Singer, songwriter, businesswoman, philanthropist Dolly Parton died Tuesday in Nashville (photo ca. 1977). Her many awards and recognitions included a Kennedy Center Honor in 2006. Twenty years later, President Trump wants to demolish the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts if his name is not restored to the side of the building.
•Contributing Pundit Rich Corbett's commentary on the US-Canadian trade war is in The Gray Area.
Fed Rate Hike in September? – Though newly minted Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh is loath to publicly signal interest rate increases or cuts, Wall Street investors Friday signaled they expect an increase when the Reserve’s Open Market Committee meets in September. Warsh told the Federal Reserve’s annual Economic Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming Friday that the central bank is not doing enough to curb inflation, NPR’s All Things Considered reports.
Warsh in his speech ticked off economic bright spots, including strong capital expenditures by US businesses, strong consumer spending and low unemployment rates.
“But on the price-stability side of our mandate, the numbers are more concerning,” Warsh said. “The Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, the 12-month change in the PCE price index, stands at 3.7%, while the six-month change is 4.1%.”
Coincidentally, Friday marks six months of the US and Israel at war with Iran.
“The comparable measures from the Consumer Price Index are also elevated,” Warsh continued, “as are the core measures of both PCE and CPI inflation. None of these measures are perfect, but they all tell a similar story: Inflation is running above our 2% target. So the Fed’s predominant focus right now should be on prices.”
President Trump is not likely to be pleased.
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We’ll Always Have Lake Erie – Before a map of the Great Lakes hung in the White House, President Trump signed an executive order Thursday to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America.” The display map made it so with “Lake America” printed in large red letters over the lake’s name for the rest of the world, Newsweek reports.
This was the latest shot in Trump’s trade war on Canada. It’s also the career real estate developer’s propensity to rename everything, as the president did last year when he renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”
“So, if you think about it, we have a gulf and we have a lake,” Trump said. “Now, all we need is an ocean. So maybe we’ll change the name of the Atlantic and or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them.”
Let that be a warning: It would be confusing for the US to be surrounded by the American Ocean off the West Coast and the East Coast. One of them, probably the Atlantic, would have to be renamed, perhaps, the Trump Ocean? (Someone warn The Atlantic magazine.)
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney noted the name has been Lake Ontario for more than 400 years; “America is changing,” he said.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford also chimed in, saying, “It’s Lake Ontario to the Canadians and the rest of the world. Now and forever.”
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Meanwhile, at the Pump – The national average for a gallon of unleaded regular fell 0.99 cents Friday to $4.0898, AAA reports, or $1.2736 costlier than on February 27. Diesel dropped 0.78 cents to $5.6105 per gallon, $1.8586 costlier than in late February. –TL
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THURSDAY 8/27/26
Kennedy Center Threatened – If President Trump can’t join his name onto the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, he wants to demolish it. That’s the threat posed as Judge Christopher R. Cooper of the US District Court for the District of Columbia holds a hearing Thursday on whether Trump’s name should be added to the 55-year-old building, as demanded by the Center’s board chaired by President Trump, Roll Call reports. The board wants the judge to consider options for adding the current president’s name to the Kennedy Center, something along the lines of “Renovated and Restored by President Donald J. Trump.”
On Monday, Trump’s Justice Department issued the threat to demolish the Kennedy Center if the president is not allowed to renovate it and fix his name to it.
“Without those efforts, the Center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down, with a determination to follow on what to build on the site, such as a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River that has been proposed, by some, for many years,” DOJ attorney Brantley Mayers argued.
Though it’s not clear who those “some” proposing an amphitheater might be, it is pretty clear the president for which it would be named.
“No one is going to demolish the Kennedy Center, we should leave the Kennedy Center theatrics to the performers,” Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA), ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said in a release.
Judge Cooper halted the Trump White House’s first attempt to add the current president’s name to the building in May, following a lawsuit filed by Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), an ex-officio member of the Center’s board.
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Meanwhile, at the Pump – The national average for a gallon of unleaded regular fell 0.17 cents Thursday to $4.0997, AAA reports, or $1.2835 costlier than on February 27. Diesel dropped 0.47 cents to $5.6183 per gallon, $1.8664 costlier than in late February. –TL
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WEDNESDAY 8/26/26
Dolly Parton: 1946-2026 -- Singer, songwriter, businesswoman, philanthropist whose Imagination Library has distributed more than 200 million books to babies and young children, Dolly Parton died Tuesday in Nashville after a “brief battle with cancer,” age 80. She made people of all sorts of cultures, identifications and ideologies claim Parton for their own, drag queen Trixie Mattel told NPR’s All Things Considered: “It’s the one thing maybe a hardcore conservative and a drag queen can have a middle ground on.”
Meta Settles – Facebook/Instagram owner Meta will pay $17 billion split between 47 states and the District of Columbia and agree to some major changes to its products over a lawsuit claiming its platforms endangered children, The New York Times reports.
Meta agrees to limit how long teenagers can spend on its platforms and will ban features that trigger mental health issues, which the NYT notes is the heart of its engagement for advertising. The settlement ends a federal civil trial filed in the US Northern District of Oakland in which California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey sought about $200 billion over accusations that Meta harmed children. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is expected to approve the settlement Meta filed with the Northern District of Oakland Wednesday morning.
The civil court trial, which began last week, was expected to run for about six weeks during which Meta founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg was considered likely to testify.
Obviously, Zuckerberg is now saved from the indignity of appearing in public court.
Meta reported $15.85 billion in profits for the second quarter of 2026, on gross revenues of $60.8 billion.
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Graham, Trump Win South Carolina Runoff – Incumbent Sen. Darline Graham (R-SC), who was appointed to the seat by South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) after her brother Lindsey died in June, won a special Republican primary race Tuesday with 52.5% of the vote to Rep. Ralph Norman’s 47.5%, The Associated Press reports.
Graham faces Democratic nominee Annie Andrews, a pediatrician, in the November 3 midterm elections.
The runoff result is a win for President Trump, who endorsed Graham over Norman. After successfully defeating in early primaries several incumbent Republicans who sometimes voted against him, Trump endorsees more recently had lost a few House and gubernatorial races.
Andrews, or much more likely, Graham, will serve a full Senate term, through 2032.
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Canada Tariffs Back – Ottawa announced $20 billion in retaliatory tariffs on US imports on about 700 products, to take effect September 8, Newsweek reports, citing a Canadian government statement. Tariff rates will be 15%, 25% or 50% depending on the product. A $7.5 billion package will aid affected Canadian businesses.
The approach is “firm but disciplined,” Duncan Wood, visiting fellow for North America at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, told Newsweek.
“The objective is not to win a tariff war, it is to establish the credibility required to negotiate with this administration,” Wood said.
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Meanwhile, at the Pump – The national average for a gallon of unleaded regular rose 0.45 cents Wednesday to $4.1014, AAA reports, or $1.2852 costlier than on February 27. Diesel was up 0.31 cents to $5.623 per gallon, up $1.8711 over late February.
CORRECTIONS: YouTube's owner was misidentified in the report on Meta's $17 billion settlement with California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey. The video sharing social media outlet is owned by Google.
Drag queen Trixie Mattel's name was misspelled in an earlier edition of the caption at the top of this page. –TL
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TUESDAY 8/25/26
Trump in SpaceX – President Trump’s portfolio managers purchased between $15,001 and $50,000 worth of SpaceX stock when it went public in June, the International Business Times reports. A major contractor with the NASA space agency led by ex-DOGE chief Elon Musk, who wants to use the company’s spaceships to colonize Mars and briefly became the first-ever trillionaire after its stock’s initial public offering, it was part of more than 1,000 trades the president’s managers made in June, according to the IBT.
Neither Musk, who is no longer a trillionaire on paper, nor Trump have done well with SpaceX stock, so far. It has dropped in value from $156.11 per share June 23, shortly after its IPO, to trading at just under $137 per share as of Tuesday morning.
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Neither Snow, Nor Rain, but Maybe SCOTUS – The Supreme Court in a 10-page unsigned ruling Monday cleared the way for the Trump administration to begin implementation of the president’s executive order from early this year to impose restrictions on mail-in voting. But it is far from a sure victory for President Trump’s effort to regulate voting and comes within a week or two of states’ distribution of mail-in ballots for the November 3 midterms.
The SCOTUS ruling paused a federal judge’s injunction that banned the federal government from applying provisions of Trump’s EO in the November election to the 23 states and District of Columbia challenging the EO’s legality, according to SCOTUSblog. SCOTUS says it’s too soon for courts to consider the challenge by the 23 states + D.C. because the order has not yet been carried out and thus states have not yet suffered the sort of injury to allow the lawsuit to move forward.
A separate, more pertinent ruling by the same judge in a case filed by a different set of plaintiffs remains in effect for now. That ruling, SCOTUSblog’s Amy Howe writes, prohibits the US Postal Service from implementing one provision of the EO anywhere in the US.
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That Was D-Day? – Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent’s “Economic D-Day” on Iran Monday was more a show about nothing but continued sanctions, renamed – because the Trump White House likes this sort of thing – Operation Economic Outcast.
Operation Economic Outcast included sanctions on more than 60 entities, including Chinese firms but not any sanctions with teeth barred at China itself, which buys most of Iran’s oil. The Chinese government warned that such economic warfare will heighten tensions, The Wall Street Journal reports. China said it would safeguard its rights and interests.
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Meanwhile, at the Pump – It seems Economic D-Day might have had some positive effect on gas prices at the pump. Unleaded regular fell 0.3 cents per gallon Tuesday to $4.0969 per gallon, according to AAA’s national average. That’s $1.2807 per gallon costlier than on February 27. Diesel is up, however, by 0.65 cents from Monday and by $1.868 over late February, to $5.6199 per gallon. –TL
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MONDAY 8/24/26
Uh Oh, Canada – Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney won’t back down in the trade war President Trump is waging on his country. After negotiations between the US and Canada broke down Saturday over Trump’s earlier threats of 50% tariffs on such goods as lumber, concrete and ice hockey equipment, Carney threatened to retaliate on those tariffs “dollar for dollar.”
Trump raised the stakes further on Monday, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“On January First, 2027, Tariffs on all Cars, Trucks, both large and small, Automotive Parts, and Steel, will be increased to 50%,” the president Truth Socialed.
Carney had said in a 22-minute address to Canada on Saturday that US trade representatives had thrown last-minute curveballs including a demand that his country comply with US diktats on tariffs on its trade with other countries, The New York Times reports. US negotiators demanded changes that “included threats on French language and culture and Canadian culture that would never be acceptable for that reason,” Carney said.
Trump’s trade war on Canada threatens the economic health of both nations. For Carney, Trump’s demands represent a major step toward the president’s demands to make Canada the 51st US state.
“We cannot accept what they offered and we will not give what they asked,” Carney said in his address. “We were not prepared to compromise Canada’s sovereignty or undermine our key industries.”
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‘Economic D-Day’ on Iran – Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent promises to announce Monday afternoon new economic sanctions on Iran meant to end the war in lieu of the deals that have not been reached since late February. Earlier Monday, Iran threatened fines or confiscation on dozens of ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the Financial Times reports.
The Persian Gulf Strait Authority set up by Iran said on X-Twitter that 46 ships had violated “Iranian protocols” for transiting the Strait.
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Meanwhile, at the Pump – AAA’s national average for unleaded regular Monday is $4.0991 per gallon, off 1.01 cents from Friday and up $1.2837 over February 27. Diesel is $5.6134 per gallon, up 3.7 cents over Friday and +$1.8615 versus late February.
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Ballroom Blitz -- Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Friday issued a temporary order staying US District Judge Richard Leon’s order that put on-hold construction of President Trump’s pet ballroom project (SCOTUSblog). Roberts’ administrative stay allows construction to continue for now, which is good news for the president no matter what, as the ballroom is “65% complete in its entirety, and moving quickly toward total completion,” US Solicitor Gen. John D. Sauer told the court. –Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa
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MONDAY 8/24/26