Aug. 11: America’s lost more than a million people who are working or looking for work … Trump reminds everyone he’s a vaccine moron — right before school starts and voters take Republicans to school in the midterms … Trump used planeload of people as decoy for the first time that we know of … In Democratic primaries today, democratic socialists face off against Republican Democrats …
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Pres. Donald Trump hasn’t just deported undocumented immigrants from the country, he’s deported one million workers from the economy, new analysis of July jobs numbers shows.
Workforce participation numbers reflect how many people are either working or haven’t given up yet on finding work in the Trumpconomy. There are one million fewer such people today than there were a year ago.
Last July, 170.4 million had jobs or were trying to get one. Today, that’s down to 169.1 million people working or trying to.
That’s just 61.4% of the working-age population — roughly 6.14 out of every ten people — the lowest it’s been since Trump tried to keep people working (when that meant COVID might kill them) so he could keep corporate stock prices up.
Here’s the MarketWatch chart of labor-force participation rates over the past decade, showing the COVID stalactite, the Trump-Joe Biden recovery, and the increasingly steep, no-no-no-no-no-no, slide of the second Trump residency:
What does it all mean? It means some people can’t find new jobs.
It means kidnapped immigrants can’t find their old jobs or the door out of their cage.
It means even the youngest Baby Boomers can’t find their arches, their posture, or their fake teeth and are taking retirement before Elon Musk privatizes Social Security.
It also means a lot of establishment Democratic candidates who lost their jobs to socialists have stopped looking for work, counting on socialist policies to support them.
And it means Trump doesn’t know shit about job creation, because he was a pretend businessperson and even real ones don’t try to create jobs, they try to get our money.
Trump, of course, has eviscerated a number of industries involving forms of energy that kill the Earth more slowly than his beloved fossil fuels do. EVs. Solar power. Deadly windmills.
THE UPSIDE As Republicans have long feared, the more people depend on government, the more they’ll demand a government we can depend on.
Trump Calls for Fucking Kids and Their Parents
In a new — except for being medieval — executive order on Monday, Pres. Donald Trump platformed highly toxic vaccine denial, just in time for Back To School season. Because he’s got the brain of a spoiled, immature, incurious, coked-up sea anemone.
His order calls for reducing the number of recommended vaccines from 18 to 11 — Jeffrey Epstein would approve! — and spacing them apart instead of getting them simultaneously. The MMR vaccine — Measles, Mumps, Rubella — for instance, would be split into three, making MMR easier for Trump to spell.
This would also delay kids getting some vaccines, accelerating Trump’s measles-distribution plan. Vaccinations would also be logistically tougher for parents who would have to schedule multiple visits, which actually might not be that big a deal since fewer parents are working now thanks to Trump’s epidemic of job destruction.
Trump called it “common sense” to reduce childhood vaccines. “Common sense” is, of course, what no one wants in their own personal medical regimen. No one about to go under the knife ever told their surgeon, “Just use your common sense, doc.”
“Common sense” is what gave us leeches, exorcisms, prescription cigarettes, and the Roadkill Diet.
Trump explained said that the frequency of autism diagnoses is “many, many times what it used to be years ago. And we had progressively more and more vaccines.”
Linking the two could finally establish that correlation does in fact cause causation. Common sense tells us how often correlation correlates with causation, and Trump’s breakthrough could prove definitively that correlation is actually causing causation.
Once correlation is determined to cause causation, we’ll know for sure that rising autism rates weren’t caused by improved screening, but by electing Republicans.
Here’s Trump demonstrating how adult-onset idiocy correlates with childhood-privilege syndrome:
UPDATE Trump has not seen proof, because none of those things are things.
THE UPSIDE Trump’s order doesn’t apply to anyone. He issues executive orders because “executive order” sounds cool, but they only apply to federal agencies, not to you, me, or our doctors.
Many states have stopped relying on federal vaccine recommendations and now issue their own, based on guidance from organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics that use education and the scientific method instead of common sense.
MORE UPSIDE There are MMR vaccines, but no individual M vaccine, other-M vaccine, or R vaccine. Just MMR. And drug companies have no plans to make separate M, or M, or R vaccines because they may be rich, but they’re not that stupid.
Trump Uses Staff, Other Innocent People as Decoys
Referring to his indictments and impeachments, Pres. Donald Trump liked to say that, metaphorically, “They're not coming after me, they're coming after you — and I'm just standing in their way.”
When they’re literally coming after him, however, it turns out he takes great pains to ensure other people are in their way.
The Washington Post caught Trump secretly sneaking off Air Force One in response to a credible Iranian threat, so that any attackers would think he was still on board and blow up that plane — with his staff and media and others on board — instead of the one he was on. Like a man.
Remember last month in Turkey when Trump claimed he wasn’t using his new, Qatari Air Force One to come home for some bullshit reason? (We learned later it didn’t have the full regimen of defensive countermeasures.)
Instead, Trump — and everyone else — boarded an Air Force One that was older and, like many older planes, sneakier.
While everyone else was figuring out which seat-belt ends were theirs, Trump left the plane almost immediately — leaving everyone else still on board. As the Post documented, Trump then snuck out in a shipping container hauled by an airport food-catering truck:
The airport catering truck then took the food container to the real, but secret Air Force One, a smaller military C-32A. Trump was loaded onto the C-32A along with the rest of the stroopwafel, nuts, and low-quality meat.
In his defense, this did involve some bravery. It must have been disorienting to be enclosed even briefly in a confined space without any gilding.
Meanwhile, Air Farce One took off with all its human targets enjoying the in-flight entertainment system, no idea they had just been cast as Trump’s next Corey Comperatore1, no idea they were now extras in the remastered commander-in-chief cut of “Air Force One” with special, deleted, alternate-coward ending.
If the alleged Iranian plan had succeeded, of course, Air Farce One and everyone on board would have been destroyed and then Trump would have popped out of nowhere, saying, “It’s okay, everyone, I’m fine! Why are you crying?”
Just two months before the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
Due to the intense secrecy around the operation, we still don’t know whether it was codenamed Dessert Storm or Epicurean Fury. Either way, it’s perfect. Two thumbs up. No notes.
The Vagina Ideologues
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is also not good at jobs, since his previous one involved managing only a small team of synapses governing which impulses went from his brain to his face-hole on Fox.
A New York Times analysis of promotions in the Pentagon’s top ranks finds that affirmative action is rampant for white dudes. The number of women being promoted is the lowest it’s been since before the George W. Bush presidency and even before we knew just how horrific the George W. Bush presidency would be. (h/t)
The share of top-rank promotions going to women is now just four percent.
Now, if you’re wondering whether this might be due to sexism, the Pentagon wants you to know nothing could be farther from the truth except the other things it says. After all, the military are bound by a code of honor that prohibits them from lying about blowing up girls schools and storing the president with airplane snack boxes.
Chief Pentagon spokesnotwoman Sean Parnell told the Times that the department “promotes officers solely on the basis of merit, performance and leadership potential … and every officer selected for promotion, regardless of gender, has earned that advancement through demonstrated excellence.”
In other words, it’s not that Hegseth is sexist, it’s that women suck. They just need to demonstrate the same excellence as the top-ranking men who embroiled the U.S. in wars it can’t win against a nation with a fraction of our military power and not even one nuke.
To Elect a Predator
Pres. Donald Trump recently narrowed his job-protection focus to one, specific job, Politico reports. Obviously, the worker in question has Trump’s required qualifications: A credible accusation of abuse.
Previously, the White House pressured Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) to stop trying to keep his job in the midterm elections. Y’know, because his ex-wife says he threw scalding hot water at her, held a gun to her head, and broke their daughter’s collarbone.
But then, when it became clear Miller wouldn’t go — because that’s how abusers refuse to roll! — the White House reasoned that Republicans needed to stop pressuring Miller. And needed to get behind him. Not to put cuffs on, but to push him toward another term in office.
Politico reports that Trump’s political team told Ohio Republican leaders that trying to force Miller out now would make it awkward to support him later against Democratic challenger Brian Poindexter.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) has said it will even support Miller financially if it looks like he can win. But one Ohio Republican told Politico that the allegations will “result in fewer votes, less ability to fundraise.”
Well, you don’t have to support him! It’s not like he’s holding a gun to your head.
THE UPSIDE For all the advantages Republicans won with wholesale gerrymandering, they’re undoing much of it with retail-level gerrymanhandling. Red districts the GOP made less red to spread Republican voters around are now in danger of slipping away thanks to the shitty candidates they’re running.
So Poindexter has a chance in a race that was seen as a Republican lock.
Always field a candidate, Democrats, no matter how hopeless things look! Ya never know when the Republican lock will be accused of holding his obligatory gun to his ex-wife’s head.
Poindexter’s campaign site is here.
Blackburn’s “Family” Values
Over on my original-reporting Substack on Sunday, I reported that Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) invited a controversial Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) leader to the 2016 National Prayer Breakfast. (Thanks to everyone who supports my reporting!)
I confess it’s not a huge story. Blackburn spoke publicly at the time about the invitation. But since Blackburn is now running for governor, I wanted to get her ties to the breakfast organizers — the Fellowship Foundation, aka “The Family” — on the record.
That, and I just might have another story coming…!
Election Watch
MINNESOTA Progressives, socialists, and Republicans who call themselves establishment Democrats are facing off in a number of contests today.
In the governor’s race, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is so establishment she’s also been part of the Fellowship Foundation, the same secretive, right-wing Christian group that created one of the Republican candidates, former MyPillow™ CEO Mike Lindell (he stepped down last week to focus on losing). Lindell’s the Trump-endorsed favorite in today’s Republican primary, which is making the establishment Republicans cry into TheirPillows.
Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan (D-MN) is going up against Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) in the Senate race. Flanagan has the backing of Democratic socialists, so obviously Craig has raised more money, but still hasn’t managed to pull ahead.
SOUTH CAROLINA Republicans are holding a special Senate primary today and instead of rallying behind Pres. Donald Trump’s favorite, they’re trying to defeat her.
Trump endorsed Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC), who was appointed last month because she was the sister of the guy who had the job before, the way healthy democracy works.
Politico reports that the field is crowded enough that there will likely be a runoff. Which means Trump could do what he did in the governor’s race and endorse both Graham and whoever she’s up against because what the fuck does he care.
WISCONSIN Establishment Democrats aren’t just sitting by and letting socialist state Rep. Francesca Hong walk away with today’s gubernatorial primary.
Outgoing Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) has been going out all over the state trying to coalesce the party behind one alternative to Hong: Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Politico reports. Which is fine! Democracy!
But if establishment Democrats are concerned that Hong will be a weaker candidate in the general, then we should expect to see them, and Evers, work just as hard to elect her in November as they’re working to defeat her in August.
Media Watch
Got this notification on my phone Sunday night:
Damn you for your cruelty, strained immigration system! Why would you do such a monstrous thing? I know, I know: Hurt people hurt people and strained immigration systems strain immigration systems.
Although the strains star in Politico’s headline to the story, at least the subheadline gives a wee hint of what’s really going on and who’s really to blame:
So that’s who’s straining the strained immigration system!
Two Quickies
Last month was America’s hottest month since the invention of months, new government data show until Pres. Donald Trump finds out parts of the government are still woke to reality and diversely inclusive of record highs. The average U.S. temperature in the U.S. for July 2026 was 76.89°, breaking the record set in July 1936, when the leading suspect of causing climate change was phlogiston.
Congressional Republicans auditioning for the part of “Bully #2” in the next John Hughes movie released text messages on Monday from when Dr. Tony Fauci used a government phone in his role as director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The text messages reveal repeated instances in which Fauci engages with public-health colleagues in empirically based discussions of science and medicine. In other words, they caught him doing his job. So, yeah, he’s cooked.
TCB
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Go get ‘em, kids! And don’t miss President Donald Trump starring in Mission Inedible: Ghost Protocol!
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks. He is a member of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation advisory board.
The guy killed in the Butler, PA, assassination attempt whose name you probably forgot because Trump never mentions him and neither do Republicans when they talk about how Jesus saved Trump but never much cared for Comperatore.
The truly heinous part of the AF 1 swap is rooted in the fact that Air Force 1 isn’t a specific aircraft it’s the call sign for *whatever aircraft POTUS is flying on*. And after Fat Donny had snuck off in a box of Totino’s Pizza Rolls (as if airline food wasn’t already bad enough) the 747 with the press corps and White House staff took off, with its transponder initially dark, then started broadcasting AF1 as its IFF signal. Which is *actively* painting a target on the backs of everyone aboard, while the coward in chief slinks off on JD Vance’s plane.
OMG 😳 This broke my brain. It’s not even 9 am and I’m already over the internet for today😮💨 How much longer do we have to put up with this madness? Miller can’t be replaced on the ballot now and the polls have him in the shitter. The district polls show it will surely flip from red to blue.