Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Read More

President Donald Trump standing next to a chart in the Oval Office.

U.S. President Donald Trump discusses economic data with Stephen Moore (L), Senior Visiting Fellow in Economics at The Heritage Foundation, in the Oval Office on August 07, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Getty Images, Win McNamee

Investor-in-Chief: Trump’s Business Deals, Loyalty Scorecards, and the Rise of Neo-Socialist Capitalism

For over 100 years, the Republican Party has stood for free-market capitalism and keeping the government’s heavy hand out of the economy. Government intervention in the economy, well, that’s what leaders did in the Soviet Union and communist China, not in the land of Uncle Sam.

And then Donald Trump seized the reins of the Republican Party. Trump has dispensed with numerous federal customs and rules, so it’s not too surprising that he is now turning his administration into the most business-interventionist government ever in American history. Contrary to Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” in the economy, suddenly, the signs of the White House’s “visible hand” are everywhere.

Keep ReadingShow less
A person sits in their kitchen, holding and looking at receipts in one hand, with a calculator in their other hand.

Rising debt, stagnant wages, and soaring costs leave families living paycheck to paycheck in 2025.

Getty Images, Grace Cary

Running on Empty: America’s Fragile Middle Class

The Vanishing Middle Class

In the late 1970s, my mom worked as a nurse and became the family's breadwinner after my dad developed serious heart disease. His doctors told him to avoid stress, even driving, for fear it would be fatal. Yet on her single income, we managed what was then considered a solidly middle-class life. Stability was assumed, even if one parent couldn’t work.

That assumption has vanished. Today, surveys show that roughly half to two-thirds of Americans live paycheck to paycheck (People’s Policy Project). A stricter Bank of America analysis finds that about one in four households spends nearly all their income on essentials (Axios). Whether the number is one-in-two or one-in-four, millions of Americans are financially on the edge.

Keep ReadingShow less
Trump’s Mirage Economy Is Putting America in Foreclosure

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in front of posters depicting household income data in the Oval Office on August 07, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump fired Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Dr. Erika McEntarfer on August 1st, claiming the agency issued “phony” jobs numbers during the Biden administration to aid Democrats.

Getty Images, Win McNamee

Trump’s Mirage Economy Is Putting America in Foreclosure

President Donald Trump likes to brand himself a business genius. But for average Americans staring at flat paychecks, shrinking opportunities, and higher grocery bills, his “Art of the Deal” looks more like a private equity raid: strip the assets, juice the numbers, and leave someone else holding the bag.

Economic policymaking under Trump is chaos in action: fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for weak jobs numbers? Done. Call tariffs the “greatest tax cut in history” while quietly carving out exemptions for firms that manufacture in the U.S. That too. In Trump’s America, numbers bend to politics, and if you don’t like it, good luck finding reliable data.

Keep ReadingShow less
Tariff ‘Mission Accomplished’ Hype Is Just That

In an aerial view, a container ship arrives at the Port of Oakland on Aug. 1, 2025, in Oakland, California.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/TNS

Tariff ‘Mission Accomplished’ Hype Is Just That

On May 1, 2003, George W. Bush announced, “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.” He was standing below a giant banner that read, “Mission Accomplished.” At the risk of inviting charges of understatement, subsequent events didn’t cooperate. But it took a while for that to be widely accepted.

We’re in a similar place when it comes to President Trump’s experiment with a new global trading order.

Keep ReadingShow less