The United States government says it has about 261 million troy ounces of gold in its gold reserves. That is rather impressive, if true.
The US government is not a great role model for honesty, though. So, it seems a good idea to put its gold claim to the test.
Elon Musk, the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency in Donald Trump’s presidential administration, has expressed in a new interview his disappointment in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which the United States House of Representatives approved last week.
Donald Trump’s presidential administration has made it clear it is an opponent of free speech through its cracking down on individuals and colleges in an effort to silence negative comments about the Israel government. This animosity to free speech was widely reported in a new context last week when high level Trump administration officials lined up to express their horror that former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey, via a post at Instagram, purportedly threatened the life of President Trump.
We have seen this play out before, the United States government relentlessly acting to control the government in a former Soviet Union republic bordering Russia and then proceeding to support that government in war against Russia. That course of action has led to devastation in Ukraine, including the deaths of hundreds of thousands of individuals, in a US proxy war against Russia. Through Monday approval in the United States House of Representatives of the Mobilizing and Enhancing Georgia’s Options for Building Accountability, Resilience, and Independence Act (MEGOBARI Act) by a vote of 349 to 42, the House took a big step toward a replay of this disaster in Georgia.
In January, I wrote about President Donald Trump on his first day in office signing an executive order that appeared designed to help implement his express desire to roll back many of the United States government restrictions imposed over the last few decades that have limited Americans’ choices for products used in their homes. Three months later, it looks like the Trump administration is following through in a significant way toward accomplishing this objective.
Since his first term, we have grown used to President Donald Trump badgering governments of fellow NATO countries to increase their “defense” spending to five percent of their respective GDPs. Quote marks are used in the preceding sentence because such spending by these governments, or the US, will largely be used for offense, feeding the military-industrial complex, and other purposes far removed from defense.
It is an improvement that President Donald Trump has made himself many times more available for media questions than did Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden and Trump’s November election opponent Kamala Harris who notoriously made great effort to avoid reporters’ questions. Still, it would be nice if Trump told his White House employees to knock off their use of petty rules limiting media access.
“A range of factions with mutually exclusive policy goals entered the Trump White House hoping the president would prioritize their particular political project.” So begins an interesting article by Christian Britschgi last week at Reason.
It sounds like a setup for failure. And Britschgi presents a case that that is what is unfolding for these factions whether they advocated removing government barriers to operation of the free market or imposing trade barriers, ending wars or starting more wars.
The tariffs President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday are massive in size and scope, Indeed, some early analysis indicates Trump has raised the United States average tariff rate to higher than did the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 that contributed to the American people’s suffering in the Great Depression. A big difference, though, is that Trump on his own was able to impose his sweeping tariffs this week, while the 1930 tariffs were imposed via legislation approved by votes and in the United States House of Representatives and Senate and then signed into law by President Herbert Hoover.
In the November of 2024 presidential election, CNN exit polling indicated that Donald Trump won the support of 76 percent of voters who answered that in the past year inflation had caused their families “severe hardship.” Now, less than five months later, voters are viewing the Trump administration as failing to address this issue sufficiently. A March 27-28 CBS poll found that 64 percent of polled individuals believed the Trump administration was “not enough” focused on lowering prices.