Raw Story

Crashing lumber prices are sending a "troubling" warning sign for the U.S. economy following uncertainty over President Donald Trump's tariffs and a "deteriorating housing market," the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

"Crashing wood prices are troubling because they have been a reliable leading indicator on the direction of the housing market as well as broader economic activity," according to the Journal.

Two U.S. sawyers last week said they will decelerate production and "curtail output, slowing the decline."

Trump tariffs and import taxes have caused unpredictable impacts on supply chains.

"During the Covid-19 lockdown, two-by-four prices nearly tripled the prepandemic record, an early sign of the inflation and broken supply chains that would bedevil the economic reopening," the Journal noted. "When the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates in 2022 to curb inflation, lumber was among the first assets to decline in value. Now, prices are signaling caution again."

Lumber prices have had a turbulent road. In anticipation of Trump's threatened higher duties on Canadian imports and tariffs on wood, a surplus of wood was set aside in the United States.

Wood prices climbed in the spring when the White House claimed "it was investigating national security aspects of imported lumber and Trump threatened steep tariffs on all Canadian goods."

The price plummeted when Trump let down tariff talk on Canada, and then prices surged again in May when buyers were looking ahead.

"In May, they started surging again as buyers began stocking up ahead of the scheduled hike in existing Canadian lumber duties and Trump’s threatened tariffs," according to WSJ.

The Trump administration is reportedly considering more tariffs — as it did with aluminum, steel and copper products — on imported wood, citing national security concerns.

Producers plan to continue cutting back on production.

In July, residential building permits slipped to just 1.4 million units, a seasonally adjusted annual rate, and the fewest units in construction since June 2020.

Construction spending in the U.S. dropped by 3.4% in July compared to the record amount set in May 2024.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a risque birthday note from President Donald Trump to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In July, the Wall Street Journal first reported that Trump had sent Epstein the note written inside of a doodle of a woman's silhouette. The note referenced a "wonderful secret" shared by the two men.

Trump quickly sued the paper, claiming that the note did not exist.

The note was reportedly provided to Congress by Epstein's estate.

"President Trump called the Epstein investigation a hoax and claimed that his birthday note didn't exist. Now we know that Donald Trump was lying and is doing everything he can to cover up the truth," Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) told the Journal on Monday. "Enough of the games and lies, release the full files now."

Christian MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk criticized "modern women" who prioritize financial security over having children.

On his Monday podcast, Kirk cited an NBC poll that indicated men who voted for President Donald Trump ranked having children as their top priority. In contrast, women who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris placed more emphasis on financial independence.

"Modern women, this polling shows modern women have become incredible narcissists," Kirk remarked. "And that's not an accusation. It's just what the data shows."

"Men are worrying more about duty and obligation," he continued. "Getting married and having children is a values-based decision. And women have to stop thinking about themselves all the time. Me, me, me! My body, my choice, my decision."

"Yes, of course, you have the freedom and the agency to do that. But not only are you ending up miserable, the country is suffering because of it."

According to Kirk, the poll showed that the "values of American women have been corrupted."

"Instead of my body, my choice, it should be my family, my community, my church, my country," he insisted. "Instead of my body, my choice, it should be my kids. Your body, your choice will end up having you miserable."

"Men are natural leaders, so men know that they must lead society towards having lots of children and lead women towards having lots of children," he added. "The silver lining is that if men are coming around, women will likely kind of come around."

"My message to the women of America: Get married and have children."

Watch the video below from Real America's Voice.

Academy Award-winning actor Tom Hanks had the rug pulled out from under him after a military award ceremony previously scheduled to honor the actor as an “outstanding citizen” was cancelled, the Washington Post reported Saturday.

The alumni association at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point had planned to present Hanks with the Sylvanus Thayer Award, which has been presented by West Point alumni to non-West Point graduates since 1958, and is awarded to those who “exemplify” a devotion to West Point’s motto of “Duty, Honor, Country.”

On Friday, however, Retired Army Col. Mark Bieger sent out an email notifying West Point faculty that the ceremony would no longer be held, according to the Washington Post, which obtained a copy of the email.

“This decision allows the Academy to continue its focus on its core mission of preparing cadets to lead, fight, and win as officers in the world’s most lethal force, the United States Army,” Bieger wrote in the email.

Hanks was first announced as a would-be recipient of the award in June, with the alumni group citing his work on films such as “Saving Private Ryan” and “Greyhound,” as well as his involvement in producing the war drama miniseries “Band of Brothers.”

Hanks expressed excitement at the announcement, calling it an “honor” to be recognized by an institution he held dear.

“To have my first ever visit to the Academy be to accept such an honor as the Thayer Award is simply astounding,” Hanks said back in June. “West Point’s legacy of leadership, character, and service to the nation is a powerful example for all Americans.”

Bill Pulte is the head of Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He has been in the news recently over his allegations that prominent opponents of President Donald Trump committed mortgage fraud. Most recently, Pulte has put Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook in his crosshairs, claiming that she listed two homes as principal residences on mortgage applications.

Trump immediately used this allegation as a basis for trying to fire Cook, even though the Fed is supposed to be an independent agency outside of the president’s control. Governor Cook sued Trump over his firing effort, and the courts will ultimately decide whether this is within his power.

At this point, it is important to remember that Cook has not even been indicted for anything, much less convicted. We only have an allegation from Mr. Pulte.

It is also worth noting the irony of Trump, who was convicted in a civil trial for putting false information on loan forms, trying to fire someone for listing two homes as principal residences. Among the items that Trump put on his loan form was the claim that his 10,000 square foot condo was actually 32,000 square feet. Perhaps President Trump is offended by the pettiness of Cook’s alleged crime.

While the validity of Pulte’s allegations will have to be determined by the courts, the real scandal is Pulte himself. He is supposed to be running the agency that oversees the processing of tens of millions of mortgages by two huge quasi-public agencies. We are not supposed to be paying him to rifle through mortgage documents to find and disclose dirt that Trump can use against his political opponents.

The media really need to be directing some serious questions in Pulte’s direction.

First and foremost, how did he happen to discover the mortgage abuses that he alleges were committed by NY Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), and now Governor Lisa Cook? Were these “discoveries” the result of random inspections done by agency staff?

Furthermore, was he looking through non-public mortgage files to gather this information?

Also, why did he make this information public when he uncovered it, instead of going through normal channels. If he had followed established procedures, he would have turned over the information to the agency’s inspector general, who would then turn if over to the Justice Department, if they determined it was appropriate. The first time the public would hear about it was when an indictment was issued.

What reason does Pulte have for not following normal procedures?

Pulte really needs to come clean on this.

He should also come clean on his holdings of Pulte Group stock, the huge housing construction company started by his grandfather. It may be the case that conflicts of interest are almost a job requirement in the Trump administration, but many of us still think that government officials should be working for the public, not trying to fatten their pocketbook.

If Pulte helps Trump get his wish and a Trump-controlled Fed lowers interest rates, it would provide a big boost to the Pulte Group’s profits. That hope would give Pulte a strong motivation to try to hasten the day when Trump appointees dominate the Fed’s Open Market Committee that sets interest rates.

Anyhow, there is definitely a big scandal here — but it involves Bill Pulte, not Lisa Cook. The media really need to take notice.

• Dean Baker is the co-founder and the senior economist of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of several books, including "Getting Back to Full Employment: A Better bargain for Working People," "The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive," "The United States Since 1980," "Social Security: The Phony Crisis" (with Mark Weisbrot), and "The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer." He also has a blog, "Beat the Press," where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues.

Could Trump’s weakness and the GOP’s cowardice mean the end of democracy around the world? Could his part in the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell scandal be the proverbial horseshoe nail that brings down majority rule and representative government worldwide?

The world’s first modern major confrontation between authoritarianism (in this case, a kingdom) and democracy was the American Revolution in 1776. Outside of tribal societies, democracy had been largely dormant all over the world for the previous two thousand years, but we installed an early version of liberal democracy here in 1789.

Our first president, George Washington, not only fought the fascist forces of King George III, but he was also a fanatic proponent of democracy itself, to the point that he refused to serve a third term in office so as not to set a “king-like” precedent.

But 80 years later, America faced her second major confrontation with fascists who wanted to end our democracy and replace it with a strongman autocracy.

By the 1860s there were only a handful of democratic nations in the world when the second major war between democracy and fascism happened. The southern US states — taken over by morbidly rich plantation owners who ended democracy in the South by the mid-1850s — attacked the United States itself in an effort to end our democratic system.

But we had a fierce democracy advocate for president in Abraham Lincoln so, after almost 700,000 people died in the Civil War, we managed to preserve democracy in America and thus for much of the rest of the world.

Eighty years after that, America faced her third major war against fascist forces, this time the attack coming from Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan. While America “only” lost an estimated 413,000 men and women in WWII, the blood price the world paid was far more massive as an estimated 75 to 80 million people perished in that conflict.

And here we are, exactly 80 years after the end of that war against fascism, and America again faces the test: will we defend and preserve democracy for ourselves and the world, or will we let the new Axis that’s forming this week in China take over the planet as Trump reshapes America into a police state and realigns us with the world’s fascist nations?

For the first time — in the fourth of these 80-year cycles of assaults against democracy — America has a president who openly and explicitly disdains the idea, embracing instead the world’s most notorious autocrats and their neofascist forms of government.

And, even if he was inclined to defend democracy, Trump is terribly weak and unpopular, which only adds to the danger that this time we could see a worldwide revolution against the form of government our Founders and Framers were willing to die to establish.

On Wednesday, as 10 of the victims of Trump’s “closest friend” Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were telling their stories in front of the Capitol, Trump ordered a deafening fly-over by military jets, ostensibly to “honor” a Polish pilot. Many saw it as the president’s way of saying, “This is how much power I command; you’d better be quiet about me.”

Trump’s also threatening Congressional Republicans, with a White House source saying that anybody signing onto Ro Khanna and Tom Massey’s discharge petition (calling for the full release of the Epstein files and related info) were committing a “hostile act.”

House Speaker “Little Mike” Johnson piled on, telling the victims as he lied to their faces that he was committed to “transparency” and “justice” and then leaving the meeting to whip against the vote to release those very documents.

Putin’s clearly reading the tea leaves: he’s launched these past few days the largest, most massive, and most deadly air raids against Ukraine of the entire three-year war. Over 500 drones and two dozen ballistic missiles hit the democratic nation overnight Tuesday, most focusing on its energy grid.

Lev Parnas, once close to Trump, says this is the new Trump/Putin strategy: destroy Ukraine’s power grid and then, when winter sets in and people are freezing to death, Trump will swoop in and “negotiate peace” that screws Ukraine and gives Putin whatever he wants.

Meanwhile, China’s President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday — using code words that every diplomat in the world heard with ringing clarity — that he’s going to take Taiwan.

Xi stood with the presidents or rulers of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Cambodia, Congo, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. That’s a significant Axis to take on the Alliance of NATO and other democratic nations.

These world leaders know what appears obvious to most Americans: if Trump were innocent of participating in Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes he’d have made all the records public. The sustained ferocity of his coverup not only appears to demonstrate guilt, but also reflects the weakness he’s brought to the office with his long history of criminal and grifting behavior.

And that weakness may well be exactly what will motivate those fascist leaders to move soon to end the pesky democracies around the planet and, finally after 249 years, again make the world safe for autocrats.

So, what do we do?

In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, in his “Quarantine Speech” calling for the democratic nations of the world to essentially quarantine the fascist nations:

“Without a declaration of war and without warning or justification of any kind, civilians, including vast numbers of women and children, are being ruthlessly murdered with bombs from the air. In times of so-called peace, ships are being attacked and sunk by submarines without cause or notice. Nations are fomenting and taking sides in civil warfare in nations that have never done them any harm. Nations claiming freedom for themselves deny it to others.

“Innocent peoples, innocent nations, are being cruelly sacrificed to a greed for power and supremacy which is devoid of all sense of justice and humane considerations.”

We are there again. Roosevelt wasn’t able to stop the inexorable metastasis of fascism across the planet that erupts every four generations, and now, 80 years later, Trump is unlikely to succeed at preventing another world war where FDR failed.

Nonetheless, we all need to do everything we can to restore decency and democracy to America — including exposing Trump’s crimes, so he can no longer be threatened or blackmailed by Putin, et al — and stand against this new Axis of Tyrants. There really is no other option.