Trump Tries to Sell His Economy as Americans’ View of It Hits New Lows

Happy Thursday! They're all done. No, we're not (just) talking about the Red Sox. We mean senators, who last night confirmed President Trump's pick to lead the Labor Department and then headed home until after the November midterm elections. With the calendar turning to October, we're now in the final sprint to Election Day. Here's hoping the coming avalanche of political ads doesn't make us all utterly miserable!

As Trump Hits the Campaign Trail, Most Americans Blame Him for Economy

President Trump launched a campaign blitz on Thursday, traveling to Texas and Oklahoma as he hopes to prevent a blue wave that could give Democrats control of one or both chambers of Congress. It's not clear, though, whether Trump will help or hurt Republican election chances, given his historically low approval ratings and his repeated insistence that the economy is strong, even as many Americans tell pollsters that they are profoundly frustrated by current economic conditions and blame Trump policies for making things worse.

Trump on Wednesday framed the issue as a communications problem.

"I've done a very bad job of explaining how good the country is doing. We're doing better than any country in the world economically," he said at a Hispanic Heritage Month event at the White House. He insisted that the country "is doing better than it's ever done" and said he will be campaigning over the next month to spread that message.

"I'm going out - because nobody's selling it. I'm doing - we're doing an extremely poor job of promotion and an extremely great job of running the country," Trump said.

Voters seem to feel otherwise. A new poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that just 31% approve of Trump's job performance while 69% disapprove, including 51% who strongly disapprove. Just 26% of those surveyed call the economy at least somewhat good, and the same percentage approve of Trump's handling of it, a new low for the president across both his terms, while 73% disapprove.

Trump is clearly failing the contemporary version of Ronald Reagan's famous 1980 debate question: "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" The AP poll finds that 46% say they and their family are worse off than when Trump returned to office, and six in 10 adults say that the national economy and the country as a whole are worse off now.

Affordability remains a major problem and prime political vulnerability. A paltry 17% of adults approve of Trump's handling of the cost of living. About two-thirds of U.S. adults now blame Trump policies for higher-than-usual prices, and 69%, including more than half of Republicans, say he has fallen short of expectations when it comes to addressing the cost of living. Nearly half of those surveyed said they are extremely or very concerned about being able to afford gas and groceries, up from around 40% in July.

The AP-NORC poll of 2,140 adults was conducted September 24-28 and has an overall margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

Trump is scheduled to continue his campaign travel schedule in Alabama on Friday and Ohio on Saturday.

Dems Call for Probe Into Federally Funded Pro-Trump Ads - and Penalties for Airing Them

A pair of Democratic lawmakers are calling on the Government Accountability Office and the U.S. Office of Special Counsel to investigate TV ads promoting President Trump that have been funded by the federal government.

In a letter sent Wednesday, Reps. Jamie Raskin and George Whiteside asked the independent agencies to provide an analysis of how much the ads cost and who paid for them, and to determine if any laws were broken in their production and airing.

Separately, a group of Senate Democrats led by Sen. Patty Murray is proposing legislation called the "Penalties for Propaganda Act" that would cut $20 million in funding from the White House budget office every time the administration uses taxpayer money to pay for anything considered political "propaganda."

"If the president is going to defy federal law to run propaganda celebrating himself-and his budget director is going to allow it-there must be consequences," Murray said. "It is not too much to expect the White House Budget Office to respect the law and the basic principle that tax dollars should not fund political ads."

The first of three pro-Trump TV ads began airing on September 23, and features images of Trump as he vows, over a chorus of voices singing "love me," to protect Americans from a variety of purported threats, including "communism, socialism, and Marxism." Two more ads have been shown since then, one of which is a repurposed campaign ad from Trump's 2024 presidential run.

The White House has described the ads as public service announcements meant to promote national pride, and they display notices that they were "paid for by the U.S. government."

Raskin and Whiteside offered a very different interpretation of the messages. "The American people are apparently paying for Donald Trump to create desperate preelection propaganda," the lawmakers wrote. "Both Congress and your agencies have a responsibility to immediately investigate this shameless theft of public funds and violation of multiple federal statutes, including the Hatch Act."

As the lawmakers explain, the Hatch Act of 1939 "prohibits executive branch employees from engaging in pernicious political activities." In addition to the Hatch Act, the lawmakers said the ads appear to violate the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2026, which prohibits "the use of federal money to pay for government propaganda"; the Anti-Deficiency Act, which prohibits the federal government from spending funds without authorization from Congress; and a variety of federal criminal statutes that prohibit the theft of federal funds.

"President Trump is obviously desperate for the American people to 'love' him, a problem that goes beyond your jurisdiction," the lawmakers said in their letter. "But stealing taxpayer dollars to pay for Mr. Trump's narcissistic ego trips is plainly illegal. Your agencies have an important responsibility to hold accountable members of his Administration who violate the laws and policies under your purview."

Asked about the ads on Wednesday, Trump defended them, saying that he's not running for office or promoting a particular candidate. "When I'm talking about making America great, making our country great, that's a countrywide ad," he said. "That's an ad for the spirit of our country."

Trump added that he would cover the costs of the ad if he had to. "Now, if somebody said that that's wrong, I'll gladly pay the money," he said, "but these are ads for the country."

Major Changes in SNAP Food Program Could Reduce Enrollment

Those who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for food aid will see a small boost to their benefits this month as the annual inflation adjustment kicks in at the start of the new fiscal year, but an overhaul of the program's rules could mean that fewer people are included in the program in the long run.

For single households, the maximum benefit is rising from $298 to $306 per month. For households of four, the maximum benefit is rising from $994 to $1,023 - about $29 a month, or $348 over the course of a year.

At the same time, there are major changes rolling out at the administrative level. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Republicans passed in the summer of 2025, states are now required to pay a larger share of the costs of running the program. Previously, states and the federal government split the overhead costs, but now states will pay 75%.

The change will save the federal government about $16.9 billion over the next five years, or an average of $3.4 billion a year, according to an analysis by the Department of Agriculture. But those savings will show up as new costs at the state level. The Food Research & Action Center, a non-profit focused on hunger eradication, estimates that the costs will be high in states with large populations. California could see the largest increase in costs, upwards of $670 million. New York could need to pay $168 million more, and Pennsylvania $130 million.

In addition to cost-sharing, in October 2027, the federal government is scheduled to start requiring states to pay part of their food aid costs if their error rate in payment exceeds 6%. If they are unable to meet the requirement, California and New York could be forced to pay over $1 billion more per year.

An analysis by the Georgetown Center on Poverty found that the rule changes will sharply raise costs for state governments, which could force them to cut their food aid programs.

"States are required to balance their budgets every year, and most states will be unable to find millions or billions of dollars to backfill the federal cuts with their own funds," the analysis says. "States are left with no good options: they will have to shift funding away from other priorities-like education and health care-to preserve SNAP, raise new revenues, reduce SNAP enrollments by adding red tape, or end their SNAP programs entirely."

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act contained additional rule changes that will likely further reduce enrollment. Congress raised the work requirement age, so now those between the ages of 18 and 64 must document 80 hours a month of work, education or volunteering to receive benefits. Previously, the requirement ended at age 54.

In addition, households with dependent children under the age of 18 used to be exempt from the work requirements. Now, the exemption applies only to households with children under the age of 14.

The bottom line: The number of SNAP beneficiaries has fallen since Trump took office, dropping from roughly 42 million to 36 million as of June 2026. That total is expected to continue to fall, perhaps dramatically, as new rules take effect in the country's major food aid program.

Fiscal News Roundup

• Barrage of Lawsuits Targets Trump's Funding Cancellation – Politico
• Senate Adjourns Until November With Republicans Fearful of Losing Majority – The Hill
• Republicans Drop Midterm Affordability Push as Voter Angst Grows – Bloomberg
• Most Americans Blame Trump for High Prices as His Economic Approval Hits New Low, AP-NORC Poll Shows – Associated Press
• Trump Says Inflation Could Pay Down the Debt 'Very Rapidly' – Wall Street Journal
• Campaign-Style Trump Ads Use Money Meant for Border Security, Memorials – Washington Post
• Top Democratic Appropriator Wants White House to Pay for Airing 'Propaganda' – Politico
• Raskin Leads Calls for Federal Investigation Into Trump PSA's – Politico
• Trump Defies Democrats, Diverts Aid for Europe to Latin America Instead – Washington Post
• GOP Weighs Quick Debt Limit Hike to Deny Democrats Leverage – Bloomberg
• Congressional Staff Planned Official Trip With Luxury Stops in Italy and France – NBC News
• Trump's Threat to Ban Diesel Exports Sets Off Global Alarms – New York Times
• Trump Administration Unveils Education Tax Credit, Ramping up Pressure on Democratic Governors – Politico
• US Sending Third Aircraft Carrier, Up to 10,000 More Troops, to Middle East – Wall Street Journal

Views and Analysis

• Trump's Playing His Greatest Hits. They Don't Work as Well as They Used to. – Karen Tumulty, Washington Post
• The Good, Bad and Dangerous in Hegseth's Pentagon Overhaul – David Ignatius, Washington Post
• Can a Wealth Tax Actually Solve Our Political and Fiscal Problems? The Math Says No. – Jeff Hoopes, The Hill
• Can You Measure a Congress's Success? – Don Wolfensberger, The Hill
• Elon Musk Rewarded for DOGE Debacle With 'Warfare' Gig – Bess Levin, New York
• If You Think Rising Oil Prices Are Bad, Just Wait for the Inevitable Crash – Philip Delves Broughton, New York Times
• Why Couldn't the Fed Manage Its Own Construction Budget? – Jonathan Levin, Bloomberg
• Fact-Checking What Donald Trump Said in His Latest Interview With Time – Leslie Dickstein, Simmone Shah and Olivia B. Waxman, Time
• Trump's Legacy at Halftime: Weakness Through War – Andreas Kluth, Bloomberg
• A Blundering 2026 Midterm Campaign – Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal
• Bill Patients for Emailing? This Could Backfire. – Ishani Ganguli, Washington Post