The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and the brief hunt for the suspected shooter rocked President Donald Trump and conservatives last week.
The White House has sought to make Kirk a martyrfor the conservative Republican cause, lowering flags to half-staff in his honor, holding a memorial service in the recently MAGA-fied Kennedy Center and having Vice President JD Vance co-host his podcast on Monday.
But while the Kirk assassination briefly swept aside a series of crises at home and abroad that threaten Trump’s major goals, they remain nevertheless as pressing issues for the White House.
On Thursday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics put out its Consumer Price Index report, which showed that inflation jumped by 0.4 percent in August and by 2.9 percent in the past 12 months. Jobless claims also rose by 27,000 to 263,000 for the week ending Sept. 6, one of the highest levels since 2021, when the economy was still recovering from the Covid-19-induced recession.
The only potential source of good economic news for this week is that the Federal Reserve will meet and likely lower interest rates by a quarter- or half-percent after Trump has long badgered Chairman Jerome Powell into doing so.
But Trump also seems to recognize the tariffs are taking a toll on the economy and causing companies to spit out information that put his policies in a bad light.
This likely prompted his announcement on Monday that, pending approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission, publicly traded companies would no longer have to report quarterly, but only every six months. While some companies may relish not having to report as much, investors might dislike it because they will have less information about where to allocate capital and investment.
Trump also faces a major issue of his administration’s own making. Last week, Trump’s mass deportation push created an international crisis when US immigration agents detained 300 South Korean workers at a Hyundai factory in Georgia.
The whole affair outraged Seoul and it led to Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau meeting with officials from South Korea to express his regret.
Trump even took it a step further, saying he didn’t want to “frighten off or disincentivize investment into America by outside countries or companies” and that the United States would “welcome” foreign companies and their employees into the United States and “we are willing to proudly say we will learn from them, and do even better than them at their own ‘game,’ sometime into the not too distant future!”
The move is a stark break from Trump’s approach of never backing down or admitting a mistake, as exhibited most publicly in the administration’s ongoing legal battle to remove Kilmar Abrego Garcia from the United States. It will also set up a clash between Trump’s desire to see manufacturing return to the United States and the deportation goals of his top adviser Stephen Miller.
Then, there’s the issue of a government shutdown. On Friday, amid Trump’s announcement on Fox & Friends that Kirk’s alleged shooter had been apprehended, he said, “We need to get Republican votes, that’s all.”
That’s not true. For a continuing resolution to pass, it needs 60 votes, meaning seven Democrats need to join the 53 Republicans. But on Monday, Trump doubled down, saying he wanted a “clean” continuing resolution, a stopgap spending bill to keep the government open as Congress writes the 12 spending bills needed to keep the lights on.
“In times like these, Republicans have to stick TOGETHER to fight back against the Radical Left Democrat demands, and vote ‘YES!’ on both Votes needed to pass a Clean CR this week out of the House of Representatives,” he posted on Truth Social. “Democrats want the Government to shut down. Republicans want the Government to OPEN.”
That will be difficult to do given many conservatives already say they will vote against the continuing resolution. Even if Republicans are ultimately bluffing, as was the case when the Freedom Caucus preened and peacocked throughout the deliberation about the “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” they will still need Democrats. And it’s unlikely Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will bail out Trump this time.
The next 15 days barreling toward a recession and the end of the third economic quarter will ultimately be a test of wills and Trump’s grip on markets and the legislative branch.
