My decision was a long time coming. Earlier this year, the chief content officer for our parent company, e.Republic, stated in a meeting that we should not run articles that could draw the attention of the Trump White House and have them try to shut us down.
At the time, her position struck me as wrong in a couple of ways. Chiefly, there was the obvious betrayal of journalistic ethics. Secondly, however, Governing is such a small (although I’d like to say prestigious) publication that the idea anyone in the current White House was reading it, let alone preparing to hammer it, struck me as dubious.
Governing was started nearly 40 years ago by editors from Congressional Quarterly who thought state policy should get more news coverage. Even after it was bought in 2009 by e.Republic, Governing remained one of the few outlets to pay continuous attention to governments outside of Washington. It often receives compliments such as being called “the Rolling Stone of state of the state addresses.” It’s a wonky publication, and it’s not huge, but it has a sterling reputation for covering a crucial niche.
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That’s one of the saddest parts of Trump’s anti-media drive. After the government has gone after the big guys — Trump has engaged in court fights this year with CBS, ABC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press, not to mention defunding NPR, my former employer — the little guys too often decide they lack the resources to stand up. Capitulation becomes the easier course.
We’ve seen this happen in other countries. Self-censorship is particularly damaging because it takes place in private; in the absence of photos of reporters walking out of the Pentagon, no one even knows it’s happened. And individuals and institutions do a more thorough job of stifling themselves than governments ever could. Not knowing where the line might be, they grow hyper-cautious and shy away from publishing anything that might cause offense.
In my role as editor of Governing, I received edicts from above throughout this year warning me to stay away from a variety of topics. For example, I was told that an article about attitudes toward vaccines caused “consternation” among the higher ups because that issue has become partisan. I warned my boss that if we weren’t going to reflect reality — if we weren’t going to do journalism — I’d have to quit.
Vaccines are partisan. Jesus H. Christ.
I don’t know how many other publications are doing this but I would expect that even if it isn’t as blatant, it’s happening everywhere. Anyone who is a public critic of Trump and his henchmen at least thinks about it. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t. But if the country is so far gone that we’re all afraid to criticize our leaders, much less the alleged free press, we have much bigger problems.
Trump and the Republicans treat California like garbage. We’re not amused:
It’s a state ballot measure about redistricting, but Proposition 50 has many California voters thinking nationally — and a lot about President Trump.
Those voting for it overwhelmingly say one reason is for them to oppose the Trump administration — which they also feel generally treats California worse than other states — and oppose national Republicans.
Overall, those who see their Prop 50 vote as a national issue are backing it, and that rationale is in turn helping push the “yes” side of the measure into the lead.
By contrast, those who see it more as a state issue are opposed: Those voting “no” are driven by a concern that redistricting would shift power away from the state’s rural areas and toward the cities and cost the state money. But their views are outnumbered at the moment.
Those voting no are Republicans. There is no reason that power would shift toward cities. It’s just that their interests will be represented by Democrats who are, by the way, better on rural issues than Republicans are. They’ll be fine. They just won’t have a racist authoritarian representing them which is obviously very traumatic for many of them. Too bad.
The Trump administration’s plan to overhaul the U.S. refugee resettlement process, including a drastic reduction in overall annual admissions, coincides with a concerted effort to prepare thousands of White South Africans to relocate to the United States through the system, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post and people familiar with the matter.
If the administration succeeds, almost all people admitted to the U.S. as refugees — as many as 7,000 from a maximum potential pool of 7,500 — could be Afrikaners, a group not traditionally eligible for the program but one that President Donald Trump says has been tyrannized by South Africa’s Black majority. The remainder may be chosen because of their ability to speak English or their views on “free speech,” people familiar with the matter said, upending a system that for decades had taken in people fleeing conflict and persecution from all over the world regardless of race or language.
Only white racists need apply for refugee status in the United States. And when you think about it, it makes sense. We are once again, a bold, unapologetic, white supremacist state with no pretensions to pluralism or tolerance and no commitment to strive for any kind of racial progress.
I will not be surprised to see that plaque just quietly disappear from the statue some day soon. It’s very DEI.
President Donald Trump ’s plan to cut record beef prices by importing more meat from Argentina is running into heated opposition from U.S. ranchers who are enjoying some rare profitable years and skepticism from experts who say the president’s move probably wouldn’t lead to cheaper prices at grocery stores.
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association along with the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America and other farming groups — who are normally some of the president’s biggest supporters — all criticized Trump’s idea because of what it could do to American ranchers and feedlot operators. And agricultural economists say Argentine beef accounts for such a small slice of beef imports — only about 2% — that even doubling that wouldn’t change prices much.
Trump wants to help his buddy Mileil by lowering tariffs to next to nothing on Argentinian beef. That’s just how it works now. These ranchers need to get with the program.
The economic consequences of allowing Trump and Bessent to dispense American policy based on whims and the needs of their best buds is, as yet, unknown. The markets are in an AI fever dream and so far, American companies and producers have been absorbing the costs of the ridiculous tariffs. Maybe that’s fine and Trump will emerge triumphant as the greatest economic mind since Adam Smith. But the jury is definitely still out.
There are some objective, measurable reasons to say that the US economy, which appears OK by the most commonly used measures, is definitely not OK once you look under the hood. One essential aspect of this weirdness is the economy is strongly bifurcated: AI is booming, but the rest of the economy isn’t. Another aspect is that in many ways the economy feels “frozen”: while there have been no mass layoffs so far, people who have lost their jobs or are just entering the work force are finding it very hard to get new jobs. Third, while the economy is growing thanks to AI spending, it’s a K-shaped expansion: People who were already affluent are becoming more so, but the less well-off are under severe pressure. For example, there are clear signs that middle-to-low income consumers are struggling: car loan and credit card delinquencies are rising, and grocers report that shoppers are buying cheaper varieties of food. At the same time, the affluent are spending freely: the top 10% of the income distribution now accounts for nearly half of all consumer spending.
What’s going on? I would argue that Trump’s wildly erratic policies are creating huge uncertainty which is deterring many companies – essentially those that are not in the AI sector or a sector catering to the affluent – from making investments. And those forgone investments include hiring new workers. The result is that much of the economy is frozen — companies aren’t hiring or investing. This freeze, in turn, explains both worker anxiety and rising inequality. Without the AI boom/bubble spending, we might very well have fallen into a recession, as some economists like Mark Zandi have claimed. And despite the AI boom, times for many workers are tough.
[…]
Overall unemployment hasn’t risen that much, but the number of long-term unemployed — would-be workers who have been jobless for more than 6 months — had soared as of August, and has probably continued to rise since then:
Another important indicator of a troubled labor market is Black unemployment. After all these years, Black workers still tend to be “last hired, first fired.” And while the overall unemployment rate (dashed green line) hasn’t risen much so far, the Black unemployment rate (blue line) has soared, presumably because Black workers are finding it especially hard to find jobs in this frozen economy:
Again, we have yet to see mass layoffs, so most workers still have their jobs. But workers believe, rightly, that if they should happen to lose their current job they will have a hard time finding another. This obviously means that workers have much less bargaining power than they did when the job market was tight. Employers don’t have to give workers big wage increases to hang on to them; they can impose onerous conditions, like ending remote work, without fearing that employees will quit, because they have no place to go.
Historically, strong demand for labor has been especially good for lower-paid workers, while weak demand has hit them hard. The post-Covid expansion, during which labor was scarce, was marked by big gains at the bottom and a surprisingly large fall in wage inequality, what David Autor, Arindrajit Dube and Annie McGrew have called the “unexpected compression.”
Incidentally, all through the Biden-era expansion I kept hearing people say that the economic recovery was only benefiting an affluent minority, that ordinary workers were being left behind. This wasn’t at all true at the time. But it is true now. The Atlanta Fed has a wage tracker that, among other things, estimates the rate of wage growth at different parts of the wage distribution. During the Biden years wage growth for the bottom fourth of the wage distribution (blue line) was consistently higher than wage growth for the top fourth (red line). Now that equalizing process has gone into reverse.
He says that every economist he knows is extremely concerned:
Many economists — actually, all the economists I know — are worried about a potential downturn. The AI boom is troublingly reminiscent of the 90s tech bubble. After the sudden bankruptcies first of a subprime auto lender, then an auto parts supplier built on hidden loans, JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon suggested parallels between bad lending in the private credit market and the bad subprime lending that brought on the 2008 crisis. To quote Dimon: “I probably shouldn’t say this, but when you see one cockroach, there are probably more.”
I hate to be cynical but I am beginning to wonder if Trump is going to be able to keep the balls in the air until he’s on his way out or gone. He may be the luckiest person in the world so it’s entirely possible. On the other hand, this is hitting hard early in his term and people are feeling it even if it isn’t translating into recession yet. The Republicans think they’ll have Morning in America in a couple of years but it is much more likely we’ll be fully falling into the dark ages.
Not that Trump cares because he does what he wants, but the new PRRI survey shows a very unhappy country:
The survey offers a snapshot of the nation’s sour mood just more than a year before the 2026 midterms — and suggests that anger could rewire political alliances and test the durability of Trump’s support.
The 16th annual American Values Survey, by Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), is worth studying because it tracks religion, values and mood, with a vast sample across racial and religious lines. The poll has been a reliable pre-election barometer.
PRRI CEO Melissa Deckman tells Axios that it “looks like political independents are very unhappy with Trump’s actions, [with] … close to two-thirds on many indicators saying the administration has gone too far in its policies,”
If it is true as they say that opinions tend to be solidified a year out, the Republicans are in trouble:
Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction, fueled by dissatisfaction with President Trump’s impact on the economy, immigration, race relations and the nation’s global standing, according to a new poll with a big, broad sample.
Even among Republicans, a significant share — nearly 30% — gave Trump low marks on the economy and how the government is functioning.
The poll of 5,543 adults (age 18+) was conducted online Aug. 15 to Sept. 8, with a margin of sampling error of ±1.79 percentage points.
The findings are similar to other major polls: An AP-NORC poll out this week found 69% of Americans thought the nation was headed in the wrong direction and 30% in the right direction. A Gallup Poll last month found 67% of Americans are dissatisfied with how things are going in the U.S., and 29% are satisfied.
In the PRRI poll, taken in partnership with the Brookings Institution, 62% say the country is going the wrong direction, led by Democrats (92%) and independents (71%).
24% of Republicans said the nation was heading in the wrong direction, the poll found.
The 68-point gap between Republicans and Democrats on that question is the widest ever recorded in PRRI’s 16 years of surveys on religion and politics.
By contrast, during President Biden’s last year in office, 94% of Republicans, 70% of independents, and 41% of Democrats said the country was moving in the wrong direction.
Six in 10 Americans say the state of race relations in the U.S. has mostly changed for the worse since the beginning of the year.
Six in 10 Americans also say the cuts in federal funding of health care programs such as Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act have gone too far.
The same share of respondents said they’re dissatisfied with how the Trump administration deals with other countries.
A majority of those surveyed (54%) say Trump’s tariffs on imported goods have gone too far.
A majority also believes the cuts in federal funding and grants to universities and research institutions have gone overboard (55%).
Most Americans appear to be strongly opposed to the Trump administration’s aggressive moves to remove millions of unauthorized immigrants and those who previously had protective statuses.
Nearly two-thirds oppose arresting and detaining unauthorized immigrants who have resided in the U.S. with no criminal record.
Nearly six in 10 agree that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers “should not be allowed to conceal their identity with masks or use unmarked vehicles when arresting people.”
About two-thirds oppose the U.S. government deporting undocumented immigrants to prisons in El Salvador, Rwanda or Libya without allowing the people to challenge deportations in court.
Oh, and by the way:
A majority of Americans agree “President Trump is a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy” (56%), up from 52% in March 2025, compared with 41% who agree “President Trump is a strong leader who should be given the power he needs to restore America’s greatness.”
Most Democrats (91%) and independents (65%) agree with the first statement, while most Republicans agree with the second statement (82%).
Seven in ten white evangelicals (73%) agree that Trump is a strong leader, as do 54% of white mainline Protestants and 55% of white Catholics. In contrast, majorities of other religious groups view Trump more as a dangerous dictator, including 53% of Hispanic Protestants.
Donald Trump wants to deploy the U.S. military against you. Yes, you. Shocking? Hardly. He’s as transparent as glass. Sen. Jeff Merkley, the Oregon Democrat, has taken the Senate floor to call out Trump for tryinhg to turn a government that is already authoritarian into a military dictatorship.
“I’ve come to the Senate floor tonight to ring the alarm bells. We’re in the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our republic since the Civil War. President Trump is shredding our Constitution,” Merkley said to begin his remarks.
Merkley’s topics have ranged from attacks on universities to indictment of political enemies to his deployment of National Guard troops to American cities.
“President Trump wants us to believe that Portland, Oregon, in my home state, is full of chaos and riots. Because if he can say to the American people that there are riots, he can say there’s a rebellion. And if there’s a rebellion, he can use that to strengthen his authoritarian grip on our nation,” Merkley said.
Sen. Dick Durbin, Democrat of illinois, just raised a question about Trump’s trying to gin up the perception of unrest in blue cities as pretext for sending in troops. Even with thousands peacefully in the streets of Chicago to run a marathon and for the No Kings protest, Durbin points out. Meanwhile, ICE is already terrorizing the citizens of Chicago as they quietly head home from church.
Durbin is not blowing smoke. Even U.S. citizens, ProPublica reports,
Yet DHS has a film crew producing sensationalized propaganda videos. One was of the ICE assault on a South Shore apartment building that, contrary to DHS allegations, was not filled with Venezuelan gang members. Another was a “TikTok-worthy fascism-slop video” (American Prospect) of its agents cruising in boats down the Chicago River.
Today I was stopped by ICE at gunpoint. They tried to bash in our car’s windows while we were doing ICE patrol in the community. We must fight back against this fascist regime that has no place in America. If you see ICE activity, please call ICIRR Support at (855) 435-7693. pic.twitter.com/6osczAEbSm
The American Prospect calls out ICE for its two months of terrorizing Chicago. Spooked citizens imagine seeing ICE around every corner:
The fear that ICE could be lurking in any car on any street has pushed many Chicagoans to avoid going out in public, where having brown skin makes you a target. Notorious U.S. Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino said the quiet part out loud to a white WBEZ reporter, describing how ICE makes arrests based on “the particular characteristics of an individual, how they look. How do they look compared to, say, you?”
In response to fears of racial profiling, neighbors are organizing grocery deliveries for those who are too scared to leave the house. Parents gather at elementary schools during dismissal, keeping watch for federal agents as their at-risk neighbors pick up their children. Advocacy groups hand out whistles to anyone they see, telling them to sound the alarm if they see la migra.
Someone mocked the DHS propaganda videos using the theme from the 1975–76 television series “S.W.A.T.“
*****NEW VIDEO WATCH TURN SOUND UP!*****
I'm so sick of these slick, fake tough @ICEgov and @DHSgov videos that I made my own to show the truth.
It is often suggested that being the object of barbs at the 2011 White House correspondents’ dinner cemented Donald Trump’s resolve to seek the White House in 2016. Being lampooned by the country’s first Black president, Barack Obama, especially gnawed at the host of “The Apprentice.” That and Seth Meyers’s surprise that Trump was running as a Republican when Meyers thought he was “running as a joke.”
Trump bowed out of the 2012 race two weeks after his public roasting. But Trump meant to get even and here we are.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that the Treasury Department “instructed employees not to share photos of the demolition of parts of the White House’s East Wing after images of construction equipment [Monday] dismantling the facade of the building went viral online.” Treasury sits across the drive from the East Wing.
The Hill reports, that “wrecking of part of the White House’s East Wing to make way for President Trump’s ballroom is striking a nerve with his critics who see it as an overhaul of a historic building for a gaudy personal project.”
Gaudy? Google “Oval Office” and “whore house.”
The White House brags that Trump’s $250 million ballroom will be built with donated private monies (from corporations and billionaires). Former Bush II chief ethics lawyer Richard Painter calls the project “an ethics nightmare.” Pundit David Frum on Tuesday reframed the privately funded vanity project as demolishing the East Wing to erect “a monument to bribery.”
The Bulwark’s JV Last advises that Democrats should make restoring the White House and grounds to its pre-Trump state a 2028 campaign issue.
“Trump’s transformation of the People’s House into a presidential palace is undemocratic,” Last writes. “Presidents are not kings. Erasing this monstrosity is fundamental statement about the right-ordering of our project in self-government.”
The White House dismissed public dismay over the demolition as “manufactured outrage” by “unhinged leftists and their Fake News allies.” Trump previously pledged that the ballroom addition would not touch the existing structure.
Comer: The evidence we gathered does not implicate President Trump in any way. Public reporting, survivor testimony, and official documents show that Bill Clinton had far closer ties to Epstein pic.twitter.com/p2SYkexCI1
Goldman on Comer's role in the Epstein coverup: "That Oversight investigation very specifically does not ask for the types of evidence where Trump's name, likeness would be — photos videos, audio, witness statements, the investigation origination documents. Oversight has not asked for those"
President Trump is demanding that the Justice Department pay him about $230 million in compensation for the federal investigations into him, according to people familiar with the matter, who added that any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit.
The situation has no parallel in American history, as Mr. Trump, a presidential candidate, was pursued by federal law enforcement and eventually won the election, taking over the very government that must now review his claims. It is also the starkest example yet of potential ethical conflicts created by installing the president’s former lawyers atop the Justice Department.
Mr. Trump submitted complaints through an administrative claim process that often is the precursor to lawsuits. The first claim, lodged in late 2023, seeks damages for a number of purported violations of his rights, including the F.B.I. and special counsel investigation into Russian election tampering and possible connections to the 2016 Trump campaign, according to people familiar with the matter. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the claim has not been made public.
The second complaint, filed in the summer of 2024, accuses the F.B.I. of violating Mr. Trump’s privacy by searching Mar-a-Lago, his club and residence in Florida, in 2022 for classified documents. It also accuses the Justice Department of malicious prosecution in charging him with mishandling sensitive records after he left office.
Lawyers said the nature of the claims posed undeniable ethics challenges.
“What a travesty,” said Bennett L. Gershman, an ethics professor at Pace University. “The ethical conflict is just so basic and fundamental, you don’t need a law professor to explain it.”
He added: “And then to have people in the Justice Department decide whether his claim should be successful or not, and these are the people who serve him deciding whether he wins or loses. It’s bizarre and almost too outlandish to believe.”
Trump knows the optics are bad — he said that it looks like he’s suing himself, hahaha — but why should he care?
The Justice Department does not specifically require a public announcement of settlements made for administrative claims before they become lawsuits. If or when the Trump administration pays the president what could be hundreds of millions of dollars, there may be no immediate official declaration that it did so, according to current and former department officials.
Nothing is too bizarre and outlandish to believe. Nothing.
Update: Trump said today that if he gets it he’ll give the money to something nice. So that’s just fine. Never mind.
WAR AND PEACE: President Donald Trump’s diplomatic efforts in the Middle East and potential talks to end Russia’s war in Ukraine are in delicate territory as news out of both regions threatens to derail peace progress.
On the ground in Israel: VP JD Vance arrived in Tel Aviv to meet with Israeli officials today as the administration works to ease tensions after Israel and Hamas accused each other of breaking the terms of the truce following a weekend of violence. But Vance said that this weekend’s incidents were not the reason for his visit: “I wanted to just see how things are going,” he said, per NYT’s Tyler Pager.
Amid growing White House concern that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu might be the one to end the deal, Vance embarked on a day of what one U.S. official described to CNN as “Bibisitting.” The VP worked to downplay fears of a ceasefire collapse in his visit.
“What we’ve seen the past week gives me great optimism the ceasefire is going to hold,” Vance said at a news conference. He said he feels “very optimistic,” though he ceded: “Can I say with 100% certainty that it’s going to work? No.”
Vance also warned that a truce between both Hamas and Israel would take a “very, very long time,” urging Israel to extend a “little bit of patience” with Hamas’ pace of returning hostages’ remains, per AP’s Seung Min Kim. As for Hamas laying its weapons down, Vance declined to state a firm timeline: “I don’t think it’s actually advisable to say this has to be done in a week.” Special envoy Steve Witkoff reiterated Vance’s optimism, adding that progress is “exceeding where we thought we would be at this time.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s son-in-law and former adviser Jared Kushner told reporters that U.S. and allied countries may begin the reconstruction of Gaza in the parts of the war-torn enclave currently held by Israeli forces. Though Kushner said plans are still in flux, he reiterated that “no reconstruction funds will be going into areas that Hamas still controls,” adding that reconstruction “would give the Palestinians living in Gaza a place to go, a place to get jobs, a place to live,” per NYT.
Trump weighs in: “Numerous of our NOW GREAT ALLIES in the Middle East, and areas surrounding the Middle East, have explicitly and strongly, with great enthusiasm, informed me that they would welcome the opportunity, at my request, to go into GAZA with a heavy force and ‘straighten our Hamas’ if Hamas continues to act badly, in violation of their agreement with us,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post today. “There is still hope that Hamas will do what is right. If they do not, an end to Hamas will be FAST, FURIOUS, & BRUTAL!”
Yeah I’m sure other countries are more than anxious to get militarily involved in this. And Kush doesn’t seem to understand that Trump’s still wanting to put the Palestinians in trailer parks in the Sahara. They should probably get on the same page. (Either that or Grandpa’s glitching too and only remembering his brilliant ethnic cleansing brainstorm.)
Oh, and whatever “progress” Trump was expecting on Ukraine is falling apart too. Rubio and Lavrov spoke on the phone and the upshot was that nobody’s meeting any time soon.
I think Trump’s going to need to find another war or two to “solve” to keep his numbers up. These two aren’t doing what he wants them to do. Maybe he could just stop blowing up fishermen in the Caribbean.
