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‘Keeps on Chugging’: Unemployment Down and Wages Up in ‘Strong’ and Record-Setting June Jobs Report

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Economists are calling the June jobs report “strong,” and “solid,” with 209,000 jobs added bringing unemployment down to a near-50-year low of 3.6%. 220,000 to 240,000 jobs were predicted, but experts say historically 200,000 jobs created in one month is still impressive.

The Washington Post calls it “a slow but steady gain,” and adds experts say the U.S. will mostly likely not fall into recession.

“Bloomberg Economics, which last fall forecast a 100 percent chance of a recession by October, now says the country will ‘narrowly dodge’ a downturn this year. Major banks including Goldman Sachs and Barclay’s are watering down recession predictions, in large part because of the job market’s resilience,” The Post reports.

And The New York Times adds, “with rising wages and low unemployment, the labor market remains resilient.”

“It’s a good solid straight down the middle, this little engine just keeps on chugging along payrolls report,” says University of Michigan professor of economics Justin Wolfers, who is also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Job growth is definitely slowing,” he adds.

READ MORE: Boebert Democratic Challenger Sets Multi-Million Dollar Fundraising Record

“Bidenomics continued its underacknowledged winning streak in June,” is how The New Republic‘s Timothy Noah reported June’s jobs numbers.

“Everybody should calm the hell down,” he adds, after calling the 209,000 jobs created number “somewhat of a triumph” while noting interest rates will likely rise and the stock market dropped after the jobs data was released.

“What today’s job numbers show is that the Biden economy is proving much harder to push into recession than the Fed reckoned on. I’d like to tell you why, but I don’t know. Nobody does. But the bottom-line reality check: That is very good news.”

The June jobs report also brings some record-breaking results.

Thursday night former Biden White House Chief of Staff Ron Klein noted, “if tomorrow’s official unemployment rate is below 4%, we will have achieved the longest stretch of sub-4% unemployment on record.”

It is. We have.

Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell notes women 25-54 working or seeking work has also just hit a record high, as has the rate of women having jobs.

The Council of Economic Advisers calls it “the highest rate since modern data began in 1948.”

READ MORE: Trump Judge’s Controversial Injunction Against Biden Hands Disney ‘Open and Shut’ Case Against DeSantis: Legal Expert

Wolfers notes the employment rate for people with a disability hit the highest rate ever recorded.

Democratic strategist, think tank founder, and political analyst Simon Rosenberg points out with these new numbers President Joe Biden has created seven times as many jobs as the last three Republican presidents combined.

He also says the average number of jobs created under GOP presidents was 10,000 per month.

READ MORE: Citing God and Attacking Biden, Kevin McCarthy Says US Should ‘Make China and India Dependent on American Natural Gas’

According to Rosenberg, under President Biden the U.S. has seen “the lowest peacetime unemployment rate since WWII,” “the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years,” “the lowest [health care] uninsured rate ever,” and “the lowest poverty rate ever.”

The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson notes over the past few years, “real wages have surged for the low-income, wiping out a quarter of the 40-year increase in inequality.”

But the Washington Post also notes that “the Black unemployment rate, which had reached a record low in April at 4.7 percent, rose in May and June again, to 6 percent. A wide body of research shows that Black workers are the first to lose their jobs in economic downturns.”

Read the tweets above or at this link.

 

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Pelosi Delivers Brutal Response After McCarthy’s Acting Replacement Orders Her to Vacate Her Office Immediately

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Within hours of Kevin McCarthy being ousted as Speaker of the House late Tuesday afternoon, his hand-picked acting successor, U.S. Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), ordered Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi to vacate her Capitol Hill offices “by tomorrow.”

McHenry, whose title technically now is “Speaker Pro Tempore,” is a staunch McCarthy ally who worked diligently behind the scenes in January to help the now-former Speaker get elected on the fifteenth attempt, had an aide issue the order.

“‘Please vacate the space tomorrow, the room will be re-keyed,’ wrote a top aide on the Republican-controlled House Administration Committee,” Politico reported Tuesday night. “The room was being reassigned by the acting speaker ‘for speaker office use,’ the email said.”

Politico adds that “House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ staff helped Pelosi’s office make the move, according to a spokesperson for the former speaker.”

Pelosi, who was honored with the title “Speaker Emerita” in 2022 by the House Steering and Policy Committee in an effort to help unite the House, did not vote for or against McCarthy’s ouster. She remained in California to attend the funeral of her friend and colleague, the late U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein.

READ MORE: ‘Radical Left Marxists’: Trump Launches Attack Hours After Judge Imposes Gag Order

But Pelosi, the first and only woman Speaker of the House, who served from 2007 to 2011 and again from 2019 to 2023, did not take McHenry’s order lying down.

“With all of the important decisions that the new Republican Leadership must address, which we are all eagerly awaiting, one of the first actions taken by the new Speaker Pro Tempore was to order me to immediately vacate my office in the Capitol,” Pelosi said in a statement, according to Politico’s Nicholas Wu. “Sadly, because I am in California to mourn the loss of and pay tribute to my dear friend Dianne Feinstein, I am unable to retrieve my belongings at this time.”

“This eviction is a sharp departure from tradition. As Speaker, I gave former Speaker Hastert a significantly larger suite of offices for as long as he wished,” She noted.

“Office space doesn’t matter to me, but it seems important to them,” Pelosi added. “Now that the new Republican Leadership has settled this important matter, let’s hope they get to work on what’s truly important to the American people.”

READ MORE: ‘Terrorist Attacks’: Murphy and Cornyn Slam House GOPers Over McCarthy Ouster

 

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‘Radical Left Marxists’: Trump Launches Attack Hours After Judge Imposes Gag Order

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Just hours after New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron imposed a limited gag order and directed Donald Trump to remove his social media post targeting and attacking, by name, the judge’s law clerk, the ex-president Tuesday evening issued an attack targeting the legal system, and apparently, by extension, Attorney General Letitia James.

Judge Engoron’s Tuesday order barred Trump from “posting, emailing or speaking publicly about any of my staff,” as Politico reported. The judge’s gag order did not extend to any officer of the court, witnesses, or anyone else involved in Attorney General James’ $250 million civil fraud case against Trump.

“Consider this statement a gag order forbidding all parties from posting, emailing or speaking publicly about any of my staff,” Engoron said Tuesday afternoon. “Failure to abide by this order will result in serious sanctions.”

Judge Engoron had announced in court: “This morning one of the defendants posted to his social media account a disparaging, untrue and personally identifying post about a member of my staff.”

“Personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate and I will not tolerate them in any circumstances,” Engoron added.

Politico described Trump’s social media post as “a message alleging [the law clerk] ‘is running this case against me.’ The message was pulled from an account on X with fewer than 200 followers. Trump then linked to an Instagram account for Greenfield’s campaign for a judgeship in Manhattan civil court.”

READ MORE: ‘Part of the Authoritarian Playbook’: Trump’s Courthouse Rant Slammed by Fascism Scholars

“’How disgraceful! This case should be dismissed immediately!!’ Trump added. He also posted a photo of her alongside Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and referred to her as ‘Schumer’s girlfriend.'”

And while the judge ordered the social media post taken down, there’s nothing that can be done about the email blast Trump sent to “millions” of his supporters that included the post, as The New York Times reported.

Tuesday evening, despite having already been given one gag order, Trump appeared to tear into the legal system and Attorney General Letitia James in a series of false claims.

After claiming James’ civil lawsuit against him was unconstitutional and election interference, Trump wrote the decision to apply that statute to him “was done by Radical Left Marxists design, and is not the America we know.”

“It is so unfair that I am being tried under Section 63(12), which is unconstitutionally being used to punish me because I am substantially leading Crooked Joe Biden in the polls,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “It is a Consumer Protection Statute, and not meant, at all, for Election Interference purposes, which is what this is all about! Under this Section of the law, I am not even entitled to a JURY (there is no checking of a box alternative!).This was done by Radical Left Marxists design, and is not the America we know. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

As The New Yorker reported last week, the law Trump is referring to was “passed at the behest of one of” James’ “Republican predecessors, Jacob Javits.”

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‘Terrorist Attacks’: Murphy and Cornyn Slam House GOPers Over McCarthy Ouster

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After U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and seven of fellow far-right House Republicans voted to oust their own Speaker of the House for supporting a bipartisan vote to keep the federal government of the United States from a shutdown, a powerful Senate Republican and Democrat are both strongly denouncing the work of the few GOP extremists who toppled Kevin McCarthy.

U.S. Senator John Cornyn, a hard-core Republican of Texas and a former member of the Senate Republican leadership team, blasted the eight House Republicans for their “terrorist attack,” and warned it will happen again.

“We saw a similar thing happen to Boehner, Ryan, and now McCarthy. I’m sure the next speaker is going to be subjected to the same terrorist attacks,” Senator Cornyn said, according to HuffPost’s Igor Bobic.

Responding to a Texas radio talk show host from his official social media account, Sen. Cornyn added, “A handful [of] House members just want to blow up the institution and themselves in the process. Sad.”

READ MORE: McCarthy Ousted as Speaker in Historic First as Republicans Vow Vengeance Against Gaetz: ‘Kiss My A–’

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) called the ouster “a deeply embarrassing moment for America. A consequence of a Republican Party that has become so radicalized that it can no longer function as an organized political party.”

“Nobody should be rooting for this circus,” added Sen. Murphy in video recorded as he watched the House voting to remove McCarthy as Speaker. He warned that the ouster of McCarthy will now take the House away from the critical work of keeping the government open after November 17, “instead of working on a budget.” And he warned that no new funds to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war have been authorized.

“These are life and death stakes,” Murphy said, lamenting this “makes us look so weak and foolish around the world.”

Watch Sen. Murphy’s remarks above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Part of the Authoritarian Playbook’: Trump’s Courthouse Rant Slammed by Fascism Scholars

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