It is a genuine relief to many — including me — that Wednesday’s U.S. inflation numbers came in lower than consensus forecasts had predicted, both for the headline and core measures. This is good news for Americans facing crippling bills, eroding purchasing power and mounting economic insecurity. It is also good news for markets, illustrating the extent to which the economy and finance are aligned on the importance of controlling a multi-dimensional menace that has been eroding the prospects for inclusive and sustainable growth.
That’s the good news, and it is welcomed progress after a year-plus of almost nonstop disappointments. Yet, with inflation still too high, it is progress that needs to be maintained and built-upon in the months and quarters ahead, especially given what else the the economy as a whole is telling us.
First, a quick review of the key inflation data just released:
Headline inflation fell from 9.1 percent in June to 8.5 percent in July, below the consensus forecast of 8.7 percent.
The core inflation measure, which by convention excludes energy and food prices as they are deemed overly volatile (up-and-down), was unchanged at 5.9 percent, below the consensus forecast of 6.1 percent.
On a monthly basis, headline inflation was flat as the sharp fall in energy prices (4.6 percent), led by gasoline (7.7 percent) offset not just higher food prices (up 1.1 percent) but also broad-based price increases elsewhere as illustrated by the 0.3 percent monthly rise in the core measure.
The moderation in headline inflation is certainly good news and reflects the work the Biden administration has been doing on the energy front in particular. It will help ease what has been rapidly compounding pressures on the budgets and livelihoods of Americans, particularly the most vulnerable segments of our society. It also lowers the still-concerning probability of the economy slipping into a recession over the next few months.
No wonder financial markets had such a favorable reaction to the new inflation numbers. Stocks surged higher and bond yields fell, good news both for companies, for mortgages, and for the fortunate households with financial wealth. As important, the traditional market measure of recession risk — that is, “curve inversion,” or the extent to which the yield on 10-year bonds trades below that on 2-year — flashed somewhat less of a loud warning signal.
Having said all this, it is important that we don’t get carried away in our relief, as genuinely welcome as it is.
At 8.5 percent, prices continue to go up at still a worrisomely high pace, eroding even more purchasing power and adding to household economic insecurity. Moreover, because the Federal Reserve has been so late in recognizing the inflation problem for what it is and in responding with credible policy measures, the drivers of this inflation are now broad-based.
We are not yet out of the woods. Far from it.
While headline inflation moderated in July, and did so more than widely anticipated, it remains a big problem. Allowed to fester for too long, by the Fed in particular, it is now an entrenched multi-dimensional challenge that has economic, social, financial, institutional and political influences.
It is crucial, not just for our economy but also for the global one, that our Fed — the most powerful central bank in the world — maintains its policy response and recovers its damaged credibility. Failing that, our collective desire to put the inflation genie back into the bottle, and the efforts of the Biden administration and Congress to do so, will prove to be of only limited effectiveness.
Mohamed A. El-Erian is president of Queens’ College, Cambridge University. He is an advisor to Allianz and Gramercy Fund Management, the Rene Kern Professor of Practice at The Wharton School, and a senior fellow at the Lauder Institute of the University of Pennsylvania.
The Putin regime has made it all the way down the rabbit hole. Nonsense is now the name of the game, as the Kremlin’s recently drafted media “recommendations” reveal.
A few weeks ago, Vladimir Putin compared himself to Czar Peter the Great (1672-1725). This time, Putin and his propagandists have compared Czar Vladimir to Prince Alexander Nevsky (1221-1263). Readers may be forgiven for wondering just what the heck is going on with all these megalomaniacal comparisons; it’s as if France’s diminutive President Emmanuel Macron were likening himself to the Sun King, Louis XIV (1638-1715) and the man who defeated the Arab armies at Tours in 731, Charles Martel.
There is a method to Putin’s madness. He is hoping to persuade Russians that he is the latest in a long chain of strongman leaders who, like every czar, deserves the popular adulation due a divinely ordained autocrat placed on earth to protect and exalt Mother Russia. Putin is also drawing on the fact that Alexander defeated the Swedes and the Livonian knights in 1240 and 1242, while Peter crushed Charles the XII of Sweden — and his Ukrainian allies! — in 1709. The message is clear: Putin, like Alexander and Peter, is defending Russia from the imperialist West and its lackey, Ukraine.
So far, so good. But then, Russia’s propagandists lapse into nonsense by blithely ignoring the embarrassingly obvious contradictions in their overall narrative. Nevsky rejected the West and subordinated his principalities to the Golden Horde — that is, to Asia. In contrast, Peter admired the West and its military and technological innovations, traveled extensively in Europe, and purposely founded the city that bears his name in order to open a “window” to Europe.
Logically, Putin cannot both support and detest the West. Nor can he paint his alliance with China as resembling the “Mongol yoke” so lamented by Russians. But Putin and his propagandists know full well that they can get away with such historical nonsense precisely because their entire ideological message consists of crude contradictions, bald-faced lies, and painfully self-evident exaggerations. The Russian population that imbibes such heady brews resembles the zombified inhabitants of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” who are administered feel-good drugs to rid them of thoughts about their dreary lives.
Like Putin and his minions, these Russians inhabit a “Wonderland” within which things are what Putin says they are. Not surprisingly, polls show that most Russians prefer not to think about the genocidal war they are waging against Ukraine. Far better to swallow some “soma” and forget that you are complicit in a world-historical crime.
Equally preposterous is the Kremlin’s new media line regarding its genocidal war against Ukraine. Naturally, the “recommendations” insist that the war is purely defensive and intended to stop the godless West from attacking holy Russia. But the truly bizarre part is that the Kremlin also compares the war to the baptism of the Kyivan Rus’ state in 988 and thereby paints itself as the defender of Orthodox Christianity and its values. Once again, readers may wonder what is going on.
As serious historians now recognize, Rus’ was a Kyivan polity centered on the Dnipro River that was only tangentially related to the principalities in the far north, Vladimir, Suzdal, Moscow and Novgorod. Historians may disagree over whether the Kyivan state was proto-Ukrainian or not, but there is no disputing that Kyivan Rus’s relationship to Nevsky, Peter, and their world is analogous to that of Rome to France. Yes, France’s precursor, Gaul, was part of the Roman Empire and no history of France would be complete without reference to Rome. And yet, it would be absurd to suggest that ancient Rome is more a part of French history then of Italian history. Is it any wonder that the grand prince who brought Christianity to Kyivan Rus’ spelled his name Volodymyr — as does Ukraine’s President Zelensky — and not Vladimir, as in Putin?
What really takes the cake is Putin’s desire to paint himself as a defender of Russian Orthodoxy. On the one hand, he’s absolutely correct to point out that the Putin state and the Russian Orthodox Church — and its apostate patriarch, Kirill — do indeed share the same values: the veneration of wanton death and destruction in Ukraine. On the other hand, some Russian believers must still hold dear the Ten Commandments and reject Putin’s and Kirill’s indifference to humanity and humility.
Of course, that contradiction doesn’t matter in Putin’s rabbit hole. The Kremlin’s propagandists don’t care whether what they say or write makes sense to thoughtful people, because they know that many Russians have ceased to think. One day, it’s possible that the capacity for critical thought will reappear in the Muscovite state. If and when it does, Russians will realize that they have been living a bloody lie for all of Putin’s unhappy reign. The moment of reckoning will be painful indeed, and no amount of soma will assuage it.
Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”
President Biden got another sliver of positive news on Wednesday as inflation dipped to 8.5 percent in July after hitting a 40-year high of 9.1 percent in June, highlighted by falling gas prices that finally is giving consumers some relief.
The news was welcome given that Dow Jones economists had been expecting an uptick of 0.2 percent in inflation from June to July. In addition, the consumer price index was unchanged on a monthly basis, according to the Department of Labor (The Hill).
July core inflation, which includes all goods sans food and energy, stayed even at 5.9 percent. The totality of the news was also reflected on Wall Street where stocks jumped across the board (CNBC).
The easing of inflation is continuing a trend for Biden, who is reveling in recent good news, including narrow passage by the Senate on Sunday of a $740 billion measure focused on prescription drug pricing, health care costs and climate change. In total, the news has helped flip the script for Biden and allowed him the rare chance to go on offense with less than three months until the midterm elections.
Political observers tell The Hill’s Amie Parnes that the president has one card that needs to be played: talking about the robust jobs market in the country.
“It’s truly the greatest jobs market in the history of our country.” said Tony Fratto, an economic policy consultant who served as White house deputy press secretary under the former President George W. Bush. “They cannot win on inflation because it’s there and people are upset about it so if you can’t win the argument, change the subject.”
“It’s communications 101…. And this isn’t that hard to do. These are alley-oop dunks,” he added.
Veterans: Biden kept up that good news on Wednesday as he signed into law a bill expanding benefits for millions of veterans who were exposed to toxins during war and are suffering illnesses. The PACT Act expands presumption of service connections for a number of conditions related to toxic exposure — meaning veterans don’t have to prove their illness was service-connected.
“This is the most significant law our nation has ever passed to help millions of veterans who are exposed to toxic substances during the military services,” Biden said in emotional remarks from the East Room (The Hill and The Associated Press).
The new law is also personal for the president, whose elder son Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015, years after deploying to Iraq in 2008. The president, who made the hazards of military base burn pits and resulting illnesses a priority during his State of the Union address in March, linked his son’s cancer to military deployment with the Delaware National Guard (The Associated Press).
“I was going to get this done, come hell or high water,”Biden said.
Lost pay: U.S. workers without paid sick leave during the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic lost an estimated $28 billion in wages, according to a report released on Wednesday by the Urban Institute with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It found that work absences due to illness, child care or other family matters increased by 50 percent when compared to the previous two years. Most absences were due to a worker’s personal illness. Women were 40 percent more likely to miss work without pay, while they were also among several groups — including self-employed, Black and Hispanic workers — who experienced the biggest increase in missed days (The Hill).
Trade: The administration is rethinking whether to scrap some tariffs on Chinese goods or potentially impose others in the wake of Beijing’s Taiwan response, putting aside options for now, Reuters reports. Biden has not reached a decision.
Related Articles
▪ CNBC: High inflation points to a possible 9.6 percent Social Security cost-of-living adjustment in 2023, or an extra $158.98 per month for the average retiree benefit of $1,656, according to an estimate based on data released Wednesday.
▪ The Wall Street Journal: The Federal Reserve is likely to want further evidence of an inflation slowdown.
▪ NewsNation: Former White House national security adviser John Bolton said in an interview that he is “not surprised” about an Iranian man allegedly plotted to kill him.
▪ CNN: Multiple current and former U.S. officials have protective security after Iran plotted to assassinate Bolton and others, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on U.S. soil. “I was not aware of the specifics,” Bolton told CNN.
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LEADING THE DAY
➤INVESTIGATIONS & COURTS
Former President Trump revealed that he invoked his Fifth Amendment rights during a deposition with the New York attorney general’s office on Wednesday as part of its probe into his business and financial dealings.
“I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’ Now I know the answer to that question,” Trump said in a statement “When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded, politically motivated Witch Hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors, and the Fake News Media, you have no choice.”
Trump took part in the deposition after he failed a number of times to block the probe and the calls to testify. Trump said that he declined to respond to questioning under the advice of his legal team.
“The United States Constitution exists for this very purpose, and I will utilize it to the fullest extent to defend myself against this malicious attack by this administration, this Attorney General’s Office, and all other attacks on my family, my business, and our Country,” he wrote in the statement.
The probe is being led by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), who Trump derided as a “renegade and out-of-control prosecutor.” She is investigating whether the ex-president misled investors and tax authorities by inflating the Trump Organization’s property value for the benefit of investments and, subsequently, deflating them to win tax and loan benefits. The probe could lead to a lawsuit seeking financial penalties from Trump and his family (The Hill).
“They asked a lot of questions about valuations and golf clubs and all that stuff,”Ronald Fischetti, Trump’s lawyer, told The New York Times, adding that Trump repeated “same answer” from 9:30 a.m. until the deposition concluded at 3 p.m. He added that Trump shortly before the meeting had to be convinced to invoke the Fifth Amendment.
“He absolutely wanted to testify, and it took some very strong persuasion by me and some others to convince him,” Fischetti said.
▪ Politico: What Trump’s pleading the Fifth means for New York’s Letitia James.
The decision also came two days after the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago resort for classified documents the former president is accused of taking with him after departing the White House early last year. Notably, the FBI’s move has inspired a fierce backlash among Trump’s most ardent supporters, fueling concern among experts about the escalating risk of political violence.
As The Hill’s John Kruzel and Rebecca Klar write, the rhetoric has ranged from divisive to incendiary, with the former president himself likening it to the Watergate break-in. However, some of his supporters have gone multiple steps further and consider it an act of civil war.
The search was conducted after investigators concluded there was probable cause that evidence of crime was being housed at Mar-a-Lago, and only after a judge approved a search warrant. However, that has not quelled the anger among some GOP leaders, who have amplified the idea that the probe was not an application of the rule of law, but rather an outgrowth of partisan politics designed to damage Biden’s main rival.
FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday became the first official at either the bureau or the Department of Justice to answer questions about the search. While he declined to comment about the investigation itself, he issued a defense of FBI agents and law enforcement officials who have received threats in its aftermath.
“I will say that I’m always concerned about violence and threats of violence against law enforcement. … Any threats made against law enforcement, including the men and women of the FBI, as with any law enforcement agency, are deplorable and dangerous,” Wray said during an appearance in Omaha, Neb. (The Associated Press).
The FBI chief glanced at notes while delivering his answer, indicating he was prepared for the question.
The House took the first procedural steps on Wednesday to pave the way for the Senate-passed, $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act to reach the floor on Friday. With expected passage later this week, the Democrats’ emblem of “getting things done” for voters would become law more than two months before the midterm elections.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has just four votes to spare in the House as Republicans argue that the bill would worsen families’ finances, add to inflation and eventually expand the deficit (The Washington Post). The legislation will pass and possibly with a unanimous Democratic vote, as was the case in the Senate.
Democrats on Capitol Hill, who veered from glum to gleeful this month, want to ask voters to enlarge the party’s majorities to take another run at the policy and spending ideas left on the cutting room floor. That was the message Wednesday from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
“Unfortunately, we have two corporate Democrats who are preventing us from doing what has to be done,”he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday, referring to Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and his own push to expand Medicare. “So, to my mind, what this election is about is the need to get three or four more progressive Democrats into the United States Senate so we can finally do what the American people want.”
The Senate battlefield in November is taking shape, giving Democrats some reason to hope, CNN reports.
The Hill: The House punted on a pending series of gun and policing bills that for weeks have stirred Democratic infighting. Action on the package had been postponed in late July to work toward an elusive compromise. “Conversations continue on finding a consensus for a robust public safety package,” Pelosi wrote to colleagues on Wednesday.
The Hill: Historic debt relief program for farmers of color takes a hit after discrimination suits.
The Hill: Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb (R) on Tuesday scheduled a special election to replace Rep. Jackie Walorski (R), who died in a car crash last week, that will coincide with November’s midterm elections. The winner of the special election is expected to take office quickly after Nov. 8 but will only serve for a matter of weeks until the end of Walorski’s term, which concludes on Jan. 3, 2023.
The Hill’s Hanna Trudo caught up with progressive Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) who sees the newly enacted CHIPS Act to benefit U.S. semiconductor manufacturers as among several legislative accomplishments that could help Democratic candidates win in November. In an interview, Khanna discussed progress on climate change, centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and his party’s political strategy.
■ Trump’s primary winning streak shows he’s still king of the GOP, by Henry Olsen, columnist, The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/3BTm9tu
■ America’s new monkeypox strategy rests on a single study, by Katherine J. Wu, staff writer, The Atlantic. https://bit.ly/3didMxk
WHERE AND WHEN
The House will meet on Friday at 9 a.m. and will vote on the Senate-passed Inflation Reduction Act.
The Senate convenes on Friday at 9 a.m. for a pro forma session during its summer recess, which ends Sept. 6.
The president and first lady Jill Biden are vacationing in South Carolina. Biden has no public events scheduled.
Vice President Harris is in California where she will participate at 1:25 p.m. PDT in a call with the news media about investments in tribal broadband. Harris will host a roundtable discussion at the Fairmont San Francisco hotel at 2:05 p.m. PDT with California state legislators and advocates to discuss reproductive health care.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Kigali, Rwanda, where he met this morning with President Paul Kagame and Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta, then held a joint press conference with Biruta (The Associated Press). At midday, Blinken visited the Kigali Genocide Memorial and meets in the afternoon with civil society representatives. The secretary later meets with employees and families from the U.S. Embassy.
Economic indicators: The Labor Department at 8:30 a.m. will report filings for jobless claims in the week ending Aug. 6. The Bureau of Labor Statistics at 8:30 a.m. will report on the producer price index for July.
China appears to wind down its threatening war games near Taiwan, whose foreign minister warned Tuesday that the Chinese military drills reflect ambitions to control large swaths of the western Pacific, while Taipei conducted its own exercises to underscore its readiness to defend itself. Beijing’s strategy would include controlling the East and South China seas via the Taiwan Strait and imposing a blockade to prevent the U.S. and its allies from aiding Taiwan in the event of an attack, Joseph Wu said during a news conference in Taipei (The Associated Press).
In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed Wednesday to liberate Crimea, one day after several explosions hit a Russian airbase on the annexed peninsula and killed at least one person. Ukrainian officials have not claimed responsibility for the attack (CNBC). But satellite images show eight Russian warplanes damaged or destroyed in Crimea (CNBC).
Zelensky told The Washington Post that the only way to stop Russia from annexing any more of Ukraine’s territory is for Western countries to ban all Russian citizens.
Russia is struggling to replenish its troops in Ukraine, according to The Associated Press. The Kremlin is using a covert recruitment effort that includes using prisoners to make up the country’s manpower shortage amid reports that hundreds of Russian soldiers are refusing to fight and trying to quit the military.
➤ POX & PANDEMIC
David Quammen, science writer and author of the forthcoming book “Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus,” writes for The New York Times opinion section that unless humans and human ingenuity can adapt faster than the coronavirus, mankind faces “a long, doleful future of continued suffering.”
🦠Stacey Abrams, the Georgia Democratic nominee for governor, announced on Wednesday that she tested positive for COVID-19. Her spokesman, Michael Holloman, said she tested positive hours after a Tuesday speech in front of some of her closest allies in Atlanta. He said she had tested negative for the virus before Tuesday’s event (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Hill).
Lake Mead, in Nevada and Arizona, and Lake Powell, in Utah and Arizona, are at the epicenter of the biggest Western drought in history, reports The Hill’s Zack Budryk.
Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States in terms of water capacity, is formed by the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River about 24 miles east of Las Vegas. In 1935, it was at least 700 feet deep. Today, it is at least 200 feet shallower and is so dry in spots that four sets of unidentified human remains have been discovered since May. One body was stuffed inside a barrel (New York magazine).
The Hill: The West’s parched condition can be explained with seven statistics.
NASA images show the staggering effects of drought on Lake Mead HERE. If the lake becomes a dead zone without sufficient replenished water and oxygen to support life, scientists argue it would be a “catastrophe” and one that could be averted.
Facebook has profited from searches and ads for white supremacist groups on its platform, a report by the Tech Transparency Project said on Wednesday. The investigation found ads monetizing search results for some white supremacist groups, of which there are more than 80 using Facebook. While the ads weren’t for the hate groups themselves, they generated revenue for the social media giant when they appeared in searches. The platform has subsequently corrected the issue, a company spokesperson said on Wednesday (The Hill).
And finally … It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for this week’s Morning Report Quiz! Inspired by this week’s 27th anniversary of Jerry Garcia’s death, we’re eager for some smart guesses about the Grateful Dead.
Email your responses to asimendinger@thehill.com and/or aweaver@thehill.com, and please add “Quiz” to subject lines. Winners who submit correct answers will enjoy some richly deserved newsletter fame on Friday.
The Grateful Dead is known as one of the most prolific touring bands in history. How many shows did the band play between 1965 and Garcia’s death in 1995?
1. 1,724
2. 1,998
3. 2,314
4. 2,578
Garcia’s ashes were spread in two locations — San Francisco and ______?
1. India
2. New York City
3. Lithuania
4. None of the above
What was the first known written history of the term “Dead Heads”?
1. One of the band’s concert posters
2. San Francisco Chronicle
3. Rolling Stone magazine
4. On a Grateful Dead album
How many keyboardists were part of the Grateful Dead (or toured with the band) throughout its 30-year history?
The average national price of gasoline fell below $4 per gallon on Thursday for the first time since March, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA).
The drop represents a dip of more than $1 since prices peaked in June at about $5.02.
Experts say they expect gasoline prices to continue to fall.
Andrew Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, told The Hill that he expects an additional decline of about 5 cents per gallon in the coming weeks, and further drop of about 15 cents per gallon after mid-September when refiners are able to sell lower-cost winter gasoline.
Lipow noted that prices have been on the decline as the high prices caused people to drive less in the U.S. and around the world.
“The consumer has changed their buying habits and reduced consumption of gasoline as they’ve combined local errands,” Lipow said, adding that they have also taken shorter driving trips for vacation.
“Worldwide, the rising costs of energy have caused demand destruction that has pressured oil prices as well,” he said. “Especially in Southeast Asia and countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka where they simply don’t have the money to pay for higher energy [costs].”
Lipow also noted that markets have stabilized after Russia was able to find new buyers for its oil from countries like China, India and Turkey after facing embargos from many Western economies.
“Now that some time has elapsed, you’re seeing increases in Russian production as they’ve found new customers,” he said.
Another gas price tracker, GasBuddy, previously projected that gasoline prices had fallen below the $4 mark earlier this week.
Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis, predicted in a video accompanying that Tuesday announcement that prices could fall between an additional 10 and 25 cents per gallon in the coming weeks.
Congress is on the verge of rolling back a significant debt relief program intended to provide aid to farmers of color after the Democratic-led effort hit a roadblock last year following legal challenges brought by white farmers claiming discrimination.
Democrats are planning to repeal the program in a sprawling economic package the party could pass as early as this week. But there are new plans to put more than $5 billion toward helping farmers whose operations are deemed at “at financial risk,” as well as those who have faced discrimination.
Specifically, the bill outlines $3.1 billion to help “distressed borrowers of direct or guaranteed loans administered by the Farm Service Agency,” and $2.2 trillion for a program to provide assistance for farmers that experienced discrimination in Department of Agriculture (USDA) farm lending programs prior to January 2021.
Agri-Pulse was first to report the plan, which was tucked away in Democrats’ 700-plus-page Inflation Reduction Act, a mammoth tax, climate and health care plan the Senate passed over the weekend.
The plan comes more than a year after Congress passed the American Rescue Plan, a coronavirus relief package that President Biden signed into law in March 2021, which included $4 billion in aid for underserved farmers.
The measure was met with instant praise from advocates last year and seen, in part, as a step by Congress to acknowledge a long history of discrimination that Black farmers and farmers of color have experienced in the nation, particularly by the government.
“USDA is recommitting itself to gaining the trust and confidence of America’s farmers and ranchers using a new set of tools provided in the American Rescue Plan to increase opportunity, advance equity and address systemic discrimination in USDA programs,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said at the time.
But shortly after the plan was enacted, white farmers brought forward legal challenges, alleging that the effort as discriminatory. Advocates say the legal action has kept the funding from reaching farmers who have been in desperate need of assistance for more than a year.
Senators pushing for the funding see the new legislation as a way to get financial assistance to farmers in need
In a statement to The Hill on Wednesday, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), said he was excited the new bill “clarifies and reappropriates this funding from the American Rescue Plan.”
“By giving USDA the authority to modify debt for distressed borrowers, we will keep family farmers around the country on their farms. For those farmers, particularly Black farmers, who have suffered USDA discrimination, this legislation sets in motion a process to right those wrongs,” he said.
He added the move was the result of a “team effort” with Sens. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), and Vilsack, as well as Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), to “get aid to these farmers.”
“This relief will be a lifeline for our farmers who are most at-risk of foreclosure or losing their land, as well as a boost to farmers who have been left behind for decades,” Warnock said in a statement on Wednesday. He called the aid significant “for economically distressed farmers all across Georgia and the country.”
But some advocates say they were caught off guard by the plan, which they also argue is too broad and could fall short of helping those who need it most.
“They call it broader,” John Boyd Jr., a civil rights advocate and fourth-generation farmer, told The Hill on Wednesday. “Generally when you use those types of terminology, the resources never seem to reach Black and other farmers of color.”
“And that’s what we’ve been saying has been the problem the whole time,” he said.
Black farmers accounted for roughly 14 percent of farmworkers in the nation about a century ago. But USDA data showed Black-owned farms constituted of less than 2 percent of the country’s 2 million farms in 2017, compared to the 96 percent owned by their white counterparts.
Advocates have attributed much of the decline in Black farmers to the historical discrimination.
Decades ago, a landmark class-action suit known as Pigford v. Glickman, in which Black farmers alleged racial discrimination in USDA loan programs, reached a $1 billion settlement.
Advocates also say many Black farmers were shut out of coronavirus aid and farm subsidies handed out under the Trump administration, which largely benefited white farmers.
“The local implementation of USDA programs and services has never been addressed ever since it was acknowledged to the Pigford class action legislation,” Dãnia Davy, director of land retention and advocacy at the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, told The Hill.
Booker said on Wednesday that he plans to “work closely with USDA to ensure farmers quickly get the support they have been waiting on and desperately need.”
The USDA said in a statement on Wednesday that the new provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act “will prove to be helpful in keeping farmers farming and providing assistance to farmers who have experienced discrimination in USDA’s leading programs.”
The department also added that, through a section in the bill providing the agency with over $3 billion to provide relief for at-risk agricultural operations, it will be able to “provide loan modifications and payments to distressed borrowers with the goal of keeping farmers farming.”
But advocates have concerns about implementation.
“Applying for a loan modification is extremely burdensome on rural landowners and farmers, and so I anticipate significant implementation challenges if this program is, in any way, supposed to be for farmers who have been historically underserved, in particular, Black farmers,” Davy said. “That’s going to be a big challenge to implement in a timely fashion, given the threats of foreclosure notices that folks are receiving at this point daily.”
She also raised issues with what she described as “extremely vague” language detailing aid for farmers facing discrimination the bill.
“Unfortunately, the definition of discrimination is lacking as well as any protected classes, and so what will discrimination even mean? Who will these adjudicators be, and how will they decipher what discrimination is when there’s no reference to our civil rights, protected classes?” she said.
She argued the program fails to meet the needs of farmers eligible for aid under the American Rescue Plan who “were really counting on this debt relief to give them a chance to remain competitive in an agricultural system that has been anti-Black since its founding.”
“It would appear to me that the focus was to avoid the courts, and not to meet the needs of the Black farmers that were promised that debt relief last year,” Davy said of the bill.
The stunning FBI search of former President Trump’s Florida residence this week has inspired a fierce backlash on the right, fueling concern among experts about the escalating risk of political violence.
The response among Trump supporters has ranged from sharp criticism over the Justice Department’s tactics to outright incendiary rhetoric, with Trump himself comparing the search of his home to the Nixon-era burglary of the Watergate complex.
Some of Trump’s most fervent backers described this week’s legal development as reflecting a country in the midst of civil war, and in isolated cases some far-right extremists called for mobilization in response to what was depicted as an act of tyranny by lawless federal agents.
Although the FBI’s search was based on a warrant approved by a federal judge, that did not stop Republicans from claiming the probe arose from a desire to damage President Biden’s main rival rather than potentially criminal conduct linked to Trump.
“The GOP’s choice to turn a probe into the mishandling of classified documents into a cause célèbre is dangerous, particularly given Trump’s history of calling on private violence, mobs, and militias for support,” said Rachel Kleinfeld, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “A democracy cannot allow anyone to be above the law.”
It may be unsurprising that a criminal investigation linked to Trump, the de facto Republican Party leader and a possible 2024 contender, would spark an impassioned response. At the same time, even the most provocative political speech, short of an incitement to violence, enjoys broad protections under the First Amendment.
But outrage over the FBI search of Trump’s home comes at a particularly tense moment in American politics, as the share of partisans who think violence is sometimes justified to achieve political ends has grown significantly. According to researcher Nathan Kalmoe, around one in five partisans say violence by their own party is at least a little justified to advance its goals.
“More partisan violence looks likely in the future, especially in response to particularly tense moments like the one Trump has escalated here,” said Kalmoe, a professor at Louisiana State University who has tracked the rising support for political violence.
In the immediate aftermath of the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, a swift backlash arose from a chorus of voices across the right.
Experts said that a specific, concerted plan for real world action hasn’t emerged, but warned that officials should keep a close eye on the tense online vitriol.
One prominent alt-right figure, Jack Posobiec, posted a series of inflammatory posts this week on Telegram, including one with more than 62,000 views that the “federal security state has declared war on Donald J Trump and his supporters.”
According to Alyssa Kann, a research associate at the Digital Forensic Research Lab, some of Posobiec’s messages have been posted in domestic extremist channels, where users are also talking about taking up arms, mobilizing and targeting the FBI.
The incendiary posts haven’t been contained to fringe sites. Posobiec, who has 1.8 million followers on Twitter, tweeted Wednesday that “Our government has been take over by a Deranged Eunuch Class. It is up to us to displace them and dismantle their corrupt apparatus.”
Steven Crowder, a conservative commentator with 1.9 million Twitter followers, tweeted Monday night “Tomorrow is war. Sleep well.”
Twitter has not taken action on those posts or the accounts. A spokesperson for the company did not respond to a request for comment.
The violent rhetoric is spreading across alternative social media sites too, such as Gab, Parler, Getter, which boast little to no content moderation policies and attract right wing audiences — especially users banned from the mainstream sites.
Collectively, the posts that have emerged online, across platforms, highlight a “nice little shopping list of far-right narratives,” said Jared Holt, senior research manager at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD).
“It’s like a big firehose of incendiary content that has kind of blown back towards the news item in these spaces,” he said.
Even as the rhetoric has grown more intense, the distance from the political fringe to the political mainstream has shortened.
According to Kann, inflammatory rhetoric that once may have been confined to fringe sites and from far-right figures has been embraced even by politicians with large followings on mainstream platforms like Twitter and Facebook, a dynamic which “emboldens” far-right influencers to be “even more violent,” she said.
“It also mainstreams that sort of violent rhetoric to the everyday person, which is really scary to think about,” Kann said.
Outspoken far-right lawmaker Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) tweets have added to the right-wing chorus, with the political firebrand calling to “defund” the FBI, casting the raid as “tyrannical” and likening the situation to action in a “civil war.”
Shannon Hiller, executive director of Princeton’s nonpartisan Bridging Divides Initiative, which seeks to track and mitigate political violence, said American politics was in a “sensitive moment,” one that called for leaders to tamp down tensions, not heighten them.
She pointed to Govs. Larry Hogan of Maryland and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas as examples of Republican leaders who, though critical of DOJ’s lack of transparency, had expressed their views without further inflaming political discourse, unlike some of their GOP colleagues.
“I do think that other GOP leaders who wink and nod to extremist rhetoric are playing with fire,” she said. “We know from other research that leaders calling for calm and rejecting violence has a positive effect on reducing risk, that’s what we should be calling for from all our leaders now.”
Trump, for his part, has continued to use his megaphone to ratchet up the temperature. On Wednesday, the former president suggested, without evidence, that federal agents had planted evidence on his property, again depicting himself as the victim of a shadowy “raid.”
Legal experts refuted Trump’s depiction of the FBI operation, and underscored the stakes of the investigation — as well as the backlash.
“Even though a judge issued the search warrant for Trump’s home, which requires a finding of probable cause that a crime was committed and that evidence would be found on the premises, Trump and his supporters are going on the offensive and engaging in heated rhetoric that DOJ has somehow treated Trump improperly,” said Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan, who spent seven years as a federal prosecutor during Barack Obama’s presidency. “It is amazing to me how many people are willing to take the bait.”
“I think the risk of civil unrest is very real, but DOJ cannot let that fear prevent it from enforcing the law,” she added, calling the Jan. 6 attack a “sobering” reminder not to underestimate “the threat of political violence by those who support Donald Trump.”
Experts noted a key difference between online posts ahead of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol and fallout from the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago. While the run-up to the Jan. 6 attack saw the emergence of a specific plan, posts circulating online this week have lacked the same concerted tie to a specific time and place.
At least not yet, said Holt, of ISD, who added that the security situation would continue to be closely monitored.
“We’re starting to track some calls for protests, we’ve seen a couple kind of floated around, but nothing’s really centralizing at this point,” he said. “There have been at least a couple instances where this has inspired extremists to call for protests or call for mobilization. We’re going to keep an eye on that and see how that evolves.”
The progressive congressman saw President Biden’s signing of the CHIPS and Science Act Tuesday as just one of several legislative victories in the Democrats’ arsenal heading into the midterm elections.
Some of those accomplishments, he believes, can help bring about a new vision for the party, where innovation and patriotism merge to remake a stronger, more economically inclusive America.
Khanna chatted with The Hill while catching a JetBlue flight to New Hampshire — his second trip to the critical early primary state this summer — to discuss recent achievements on climate, his friend Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and electoral strategy beyond November 2022.
This interview has been condensed for length.
The Hill: Big day for you.
Khanna: Yeah, it was! I’ve been working on this legislation [the CHIPS and Science Act] for almost three-and-a-half years. It’s been a long journey, but it’s great to see the president sign it.
My whole mantra has been a new economic patriotism. That we have to focus on bringing the new factories, the new industry to places that have been totally deindustrialized. That deindustrialization and job loss in factory towns like New Castle, Ind., and Janesville, Wis., is part of the cause of the polarization in our nation.
The Hill: What would you say is the most critical message that voters can glean from this?
Khanna: We need to make things in America again. For 40 years, we had wrong policies that shipped our production offshore, factory towns suffered with divorce, with suicides, with the destruction of community because of corporate greed that basically let factories go offshore. Our politicians did nothing about it. And now it’s time to make things in America.
The Hill: Talk about the bipartisan nature of that.
Khanna: The initial versions of this we introduced were [with] Todd Young, a Republican senator from Indiana, and [Rep.] Mike Gallagher [R], who’s a Marine from Wisconsin. It was all about building things and making things in this country.
The Hill: How much credit do progressives get for this particular achievement?
Khanna: On the CHIPS bill, the progressive caucus really helped to make sure the money isn’t going to stock buybacks and there’s strong guardrails on this. The reality is that making things in America and having the government work with the private sector in business is an FDR policy. That’s how we had a victory of production. I think progressives often don’t appreciate how much FDR’s victory of production and mobilization of production was working with business leaders.
Progressives should embrace the broader vision of working with business to reindustrialize America. To have new factories, to build new things. It should be not just a check on corporate greed, but what is the affirmative vision?
The CHIPS and the [separate] climate bill is just a down payment on having a vision for a new economic patriotism. Imagine if we could open up a new plant, a new factory in every congressional district in this country? Or at least two per state. And have President Biden out there, opening these new factories, standing with business leaders and union leaders in these towns. It would change the psychology of America. Communities that feel down and out will feel that they and their kids can participate in the next generation of economic vitality again. It’s not just about the job and the economy, it’s about patriotism and aspiration.
The Hill: [On working with Manchin on climate issues]: Would you say that’s an area where you can see room for additional progress? Progressives having more of a give and take?
Khanna: Progressives can be very proud of the climate provisions because it’s groups like Sunrise and [Sen.] Bernie’s [Sanders (I-Vt.)] campaign and NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council] and Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace that made climate the priority, that had it be such a big part of Build Back Better. That had me say to Sen. Manchin, this is the one thing you can’t compromise on. If it wasn’t for their activism and it was ordinary times, we might be 10-fold lower.
The Hill: How much of a boost do you see Biden gaining from this? Can that be sustained through November?
Khanna: He should get a boost. Let’s see how it plays out. I think the important thing is we need to be in the communities across the country talking about the benefits people will get.
One of the challenges of a policy of tax credit versus the policy of CHIPS, [is] the policy of CHIPS is a little more visible. You have the government stand with the CEO of Intel in Columbus, Ohio, and open up this new factory and talk about 7,000 jobs. And so the government gets credit and is part of that message. That’s why the New Deal was so successful — FDR took credit for everything that happened.
The challenge with the tax credit is it’s over 10 years, and how do we make that visible? How do we say that a company that’s succeeding, that it was because of the government’s support? It’s a bigger challenge for us as legislators to be in those communities and explain what the government is doing and how it’s going to help their lives.
The Hill: [On the FBI raid of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate]. Could [it] end up hurting Democrats in November?
Khanna: I think it depends on what comes out of it. What is the follow-up action that emerges?
The Hill: The very fact that there was a raid, you don’t think is necessarily enough to handicap Democrats?
Khanna: It depends on what they find and what actions the Justice Department takes. There’s no way to gauge this.
The Hill: Are you saying on the record that you want Biden to run in 2024?
Khanna: I will support him.
The Hill: In terms of your preference for him running?
Khanna: That’s his decision. He’s the incumbent president. If he runs, he’ll have my support. He’s got the wisdom to make the decision. I don’t think he’d run if he didn’t think he could win.
The Hill: Are you still going to New Hampshire tonight?
Khanna: I am. The Young Democrats invited me. I’m just boarding JetBlue as we speak.
The Hill: Obviously, your trip will get some attention among the local press and national for its first-in-the-nation stuff. I’m curious what you would say to the oncoming speculation you’re probably about to get in the next 24 hours.
Khanna: [New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman] Ray Buckley invited me and I said sure. I went up there on a book talk and this came out of it. I would just say that I’m going up because the Young Democrats invited me.
Former President Trump is in the middle of two legal firestorms this week — and there looks to be plenty more trouble to come.
Trump has skated away from the jaws of peril before, both in his political life and in his business career. But the sheer accumulation of dangers now is a problem.
“I see the cumulative impact of all the different pieces in some ways being a numbers game,” said Jared Carter, a professor at the Vermont Law & Graduate School who specializes in constitutional law. “You are just not going to win them all. I think there is a cumulative impact from a legal perspective, but even more so politically. This could be a political death by a thousand cuts.”
The political angle is salient because Trump has been edging closer to declaring a 2024 presidential candidacy.
Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) was among a group of supportive Republican lawmakers who had dinner with the former president on Tuesday evening. Banks later told Fox News Trump had given the group the impression he had made up his mind on 2024 and “we are going to like his decision.”
But even as Trump’s supporters rally to his side, his growing legal jeopardy gives others in the GOP second thoughts. Behind the scenes, some wonder whether a nominee such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis could exhibit a Trump-like appeal without bringing the former president’s heavy baggage.
Trump’s Tuesday dinner with GOP House members came sandwiched between two huge developments: the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Monday, and the former president’s decision on Wednesday to plead the Fifth Amendment during a deposition in a civil probe headed by New York State Attorney General Letitia James.
Trump is encircled by at least three other areas of legal danger. A probe in Georgia is looking at whether he and his allies broke laws in attempting to overturn the election results in that state. A federal grand jury is investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection. And the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has also been conducting a criminal probe.
The last of those would appear to be the least dangerous for Trump. It is perceived to be petering out after two prosecutors resigned back in February.
But ranking the peril from the other investigations is a complicated matter.
By some measures, the probe in Georgia could be as serious as any other, though it has got less national publicity.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been investigating whether Team Trump’s efforts amounted to “solicitation of election fraud” among other offenses.
Presumably helping make her case is the now-infamous phone conversation on Jan. 2, 2021 in which Trump was recorded urging Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn President Biden’s victory. Raffensperger, a Republican, resisted Trump.
However, Willis suffered a self-inflicted setback last month when a judge blasted her for hosting a fundraiser for a Georgia Democrat running against one of the potential targets of her investigation.
“It’s a ‘what are you thinking moment,’” Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said. “The optics are horrific.”
There are other complications in assessing where Trump faces the gravest dangers.
“To say one thing is more perilous than the other is hard,” said Michael Zeldin, a former Department of Justice attorney who is also a well-known legal commentator.
“Georgia seems the most straightforward on the question of whether or not [Trump] endeavored to interfere in the election. But if you factor in the prospective jury pool in Georgia, then gaining a conviction against this political figure may be very much more complicated.
“Conversely, the Jan. 6 events may seem the more complex but it’s the flip side of Georgia — the jury pool in D.C. would appear to be much more favorable to a prosecution, because he is not very popular in the District of Columbia.”
The picture is further complicated because so much is going on beyond the public gaze.
The FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, for example, appears to have been conducted in search of classified materials. But what exactly was sought remains unknown — as does whether it was found.
The Department of Justice probe into Jan. 6 has had none of the public fanfare of the House Select Committee hearings on the same topic.
But actions that have been reported, such as the grand jury receiving testimony from former Vice President Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short, or a subpoena being issued to former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, underline the gravity of the matter.
The civil probe being led by James is, by its nature, less serious in that it cannot result in incarceration.
But Trump’s furious outbursts against the New York State attorney general, a Democrat, betray some worry. In a Wednesday statement, Trump blasted James as a “failed politician who has intentionally colluded with others to carry out this phony years-long crusade.”
The former president’s decision to take the Fifth in the James probe carries risks, too. In a civil matter, unlike a criminal case, a jury can draw adverse inferences from a person choosing to invoke the right to avoid self-incrimination.
“You can make a big point to a jury about that,” said Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney and deputy assistant attorney general. “You can present a very forceful piece of evidence and then say, ‘And what did Mr. Trump say about all this?’”
There are still enormous unknowns in all the probes Trump faces.
But this week has at least demonstrated that the tide of trouble is growing higher.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke on Wednesday snapped at a heckler who laughed as he discussed a recent mass shooting.
O’Rourke, who has expressed outrage after a gunman opened fire inside an Uvalde, Texas, elementary school and killed 19 children and two adults, delivered a speech at a town hall in the city of Mineral Wells.
While discussing some details of the tragedy, somebody in the crowd laughed, prompting O’Rourke to swiftly turn around.
“It may be funny to you, motherf—–,” he said, “but it’s not funny to me.”
O’Rourke earned a round of applause from the crowd for the response.
The Democratic candidate, who has pushed for more restrictive gun laws, will face off against GOP Gov. Greg Abbott in November.
A dating app for conservatives called The Right Stuff will launch next month, seeking to open up a new door for the political right who hope to find more like-minded people in the romantic world.
The upcoming debut was announced in a video featuring Ryann McEnany, the younger sister of former Trump White House secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
The Right Stuff is a free application but can be accessed by invite only, according to the promotional video. Moreover, female users can achieve a premium subscription service on The Right Stuff by inviting other people onto the app.
McEnany added, however, that “male” and “female” would be the only gender identity options users can select on the app, meaning those who identify as transgender, nonbinary or another gender identification would not be accepted.
“The Right Stuff is all about getting into the right dating pool with people who share the same values as you,” McEnany said in the announcement video. “We’re sorry that you’ve had to endure years of bad dates and wasted time with people who don’t see the world our way. The right way.”
The Right Stuff will be in competition with popular dating apps such as Tinder, Bumble and Hinge, services that conservatives often complain cater to the left more than the right.
Tinder, for example, has rolled out numerous changes since the pandemic, including allowing users to post their COVID-19 vaccination status or affirm they support abortion rights, updates that have roiled some conservatives.
The new dating service will also have to fare better than other conservative dating apps that have failed or largely gone unnoticed in the past, including DonaldDaters.
The Hill wrote about The Right Stuff in detail in July, noting the app was created by former Trump White House staffers and is backed by conservative tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who has invested $1.5 million into the app.
Daniel Huff, who served in the Trump administration in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, told The Hill that The Right Stuff “has really not been done before.”
“It’s an important, underserved market,” Huff said. “Liberals own the education, media corporations, and we can’t let them control our personal relationships.”
The Right Stuff could face some backlash for the exclusion of the transgender community. The app is also currently focused on heterosexual relationships, Huff said, but added it may expand to accept same-sex relationships in the future.
The website appeals to young conservatives, displaying messages advertising the ability to “connect with people who aren’t offended by everything,” and to “view profiles without pronouns.”
McEnany said users will have more unrestricted access than Tinder and Bumble, which block who you can see that liked you without a premium subscription. Users can immediately see who liked their profile and connect with them.
