Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times,

President Donald Trump’s ambitious agenda has been met with order after order from lower courts temporarily blocking him. Many of those have been lifted by the Supreme Court, handing Trump several wins and raising questions about how lower courts have been handling his cases.

These decisions have mostly come on what’s known as the “emergency” or “shadow docket,” a set of more urgent appeals that the Supreme Court often decides without oral argument.

The Supreme Court sometimes issues a ruling without explanation in these cases.

The resulting decisions—at least 21 in Trump’s second administration—have prompted varying alliances and opinions that reflect apparent frustration among the justices.

Here are some takeaways from Trump’s battles at the Supreme Court during the 2024-2025 term.

Trump’s Winning Streak

The administration has been remarkably successful at the high court, obtaining relief in 14 of the 18 appeals that have been ruled on by the justices.

So far, the Supreme Court has allowed Trump to block spending across multiple departments, remove high-ranking bureaucrats and probationary employees, and move forward with immigration enforcement measures.

Perhaps his biggest victory came in June when the justices ruled against the use of nationwide injunctions. Such orders have blocked many of Trump’s policies on a nationwide basis, rather than just for the parties before the court.

But Trump’s victories so far have been relatively limited, usually scoring temporary relief from lower court orders while the justices refrained from making final decisions on the legality of Trump’s policies.

“The merits of most challenges to Administration policies did not reach the Court so we have no clear sense of how much of the President’s agenda it will sustain,” Georgetown University Law Professor David Super told The Epoch Times.

In at least a handful of cases, the justices ruled against Trump.

For example, they said in May that Trump had provided inadequate due process for individuals subject to deportation under the Alien Enemies Act. A majority of the justices temporarily halted deportations on two occasions while leaving unresolved meatier questions about whether Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act was valid.

That decision—and another effectively forcing the disbursement of foreign aid—drew some heavy criticism from Justice Samuel Alito.

“Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars?” he asked in an opinion joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch in March.

“The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise,” he added, noting that he was “stunned.”

Lower Courts’ Authority

Alito’s comment was one of many questioning the authority of lower courts in blocking the president’s policies.

Much of the administration’s arguments in court have focused on whether federal district judges have authority to even hear particular cases or second-guess the administration’s judgments.

Trump’s mass firings, for example, have brought into focus how much Congress can limit his ability to fire employees. That’s particularly true for high-ranking bureaucrats, whose positions Congress may have attempted to insulate by saying they cannot be fired without cause.

A long list of officials have already sued, providing cases for the Supreme Court to weigh in on a nearly century-old precedent on the president’s removal power. While the Supreme Court initially refused Trump’s request to fire a watchdog within the government, it temporarily allowed other removals of labor board officials and those on a consumer safety commission.

While the ruling on nationwide injunctions limited courts’ authority, many other questions remain unanswered—including how litigants might obtain nationwide relief through other legal tools.

Besides that question, the Supreme Court could grapple more deeply with whether disputes with federal employees must go through an administrative process before reaching federal courts.

Another question is whether challenges to Trump’s funding cuts should be brought in those courts rather than in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. A law known as the Tucker Act grants the Court of Claims jurisdiction over contract disputes, but some federal judges have said the administration is misapplying this law.

In April, a majority of the Supreme Court seemed to side with the Trump administration when it removed a lower court’s block on Trump’s attempt to freeze millions in Education Department grants.

While they didn’t offer a final opinion on lower courts’ jurisdiction, an unsigned majority opinion seemed to favor the president’s view. “The Government is likely to succeed in showing the District Court lacked jurisdiction to order the payment of money,” the “per curiam,” or unsigned opinion, read.

Moving Too Quickly?

Not everyone was on board with that opinion. Besides Chief Justice John Roberts, the three liberal justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—said they would have ruled differently.

In that case and others, the dissents featured similar concerns from both conservative and liberal justices.

Kagan worried that the court was moving too quickly on the education grants and failed to thoroughly consider the issue.

“The risk of error increases when this Court decides cases—as here—with barebones briefing, no argument, and scarce time for reflection,” she said, before suggesting the court created “new law” on the emergency docket.

Sotomayor later quoted that portion of Kagan’s opinion when she dissented from the court’s decision to remove blocks on Trump’s Alien Enemies Act deportations in April.

The administration’s deportations under the 18th-century law have sparked four decisions from the court this past term. In one decision, justices said the administration had to facilitate the return of one of the men deported to El Salvador.

In a separate case, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked Trump’s deportations for a group of detainees in Texas before that group or class had been certified in a lower court. In class action lawsuits, a court has to certify the class of plaintiffs before the action can proceed.

A dissent written by Alito and Thomas had strong words for this aspect of the decision and others.

“In sum, literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation for its order,” the dissent, authored by Alito, read.

The opinions in these cases have been brief, often leaving questions about how lower courts should view particular legal issues.

At an event for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Kagan said in July that the court “should be cautious” about acting on the emergency docket and cited issues like a lack of briefing.

“The orders themselves don’t tell anybody anything about why we’ve done what we’ve done,” she said. “I think there are some things you can pretty well guess, but there are lots of other things … where you can’t,” she said.

According to media outlets, Kavanaugh defended shorter orders at an event in Missouri on July 31. “There can be a risk, in writing the opinion, of a lock-in effect, of making a snap judgment and putting it in writing, in a written opinion that’s not going to reflect the final view,” he said.

President Trump has sent a message to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva saying the Brazilian leader could “call him anytime” to discuss the trade dispute centered on the country’s treatment of ex-leader Jair Bolsonaro.

Lula has defiantly responded Tuesday with the statement, “I will not call Trump because he does not want to talk.” He further asserted that nobody gives him lessons in negotiations.

Speaking during an event held in Brasilia, he made clear: “I don’t want people to think I am afraid of Donald Trump” and that “the US president had no right to announced the tariffs on Brazil the way he did” – especially as they make no sense.

Additional vehement complaints about the US position, at a moment a record-setting 50% tariff has taken effect for many Brazilian goods entering the US, are as follows via Bloomberg:

• US attacks on instant payment system Pix are unjustified, we cannot be penalized for developing a free and efficient system, said Lula
• The allegations about the Pix payment system, regulation of digital platforms and deforestation are unreasonable “Pix is a national heritage and an international reference for public and digital infrastructure. I would like President Trump to try out Pix in the US.”
• Brazil never left the negotiation table Political and electoral interests cannot contaminate commercial relations
• Critical minerals belong to Brazil and will not be explored by other nations

The Trump administration is demanding that charges against Bolsonaro, stemming from his rejection of the election results which brought Lula back to power, be dropped. 

However, the government has emphasized the independence of the judiciary. A week ago the US slapped sanctions on Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes.

But regional analyst Bruna Santos of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington DC, has explained that dropping the charges against Bolsonaro is simply not going to happen.

“The ask for Lula was undoable,” he was quoted in the Associated Press as saying. “In the long run, you are leaving a scar on the relationship between the two largest democracies in the hemisphere.”

‘I’m NOT going to call Trump to negotiate’ – Lula

Brazilian Prez. says Trump has no interest in talking

He also reveals what he’ll be saying to Putin, Xi, and Modi pic.twitter.com/GCUlnsvviA

— RT (@RT_com) August 5, 2025

As of Monday Bolsonaro has been ordered under house arrest, with the federal top court citing violations related to stoking resentment via social media and public messaging. For now at least, it looks like the government is backing down, despite the damage to trade relations and future economic pain.

Authored by John R. Lott Jr. via RealClearPolitics,

Over the last few days, Americans have witnessed two attacks that ended very differently.

A stabbing at a Michigan Walmart on Saturday was stopped by an armed man, a Marine veteran, who went to the shooting range but “forgot to take his pistol off his hip.” The New York Times, Associated Press, Washington Post, NPR, NBC News, BBC, and many others completely ignored the gun used to stop the attack. But an eyewitness described how others who had tried to stop the attacker were stabbed, but it took the Marine with a gun to stop the attack. The attack was stopped several minutes before the first responders were able to arrive. One thought is that this hero might get some coverage in the legacy media simply because he is black and the attacker is white.

This case was far from unusual. Between January 2021 and December 2024, concealed handgun permit holders stopped 37 attacks that police said would have turned into mass public shootings if not for their intervention. But they rarely get national news attention.

Unfortunately, after Monday’s attack in New York City, Democrats drew the wrong conclusion. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) responded by calling for a federal assault weapon ban and blaming the tragedy on the absence of such a law.

Their gun control laws ensure that there won’t be any armed civilians there to save the day. The murderer who killed four people broke numerous gun control laws – he openly carried a rifle that was already illegal to possess or carry in the state. New York State and New York City prohibit open carry of loaded long guns in public and ban so-called assault weapons, such as an ARâ??15 style rifle. Even concealed carry permits do not authorize openly carrying a rifle in public. 

Meanwhile, the law-abiding victims were defenseless, disarmed by the city’s strict regulations. There are currently only about 6,000 active concealed handgun permits in a city with almost 7 million adults, so less than 1% of adults. And carrying a permitted concealed handgun is extremely difficult as there is a very long list of places where you are banned from carrying (e.g., public transportation such as subways, any places that serve alcohol, Times Square, government buildings and educational facilities, and public gatherings). The total costs for getting the permit run about $770 (for fees to the New York Police Department and the required course).

The problem is simple: Someone intent on murdering four people won’t be deterred by extra gun control penalties. Even if the killer had survived, he would have already been facing four life sentences, which makes adding a few more years meaningless. For attackers who expect to die during the assault – as most mass public shooters do – those laws carry no weight at all.

But for law-abiding citizens, the consequences are severe. Violating these laws could turn them into felons and upend their entire lives. The laws meant to stop criminals end up disarming the innocent instead.

These murderers take advantage of the laws that ensure they will be the only ones with weapons. Again and again, diaries and manifestos of mass public shooters show a disturbing pattern: They deliberately choose locations where they know their victims can’t fight back due to restrictive gun laws. While it remains unknown whether this particular killer made such a calculation, his actions align with a pattern we’ve seen repeatedly in other cases. It isn’t too surprising that 92% of mass public shootings occur in places where guns are banned.

Two of the four people murdered in the New York City attack were security guards, but people don’t appreciate what an extremely difficult job uniformed police have in stopping these active shooting attacks. “A deputy in uniform has a difficult job in stopping these attacks,” said Sheriff Kurt Hoffman in Sarasota County, Florida. “These terrorists have strategic advantages in determining the time and place of attacks. They can wait for a deputy to leave the area or pick an undefended location. Even when police or deputies are in the right place at the right time, those in uniform who can be readily identified as guards may as well be holding up neon signs saying, ‘Shoot me first.’ My deputies know that we cannot be everywhere.”

In fact, even though civilians stop more of these active shooting attacks, 19 police officers were killed in these attacks versus two civilians with permitted concealed handguns. And surveys of academics who have published peer-reviewed empirical research on firearms show that criminologists and economists strongly support letting people carry concealed handguns in order to stop mass public shootings.

While politicians rush to call for new laws after each tragedy, they often ignore the basic reality that killers intent on murder are attracted to attack in places with strict gun control. Instead, those laws disarm only the potential victims, leaving them vulnerable and defenseless.

John R. Lott Jr. is a contributor to RealClearInvestigations, focusing on voting and gun rights. His articles have appeared in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, USA Today, and Chicago Tribune. Lott is an economist who has held research and/or teaching positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University, Stanford, UCLA, Wharton, and Rice.

Ground beef prices are at record highs, while the U.S. cattle and calf herd has fallen to its lowest level in 50 years. Understanding these dynamics, we’ve been carefully watching for a cyclical low in the 12-year herd cycle, a bottom that now appears to have been reached. 

New comments from Tyson Foods CEO Donnie King during Monday’s earnings call point to a long-awaited herd rebuilding cycle set to begin “in earnest” next year, though any meaningful supply recovery likely won’t materialize until 2028.

King told analysts that one of the first emerging signs that a rebuilding cycle nears is that ranchers are starting to retain heifers for breeding operations. 

“We’re poised to capitalize on tremendous opportunity ahead of us,” the CEO said, adding, “Cattle availability should improve in the coming years.”

America has slid into a beef supply crisis, pushing retail ground beef prices above $6 per pound. Years of herd reduction, driven mainly through elevated inflation, high feed costs, and adverse weather across the cattle belt, have shrunk the nation’s herd to its smallest size since the early 1970s.

This has severely impacted processor profits, with Tyson’s beef division posting a $151 million loss in Q3, its seventh consecutive quarterly loss. 

In June, Goldman analysts Leah Jordan and Eli Thompson signaled that the 12-year cattle herd cycle has likely reached a cyclical low, suggesting a rebuilding phase may be approaching. However, any eventual recovery is unlikely to be a sharp “V” and will more likely take the shape of a prolonged “U”.

“We also believe the cyclical low in beef profitability is creating an attractive entry point for patient investors in Buy-rated TSN,” the analysts noted.

The key takeaway is that beef prices are likely to continue rising, driving further demand substitution toward chicken. While the upcoming herd rebuilding phase is a welcome development, it will take years to play out. Only once the recovery is well underway will beef prices peak and begin to reverse meaningfully.

Authored by Benjamin Weingarten via RealClearInvestigations,

On June 27, the Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump what he hailed as a “GIANT WIN,” finding that lower courts had “likely” overstepped in ordering universal injunctions blocking many of the president’s policies.

While the Court’s 6-3 opinion in Trump v. CASA appeared to disarm Trump’s opponents of perhaps their most potent legal weapon, his adversaries had other ideas.

In the weeks since, Trump’s challengers have seized on the ruling’s openings – especially the use of class-action suits in which a handful of plaintiffs may allege harm and seek relief on behalf of all similarly situated parties – to continue leveraging lower court judges to block the president’s orders. 

Norm Eisen, one of the architects of a so-called “rule of law and shock and awe” strategy to blanket the administration with dozens of lawsuits, quickly helped bring a case before New Hampshire’s district court. The suit aimed to enjoin the president’s ban on birthright citizenship not only with respect to five named plaintiffs, but for “a nationwide class of all other persons similarly situated.”

On July 3, the district court ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor in that case, over the Trump administration’s objections. Other plaintiffs prevailed in a separate case in the D.C. District Court challenging the president’s crackdown on asylum claims at the southern border. 

Scholars on both sides of the universal injunctions issue agree that CASA’s impact may be limited. 

Stanford Law Professor Mila Sohoni, a supporter of universal injunctions, wrote in CASA’s aftermath that “the court may have in the end accomplished little beyond handing the executive branch a litigation victory.”

Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, who has opposed universal injunctions in congressional testimony, told RealClearInvestigations, “I’m not sure how much CASA will actually check the ability of lower courts to halt presidential policies.”

By refusing to foreclose class actions and several other paths to nationwide or universal relief, many scholars argue, the Supreme Court has set itself up to preside over future battles over the limits to these remedies – perhaps expanding its power relative to the executive branch. As a result, they anticipate that the court’s ruling may be the beginning of a war between the executive and judiciary rather than its culmination.

Class Action Workaround

Under the pre-CASA regime, challengers to presidential action needed only to secure a single favorable ruling from one of hundreds of district court judges anywhere to block administration policies everywhere – leaving key initiatives stalled, sometimes for months or years, pending litigation often not resolved until the Supreme Court had its say. 

Supporters of universal injunctions argued that they were necessary to protect plaintiffs and the public at large from irreparable harm while challenges to allegedly illegal policies slowly wound their way through the courts. Critics countered that such relief represented an unprecedented and illegitimate expansion of the lower courts’ authority, hampering the democratically elected president from carrying out his duties. 

Democrats and Republicans alike, who have at times each decried universal injunctions and alleged politicization in the judiciary among judges who issued them, also lamented that such injunctions incentivized forum shopping: Plaintiffs strategically file suit in likely sympathetic courts to combat disfavored presidential policies nationwide. 

An earlier RCI analysis of 350 cases brought against the second Trump administration through June 11, 2025, found that plaintiffs brought 80% of those cases before just 11 of the nation’s 91 district courts, almost all of them located in areas dominated by Democrats and presided over by Democratic nominees.

While the Supreme Court ruled that universal injunctions were inconsistent with both law and legal tradition, the court’s majority highlighted and left open several possible avenues through which lower courts could thwart executive action by granting universal relief or its equivalent – and open the judiciary to potential charges of politicization.

First among them is a class action lawsuit. In theory, class actions should make it harder for parties to pursue and judges to unilaterally issue broad injunctions that block an executive order. In a class action suit, sometimes diverse and large groups of plaintiffs must coordinate their case, creating practical challenges. The New Hampshire case brought with the help of Eisen’s Democracy Defenders Fund showed, however, that determined challengers can create classes quickly, using just a few people to represent a far larger number of individuals. 

Perhaps the bigger hurdle for plaintiffs seeking to bring a class action suit is that they must satisfy several requirements to achieve certification and advance their case. Judges determine whether to certify a class by looking to four factors under federal Rule 23: Among other things, plaintiffs must demonstrate the need to bring such a suit on behalf of a group; that their arguments are representative of those in the group; and that they will faithfully represent the unnamed parties comprising the group. Rule 23 often requires significant briefing and analysis. If a judge certifies a class, the defendants can immediately appeal, at further time and cost.

Despite this seemingly higher threshold for challengers to presidential policies, Justice Samuel Alito cautioned in a CASA concurrence, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, that lower courts could render the decision moot should they take a too-lax approach to class actions and liberally permit the creation of universal classes. 

While acknowledging that Rule 23 “may permit the certification of nationwide classes in some discrete scenarios,” Alito counseled that lower courts be “scrupulous” in adhering to the rule’s “rigors,” including conducting a robust class certification analysis. “Otherwise,” Alito warned, “the universal injunction will return from the grave under the guise of ‘nationwide class relief….’”

Trump Thwarted Again

Just five days after the CASA decision, one judge seemed to vindicate Alito – at least in the eyes of the Trump administration. On July 2, D.C. District Court Judge Randolph D. Moss certified a class consisting not just of the 13 people and three nonprofit groups that brought the suit, but of everyone who is or will be subject to Trump’s first-day proclamation prohibiting southern border crossers from seeking asylum, in an opinion finding that policy to be unlawful and unconstitutional.

Following the D.C. decision, Chad Mizelle, chief of staff for Attorney General Pam Bondi, tweeted: “The ink is barely dry on SCOTUS’s decision striking down universal injunctions, yet rogue district judges are continuing with business as usual – issuing universal injunctions under the guise of ‘class actions’ that cover anyone and everyone in the world. SCOTUS must end the #judicialcoup.”

The administration has appealed Judge Moss’ ruling.

Plaintiffs have used class actions to stymie the Trump administration in several other cases, including those involving the deportation of immigrants and disclosure of information regarding January 6 investigators.

University of Chicago Law Professor Samuel Bray, a prominent critic of universal injunctions, cited widely by the Supreme Court’s CASA majority, told RCI that “The existing class action standards can be difficult when bringing a class action for damages, but they are easy to meet when the suit is challenging a government action or policy that applies to the whole class in the same way.”

UCLA Law Professor David Marcus, who supported universal injunctions, agrees, writing that “Courts overwhelmingly favor class certification in cases for injunctive relief against government defendants.” He conducted a study of several hundred district court decisions in “public interest cases” from 2011-2020, finding that around 75% proved favorable to plaintiffs.

Georgetown University’s Stephen Vladeck, who has testified before Congress in favor of universal injunctions, says that ultimately a proliferation of nationwide class action suits will lead to challenges before the Supreme Court. If a majority is “generally sympathetic to such relief,” that will “somewhat reduce the implications of” the CASA decision.

“But if the Court is also going to look askance at nationwide class actions,” Vladeck argues, “then…[CASA] could be catastrophic for the ability of lower courts, at least, to halt executive branch lawlessness on a broad-enough basis to make a difference.”

Other Path to Universal Relief

Justices on both sides of the CASA decision identified several workarounds for plaintiffs seeking to broadly halt presidential policies – workarounds owing either to the narrowness of the courts’ ruling, or lower courts’ potential lack of fastidiousness to it.

Justice Alito, in a concurrence joined by Justice Thomas, highlighted the court’s silence on states’ ability to claim third-party standing and thereby bring suits on behalf of all of their residents in pursuit of unduly broad injunctions. Alito cautioned that should courts not engage in “rigorous and evenhanded enforcement of third-party-standing limitations,” it will undermine CASA “as a practical matter.”

Justice Thomas, in a concurrence joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, expressed concern that judges might misinterpret the Supreme Court’s guidance that courts may issue remedies affording “complete relief” to once again pursue universal injunctions. Thomas emphasized that judges may provide “complete relief between the parties” before them – but that this “is not synonymous with ‘universal relief.’” 

Stanford’s Sohoni noted that the court “conspicuously fail[ed] to assert that the complete relief principle does not justify a universal injunction for the plaintiff states in” the birthright citizenship case.

On July 23, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court’s ruling, in one of the birthright citizenship cases brought by several states consolidated in CASA, that a universal injunction “is necessary to give the States complete relief on their claims.”

Finally, the court identified a fourth potential loophole in a footnote to the majority opinion. “Nothing we say today resolves the distinct question whether the Administrative Procedure Act authorizes federal courts to vacate federal agency action,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote, under which courts may “hold unlawful and set aside agency action.”

This remedy, known as vacatur, has been used to challenge and invalidate agency rules and regulations. In the asylum case over which Judge Moss is presiding, the plaintiffs challenged the policy under the Administrative Procedures Act, and Moss vacated the agency guidance implementing the policy accordingly.

“We have a crisis of result-oriented judging in this country,” Jesse Panuccio, who previously served as the number three Justice Department official during the first Trump administration, told RCI.

“Unfortunately,” he added, “it’s probably fair to predict that those judges who…thought they had the inherent power to govern the whole nation from their courtrooms” pre-CASA would continue to operate cavalierly going forward.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA) told RCI that “lower courts should heed Justice Alito’s warning not to ‘award relief to broadly defined classes.’” Grassley has introduced a bill, the Judicial Relief Clarification Act, that he said “would also ensure that vacatur is not used as an end-run around the prohibition on universal injunctions.”

Rep. Darrell Issa of the House Judiciary Committee, drafter of legislation to curtail universal injunction that passed in the lower chamber prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling, told RCI that he “share[s] Justice Alito’s concerns, which may prove not only precise, but prescient.”

These statements come as lower court judges have, in recent weeks, defied Supreme Court rulings and issued orders demanding the Trump administration defy Congress by paying out certain funds in contravention of the just-passed “One Big Beautiful Bill” – without explanation or allowing the administration to respond.

When asked whether he saw any checks on lower court overreach post-CASA, Rep. Issa said, “We are moving forward with our legislative solutions – the best kind of meaningful check.”

In the meantime, the Supreme Court has been playing whack-a-mole with lower courts. In response to perceived defiance of its jurisprudence in a recent case concerning the president’s power to remove independent agency leaders, Chief Justice John Roberts saw fit to emphasize – in siding with the Trump administration and overturning the lower courts – that the Supremes’ precedent “squarely control[s].”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said preliminary data from July 2025 show that for the third time this year, the agency set record lows for nationwide encounters and single-day border apprehensions.

There were 24,630 nationwide encounters with illegal immigrants in July, the lowest on record, down 2.4 percent from June and nearly 90 percent lower than the monthly average under the previous administration, the agency said on Aug. 1.

Border Patrol apprehensions hit 6,177 individuals in July, breaking June’s all-time low.

Daily apprehensions averaged just 148 per day.

Last July, during the Biden administration, the average apprehension rate was 152 individuals every two hours.

“History made, again. The numbers don’t lie—this is the most secure the border has ever been,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said. 

“President Trump didn’t just manage the crisis—he obliterated it. No more excuses. No more releases. We’ve put the cartels on defense and taken our border back.”

On July 20, the country recorded its lowest single-day apprehension numbers in history, with 88 at the Southwest border and 116 nationwide.

Along the southwest border, authorities reported 4,598 apprehensions for the entire month of July, which is lower than the daily average under the Biden administration, DHS said.

As Naveen Athrappully reports for The Epoch Times, the Trump administration’s stringent measures against the influx of illegal immigrants have come under criticism from some immigration organizations.

Last month, advocacy group American Immigration Council released a report alleging that the administration’s immigration policy “strikes at the foundation of American democracy,” according to a July 23 statement from the group.

It said the Trump administration has effectively ended asylum at the southern border, demolished the refugee program, boosted funding for immigrant detention, and jammed legal immigration pathways via processing freezes, large fee increases, and opaque barriers.

“This isn’t just a hardline immigration agenda,” said Nayna Gupta, the organization’s policy director.

“It’s a wholesale effort to use immigrants and the U.S. immigration system to attack core tenets of our democracy and exercise unchecked executive power to realign the American government around exclusion and fear.”

Last month, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) announced legislation designed to “expand a pathway to lawful permanent residency” for millions of noncitizens who have been living in the United States for a long time.

Accusing the Trump administration of “cruel scapegoating of hardworking immigrants and fearmongering of California communities,” Padilla said in a July 25 statement from his office that “there’s a better path forward.”

According to data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), nationwide encounters of illegal immigrants between February and June, the first five full months of the Trump presidency, stood at 141,550 individuals, down from nearly 1.2 million in the same period last year.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (C) rides a four-wheeler during a tour along the Nogales border wall at the Mariposa Port of Entry in Nogales, Ariz., on March 15, 2025. Alex Brandon/AFP via Getty Images

Falling Crime Rates

In a July 28 statement, the agency said violent crime in American cities has declined as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) removes the “worst of the worst” criminal illegal immigrants from the country.

DHS cited a July 2025 report from the think tank Council for Criminal Justice, which revealed that homicide rates across 30 cities declined by 17 percent in the first half of 2025 from the same period last year.

Aggravated assaults fell by 10 percent, gun assaults by 21 percent, robbery by 20 percent, sexual assaults by 10 percent, and carjackings by 24 percent, the report said.

“Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, our law enforcement is working at lightning speed to remove violent criminal illegal aliens from the U.S. Every single day we are arresting gang members, murderers, pedophiles, and violent predators,” Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said.

“70 percent of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens who have been convicted or charged with a crime. These arrests and deportations of criminal illegal aliens are having real impact on public safety.”

On July 29, Noem announced a series of nationwide ads promoting the CBP Home App that encourages illegal immigrants to self-deport from the United States back to their home nations.

“The CBP Home app gives aliens the option to leave now, and self deport, so they may still have the opportunity to return legally in the future and live the American dream,” Noem said. “If they don’t, we will find them, we will deport them, and they will never return.”

Authored by George Leaf via TheDailyEconomy.org,

It is useful to have frequent reminders that people often resort to deception to peddle their beliefs.

The book The 1619 Project Myth by Phillip W. Magness is highly valuable in that regard, as it devastates the historical accuracy of “The 1619 Project” published by The New York Times. 

That long magazine piece was the brainchild of one of its writers, Nikole Hannah-Jones, who used it to make her breathtaking claim that the true date of America’s founding was not 1776, but rather 1619, the year when the first slaves were landed in North America.

Why say that?

The answer is that, like so many “progressives,” Nikole Hannah-Jones wants to undermine the idea that the United States was founded to increase the people’s freedom and replace it with the notion that the nation’s founding was rooted in slavery and oppression. The American Revolution was fought, in her telling, to preserve slavery, which the colonists feared was going to be ended by the British government. Moreover, she and several of her co-authors maintained, the effects of slavery are still with us. What better way to get people to think of America as a terrible nation that’s in need of radical (or revolutionary) transformation?

Almost immediately after its publication, “The 1619 Project” came under fire from scholars (and not just those on the political right) who found its claims to be unsupported, implausible, and misleading. Among the first was economic historian Phillip W. Magness, now a Senior Fellow at The Independent Institute. He wrote several critical essays about different aspects of the Project, which he compiled into a book in 2020. Now, with more time to reflect on the issues and respond to recent spin-offs from the Project, he has put out a new version. It’s a demolition job of the first magnitude.

Magness writes, “Each new permutation of Hannah-Jones’s work has veered more heavily into political advocacy, taking greater liberties with evidence in the process.” But, faced with a mountain of counter-argument, the New York Times has only made one carefully hidden concession about the doubtful claims in it, while Hannah-Jones and her major contributing author, Professor Matthew Desmond, avoid serious confrontations with those who criticize their work and resort to ad hominem attacks.

The book is more than a point-by-point refutation of the claims in the Project. In it, readers also learn a lot about the history of capitalism in America that they probably would not find anywhere else. Here’s just one example.

While Hannah-Jones and her collaborators want to make people believe that slavery and capitalism were somehow in league in early America, that’s the opposite of the truth.

Magness recounts the story of the Tappan brothers of New York City. They were successful merchants who opposed slavery. In 1834, they invited Rev. Samuel Cornish, a black American and abolitionist, to their Sunday worship service. That led to a mob attack on their business and homes, as pro-slavery New Yorkers called their gesture of solidarity an invitation to a slave revolt. Between mob violence and a boycott against them, the Tappans were nearly ruined. But, just when all seemed lost, Lewis Tappan came up with a brilliant plan to revive his business by offering to deal on credit with trusted associates in the abolitionist movement. The result was the New York Mercantile Agency, the forerunner of Dun & Bradstreet. Capitalism and slavery were friends? Nothing could be further from the truth.

Or consider the thesis, advanced by Prof. Desmond, that the American economy was extremely dependent on cotton produced by slavery — so dependent that it was really the driving force behind the nation’s early growth. Magness demonstrates that his claim is not remotely supported by the evidence, then turns the tables by informing the readers that one of the foremost advocates of slavery in antebellum America was one George Fitzhugh, who ranted against the ideas of Adam Smith and other free-market advocates. Fitzhugh declared that the South “must throw Adam Smith, Say, Ricardo & Co. in the fire.”

In short, the philosophy of capitalism was utterly incompatible with slavery, and the pro-slavery crowd knew it. Of course, you will hear none of that from Hannah-Jones or her supporters.

Another revealing spin-off from the 1619 Project is how it affected the American Historical Association (AHA).

The president of the AHA, James Sweet, had the temerity to cast doubt on the truthfulness of the claims in a tweet, writing, “As journalism, it is powerful and effective, but is it history?” 

Sweet quickly learned that one is not permitted to ask questions about something so important to the left as this. Magness writes, “Incensed at even the mildest suggestion that politicization was undermining the integrity of historical scholarship, the activist wing of the history profession showed up at the AHA’s thread and began demanding Sweet’s cancellation.” So great was the uproar that Sweet felt the need to issue a groveling apology for having “caused harm” with his tweet. The activists did not bother to engage with Sweet and defend the 1619 Project — they just wanted to see him punished for his apostasy.

If there was ever the slightest doubt as to the political purpose of the 1619 Project, it was erased when Hannah-Jones, in the subsequent Hulu TV series based upon it, called for the nation to pay reparations for slavery. That idea has long been dismissed by scholars of all races as unjust and economically ruinous. Nevertheless, she blithely stated that reparations were needed to atone for our racist past and, to explain how we could pay for the trillions it would cost, told viewers that the government can afford anything it wants just by printing enough money. How do we know that? Because a few crank economists who subscribe to Modern Monetary Theory say so. Thus, the 1619 Project combines false history with ludicrous economics to promote the statist agenda.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that the American education establishment has been eager to embrace the 1619 Project and bring its materials into school and college classrooms. The leftists who say that the Project is just about teaching students some neglected aspects of American history are simply lying — the materials in it are deceptive rather than informative. 

Magness’s book will be of use to parents or officials who don’t want students to be indoctrinated with propaganda meant to sow hatred for the country and mislead students about capitalism.

The next time you hear anything positive about the 1619 Project, reach for Magness’s excellent book.

Total household debt rose by $185 billion in the second quarter of 2025, a 1% rise from Q1 2025. Balances now stand at $18.39 trillion and have increased by $4.24 trillion since the end of 2019, just before the pandemic recession.

Before is a snapshot of the latest Q2 data, courtesy of the NY Fed:

Balances

• Mortgage balances grew by $131 billion during the second quarter of 2025 and totaled $12.94 trillion at the end of June.
• Balances on home equity lines of credit (HELOC) rose by $9 billion, the thirteenth consecutive quarterly increase. There is now $411 billion in outstanding HELOC balances, $94 billion above the low reached in the first quarter of 2022.
• Credit card balances rose by $27 billion during the second quarter and now total $1.21 trillion outstanding and are 5.87% above the level a year ago.
• Auto loan balances rose by $13 billion, and now stand at $1.66 trillion.
• Other balances, which include retail cards  and consumer finance loans, were roughly unchanged at $540 billion.
• Student loan balances edged up by $7 billion and now stand at $1.64 trillion.
• In total, non-housing balances increased by $45 billion, a 0.9% increase from 2025Q1. 

Originations

• Mortgage originations increased slightly, with $458 billion newly originated in Q2.
• There were $188 billion in new auto loans and leases during Q2, an increase from the $166 billion observed in the first quarter of 2025.
• Aggregate limits on credit cards continued to rise, with a $78 billion (1.5%) uptick in the second quarter.
• Home equity lines of credit (HELOC) limits rose by $18 billion, continuing the growth in HELOC limits that began in 2022

Credit Quality

• Credit quality of newly originated loans was mixed: The credit scores of newly originated auto loans decreased, as the median score for auto loan originations decreased by 6 points.
• There was an improvement in the credit quality of mortgages, as the median score of newly originated mortgage loans increased by 5 points and the tenth percentile score increased by 13 points.

• About 53,000 individuals had new foreclosure notations on their credit reports, a decline from the previous quarter

All of the above is more or less as expected: yes, the US consumer is drowning in (ever more) debt, but that’s hardly a surprise: since life for middle class Americans is now largely unaffordable, most Americans have no choice but to take on even more debt. 

There was, however, one big shock, and it had to do with the trillions in student debt in general, and the end of the repayment moratorium in particular (see “Trump Admin Begins Collecting On Student Loans In Default“).

As the NY Fed notes, aggregate delinquency rates “remained elevated in the second quarter of 2025” which is putting it mildly. As of the end of June, 4.4% of outstanding debt was in some stage of delinquency, which is 0.1% higher than the first quarter.

And while transition into early delinquency held steady for nearly all debt types; the exception was for student loans, which saw another uptick in the rate at which balances went from current to delinquent due to the resumption of reporting of delinquent student loans on credit reports after a nearly 5-year pause due to the pandemic.

Student loan delinquencies have been on the rise since the beginning of the year, after the government ended Biden’s years-long payment freeze. 

As the charts below show, transition rates into serious delinquency, defined as 90 or more days past due, were largely stable for auto loans and credit cards (although both were elevated compared to previous years), edged up slightly for mortgages and HELOCs … and absolutely exploded higher for student loans, as the share of student-loan debt entering serious delinquency was 12.9%, the highest in 21 years of data!

In fact, as one can clearly see there has never been such a catastrophic deterioration in student loan in US history across borrowers of virtually all ages, but especially those 50 and over!

The record surge in delinquencies suggests American households, especially those with student loans, are facing increasing financial distress this year amid high interest rates and a slowdown in hiring. Recent data showed consumer spending fell in the first six months of 2025, even before tariffs started to boost prices.

While transitions into delinquency is the start of the bankruptcy pipeline, the end is also getting busier, and about 131.000 consumers had a bankruptcy notation added to their credit reports in Q2, an increase from the previous quarter. Expect this number to explode once all those student loan delinquencies transition to defaults in a few months at which point the student loan crisis becomes front and center. 

The dramatic deterioration will be another factor forcing the Fed to cut rates in September. Last week, Fed chair Jerome Powell said of delinquency rates, “Essentially, you have a consumer that’s in good shape and is spending,” though admittedly “not at a rapid rate.” Actually, turns out the consumer – when it comes to student loans – is now broker than ever.

In a briefing with reporters, New York Fed researchers said student-loan delinquencies would likely continue to rise, eventually returning to pre-pandemic levels. Between late 2012 and early 2020, the share of student debt that was seriously delinquent ranged between 10.7% and 11.8%.

“This quarter’s flow of household debt into serious delinquency was mixed across debt types, with credit card and auto loans holding steady, student loans continuing to rise and mortgages edging up slightly,” Joelle Scally, an economic policy adviser at the New York Fed, said in a press release, underplaying the clearly catastrophic surge in student loan delinquencies, and soon, defaults which will result in tens of millions of consumers suddenly finding themselves carved out from the US consumer economy just as the student loan crisis goes front and center. 

Full New York Fed Household Credit slideshow can be found here.

Authored by Jeremy Portnoy via RealClearInvestigations,

Topline: Over the last decade, more than half the Senate office furniture purchased have some unanswered question attached to them – including where the furniture is located.

The Architect of the Capitol’s Senate Furniture Program “needs significant improvements,” and its “processes for acquiring, safeguarding, transferring, and disposing of furniture are inefficient and ineffective,” according to a new audit from the Architect of the Capitol’s inspector general.

Key facts: The Architect is responsible for maintaining the buildings and grounds on Capitol Hill, but it typically only buys furniture for Senate office buildings.

The office bought 29,603 pieces of furniture from 2014 to 2024, costing taxpayers $22.6 million. “A minimum” of 13,159 pieces of furniture (51%) have “erroneous information,” according to the audit. Some mistakes are minor — an incorrect tag number or description — but others are much larger, including that no one knows where the furniture is, how much it cost, or both.

First, auditors randomly selected a piece of furniture listed in the Architect’s computer catalog, but staffers were unable to locate it. The only clue showing the furniture’s location was a handwritten note from 2012, but the furniture was not actually at that location.

Next, the auditors randomly selected another piece of furniture. Architect staffers were able to find this one, but not any documents showing its cost — they had been lost in a flood.

Finally, auditors allowed Architect staffers to choose the piece of furniture that would be reviewed by the inspector general. Still, auditors found five issues with the hand-selected piece of furniture, including forms with missing signatures and conflicting dollar costs on different documents.

Overall, auditors reviewed 138 pieces of furniture but were unable to locate 71 of them. 

The Architect leases building space to store extra furniture, but the buildings are poorly maintained and are sometimes unusable, according to the audit.

The Architect is also buying too many items. There are “several dozen” microwaves in storage to eventually replace the current microwaves, but the extras may be “obsolete” before they are needed.

Staffers have also been leaving furniture unattended in hallways, which will make it harder to prevent theft, according to the audit.

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com. 

Summary: After the federal government’s $3.3 billion spending spree on furniture during the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s no wonder officials are having trouble keeping track of it all.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

Oil prices remain jittery today as the market digests yet another sanctions-threat targeting Russia.

President Trump is said to be mulling new sanctions on Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” of oil tankers if Moscow doesn’t commit to a peace agreement with Ukraine by Friday.

Despite many threats, the Trump White House has yet to impose new sanctions on Russia since he took office. Already the Russian economy is incredibly isolated in the West’s eyes, while a growing Kremlin reliance on leading BRICS countries such as China and India has emerged.

Both of these countries have said they don’t plant to change course on Russian energy, even in the face of secondary sanctions which are being dangled by Washington.

Financial Times describes that oil sales from this ‘shadow fleet’ has been a key source of funding for the Kremlin’s war machine:

The “shadow fleet” consists of ships with obscure ownership structures that avoid Western services like insurance and logistics, making it difficult to penalize the owners directly. However, recent efforts to sanction the ships themselves have shown some success.

According to two individuals familiar with White House discussions, sanctions on the shadow fleet are viewed as a relatively straightforward way to increase pressure on Russia. A third source close to the administration confirmed that broader sanctions options, including targeting the fleet, are under review.

There are existing Biden era sanctions on over 200 named Russian crude, chemical, and product tankers. Trump has reportedly held back on expanding these sanctions on hopes of achieving ceasefire in Ukraine.

Russia has until Friday, sources cited in the FT say. “If enacted, additional U.S. measures would reinforce similar efforts by the European Union. Last month, the EU added over 100 ships to its sanctions list, raising the total to 415.”

This has done nothing to deter Putin’s ‘Special Military Operation’ in Ukraine. In many ways the West is out of ‘solutions’ as it has sanctioned Russia to unprecedented levels – and yet this has done little. The ultimate answer from Moscow’s point of view remains significant territorial concessions by Kiev and a clear binding pledge to never join NATO. And yet the Zelensky government has refused.