Happy Tuesday! On this day—September 9—two great nations formally adopted their official names. In Philadelphia, in 1776, the Continental Congress named its new nation the “United States of America,” and exactly 172 years later, Kim Il Sung proclaimed the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- Israeli military spokesperson Col. Avichay Adraee issued a sweeping evacuation order Tuesday morning, calling on all Gaza City residents to immediately leave via designated corridors ahead of expected strikes. The notice states that the “IDF is resolute in defeating Hamas and will operate in Gaza City with overwhelming force, as it has done throughout the Strip,” and instructed residents to “evacuate immediately.” According to an Israeli official, who spoke with Israel Hayom, more than 100,000 people have already evacuated the city, with between 100,000 and 300,000 remaining. Meanwhile, during a meeting in Croatia, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said that his country was committing to ending the war “based on President Trump’s proposal and in accordance with the principles established by the security cabinet.”
- At least 19 people were killed and 100 others injured on Monday in Nepal’s capital city, Kathmandu, following mass protests against corruption and the government’s recent ban on social media platforms that do not meet its new strict registration requirements, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, X, and YouTube. The protests were largely youth-driven, and, after fighting broke out with security forces, Nepalese police deployed anti-riot water cannons, batons, and rubber-bullet guns. Later that day, Nepal’s communications and information technology minister, Subba Gurung, announced the government would repeal the ban, attributing violence to “infiltration from different selfish centers,” and added the government would pay relief to victims’ families and hospital bills for injured civilians. Nepali Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli resigned this morning as protests continue.
- Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth traveled to Puerto Rico on Monday, telling Navy sailors and Marines aboard the USS Iwo Jima that they are on the “front lines.” “What you’re doing right now, it’s not training,” he added. “This is the real world exercise … to end the poisoning of the American people.” Hegseth’s visit, which Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine also joined, comes after Trump ordered a military strike on a suspected cartel-affiliated drug trafficking boat (read more about the strike in yesterday’s TMD). On Friday, unnamed sources told Reuters that the White House had further deployed 10 F-35 fighter jets to Puerto Rico for additional military operations against drug cartel operations.
- French Prime Minister François Bayrou was voted out Monday by the country’s parliament in a 365–194 confidence vote, and is expected to formally submit his resignation to President Emmanuel Macron today. Bayrou proposed the no-confidence vote to gain approval for a budget proposal that included tax hikes to reduce government spending by 44 billion euros ($51 billion). Bayrou had also suggested cutting two public holidays to reduce government debt. Macron said he would appoint a new prime minister later this week. Bayrou took office in December 2024, following a no-confidence vote against former French Prime Minister Michel Barnier, and is the third consecutive French prime minister to hold the office for fewer than 12 months.
- U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer on Monday asked the Supreme Court to lift a federal district judge’s preliminary injunction that required the Trump administration to spend $4 billion in congressionally appropriated foreign aid by September 30. On September 3, Federal Judge Amir Ali ruled that since Congress appropriated the money, the administration had to follow through and disburse the funds, stating that the White House had “given no justification to displace the bedrock expectation that Congress’s appropriations must be followed.” However, Trump issued a “pocket rescission” on August 29—temporarily suspending the funds past their expiration date—leading Sauer to argue that, because the issue is before the legislative and executive branches, the judge overstepped his bounds. “The government now faces the prospect of contempt proceedings before the district court,” he wrote, “if the government misses statutory deadlines for congressional notifications for obligating funds that the President has proposed should be rescinded and that Congress is actively considering.”
- The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a federal district judge’s order that temporarily barred the Trump administration from considering “apparent race or ethnicity,” a Spanish or foreign-speaking language, in addition to other factors, in its determination in making immigration enforcement arrests. The majority justices did not rule on the merits of the case—that challenge is still pending in a federal appeals court—but stipulated that the district judge could not temporarily block federal agents from continuing this specific protocol while the merits case is pending. While there was no majority opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurrence that judges “may have views on which policy approach is better or fairer. But judges are not appointed to make those policy calls.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent, which Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined.
- A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a jury verdict ordering that Trump pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in defamation and punitive damages, rejecting the president’s challenge that such an amount was excessive. In a memoir published in 2019, Trump wrote that Carroll, who had accused him of raping her in 1996, did so to push her own book sales, and said her accusations were “totally false,” prompting Carroll to sue the president. In a separate case decided in 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse but not rape. However, the appeals court wrote in an unsigned opinion that the punitive damages are “fair and reasonable,” citing death threats Carroll has received since 2019.
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Bad Job
It turned out that shooting the messenger did not, in fact, change the message. President Donald Trump, incensed by poor jobs reports, fired Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer last month for allegedly producing “phony” numbers. “I fired her, and you know what? The right thing,” he said. On Friday, the BLS released its first survey results on the U.S. job market since Trump’s decision to oust McEntarfer.
The results? Even worse for Trump. BLS data for August showed that the U.S. economy added 22,000 non-farm jobs last month, a steep decline from the 79,000 jobs added in July. In August 2024, that number stood at 124,000. Data for June was also revised down by 27,000 jobs from 14,000, meaning that the economy actually shed 13,000 jobs for that month. It was the worst monthly showing since 2020.
August’s hiring slowdown is the latest in a succession of indicators showing that the immigration and trade policies of the Trump administration are beginning to affect the U.S. economy—and not in a good way. With companies facing rising import costs along with deep uncertainty, and the pool of eligible workers shrinking as deportations increase, an economy that seemed to be defying predictions of doom may finally be starting to wobble. All eyes now turn to the Federal Reserve’s meeting next week and the near-certainty of an interest rate cut.
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White House officials sought to downplay the alarming numbers over the weekend. Friday’s report was “a little bit disappointing,” said Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council. “I expect it will be revised up,” he added, pointing to a history of the BLS later adjusting August numbers upward. The August 2024 jobs report, for example, was later revised upward from 142,000 jobs to 159,000.
Other members of the Cabinet gave less wonky reasons for doubting the numbers. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CNBC on Friday that once the White House had removed all of the president’s opponents from the BLS, jobs reports would improve. “You’ll take out the people who are just trying to create noise against the president,” he claimed, arguing for Trump’s eventual appointee, Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni, to clean house at the BLS. Antoni has not yet been confirmed by the Senate, dogged by accusations of a thin academic record and a recent CNN report into an anonymous social media account he allegedly created that shared conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and sexist remarks about former Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
In endeavoring to explain the weak job market, administration spokespeople also argued that if immigrants are taken out of the equation, data shows a purported rise in employment among native-born workers. However, those numbers are mainly a “statistical artifact,” Jed Kolko, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told TMD.
Unemployment numbers are gathered through a survey that includes asking respondents whether they are foreign- or native-born. But while the pool of respondents may change, the total population does not, as this is based on projections from the beginning of the year. In short, if a greater share of native-born workers responds to the survey due to deportations of illegal immigrants, lower immigration, and hesitancy to respond among immigrants, then the percentage of native-born workers mechanically rises to fit the predetermined population estimate.
Other measures also attest to this. “If it were purely a decrease in the labor supply, you would be seeing fast-rising wages,” Peter Coy, an economic commentator and former columnist for the New York Times, told TMD. But real wage growth has actually declined slightly in the last few months to 4.1 percent in July, down from 4.2 percent in June.
The new numbers, along with the downward revisions, solved a bit of an economic mystery: Why did the labor market appear to be so robust, even as economists almost unanimously agreed that tariffs would raise prices and deportations would reduce the pool of eligible workers?
The answer, it appears, is that the market isn’t as strong as previously thought.
However, it’s also true that unemployment has remained relatively unchanged, increasing to 4.3 percent in August, compared to 4.2 percent in June. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has called this combination of low unemployment and low job growth a “curious kind of balance”: Aggressive deportations and sharply curtailed immigration mean that even weak job numbers don’t drastically alter employment rates.
The White House remains committed to its anti-immigration and anti-trade policies. Cutting interest rates, a decision made by the (for now) independent Federal Reserve, remains the last lever to pull to encourage hiring. In recent months, Trump has campaigned for the Fed to cut interest rates (including by attempting to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook), but Powell and the vast majority of Fed governors have been reluctant to do so. Inflation remains at 2.7 percent, above the Fed's 2 percent target, and injecting cash into the economy by making money cheaper risks increasing inflation.
But, fortunately for Trump, the Fed’s rate-cutting reticence is likely to end in about a week, driven by the decline in job growth. “That [a rate cut] will happen is pretty certain,” Coy said. The CME Group’s Fedwatch, a widely used prediction market for rate cuts, currently projects a 100 percent probability of a rate cut, with a 90 percent chance of the Fed lowering the target rate by one quarter of a percentage point, and a 10 percent chance of a half-point cut.
On the one hand, the case for cutting rates is now obvious. The Fed has a dual mandate to maintain maximum employment and stable prices, and the most obvious solution to weaker job market growth is to free up capital by lowering the benchmark interest rate. Even with inflation currently above the Fed’s target, some members of the board believe it can “look through” supply shocks, such as tariffs, assuming that prices will simply stabilize after a one-time increase, rather than accelerating higher due to looser monetary policy.
On the other hand, consumers don’t necessarily view the macroeconomy in the same way Fed governors do—and that matters. “If consumers and businesses get the perception that inflation is rising, then they’ll behave that way,” said Coy. “It doesn’t matter if economists tell them they should look through inflation.”
Lowering rates at a time when the president is engaged in a very public campaign to pressure the Fed also carries its own risks. “I think it’s widely seen that Trump wants interest rates to go lower, and that could unsettle people’s expectations,” David Beckworth, the director of the monetary policy program at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, told TMD. With increasing deficits on the horizon as well, “looking through inflation caused by negative supply shocks may not be sufficient,” he noted.
The president’s policies also don’t determine the fate of an economy by themselves. “No one person can control the economy, for good or bad,” said Coy. Other factors, such as an ongoing economic slowdown in China or the potential impact of artificial intelligence on entry-level jobs, are also significant influences on the broader economy and the job market, he argued. Beckworth also noted that supply shocks, like immigration restrictions or tariffs, usually aren’t capable of causing a recession on their own. “Full-blown recessions usually are caused by something like a severe financial crisis or the Federal Reserve tightening rates,” he noted.
The U.S. economy might continue to steam forward, but it will increasingly be sailing against the current. In 2024, U.S. GDP grew at an average annual pace of 2.5 percent; for the first six months of 2025, growth was 1.4 percent. Last year, the U.S. economy created 2.2 million jobs, while this year, it’s on pace for roughly half that number. At this point, the deceleration seems undeniable.
Observers of consumer data are also pointing to warning signs. “The middle class is stretched,” Heather Long, the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, told TMD. “There’s not a lot of room left in their budgets.” Even though overall spending levels haven’t declined drastically, she noted, middle- and working-class consumers are starting to pinch pennies: shopping at wholesale clubs, reducing vacation time, and saving more in checking accounts. “We’re in a slow-speed economy,” said Long.
Trump may not be able to singlehandedly wreck the economy, then, but he can slow it down. “To some extent, this robust economy has absorbed all the shocks, all the challenges, all the stress that’s been imposed by the ad hoc policies” of the White House, said Beckworth. “But I think we’re running low on the ability to absorb such shocks.”
Today’s Must-Read
What is the defining characteristic of capitalism? Some say profit. Others, private ownership. Still others, rapacity. Considering that capitalism may have begun as early as the 16th century, in England, it took a long time for us to come up with the most impressive answer, at least to date: creative destruction. It’s a term you’ve heard and likely experienced firsthand—if you switched from compact discs to Spotify, if you’ve ordered something from Amazon, if you’re invested in cryptocurrency, or if you remember the morning paper in the driveway. Creative destruction, according to Chicago Booth Review, is “when innovation brings about the decline or demise of established products or enterprises.” More poetically, it’s “the fundamental impulse that gets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion … the essential fact of capitalism.”
Toeing the Company Line
The Tariff Shutdown
How Democrats should use their leverage.
Junkie Thinking
The pathology of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Trump’s World Liberty Financial Windfall
Public trading in a token issued by the Trump family’s crypto venture boosts the value of the president’s digital holdings.
Under Trump, Process Is for Suckers
The guiding principle of the president’s second term is ‘just do things.’
Hamas’ Chief Negotiator Is a Terrorist, Not a Peacemaker
Khalil al-Hayya helped plan the October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel and has called it a ‘source of pride.’
Listening to a Justice | Interview: Justice Amy Coney Barrett
Originalism is not a tool for judicial restraint.
Judicial Philosophy | Interview: Sarah Isgur, Justice Amy Coney Barrett
Inside the walls of the Supreme Court.
Worth Your Time
On the sidelines of a Chinese military parade, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin were caught on hot mic talking about the potential of living longer through organ transplants and other ambitious medical methods. It sounds like a conversation villains would have in a Bond movie, but it was actually a glimpse into the elite longevity industry, where the ultrarich invest billions in an attempt to live as long as possible. In a new report, the Wall Street Journal dives into this, breaking down the main companies and investors involved: “How much would you invest in the possibility of living to 150 or beyond? Or having 20 extra healthy years? For the ultrawealthy, it’s more than $5 billion over the past 2½ decades, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of longevity investment deals in PitchBook, public company statements and regulatory filings. Silicon Valley giants Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, Yuri Milner and Marc Andreessen are among the boldface names behind the influx of money in the longevity industry. Thiel’s quest for longer life spans nearly a dozen companies—some of which were funded by his venture firm and others by a nonprofit foundation he backed—that raised more than $700 million, according to the Journal’s analysis. They and other wealthy investors have helped push what was once something of an academic backwater into the cultural mainstream. Many companies ultimately fail, but the ultrawealthy and other enthusiasts are following the money and the science to decide where to invest and what to take.”
Presented Without Comment
Reuters: Congress Releases Epstein’s ‘Birthday Book,’ Including Alleged Trump Letter
Also Presented Without Comment
Washington Post: Meta Suppressed Research on Child Safety, Employees Say
Meta had publicly committed to making child safety a top priority across its platforms. But Sattizahn and the second researcher, who specializes in studying youths and technology, said that after the interview, their boss ordered the recording of the teen’s claims deleted, along with all written records of his comments. An internal Meta report on the research said that in general, German parents and teens feared grooming by strangers in virtual reality — but the report did not include the teen’s assertion that his younger sibling actually had been targeted.
The report is part of a trove of documents from inside Meta that was recently disclosed to Congress by two current and two former employees who allege that Meta suppressed research that might have illuminated potential safety risks to children and teens on the company’s virtual reality devices and apps — an allegation the company has vehemently denied. After leaked Meta studies led to congressional hearings in 2021, the company deployed its legal team to screen, edit and sometimes veto internal research about youth safety in VR, according to a joint statement the current and former employees submitted to Congress in May. They assert Meta’s legal team was seeking to “establish plausible deniability” about negative effects of the company’s products, according to the statement, which, along with the documents, was obtained by The Post.
Also Also Presented Without Comment
New York Times: Trump’s Treasury Secretary Threatens to Punch Housing Official in the Face
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