U.S. News
State Department Says It Has Revoked More Than 300,000 Visas in Trump’s Second Term, a Record Pace
The State Department announced Tuesday that the Trump administration has revoked more than 300,000 visas held by foreign nationals during the president’s second term, a figure officials say reflects a faster pace than any previous administration and which rights groups say raises due process and free speech concerns. The total has climbed quickly. An Aug. 10 State Department update put revocations at more than 175,000, and in January the department said it had revoked more than 100,000, which was a record at the time. The Irish Times reported that the pace has accelerated in recent weeks. The count covers the period since January 2025, though the department did not provide a detailed month-by-month breakdown. State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said on X that the administration “has revoked more visas at a faster pace than any administration in history,” adding that the department has “zero tolerance for foreigners here on visas who break the law, commit fraud, or undermine our national security.” In an email to Al Jazeera, the department said: “We are taking, and will continue to take, action to keep our borders, and our nation, secure.” An official said the “vast majority” of revocations were tied to criminal activity, public safety concerns, immigration violations, fraud or misrepresentation, or other ineligibility. The department provided some detail on those categories. More than 4,000 revocations involved people who engaged in or facilitated so-called birth tourism, in which foreign nationals travel to the United States to give birth so the child receives citizenship. Within the criminal and public-safety category, 25% of revocations were for assault and related crimes, 22% for driving under the influence, 7% for theft, and 7% for substance abuse or distribution. The department did not provide figures for student visas or visa overstays, and the numbers have not been independently verified. The announcement fits a broader tightening of the immigration system. The administration has adopted stricter visa policies, including expanded screening and closer review of applicants’ social media activity. Trump has said the immigration crackdown and deportation drive are meant to improve domestic security. Supporters of the approach argue that visas are a privilege, not a right, and that removing people who commit crimes or commit fraud while in the United States is a basic function of immigration enforcement. They also point to the DUI and assault figures as evidence that the revocations target conduct that endangers the public. Critics see a wider net. Rights advocates and legal experts have condemned the social media screening, arguing that it threatens free speech, resembles surveillance, and singles out immigrants. According to the Irish Times, categories of cases that have drawn scrutiny include pro-Palestinian foreign protesters demonstrating against Israel’s attacks on Gaza and foreigners whose social media comments about the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk drew attention. Advocates say the crackdown has violated due process and free speech protections and created an unsafe environment, particularly for ethnic minorities, who have raised concerns about racial profiling. They also argue that national-security justifications have been used to target critics, and that isolated fraud cases have been used to broadly target immigrant communities, citing the Somali-American community in Minnesota as an example. The administration disputes that characterization, saying the actions target foreign nationals in the country who break the law, commit fraud, or pose national-security threats, in the words of Pigott. Because the department has not released case-by-case data, the competing claims are difficult for outsiders to test. The 300,000 figure shows how many visas were revoked but not how many of those cases involved people who were in the United States at the time, how many were challenged, or how many were reversed. The numbers also sit alongside other changes affecting legal immigration. Al Jazeera notes that Trump campaigned on stopping illegal immigration, yet his administration has also made legal immigration harder, for example by imposing expensive fees for certain work visas. Taken together, the policies have reduced the number of people entering or remaining in the country on a lawful basis, a result that supporters view as restoring order to the system and critics view as damaging to industries and universities that rely on foreign talent. One of the best-known individual cases is already heading toward the Supreme Court. Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate, this week asked the justices to overturn a ruling that allows the administration to rearrest and deport him. Khalil has not been charged with a crime and says he was targeted for his pro-Palestinian activism, arguing that his removal would violate his free speech rights. The administration has defended its actions in such cases as lawful enforcement of immigration and national-security rules, and the Court’s eventual handling of the dispute could shape how far officials can go in using speech-related grounds. The practical consequences for people holding visas are significant. A revocation can take effect while a person is abroad, meaning a traveler may be unable to return to the United States, or while a person is inside the country, where it can expose them to removal proceedings. Immigration attorneys say they have seen more clients worried about travel and about the effect of social media posts on their status, though the extent of that chilling effect is difficult to measure. The milestone arrives weeks before the midterm elections, in which immigration remains a central issue for both parties. Republicans are likely to cite the figures as proof of a promise kept on border and national security, while Democrats and advocacy groups are likely to point to the cases that have drawn criticism and press for more transparency about how revocations are decided and reviewed. Open questions remain about oversight. Immigration lawyers and advocacy groups have asked how revocations are reviewed internally, what notice recipients receive, and whether there is a meaningful path to appeal, particularly for people abroad when their visa is cancelled. The department’s public statements this week did not address those procedural points. For now, the State Department’s headline number is…
Trump Announces $8 Billion Harvest Fuel Relief Program for Farmers as Diesel Prices Hit Record Highs
President Trump announced an $8 billion Harvest Fuel Relief Program on Monday to help American farmers absorb soaring diesel costs during the 2026 harvest, delivering the news at a Kansas campaign event for Republican Sen. Roger Marshall less than three weeks before the midterm elections. The one-time payments will be administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency using Commodity Credit Corporation funds, the same financing mechanism used for the earlier $12 billion Farmer Bridge Assistance program, which the new effort is modeled on. Trump described the program as “providing our farmers with $8 billion in support to offset diesel costs during this harvest season.” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins called Trump “the most pro-farmer president of my lifetime” and said the money will “bring certainty to our farmers during this harvest.” The announcement comes as fuel costs have surged. U.S. retail diesel reached a record $6.50 per gallon in September, and AAA data this week put the national average at roughly $6.32 per gallon, compared with about $4.30 for regular gasoline. In Kansas, diesel averaged about $6.07 per gallon. Bloomberg attributes the global spike in diesel prices to the U.S.-Iran conflict, which has limited fuel exports moving through the Strait of Hormuz. For farmers, the timing is especially painful: harvest-season equipment such as combines, grain carts and trucks runs almost entirely on diesel, and USDA data show more than 64% of soybeans and nearly half of the corn crop had been harvested as of the week ending Oct. 18. Payments will be calculated using expected 2026 crop-year losses rather than farmers’ actual fuel receipts. USDA says the formula draws on reported FSA planted acres, Economic Research Service cost-of-production estimates, and yields and prices from the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report. Crop insurance enrollment is not required to qualify. Commodity-specific payment rates for Title I crops such as corn, soybeans and wheat are due next month, though USDA has not yet explained how the formula will work crop by crop, a gap noted by the trade publication Agri-Pulse. Producers of specialty crops, fisheries and other non-Title I commodities are being asked to email fuel-cost data to [email protected] so the department can consider it when setting rates, and farmers have been advised to create a Login.gov account ahead of the application period. The program is the latest in a series of administration steps to address diesel costs. In early October, Trump expanded access to red-dyed, tax-exempt diesel used in farm and construction equipment. He has also said he will not authorize a diesel export ban, even though some Republicans had called for a pause on exports to keep supplies at home. Around Oct. 17, the president waived new Russia sanctions and tariffs on major buyers of Russian energy under the Graham Act, following a separate waiver intended to allow more Russian diesel to reach the market, according to reporting by Farm Policy News. Marshall has pushed for diesel relief for months. His office previously urged USDA to provide aid during harvest, and the White House’s Rapid Response 47 account credited him as “the leader who fought for that to happen.” Marshall is running for re-election in a race that both Sabato’s Crystal Ball and the Cook Political Report rate as a toss-up, and Trump rallied for him in Kansas on Monday. The political context is hard to ignore. Control of Congress is at stake in November, and farm-state voters, who have been squeezed by high input costs and the effects of trade disputes, are a key constituency in a number of competitive races. Newsweek noted that Trump’s approval ratings on the economy have slipped as households report affordability concerns, and that promises of direct financial help are not new this cycle, pointing to a proposed $5,000 “dividend” check and payments of nearly $100 to seniors to offset Medicare Part B premiums. The administration frames the farm program as a straightforward response to an emergency, while skeptics are likely to question whether a payment announced at a campaign rally weeks before an election is as much about turnout as about relief. Farm groups welcomed the money. The Oklahoma Farm Report carried statements from agricultural organizations expressing appreciation for the program, and John Boyd, founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association, told Newsweek that farmers “just can’t survive” current fuel prices and other financial pressures. At the same time, agricultural economists often caution that one-time payments, however welcome, do not change the underlying cost structure farmers face, and that formula-based payments can leave some producers feeling shortchanged if their actual fuel bills run higher than the formula assumes. Questions remain about the program’s fiscal footprint and how it fits alongside other agriculture spending. The $8 billion draws on the Commodity Credit Corporation, a USDA financing arm with borrowing authority that Congress periodically replenishes, and it follows the $12 billion bridge assistance package, bringing the administration’s recent emergency farm outlays to roughly $20 billion. USDA has not yet published the specific payment rates, application deadlines or payment dates, details that will determine how quickly the money reaches farm accounts and whether it arrives before many producers finish harvest. The structure of the payments also matters. Because they are tied to expected crop-year losses rather than documented diesel purchases, the money functions more like broad income support than a fuel rebate, which means a farmer with a large planted acreage and modest fuel use could come out ahead of a smaller operator who burns more diesel per acre. USDA’s decision to wait until next month to publish crop-specific rates leaves producers unable to calculate what they will actually receive, even as they continue to buy fuel at record prices to finish bringing in this year’s crop. For now, farmers are waiting on the fine print. With diesel prices tied to events in the Persian Gulf that no agricultural program can resolve, the relief offers a short-term cushion rather than a long-term fix, and its ultimate value to producers, and…
Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s White House Press Ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico, Citing Due Process Violations
A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, ordering officials to immediately restore the outlets’ press credentials after finding the administration likely violated the journalists’ due process rights when it revoked their access without warning. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly granted the outlets’ request for emergency relief just days after Trump announced the bans “effective immediately” in a Friday post attacking what he called the outlets’ “constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS.” Secret Service agents confiscated the reporters’ press credentials at the White House gates the following Saturday morning, and the three news organizations filed suit that Monday, arguing the sudden revocation violated both the First Amendment and basic due process protections that require notice and an opportunity to be heard before a government benefit is stripped away. In his ruling, Kelly found that the journalists had received “no prior notice of the bans or an opportunity to challenge them,” a procedural failure he described bluntly in a hearing on the case: “I think it is fair to say that the process laid out in those two cases wasn’t followed here,” referring to earlier legal precedents governing how the White House may revoke press access. The judge also expressed skepticism toward the administration’s national-security justification for the bans, writing that “nothing in the record…suggests that the revocation…was motivated by national security concerns,” and noting that several of the specific stories cited by the White House as justification were, in his assessment, “routine” reporting that in some cases dated back months. Access was restored quickly once the order came down. White House Press Operations staff began reinstating credentials at 7:25 a.m. Thursday, Secret Service reactivated the affected badges by 9:07 a.m., and reporters from all three outlets were able to pick up press passes at the gate before 10 a.m., regaining physical entry to the White House grounds by around noon. The legal victory for the news organizations was amplified by a detail that added a layer of irony to the entire dispute: reporting has since identified Vice President JD Vance as the anonymous source behind the very Politico story the White House cited as a national-security justification for banning the outlet. According to multiple published reports, Vance was the unnamed official quoted in the Politico article that the administration later pointed to as evidence of irresponsible reporting warranting Politico’s removal from the building — meaning the administration effectively punished a news outlet for accurately quoting a source who turned out to be its own vice president. Theodore Boutrous, an attorney representing CNN in the litigation, called Kelly’s ruling “a strong ruling vindicating freedom of the press, due process and the rule of law,” framing the decision as a broader affirmation that the executive branch cannot simply strip credentialed journalists of White House access on a whim, even when the president strongly objects to how his administration is being covered. Trump responded to the ruling on Truth Social by reiterating his criticism of the banned outlets’ coverage as “FAKE NEWS,” signaling no change in his underlying view of the reporting that prompted the ban in the first place. The Justice Department has moved to appeal Kelly’s decision, arguing in court filings that access to the White House complex is “a privilege, not a right” and that the executive branch retains broad discretion over which journalists may be credentialed to cover the presidency from inside the building. That argument sets up a higher-stakes legal fight over the coming weeks, since Kelly’s order was explicitly temporary relief pending further litigation rather than a final resolution of the underlying constitutional questions. Legal scholars who follow press-access disputes note that courts have historically been reluctant to let the White House revoke credentials based on the content of a journalist’s reporting, treating such revocations differently than routine security or logistical decisions about how many reporters can physically fit in briefing spaces. The episode is not the first fight over White House media access during Trump’s second term, which has seen repeated tension between the administration and outlets it views as hostile. But Thursday’s ruling marks one of the most direct judicial rebukes yet, with Kelly’s finding that the bans lacked any credible national-security basis undercutting the administration’s primary justification for treating this dispute differently than ordinary editorial disagreements. For the three affected outlets, the practical effect of Thursday’s ruling is a return to business as usual, at least for now, with reporters once again able to attend briefings and cover events from inside the White House complex. But the underlying legal fight is far from over, and press freedom advocates say the case is likely to be watched closely as a bellwether for how much latitude future administrations — of either party — will have to selectively restrict access for outlets whose coverage a sitting president finds objectionable. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and other press-advocacy organizations have filed supporting briefs in the case, arguing that a ruling in the administration’s favor on appeal could set a precedent allowing any future White House to functionally blacklist unfavorable coverage by revoking the physical access reporters need to do their jobs. With the appeal now pending, both sides are bracing for a longer legal battle over the scope of presidential authority to control press access to the White House, even as the three outlets resume their normal coverage of the administration in the meantime under the protection of Kelly’s temporary order. The dispute has also reignited a broader debate over how White House press credentialing works and how much discretion any administration should have over it. White House access has traditionally been administered by the press office itself, subject to informal norms rather than codified legal protections, a structure that has generally functioned without major controversy across administrations of both parties precisely because presidents have historically refrained from using credentialing decisions to punish outlets over the substance of their coverage. Media law experts…
Kennedy Center Board Votes to Close Over Financial Crisis and Trump Naming Dispute, Names New President
The Kennedy Center’s board of trustees voted Tuesday to close the storied Washington performing arts institution, citing both severe financial distress and an unresolved legal dispute over the board’s push to add President Trump’s name to the building, according to sources familiar with the closed-door meeting. Board members characterized the center’s physical condition as dire and the institution as nearing insolvency, describing the extensive renovations the building requires as “a very large and complex job” that the center’s current finances cannot support. The board’s private meeting Tuesday, which Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick both attended, ultimately resulted in a vote to cease Kennedy Center operations, according to people familiar with the proceedings who spoke to the Associated Press. As part of the shakeup, Matt Floca — who previously served as the center’s vice president of operations with a background in facilities management and construction — was installed as the new president and executive director, replacing Richard Grenell, who had led the institution through a turbulent stretch marked by budget warnings to staff about impending cuts that would leave the organization running on “skeletal teams.” The closure vote caps months of controversy that began earlier this year when Trump moved to reshape the Kennedy Center’s leadership and, subsequently, sought to attach his name to the federally chartered cultural institution. The board went so far as to erect signage placing Trump’s name above that of President John F. Kennedy, for whom the center has been named since it opened in 1971 as a living memorial to the assassinated president. When the naming move drew immediate legal challenges, the board did not remove Trump’s name but instead installed what has been described as “an elevated tarp which obscures Trump’s name and most of Kennedy’s” while the underlying legal fight played out in federal court. Federal Judge Christopher Cooper ultimately blocked the board’s effort to formally rename or add memorial signage honoring Trump, ruling unambiguously that “Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing” — a reminder that the Kennedy Center, unlike a privately run cultural venue, operates as an independent federal institution whose formal name and memorial designations fall under congressional authority rather than the discretion of its board or any single administration. Despite the ruling, board members reportedly floated alternative inscription language that would have recognized Trump’s financial contributions to the renovation effort, with the board suggesting that “without such appropriate recognition,” continued presidential support for funding the needed repairs was unlikely to materialize — a framing that drew criticism from lawmakers and arts advocates who argued that federal cultural institutions should not be treated as bargaining chips tied to a single benefactor’s desire for personal recognition. The controversy also produced a separate legal skirmish over who gets a voice in the Kennedy Center’s governance. A federal judge determined that Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat who serves as an ex officio board member by virtue of her congressional position, was entitled to participate in Tuesday’s closure vote meeting, though the judge stopped short of guaranteeing her an actual vote on the board’s decisions — a narrower procedural ruling that nonetheless underscored how contentious even basic governance questions at the institution had become amid the broader fight over its leadership and branding. The upheaval has triggered a wave of departures and public criticism from the artistic community that has long relied on the Kennedy Center as one of the nation’s premier venues for theater, music and dance. Actress Issa Rae and banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck are among the performers who have withdrawn from planned Kennedy Center engagements in protest, while pianist and songwriter Ben Folds and celebrated opera soprano Renée Fleming both resigned from advisory roles at the institution earlier this year. Jean Davidson, who had served as executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra, one of the resident companies that performs at the Kennedy Center, also departed for a position elsewhere amid the turmoil. Trump has publicly tied his willingness to support the center’s renovation funding to the naming dispute, suggesting on social media that his financial backing for the extensive repairs the building needs was contingent on receiving what he considers appropriate recognition — a linkage that critics say inappropriately conditions taxpayer-adjacent support for a national cultural institution on personal branding concerns rather than the institution’s underlying public mission. For a facility that has hosted presidents, foreign dignitaries and the country’s most prominent performing artists for more than five decades, Tuesday’s closure vote represents an unprecedented disruption. The Kennedy Center receives federal appropriations to help maintain its facilities as the nation’s official memorial to President Kennedy, but has historically relied heavily on private donations, ticket sales and its endowment to fund programming — a funding model that board members now say has proven unsustainable given the scale of deferred maintenance the aging building requires alongside the institutional turmoil of the past several months. Arts advocates and congressional Democrats have called the closure vote a direct consequence of the leadership upheaval Trump initiated earlier this year, arguing that the departure of experienced arts administrators and donors amid the branding fight left the institution financially weaker and less capable of executing the ambitious renovation plans now being cited as justification for shutting down. Supporters of the administration’s involvement counter that the center’s financial problems predate this year’s leadership changes and that a substantial infusion of private funding, potentially including from Trump himself, represents the institution’s best realistic path toward the kind of comprehensive renovation its aging infrastructure genuinely requires. With a new president now in place and the underlying legal dispute over Trump’s name still not fully resolved, the Kennedy Center’s path back to normal operations remains uncertain. Congressional oversight committees are expected to examine the closure decision and the institution’s finances in the coming weeks, given the center’s unique federal charter and the public funding it receives, even as the board and new leadership under Floca begin the…
Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Mail Ballot Restrictions Ahead of 2026 Midterms in Major Election Ruling
The Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s bid to impose new restrictions on mail-in voting ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, a decisive ruling handed down Monday that allows states to continue running their existing vote-by-mail systems even as ballots are already being cast in some jurisdictions. The ruling marks the definitive resolution of a legal fight that had been winding through federal courts since spring, when President Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. Postal Service to play a central role in verifying mail-ballot eligibility. The administration framed the mail-voting restrictions as an election-integrity safeguard, but the justices found the plan “unlikely to succeed on the merits,” a phrase that effectively ended the administration’s chances of implementing the order before November’s midterm elections. Notably, the coalition that rejected the mail-in voting restrictions was not drawn along the predictable ideological lines that typically define high-profile Supreme Court election cases. Justices Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh — all three appointed by Trump himself during his first term — joined the majority in ruling against the administration’s position, while Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas publicly dissented. That alignment complicates any straightforward narrative about the court simply protecting a Republican president’s agenda, underscoring instead a genuine split among the court’s conservative wing over the limits of executive authority in setting election procedure. The mail ballot restrictions case traces back to Trump’s original executive order, which sought to have USPS compile and rely on eligibility lists supplied by state election officials before delivering mail ballots to voters. A federal judge had already found that the Postal Service, as an independent federal agency, lacks the legal authority to condition ballot delivery on the kind of citizenship and eligibility verification scheme the order envisioned — a finding the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling effectively left intact by declining to revive the administration’s approach in time for this election cycle. Data on the scale of mail voting in the United States helps explain why Monday’s ruling carries such high stakes for how the 2026 midterms will actually be conducted. Roughly one-third of American voters now cast their ballots by mail rather than in person, and eight states — California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington — conduct their elections almost entirely through mail-in voting, meaning any successful restriction would have reshaped how a substantial share of the electorate participates in this fall’s elections. The administration had defended the push for tighter verification by citing concerns about noncitizen voting, though independent research, including a 2025 Brookings Institution analysis, has found that instances of noncitizen voting occur at a rate of approximately 0.000043% of all ballots cast — a figure voting rights advocates have repeatedly cited as evidence that the restrictions targeted a problem far smaller in practice than in political rhetoric. Reaction from state election officials, who have spent months preparing for the possibility that mail-voting rules could shift dramatically and suddenly, was one of relief tempered by continued vigilance given how contentious the underlying legal fight has been. Oregon’s Secretary of State framed the ruling in stark terms, emphasizing that “presidents don’t run elections, the people do,” a line that captured the broader argument voting rights groups have made throughout the litigation: that election administration authority under the Constitution rests primarily with states and Congress, not the executive branch. Nevada’s Secretary of State described the mood among election officials as “one of relief,” while still urging voters to remain confident in the process regardless of the legal turbulence surrounding it in recent months. Monday’s ruling is the latest and most consequential chapter in a case that has moved through the courts in fits and starts since Trump signed the original order. An earlier Supreme Court order in August had paused a lower-court injunction specifically as it applied to roughly two dozen Democratic-led states, allowing partial implementation to proceed in a narrower set of circumstances while a separate, broader nationwide injunction remained in place. That fragmented earlier ruling had left election officials genuinely uncertain about which rules would apply where, a limbo that Monday’s more sweeping rejection appears to resolve in voters’ favor nationwide, at least for this election cycle. The timing of the decision — arriving as voting is already underway in some states with early and mail balloting — added urgency to the court’s ruling, since any further delay in resolving the legal uncertainty risked disrupting ballot printing, mailing schedules and voter confidence in the weeks immediately preceding the election. Legal analysts following the case say the practical effect of Monday’s ruling is to lock in the status quo for mail voting through the 2026 midterms, even though the broader constitutional questions about presidential authority over election administration remain technically unresolved and could resurface in future litigation well before the next presidential election cycle. Republican officials who had supported the push for tighter mail-ballot verification expressed disappointment but signaled the fight over election security is far from over, pointing to state-level efforts to tighten voter ID rules through legislative channels. Democratic officials and voting rights organizations characterized the ruling as a necessary check on executive overreach into an area the Constitution reserves primarily to states and Congress. The decision lands amid a broader wave of election-related legal battles playing out simultaneously across the country this election cycle, including ongoing redistricting fights in more than half a dozen states that have reshaped House maps ahead of November. Voting rights advocates argue that taken together, the mail-ballot litigation and the redistricting battles reflect a coordinated push to influence the midterm playing field through the courts and executive action alike, while administration officials continue to insist each initiative addresses a distinct and legitimate concern about fairness or integrity in how elections are run. With the mail-voting question now largely settled for this cycle, attention is likely to shift toward how those redistricting disputes and other pending election-law cases are resolved in the final stretch before voters head to the polls in November….
August Payrolls Blow Past Estimates With 162,000 Jobs Added, Reviving Fed Rate-Hike Bets
The U.S. economy added 162,000 jobs in August, according to Labor Department data released Friday, nearly tripling economist forecasts of 56,000 and delivering the clearest signal yet that July’s shocking job losses were more of an aberration than the start of a genuine downturn. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.1%, matching expectations. The blowout report stood in sharp contrast to the private-sector ADP data released earlier in the week, which had shown private payrolls growing by just 38,000 — underscoring how differently the two closely watched measures can read the same labor market in the same month. Friday’s official government count showed private payrolls alone climbing by 127,000, nearly triple the 45,000 economists had penciled in, while government employment added a further 35,000 positions, including 50,000 new local government jobs that helped offset a modest decline in federal employment. The sector breakdown showed hiring concentrated in a handful of areas rather than spread evenly across the economy. Food services led non-farm categories with a gain of 59,000 jobs, reflecting continued strength in consumer spending on dining and hospitality even as other parts of the economy have shown signs of strain. Manufacturing added 16,000 positions and healthcare contributed 13,000 more, both solid if unspectacular gains. The information sector was the notable outlier, shedding 23,000 jobs in a continuation of the restructuring that has hit media, telecommunications and parts of the tech industry particularly hard over the past year as companies have restructured operations and, in some cases, replaced roles with AI-driven tools. Wage growth came in essentially in line with expectations, with average hourly earnings rising 3.1% year-over-year, just above the 3% economists had forecast. While that pace of wage growth remains historically solid, it continues to run behind the cumulative inflation increases many households have experienced over the past several years, meaning many workers’ paychecks are still not fully keeping pace with the cost of living even as nominal wage gains remain positive. The report’s real significance lies less in its individual numbers than in what it means for the Federal Reserve’s rate decision later this month. Just one month after a shockingly weak July jobs report had many economists penciling in rate cuts to shore up a softening labor market, Friday’s number flipped that calculus dramatically. Markets responded immediately: the probability traders assigned to a 25 basis point rate hike at the Fed’s September 15-16 meeting jumped to 60.4%, up sharply from 49.4% just the day before, according to futures pricing. Stock markets slipped in response, with the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all pulling back Friday as investors recalibrated their expectations for the path of monetary policy. Ellen Zentner, an economist at Morgan Stanley, captured the shift in sentiment succinctly, saying the “upside surprise in payrolls will likely ramp up concerns about a rate hike,” while cautioning that the following week’s inflation data would ultimately prove decisive for the Fed’s actual decision. Tim Urbanowicz at Goldman Sachs offered a somewhat more measured read, characterizing the strong report as reflecting ongoing “labor market rebalancing” rather than a fundamental shift in the economy’s trajectory. Adam Schickling of Vanguard struck a similar note, arguing that “the labor market remains resilient enough to keep the focus on inflation,” and suggesting that a single strong month, however dramatic relative to expectations, is unlikely on its own to materially change the Fed’s broader policy stance. The whipsaw between July’s contraction and August’s blowout leaves Fed Chair Kevin Warsh and his colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee with a genuinely difficult call to make at their upcoming meeting. Warsh has been outspoken about prioritizing the fight against inflation, which has remained stubbornly above the Fed’s 2% target for much of the year, and Friday’s strong jobs data gives him and like-minded committee members ammunition to argue that the labor market can withstand tighter policy without tipping into serious weakness. At the same time, the sheer volatility in the data — a 23,000-job loss one month followed by a 162,000-job gain the next — makes it harder for the committee to have full confidence in any single data point as a guide to where the economy is actually headed. For everyday workers and businesses, the practical upshot of Friday’s report is further uncertainty about the direction of borrowing costs heading into the fall. A rate hike would mean continued elevated costs for mortgages, auto loans and business credit, potentially cooling some of the very hiring momentum the August report just demonstrated. A hold, or eventual cut, would ease those pressures but risks reinforcing inflation dynamics the Fed has spent years trying to bring under control. With the Consumer Price Index report due out before the Fed’s meeting, markets and policymakers alike are likely to treat that release as the true tiebreaker in a decision that, after Friday’s numbers, has become considerably harder to call than it looked just a few weeks ago. The swing between July and August also reignited a broader debate among economists about how much weight any individual monthly jobs report deserves in shaping expectations, given how frequently the data has been revised in recent years and how sharply the two most recent readings have diverged. Some labor economists have pointed to changes in survey response rates and methodology adjustments at the Bureau of Labor Statistics as partial explanations for the increased month-to-month volatility, while others argue the swings simply reflect genuine turbulence in an economy still working through the effects of tariffs, AI-driven restructuring in white-collar industries, and shifting immigration patterns that have all affected labor supply and demand in ways that are difficult to disentangle in real time. Political reaction to the report broke down along predictable lines. Administration officials pointed to the strong headline number as validation of the White House’s broader economic approach, while critics countered that a single month’s rebound does little to address the underlying wage stagnation relative to inflation that has weighed on household budgets for years. Both camps agreed on one point:…
Private Payrolls Add Just 38,000 Jobs in August, Missing Forecasts Again
Private employers added just 38,000 jobs in August, according to data released Wednesday by payroll processor ADP, falling well short of economist forecasts of 48,000 and marking the weakest month of hiring since January — the latest sign that the labor market’s slowdown from earlier this summer has not meaningfully reversed. The August figure also represents a step down from July’s revised gain of 46,000 jobs, suggesting the deceleration in hiring has continued rather than stabilized. The report lands two days before the Labor Department releases its own more comprehensive nonfarm payrolls report Friday, which economists expect to show a considerably stronger 56,000 new positions — a notable divergence between the two measures that, if it holds, would still represent a substantial rebound from July’s shocking loss of 23,000 jobs on the government’s official count. The unemployment rate is projected to hold steady at 4.1% in Friday’s report. The sector-by-sector breakdown in ADP’s data paints a mixed picture of an economy adding jobs unevenly rather than uniformly slowing across the board. Education and health services led all sectors by a wide margin, adding 45,000 positions on their own — meaning that without healthcare and education hiring, the broader private sector would have posted a net job loss for the month. Leisure and hospitality added a further 16,000 positions, while financial activities and the catch-all “other services” category each contributed 6,000 jobs. The weakness was concentrated in goods-producing and traditionally cyclical sectors. Manufacturing shed 17,000 jobs, continuing a rough stretch for American factories that have faced elevated input costs tied to this year’s tariff increases alongside softer demand in key export markets. Professional and business services, a category economists watch closely as a leading indicator for the broader labor market, lost 16,000 positions. Natural resources and mining, along with trade, transportation and utilities, each shed 5,000 jobs. The combination suggests employers in more economically sensitive industries have grown more cautious about adding headcount even as service-sector hiring in areas like healthcare continues largely unabated, insulated by demographic demand that doesn’t ebb and flow with the broader business cycle the way manufacturing and corporate services do. Wage data in the report told a more complicated story about the state of the labor market than the headline job-count numbers alone. Workers who stayed in their current jobs saw annual pay gains of 4.4%, a solid if unspectacular figure by recent historical standards. But workers who switched employers saw considerably faster wage growth of 7.3%, a gap ADP’s chief economist attributed to shifting compensation patterns driven partly by demographic turnover in the workforce and partly by the early effects of AI-related disruption reshaping which skills and roles command a premium in today’s job market. That widening gap between “stayer” and “switcher” wage growth has historically been read as a signal of at least some underlying tightness in specific pockets of the labor market, even as the top-line hiring numbers soften. The report adds a fresh data point to an increasingly consequential debate inside the Federal Reserve, which meets September 15-16 to decide on interest rates under new Chair Kevin Warsh. Warsh has been vocal about prioritizing the fight against inflation, which has remained elevated relative to the Fed’s 2% target for much of the year, even as the labor market has shown clear signs of cooling since the July jobs report first rattled markets with its unexpected contraction. Wednesday’s ADP numbers, while not as dire as July’s shock, do little to resolve the tension the Fed faces heading into its meeting: whether to hold rates steady to keep fighting inflation, or begin cutting to support a labor market that has now posted two straight months of underwhelming hiring data by two different measures. Markets have shown some sensitivity to the report, with traders adjusting rate-cut probabilities modestly following the release, though the more consequential data point for the Fed’s actual decision will likely be Friday’s official government jobs report and the following week’s Consumer Price Index reading, both of which will land in the two weeks before the September FOMC meeting. Economists caution against reading too much into any single month’s data given how volatile job-growth figures have been over the past year, but note that a second consecutive month of ADP data undershooting expectations, even a much less dramatic shortfall than July’s, reinforces a broader narrative of labor-market softening that has now persisted long enough to be difficult to dismiss as simple noise. For workers and job seekers, the practical effect of the slowdown has been a labor market that increasingly rewards those willing to change jobs over those who stay put — a dynamic reflected clearly in this month’s wage data — even as overall hiring across large swaths of the economy, particularly in manufacturing and professional services, remains notably subdued compared with the pace seen through most of the past several years. The divergence between ADP’s private-sector count and the government’s broader payrolls survey has itself become a recurring point of discussion among economists this year, since the two reports have told noticeably different stories in back-to-back months. ADP’s methodology draws on actual payroll processing data from the millions of businesses that use its payroll services, giving it a real-time window into private hiring, but it excludes government employment entirely and can diverge from the Labor Department’s survey-based approach in any given month due to differences in sampling, seasonal adjustment, and which businesses happen to be included. Economists generally caution against treating either report in isolation as the definitive read on the labor market, preferring instead to look at the trend across several months of both series together — a trend that, over the summer, has consistently pointed toward softening even as the exact monthly figures have bounced around. Retailers and small businesses in sectors like hospitality, which continued adding jobs even as manufacturing and professional services contracted, say they are still seeing steady consumer demand heading into the fall, a note of relative optimism that stands in some tension…
House Passes Stopgap Funding Bill, Averting Shutdown Before Midterm Elections
The House of Representatives passed a short-term government funding bill Tuesday by a lopsided 370-48 vote, sending the measure to President Trump’s desk and averting a government shutdown just weeks before voters head to the polls in the November midterms. The stopgap measure, known as a continuing resolution, keeps federal agencies funded generally at current spending levels through December 11, buying Congress additional time to negotiate full-year appropriations bills without the immediate pressure of an October 1 funding cliff. The Senate had already approved the measure by an overwhelming margin before it reached the House floor, and with Trump’s signature considered a formality, the bill is expected to become law well before the current funding deadline expires. The lopsided vote margin reflects a rare moment of bipartisan alignment on a piece of must-pass legislation, particularly notable given how badly the last two funding fights went. Lawmakers in both parties have been eager to avoid a repeat of 2025’s shutdown chaos, when the federal government endured a 43-day lapse in funding followed by a separate, even longer 76-day shutdown limited to the Department of Homeland Security — the longest shutdown of any single federal department in U.S. history. With midterm elections just two months away, neither party wanted to be blamed for a third disruptive funding lapse in as many years, a dynamic that appears to have driven Tuesday’s smooth passage far more than any newfound spirit of bipartisan cooperation on the underlying spending questions that remain unresolved. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole framed the bill as straightforward good governance, telling reporters it provides “certainty that the government will remain open, certainty that our service members will be paid.” House Speaker Mike Johnson struck a similar tone, crediting Republicans for delivering the result and saying the House GOP is “continuing to do the grown-up thing, get the job done” — remarks aimed as much at midterm voters weighing which party can be trusted to keep basic government functions running as at colleagues on the floor. Democrats offered a more qualified endorsement. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, pointed to a provision delaying a proposed rule that would have given Trump-appointed officials new authority to halt federal grants for programs they deem misaligned with the administration’s policy agenda, calling the delay “an important first step.” But DeLauro made clear Democrats see the underlying policy fight as far from settled, warning that “whether a community receives disaster relief should not depend on who they voted for in the last election” — a pointed reference to Democratic concerns that the administration could eventually use grant-approval authority to reward friendly states and jurisdictions while punishing others. The bill includes at least one other notable policy provision beyond the topline spending extension: language preventing the Department of Homeland Security from transferring funds internally to boost Border Patrol’s budget beyond what Congress has already appropriated, a restriction that reflects ongoing congressional efforts to maintain oversight over how immigration enforcement dollars are actually spent even as the administration has pushed to expand enforcement operations through other channels, including the National Guard deployments and ICE surges already underway in several major cities. The relatively narrow scope of the bill — a straightforward extension of current funding levels rather than a comprehensive rewrite of federal spending priorities — reflects a deliberate strategy by leadership in both chambers to keep the legislation simple enough to avoid the kind of ideological riders that have sunk previous funding bills. Appropriators on both sides have signaled they intend to use the roughly three-month runway before the December 11 deadline to try to negotiate full-year spending bills covering the various federal agencies individually, rather than relying on another continuing resolution when the current one expires. Whether that effort succeeds is an open question; previous attempts at regular-order appropriations have repeatedly broken down over disputes on individual agency budgets, immigration enforcement funding, and policy riders attached by both parties, which is part of why the government has now operated under a series of short-term patches for much of the past several years rather than the full-year budgets that were once the norm. The bill’s passage removes one significant source of uncertainty from the political landscape heading into the fall campaign season, allowing both parties to turn their full attention to the redistricting fights, the state of the economy, and other issues expected to dominate midterm messaging without the added complication of a government shutdown playing out in the final stretch before Election Day. Still, the December 11 deadline means the underlying funding fight has only been postponed, not resolved, and lawmakers on both sides say they expect a more contentious round of negotiations once Congress returns from the elections to face a lame-duck session that will need to produce either full-year spending bills or yet another short-term extension before the holidays. For federal workers and contractors who lived through last year’s back-to-back shutdowns, Tuesday’s vote offers at least a few months of certainty. Whether that certainty extends much beyond December remains very much in the hands of a Congress that has struggled repeatedly in recent years to complete its most basic constitutional task of funding the government it oversees. The timing of the new deadline is itself politically significant. By pushing the next funding cliff to December 11, congressional leaders in both parties effectively guaranteed that the fight over full-year spending bills will unfold in a lame-duck session immediately following the midterms, when the incentives facing individual lawmakers shift considerably. Members who lost reelection bids in November will have less political exposure to worry about when casting votes on politically difficult spending bills, while members who won will be looking ahead to a new two-year term rather than an immediate election. Congressional aides in both parties have said privately that lame-duck sessions, for all their reputation as chaotic and rushed, have historically proven more capable of producing genuine compromise on appropriations than sessions held in the shadow of an looming…
SNAP Turns 62 With Enrollment Down 11% Nationally as New Work Requirements Take Hold
The federal food stamp program marks 62 years since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Food Stamp Act into law on August 31, 1964 — an anniversary landing this year amid the steepest enrollment decline in the program’s modern history, as expanded work requirements and eligibility restrictions passed last year work their way through the system. More than 4 million people lost Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits between July 2025 and April 2026, according to federal data, with nationwide participation falling from roughly 42 million to 37 million recipients — an 11% decline in less than a year. More recent estimates put the total number of people who have lost benefits since the changes began at over 5 million, with enrollment continuing to decline in every state, according to Lauren Bauer, an economist at the Brookings Institution who tracks the program. The changes stem from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the sweeping tax and spending package Congress passed in July 2025. The law significantly expanded SNAP’s work requirements, mandating that more adults prove they are working or volunteering at least 80 hours a month to keep receiving benefits. Groups newly subject to those requirements include veterans, homeless individuals, young adults aging out of the foster care system, parents with children between 14 and 17, and adults between the ages of 55 and 64 — populations that had previously been exempted from SNAP’s work-requirement rules in whole or in part. The law also eliminated federal food aid eligibility entirely for certain categories of noncitizens, including refugees, asylum seekers, and victims of domestic abuse or human trafficking who had previously qualified for assistance regardless of immigration status. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the expanded work requirements alone will reduce SNAP participation by an average of 2.4 million people per month over the 2025-2034 period, a scale of reduction that budget analysts describe as one of the largest deliberate contractions of the program’s reach since its modern form took shape in the 1970s. Children have not been spared: at least 1 million children lost benefits across the 19 states surveyed in one recent analysis, even though most of the new work requirements are aimed at adult recipients rather than families with young children directly. The impact has landed unevenly across the country. Arizona has seen the steepest decline of any state, with enrollment falling to roughly half of the previous year’s level — a drop of more than 400,000 participants. Louisiana, Florida and Oklahoma have also recorded significant enrollment drops as the new eligibility rules and paperwork requirements take hold, according to state-level data reviewed by researchers tracking the rollout. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has offered a different read on the numbers, attributing the enrollment decline primarily to “a better economy” and arguing that many people leaving the rolls were “taking the program that shouldn’t have been” receiving benefits in the first place — framing the drop as evidence the new work requirements are successfully targeting the program toward those who genuinely need it. Policy analysts studying the data have pushed back on that explanation, noting that unemployment has remained essentially flat over the same period while food prices have continued to rise, a combination they argue points toward the policy changes themselves, rather than a strengthening labor market, as the primary driver of the decline. Beyond the immediate eligibility changes, the law sets up a more structural shift in how SNAP is funded starting in 2027, when states will be required to help cover the program’s costs for the first time in the program’s history. SNAP has historically been funded almost entirely by the federal government, with states responsible mainly for administrative costs rather than the benefits themselves. Tim Shaw, a policy expert at the Aspen Institute, said the new state cost-sharing requirement creates a serious long-term risk for the program’s reach, since most states are legally required to balance their budgets every year and have far less fiscal flexibility than the federal government to absorb a new, potentially large and unpredictable expense. “More than 60 years of food assistance could soon come to an end” in some states, Shaw warned, raising the possibility that a handful of states could eventually scale back their participation in the program altogether once the funding burden shifts. Some states have also begun restricting which specific food items SNAP recipients are permitted to purchase with their benefits, a separate trend that predates the 2025 law but has gained momentum alongside the broader push to tighten the program’s rules. Supporters of those restrictions argue they encourage healthier purchasing patterns among recipients; critics counter that they add administrative complexity for retailers and stigmatize recipients without meaningfully improving nutrition outcomes. Elaine Waxman of the Urban Institute pointed to what she described as one of SNAP’s core historical strengths now under strain: its universality. Before the recent changes, she noted, the program’s defining feature was that “it was available everywhere,” providing a consistent nutritional safety net regardless of which state a family happened to live in. With enrollment now falling unevenly by state and a state-funding requirement looming in 2027, that consistency is increasingly in question, with anti-hunger advocates warning that the practical experience of the program could soon vary dramatically depending on a family’s zip code in a way it has not for most of the program’s 62-year history. Food banks and local charitable networks in several of the hardest-hit states say they have already seen a noticeable uptick in demand as SNAP recipients lose eligibility, though most describe their capacity as strained rather than broken so far. Anti-hunger organizations argue that private charity was never designed to absorb the scale of need that a federal entitlement program covering tens of millions of people is built to address, and they warn that a further wave of state-level funding shortfalls in 2027 could push local food assistance networks well past their sustainable limits. Supporters of the new work requirements counter that a modest transition period of strained…
Supreme Court Lets Trump’s Mail-Voting Order Partially Take Effect, Injecting Uncertainty Into Midterms
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority handed the Trump administration a preliminary win Monday, pausing a lower-court ruling that had blocked key parts of President Trump’s executive order overhauling mail-in voting rules across two dozen states — even as a separate nationwide injunction keeps the order’s central mechanism frozen for now. Trump signed the executive order in March, directing the Department of Homeland Security to compile citizenship verification lists and requiring the U.S. Postal Service to obtain lists of eligible mail voters from state election officials. Under the order, USPS would deliver mail ballots only to voters confirmed on those lists, and election officials would be required to place specific verification barcodes on ballot return envelopes. The White House has defended the order as a necessary safeguard against noncitizen voting, though research on the subject has consistently found that noncitizen voting in U.S. elections is, in the words of election researchers, “infinitesimally rare.” U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani had blocked the order’s key provisions in June for 23 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia, ruling that Trump “overstepped a president’s authority” under a Constitution that assigns election rule-setting power to state legislatures and Congress, not the executive branch. Talwani also found that the Postal Service, as an independent federal agency, has no legal authority to condition mail-ballot delivery on the kind of voter-list verification scheme the order envisions. The Supreme Court’s unsigned order Monday paused Talwani’s injunction specifically as it applied to those 23 states and D.C., allowing the administration to move forward with certain aspects of implementation there while the underlying legal fight continues. But the justices left a separate, broader nationwide injunction in place, meaning USPS still cannot actually begin restricting mail-ballot delivery based on the disputed voter lists anywhere in the country while the administration’s appeals proceed. The court was notably cautious in its own language, writing that its decision “does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful. On that score, time will tell” — a signal that the justices were resolving only a narrow procedural question about which injunction applies where, not endorsing the order’s ultimate legality. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the ruling, warning that the decision “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections” at a moment when state election officials are already deep into planning for November. New York’s attorney general, whose office has been among those challenging the order, called the ruling a “painful setback” while vowing to continue pursuing the underlying legal challenge through the appeals process. The practical stakes of the ruling are tied tightly to the calendar. Administration officials have acknowledged that full implementation of the order would need to begin “as soon as early to mid-August” to be operationally ready before the midterm elections in November — a deadline that has now effectively passed, meaning that even with Monday’s favorable ruling, the legal and logistical hurdles remaining make it increasingly unlikely the order will be fully in effect in time to reshape how mail ballots are processed in this year’s midterms. That timing crunch has left election administrators in the affected states in an awkward holding pattern, uncertain whether to prepare systems for a new verification regime that may or may not be operational before ballots go out. Republican-led states that intervened in the case have appealed the broader injunction, arguing that Talwani’s nationwide order improperly extended relief to states that were never party to the original lawsuit and that federal courts should not be able to block a presidential directive on a nationwide basis based on a challenge brought by a subset of states. Democratic attorneys general and voting rights groups, meanwhile, argue that the administration’s own timeline concessions undercut its claim of urgency, suggesting the order’s real purpose was less about closing a negligible security gap and more about making mail voting logistically harder in states that rely on it most heavily. The dispute now heads back to the lower courts for further proceedings on the merits, with the Supreme Court’s Monday order settling only which injunction controls in the interim rather than resolving the constitutional questions at the heart of the case. Legal analysts following the litigation say a final resolution — whether from the appeals court or eventually from the Supreme Court itself on the full merits — is unlikely before the 2026 midterms are decided, meaning the order’s ultimate fate will most likely be determined only after this election cycle has already played out under whatever patchwork of rules happens to be in effect this fall. For voters in the 23 states and D.C. covered by Monday’s ruling, the immediate practical impact remains limited given the separate nationwide injunction still blocking USPS implementation, but election officials in those states say they are watching the appeals process closely, given how quickly the legal landscape has shifted over the past several months. The ruling arrives against a backdrop of intensifying legal and political fights over election procedure in the run-up to November, following on the heels of the redistricting battles reshaping House maps in more than half a dozen states. Voting rights groups have argued that the mail-voting order, the redistricting fights, and a series of other state-level changes to voter ID and registration rules amount to a coordinated effort to tilt the midterm playing field in ways that will be difficult for courts to fully sort out before votes are cast. Administration officials reject that characterization, framing each initiative as a separate, good-faith effort to address a specific and distinct integrity or fairness concern, whether in how districts are drawn or how ballots are verified. Election law scholars note that the fractured nature of Monday’s ruling — one injunction lifted, another left standing — is itself a reflection of how unusual this case is procedurally, since it involves overlapping lawsuits filed in different jurisdictions raising similar claims against the same federal policy. That fragmentation means the order’s legal status could…