by Allison Detzel | Sep 29, 2026 | Economy, News, White House
MS NOW’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski gave Donald Trump a reality check on the state of the U.S. economy after the president told reporters Americans were “twice as wealthy” as a result of his administration’s policies.
“The economy sucks,” Brzezinski said bluntly.
On Tuesday’s “Morning Joe,” Scarborough tore into the president and argued his administration hasn’t focused on the economic well-being of everyday Americans, instead choosing to push policies that benefit the country’s wealthiest.
“The economy is OK for people like Trump,” he said. “The economy is better than OK for people like Trump’s children, who are gazillionaires now.”
Scarborough said that if Trump listened to Americans, he would clearly see how they feel as if they’re being left behind by his administration.
“What are the polls saying? Americans, working Americans, middle-class Americans, even upper-middle-class Americans, what are they saying this economy is like?” he asked.
According to a recent poll from NBC News, a majority of voters, 55%, said they believed Trump’s policies have hurt the economy.
“Tariffs are inflationary,” Scarborough explained. “Wars are inflationary. All the trade wars that are going on are inflationary.”
The MS NOW host said he would not be surprised if the president’s economic agenda caused interest rates, which were raised earlier this month, to rise even further.
“That’s going to mean credit card payments are going to be higher for working Americans and middle-class Americans,” Scarborough said. “That means mortgages are going to be higher. That means car loans are going to be higher. That means student loans are going to be higher. That means their lives are going to be more expensive.”
You can watch Scarborough’s full comments in the clip
by Michael A. Cohen | Sep 25, 2026 | Economy, Opinion, White House, World
If recent public opinion polling is correct, the Republican Party is on the verge of an electoral bloodbath. While it’s typical for the incumbent party to struggle in midterm elections, the situation today for the GOP is far more perilous — and a big part of the reason is President Donald Trump’s decision to go to war against Iran.
More than 200 days since it began, it’s clear that the Iran war is a strategic disaster, and that view is widely shared by the American people. Support for the war routinely polls in the low-30s, but of greater concern for Republicans are the second and third order effects of the war.
Gas prices are up around 50% since the war began — and have spiked this month. Sticker shock at the pump has contributed to higher inflation, a more than 20% rise in airline ticket prices (because of higher jet fuel costs) and even a 1.25 percentage point jump in mortgage rates, because the Federal Reserve has been forced to keep interest rates higher.
In a new report I wrote this week for the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan foreign policy think tank in Washington, D.C., Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, estimated the total cost of the war at $220 billion — that’s approximately $1,650 per average American household.
More than 200 days since it began, it’s clear that the Iran war is a strategic disaster, and that view is widely shared by the American people.
The Pentagon’s share of the Iran debacle is around $40 billion and the costs keep ticking up. To make matters worse, the United States has used
by Allison Detzel | Sep 25, 2026 | Economy, Iran, News, World
MS NOW’s Ali Velshi tore into Marco Rubio, blasting the secretary of state for his “nonsense” claim that diesel prices would be three times their current price if not for Donald Trump’s war with Iran. The “11th Hour” host said Rubio’s remarks proved he wasn’t the “adult in the room” in the Trump administration, as some thought he would be.
During an interview with Fox News, Rubio was asked about the skyrocketing price of diesel, which on Tuesday hit a record high of $6.53 a gallon — up more than 75% from a year ago, according to AAA.
“Every American president says it. Every world leader you meet with tells the president, ‘We agree they can’t have a nuclear weapon,’” Rubio said on Tuesday. “Eventually someone has to do something about it, or it’s going to happen.”
“And then imagine North Korea, but in the Middle East; that would be catastrophic for the world,” he added. “And you wouldn’t be paying $6 or whatever diesel is this morning — you’d be paying triple that.”
But Velshi wasn’t buying it.
“Come on, man — come on,” he said in response to Rubio’s comments. “I used to like you. I used to think you were smart.”
“This nonsense about [how] diesel would have been $18 a gallon if we didn’t attack Iran — that’s not true,” Velshi said. “There was a way to get Iran to not have a nuclear weapon: It was called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal that was signed in 2015 under the Obama administration.”
The MS NOW host said the agreement “was demonstrated to be working” before “it was ripped
by Maximillian Alvarez | Sep 23, 2026 | AI, baltimore, Economy, Politics and Movements: US, video
Editor’s Note: Council Bill 26-0174 (data centers) will get another public hearing in front of the Baltimore City Council’s Land Use & Transportation Committee on the 4th floor of City Hall on the morning of September 24.
Baltimore, Maryland, currently has a moratorium on new data center development, but a proposed City Council bill has residents nervous that the door is creaking open for data centers to come into the city—and that City Council views this as “inevitable.”
Council Bill 26-0174, sponsored by City Councilmember Phylicia Porter, would require new data center projects in Baltimore to go through a conditional use approval process that includes a health equity assessment. Residents opposed to the bill say that while the bill may be well intentioned, they want a full data center ban, not stricter guidelines for data centers operating in Baltimore.
In this on-the-ground report, TRNN takes you inside the August 27 Baltimore City Planning Commission public hearing on Council Bill 26-0174:
TRNN also published a full, unedited recording of the August 27 Baltimore City Planning Commission public hearing on Council Bill 26-0174, which is free and available to the public on our YouTube channel:
Credits:
Videography: Maximillian Alvarez
Post-Production: Dave Hebden, Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Speaker 1:
We all are well aware that we’re not dealing with good faith actors when it comes to the people who want to build data centers.
Speaker 2:
I currently work at a data center. That doesn’t mean that I approve of data centers. Every
Speaker 3:
Every time it storms, it seems that a bunch of lights go down in the city. I’m confused why we’re
by Hayes Brown | Sep 23, 2026 | Congress, Economy, elections
The ever-growing national debt has loomed threateningly over America’s economy for decades now. The House isn’t currently in session, but the Budget Committee still took its work addressing the issue on the road. Chair Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, held a field hearing Monday in Dallas on “examining the need for a Fiscal Commission” to tackle the problem.
Monday’s hearing is proof that Capitol Hill is ground zero for more cases of amnesia than most soap operas, notably whenever Republicans hold control of the White House and Congress. The apparent memory loss affects dozens, if not hundreds, of GOP lawmakers at a time, blocking out any concern about the national debt. Previous efforts to reduce the debt are similarly tossed out the metaphorical window, lost to the ravages of time.
The apparent memory loss affects dozens, if not hundreds, of GOP lawmakers at a time, blocking out any concern about the national debt.
How convenient then for Republicans that this affliction appears to be lifting right as Democrats seem poised to wrestle control of the House, and potentially the Senate, in the upcoming midterms. (The massive deficits spawned under President Donald Trump and George W. Bush will undoubtedly remain obscured in their recollections.) Their memories partially restored, Republicans will be free to once again insist that Democrats must be the responsible party and only the responsible GOP can bring the out-of-control debt to heel — but only by slashing spending, of course, not raising taxes on the wealthy.
Arrington rightly noted that the debt crossed the $40 trillion threshold last month, making it more than ten times higher than in the early 1990s. The
by Joseph Zeballos-Roig | Sep 23, 2026 | Congress, Economy, Opinion
Republicans have long ridiculed Jimmy Carter as a feckless figure who did little to help a limping economy and was outsmarted by foreign adversaries like Iran. President Donald Trump once used the occasion of Carter’s 100th birthday, in October 2024, to declare him a success — at least compared with Joe Biden.
Now, with few options at their disposal to tackle the record-high diesel prices battering farmers and truck drivers, and with just six weeks to go until the midterms, growing pockets of the Republican Party are reaching into the Carter playbook.
In the past three days, the concept of a diesel export ban caught fire among Republican lawmakers. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa spearheaded the GOP jailbreak when he endorsed the proposal on Saturday, saying in an X post that “high diesel prices ARE KILLING FARMERS INCOME.”
Republicans are falling back on a Carter-era idea that only deepened rock bottom for farmers.
Now a stampede of Iowa Republicans is rushing to back the proposal, as diesel scaled to a record high of $6.53 per gallon nationwide. It’s more than double the price from a year ago, thanks in large part to the Iran war and, to a lesser extent, the war in Ukraine. Republicans are demanding immediate action.
“Iowa farmers are filling combines this week at the highest diesel price this state has ever seen, while oil companies ship record amounts of American diesel overseas,” Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks said, calling companies to “sell American diesel to Americans first.” The three-term congresswoman’s re-election race has been rated as a toss-up by Inside Elections, a nonpartisan publication.
Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is campaigning to replace retiring Sen.
