Posted this morning: The jobs report released at 8:30 a.m. this morning showed that employers added 272,000 jobs in May, up from the 242,000 monthly average that lasted through the first half of the year and well above most economists’ forecasts.
The unemployment rate in April was 3.9%, slightly higher than the 3.4% in the same period last year. In May, that number fell to 4%.
“The headline number is a source of celebration for the president [Joe] Biden often points to a strong job market when trying to prove to voters that he’s handling the economy well,” he concluded. New York Times. But in reality, the situation is much more complex.
The economy is finally recovering from its recent period of high inflation, but the recovery is slower than expected, and the Fed may not be able to lower interest rates anytime soon (which would affect people’s willingness to trade on their homes, for example). This new data likely won’t change the Fed’s behavior, so rates will remain high — a tough pill for Biden to swallow as it may be one of the main factors contributing to perceptions of a sluggish economy. One of them.
Maybe Trump isn’t that bad? Every Washington postDonald Trump plans to “repeal parts of the 1974 law that limits the president’s power to spend federal funds without congressional approval” if he is re-elected as president. He claimed that on his first day in office he would tell every agency to find “a big chunk” of its budget that could be cut, especially international aid programs and environmental agencies.
“The Trump team’s comments are shocking, unusual and really beyond what we’ve seen,” said Eloise Pasachoff, a budget law expert at Georgetown University. Washington post. But the national debt, now over $34 trillion, is also staggering, unusual, and truly beyond anything we’ve ever seen, so it’s unclear what types of drastic measures should be taken to get spending back to appropriate levels. For more information on the national debt, check out this just asking questions Interview with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who wears a debt clock pin on his lapel.
But the specific mechanisms Trump plans to use could tip the balance between the legislative and executive branches. “I will use the president’s long-recognized seizure powers to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy to save massive amounts of money,” Trump wrote on his campaign website. Legislation came as President Richard Nixon abused the process They are prohibited from withholding funds, where the president refuses to allocate funds even after Congress has appropriated them.
Many quotes from Washington post There seems to be a belief that this will be a massive constitutional crisis, and there is good reason to doubt that Trump will actually cut the spending amounts he says he will. But it’s interesting that Trump has been criticized for proposals like this, while many of Joe Biden’s most expensive plans, such as student loan relief, which have been repeatedly blocked by the courts, are considered perfectly acceptable.
New York scene: The report stated that “an investigation by the city’s Department of Investigation found that approximately 1,200 New York Police Department officers cheated when taking promotion tests, but the cheating was apparently in vain because it did not significantly improve their test scores.” Hell Gate.
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- Report: “SpaceX has received approval from U.S. aviation safety regulators to launch its massive Starship rocket on its fourth major test flight, as the Elon Musk-led company works to get the launch vehicle operational and regularly deployed. Get ready for space travel. Bloomberg. “The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement on Tuesday that it granted SpaceX a launch license to move forward with its next test flight.
- Canada’s new Online Harms Act will “restrict people’s freedoms to stop them from future crimes they haven’t yet committed,” writes atlantic organizationConnor Friedersdorf. “We need the ability to stop anticipated hate crimes from happening,” Canada’s attorney general said.
- Hunter Biden’s gun trial – in which he is accused of lying about using drugs to obtain a gun – is still ongoing, but looks particularly chaotic as his sister-in-law/ex-girlfriend Hallie Biden testifies against him, talking about how she Disposing of his gun in the United States.
- “Congestion pricing was a great idea that died because our government wasn’t worth the money,” writes Josh Barro. Very serious.
- “It is widely believed that the Nordic countries are great bastions of rehabilitation: by focusing on rehabilitation rather than punishment, they have managed to achieve extremely low recidivism rates. Or so the story goes. However, this perception is largely a myth,” argued Patterns of Human Nature.
- Brianna Joy Gray, host Rising and reasonMy own Robbie Soave (and sometimes your real Robbie Soave, when I’m subbing for Soave), rolled her eyes at the source’s description of her sister’s rape on October 7, and was immediately fired from the show.
- Joe Biden’s executive order restricting asylum seekers is already having dire consequences:
“They are not all asylum seekers” completely misses the point. We do not want a person to be persecuted or tortured again. If that requires getting 10 or 100 people in who want to work, so what? My tax dollars should not be used to help any persecutor or torturer. https://t.co/hoh2MOyyz4
— David J. Bier (@David_J_Bier) June 6, 2024
- new just asking questions With Mike Solana (an absolute must follow):