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The politics of Donald Trump’s war on cities

An armed law enforcement agent sits in an armored vehicle as residents of Chicago's Brighton Park neighborhood confront law enforcement at a gas station after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents allegedly detained an unidentified man riding in his car, in Chicago, Illinois, on Oct. 4, 2025.

(AFP via Getty Images)

The politics of Donald Trump’s war on cities

A masked, federal agent in combat uniform leans out the passenger window of a Jeep and points a military rifle directly at the face of a U.S. citizen in Chicago, simply for recording him.

It should send a chill down every American’s spine. President Trump’s revenge on America’s liberal cities is an authoritarian abuse of power. Americans in 2025 should not have to live in police states or with the National Guard patrolling their streets or pointing weapons at them.

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Trump Declares War on Democratic Cities

People rally around a group of interfaith clergy members as they hold a press conference downtown to denounce the Trump administration's proposed immigration sweeps in the city on Sept. 8, 2025 in Chicago.

Scott Olson, Getty Images

Trump Declares War on Democratic Cities

When presidents deploy the National Guard, it’s usually to handle hurricanes, riots, or disasters. Donald Trump has found a darker use for it: punishing political opponents.

Over recent months, Trump has sent federalized Guard units into Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Memphis, and now Chicago—where roughly 300 Illinois Guardsmen have been federalized and another 400 troops brought in from Texas. He calls it “law and order,” but the pattern is clear: Democratic-led cities are being targeted as enemy territory. Governors and mayors have objected, but Trump is testing how far he can stretch Title 10, the section of U.S. law that allows the president to federalize the National Guard in limited cases of invasion or rebellion—a law meant for national crisis, not political theater.

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Goldman’s Safe Bets Reveal an Uneasy U.S. Economy
a close up of a one dollar bill
Photo by Adam Nir on Unsplash

Goldman’s Safe Bets Reveal an Uneasy U.S. Economy

Goldman Sachs’s September conviction list does not look like a cheer for American innovation. It reads more like a survival kit. On paper, the U.S. economy still looks vigorous. Second-quarter GDP rose at a 3.8 percent annualized rate, powered by consumer spending. Personal consumption was revised up to 2.5 percent. August retail sales outpaced forecasts, climbing 0.6 percent instead of the expected 0.2. Inflation, measured by the Fed’s preferred gauge, is running at 2.7 percent - close enough to its target to support optimism.

Scratch below the surface, though, and the story darkens. The U.S. added just 22,000 jobs in August, the weakest monthly gain in years outside recessions. Unemployment ticked up to 4.3 percent, its highest since mid-2021. Real wages rose only 1.1 percent over the past year, barely matching inflation. Families are saving less - just 4.6 percent of disposable income, down from pandemic highs. Prices remain stubborn: the consumer price index rose 2.9 percent in August, hotter than the month before. Consumers are still spending, but increasingly on borrowed time and borrowed money. Credit card balances are climbing, and delinquency rates are spreading fastest among lower-income households.

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Donald Trump
Donald Trump
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When Belief Becomes Law: The Rise of Executive Rule and the Vanishing of Facts

During his successful defense of the British soldiers accused of killing Americans in the Boston Massacre of 1770, John Adams, the nation's second president, famously observed that "facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations or the dictates of passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

Times have changed. When President Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, saying that the jobs numbers compiled by the agency's nonpartisan analysts and experts "were RIGGED” some pundits observed that you can fire the umpire, but you can’t change the score.

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