Trump faces crises on economy and immigration this week

The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and the brief hunt for the suspected shooter rocked President Donald Trump and conservatives last week.

- Eric Garcia, The Independent

The White House has sought to make Kirk a martyr for the conservative Republican cause, lowering flags to half-staff in his honor, holding a memorial service in the recently MAGA-fied Kennedy Center and having Vice President JD Vance co-host his podcast on Monday.

But while the Kirk assassination briefly swept aside a series of crises at home and abroad that threaten Trump's major goals, they remain nevertheless as pressing issues for the White House. On Thursday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics put out its Consumer Price Index report, which showed that inflation jumped by 0.4 percent in August and by 2.9 percent in the past 12 months. Jobless claims also rose by 27,000 to 263,000 for the week ending Sept. 6, one of the highest levels since 2021, when the economy was still recovering from the Covid-19-induced recession.

The only potential source of good economic news for this week is that the Federal Reserve will meet and likely lower interest rates by a quarteror half-percent after Trump has long badgered Chairman Jerome Powell into doing so.