How the George Floyd Protests Changed America, for Better and Worse
Over the last several decades, the United States has occasionally experienced dramatic transformations during compressed stretches of time. In 1968, the twin assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, separated by merely two months, yielded broad disillusionment. Six years later, as the simmering Watergate scandal boiled over and prompted President Nixon's resignation, many Americans adopted a posture of deep distrust toward elected officials. And, of course, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, inaugurated an enduring era of anxiety over safety and security. In these critical periods, an existing American order declined and a new paradigm ascended.
In 'Summer of Our Discontent,' Thomas Chatterton Williams argues that the United States witnessed another such epoch-defining moment five years ago. The inflection point, he contends, arrived on May 25, 2020, when Derek Chauvin slowly extinguished George Floyd's life outside the Cup Foods convenience store in Minneapolis.
The ensuing indignation over Floyd's murder, alongside the then-raging pandemic and extensive lockdown orders, fused to generate the largest protest movement in our country's history. That activism at once marked and marred the American psyche, Williams insists, as 'the residues of the normative revolution of 2020 have lingered.' In his view, a grave shift in mores and attitudes fomented a racialized 'wokeness' on the left that, in turn, generated a ferocious backlash on the right, bequeathing our current, anguished hour.
Williams is right that the last several years have brought unusually intense ferment to American racial politics, and that the turmoil packed into what we might call the Long George Floyd Moment — beginning in the Obama years and stretching into Joe Biden's presidency — deserves rigorous scrutiny.
A staff writer at The Atlantic and prominent commentator on race and identity, Williams would seem well suited to explore how these recent seismic shifts have jolted American society. Amid a sea of intellectual orthodoxy, he admirably stands out for his willingness to pursue independent lines of thought, no small feat given his combustible topic. Much of his recent journalism can be construed as a broad-gauged expansion of the project initiated in his last book, 'Self-Portrait in Black and White' (2019), which denounced what he viewed as America's pathological fixation on race and racial categories.
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CNN
7 minutes ago
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The jobs report that enraged Trump was flashing a recession warning sign
Job market Donald TrumpFacebookTweetLink Follow The bad news in last Friday's jobs report may have been overshadowed when President Donald Trump fired the commissioner in charge of producing it. But economists haven't forgotten about America's job market – and they're growing concerned. Some of the jobs report data has economists using a word they haven't uttered in several months: recession. Hiring over the past three months slowed dramatically, creating problems for the economists and statisticians at the Bureau of Labor Statistics whose job is to make sense of the payroll data they get from thousands of businesses across the country. As new data came in about May and June's employment, the BLS was forced to sharply lower those months' job totals from their preliminary estimates. The BLS revised May and June's jobs totals lower by a combined 258,000 jobs. That massive revision gave economists some serious agita. Larger revisions have happened before, but every time changes that large have taken place over the course of at least two months, the US economy has been in a recession – at least since records began in 1968. 'The job market is terrible,' said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office during the George W. Bush administration. 'Outside of education and health, the economy has lost private sector jobs in the past three months. That's terrible.' The US economy has added an average of just 85,000 jobs per month this year, which is well below the 177,000 jobs that the economy added on average each month before the pandemic. Poor jobs data doesn't mean the US economy is in or going into a recession. Several recent economic indicators are pointing in the wrong direction – weakness in second-quarter gross domestic product and slower-than-expected growth in both the manufacturing and services sectors, for example. But, importantly, the National Bureau of Economic Research, which is responsible for declaring recessions, tracks four big indicators of economic activity – consumer spending, personal income, factory production and employment. None have been pointing to a recession or even that the US economy is on the precipice of a recession. That is, until Friday's jobs report. Yet even the recession alarms it sounded come with some caveats. Recent moribund job growth was likely distorted by business uncertainty surrounding Trump's tariffs, and it's too early to tell whether it will rebound or continue to remain at this low level, noted Keith Lerner, co-chief investment officer at Truist. 'The US economy is in a muddle-through environment,' said Lerner, who said the Federal Reserve probably needs to take action to lower interest rates soon because the jobs report suggests it might be behind the curve. The Fed has known about the slowing hiring for quite some time. But the sharp pullback over the past few months – data the Fed didn't have when it made its decision last week to hold interest rates steady – probably means the economy is considerably weaker than economists had expected. 'Friday's jobs report was terrible with recessionary level numbers, but slowing hiring is not new,' said Robert Ruggirello, chief investment officer, Brave Eagle Wealth Management. 'While Friday's report does not mean we are entering a recession, it shows that companies are freezing hiring and firing until there is more policy certainty and business confidence.' Ironically, the leading culprit for slowing jobs growth may be the thing that has been holding the Fed back from cutting rates: Trump's tariffs. The Fed had been in wait-in-see mode in case tariffs pushed prices higher. The flip side is that the US economy appeared strong enough to handle higher interest rates. But it seems businesses are no longer waiting. They're freezing hiring and changing their investments as they grow fearful that tariffs could raise costs and hurt the economy. 'The president's unorthodox economic agenda and policies may be starting to make a dent in the labor market,' said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at FwdBonds. 'Businesses are not waiting as they are cutting back on the numbers of new workers they bring on board, which means we can no longer count on the employment markets to be a positive factor supporting economic growth in the weeks and months ahead.' Trump's immigration policy appears to be taking a toll, too. Since April, 1.4 million people dropped out of the US labor force – 802,000 of whom were foreign born. That may have helped make the jobs report look slightly better than it actually is. Because of the way the survey was taken, if the 503,000 who dropped out of the labor force but still wanted to work had told the BLS that they were actively searching for a job, the unemployment rate would have risen to 4.5% last month, Rupkey said. Instead, it rose to 4.2%. The revisions, though surprising for their sheer size, were not fully unexpected. They align with the other inputs that analysts have been tracking, Goldman Sachs economists said in a note to clients Saturday, and they help paint a clearer picture of the economy. Other key jobs indicators 'have slowed significantly in recent months,' wrote Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius. 'Taken together, the economic data confirm our view that the US economy is growing at a below-potential pace.' In other words, Goldman Sachs isn't shocked by the revisions. If anything, they fit with the broader puzzle pieces. The revisions were 'undeniably concerning,' Bank of America economists said in a note to investors Monday. But the 'silver lining' is that a considerable amount of the revisions had to do with seasonal adjustments – basically algorithms that needed adjusting as new data came in. The BLS considers its initial jobs numbers to be preliminary when they're first published, because some respondents fail to report their payroll data by the BLS' deadline. Low survey responses can make the report more challenging to estimate. But the BLS continues to collect the payroll data as it's reported, and it revises the data accordingly. To extrapolate the data for the entire country, BLS economists add in some educated guesswork, based on seasonal hiring trends. The BLS also smooths out the data with calculations known as seasonal adjustments to avoid huge spikes and dips in data each month. The data are also revised because of those seasonal adjustments. If the more complete data comes in well above or below the preliminary data, revisions can be exacerbated by the BLS' seasonal adjustments, which sometimes need to be recalculated. Now that the BLS has a better sense of the job market – one with a much slower pace of hiring – revisions in future months may be far less dramatic than over the past several. CNN's Matt Egan contributed to this report.
CNN
19 minutes ago
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The jobs report that enraged Trump was flashing a recession warning sign
The bad news in last Friday's jobs report may have been overshadowed when President Donald Trump fired the commissioner in charge of producing it. But economists haven't forgotten about America's job market – and they're growing concerned. Some of the jobs report data has economists using a word they haven't uttered in several months: recession. Hiring over the past three months slowed dramatically, creating problems for the economists and statisticians at the Bureau of Labor Statistics whose job is to make sense of the payroll data they get from thousands of businesses across the country. As new data came in about May and June's employment, the BLS was forced to sharply lower those months' job totals from their preliminary estimates. The BLS revised May and June's jobs totals lower by a combined 258,000 jobs. That massive revision gave economists some serious agita. Larger revisions have happened before, but every time changes that large have taken place over the course of at least two months, the US economy has been in a recession – at least since records began in 1968. 'The job market is terrible,' said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office during the George W. Bush administration. 'Outside of education and health, the economy has lost private sector jobs in the past three months. That's terrible.' The US economy has added an average of just 85,000 jobs per month this year, which is well below the 177,000 jobs that the economy added on average each month before the pandemic. Poor jobs data doesn't mean the US economy is in or going into a recession. Several recent economic indicators are pointing in the wrong direction – weakness in second-quarter gross domestic product and slower-than-expected growth in both the manufacturing and services sectors, for example. But, importantly, the National Bureau of Economic Research, which is responsible for declaring recessions, tracks four big indicators of economic activity – consumer spending, personal income, factory production and employment. None have been pointing to a recession or even that the US economy is on the precipice of a recession. That is, until Friday's jobs report. Yet even the recession alarms it sounded come with some caveats. Recent moribund job growth was likely distorted by business uncertainty surrounding Trump's tariffs, and it's too early to tell whether it will rebound or continue to remain at this low level, noted Keith Lerner, co-chief investment officer at Truist. 'The US economy is in a muddle-through environment,' said Lerner, who said the Federal Reserve probably needs to take action to lower interest rates soon because the jobs report suggests it might be behind the curve. The Fed has known about the slowing hiring for quite some time. But the sharp pullback over the past few months – data the Fed didn't have when it made its decision last week to hold interest rates steady – probably means the economy is considerably weaker than economists had expected. 'Friday's jobs report was terrible with recessionary level numbers, but slowing hiring is not new,' said Robert Ruggirello, chief investment officer, Brave Eagle Wealth Management. 'While Friday's report does not mean we are entering a recession, it shows that companies are freezing hiring and firing until there is more policy certainty and business confidence.' Ironically, the leading culprit for slowing jobs growth may be the thing that has been holding the Fed back from cutting rates: Trump's tariffs. The Fed had been in wait-in-see mode in case tariffs pushed prices higher. The flip side is that the US economy appeared strong enough to handle higher interest rates. But it seems businesses are no longer waiting. They're freezing hiring and changing their investments as they grow fearful that tariffs could raise costs and hurt the economy. 'The president's unorthodox economic agenda and policies may be starting to make a dent in the labor market,' said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at FwdBonds. 'Businesses are not waiting as they are cutting back on the numbers of new workers they bring on board, which means we can no longer count on the employment markets to be a positive factor supporting economic growth in the weeks and months ahead.' Trump's immigration policy appears to be taking a toll, too. Since April, 1.4 million people dropped out of the US labor force – 802,000 of whom were foreign born. That may have helped make the jobs report look slightly better than it actually is. Because of the way the survey was taken, if the 503,000 who dropped out of the labor force but still wanted to work had told the BLS that they were actively searching for a job, the unemployment rate would have risen to 4.5% last month, Rupkey said. Instead, it rose to 4.2%. The revisions, though surprising for their sheer size, were not fully unexpected. They align with the other inputs that analysts have been tracking, Goldman Sachs economists said in a note to clients Saturday, and they help paint a clearer picture of the economy. Other key jobs indicators 'have slowed significantly in recent months,' wrote Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius. 'Taken together, the economic data confirm our view that the US economy is growing at a below-potential pace.' In other words, Goldman Sachs isn't shocked by the revisions. If anything, they fit with the broader puzzle pieces. The revisions were 'undeniably concerning,' Bank of America economists said in a note to investors Monday. But the 'silver lining' is that a considerable amount of the revisions had to do with seasonal adjustments – basically algorithms that needed adjusting as new data came in. The BLS considers its initial jobs numbers to be preliminary when they're first published, because some respondents fail to report their payroll data by the BLS' deadline. Low survey responses can make the report more challenging to estimate. But the BLS continues to collect the payroll data as it's reported, and it revises the data accordingly. To extrapolate the data for the entire country, BLS economists add in some educated guesswork, based on seasonal hiring trends. The BLS also smooths out the data with calculations known as seasonal adjustments to avoid huge spikes and dips in data each month. The data are also revised because of those seasonal adjustments. If the more complete data comes in well above or below the preliminary data, revisions can be exacerbated by the BLS' seasonal adjustments, which sometimes need to be recalculated. Now that the BLS has a better sense of the job market – one with a much slower pace of hiring – revisions in future months may be far less dramatic than over the past several. CNN's Matt Egan contributed to this report.
Fox News
24 minutes ago
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Michelle Obama celebrates Barack as ‘coolest guy' on his birthday after the pair joked about divorce rumors
Former first lady Michelle Obama praised former President Barack Obama as her "everything" and the "coolest guy I know" on his 64th birthday after the longtime couple joked about divorce rumors that have been swirling for months. "Happy birthday to my love, my best friend, my everything! @BarackObama, even after all these years, you're still the coolest guy I know," the former first lady posted to Instagram Monday afternoon, accompanied by a photo of the pair. The former president turned 64 Monday, with the former first lady sharing the birthday post on both Instagram and Facebook. Michelle Obama's birthday message followed months of speculation that the couple's more than 30-year marriage was on the rocks before the couple joked about the rumors during a July podcast. "It's my husband, ya'll!" Michelle Obama said jokingly at the start of a podcast of "IMO" in July when the former president first joined the set. "When we aren't (in the same room), folks think we're divorced." The former first lady hosts "IMO" with her brother Craig Robinson. "She took me back!" Barack Obama quipped during his appearance, joking, "It was touch and go for a while." Speculation had mounted for months that the presidential couple was headed to divorce, which heightened in January when the former first lady did not attend high-profile events such as President Donald Trump's inauguration or President Jimmy Carter's funeral. "There hasn't been one moment in our marriage where I've thought about quitting my man," Michelle Obama said during an "IMO" podcast in July. "We've had some really hard times. We've had a lot of fun times, a lot of adventures, and I have become a better person because of the man I'm married to." "Don't make me cry now," Barack said. "Don't let me start tearing up now." Michelle previously had dismissed divorce rumors, including in April when she addressed questions as to why she did not join the 44th president at Trump's inauguration or Carter's funeral. "But the interesting thing is that when I say no, for the most part, people are like, 'I get it, and I'm OK,' right?" she told podcast host Sophia Bush in April about how she spends her time. "And that's the thing that we as women, I think we struggle with, like disappointing people. I mean so much so that this year people were, they couldn't even fathom that I was making a choice for myself, that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing, you know? This couldn't be a grown woman just making a set of decisions herself, right? But that's what society does to us." "If it doesn't fit into the sort of stereotype of what people think we should do, then it gets labeled as something negative and horrible," Obama continued. Fox News Digital reached out to Michelle Obama's office for any additional comment Tuesday morning but did not immediately receive a reply.
