Sat: Previous Guy Wants to Increase Inflation

The Gang That Can't Get Anything Straight

The court-appointed monitor for the Trump Organization in the New York civil fraud case is sounding the alarm that the company's disclosures are "inconsistent" and riddled with errors, reported The Messenger on Friday.

"'I have identified certain deficiencies in the financial information that I have reviewed, including disclosures that are either incomplete, present results inconsistently, and/or contain errors,' former federal judge Barbara Jones, tasked with scrutinizing the former president's business empire, wrote in a 12-page letter," reported Adam Klasfeld. "Though she described Trump and his businesses as 'cooperative' with her investigation, Jones added that 'information required to be submitted to me pursuant to the terms of the monitorship order and review protocol has, at times, been lacking in completeness and timeliness.'"

"Jones, who also served as a monitor in Rudy Giuliani and Michael Cohen's criminal investigations, said that the Trump Organization has 'implemented changes' under her monitorship, but it needs to shape up even more," the report continued, quoting her as saying. "Absent steps to address the items above, my observations suggest misstatements and errors may continue to occur, which could result in incorrect or inaccurate reporting of financial information to third parties."

Trump Org. gave error-riddled and 'inconsistent' disclosures: court-appointed monitor

How Dumb Is it To Not Let Asylum Seekers Work While They Wait for a Hearing?

A city of 710,000 struggles to cope with 40,000 migrant arrivals

Nearly 40,000 migrants have arrived in Denver over the past year, making a city with a population of just over 710,000 the top destination per capita for newly arrived migrants crossing the U.S. southern border and traveling north in buses from Texas.

The influx is taking a toll on the city’s public safety net. Starting Feb. 5, Denver will limit the number of days migrants can stay in shelters and send those who exceed their stay out onto the streets.

One Venezuelan family, a mother, father and their three daughters, told NBC News they’ve been staying at a hotel paid for by the city, but they’ve just received notice that they’ll be evicted.

Ab-Butt Wants to Take Texas Back to the 1850s.

GOP Invokes Nullification In Border Standoff Between The U.S. And Texas

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s defiant statement on Wednesday rejecting the federal government’s authority to enforce immigration law at the U.S.-Mexico border ratcheted up the already tense stand-off between the state and the Biden administration — and signaled how fully the GOP has become the party of the Southern conservatives it was founded to fight.

Abbott’s declaration that that the Biden administration had “broken the compact between the United States and the States” by failing to “fulfill the duties” of protecting Texas from an “invasion” is an eerie echo of the political thought that gave rise to nullification and secession in the 19th century and resistance to desegregation in the 20th.

Prior to the Civil War, the prevailing view among Southern elites was that the Constitution of the United States of America was merely a compact between the states. Under this theory, states could decide which national laws to follow or not. And, in extreme circumstances, states could exit that compact and secede, if they decided the national government or other states had violated it.

While this framework was endorsed in some fashion by the likes of Thomas Jefferson, the political thinker who most influenced Southern secessionists and, later, segregationists was John C. Calhoun.

Previous Guy Wants to Increase Inflation If Elected

Donald Trump is preparing for a massive new trade war with China

Former president Donald Trump is weighing options for a major new economic attack on China if reelected, considering plans that are widely viewed as likely to spark a global trade war.

Publicly, the GOP front-runner has endorsed downgrading China’s trade status with the United States — a move that would lead tariffs between the world’s two largest economies to skyrocket. Revoking China’s status as a “most favored nation” for trade — which is applied to almost all countries the United States trades with — could lead to federal tariffs on Chinese imports of more than 40 percent, according to one analysis. Trump has floated imposing a 10 percent tariff on nearly all $3 trillion in annual imports from all countries, including China.

Privately, Trump has discussed with advisers the possibility of imposing a flat 60 percent tariff on all Chinese imports, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to relay private conversations.

All these options would lead to enormous disruptions to the U.S. and global economies that would far surpass the impact of the trade wars of Trump’s first term, economists of both parties say. Although he often praised Xi Jinping as president and signed a 2020 trade deal with China, Trump now repeatedly bashes Beijing on the campaign trail and has promised a tougher stance than President Biden.

Trump’s determination to ratchet up trade fights with Beijing reflects the emerging economic stakes of the 2024 election, as the former president appears increasingly sure of winning the GOP nomination. Trump has floated some fanciful new ideas for his second term — like building “Freedom Cities” in different parts of the United States with flying cars — but has primarily focused on intensifying policies he pursued during his first term, such as a severe immigration crackdown, cuts to corporate taxes and disruptive new tariffs on U.S. trading partners.

He Also Wants to Make the Border Worse

As Trump Vies to Blows Up Border Deal, Migrant Crisis Could Get Worse

Donald Trump is not in office, but he’s using his hold on the Republican Party to hold up border funding negotiations in Congress, kneecapping the federal government's ability to better address a situation widely viewed as a logistical nightmare and humanitarian crisis.

A bipartisan group of Senators were rushing on Friday to hammer out a legislative package that would put billions of dollars in new resources toward the southern border, where federal officials have been overwhelmed by a surge in migrant crossings. In October, President Joe Biden sent an emergency funding request to Congress asking for more agents, officers and deportation flights. Late Friday, Biden released a statement vowing to shut down the border if the plan became law.

"What’s been negotiated would – if passed into law – be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country," Biden said.

Getting any border package through both chambers of Congress was always going to be a challenge, but Trump’s urging of Republicans to refuse to help the Biden administration address the situation is prompting predictions that the issue may be dead until after the November election.

Such an outcome could exacerbate an already dangerous dynamic on the border, say immigration experts and lawmakers.

Trader Joe's Attacks the Rights of ALL Workers

Trader Joe’s is facing a litany of union-busting charges before the National Labor Relations Board. The agency’s prosecutors have accused the company of illegally retaliating against workers, firing a union supporter and spreading false information in an effort to chill an organizing campaign.

But in a hearing last Tuesday, the grocer’s attorney briefly summarized a sweeping defense it intends to mount against the charges: The labor board itself, which was created during the New Deal and has refereed private-sector collective bargaining for nearly 90 years, is “unconstitutional.”

The argument would appear to fit inside a broader conservative effort to dismantle the regulatory state, which has taken aim at agencies tasked with enforcing laws to protect workers, consumers and the environment.

The exchange, a transcript of which HuffPost obtained through a public records request, came at the start of a trial to determine whether Trader Joe’s violated workers’ rights. Trader Joe’s’ attorney, Christopher Murphy of the law firm Morgan Lewis, informed the judge, Charles Muhl, that there was “one final thing” the grocery chain wanted to add to its defense before proceedings began.

“The National Labor Relations Act as interpreted and/or applied in this matter, including but not limited to the structure and organization of the National Labor Relations Board and the agency’s administrative law judges, is unconstitutional,” Murphy said.

Murphy added that the company was making the “affirmative defense” now so that it could argue it in full later.

The judge said he would allow it into the record, but left it at that.