Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

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Fighting With Family (Andrew Harnik / Getty)

View in browser When Donald Trump looks at a map, he doesn’t see nations. He sees property. All of those pretty colors do not represent actual places filled with human beings who have distinct cultures, languages, and histories; the planet, to Trump, is a big board game, like Risk or Monopoly. Greenland isn’t a real location—it’s a valuable chunk of territory nestled between Boardwalk and Park Place. The Strait of Hormuz isn’t an international waterway—it’s a thing to control somewhere between Kamchatka and East Africa. This inability to grasp the existence of independent nations drives the president to fury when countries and their governments refuse to play along with his delusions. Trump cannot understand why Iran won’t bend to his will, why NATO won’t instantly obey his orders, why South Korea and Japan won’t just write checks or provide troops on demand. The only people Trump seems to respect are the autocrats in Beijing and Moscow and Pyongyang who, like him, view the world as a brutal competition for power and territory. Now Trump has declared economic war on Canada, a nation that has vexed him for years. Even by the standards of Trump’s many fixations, his obsession with Canada has become not only weird but truly destructive. He has opened a giant political and economic rift with one of America’s biggest trading partners, a sister nation, and an ally in the common defense of North America and Europe. Why does Trump hate Canada so much? We can only speculate about what goes on in the president’s head, but his actions suggest a pattern. When Trump is frustrated about something he can’t control, he lashes out at friends harder than he does enemies. He took out his anger about the Epstein files on legislators from his own party, even though he had campaigned on releasing those documents. Stymied by Iran on multiple fronts, Trump decided to blame South Korea for not helping him, and curtailed military exercises with a vital U.S. ally. (This decision also had the side benefit of allowing Trump to make another embarrassing overture to the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, a bromantic gesture that went unreciprocated.) Trump values absolute loyalty over everything else—not that he always returns it—and he detests any sign that others, especially those who are supposed to be his friends and allies, might have views and interests of their own. The American economy is stalling, and Trump’s poll numbers are in the basement, so the next obvious move is to pick a huge fight with a nation that is essentially family to Americans. Canada is most definitely a foreign country, which is one reason I like to visit. (Go ahead—try to find a convenience store in America that sells Aero chocolate bars or wine gums.) But to the utterly incurious Trump, it probably looks like an extension of upstate New York. Canada and America are bound by deep cultural and historical bonds, but ironically, the superficial similarities are likely driving much of Trump’s vitriol. How dare these people—whose country is, to him, just a cheap knockoff of America—defy him! After all, most of Canada speaks English; its cities look like ours (if definitely cleaner); we share pop stars and TV shows; they even call their money “the dollar,” despite its colorful look and plasticky feel. Canada, in the president’s eyes, is less a sovereign nation than a real-estate parcel he forgot to buy because it’s in a neighborhood he never visits. The fact that Canada is led by someone Trump accidentally helped put in office probably irks him too. Early last year, Canada’s Liberal Party had been in power for 10 years and was facing a huge defeat in what seemed to be an impending “change” election. Trump, as usual, could not control himself when it came to the internal politics of an allied nation: He imposed tariffs during the lead-up to the Canadian vote while banging on about making Canada the 51st state. The Liberal leader Mark Carney—an unflappable public figure who is completely different from Trump in both temperament and intellect—pivoted quickly and campaigned on standing up to the American president. Carney almost overnight went from a no-hoper to prime minister. And now he has shown that he is perfectly willing to retaliate against Trump’s policies rather than fold. If Trump wants tariffs, Carney will provide them—in spades. Imagine how all of this looks to Trump, who has made clear that Canada shouldn’t even exist as an independent state. I am humiliated as an American, and as a friend of Canada, to admit this, but Trump’s attitude toward Canada is almost indistinguishable from the way Russian President Vladimir Putin sees Ukraine: not as a state but as some kind of historical anomaly that should be returned to its rightful owners. Trump might think it’s funny to post memes of Canada with an American flag superimposed on it, but those jokes are a lot less hilarious to people in places such as Ukraine, who are fighting a war against a dictator who feels exactly the same way about their country. Canadians are probably scratching their head over Trump’s willingness to hurt his own people and especially his own party. Trump may hate Canada, but it’s hard to imagine what he thinks he’ll gain by causing economic pain to Americans along the Canadian border, especially in states such as Maine and Michigan, where Republicans are facing tight battles for congressional seats. What the Canadians may not realize is that, with this president, none of it has to make sense, and that if recent history is a guide, he will back down, perhaps after declaring victory over Ottawa. Trump will then move on, leaving ordinary Americans and their Canadian friends to deal with the damage. Related: Trump will make South Korea pay for his Iran humiliation. How to lose a trade war

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Trump plans $500 Obamacare rebates

The Trump administration plans to send $500 rebate checks to as many as 1 million people who it says were overcharged for coverage under Obamacare, Axios' Marc Caputo has learned.

• The direct-deposit payment would be sent to people in 30 states before the Nov. 3 midterm election, as President Trump touts savings from his tax-cut legislation and prescription drug plan.
• The plan underscores a tenet of Trump's idea for remaking the health care system, which involves subsidizing more Americans directly for their coverage instead of paying health insurers. Keep reading.

💰 Another cash promise ... In a new wrinkle during his marathon speech at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas last night, President Trump said: "If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate — both of them ... because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000 ... It will be called the Trump Dividend."

• He likened the payments to a successful company's distributions to shareholders.
• Within an hour, Vice President JD Vance suggested the dividend payments wouldn't go to the wealthy. Vance suggested it could be paid for by U.S. tariff revenues, though the suggested payment dwarfs what the U.S. has taken in through the protectionist measures. (AP)

🥊 Joe Lonsdale, venture capitalist and Trump ally, wrote on X in response to Trump's bonus idea: "For the record, I am hugely in favor of winning the midterms, and love much about this admin, but am strongly against bread and circus bribes."

ps:What a crock of Bull Manure!!

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🗳️ GOP revives 9/11 playbook

Axios' Alex Isenstadt reports from the GOP convention at American Airlines Center in Dallas:

Republicans are invoking 9/11 to bash left-wing Democrats in a growing number of midterm races, seizing on the 25th anniversary of the attacks to portray them or their supporters as anti-American and sympathetic to terrorists.

• Why it matters: It marks the return of a controversial political tactic that was common in the years after the 9/11 attacks but had largely faded from campaigns over the past quarter-century.

👓 Between the lines: The GOP's 9/11-focused barrage is part of a broader effort to brand Democrats as extreme and increasingly influenced by the party's left wing, and turn midterms into a "Who's worse?" election.

The strategy is playing out most prominently in Michigan, where Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers is expected to use his speech at the GOP's midterm convention to assail Democrat Abdul El-Sayed over 9/11, Axios has learned.

• Rogers aims to contrast El-Sayed's relationship with left-wing streamer Hasan Piker — who said in 2019 that "America deserved 9/11" (a comment Piker now disavows) — with Rogers' own background as an FBI agent, according to a person familiar with his prepared remarks.

🔭 Zoom out: In New York, the National Republican Congressional Committee attacked Democratic House candidate Effie Phillips-Staley over an appearance she made with Piker, and called on her primary rivals to condemn her.

• In Colorado, Republicans have assailed Democratic House candidate Melat Kiros for saying 9/11 was "inevitable" because of America's policies in the Middle East.

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Trump’s immigration crackdown, by the numbers

Over the last year, the Trump administration’s immigration offensive has shifted considerably in both scope and intensity. Detentions are up nearly 70% since early 2025, while deportations are accelerating. The administration says immigration authorities are focusing their arrests on major criminals it calls “the worst of the worst.” But new data from Syracuse University shows that just 31% of ICE detainees have prior criminal convictions. At the same time, the crackdown has grown more aggressive and moved deeper into the US, with at least 20 people shot by on-duty ICE and Border Patrol agents since the second Trump administration began in January 2025.

+ Read more: Tracking the numbers behind Trump’s immigration offensive

+ Plus: Another group of immigrants may be on the verge of losing deportation protections

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Would a $5,000 check sway your vote?

President Donald Trump vowed to pay every American adult $5,000 if Republicans win November’s midterm elections — an unprecedented offer as he tries to keep his party in power.

He made the promise Wednesday night in Dallas as he headlined the GOP’s first midterm convention. But the announcement was short on specifics, with no clear explanation of how the pledge would be funded.

In the current economy, a $5,000 check is an undeniably enticing proposition for households with already stretched budgets. For now, though, there’s no clear path from the promise to a payment. And Trump’s history of unfulfilled campaign pledges gives reason to be skeptical. His 2024 campaign alone offers two notable examples: Trump repeatedly vowed to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of returning to office, or even before being inaugurated, and to end inflation. During his 2016 campaign, he famously vowed that Mexico would pay for his border wall, which also did not happen.

+ Read more: Trump vows $5K payments to US adults if GOP keeps control of Congress but doesn’t say how

+ Fact check: Trump makes numerous false claims in Republican convention speech

+ Photo gallery: The first-ever Republican midterm convention   ps:Nope!!

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Trump, hoping to salvage midterms, promises to give every US adult $5,000 if GOP wins “It will be called the Trump Dividend,” President Donald Trump said during the GOP’s midterm convention in Dallas. He has discussed the possibility before but has never tied it to his party’s electoral fortunes. Read more.

Why this matters: Trump likened the payments to a corporation’s distributions to shareholders, citing “our tremendous strength and success economically." However, the dubious promise would likely cost more than $1 trillion and require congressional approval, and would further exacerbate the country’s nearly $1.8 trillion annual budget deficit and concerns about inflation.   Within an hour, Vice President JD Vance appeared to try to walk back Trump’s proposal — at least in part — by suggesting the dividend payments would not go to the wealthy. Vance suggested it could be paid for by U.S. tariff revenues, though the suggested payment dwarfs what the U.S. has taken in through the protectionist measures. The White House did not respond to a message seeking details.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ WATCH: Criminal defense attorney says dividend promise is lawful, but not without challenges Democratic Sen. Fetterman speaks at GOP convention, fueling party-switch fears  Democrats say Trump’s ‘bizarre’ convention is a distraction from his faltering presidency Trump defends Iran war, slams Democrats and more at the convention WATCH: ‘New America,’ ‘Trump Strait': Trump goes on a naming spree Photos of the convention Foulkes defeats Rhode Island’s Gov. McKee. He’s the first governor in 8 years to lose a primary  Missouri’s congressional map is back before the U.S. Supreme Court, sowing still more confusion Rubio says US is working with allies to counter drugs but will ‘still blow up ships if need be’  Alcohol, whey and motorcycles are in the crosshairs of the US import ban on Canada products

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Trump says oil prices that spiked because of Iran war likely won’t come down until after midterms “Right after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward,” President Donald Trump said in an exchange with reporters before traveling to Dallas. “I think it’s going to take a little bit longer than the midterm.” Read more.

Why this matters: The comments were a striking acknowledgment from Trump about the conflict as his Republican administration faces mounting pressure to address high gas prices as the war in Iran grinds on with no conclusion in sight. Oil prices on Wednesday jumped more than 3%, pushing international Brent crude past the $100 threshold for the first time since July. Trump added that he believes Iran will finally relent after the pivotal elections are held in the U.S.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ UN nuclear watchdog board reports Iran to the UN Security Council for the first time in 20 years  Israeli strike in Gaza kills 4 including children and other Mideast developments

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Trump doesn’t have the power to limit mail-in voting, lawmakers tell US Supreme Court

The hotly contested U.S. Postal Service rule restricting mail-in voting usurps Congress’ authority, as well as states’ power to administer elections, more than 250 current and former members of Congress said in a filing to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday.

https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/09/09/repub/trump-doesnt-have-the-power-to-limit-mail-in-voting-lawmakers-tell-us-supreme-court/?

Appeals court hands Trump a loss on mail voting as Supreme Court considers his executive order

WASHINGTON (AP) — An appeals court on Thursday upheld a block on President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting, a decision that comes as the Supreme Court considers the same case and states have already started sending out ballots for the high-stakes midterm elections.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-mail-voting-executive-order-midterms-3e2c89ab0a0f7faca75e50ff34adee15?

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The Big Tech Alums Building Trump’s AI War Machine

By Toni Aguilar Rosenthal

As lawmakers demand Congress put artificial intelligence safeguards in place amid new warnings from AI whistleblowers, the Trump administration is using a new, obscure office to do exactly the opposite. 

The agency, which is dedicated to turning the U.S. military into an “AI-first warfighting force,” is staffed by alumni of Amazon, Palantir, Meta, and Salesforce. All firms that are at the center of the government’s AI contracting boom and which have the most to gain from the minimal implementation of AI safeguards.

The Department of Defense founded the little-known Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) in 2022 when it merged multiple offices, including the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, the Defense Digital Service, and the Chief Data Officer, into a single entity. It now leads all things AI at the Pentagon, from “the development and deployment of algorithmic warfare” and drafting AI-related policy to helping guide the procurement of AI systems from private contractors like Amazon and Palantir. 

Under President Donald Trump, the CDAO has focused on integrating AI systems into weapons, combat decisions, surveillance regimes, and target identification processes. 

Some of these CDAO-managed military “capabilities” helped select the 13,000 targets bombed in the first 38 days of Donald Trump’s ongoing war against Iran. One thousand were struck in the first 24 hours alone. Those so-called “targets” included civilian infrastructure.

Several members of the CDAO’s leadership, responsible for helping decide which companies nab multimillion-dollar defense contracts and what safety guardrails will be enforced for them, have passed through the D.C. revolving door from tech industry C-suites. It’s common practice for such employees to receive equity as part of their compensation, enabling them to profit from the company’s growth, though The Lever could not verify whether CDAO employees hold equity in their former firms. Now, the former corporate colleagues of these Big Tech alums are among those poised to profit most from the Trump administration’s push to streamline AI procurement, accelerate AI adoption, and defang basic AI safeguards.

Amazon Alum At The Helm

Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Officer Cameron Stanley currently leads the CDAO. 

Stanley started his career as an Air Force Lieutenant before spending several years in the private sector, including at global consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, a massive federal contractor. Then, after a multiyear stint focused on military technology and artificial intelligence at the Defense Department ending in 2024, Stanley decamped to Amazon Web Services, a division of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing, before rejoining the government in 2026.

Stanley’s most recent former employer has fared extraordinarily well under the Trump administration. Amazon Web Services is one of the CDAO’s approved Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace vendors, which offers fast-tracked procurement pathways to Pentagon customers, and the Amazon subsidiary has raked in a number of other federal contracts in the first two years of Trump’s second term.  

Per publicly available spending data, which excludes classified programs and other exempted awards, Amazon Web Services earned at least $277 million from defense contracts in fiscal year 2025, and it has collected another $358 million in Pentagon spending so far in fiscal year 2026.

Following the Defense Department’s dispute with Anthropic over basic AI deployment safeguards, Amazon was also one of eight tech companies to secure a deal with the Pentagon to deploy its frontier AI models in classified military capacities for all “lawful operational use.” 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has requested clarification from the agency and the companies (including Amazon) regarding what, exactly, “lawful operational use” means, and whether these companies have essentially gifted Donald Trump the ability to use AI to “engage in domestic surveillance — including spying on U.S. citizens exercising their legal rights — or [to] build autonomous weapons systems that have enormous power to make decisions about targeting without human intervention.” 

Amazon Web Services also plays a role in the Palantir-led and CDAO-managed Project Maven (now known as the Maven Smart System), an AI-integration system designed to accelerate the so-called “kill chain” from target identification to destruction in just “four clicks.” Integrating large language learning models into Project Maven means the system can now target up to 5,000 objectives a day. 

Project Maven, whose Pentagon contract is worth up to $1.3 billion, is now being “repurposed for border control and drug policing at home,” according to The New Yorker.

Palantir’s Inside Man 

Stanley isn’t the only public official who came to CDAO from a company with a stake in Project Maven. Rob Malpass, who previously worked at Palantir, is now the CDAO’s Deputy Chief Digital and AI Officer of the Intelligence Mission Area.

Malpass is also a Trump-world nepo baby. He is the son of David Malpass, a longtime Trump ally who served in the U.S. Treasury Department during Trump’s first term and subsequently led the World Bank from 2019 to 2023. The younger Malpass spent nearly a year working under his father at the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, where the staff was reportedly told to give him “preferential treatment.” Leaked audio revealed that bank staff referred to the 22-year-old “as a ‘prince’ and ‘important little fellow,’ who could go ‘running to daddy’ if things went wrong,” according to The Guardian.

Malpass left his father’s side to join Trump’s first National Economic Council in 2019 before moving to Palantir in 2021. 

Like Amazon Web Services, Palantir has also been one of the top government contractors to benefit from the second Trump administration. In 2025, the Army awarded the company almost $10 billion to establish “a comprehensive framework for the Army’s future software and data needs” over the next decade. It is one of the largest Pentagon contracts ever delivered. And $700.7 million of that has been earmarked to support the CDAO’s Managed Service Solution for DOD.

Ties To Meta And Salesforce

Another AI industry insider, CDAO Chief of Staff Kaydee James, joined the office after a stint as chief of staff at Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which wielded AI tools to “delete” federal contracts and workflows, fire staff, and surveil government workers.

Previously, from 2021 to 2023, James worked at Meta, one of the many Big Tech firms going “all in” on AI. In 2025, Meta dumped $14.3 billion into an AI infrastructure company called Scale AI in exchange for a 49 percent ownership stake. Last year, the Pentagon contracted with Scale AI to provide “our warfighters and mission operators with cutting-edge AI tools.” In May, CDAO expanded Scale AI’s contract ceiling from $100 million to a whopping $500 million potential over the lifetime of the award. 

Before her time at Meta, James worked at Salesforce. The cloud-based customer relationship management giant won a 10-year Army contract worth $5.6 billion this past January.

Billion-Dollar Windfalls

All told, Trump’s federal government — and the AI insiders it’s hired — have spent the first years of Trump 2.0 propping up what looks to be an AI bubble of gargantuan proportions through deregulation, hundreds of billions of dollars in federal contracts, as well as direct and hidden public subsidies. 

Indeed, the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization, found that federal spending on AI-related contracts rose to $7.2 billion in 2026, up 966 percent compared to 2024. What’s more, the value of potential awards has soared to $91.8 billion, a 1,912 percent jump from just two years earlier.

Much of that windfall has been overseen by the industry alums helming the CDAO. But the office and its corporate ties could now face scrutiny if lawmakers follow through with their promises to curb the AI gold rush. Following insider warnings that AI companies are “gambling with our lives,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) pushed a sweeping AI safety bill, saying “we need to pass the bipartisan AI Kill Switch Bill asap.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), meanwhile, announced he’ll be introducing legislation “to ban superintelligence and pause AI development.” 

While the public waits for Congress to implement basic safeguards against the terrifying warnings that continue to emerge from industry whistleblowers, AI companies — thanks, in part, to their former colleagues now in government — just keep cashing in.

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Trump wants to send Americans money. Congress and economists don't seem thrilled with the idea

Donald Trump's pitch to send Americans $5,000 checks should Republicans prevail in the November midterms is drawing scorn from some members of Congress — the very people who have constitutional authority over federal spending. Read More.   Rubio pledges US won't take unilateral action against drug trafficking despite recent strikes Secretary of State Marco Rubio pledged Thursday that the U.S. would not take military action against narcotics traffickers in Latin American countries without the approval of its allies, even as the Trump administration keeps up a yearlong campaign of deadly strikes against alleged drug boats in international waters. Read More.

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A Turning Point for the Right (Al Drago / Getty)

View in browser When Charlie Kirk was assassinated last September, many of his allies on the right memorialized him as a hero of free speech and the founder of an enduring political movement. Critics on the left tended to emphasize his long history of offensive remarks and dismiss him as little more than a troll. With a year of distance, neither view appears complete. Since his death, the MAGA movement has stumbled: Its factions are bickering, and Republicans are facing potentially disastrous midterm elections. President Trump seems disconnected from his base and reality. The current plight points to Kirk’s rare ability as a political node, someone who united otherwise disparate forces under one umbrella—and also to how much the movement depended on Kirk personally. Just how fragile a peace Kirk had managed to keep became clear three months after his killing, at an annual conference of Turning Point USA, the organization he’d co-founded. At the summit, feuding parties each tried to claim Kirk’s endorsement of their views. Ben Shapiro, the Daily Wire impresario, used the occasion to blast the broadcaster Tucker Carlson for conducting softball interviews with anti-Semites and other white supremacists. Citing Kirk’s stiff-arming of the Hitler-admiring influencer Nick Fuentes, whose followers were sometimes ejected from Turning Point events, Shapiro assailed Carlson for giving Fuentes a platform. Carlson mounted a counterattack in that evening’s keynote speech, arguing that it was Shapiro who was betraying Kirk’s commitment to open debate. These conflicts among leading right-wing figures have continued ever since. Kirk’s widow, Erika, now leads Turning Point and is well-regarded, but she does not seem to have the muscle that her husband did to quell conflicts. Carlson has become a furious critic of Trump and has vowed to create a rival political movement (although his ability to follow through is in question). Candace Owens, another prominent media personality, has become a proponent of conspiracy theories about Kirk’s death and has baselessly suggested at various times that the Israeli or French governments or “Egyptians” were involved. Fuentes has become a more influential commentator, but overall, MAGA media figures are seeing splintering audiences. No movement leader is as important as Trump, but the president has also had a tumultuous year. He is obsessed with building a ballroom at the White House—in part as a legacy project, but also perhaps because Kirk’s assassination and the attempts on his own life have instilled an understandable sense of paranoia that makes having a secure space at his residence feel imperative. As Trump has become more cloistered and withdrawn from public appearances, he has lost touch with his base, and he is pursuing an unpopular long-term war in Iran that betrays his campaign platform and writing off voters’ concerns about the economy and inflation. These dynamics, along with the natural pendulum swing against the sitting president’s party in midterm elections, mean that Republicans have bleak expectations for November. Not only are Democrats leading in polls of the generic House ballot and gaining in several Senate forecasts, but GOP voters are less enthusiastic than their Democratic counterparts. The problems are particularly acute among young voters. Although that group is typically heavily Democratic, Trump nearly matched Kamala Harris’s showing with the demographic in 2024, for which Turning Point received a great deal of credit. Today, however, young voters disapprove of Trump by wide margins—even greater than the general population. Young people who voted for Trump are also more likely to regret their vote than older ones, a recent Navigator poll found. Young men have turned against the president more than almost any other group has. What’s notable is that this drop in support and enthusiasm for Trump and Republicans comes at the same time that Turning Point is growing. As Reuters reported today, the organization has expanded since Kirk’s death, especially on campuses, but the people flocking to these chapters aren’t uniformly loyal to Trump. Turning Point could yet be an important presence in the midterms. The group was central to the Trump campaign’s plan for voter turnout in the 2024 election, helping deliver the president his first popular-vote victory among his three tries. Wired reports that Turning Point once again plans to spend large sums on field operations from now until the midterms. Kirk’s legacy on free speech and debate also remains up for grabs. As I wrote shortly after the assassination, an ironic phenomenon was emerging in which Kirk was being praised for his commitment to open discourse at the same time that right-wing figures were attempting to stifle any criticism of him. Some professors who were fired or punished in that period have since been reinstated or paid damages, but Trump and his allies have abandoned even a perfunctory commitment to free speech. Many of the tensions on display today have always been present in the MAGA movement. Trumpism is a big tent; it includes populists and plutocrats, isolationists and interventionists, and a dozen more dyads. The seams would inevitably have become visible at some point, but in retrospect, Kirk appears to have helped stave that off by maintaining connections across many factions and the sway to keep figures such as Fuentes outside. In his absence, the conflicts have come into the open. Related: The irony of using Charlie Kirk’s murder to silence debate Ali Breland: “I watched 12 hours of Nick Fuentes.”

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Full of Hot Air

View in browser

Just call it the Five-Grand Old Party. This week, at the Republican Party’s midterm faux-convention, President Trump announced something called (inevitably) the “Trump Dividend.” The premise is simple. “If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them,” Trump said, “I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.”

Problems abound. First, this is wildly inappropriate, for obvious reasons: It’s an attempt at using taxpayer money to bribe voters into supporting the president’s party. Because Trump is not premising the supposed payout on individuals’ votes, it might be legal, though the White House would presumably require congressional approval for the estimated $1.3 trillion cost. A Republican Congress might sign off; a Democratic one might be more inclined to start impeachment proceedings.

Second, the payments almost certainly won’t happen. (If you disagree, I’d be happy to sell you a nice bridge in Brooklyn if you sign your Trump Dividend over to me.) Trump has promised to cut checks to Americans before and not followed through, and this proposal appeared to catch many of Trump’s advisers, as well as Republican lawmakers, by surprise. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump’s rival for the 2024 GOP nomination, quickly criticized the pledge.

Third, injecting more than $1 trillion into the economy wouldn’t just blow up the deficit and national debt—it would also drive up prices. Giving every American $5,000 to spend would create demand that couldn’t immediately be met, encouraging sellers to raise prices. I could quote lots of economists from left, right, and center who have already said that the payouts would be inflationary, but you could also just take it from Trump himself, who has repeatedly blamed inflation on high spending during the Biden administration—including in the same speech where he floated the dividend.

A paradox of this moment is that inflation is a big reason for Trump’s cratering approval and his party’s sinking odds in the midterm elections, but nearly every one of his signature policy ideas is inflationary. The basic challenge is not novel to this president—voters hate inflation, yet most anti-inflation measures the government can take will hurt the economy, which voters also hate. But Trump’s strategy seems to be to commit to new proposals that would drive up costs.

In some cases, inflation is incidental to the president’s goal. When Trump launched the war in Iran, he apparently believed that it would end quickly—and might even result in the United States gaining control over Iran’s huge oil reserves. Instead, the war is dragging on into its seventh month, with no end in sight. The de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz, as well as attacks in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, have strangled shipping of oil as well as other goods, driving prices higher. The average price of a gallon of diesel fuel in the U.S. topped $6 today for the first time, and because so many goods move via diesel trucks, the rise drives further inflation.

Trump’s efforts to crack down on immigration also have the collateral effect of pushing prices up. The administration has not only tried to secure borders and deport unauthorized immigrants; it has also revoked legal status from more than 1 million people who were permitted to live and work in the United States under Temporary Protected Status. Many of these people were employed in industries such as construction and health care that are difficult and low-paid; for example, more than 20,000 Haitians with TPS worked in caregiving last year. Housing shortages plague many parts of the country, and more building could alleviate them. Perhaps Americans will be willing to take these difficult jobs, but with unemployment rates already low, that will likely require higher salaries—which will mean higher costs, and therefore higher prices.

Other Trump policy ideas are directly and explicitly inflationary. For decades, Trump has espoused protectionism, saying that the United States should impose tariffs in order to close trade deficits with some partners. Regardless of the other merits of this plan (and they are dubious at best), tariffs are by definition inflationary. The goal is to raise prices on certain products. A tariff is a tax on goods, and someone has to pay it.

Faced with economic headwinds and voter dissatisfaction, Trump has at many times dismissed voter concerns, but he has also pressured the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. Trump attempted to oust former Fed Chair Jerome Powell and the board member Lisa Cook, and made clear that he expects his newly appointed chair, Kevin Warsh, to lower rates. By law, the Fed is required to promote maximum employment and stable prices. (It aims for 2 percent inflation.) Trump wants lower interest rates because they encourage economic growth, but they drive inflation for the same reasons: Lower rates encourage borrowing, which produces spending, which has a similar effect on prices as sending every American adult a $5,000 check.

Writing off Trump’s pursuit of inflationary ideas as cynical is tempting, if only because so much of what he does is cynical, but years of evidence suggest that Trump actually has little idea how economics works, as the journalist Steve Benen recently noted. The president’s obsession with trade deficits is nonsensical; Senator Rand Paul memorably quipped that because he gives money to his grocer and gets food in return, he’s running a trade deficit with the supermarket. Last week, Trump perplexingly suggested that the United States could simply cut off commerce entirely: “We could do tremendous good for ourselves by just not trading with countries.”

Perhaps Trump doesn’t understand that his ideas will drive up prices. Perhaps he does, but concludes that dangling free money in front of voters is worth the hit. Either way, new numbers released today show that inflation rose 3.4 percent from one year ago. Trump’s policies are working.

Related:

• Trump doesn’t want to fight inflation.
• Trump is asking the private sector to save him.

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Federal court rejects Trump order keeping Michigan coal plant open

In a defeat for the Trump administration, a federal court on Friday ruled that the Energy Department exceeded its authority when it forced a Michigan coal-fired power plant to stay open past its scheduled retirement date last year. Read More.