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Biden focuses on job growth as US GDP falls for second-straight quarter

President Biden on Thursday responded to news of a second-straight quarter of economic contraction by focusing instead on the strong job market, a tactic the White House has been using to argue the U.S. is not in a recession.

“But even as we face historic global challenges, we are on the right path and we will come through this transition stronger and more secure,” Biden said in a statement on Thursday. “Our job market remains historically strong, with unemployment at 3.6% and more than 1 million jobs created in the second quarter alone. Consumer spending is continuing to grow.”

U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) shrunk between April and June, according to data released by the Commerce Department. GDP fell at a yearly pace of 0.9 percent in the second quarter, which means the economy would shrink by nearly 1 percent if the second quarter’s pace of growth lasted for an entire year.

Economists have long used two straight quarters of negative economic growth as a rule of thumb to determine when the U.S. is in recession and is the formal threshold for a recession in other countries. But, economists in the U.S. also consider a broader range of data when determining a recession and say it may be too soon to know if the U.S. is in one given the strength of the job market.

Biden, in his statement, did not mention the word recession.

The administration has recently ramped up messaging that the U.S. is not in a recession, focusing on the technical definition of a recession to insist that months of strong job growth and healthy consumer spending prove a recession is not here yet and may not come at all.

The U.S. has added 2.7 million jobs since the start of 2022 and consumer spending has continued to increase even amid high inflation.

Most economists expected GDP to fall for the second consecutive quarter as the economy faced more pressure from high inflation, rising interest rates, slowing job growth, falling home sales and other headwinds.

The president also said that the data released on Thursday is not a surprise.

“Coming off of last year’s historic economic growth – and regaining all the private sector jobs lost during the pandemic crisis – it’s no surprise that the economy is slowing down as the Federal Reserve acts to bring down inflation,” he said.

He mentioned a meeting earlier this week with the chairman of SK Group from South Korea, a company that is investing over $200 billion in American manufacturing. And, he noted the Congress is moving towards passing the China competition bill and that there’s an emerging deal in the Senate on the reconciliation package, which is now called the Inflation Reduction Act.

“My economic plan is focused on bringing inflation down, without giving up all the economic gains we have made. Congress has an historic chance to do that by passing the CHIPS and Science Act and Inflation Reduction Act without delay,” Biden said.

The White House has argued that both bills will help with bringing down inflation. The president is expected to talk about the reconciliation package on Thursday, following Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announcing a $369 billion deal on a climate, taxes and health care package.

Later on Thursday, he is expected to deliver remarks on the economy and meets with CEOs.

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Club for Growth launches ad blitz hitting Biden amid recession fears

The conservative economic organization Club for Growth launched an ad blitz targeting President Biden amid fears of a recession after data released by the Commerce Department on Thursday showed U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) fell for the second quarter in a row.

“Joe Biden says,” a narrator begins the 30-second ad, before pivoting to a clip of Biden saying “my economic plan is moving this country in a better direction.”

“But today, America is officially in a recession. And the Biden recession is because of Biden policies. Radical economic plan causing painful inflation and radical environmental plan causing pain at the pump,” the narrator says.

“Call Joe Biden and tell him the only thing his economic plan is doing is hurting your family,” the narrator continues.

The ad campaign, which was first reported by Breitbart News, will air on the Sunday shows this upcoming weekend in Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina, among other places. The ad blitz is a part of a six-figure TV and digital ad buy.

“Since taking office, the Biden administration has laughed at the very real concerns facing our economy by downplaying the hardships American families are experiencing and by shifting blame and overtly lying. Make no mistake, America is now in Biden’s recession regardless of what the administration tries to say,” Club for Growth President David McIntosh said in a statement.

Earlier on Thursday, the Commerce Department released data showing that GDP shrunk for the second quarter in a row at an annual pace of 0.9 percent between April and June.  

While other countries’ recessions have been determined using the threshold of negative economic growth happening for two straight quarters, a broader range of data is generally used by U.S. economists in making that determination.

Biden defended the recently released data in a statement on Thursday, saying “it’s no surprise that the economy is slowing down as the Federal Reserve acts to bring down inflation.”

“But even as we face historic global challenges, we are on the right path and we will come through this transition stronger and more secure. Our job market remains historically strong, with unemployment at 3.6% and more than 1 million jobs created in the second quarter alone. Consumer spending is continuing to grow,” he touted. 

Nevertheless, campaigns immediately used the new data to tie the economic news to their respective opponents. 

Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance’s campaign called it a “Ryan Recession” and claimed challenger Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) was “responsible” for it. 

The economic news will add to the present headwinds Democrats already face ahead of the November midterms as they grapple with President Biden’s lagging approval numbers and key issues like inflation. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Liberals gave us Trump, who gave us Biden — make it stop!

They say that in a great country like the United States, anyone can grow up to be president. And it’s apparently true, because Donald Trump and Joe Biden did just that. And if those two can become president, it’s a safe bet that just about anyone can. But when a free country like ours elects two of the most unpopular (and arguably, worst) presidents in our entire history — back-to-back, no less — then you have to wonder what the heck is going on.

How this came about, I think, has a lot to do with the law of unintended consequences, whereby actions of individuals or groups lead to things that are unanticipated, things that no one saw coming — even if, in retrospect, we should have. 

For example, we got Joe Biden because we elected Donald Trump. And we elected Donald Trump because of liberal condescension aimed at all sorts of people the elite left didn’t think were worthy of their respect.

So, maybe we should have seen it coming. Maybe we should have anticipated that if college-educated, supposedly sophisticated liberals looked down their noses at the “great unwashed” who live in “flyover country,” those “ordinary” Americans just might feel disrespected — and latch on to someone who they think understands them and cares about them.  Enter Donald Trump, who was giving the elite establishment the middle finger, and so were his new acolytes.   

A lot of Americans who liked Trump were tired of being seen as hayseeds and dolts. They remembered that Barack Obama in 2008 said they were the kind of people who cling to “guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.”

They remembered watching television in 2014 and 2015 and seeing anti-police riots in places like Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo. — and hardly hearing a word of condemnation from Democrats.

They noticed that pampered college students, many of whom came from well-off liberal families, were shouting down conservative speakers on campuses, claiming they made them feel unsafe. 

And they intuitively knew that there was no conspiracy composed of rogue white cops to shoot unarmed Black men, a lie that more than a few on the left were peddling.

By the time Donald Trump glided down that elevator at Trump Tower in Manhattan, millions of “ordinary” Americans had had enough. Their messiah had arrived.

And then we got four years of virtually non-stop chaos, non-stop dopey tweets, non-stop name-calling. How many of us really knew how crazy it was going to be? Trump has been called a narcissist and a sociopath and, while I’m not an expert in such matters, it sounds about right to me. 

This leads us to the next bad move Americans made. Trump, thanks to about 80 million voters, gave us Joe Biden. Outside of Biden’s immediate family, who actually thinks that he got that many votes because Americans saw him as a brilliant statesman with great ideas? Not many, I’d bet. We got Biden because voters had had enough of Trump. 

And what exactly did we get with “middle-class Joe”? Well, we got someone who ran as a moderate and, in no time flat, convinced himself that he could be the next Franklin Roosevelt.  He championed trillion-dollar legislation that fueled inflation that made Americans angry, and so, instead of uniting the nation as he promised, he has divided it — just like the guy who preceded him in office.

Now we’re hearing rumblings about how the next presidential election may be a rematch between Biden and Trump. This raises a question: What in God’s name did we do to deserve this? One doesn’t have the requisite competence to be president, and the other doesn’t have the requisite character.

But if it happens, I know what I’ll be doing — the same thing I did in 2016 and 2020. I sat out both elections and, if these two are the nominees in 2024, I’ll sit out the next one.

The last Democrat for whom I voted in a presidential election was Jimmy Carter, and that was the first time he ran. Even when I agree with Democratic policy on some issues, I no longer want to be on their team. They annoy me for many reasons — and it’s not only their progressive politics. It’s also their sanctimony, their holier-than-thou mentality, that grates on me.  

As for voting for Donald Trump, I don’t care how much I approved of his policies — on cutting taxes, slashing regulations, and his policies that helped minorities get good jobs — none of that trumps, well, Trump himself.  

My fervent hope is that neither man runs again. And if Trump decides not to run, there’s a good chance that Biden won’t run, either — because even he must realize that the only Republican he has a chance of beating is Donald Trump. So, no Trump, no Biden.

One can hope, right?

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He was a correspondent with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” for 22 years and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him on Twitter @BernardGoldberg.

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Racial discrimination led to dramatic spikes in depressive symptoms, suicidality during COVID-19

In the past, discrimination has been tied to increased levels of stress and poorer health. 

New reseach looking at data collected in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic show that between May and July of 2020, everyday discrimination experienced by racial and ethnic minority groups was associated with a 17-fold increased risk of moderate or severe depressive symptoms and 10-fold increased risk of suicidal ideation. These individuals experienced discrimination more than once per week. 

Findings, based on participants in the All of Us research program, were published in JAMA Psychiatry.

As individuals experienced more discrimination, their risks of poor mental health outcomes  increased, while associations were greatest among individuals who self-identified as Hispanic/Latino or Asian. Outcomes were also exacerbated when the main reason behind  discrimination was related to race, ancestry or national origins.

Researchers expressed surprise at the magnitude of the effects documented in the data. 

“At high levels of everyday discrimination, the association with moderate to severe depressive symptoms was similar to the effect of having a pre-pandemic mood disorder diagnosis, which is pretty dramatic,” said co-author Jordan Smoller of the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Psychiatry in a press release. 

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Higher rates of unemployment, food and housing insecurity, lower access to health care, and racially motivated violence seen throughout the pandemic all likely contributed to added stress for racial minority groups who already routinely experience structural racism.

A total of 62,651 individuals were included in the cohort study, making it the largest and most diverse study to date on mental health effects of discrimination experienced throughout the pandemic, to the authors’ knowledge. 

“By demonstrating the complex and dynamic relationship between discrimination and adverse mental health outcomes in a large and diverse sample of the United States, this study provides empirical evidence regarding the adverse mental health consequences of discrimination based on race, ancestry, or national origins during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially among individuals self-identifying as Hispanic or Latino or non-Hispanic Asian,” they wrote. 

In the study, discrimination was defined as being treated with less courtesy and respect than others, such as receiving poorer service at restaurants, and being harassed or called names. 

Notably, the COVID-19 pandemic coincided with an increase in verbal and physical attacks on individuals of Asian and Pacific Island descent, while the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) found between 2019 and 2020, there was a 77 percent increase in hate crimes against Asian individuals.

The authors called for increased awareness of the detrimental effects discrimiatnion and racism can have on individuals’ mental health. 

“Inequities are not inevitable,” said Smoller, “but for changes to occur, we must work harder to understand and address the kinds of discrimination that some communities experience and the toll it can take on their health and everyday lives.”

Source: TEST FEED1

These lifestyle habits could reduce risk of dementia

Both mental and physical activities, including climbing stairs or visiting frequently with family and friends, are lifestyle habits scientists say could reduce the risk of dementia, according to a new study.  

“Many studies have identified potential risk factors for dementia, but we wanted to know more about a wide variety of lifestyle habits and their potential role in the prevention of dementia,” said study author Huan Song, of Sichuan University in Chengdu, China.  

“Our study found that exercise, household chores, and social visits were linked to a reduced risk of various types of dementia,” Song added. 

For the study, more than 501,000 people with an average age of 56 from a U.K. database filled out questionnaires asking how often they participated in various physical activities, household and job-related tasks and mental activities, like social visits. 

Other questions related to the participants transportation habits, use of electronic devices and education levels. 

Participants reported their family history for dementia to help researchers narrow down genetic risk factors and then were followed for an average of 11 years.  

Nearly 5,200 people had developed dementia by the end of the study.    

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The team found after adjusting for factors such as age, income and smoking, most mental and physical activities studied were linked to lower risk of dementia. People who exercised frequently were at 35 percent lower risk for dementia than those who did not exercise regularly.  

Participants who engaged in household chores were at a 21 percent lower risk than those who did not, and those who had daily visits with family and friends experienced a 15 percent lower risk.  

All participants, regardless of their family history for dementia, benefited from the protection of physical and mental activities, according to the study. 

Researchers noted a limitation of the study could be linked to self-reported activity levels, which could lead to inaccurate reporting. 

“Our study has found that by engaging more frequently in healthy physical and mental activities people may reduce their risk of dementia,” Song said. “More research is needed to confirm our findings. However, our results are encouraging that making these simple lifestyle changes may be beneficial.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

Karl Rove asks: 'What will Donald Trump do with his campaign cash?'

Karl Rove, former White House deputy chief of staff in the George W. Bush administration, asks in a Wall Street Journal op-ed what former President Trump will do with the $121 million in cash he has raised with his political action committees (PAC). 

Rove points out that Trump has raised more than $121 million between his four PACs, Save America, Make America Great Again, Again! Inc., Trump Make America Great Again PAC and Make America Great Again Action.

As of June 30, Save America alone had the most cash on hand at $103.1 million, he noted, adding that the money Trump raised could not be used for his own presidential campaign if he makes another run for the White House in 2024.

“One option off the table is converting that money to a Trump presidential campaign, according to federal election lawyers,” Rove writes. “If Mr. Trump decides he must upstage the midterms and announce this fall rather than waiting, he’ll immediately need to file a new committee for his presidential campaign to pay his political expenses.”

Roves writes that Trump could financially support candidates he has endorsed, but “he hasn’t shown much interest in that so far.”

Trump, who is limited to $5,000 donations, has so far given $365,000 to candidates he has endorsed.

“​​One way to use more of this money is through independent expenditures on behalf of candidates, but Mr. Trump hasn’t devoted much cash to that either,” Rove writes. 

Among the candidates and groups he has supported with those independent expenditures include a Georgia group looking to oust Gov. Brian Kemp (R) that received $2.6 million, he noted.

Rove added that Trump could also be using his money to help candidates who have been severely outraised by their Democratic opponents such as Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance.

“If Mr. Trump doesn’t start actually deploying these funds to help candidates he’s backed for Congress, governor and other statewide offices, donors might not keep giving to the former president’s causes. Trump-endorsed candidates might start to wonder how strong an ally the former president really is, beyond lending his name in a primary,” Rove said. 

“Many Republicans running are parroting Mr. Trump’s views, especially his discredited claims about the 2020 election. We’ll soon see if he backs those who’ve backed him—and how they fare if he does,” he concluded.

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US GDP falls for second-straight quarter

U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) shrunk between April and June, according to data released Thursday by the Commerce Department, marking the second-straight quarter of economic contraction.

GDP fell at a yearly pace of 0.9 percent in the second quarter, according to the Commerce Department’s first estimate of economic growth over the previous three months. Put simply, the U.S. economy would shrink by nearly 1 percent if the second quarter’s pace of growth lasted for an entire year.

Most economists expected GDP to fall for the second consecutive quarter as the economy faced more pressure from high inflation, rising interest rates, slowing job growth, falling home sales and other headwinds. 

While the economy was almost certain to slow after growing 5.7 percent in 2021, experts have become more fearful of the U.S. slipping into recession after GDP fell at an annualized rate of 1.6 percent in the first quarter.

Two straight quarters of negative economic growth have long been used as a rule of thumb to determine when the U.S. is in recession and is the formal threshold for a recession in other countries. But economists in the U.S. consider a broader range of data when determining if the U.S. is in recession.

The U.S. has added 2.7 million jobs since the start of 2022 and consumer spending has continued to increase even amid high inflation. Economists say it may too soon to know if the U.S. is in recession, if at all, given the strength of the job market.

A steep decline in business investment and a 3.1-percent surge of imports, which detract from GDP in calculations, were the two major forces behind the second quarter decline.

Gross private domestic investment—which includes sales of buildings, equipment, and intellectual property— fell 13.5 percent in the second quarter after rising 5 percent during the first three months of the year. Housing construction fell 14 percent in the second quarter and construction of other structures fell 11.7 percent over the year.

Consumer spending rose 1 percent over the quarter, driven largely by a 4.1 percent increase in spending on services. Spending on goods fell 4.4 percent during the second quarter after falling 0.3 percent in first quarter.

–Updated at 8:59 a.m.

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Big business groups lash out at Manchin-Schumer deal

Lobbying groups representing large corporations swiftly criticized a revamped reconciliation deal announced by Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Wednesday.

They are zeroing in on the plan’s 15 percent minimum tax on corporations, which would help pay for massive investments in climate and energy security, extended health care subsidies and reduce the deficit.

Big business lobbyists are expected to make a last-minute push to defeat or weaken the Manchin-Schumer agreement, which took K Street by surprise. 

“Taxes that discourage investment and price controls that limit innovation will make our current economic problems worse,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce chief policy officer Neil Bradley said in a statement. “Congress should reject these policies and focus on unleashing American made energy.”

The National Association of Manufacturers, which is running ads in the nation’s capital opposing the previously announced slimmed-down reconciliation package over its drug pricing provisions, argued that the minimum tax would undermine the industry’s competitiveness. 

“Manufacturers kept our promises after the 2017 tax reforms, hiring more workers, investing in our communities and raising wages and benefits. Raising taxes now will hurt manufacturers’ ability to keep delivering for our people and mean fewer opportunities for Americans already worried about their financial future,” Jay Timmons, the group’s CEO, said in a statement. 

Democrats have long lamented that large, highly profitable corporations pay less in taxes than some small businesses due to lucrative tax breaks.

At least 70 public companies made over $1 billion in income in 2020 but paid less than 15 percent in federal taxes, including General Motors, Intel and FedEx, according to a report from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). 

The inclusion of the minimum tax will please retailers, which previously backed the proposal as a way to make the tax code fairer for companies that don’t qualify for as many tax credits.

The minimum tax is the top revenue raiser in the Manchin-Schumer plan, bringing in an estimated $313 billion over a decade. The proposal to allow the government to negotiate drug prices, which is fiercely opposed by the pharmaceutical industry, is expected to save an additional $288 billion.  

K Street lobbyists are expected to aggressively mobilize against the deal’s other key revenue raisers. It calls for boosting IRS enforcement, an idea that banks have lobbied against, and closing the carried interest loophole, which would hit investment managers’ bottom line.  

Democrats would only need a simple majority to pass the reconciliation package, though various Senate Democrats have expressed skepticism about some of those measures. All eyes are on Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), a business community ally who previously backed a minimum corporate tax but has opposed changes to carried interest. 

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Supreme Court’s EPA Ruling does not doom the SEC’s climate disclosure rule

Following the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia vs. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to limit the agency’s authority to act on climate change, opponents of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) forthcoming climate disclosure rule have unequivocally declared that the opinion dooms it, too.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In the recent EPA ruling, the Supreme Court held that the so-called “major questions doctrine” applies when a court determines an agency has taken on new, extensive power that vastly expands its ability to address extraordinary policy questions. According to the Supreme Court, under this doctrine, it will only strike down regulations if agencies make an “unprecedented” departure from past interpretations of legal authority or “assert highly consequential power beyond what Congress could reasonably be understood to have granted.” To that end, one scholar argued that the doctrine should instead be named the “extraordinary questions doctrine,” as agency actions can be major yet permissible.

The SEC’s proposed climate disclosure rule does not fit this description. With this proposed rule, the SEC would merely require the same types of financial risk disclosures that it has required since the agency’s founding in 1934, following the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929. Without accurate information of issuers’ financial health and risks, the Roaring ‘20s were a time of frenzied speculation, in which uninformed investors took out loans in order to invest in companies and ride the wave of riding valuations. Companies with the best advertising, rather than opportunities for future success, received investments. After the bubble burst and caused widespread economic harm, Congress created the SEC to mandate and enforce financial disclosures for the protection of investors and maintenance of fair, orderly and efficient markets. The SEC has spent the past nine decades requiring public companies (known as issuers) to disclose their financial-related risks and other information relevant to their valuation — from cash flows and cybersecurity strategies to other environmentally related risks.

Building on this long history and the understanding that climate change poses significant financial risks and opportunities for issuers, the SEC in March proposed requiring these firms to disclose the expected effects of climate change on their operations. With this information — including whether climate change has affected or is expected to affect the issuer’s business, whether the issuer has adopted a transition plan or set climate-related targets, and whether the issuer would be at risk from changes in consumer preferences — investors could better assess the value of the investment and would be able to decide whether to invest in a particular stock or bond, based on their own risk tolerance. As the SEC stated, the proposal would provide investors with “decision-useful” information “to enable them to make informed judgments about the impact of climate-related risks on current and potential investments.”

The SEC’s proposal does not violate any of the tests the Supreme Court has newly defined as part of its major questions doctrine. The SEC has not reinterpreted its statutes to find “an unheralded power.” It has not proposed a “transformative expansion in its regulatory authority.” It has not regulated “beyond what Congress could reasonably be understood to have granted.” Instead, the SEC is relying on long-standing interpretations of statutes authorizing it to require issuers to disclose information that is helpful to investors — just as Congress intended.

In order to justify their argument that the SEC’s proposal violates the court’s major questions doctrine, opponents of the proposal have been forced to obfuscate, stretch and imagine. They claim that the SEC’s proposal “would tee up shifts of capital from fossil-fuel-based industries … toward industries that are supposedly greener” or that the rule would “transform” the SEC into an “environmental regulator.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

Recognizing that it has not been charged by Congress with addressing climate change nor does it have the expertise to do so, the SEC’s proposal does not require issuers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or develop climate-related transition plans. In fact, the proposal does not require issuers to change any management practice at all. Instead, the proposed rule simply recognizes that investors are hungry for information about issuers’ climate-related risks and opportunities and requires issuers to provide investors with that information, reducing information asymmetries between issuers and investors and allowing capital markets to function effectively and efficiently.

The simple truth is this: In finalizing the climate disclosure rule, the SEC would not be violating the major questions doctrine but would instead be fulfilling its congressional mandate of ensuring members of the public have the information they need to make informed investing decisions.Todd Phillips is the director of financial regulation and corporate governance at the Center for American Progress.

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Democrats gain ground on generic congressional ballot: poll

Democrats have gained ground against Republicans ahead of the midterm elections, with a new poll showing Democrats holding a 4-percentage-point lead on a generic congressional ballot.

The USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll shows that 44 percent of respondents would vote for the Democratic candidate if the election for Congress were held today, compared to 40 percent who said they would back the Republican.

Roughly 16 percent said they were undecided.

The polling indicates movement for Democrats since last month, when voters were split 40 percent for each party, respectively, when asked the same question.

The survey released on Thursday also found that Americans are dissatisfied with how Republicans and Democrats represent the views of their voters. 

Respondents were asked if the two political parties did a good job of representing the political views of Americans or if they believed multiple parties or a third party were necessary.

While about 25 percent said the two major parties were good enough, about 34 percent said multiple parties were necessary and another 26 percent said a third party was necessary.

While this latest poll shows that Democrats maintain a slight edge over Republicans in a generic congressional race, the party still faces headwinds in the midterms, including President Biden’s lagging approval rating, high inflation and general sentiment about conditions in the U.S.

The new poll found that 76 percent of respondents believe the country is on the wrong track compared to 15 percent who said things were headed in the right direction. 

The USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll was conducted between July 22 and July 25 with 1,000 voters surveyed. The margin of error is 3.1 percentage points. 

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