WARNING: The Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the July Consumer Price Index Tuesday morning, August 12, without the chief administrator fired by President Trump after a dismal July jobs report and severe downgrading of May and June numbers. 

Watch the middle column for the latest CPI and then look to the left and right columns for commentary. 

Scroll down with the trackbar on the right to read “Who is the Real Radical?” in the right column by Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay, and “The Language of Immigration Shapes Perception” by contributing pundit Jerry Lanson. 

Then weigh in with comments of your own. The Hustings always welcomes civil comments on all current political issues. Email your COMMENTS to editors@thehustings.news and please indicate your political leanings in the subject line, irrespective of your position on a specific issue, so that we may post your comments in the proper column.  –Editors

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MONDAY 8/11/25

In which a contributing pundit on the right responds to left-column contributing pundit Jerry Lanson’s “The Language of Immigration Shapes Perception”:

Jerry Lanson’s personal story and opinion on US immigration laws was a solid argument to change legal immigration numbers. It is … and has been … a debate Americans have had for decades. If border security was taken seriously by all those who take an oath to live by and “uphold the laws of the United States” and if “carrots” were not dangled in front of those who would like to immigrate to this country illegally, Congress would find it easier to compromise on needed immigration reform and numbers. If the same cycle of rewarding illegal aliens with benefits and extending hope for amnesty without consequences continues, don’t expect the American people and Congress to agree on changing US immigration law. –Rich Corbett

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MONDAY 8/11/25

Commentary by Jerry Lanson

Words matter. They shape the way we think about people born elsewhere, especially if they crossed into this country without proper papers.

For as long as I can remember, these immigrants have been referred to widely as “illegal aliens.” Today, the Trump Administration regularly uses the term even for those living, working and studying in this country legally.

In the last week, The Boston Globe wrote about a Jamaican-born seasonal police officer at Old Orchard Beach in Maine who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and shipped to the Plymouth Country Correctional Facility in Massachusetts though his working papers in this country extended to 2030 and The Washington Post and other outlets told of a 20-year-old, Korean-born Purdue University student, the daughter of an Episcopal priest. She was abducted from a New York City immigration courthouse where she had gone to renew her visa and shipped to a Louisiana ICE detention center. She was released five days later after nationwide outrage led by the faith-based community.

ICE officials referred to both as “illegal aliens.”

Whomever the term is applied to conveys the message that these people are (a) criminals and (b) from another planet, or at least strange and different.

In fact, the overwhelming majority of immigrants, documented and undocumented, are neither.

Most often even those entering the country without documents are ordinary and sometimes courageous people -- husbands and wives, mothers and fathers seeking better lives in the United States, often fleeing oppressive governments, wars or gangs that make it difficult and dangerous for them to stay in their countries of origin. They and their children face threats, violence and extortion.

Any amateur student of history knows that sometimes immigrants have no choice but to flee their countries of birth. Their lives are on the line. Think of Europe in the 1930s. Look back at your own family members, wherever they came from, and ask yourself whether any of your descendants came here because they had no choice.

My father was fortunate to enter this country legally from England through Ellis Island early in 1937. His uncle already lived in this country and could sponsor him. But he certainly did not flee Germany “legally.” Though baptized a Lutheran, he was culturally 100 percent Jewish. He recognized his life in Nazi Germany would soon be in peril (his father died of a heart attack, the day after Adolph Hitler was appointed German chancellor in early 1933).

So one day in the summer of 1935, my dad took a hike with a non-Jewish girlfriend in the hills along along the Czechoslovakian border. At the summit, she hiked back into Germany. My dad hiked into Czechoslovakia. In his shoes were thousands of dollars, his own money but inheritance he would have been forbidden to take out of Germany.

What’s my point?

When Gunther Lichtenstein, who years later would become Gunther Lanson, hiked into Czechoslovakia, he clearly was an undocumented immigrant – a so-called “illegal alien.” So were tens of thousands of others who fled the Nazi extermination camp machine to countries bordering Germany, seeking to make their way by land and sea to safety.

Would those of you who use the term “illegal aliens” to describe those who come to this country, often to flee oppression, have scorned people like my dad? I doubt it. Should today’s immigrants follow the murky letter of our immigration laws even if leaves them as prey for dictatorships, terrorists and gangsters in home countries from Afghanistan to El Salvador?

It is true that there are millions of undocumented people in this country. Some have lived here since childhood, uncertain how to change their status. Are they illegal? Aliens? Or contributing members of our society?

ICE’s own data show that nearly three of four immigrants being abducted by our government from worksites, the street, their cars and their homes have never been convicted of any crime, not even the most minor ones. Some have lived in this country for decades. When jailed or deported by this administration, they leave behind children, many of them birthright citizens, some who’ve served in the military, are working or are enrolled in college.

When my father arrived in the United States, legally but after a journey that began with an “illegal” escape into Czechoslovakia, he still had some of the money that was in his shoes when he hiked out of Nazi Germany.

In New York City, he used this money to pay his bills while earning a dollar or two a day as an usher in a movie theater, where, watching movies over and over again, he gained greater mastery of the English language. He married an American girl, served as a master sergeant in the US Army, raised two sons, opened a printing business and, later, worked as director of sales promotion for an international lighting company.

He retired from Long Island to Vermont, where he chaired his local planning board, started a chess club and opened a local travel agency with a business partner. When heavy rains flooded the Connecticut River over its banks, inundating those living in low-lying areas, my mom and dad invited long-time locals to stay on their hilly property until the water receded.

Imperfections and all, Gunther Lanson lived the quintessential American immigrant story. He certainly was no “alien.” He was part and parcel of every community in which he lived as are many who come today from Latin America, Cape Verde, Haiti, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere. 

They live as our neighbors. They care for our elderly, our yards and gardens, our homes and more. They start businesses and, given the opportunity, often thrive.

Undocumented, no doubt, some are. But please, don’t call them illegal. Don’t call them aliens. Don’t make them different. We are lucky to have them in our communities.

This commentary first appeared in Lanson’s Substack, From the Grassroots.

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WEDNESDAY 8/6/25

Commentary by Stephen Macaulay

Donald Trump sent letters on July 31 to 17 of the leading pharmaceutical companies in which he tells them, in no uncertain terms, that they must lower prescription drug prices in the US, stating that if they “refuse to step up, we will deploy every tool in our arsenal to protect American families from continued abusive drug pricing practices.”

In the text he pointed out there was a May 12 Executive Order, “Delivering Most-Favored-Nation Prescription Drug Pricing to American Patients,” which has the objective of stopping “global freeloading.” Which sounds good, but which is not the case.

While it is true that “brand name drug prices are up to three times higher on average than elsewhere for the identical medicines,” arguably there is a reason why this is the case in many instances in places like the European Union and Canada:

The governments negotiate prices.

Discussion. Bargaining. Compromise.

While the two words rhyme, their meaning is not the same:

Dictate/Negotiate

Throughout his campaign as well as during his time in office, Trump has railed against the “leftist, radical, extremist” etc. people who happen to be in the Democratic Party.

Yet here he is (not unlike his telling corporations that they should absorb the cost of tariffs), taking a page from the Communist Playbook.

In the dictates of communist ideology, there is the abolition of the profit motive, which is a fundamental part of capitalism.

There is centralized — as in “government” — economic planning: the State decides, for example, what prices are.

And there is no free-market competition. The State decides.

There is no discussion, bargaining or compromise. There is a dictate handed down from on high.

Should there be any resistance, then “every tool in our arsenal” will be used to crush the resistance.

I don’t like having to pay higher prices for prescription drugs more than anyone else. But I also understand there are things like market forces that need to be considered.

If the State decides how much drugs should cost — and let’s face it, the State probably doesn’t have the slightest idea of how much the cost associated with the drugs are (from the costs of development and testing through production and distribution, especially now that is evidently thinks that professionals are overrated) — then there is little incentive for pharmaceutical companies to create new drugs. How is that going to work out when the next pandemic arises?

And where does this control stop?

Should Trump be able to dictate the prices of everything, from gasoline to fast food, from toys to candy?

Liberals have always been in favor of the government playing a big role in the economy while conservatives want limited government and free market forces.

So where is the Republican Party, the ostensible conservatives, when it comes to pushing back on what is clearly a case of Statism?

Trump has signed some 180 Executive Orders which, in effect, supersede the authority of Congress to write laws. 

Similarly, although Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution says “The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” — which includes tariffs — the President has essentially taken over, claiming in many cases that it is based on “national security,” which makes you wonder how a Kia minivan imported from South Korea poses a military threat.

Again, where are all the congressional free-market people?

Lower drug prices seems a good idea — until the President decides that for whatever whim higher prices (say, by imposing a tariff on places like Switzerland, where several pharmaceuticals are made) are a better idea.

Yes, this is radical, leftist policy coming out of the White House.

Makes AOC and Bernie look like pikers.

Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings.

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WEDNESDDAY 8/6/25

What will tariffs have wrought on the US economy? 

What are your thoughts on President Trump’s firing US Bureau of Labor Statistics chief Erika McEntarfer after a dismal jobs report (and downward revision of two previous months’ job growth) Friday?

Can we trust future BLS numbers, which include the monthly Consumer Price Index report, from a chief hand-picked by Trump? (The July CPI report will be released Tuesday, August 12.)

Last week we ran a debate centered on the US economy circa late July, under the headline, “Fed Resists Trump Economy’s Charms” in the center column. 

Contributing pundit Rich Corbett’s commentary, “America is Back, Baby!” is in the right column.  

Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s commentary, “Just Wait” is in the left column. (Macaulay returns to the right column this week with “The Numbers.”)

We invite you to comment on any or all of the above, including which pundit’s column is aging better, via email to editors@thehustings.news. Please indicate in the subject line whether you lean left or right (irrespective of your opinion on a single issue) so that we may post your comments in the proper column.  --Editors

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MONDAY 8/4/25

Commentary by Stephen Macaulay

Let’s take a look at what kind of a job that the Trump Administration is doing when it comes to helping out the American consumer at the grocery store.

As you will recall, he claimed that he was going to drive prices way down.

Or, in his inimitable words:

“I won on the border, and I won on groceries. Very simple word, groceries. Like almost—you know, who uses the word? I started using the word—the groceries. When you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time, and I won an election based on that. We’re going to bring those prices way down.”

(Who knew that he made the words “the groceries” popular?)

This review is a bit tricky because it uses figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and we know what President Trump thinks about numbers from the BLS. . .or, at least, some of the numbers.

To make a fair comparison, we’ll look at the prices in June 2021, when Biden was in office for a few months, and June 2025, when it was (and is) Trump’s economy.

Apples are not listed, so we’ll have to use bananas and navel oranges, per pound.

• Bananas:     2021: $0.60           2025: $0.65
• Oranges:      2021: $1.35           2025: $1.63

Bacon is not listed, but chicken and ground chuck beef are, with prices per pound.

• Chicken:      2021: $1.47           2025: $2.09
• Beef:           2021: $4.57           2025: $6.10

And then there’s milk, per gallon:

• Milk:           2021: $3.56           2025: $4.03

Clearly, when American consumers go to the market to buy the groceries they are spending more across the board than they were before Trump was going to “bring those prices way down.”

An increasing number of grocery stores have gasoline stations on their lots.

As you will recall, during the campaign he repeatedly claimed that if elected he would get the price of gas under $2.00 per gallon. In May he said on “Meet the Press”: “I have it down to $1.98 in many states right now.” 

A slight problem with that is there wasn’t $1.98 gas in any states.

So let’s go back to the June 2021 and June 2025 comparisons and see how gas prices are doing per gallon. These numbers come from the Energy Information Agency. 

• 6/7/21:       $3.128
• 6/14/21:     $3.161
• 6/21/21:     $3.153
• 6/28/21:     $3.185

That was Biden.

Here’s Trump:

• 6/2/25:       $3.256
• 6/9/25:       $3.235
• 6/16/25:     $3.365
• 6/23/25:     $3.338
• 6/30/25:     $3.288

So not only was gas less expensive under Biden, but Trump’s prices are 46% higher than that $2.00 per gallon he was talking about.

He can bloviate all he wants. He can fire the heads of agencies. He can create diversions of all types.

Sooner or later these prices are going to catch up with him.

And remember this: In May he was responding to criticism of tariffs by saying: “Maybe children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe those two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more.”

Come the holiday season, when the tariffs really kick in and prices across the board rise for everything from cars to coffee, “a couple bucks more” is going to be a whole lot of money for regular working Americans—you know, the kind of people who voted Trump.

Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings.

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MONDAY 8/4/25

Commentary by Jerry Lanson

Donald Trump often can twist, shred and shed the truth as readily as Harry Houdini twisted and shed padlocked chains.

Throughout his life he’s used lies and deflection to wriggle out from under political pressure and legal charges, large and small, just as Houdini mesmerized audiences with his skill at wriggling out of shackles.

In his act, Trump has profited from disengaged and alienated voters alike, often distracting them by accusing those investigating him with precisely the same kinds of misconduct he’s alleged to have committed.

And for most of his life, through two impeachments, through a lost election he still insists he won, and through investigations and indictments surrounding the January 6, 2020 riots at the US capitol, these maneuvers have worked.

But now, as he passes the six-month mark of a second presidency that has turned this country and its values upside down, Trump’s lies seem to be growing so extreme and his behavior so erratic that even some ardent MAGA supporters are beginning to question him.

For two weeks, Trump has tried relentlessly, even desperately, to turn the page on Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and former friend who hung himself in jail awaiting trial on charges of trafficking teen-age girls for sex. The president’s about-face has shocked Trump supporters who for years have drunk at the trough of rightwing conspiracy theorists who have told them the “Deep State” suppressed evidence of Epstein’s ties to rich and famous Democrats.

The Trump Administration just weeks ago was promising to reveal Epstein’s secrets once and for all. Then, abruptly on July 10, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the Epstein case was closed, that there was nothing more to be said about it. The investigation, she said, had turned up nothing worth releasing, a line Trump repeated multiple times in the days that followed, as he’s strained to change the subject. He’s tried many things.

•Over the weekend, for example, he sent out a scree of social media posts that The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel called “alarming, even by his [Trump’s] standards.” Among his 33 Sunday posts was an AI generated video of former President Barack Obama being arrested in the Oval Office and video snippets of wild scenes such as a woman catching a charging cobra with her bare hands.

•On Tuesday, two weeks after signing legislation that will slash 10 million people from Medicaid roles in the next decade, he vowed he would reduce drug prices to a tenth or less of their current costs, Mediate reported in an article reposted on Politicalwire.com. This would be lower than the cost of manufacturing them.

•And at a Tuesday reception with Congressmen, Trump reportedly claimed that the Epstein scandal, which he called a “made up hoax,” had led to a remarkable boost in his polling numbers, giving him “the best numbers I’ve ever had,” Mediate reported.

For all his bravado, however, the master at mendacity seems to be struggling in his effort to shed the story. Trump’s real poll numbers appear to be declining at a steady and possibly an accelerating pace. And, as Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson raced to get out of town for summer recess to quell growing Congressional dissent about Epstein, a subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight Wednesday cast an 8-2 bipartisan vote to subpoena the Department of Justice for its files on Epstein’s sex trafficking investigation, the AP reported.

Trump’s biggest gambit to change the narrative could well come following the Thursday-Friday meeting between Justice Department officials and convicted Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell in Tallahassee, Florida, ostensibly to hear “new evidence,” the New York Post reports. It most assuredly won’t be about the president.

But just what this all means remains really murky. Epstein died six years ago, his death in jail ruled a suicide. Though The Wall Street Journal Wednesday reported that Bondi’s Justice Department had informed Trump that his name appeared “multiple times” in the Epstein investigation file, that news does not explain why Trump has labored so persistently and awkwardly to shut the story down. He’s long been known to be Epstein’s former friend and associate.

What is clear is that Trump’s polling numbers are falling.

Most remarkable have been two polls released this week reporting a seismic shift in young voters’ perceptions. Prior to the election, Trump was making significant inroads with this group.

Now a recent YouGov poll shows Trump’s net approval among Gen Z voters has dropped from roughly even to -40 percentage points, according to a tweet reposted on Politicalwire.

A CBS News poll that appeared on the site Tuesday showed an even bigger drop in support among voters between 18 and 29. It said that while Trump had a 10% favorable rating among these voters in February, the same age group now disapproves of him 72% to 28% – well over two to one.

Polls of all voters show increasing disenchantment with Trump’s performance on all issues, including those that fueled his campaign, such as immigration and inflation. His aggregate poll numbers are now lower than at any point in his second term.

Still, it is too early to know whether Trump will once again wriggle out of his problems.

In fact, it’s not entirely possible to rule out that the media and political frenzy over Epstein wasn’t hatched as one more diversion from the real pain Trump and his henchmen have inflicted with cuts in Medicaid, education, and science and health research, and with his administration’s vicious crackdown on immigrants.

Groups actively resisting the administration, such as Indivisible, are urging supporters to be ever-vigilant of Trump’s growing disregard of the Constitution and the rule of law. They’re encouraging members to reach out to neighbors and acquaintances to expand their ranks and grow their peaceful protests. 

Their concern is well-founded. A cornered Donald Trump often gets wilder. In the past week alone, he’s called for criminal investigations of Obama and his administration; of Schiff, who led the first impeachment hearing; of former FBI Director Jim Comey and of others.

Trump’s rapidly growing ICE army continues to spread chaos through workplaces, farms and immigrant communities, typically hauling in those with no criminal record. A headline in the Boston Globe Magazine this week reads, “’I want daddy.’ As ICE detains parents, children are left behind.”

Ultimately, however, the fate of Trump’s presidency may not lie with the resistance but with Trump’s success or failure in either deflecting attention from the Jeffrey Epstein files or making those files stick to someone else.

Though six years have passed since Epstein died in prison, something about the case, for whatever reason, clearly makes Trump uncomfortable. And that’s led the news media, Democrats and growing numbers of Republicans to talk about little else.

This column first appeared on Lanson’s Substack, From the Grassroots.

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FRIDAY 7/25/25

Commentary by Stephen Macaulay

One of the things that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves is what even the Trump Administration knows tariffs do: Raise the cost of goods in the country importing them.

So, simply, the price of goods being imported into the US are more expensive for those who are buying them.

Most things that we buy have some intermediary. It’s not like its farm-to-table (you picked it; you cooked it).

You may buy something from General Motors. You may buy something through Amazon.

In both cases, if they are sourcing something from another country (e.g., GM builds trucks in Canada and Mexico, both of which have 25% tariffs; Kindles aren’t made in Seattle, but in places including China, which has a 30% tariff), then their invoice is increased. 

What’s more (actually less) is that the value of the US dollar has been declining consistently since “Liberation Day” in April. There is a measure known as the “US Dollar Index,” which compares the value of the dollar against a basket of currencies. A higher number is better.

So here’s how it is going:

--March: 104.21

--April: 99.47

--May: 99.33

--June: 96.88

--July (so far): 97.48

Down, down, down.

This means that when paying for those imported goods, it costs more dollars today than it did in March.

There is an argument that a weaker dollar is more advantageous for exporters from the US. 

But here’s the thing: US exports haven’t exactly been struggling.

That is, in 2014 the value of US exports was $1.62 trillion. Ten years later, 2024, the number was up to $2.064 trillion.

That’s a 27% increase.

The Administration has consistently argued that the countries of origin are the ones who pay the tariffs.

Which is patently untrue.

To use a hackneyed example: It is just like Mexico was going to pay for the Wall.

It was easy for Trump supporters to believe that fabrication because unless they lived in the neighborhood of the Wall, they really didn’t have a sense of what was or wasn’t being built. (As things turned out, not much of the Wall was new construction. And

Mexico didn’t pay for it.)

More importantly, the Wall claim didn’t have a visible impact on the supporters’ buying power.

Tariffs are different.

There is a 50% tariff on coffee beans from Brazil. The US imports as much as 50% of its coffee from Brazil — because the US isn’t conducive to growing coffee, not because the Brazilian people are “ripping us off!”

Just wait until people start seeing that putting Folgers in their cup is going to get a lot more expensive. And the wait won’t be long.

The Administration — from President Trump to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — have been saying that there is an expectation that US corporations will absorb tariff-associated costs.

Which means that there is an expectation that US corporations will essentially underwrite the tax that tariffs are on the consuming public.

Let’s go back to the coffee example. Walmart, which sells a whole lot of groceries to a whole lot of Americans, has a profit margin on groceries of less than 3%.

What the Administration is saying is that Walmart needs to reduce that margin even further in order to absorb the tariff costs.

Back in May during the Walmart earnings call, CEO Doug McMillon, who quite evidently understands how businesses operate, said, "We will strive to keep our prices as low as possible. However, due to the significant scale of the tariffs . . . we cannot absorb all the pressure given the reality of slim retail margins . . . the elevated tariffs will lead to increased prices.”

It can’t be put any simpler than that.

How much is that jar of coffee going to cost?

What is the alternative to importing coffee? The US mainland isn’t conducive to the crop. This is just how the world works, despite what the Administration would like us to believe.

And while on the subject of buying things at places at Walmart, as kids across the country right now know — and are not particularly happy to know it — this is “Back to School” season.

When I was young my mom took me to a department store and bought me some new shoes and clothes to wear for the forthcoming school year. And all of my classmates, to a greater or lesser degree, evidently had the same experience. 

Here’s this from the latest (July 23) research from The Yale Budget Lab:

“The 2025 tariffs disproportionately affect clothing and textiles, with consumers facing 40% higher shoe prices and 36% higher apparel prices in the short-run. Shoes and apparel prices stay 19% and 17% higher in the long-run respectively.”

Moms across the country are going to have more than a slight surprise when they go “Back to School” shopping.

There is no way that everyday Americans are going to escape the higher prices that the tariffs are putting on the goods that they buy every day.

While bringing back manufacturing to the US is a laudable goal, have you heard any articulation from anyone in the administration how they are going to facilitate this?

If they were serious about bringing back manufacturing there would be a Moon Shot-like series of programs that would help fund the development of industries that will be viable in the years ahead. Instead, all they seem to be doing is trashing green energy technology (does anyone really think that coal is the future of energy?) and eliminating tax incentives and regulations that make it more likely that car companies will not build electric vehicles — which will mean that the US will pretty much be an island of old automotive technology compared to the rest of the world — with the exception of Cuba.

Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings.

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FRIDAY 7/25/25