Trump’s policies lead to 274% reduction in retail jobs since he took office

Store closures in the U.S. have led to a huge 274% spike in retail layoffs so far this year, a new report says. In the first five months of 2025, retailers announced 75,082 job cuts compared to 20,276 during the same period the year before, according to business and executive coaching firm, Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. The figures include major job losses at retail giants like Macy’s, which is set to close 150 stores across the U.S. after sales dropped by a staggering $21.3 billion.

Some 66 of the closures were confirmed in January. Macy’s is one of America’s most familiar brands but in total will be shuttering around one-third of its underperforming locations by the end of 2026. Earlier this year, fabric and crafts retailer Joann announced it was going out of business, following bankruptcy, and was forced to shut down all 800 of its stores. The Ohio-based retailer had been a destination for generations of quilters, knitters, and lovers of craft projects for 80 years.

And pharmacy giant CVS recently announced plans to close 270 stores nationwide in 2025. A spokesperson for the brand said several factors went into the decisions to close the locations, including “population shifts and consumer buying patterns.” JCPenney, Forever 21 and Walgreens are among the other high-profile chains that have announced store closures in 2025.

Retail is the second-leading industry to suffer job cuts this year, behind the federal government, which has seen over 270,000 jobs slashed, thanks to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

I’m confused — Trump said the US economy would be booming under his administration

Virginia Republicans in full melt-down and civil war . . . and that’s a good thing.

In just five short months, millions of Virginians will head to the polls for an election that will decide a whole lot more than which party controls the governor’s mansion in 2026. Democratic state lawmakers need to retain control of the legislature in order to advance a trio of ballot measures protecting abortion rights, codifying same-sex marriage, and restoring voting rights to ex-felons.

Republicans have framed those three ballot measures and this year’s election as a do-or-die moment for the commonwealth. Turnout will be critical, as Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin is barred by law from seeking a second term and his chosen successor, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, lacks his name recognition.

A united Virginia Republican Party could, Youngkin hopes, give Earle-Seares a decisive turnout advantage in a hotly competitive race. There’s just one problem: Virginia’s Republican leaders absolutely hate each other, and they don’t care who knows it. The party’s MAGA civil war has left Youngkin with a political migraine—and given Democrats a golden opportunity to flip a swing seat governorship. 

The trouble began, as these things often do, with a MAGA-themed gay porn sex scandal. This one involved the Virginia GOP’s candidate for lieutenant governor, John Reid, the first openly gay man to earn the role. Internal Republican research linked the Trump-aligned Reid to multiple salacious gay porn sites. That’s the kind of thing that puts you in the doghouse with the Christian conservative Republicans who elected Youngkin and Earle-Sears.

Youngkin told Reid it was time to drop out. Reid not only refused, he released a series of videos denying the allegations and accusing Youngkin’s team of extortion. The governor’s failed effort to bully Reid out of the race enraged the state’s MAGA movement, who saw the move as a backdoor effort to push their champion off the ticket.

Eventually the measured Youngkin lost his cool. He dispatched his top strategist, Matt Moran, to threaten Reid with serious consequences if he stayed in the race. Then, when Reid went public with those threats in a sworn affidavit, Moran and Youngkin issued a forceful public denial. But to paraphrase former FBI Director James Comey, oh lordy, there were tapes. Just a few days after Reid published extensive audio recordings proving his claims, Moran announced his resignation from Youngkin’s Spirit of Virginia PAC.

The entire embarrassing incident poisoned what were already pretty nasty relations between Virginia’s MAGA and Christian conservative sects. It also put Earle-Sears in an impossible position, because her largely Christian voter base now expected her to do something about the gay man scandalizing the state party.

Instead, Earle-Sears decided to anger everybody. 

In a statement in which she quoted heavily from the Bible, Earle-Sears nevertheless failed to express any opinion on her controversial running mate. When pressed by reporters to offer her opinion on Reid’s behavior, Earle-Sears said only that “It’s his race” and “his decision alone” to stay in the race. The state’s Christian conservatives read Earle-Seats’ vagueness as weakness. To the party’s MAGA wing, it sounded like carefully worded treachery.

Virginia Republicans’ frustrations are written across every poll conducted since Reid’s scandal surfaced, with Democratic nominee Abigail Spangerger notching small but consistent gains while Earle-Sears’ popularity plateaus. In January, Spanberger led the race by only 2 points. By late May, her lead had widened to 9 points. What once looked like a nail-biter of a race increasingly looks like a rout.

Earle-Sears’ struggles are also derailing her biggest obsession: controlling other women’s reproductive rights. Earlier this year, Virginia’s Democratic legislature narrowly passed a constitutional amendment enshrining abortion rights in law, a process they will need to repeat next year before the measure goes to voters in November 2026.

Earle-Sears has repeatedly said she’s “morally opposed” to the amendment. Keeping her out of the governor’s office is the best way to ensure Virginian women preserve their freedom of choice.

But what does that have to do with Virginia Republicans’ bubbling civil war? A lot, actually. The party’s deep rifts led to a spate of costly primary challenges as MAGA Republicans clashed with Christian conservatives. Meanwhile, a well-organized state Democratic Party is fielding legislative candidates in all 100 of Virginia’s House districts, forcing Republicans to spend even more on races that once went uncontested.

Hating takes a lot of time and energy, and Virginia’s GOP is discovering it doesn’t really have time for much else—including stopping their own slide into total dysfunction and reality TV ghoulishness. Democrats like Spanberger don’t just look like the adults in the room, with the current state of Virginia’s Republican Party, they are the only adults in the room.

Virginia’s political turmoil is another powerful reminder that the MAGA movement is incapable of existing alongside any other competing ideology. Its authoritarian roots make any kind of political coexistence impossible, even among other sects of Republicanism. Even when it means breaking a once-competitive party in two.

Youngkin and Virginia’s Christian conservatives now find themselves losing an existential battle for their party’s future. It’s a battle we’ve seen play out dozens of times in state parties and in the consciences of individual lawmakers like Youngkin, who probably regrets his own devil’s bargain with the MAGA movement right about now.

The Virginia GOP’s total collapse positions Democrats to make historic gains across the state. More importantly, it may be the key to securing a wave of long overdue reforms that make Virginia more just and more fair for everyone. It isn’t often that political parties flame out as spectacularly as Virginia’s Republicans but that’s what happens when you tie yourself first to the old Confederacy, then to the Tea Parties, and finally to Trump.

If you are military, and you are ordered to attack civilians, read this:

So let me get this straight. Trump called out the CA National Guard in L.A. but he blocked the use

. . . .of the D.C. National Guard by ordering Acting Sec. of Defense Christopher Miller to order a stand down for the DC National Guard two days before Jan. 6, 2021 violent and illegal storming of the Capitol Building by Trump’s MAGA supporters who believed his lies that the election was stolen from him in 2020.

This is a dictatorship kind of thing.

Trump, Stephen Miller, and the rest of his Nazi henchmen  don’t really care about illegal immigrants but want to provoke violence so they can declare martial law.

Trump knows he lost in 2016, 2020, and barely squeaked by in 2024 and he and Miller, Bannon, Bondi, Noem, Hogsbreath, and those useless bags of hair who are Senate Republicans and Representatives are all in on killing Americans who disagree them.

“Hit a cop, go to jail” . . . unless you are a friend of Trump, then, you are pardoned

In response to the disturbances in Los Angeles, on Saturday, June 7, FBI Director Kash Patel posted the following on the social media site X:

“Hit a cop, you’re going to jail… doesn’t matter where you came from, how you got here, or what movement speaks to you. If the local police force won’t back our men and women on the thin blue line, we FBI will.”

We need to remind Patel that many of the January 6 rioters who attacked and seized the US Capitol were convicted of beating police officers, many of them beaten very badly, yet President Trump pardoned every single one of them, including pardoning those who “Hit a cop . . . “

If it were not for double standards, the Trump administration would have no standards.

 

How Republicans steal elections

Trump is an illegitimate president, but he’s not the first. The last Republican who was elected president without fraud or naked treason was Dwight D. Eisenhower. And it’s damn well past time that Democrats started telling the story.

But let’s start with Trump, and then go to Nixon, Reagan, and Bush.

Greg Palast recently did the math, and it’s now irrefutable: the only reason Trump is in the White House is because over 4 million Americans were either denied their right to vote or their votes were discarded.

The US Elections Assistance Commission data tells the damning story: a staggering 4.7 million voters were wrongfully purged from voter rolls before the election. By August 2024, self-proclaimed “vigilante” vote fraud hunters had challenged the eligibility of 317,886 voters across multiple states. When Election Day arrived, the Georgia NAACP estimated challenges had exceeded 200,000 in Georgia alone.

This wasn’t just a few isolated incidents. It was a coordinated national strategy:

Read the full article here.