U.S. economic growth dropped to 1.5 percent in the second quarter, down from a 2.1 percent annual rate in the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Thursday. Economists were expecting a GDP growth rate of 1.8 percent, but thanks to President Trump’s Iran war, disastrous tariffs (including new tariffs levied on more than 50 countries last week), and cuts to government spending, we are, once again, not doing as well as Trump claims.“Americans are feeling gloomy: consumer confidence remains in the doldrums as households worry about rising costs,” The Economist reports. “Although annual inflation slowed to 3.5 percent in June from 4.2 percent in May, thanks largely to a temporary fall in petrol prices, renewed fighting has since pushed oil prices higher again.”Regular gasoline came in at an average of $4.22 a gallon in the second quarter, a dramatic increase from less than $3 a gallon before the U.S. and Israel began the war on Iran in February. Now that the shaky U.S.-Iran ceasefire is dead, Americans are bracing, once again, for painful prices at the gas pump. These latest figures reaffirm that the main concern right now for Americans is cost—of just about everything. Even Fox News recognizes that voters are unhappy with Trump’s economy and want “major change.” And by “major change,” we do not mean more tariffs. Plus, the Federal Reserve opted to hold interest rates steady for a fifth consecutive meeting on Wednesday. New Fed chairman Kevin Warsh acknowledged that there’s no quick fix to ease the cost of living, telling reporters there is no “magic wand” to bring prices down. In other words, Americans are getting the worst of both worlds: an economy that’s slowing down while prices keep climbing.But of course, in Trump’s own words, he “doesn’t think about Americans’ financial situation” when making decisions about the war in Iran. Editor’s Pick:Katie Miller, a former Trump administration staffer and wife of White House adviser Stephen Miller, has called for Anthony Fauci to be jailed, citing the recent release of his diary entries as proof that he is nothing but an attention-seeker. But the diary entries reveal something else. During President Trump’s first term, when Katie Miller was then-Vice President Mike Pence’s communications director and involved in the White House’s response to Covid-19, she appeared quite close with the director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases. Fauci provided regular medical advice to the Millers, counseling the family after Katie tested positive for the virus in 2020 while she was pregnant, when her husband had Covid-19, and when her newborn child had a medical episode, NOTUS reports. “I am calling katie frequently to check on her couple time per day. She is very anxious about getting very ill since she is 10 weeks pregnant. Tonight she had an anxiety reaction. I calmed her over the phone,” Fauci wrote in his diary on May 9, 2020. Fauci wrote in another entry how he called the doctors treating Miller’s child directly to discuss the baby’s medical care. Senator Rand Paul released over 1,000 pages of Fauci’s diary Saturday, and quite a few of those entries showed the extent of Fauci’s interactions with Miller before they were later redacted. NOTUS compared pages before and after the redactions, and found that many of the suddenly redacted passages concerned the Millers’ relationship with Fauci, with the original documents mentioning Katie 56 times, while the redacted version mentioned her just 37 times. Katie told NOTUS not to publish details of her child’s medical history, claiming that Paul published them without her permission. She also said that despite her regular contact with Fauci during the pandemic, she thought at the time that he was “incredibly self-centered and sought to promote himself above the good of the people.”“He was not my doctor. He was not my friend. He was a work colleague who called me for work purposes, and in the course of a phone call, you would discuss other things,” Miller said to NOTUS. Fauci describes Katie Miller in his diary as someone who he saw as an ally to help deal with Pence and Trump while the Coronavirus Task Force was active. “katie Miller is great (tough, smart,but great),” Fauci wrote on March 25, 2020. He also spoke to her multiple times while she was traveling to her parents’ home in Texas later in October that year, after her husband tested positive. “Am on phone frequently with katie and Stephen,” Fauci wrote on December 31, 2020.But since then, Katie has blasted Fauci frequently online, accusing him of caring “more about virtue signaling than science” and causing “decades of harm” to children with his leadership of the government’s response to Covid-19. She now speaks often about not vaccinating her youngest child on her podcast.It’s highly hypocritical how she and her husband are now trashing a dedicated public servant and medical professional who went out of his way to help them during the Covid-19 pandemic, when they dealt with the same fears of the virus as every other American. Now the Millers are happy to pile on and blame Fauci for the failures of the Trump administration’s Covid-19 response. More on Republicans and Fauci:Donald Trump has bought into the unfounded rumor that the families of New York City’s 9/11 victims don’t want Mayor Zohran Mamdani at the tragedy’s twenty-fifth anniversary ceremony in September.When asked about the conspiracy during a White House press conference Wednesday, Trump claimed that he “understood” why there was pressure to keep Mamdani away from the event, telling a reporter that the victims’ families were “very unhappy with the mayor.”“I think they’re having a hard time with Mandami,” Trump said, pronouncing the New York City mayor’s name wrong. “The people having to do with—anybody having to do with 9/11 right now, on the victims’ side, and there’s a lot of them, they’re very unhappy with what’s going on in New York.”The conspiracy appears to have come from a New York Post headline, published on the Sunday edition’s front page, that claimed “thousands of 9/11 families” wanted Mamdani banned from the ceremony.But that’s not true: The Rupert Murdoch–owned paper cited a Change.org petition launched by Giovanni Galante as the origin point of the startling figure. But Galante, who lost his wife Grace Catherine Galante in the attacks, didn’t have the signatures to back up that claim.The petition argued that Mamdani’s reluctance to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada”—which pro-Palestinian activists have used as a universal call for Palestinian liberation from Israeli occupation—should disqualify him from attendance, as it suggests he does not “share American values” with the victims’ families.The petition has since accrued 42,000 “verified signatures,” though that simply means the electronic sign-offs were conducted by a person rather than a bot. It does not ensure the signatures came from New Yorkers—let alone the families of the nearly 3,000 people who died during the Al Qaeda terrorist attack.In an interview with Popular Information, Galante said that no such list actually existed.“We don’t have a list,” Galante told the independent digital newsletter.Even the Post story contradicted its headline’s wild claim, reporting that the petition had “collected over 1,100 signatures in a little over a week, including from at least 300 victims’ families.” But the Post interviewed just three sources who lost a family member during the attack and also signed the petition.In reality, the 300 figure reported by the Post was also the result of guesswork based on the petition’s popularity.“We all know each other, so … think about it. If you know 10 people and they give it to 10 more people they know that lost. That’s how we got the 300 number,” Galante said. “I don’t go through the list and look at the names.”Nonetheless, the story was quickly cannibalized by right-wing media, finding plenty of air time across Fox News’s myriad properties and even spreading to CBS News.“Thousands of 9/11 victims’ families are asking New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani not to attend this year’s solemn remembrance ceremony,” CBS reported Monday before issuing a retraction.Mamdani, meanwhile, has no plans to stay away from the event.“I will proudly honor the families, the survivors, the first responders forever impacted by that horrific terror attack by standing alongside them at this year’s 9/11 commemoration, reaffirming that we will never forget the solemn day felt by all of us who call this city home and, frankly, by all of us who called this country home,” Mamdani said.In a statement to CBS News, the 9/11 Memorial & Museum noted that it had “intentionally worked to keep the commemoration free of politics. Government officials from across the political spectrum have attended the ceremony simply to bear witness.”Editor’s Pick:President Trump has announced yet another renovation project that will cost billions, while in the midst of a failing, unpopular war with Iran. The president revealed plans for a $22.5 billion renovation of Dulles International Airport at a press conference on Wednesday afternoon alongside Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby.“This is all about the Dulles Airport.… It’s considered one of the worst airports anywhere in the world. We’re gonna make it maybe the best, with some hard work and some good thought process,” Trump said to open the presser. He described the plan as a “major, and long overdue, renovation and reconstruction of Washington’s really horribly thought-of Dulles International Airport.” Trump plans to add over five million square feet of newly renovated space, replacing the airport’s C and D concourses and constructing a multistory above-ground parking garage connected to them. He wants a new air train and new restaurants and lounges. Mock-ups of the renovation also feature Trump’s classic gold styling throughout the airport.Trump claims the airport’s renovation will be bonded and thus not need federal funds, with participating airlines paying for the whole project. “Cost was no object, unfortunately or fortunately,” he said.“It’s gonna be so efficient. Right now it’s totally inefficient,” he continued. “Between the trams and the Star Wars thing … elevated buses, nobody knows what’s going on, it’s a real mess.”Regardless of how good or bad you think Dulles is, the level of priority this project has taken on—much like the White House ballroom, the Kennedy Center, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and Trump’s desired “Triumphal Arch”—is very questionable given the state of the war on Iran, the economy, and upcoming midterm elections. Especially at that price. Construction is expected to begin next year. Sean Duffy says the redevelopment of Dulles will be bonded at $22.5 BILLION pic.twitter.com/YCQ8ny3U9r— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 29, 2026 Read The TNR Blue Book, our new newsletter on the Democratic Party:Texas’s Republican Senate nominee, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, is struggling to raise funds thanks to his scandal-laden career and a nasty primary. The New York Times reports Wednesday that major Republican donors have so far refused to spend money on Paxton’s campaign, where he is polling behind James Talarico, who could be the first Democrat Texas sends to the Senate since 1993. Those donors had spent money in the state’s Republican primary, which placed a spotlight on Paxton’s extramarital affair and criminal charges over alleged state securities fraud. After Paxton narrowly secured the GOP nomination following a runoff with incumbent Senator John Cornyn, these donors’ opinions haven’t changed, especially since the attorney general has been seen traveling with his lover and now has been accused of committing voter fraud. Two of the GOP’s biggest money committees, the Senate Leadership Fund and MAGA Inc., haven’t spent any money on Paxton’s campaign despite President Donald Trump backing him. It’s become an open secret that each is waiting for the other super PAC to pony up millions of dollars, according to the Times. The former is run by people close to Senate Majority Leader John Thune and who backed Cornyn in the primary, while the latter is run by Trump advisers. “Somebody is going to have to spend big money,” Dan Eberhart, an oil executive raising funds for Paxton, told the Times. “We’ll see who blinks.”Other national Republican groups plan to spend money on other Senate races in Ohio and Kansas, even though those races aren’t as close as Texas. As of early July, Talarico has nine times as much cash in his main campaign account as Paxton does, and has already spent $12 million in ads. He also continues to rake in money from wealthy Democrats in places such as Chicago and Martha’s Vineyard. Will Trump and the GOP step up to bail out Paxton? Read more about Paxton: