Top Democrats slam ‘Trump’s failing economic agenda’ after weaker-than-expected jobs growth – US politics live | Trump administration
Top Democrats slam ‘Trump’s failing economic agenda’ following jobs report that experts call ‘mediocre’
Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate banking committee, has blasted Donald Trump’s “failing economic agenda” following the latest jobs report – which many experts have described as “mediocre” and “weak”.
“Since January 2025, Trump’s economy has only added 33,000 jobs a month on average, far below the 120,000-a-month average in 2024,” Warren said. “Since the start of Trump’s war, real wages have fallen 0.7% as his failed agenda keeps pushing prices up.”
Ahead of the November midterms, Democrats are hammering home that many of the Trump administration’s policies have resulted in a cost of living crisis, and urging voters to eschew Republicans vying for seats in Congress at the ballot box.
Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, noted that “American families are being squeezed on all sides by Trump’s disastrous economy”, in response to Friday’s figures.
Key events
The US will deploy around 500 troops to Texas’ Rio Grande Valley this week, days after Coast Guard personnel came under fire from suspected cartel members near the Mexican border, NewsNation reports citing law enforcement sources.
NewsNation reported it had obtained video showing troops being dropped onto islands in the sector from Chinook helicopters.
The Coast Guard said Coast Guard Forces Rio Grande personnel encountered gunfire from the Mexican border near Garceno, Texas, on Saturday while conducting joint interdiction operations with federal partners, according to NewsNation’s report. Personnel returned fire in the incident, which is still under investigation.
No injuries to Coast Guard or other personnel were reported, and no damage to Coast Guard assets was reported.
Will Democrats take Congress from Trump? The key midterm races – mapped
Chris Stein, Alex Clark, Andrew Witherspoon and Ashley Kirk
A turning point in Donald Trump’s second term will soon arrive. On 3 November, voters across the US will decide whether to keep the president’s Republican allies in control of Congress, or return Democrats to the majority.
Many indicators of voter sentiment suggest the Democrats are favored to take back control of the House of Representatives, and potentially the Senate. Winning either would be a significant victory for the party and give it the power to block Trump’s legislative agenda and more aggressively investigate his administration.
This interactive piece charts and maps reveal where the battle for Congress will be fought.
This year’s Kennedy Center Honors will be held at Washington’s Capital One Arena, not the arts institution that’s been at the center of a legal battle over adding Donald Trump’s name to the building, the Associated Press reports.
The 49th annual awards are set to take place at Washington’s downtown arena, a Kennedy Center spokesperson said. Few other details were immediately available, and an explanation for the change wasn’t given. The event will take place on 7 December.
The center’s Trump-picked board voted last month to close the performing arts venue after a federal judge blocked the institution from returning Trump’s name to the facade.
Trump has threatened in social media posts that safety repairs the center needs would only happen if the board was allowed to move forward with plans to add his name to the building.
A federal judge has twice said that can’t happen without the approval of Congress, which has allocated $257m for repairs.
The president hosted the 2025 awards , whose honorees included Sylvester Stallone and George Strait. He said at the time that he would rename the facility the “Trump Kennedy Center”, and not long after workers began adding his name to the building.
The board of trustees voted unanimously for the change, which has been challenged in court since.
Congress named the performing arts center as a living memorial to John F Kennedy in 1964, the year after he was assassinated.
The law explicitly prohibits the board of trustees from making the center into a memorial to anyone else, and from putting another person’s name on the building’s exterior.
As we bring you the news of the deal that European leaders have struck to release millions of barrels of diesel reserves, a White House official tells the Guardian that Donald Trump spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday night, and with G7 leaders on Friday morning, to successfully negotiate the release of the stockpiles.
This detail comes after the administration publicly urged the leaders to tap into the reserves, and Trump has floated a possible diesel export ban, which Europe has warned would be economically crippling.
White House touts tepid jobs report as proof that Trump’s ‘reindustrialization agenda is working’
The White House has welcomed the latest jobs report – which shows fewer new jobs added than economists projected. Taylor Rogers, a spokesperson, highlighted the addition of “9,000 manufacturing jobs and 12,300 factory construction jobs over the month” as proof that Donald Trump’s “reindustrialization agenda is working”.
She noted that “wages are up over last year” – despite the fact they have not kept up with inflation.
Hegseth announces ‘one-day stand-down’ for service members to vote in midterm elections
Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, announced today that there will be a “one-day stand-down” this month, for service members to vote in the upcoming midterm elections. He added that many members of the military “face unnecessary, difficult ways of obtaining, completing, and returning absentee ballots while serving far from home” and said the directive would take place this year and every election year to come.
“We’re not telling you who to vote for, but we will give you every opportunity to do so,” Hegseth said in a straight-to-camera video. “Take that day to fill out your absentee ballot. Help your family members do the same, or go to the polling place yourself and exercise your right to vote.”
My colleagues are covering the move from G7 leaders to release up to 100m barrels of diesel reserves within four months, to mitigate the ongoing energy crisis as a result of the US-Israel war on Iran.
Earlier, as I reported, Trump welcomed the news after urging European countries this week to tap into reserves while he weighed an export ban. However, the president offered few details about which countries had signed on to the deal.
On today’s episode of Politics Weekly America, Jonathan Freedland is digging into the Texas Senate race.
The Democratic Senate nominee, James Talarico, is surprising everyone, as polls have him leading his Republican opponent, Ken Paxton.
Jonathan speaks to James Henson, founder and executive director of the Texas Politics Project, about why a blue wave in the Lone Star state – which hasn’t seen a Democrat win a Senate seat in almost 40 years – would be seismic.
Trump claims Europe has agreed to release diesel oil reserves as he weighs export ban
On Truth Social, Donald Trump has claimed that Europe has “just agreed to release a massive amount of their heavily stocked Diesel Oil”. This comes after the administration urged European allies to release their diesel reserves as fuel prices continue to rise due to the ongoing Iran war and the president continues to weigh an export ban. The president added that “the process will begin immediately”.
In the US the average price for a gallon of diesel sits at $6.3, up from $3.7 a year ago – a 70% hike.
Trump said on Wednesday that he was still “thinking about” a ban on diesel exports to curb the soaring cost of energy domestically. However, he noted that an embargo “might raise the price of other things.” Europe has warned of a further economic tailspin in the event of a ban.
A reminder that major sectors of US agriculture, manufacturing and commercial fishing depend heavily on diesel.
Europe has also becoming increasingly reliant on US diesel exports after Ukrainian strikes destroyed Russian oil refineries and Moscow implemented its own export ban earlier this year to preserve its supply.
And as we bring you the latest on how the jobs report stands to impact voter sentiment ahead of the November midterms, my colleagues have done all the hard work in mapping out the battle for Congress and the key states, candidates and districts that will ultimately decide the balance of power on Capitol Hill.
Many indicators of voter sentiment suggest the Democrats are favored to take back control of the House of Representatives, and potentially the Senate. Winning either would be a significant victory for the party and give it the power to block Trump’s legislative agenda and more aggressively investigate his administration.
Take a look here:
A reminder that my colleagues are covering the latest market reactions to today’s job report, including allayed fears about future interest rate hikes in light of the weaker-than-expected numbers reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Top Democrats slam ‘Trump’s failing economic agenda’ following jobs report that experts call ‘mediocre’
Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate banking committee, has blasted Donald Trump’s “failing economic agenda” following the latest jobs report – which many experts have described as “mediocre” and “weak”.
“Since January 2025, Trump’s economy has only added 33,000 jobs a month on average, far below the 120,000-a-month average in 2024,” Warren said. “Since the start of Trump’s war, real wages have fallen 0.7% as his failed agenda keeps pushing prices up.”
Ahead of the November midterms, Democrats are hammering home that many of the Trump administration’s policies have resulted in a cost of living crisis, and urging voters to eschew Republicans vying for seats in Congress at the ballot box.
Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, noted that “American families are being squeezed on all sides by Trump’s disastrous economy”, in response to Friday’s figures.
Of note, the wage growth according to the latest jobs report, sits at 3% – which is still lower than the current 3.4% inflation rate. The gap here is crucial as voters prepare to vote in the upcoming midterms, and affordability is consistently polled as the key election issue ahead of November.
Jobs report shows weaker growth than expected, while unemployment sees uptick ahead of midterm elections
New figures, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows that the number of new jobs added in the US was weaker than expected, while unemployment saw an uptick.
The US added 29,000 new jobs in September, significantly fewer than the roughly 90,000 economists forecasted. Unemployment increased slightly to 4.2% – up by 0.1 point compared to last month’s data.
The latest report shows a drop in the overall number of jobs in September, compared to August, where the revised numbers show that the US added 133,000 new jobs.
Donald Trump will begin his day in Washington after spending Thursday campaigning in Durant, Oklahoma. He’ll travel to Mobile, Alabama, at 12.30pm ET today for a campaign rally. It’s part of the president’s 32-day blitz to juice support for Republicans ahead of the November midterm elections. He won Mobile county by almost 17 points in the 2024 presidential election.
Despite the president initially saying that he would focus his attention on competitive districts, in recent days he’s made speeches in Republican strongholds as his approval rating is still under water.
On Monday, following public outcry, Matthew Van Houten, the Tompkins County district attorney, said his office would reopen the investigation into the Cornell case, nearly two years after the student victim of the alleged gang-rape gave a statement to police.
My colleagues Richard Luscombe and Maya Yang covered the story earlier this week. They wrote:
According to lawyers for the student, who filed a civil lawsuit against the university and her alleged attackers earlier in September, only two members of the Chi Phi fraternity were expelled after the October 2024 incident, in which she said she was drugged and repeatedly raped over the course of seven hours.
None of the seven were arrested, they said, and the others were made to write essays, attend workshops or serve short suspensions.
On Monday, Matthew Van Houten, the Tompkins county district attorney, said his office was looking again at the case, after the woman, who was 20 at the time of the alleged assault, presented allegations in her lawsuit that were “dramatically different” from the statement she gave to police two years ago.
Later on Monday, Van Houten released a fuller statement defending his office’s past decision to not seek charges.
“While I generally refrain from commenting publicly on criminal investigations, the community outrage stemming from the incomplete news and social media coverage requires that I provide an answer to why the investigation resulted in a lack of criminal charges,” he said.
Read more:
Calls grow for US death penalty halt after ‘torturous’ botched execution of Christa Pike
Ed Pilkington
Top lawyers, doctors and members of the faith community are calling for a moratorium on the US death penalty after Tennessee’s failed attempt to execute Christa Pike left the prisoner alive but in critical condition and receiving life-saving medical care.
The recent spate of harrowingly botched executions across US death penalty states reached a new low late on Wednesday when Tennessee’s governor Bill Lee called off the procedure after Pike had been injected with two full syringes of pentobarbital. She is the only person to have survived being administered 5mg of the sedative – a massive dose that under normal circumstances is considered fatal.
An hour after the first injection was given, she was overheard by eyewitnesses to be still breathing, choking and struggling, and was found to have a heartbeat. Her lawyers said that her current condition, and the degree to which she may have been brain damaged through oxygen deprivation, were as yet unknown.
Sandra Babcock, a death penalty scholar at Cornell law school who advises Pike’s legal team, told the Guardian that the events that unfolded were “unimaginably barbaric. They demand accountability.”
Read more:
Letitia James is no stranger to high profile investigations involving powerful individuals and institutions.
Her most prominent case in recent years was the civil fraud action against Donald Trump and the Trump Organization. In February 2024, a New York judge ruled in her favour and ordered Trump to pay a $450m penalty after finding he fraudulently overstated his net worth to dupe lenders. A five-judge panel tossed the financial penalty last year, but James’s office has appealed to reinstate it.
In this profile of James in February 2024, Guardian US reporter Lauren Aratani wrote:
Raised in Brooklyn with her seven siblings, James attended public schools before getting her law degree at Howard University in Washington DC. She rose through the ranks as a public defender before entering New York politics as a councilmember and then as public advocate, the first Black woman to hold the watchdog role and one where she filed a record number of suits on behalf of people with disabilities, seniors and tenants.
When she won the attorney general’s office, another first for a Black woman, James vowed to “take that power back” from corporations and corrupt politicians.
“The law is the great equalizer and the biggest pillar of our democracy,” she said in her inaugural speech in 2019. “I will shine a light into the murkiest of swamps and act as a steward of justice.”
The profile is more than two years old but still worth a read for useful background on James’s career and her involvement in several of the big cases that have defined her tenure as attorney general.
New York governor to provide update on Cornell gang-rape case after appointing special prosecutor
The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, has named New York attorney general Letitia James as special prosecutor to investigate an alleged gang-rape at Cornell University in 2024, saying she had lost faith in the local district attorney’s ability to handle the case.
Both Hochul and James are due to speak today to provide an update on the investigation following the attorney general’s appointment.
Hochul said newly released information raised questions about the investigation conducted by Cornell police and the decision by Tompkins County prosecutors not to file charges.
“This has, in turn, undercut my faith, and the public’s faith, in the district attorney’s ability to effectively investigate and prosecute the case at this time,” she said in a statement.
James will oversee the investigation and, if warranted, present evidence to a grand jury, Hochul added.
Matthew Van Houten, the Tompkins County district attorney, declined at the time of the alleged assault to file charges, saying his office chose not to prosecute because the victim’s testimony did not establish a lack of consent.
But with renewed attention on the case and mounting public pressure, Van Houten said on Monday that his office would reopen the investigation.
A woman, known as Jane Doe in court documents, filed a civil lawsuit last month alleging she had been drugged with ketamine and raped by a group of men at a fraternity house near Cornell University’s campus in October 2024. She reported the incident to the Cornell University police department several weeks later, but no criminal charges were filed.
James said her office would “fully and fairly” investigate the allegations.
You can read our latest report on this story here:
In other news:
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Donald Trump is heading to Alabama today as part of his near month-long midterm campaign blitz. He began the 32-day tour yesterday in safe Republican territory, starting with Texas and Oklahoma and continuing to Ohio this weekend and Nebraska on Monday. The US president is expected to campaign almost daily ahead of November’s midterm elections, as the Republicans wrestle to retain its slim majorities in both the House and Senate.
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The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics will publish its employment report today, with Reuters reporting that US job growth likely slowed in September while the unemployment rate held steady at 4.1% for a third month in a row.
