Trump Official Says American Dream Is Working in Factories Forever

Former CEO and current Trump Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick—who wants robots to replace the American worker and wants you to shut up and take your Social Security cuts—also wants a section of the population to commit generations of their families to working in factories.

“It’s time to train people not to do the jobs of the past but to do the great jobs of the future,” Lutnick said Tuesday on MSNBC while arguing for more community college education, before his argument got much worse. 

“This is the new model, where you work in these kind of plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here. You know, we let the auto plants go overseas. Right now you should see an auto plant, it’s highly automated but the people—the four, five thousand people who work there—they are trained to take care of those robotic arms, they are trained to keep the air conditioning system.” 

There’s nothing wrong with working in a factory, on its face. But Lutnick, the son of a college professor and the grandson of a dry-cleaning store owner, is suggesting that millions of people ought to commit to a generational lack of upward mobility under the guise of creating a new class of American labor. What Lutnick is so enthusiastically describing—being bound to the same job in the same industry for decades and decades—is serfdom. And that serfdom won’t even be widely available as automation takes over and the only job left is to watch the robots and make sure they don’t overheat. Howard Lutnick and Donald Trump view the domestic workforce as a homogenous, voiceless mass happy to live in the dreary mediocrity they’re forced into.  

Even Donald Trump’s favorite network is facing backlash for not bending the knee enough.

Speaking with Fox News on Tuesday, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller unabashedly told the network that they should fire their pollster, notifying them that the White House “does not acknowledge” Fox’s negative polling about Trump.

The terse exchange followed a point-blank question by anchor John Roberts, who asked Miller to comment on polling data that indicated “a lot of people think [Trump’s] spending too much time on tariffs and not enough time on the economy and lowering prices.”

But Miller did not comment on the data. Instead, he opted to cut the network down a notch, leveraging Trump’s authority and base to suggest that the network take an even more sycophantic approach.

“I don’t want to make things weird for you, John,” Miller said. “But it is our opinion that Fox News needs to fire its pollster.”

“And I won’t surprise you with that, I don’t think you’re surprised that I’m saying that, but the Fox News pollster has always been wrong about President Trump,” Miller continued, harkening back to polling from last summer that suggested former Vice President Kamala Harris would win the presidential election.

“We don’t acknowledge any of that polling,” Miller added.

When Fox returned from a commercial break, Roberts noted that the network would continue to defend its work, regardless of the Trump administration’s prerogative.

“You might have been watching earlier when Stephen Miller joined us here on America Reports, he made a remark that was critical of our polling,” Roberts said. “But here at Fox News we stand by our polling as we always have.”

Unfortunately for Miller, Fox News isn’t alone. Multiple polls show Trump is deeply unpopular for his economic policies.

Miller previously served as the senior adviser for policy and White House director of speechwriting during Trump’s first term. The far-right politico has made a name for himself for his vicious anti-immigrant policies, which include proposals to build mass deportation camps and deploy the military and the National Guard to seal the border, promising a forthcoming reality of “large-scale raids” and “throughput facilities.”

He’s long been viewed as one of the most apparent and rigid ties between Trump and the white nationalist agenda. Miller, a mentee of Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon, has had a profound impact on the president-elect’s language and policy on immigration, despite entering Trumpworld with little policy or legal expertise.

He was the architect of Trump’s first Muslim travel ban and has been a vocal proponent of family separation at the U.S. border, as well as limiting citizenship for legal immigrants. During his time in Trump’s first term, leaked emails revealed that Miller promoted white nationalist articles and books, especially on the idea that nonwhite people are replacing white people.

Miller’s rhetoric has been roundly condemned—including by his uncle, Dr. David S. Glosser, who in a scathing 2018 piece for Politico Magazine condemned his far-right relative as a hypocrite for drafting policy that would have prevented their own family from seeking refuge on America’s shores in the twentieth century.

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump’s choice for U.S. ambassador to China was confirmed Tuesday with the help of 16 Democratic votes in the Senate. 

David Perdue, formerly a Republican senator from Georgia, easily sailed through with a 67–29 vote, with four senators not voting. The Democrats who joined all but two Republicans to vote for Perdue weren’t only representing battleground states, either.

“Yea” votes included New Jersey’s Cory Booker, whose record-breaking speech on the Senate floor against Trump’s policies earlier this month seemed to inspire the rest of his party, as well as Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth, a military veteran who has criticized the administration for firing military veterans from civil service positions.  

Perdue was confirmed while the U.S. and China are in the midst of a trade war entirely caused by Trump’s ill-conceived 145 percent tariffs against Chinese imports, which China has responded to with its own 84 percent tariffs against U.S. exports to the country. Somehow, 16 Senate Democrats agreed with Trump’s choice of Perdue to deal with Beijing during this manufactured crisis. Here are their names: 

1. Cory Booker—New Jersey
2. Chris Coons—Delaware
3. Tammy Duckworth—Illinois
4. John Fetterman—Pennsylvania
5. Ruben Gallego—Arizona
6. Maggie Hassan—New Hampshire
7. Tim Kaine—Virginia
8. Andy Kim—New Jersey
9. Angus King—Maine (independent who caucuses with Democrats)
10. Amy Klobuchar—Minnesota
11. Gary Peters—Michigan
12. Jack Reed—Rhode Island
13. Jacky Rosen—Nevada
14. Jeanne Shaheen—New Hampshire
15. Elissa Slotkin—Michigan
16. Mark Warner—Virginia

Consumer confidence in the economy has plummeted for the fifth straight month, sinking to lows not seen since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, all thanks to Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index fell by 7.9 points in April, bringing overall consumer confidence to 86, according to a report published Tuesday. Consumer futures were brought to a 13-year low, with outlooks on the economy dropping by 12.5 points to 54.5 points. That’s well below the threshold of 80 that “usually signals a recession ahead,” according to the Conference Board.

“The decline was largely driven by consumers’ expectations. The three expectation components—business conditions, employment prospects, and future income—all deteriorated sharply, reflecting pervasive pessimism about the future,” Stephanie Guichard, a senior economist at the Conference Board, said in a statement.

The number of consumers expecting fewer jobs in the next six months (32.1 percent) was particularly alarming, reaching heights not seen since April 2009, when the country was in the midst of the Great Recession.

“Expectations about future income prospects turned clearly negative for the first time in five years, suggesting that concerns about the economy have now spread to consumers worrying about their own personal situations,” Guichard noted.

The drop-off in confidence has rattled all ages and income groups, as well as all political affiliations. The group with the sharpest decline in confidence is also America’s most employed, people aged 35 to 55.

The root cause of the instability was “high financial market volatility in April,” which hit American consumers’ stock portfolios and retirement savings hard and fast, per the Conference Board’s report. That was almost singularly due to Trump’s machinations in the White House, which included releasing (and stalling) a sweeping and vindictive tariff proposal plan that economists observed (and the White House eventually confirmed) was founded on bad math.

It’s not the only negative indicator for Trump’s performance. An ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll published Sunday found that Trump’s approval rating had plummeted to 39 percent—a 6 percent drop from February—marking the lowest first-100-day rating of a president since modern polling began roughly 80 years ago.

It turns out that all of Elon Musk’s villainous efforts working in the Trump administration have cost him 25 percent of his total wealth.

Since January 17, just three days prior to the start of President Trump’s second term, the tech oligarch and fascism enthusiast has lost $113 billion, Bloomberg reports. The bulk of that loss has come from a 33 percent drop in the stock price of Musk’s Tesla car company, taking a chunk out of his wallet even as his other companies, such as SpaceX, Neuralink, and XAi, have taken in more funding.

Tesla has lost $448.3 billion in market value since January, with the car company becoming the target of protests over the White House’s massive cuts to government agencies and its other unpopular policies. Demonstrations have sprouted up at Tesla dealerships across the country, and sales have plummeted, with the company experiencing its worst quarterly earnings in years.

Musk has crowed about the success of his work in government through theDepartment of Government Efficiency. But he has been unable to live up to his own promises, claiming to save only $160 billion versus the lofty $2 trillion figure he said he would deliver. On top of that, his cost-cutting measures could end up costing taxpayers even more money. His efforts have made him massively unpopular, with 54 percent of Americans disapproving of the world’s richest man compared to 53 percent disapproval of Trump, according to a new poll.

Musk can’t ignore the consequences of his actions anymore, saying on Tesla’s earnings call last week, “There’s been some blowback for the time that I’ve been spending in government.” As a result, Musk added that his “time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly” beginning in May.

But even if that is true, it may not reverse Musk’s financial misfortunes or his lack of popularity. It’s not going to make Americans start buying his cars again or forget that he called Social Security, which millions of disabled and elderly Americans depend on, a “Ponzi scheme.” Musk will have to work tirelessly to atone for his actions to get back into the public’s good graces, if that’s even possible.

President Trump called Jeff Bezos Tuesday morning to fume at the Amazon founder about reported plans for the company to display a number alongside product prices that tells consumers exactly how much Trump’s tariffs are adding to the final cost, according to CNN. 

Amazon had planned the display in the wake of Trump’s unprecedented tariff war on imports from virtually the entire world inevitably leading to increased prices. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called it a “hostile and political act” when asked about the news. 

“This is a hostile and political act by Amazon. Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years? And I would also add that it’s not a surprise. As Reuters recently wrote: ‘Amazon has partnered with a Chinese propaganda arm,’” she stated. “So this is another reason why Americans should buy American; it’s another reason why we are onshoring critical supply chains here at home to shore up our own critical supply chain and boost our own manufacturing here.” 

At some point, the president placed a call to one of his most high-profile supporters, and after that the tariff price marker idea was dead. 

“Of course he was pissed.… Why should a multibillion-dollar company pass off costs to consumers?” an anonymous source told CNN, using pro-labor language to misrepresent the nature of the tariffs.

Amazon had an opportunity to show people everywhere what the impact of the president’s destructive trade policies actually looked like. Instead they seem to have fallen in line, even as Trump costs them. 

Donald Trump’s shady crypto business has a surprising partner: Zachary Witkoff, the son of the president’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff. But don’t worry, his dad is getting in on the action too.

A sweeping investigation published Tuesday by The New York Times found that the young Witkoff had found his way to becoming one of the top three managers of World Liberty Financial, or WLFI, the decentralized finance platform that is majority owned by a Trump business entity.

DT Marks DEFI LCC, which is affiliated with Trump and his family members, owns 60 percent of World Liberty and is entitled to 75 percent of $WFLI token sales after deduction of agreed reserves, according to the website.

Trump serves as the company’s “Chief Crypto Advocate.” It’s a sort of ironic title because, while Trump can promote the brand itself, he can also shape policy to the benefit of cryptocurrencies and influence the very markets to which crypto value is tied. The president’s sons, Eric and Don Jr., are both Web 3 ambassadors, while Barron, a freshman at New York University, is a “DeFi Visionary.”

A Securities and Exchange Commission filing lists Witkoff and his son as “promoters.” Witkoff, whose background is in New York real estate, has become a central figure in the floundering U.S.-brokered peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.

The Times reported that Zachary Witkoff was one of three managers who oversee daily operations at World Liberty, alongside Chase Herro and Zak Folkman of Dough Finance, a lending app that was hacked in July, losing its customers more than $2 million. Coindesk previously reported that some of WLFI’s code was lifted directly from the defunct Dough Finance.

The young Witkoff recently traveled with Folkman and Herro to Pakistan to meet with Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif and other government officials to discuss World Liberty.

“The trip, complete with limousines, a dance performance and police escorts, seamlessly blended the president’s business interests with the trappings of a state visit,” the Times reported.

The trio also met this week with Changpeng Zhao, the founder and former chief executive of Binance, in Abu Dhabi to discuss USD1, WLFI’s stable coin, which is a cryptocurrency that maintains a value of $1. Zhao has been seeking a pardon from the Trump administration after he pleaded guilty to violating U.S. anti–money laundering laws, according to The Wall Street Journal.

World Liberty presents a golden opportunity for investors to curry favor with the Trump administration by allowing them to invest in a coin that directly benefits the president and his family.

World Liberty sent multiple firms a pitch saying that they could essentially pay somewhere between $10 million and $30 million for World Liberty’s endorsement, according to three firms that spoke with the Times. In return for tens of millions of dollars, World Liberty would buy a small amount of the firm’s cryptocurrency, signaling to the market that the firm’s coin was worthy of investment, while pocketing the rest of the cash.

Some firms turned them down. “It’s a very dishonest approach,” Dominik Schiener, founder of the IOTA Foundation, told the Times. His Berlin-based group “immediately” rejected the pitch, he said.

Crucially, World Liberty allows foreign investors to financially back Trump. Many of World Liberty’s early investors were from South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates. Early investors also included some foreign crypto entrepreneurs who had to make payments to the Securities and Exchange Commission over their misdeeds.

Crypto executives have used their purchases of $WLFI to raise their profile in the U.S. and globally, in addition to granting them leverage with the White House. Justin Sun, a Chinese billionaire who founded the crypto platform Tron and was sued by the SEC during the Biden administration, bought a whopping $75 million of $WFLI, late last year. A few months later, the SEC asked a federal judge to halt Sun’s case.

In March, Trump announced plans for a U.S. “crypto strategic reserve,” which presents as a blatant insider trading scam to make his billionaire crypto czar richer—funded by taxpayer money. It directly increased the value of World Liberty’s stash of ether, which was one of the coins included in Trump’s reserve.

In Oklahoma City Thursday, about 20 federal immigration agents raided the wrong home, forcing a woman out of the house with her three daughters, not even leaving them enough time to get dressed, and then seized their phones, laptops, and life savings.

The woman had only moved into the house two weeks earlier, after relocating to Oklahoma from Maryland. The armed agents told the woman, identified by local TV station KFOR as “Marisa,” that they had a search warrant, but the named suspects on the warrant didn’t live in the house and weren’t connected to anyone in the family.

“We just moved here from Maryland,” Marisa said. “We’re citizens. That’s what I kept saying. We’re citizens.”

The agents, who identified themselves as U.S. marshals, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and FBI agents, didn’t seem to care, waking the family up, forcing them outside in their underwear, ransacking the house, and taking the family’s belongings as “evidence.”

“I told them before they left, I said you took my phone. We have no money. I just moved here,” said Marisa. “I have to feed my children. I’m going to need gas money. I need to be able to get around. Like, how do you just leave me like this? Like an abandoned dog.”

“They were very dismissive, very rough, very careless,” the woman added. “I kept pleading. I kept telling them we weren’t criminals. They were treating us like criminals. We were here by ourselves. We didn’t do anything.”

One agent told the family, “I know it was a little rough this morning.”

“It was so denigrating. That you do all of this to a family, to women, your fellow citizens. And it was ‘a little rough’? You literally traumatized me and my daughters for life. We’re going to have to go get help or get over this somehow,” Marisa said. The agents told her that it could take days or months for the family’s stuff to be returned, and wouldn’t even give her a business card.

It all fits a pattern of cruelty from the Trump administration in its efforts to deport as many people as it can. The White House doesn’t believe in due process or following the law, or even standards of basic decency. The violent raid in Oklahoma City would be wrong even against a family of undocumented immigrants, let alone U.S. citizens like Marisa and her daughters. Hopefully, she and other victims of the administration’s wanton behavior can get restitution.

UPS plans to fire 20,000 people before the end of the year, in the midst of a Trump-induced drop in deliveries from Amazon, the postal service’s biggest customer. This amounts to a staggering 4 percent of its workforce. UPS will also shut down 73 buildings.

“In connection with our anticipation of lower volumes from our largest customer, we began our Network Reconfiguration, which is an expansion of Network of the Future and will lead to consolidations of our facilities and workforce as well as an end-to-end process redesign,” UPS stated in a regulatory filing. 

Trump’s 145 percent tariffs on Chinese imports are likely to have a massive impact on Amazon, as 60 percent of its sales come from smaller, independent retailers that depend on said imports. Even Amazon CEO Andy Jassy admitted that the cost of countless products “made in China” will shoot up. Earlier on Tuesday, a report indicated that Amazon had plans to display how much each product’s final cost had been impacted by Trump’s tariffs, though it later caved under White House pressure and said that’s no longer the case. 

These are thousands of good union jobs here getting eliminated by Trump’s destructive trade policy. UPS is the single largest employer in the Teamsters Union, with over 61 percent of its employees maintaining union membership. This critical blow comes as Teamsters President Sean O’Brien continues his shameless support of the clearly anti-labor Trump administration.

And even more troubling: UPS is in serious negotiations with an AI start-up that would have hundreds of gray, humanoid robots replace human workers at the UPS packaging conveyor belt, as this bleak, sterile clip from the company’s X profile shows. Tariffs aren’t getting negotiated, prices are rising, people are being fired, and a team of soulless assembly-line robots is waiting in the wings.  

The Trump administration may not be telling the truth on deporting undocumented immigrant mothers with their U.S. citizen children.

Attorneys for the women and three U.S.-born children say their deportations over the weekend were illegal and the administration’s claims that the children were placed on deportation flights at their mothers’ request are false. One mother wasn’t allowed to speak with a lawyer or her family before she was deported with her children, even though Immigration and Customs Enforcement knew that one of them has stage 4 cancer.

That child, a 4-year-old boy, left the country without access to his cancer medication along with his 7-year-old sister, also a U.S. citizen. Their mother “did not consent to any of this,” according to attorney Mich P. González.

“She did not sign anything, did not write anything, and did not consent to anything expressly. The entire time she was trying very aggressively to speak to her lawyer,” González told NBC News. “As a matter of fact, she was trying to get ahold of a phone to try to call her family and her attorney. But she wasn’t being allowed.”

In another case, a mother of a 2-year-old American citizen about to be deported was given less than two minutes on the phone with her husband to decide what to do with their child. She had been told by ICE to take her children to her routine check-in, moved up from the original date, when she was detained.

Her attorney told MSNBC that “at every single point ICE denied anybody the ability to know where this family was, denied everybody the ability to contact with them and communicate with them.”

The child’s father “barely had any opportunity to speak with the mother about what was best for the child before an ICE officer hung up the phone as he tried to give her the number for an attorney,” said Grace Willis, an attorney with the National Immigration Project.

The Trump administration’s “border czar” Tom Homan has said that the deportations of these young children all took place at their mothers’ request. Secretary of State Marco Rubio concurs, saying that the kids weren’t deported but “went back with their mothers,” and can return to the U.S. if there’s someone who “wants to assume them.”

All of this is more proof of the White House’s cruel and haphazard approach to immigration. It wants quick, mass deportations so badly that it ignores the law and even basic allowances for family contact and phone calls. To these officials, basic human rights, let alone those guaranteed under the Constitution, do not apply to anyone slated for deportation, lest anything get slowed down or overturned.