Trump fires labor statistics chief after weaker than expected jobs report
Donald Trump has said he’s directed his team to fire Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, after data showed US employment growth was weaker than expected for the last few months.
McEntarfer was nominated by former president Joe Biden to serve in the role in 2023 and was confirmed by the US Senate the following year.
“We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
The bureau released revised job stats today which showed the US economy added only 73,000 jobs in July, far lower than expected, amid ongoing concerns with Trump’s escalating trade war.
In the report, the BLS also slashed the number of jobs added in May, revising the figure down by 125,000, from 144,000 to only 19,000, and June, which was revised down by 133,000, from 147,000 to just 14,000 – a combined 258,000 fewer jobs than previously reported.
Key events
Here is my colleague Andrew Roth’s report:
Donald Trump has said that he has deployed nuclear-capable submarines to the “appropriate regions” in response to a threatening tweet by Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev, suggesting that he would be ready to launch a nuclear strike as tensions rise over the war in Ukraine.
In a post on Truth Social on Friday, Trump wrote that he had decided to reposition the nuclear submarines because of “highly provocative statements” by Medvedev, noting he is now the deputy chairman of Russia’s security council.
Medvedev had earlier said that Trump’s threats to sanction Russia and a recent ultimatum were “a threat and a step towards war”.
Donald Trump also continues to voice his frustration over the war Russia continues to wage in Ukraine, writing on Truth Social earlier (before the submarine announcement):
I have just been informed that almost 20,000 Russian soldiers died this month in the ridiculous War with Ukraine. Russia has lost 112,500 soldiers since the beginning of the year. That is a lot of unnecessary DEATH! Ukraine, however, has also suffered greatly. They have lost approximately 8,000 soldiers since January 1, 2025, and that number does not include their missing. Ukraine has also lost civilians, but in smaller numbers, as Russian rockets crash into Kyiv, and other Ukrainian locales. This is a War that should have never happened — This is Biden’s War, not ‘TRUMP’s.’ I’m just here to see if I can stop it!
As Trump and Medvedev have traded taunts in recent days following Trump saying on Tuesday that Russia had “10 days from today” to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine or be hit, along with its oil buyers, with tariffs, Moscow has shown no sign that it will comply with Trump’s deadline.
As my colleague Shaun Walker reports from Kyiv, Vladimir Putin has not responded to Trump’s ultimatum. He has claimed he wants a “lasting and stable peace” in Ukraine but has given no indication that he is willing to make any concessions to achieve it, after a week in which Russian missiles and drones again caused death and destruction across Ukraine.
“We need a lasting and stable peace on solid foundations that would satisfy both Russia and Ukraine, and would ensure the security of both countries,” said Putin, speaking to journalists on Friday, a week before Trump’s new deadline for hostilities to cease.
Trump has said if Russia and Ukraine do not come to an agreement to end the war by next Friday, 8 August, he will impose a package of economic sanctions on Russia.
Per my last post, Medvedev on Monday accused Trump of engaging in a “game of ultimatums” and reminded him that Russia possessed Soviet-era nuclear strike capabilities of last resort after Trump told Medvedev to “watch his words”.
Medvedev has emerged as one of the Kremlin’s most outspoken anti-western hawks since Putin sent tens of thousands of troops to launch his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Reuters notes that while Kremlin critics deride him as an irresponsible loose cannon, some western diplomats say his statements illustrate the thinking in senior Kremlin policymaking circles.
The Associated Press also notes that with his frequently wielded nuclear threats and lobbing of insults at western leaders on social media, some observers have argued that Medvedev is seeking to score political points with Putin and Russian military hawks with his extravagant rhetoric.
The escalation from Trump comes amid a spiralling war of words with the former Russian president over Trump’s efforts to get Russia to end its war in Ukraine.
Trump yesterday called Medvedev a “failed former president”, writing on Truth Social that he should “watch his words” and is “entering very dangerous territory”.
Russia and the USA do almost no business together. Let’s keep it that way, and tell Medvedev, the failed former President of Russia, who thinks he’s still President, to watch his words. He’s entering very dangerous territory!
Medvedev, who was prime minister of Russia from 2012 to 2020 and is a very vocal supporter of its invasion of Ukraine, has ridiculed Trump’s ultimatum to the Kremlin to reach a peace deal. He wrote on X earlier this week:
Trump’s playing the ultimatum game with Russia: 50 days or 10 … He should remember 2 things:
1. Russia isn’t Israel or even Iran.
2. Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step towards war.
Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with his own country. Don’t go down the Sleepy Joe road!
In another post on X, Medvedev, the deputy chair of Russia’s security council, called US senator Lindsey Graham “gramps”, after he told him to “get to the peace table”.
It’s not for you or Trump to dictate when to ‘get at the peace table’. Negotiations will end when all the objectives of our military operation have been achieved. Work on America first, gramps!
The jabs continued on Telegram, where Medvedev threatened Trump with a cold war-era doomsday weapon known as the “Dead Hand” – a Russian nuclear system designed to automatically launch a retaliatory strike.
If a few words from a former Russian president can cause such a nervous reaction from the supposedly powerful President of the United States, then clearly Russia is right about everything and will continue its own way.
And as for the ‘dead economies’ of India and Russia and ‘stepping into dangerous territory’ – well, let him recall his favorite movies about the ‘walking dead,’ as well as how dangerous the supposedly non-existent ‘Dead Hand’ can be.
Trump orders nuclear submarines moved after ‘highly provocative statements’ from Medvedev
Donald Trump has said he had ordered two nuclear submarines to be positioned in “appropriate regions” in response to threats from former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, who said on Thursday that Trump should remember Moscow had Soviet-era nuclear strike capabilities.
Trump said in a post on Truth Social:
Based on the highly provocative statements of the Former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, I have ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that. Words are very important, and can often lead to unintended consequences, I hope this will not be one of those instances. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Canada trade team could quit DC talks after Trump tariffs, says Carney adviser
The Canadian team working on a trade deal with the US could walk away from talks in the wake of Donald Trump’s decision to impose a 35% tariff on some goods from Canada, an adviser to that country’s prime minister, Mark Carney, said on Friday.
Flavio Volpe, a member of Carney’s hand-picked Council on Canada-US Relations, told CBC News that the negotiators would stay in Washington for the time being. Yesterday, Trump signed an executive order increasing tariffs on Canadian goods to 35% from 25% on all products not covered by the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.
The White House cited what it said was Canada’s failure to stop fentanyl smuggling and a failure to address US concerns about trade barriers. Trump has also cited Carney’s plan to recognize a Palestinian state in September as making it “very hard” to reach a deal.
“Team Canada is still in Washington working on a deal and they’re going to be there until we either have a conclusion of a good deal for Canada or that it’s time to take a pause and walk away,” said Volpe, president of Canada’s national Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association.
Carney wants a new deal to reset bilateral relations, saying Trump’s move to impose tariffs had irrevocably upended the decades-old trading and security ties between the two neighbors. The talks though have so far produced little.
Washington is also unhappy about Canada’s refusal to drop its own Trudeau-era countermeasures.
In June, Carney had threatened to ramp up counter-tariffs in July unless there was progress on the deal. A statement he issued early today did not mention retaliation at all.
Brian Clow, a senior Trudeau aide who was in charge of US relations inside the prime minister’s office for several years, noted that Trump had announced a number of deals with nations that declined to impose counter-tariffs.
“Unfortunately, Canada stands on its own right now, along with China, because many other countries around the world refused to stand up to this President,” he told Reuters. “So I’m not sure that further retaliation is the way to go here.”
The offices of Carney and Dominic LeBlanc, the federal cabinet minister leading the Canadian team in Washington, were not immediately available for comment.
Kamala Harris says she doesn’t plan to return to ‘broken’ system of US politics
Ed Pilkington
Kamala Harris has said that she currently has no desire to re-enter “the system” of American politics because it is “broken”.
Last night the Democratic party’s defeated presidential nominee, who replaced Joe Biden late in the 2024 campaign after he dropped his re-election bid, gave her first interview since losing the election to Donald Trump, talking to Stephen Colbert on The Late Show.
After she announced she will not run for the governorship of California just a day earlier, Harris told the TV show that it was about something more “basic” than whether she wanted to run for something else instead – with the subtext being whether she will attempt a White House run again in 2028.
“Recently I made the decision that I just – for now – I don’t want to go back in the system. I think it’s broken,” she said, provoking a collective groan from the studio audience. Colbert later returned to the subject, saying that her remark was harrowing. “Well, but it’s also evident, isn’t it?” she said.
The former vice-president added:
I always believed, that as fragile as our democracy is, our systems would be strong enough to defend our most fundamental principles. And I think right now that they’re not as strong as they need to be. And for now I don’t want to go back into that system.
Harris’s choice of The Late Show as the channel for her first post-election defeat interview was pointed. The most-watched talkshow was cancelled last month by the CBS network, which pleaded financial stress, though the decision was widely denounced as being politically motivated.
The cancellation was announced after Colbert had criticized CBS and its parent company, Paramount Global, for reaching a $16m settlement with Trump. The president had sued CBS News over an interview on the 60 Minutes show with Harris at the height of last year’s presidential campaign, which Trump claimed had been manipulated in her favour.
None of this febrile backstory was mentioned by either Colbert or Harris on Thursday. But she did delivery a passionate lament for the numbers of people who she said had “capitulated” to the aggressive second Trump administration.
When Colbert invited her to say “I told you so” after she had predicted many of Trump’s most contentious moves – including Medicaid cuts, ignoring court orders and “massive tax cuts to the rich” – she replied: “But Stephen, what I did not predict was the capitulation.”
She went on:
Perhaps it’s naive of me … There should be many who consider themselves to be guardians of our system and our democracy who just capitulated, and I didn’t see that coming.
Six in 10 Americans blame Trump administration for driving up their cost of living, new poll suggests
Michael Sainato
Americans are struggling financially, grappling with debt and the rising cost of living, and are blaming the Trump administration and corporate interests for worsening economic outlooks for working families, according to a new poll.
Six out of 10 Americans place blame on the Trump administration for driving up their cost of living, according to a poll conducted by Morning Consult for the Century Foundation, which asked 2,007 Americans how they are managing the high cost of living in the US economy, who they think is to blame and what are the solutions.
The poll found 63% said Trump had had a negative impact on grocery prices, and 61% said he had had a negative impact on the cost of living. Nearly half, 49%, said the Trump administration had had a negative impact on their finances. Nearly eight out of 10 Americans, including 70% of Republicans, fear that Trump’s tariffs will increase the price of everyday goods.
More than six out of 10 Americans said it had become more difficult to find a well-paying job, buy a home and afford childcare.
Ghislaine Maxwell moved from Florida prison to lower-security facility
Ghislaine Maxwell has been transferred from a Florida prison to a lower-security facility in Texas to continue serving her 20-year sentence, the US Bureau of Prisons said today.
For Maxwell, an associate of the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the move from FCI Tallahassee, a low-security prison, to the federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas, comes a week after she met with deputy attorney general Todd Blanche, who said he wanted to speak with her about anyone else who may have been involved in Epstein’s crimes of trafficking underage girls. Maxwell’s lawyer David Markus confirmed that she was moved.
The Bureau of Prisons classifies prison camps such as Bryan as minimum-security institutions, the lowest of five security levels in the federal system. Such facilities have limited or no perimeter fencing. Low-security facilities such as FCI Tallahassee have double-fenced perimeters and higher staff-to-inmate ratios than camps, according to the bureau.
The House oversight committee has said that it also wants to speak with Maxwell. Markus said Maxwell would be open to this but only if the panel gives her immunity from prosecution for anything she says.
Democrats are launching a nationwide summer blitz designed to force vulnerable Republicans to defend Trump’s big tax and spending bill, especially Medicaid cuts.
The Democratic National Committee’s “Organizing Summer” will feature events in Alaska, Texas, Colorado and California over the coming week. The party’s message will be reinforced by online advertising and billboard trucks at county fairs targeting House Republicans in Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Jersey, among other states.
The event aims to ensure that “Americans across the country know exactly who is responsible for taking away healthcare, food, construction jobs and nursing homes in order to give massive handouts to billionaires,” the chair of the DNC, Ken Martin, said.
The package Trump signed into law on 4 July may become the defining issue of next year’s midterm elections. Republican leaders encourage their members to promote more popular aspects of the law in appearances where they’re less likely to face difficult questions or protests.
Thousands of license applications by US companies to export goods and technology around the globe, including to China, are in limbo because turmoil at the agency in charge of approving them has left it nearly paralyzed, reports Reuters.
While the US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, has long touted Trump’s tariff and trade deals, sources said the export bureau under Lutnick’s command has failed to issue expected new rules, stifled communications with industry representatives, pushed out experts, and lost staff through buyouts and resignations.
Shipments of artificial intelligence chips from tech giant Nvidia to China are the most high-profile example of licenses not being swiftly approved. The company said on 14 July that the government assured it licenses would be granted for its H20 chip, and it hoped to start deliveries soon.
Lutnick and other officials confirmed sales would be allowed. But sources said this week no licenses have yet been issued, and billions of dollars of AI chip orders are at stake.
One US official said the backlog of license applications is the lengthiest in more than three decades.
The US Transportation Department said today that it is cancelling $26m in grants for a long-delayed proposed high-speed rail project between Washington and Baltimore.
The USDOT said it was rescinding funds for the proposed $20bn Baltimore-Washington Superconducting Magnetic Levitation, or Maglev project, after “nearly a decade of poor planning, significant community opposition, tremendous cost overruns, and nothing to show for it”. An environmental review of the project has been on pause since 2021.
Trump steps up attacks on Fed’s independence amid interest rates row
Callum Jones
Further to my earlier post, Donald Trump has (yet again) called on top Federal Reserve officials to seize control from its chair, Jerome Powell, if he fails to cut interest rates, stepping up his extraordinary attacks on the central bank’s independence.
The US president called Powell “a stubborn MORON” in a series of critical social media posts on Friday, days after the Fed held rates steady for the fifth consecutive time.
It comes as Trump faces heightened questions over the impact of his aggressive economic policy, and the White House presses forward with plans for a fresh wave of tariffs next week.
Hours before the federal government released data which underlined a significant deterioration in the jobs market, Trump again broke with precedent to pin blame on the Fed – and urge it to change course.
“Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell, a stubborn MORON, must substantially lower interest rates, NOW,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, his social network. “IF HE CONTINUES TO REFUSE, THE BOARD SHOULD ASSUME CONTROL, AND DO WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS HAS TO BE DONE!”
The Fed chair does not unilaterally set interest rates, which are decided by its rate-setting federal open market committee. Presidents typically respect its independence, leaving the central bank to make an objective decision – without political interference – about the best policy on interest rates for the US economy.
Lisa O’Carroll
Some countries received a reprieve from Donald Trump when he announced sweeping new levies yesterday.
Lesotho was facing 50% tariffs on 2 April, an existential threat to its textile industry, but came out on Friday with a 15% rate. That should make it easier for manufacturers in Lesotho – which last month declared a national state of disaster over the country’s “high rates of youth unemployment and job losses” – to sell their goods to American consumers.
That’s a relief for a nation which Trump said “nobody has ever heard of” when he halted USAID earlier this year.
Also getting a drastic reduction in tariffs are Madagascar, down from 47% on 2 April to 15% on 1 August, and Botswana, down from 37% to 15%.
Liechtenstein, the wealthy European state best known as a financial centre, has seen rates slashed from 37% to 15%, while the Falkland Islands have gone from 41% to 10%.
Cambodia went from 49% to 19%, while Iraq only got a four-point reduction, from 39% to 35%.
‘Killing jobs and jacking up prices’: Democrats lambast Trump over tariffs and weak jobs report
Democratic lawmakers have slammed Trump’s “reckless and chaotic” tariff policies and federal cuts after today’s weak jobs report revealed that 258,000 fewer jobs were created in May and June than previously thought.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said on X:
The chickens are coming home to roost for Trump, and American families are paying the price. His reckless and chaotic tariffs and his drastic cuts are catching up with the economy which means fewer jobs and more people out of work. Trump must end his trade war and reverse his horrible cuts now.
California governor Gavin Newsom wrote:
A July jobs report way below expectations. May and June revised down as well. Unemployment rate ticked back up to 4.2%. We haven’t seen conditions like these since 2020. Don’t let Donald Trump gaslight you. He is failing Americans and crashing our economy.
Kathy Hochul, New York’s governor, said:
Donald Trump is killing jobs and jacking up prices with his tariffs. Sellout Stefanik calls his leadership a ‘masterclass.’ I call it bullshit. We will fight back.
Senator Chris Murphy, of Connecticut wrote:
Unsurprising bad jobs report. Just 73,000 added in July, and most of those were health care. Even worse, May and June jobs numbers revised down by 258,000. Awful. Companies don’t want to create jobs in Trump’s chaos economy with weakening rule of law and rampant corruption.
Representative Richard Neal, of Massachusetts, said:
The American people didn’t ask for this. Hiring has stalled, prices are surging, and this administration is actively undermining the labor market Democrats rebuilt. This goes beyond failed Republican leadership, it’s actively making life harder for people.
