Trump downplays economic woes as partisan spin, saying, ‘Costs are way down’
US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (Photographer: Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said the U.S. economy is strong and insisted polls showing Americans are feeling economic pain are “fake” during an interview on Fox News that aired on Monday night.
Trump said bad news about the economy amounted to a “con job by the Democrats,” adding Democrats “feed” major news network anchors with the message the economy is bad and then “every anchor” does “exactly what they say.”
“I’ll never forget, they used a word like ‘manufactured,'” Trump said in the interview. “You remember the word ‘manufacture’? It’s a ‘manufactured’ economy. Nobody uses that word. Every anchor broke in ‘manufactured.’ They do exactly what they say. It’s such a rigged system.”
The U.S. economy grew at an annualized rate of 3.8% in the second quarter in the government’s final estimate, besting a 3.3% rate issued in its second estimate and far exceeding a 3% initial estimate. But consumer prices rose 3% in September compared to a year ago, with inflation at its highest level since January, the most-recent government data showed. The inflation reading came in lower than economists’ expectations.
Trump defended his handling of the economy, saying that costs are “way down” across the board.
“So are you ready? Costs are way down,” Trump said. “Gasoline is going to be hitting $2 pretty soon, or around $2. Gasoline is at $2.70 now and it was at $4.50 under Biden, under sleepy Joe. When gasoline comes down, when energy comes down — and everybody agrees energy is down — we drill, you know, drill, baby drill. We’re going like wild.”
The average consumer price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. was $3.072 on Tuesday, according to AAA, which said the average price was $3.083 a gallon a year ago.
Trump was also pressed about a rollout by his administration for a 50-year mortgage option, something that faced criticism on social media as critics pointed out that the extended payoff timeline would mean Americans would pay more in interest than they would through the life of a shorter loan.
Laura Ingraham, the Fox News host, suggested to Trump that longer loans could be construed as a “giveaway to the banks” and would simply be “prolonging the time it would take for Americans to own a home outright.”
Trump pushed back on Ingraham, saying that “all it means is you pay less per month.”
“You pay it over a longer period of time. It’s not like a big factor. It might help a little bit,” Trump said. “But even with interest rates up, the economy is the strongest it’s ever been. You know, you asked me, just to go back to the beginning of your question, you talked about prices. We’re down on energy. We’re down on interest rates.”
“Well, first of all, the East Wing was a beautiful, little, tiny structure that was built many years ago, that was renovated and expanded and disbanded and columns ripped out, and it had nothing to do with the original building,” he said. “It was a poor, sad sight, and I could have built the ballroom around it, but it would not have been — we’re building one of the greatest ballrooms in the world, by the way.”
“But the East Wing, that building was renovated 20 times, including adding a floor to the top, which was terrible, Trump continued. “It was at a common brick little, tiny windows. It looked like hell. It had nothing to do with the original building, and I didn’t want to sacrifice a great ballroom for an okay ballroom by leaving it right smack in the middle.
(NEW YORK) — A public memorial service for conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was killed on Sept. 10 while speaking on a college campus, is being held Sunday in Glendale, Arizona.
Tens of thousands of people are expected to attend the service at State Farm Stadium, including President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and top administration officials.
Trump said he will deliver remarks at the service. The president previously said he would posthumously award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Being called “Building a Legacy, Remembering Charlie Kirk” — the service is scheduled to start at 11 a.m. local time, or 2 p.m. ET, according to Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk founded. Attendees have been asked to wear red, white or blue.
The event will be streamed live on ABC News Live, which is available on ABCNews.go.com, ABC News apps and across streaming platforms. Live blog coverage with up-to-the-minute developments will be available on ABCNews.go.com.
The Department of Homeland Security has designated the memorial service as a Special Event Assessment Rating (SEAR) Level 1 event, which is “reserved for events of the highest national significance,” a department official said.
Kirk, 31, was fatally shot on Sept. 10 while speaking at Utah Valley University for his “The American Comeback Tour,” which invited public debate on college campuses.
Authorities on Sept. 12 identified 22-year-old Tyler Robinson as the suspect. Robinson was charged this week with multiple counts, including aggravated murder. Prosecutors said they intend to seek the death penalty.
Kirk is survived by his wife and their two young children. Erika Kirk, who has been elected to replace her husband as the CEO for Turning Point USA, is also slated to speak at Sunday’s service.
Other speakers for Sunday’s service include Vice President Vance, Donald Trump Jr., Tucker Carlson, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
Teenage girl using a smart phone during an exam in the classroom (StockPlanets/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — While many states have at least partially banned cellphones in the classroom this back-to-school season, some are still leaving those decisions to their local education agencies, according to a new data analysis conducted by ABC News.
ABC News reached out to the education departments of every state, D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico by email this summer to discuss the policies.
Overall, 20 states (including D.C. and the Virgin Islands) have completely banned wireless communication devices — including personal phones or tablets — for the entire instructional day. There are, however, exceptions for students with disabilities who have individualized education programs.
In contrast, 17 states — such as Maryland and Wyoming — that have not banned the use of wireless communication devices in schools on the state level.
The remaining 16 states have chosen a more relaxed approach, with some recommending the individual school districts decide their own policies, and others, like Puerto Rico, only requiring a policy to be formed by 2026.
The Department of Education is on a quest to return all education responsibilities and decisions to the states. It leaves cellphone guidance to the local level.
Cellphone usage continues to be one of the most contentious issues for education leaders. Education experts told ABC News that electronic devices stifle engagement, disrupt learning by causing distractions, and create adverse mental-health issues in adolescents.
Thomas Toch, the director of FutureEd — an education policy center at Georgetown University, said he believes using cellphones in schools is generally problematic with the harm outweighing the good.
“It’s a problem,” Toch argued. “We’re trying to get kids to engage, to immerse themselves in the subject at hand, to communicate with their peers, to be part of a learning community,” he said.
“There’s lots of research to suggest that [phones] are very detrimental to students’ levels of concentration and undermine, for those reasons and others, their learning,” Toch added.
‘Even worse after COVID’
The modern smartphone debuted in 2007 — nearly 20 years ago — but school cellphone issues were exacerbated over the last few years, according to educators who spoke to ABC News.
When students returned to the classroom after the COVID-19 pandemic, they brought back their phones, according to Vermont’s Harwood Union Middle and High School Assistant Principal Jessica Deane. She said phones in school have been a problem since their invention, and emphasized that the problem has never been more prominent than since the pandemic.
“I’ve been asking students to put their phones away since 2005,” Deane told ABC News. “It seemed even worse, coming back after COVID.”
Teachers across the country, such as Julia Casey in Missouri, said the new ban has made her job more manageable because she doesn’t have to police students.
“I don’t have to, like, correct that behavior,” Casey said, adding that the ban has helped students “stay on task a lot more.”
‘Bell-to-bell’
The most strict cellphone measures include implementing a “bell-to-bell” school-day ban for this academic year. The bans are mandated in places such as Arkansas, Texas, Virginia and more.
The states require phones be stored separate and away from students.
Oregon Governor Tina Kotek signed an executive order banning phones in her state, too.
“This will help improve focus, mental health and safety — so every student can learn and thrive without distractions,” Kotek said in a recent post on X.
New York City Public Schools, the nation’s largest school district, also has a bell-to-bell policy in place for its nearly one million students, but the schools will be required to provide at least one method for families to reach their children during the school day in the case of an emergency.
In Kansas, the state board of education commissioned a task force — consisting of parents, educators and students — on student screen time, which found that its schools should limit cellphone use, with some school going with a bell-to-bell ban.
“We wanted the local school districts to have that control,” Kansas Commissioner of Education Randy Watson told ABC News. “What we have found is that most school districts in Kansas are implementing a bell-to-bell ban.”
Emergency situations
One of the top concerns for parents and families is their ability to contact their children in case of an emergency.
School safety is the No. 1 priority for educators, according to interviews with city leaders and education officials, especially with the influence of recent school shootings.
For communication purposes, phones can be valuable tools for students during the school day, according to Toch.
“There could be instances where kids don’t … have a way to communicate with family members — or don’t have an ability to communicate a problem that they see and that they might want to use their phone to alert others to,” Toch told ABC News.
Celebrating Washington, D.C.’s bell-to-bell policy, D.C. Schools Chancellor Lewis Ferebee argued that if there’s an emergency “the last thing we want students to do is to be on their cellphone.”
“We want them to be focused on the guidance and direction that they will be receiving from adults in the situation,” he said.
Kansas Commissioner Watson said any school incident is tragic, but he claimed there was “no evidence” to suggest having cellphones helps in the case of an emergency, according to his conversations with law enforcement.
In his state, Watson said districts are making their own choices and it’s paying off for the students.
“Kids are more engaged,” Watson explained.
“Kids are happier. There’s less bullying that takes place. There’s less distractions academically. That daily behavior goes on and on.”
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser speaks with ABC News correspondent Devin Dwyer about a state ban on conversion therapy for minors. ABC News
(COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.) — Conversion therapy, or the attempt to change a patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity as a form of treatment, has been widely discredited by major American mental health and medical organizations for decades. Half the states have outlawed the practice as ineffective and harmful to minors, often on a bipartisan basis.
On Tuesday, a licensed therapist who offers “faith-informed” counseling services in Colorado will directly confront that consensus at the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to strike down the laws as infringements on free speech.
“I want to be able to speak genuinely, openly, have full conversations with my clients,” said Kaley Chiles, the plaintiff in the high court case, in an interview with ABC News, “without the state kind of peering into my office in these completely private conversations.”
“If someone comes into the office and they say, I am a biological male and I have been living and presenting as a female for a while now – those are the clients who I cannot have a full conversation with,” Chiles said.
The case pits the First Amendment against a state’s regulation of medical practices to comply with an established standard of care. It also implicates the rights of parents in search of help for children struggling during puberty and the mental health of LGBTQ young people in search of greater societal acceptance.
The Colorado Minor Conversion Therapy Law, enacted in 2019, says therapists licensed by the state are not allowed to try to “change behaviors or gender expressions” or try to “eliminate or reduce” same-sex attraction. Violators face up to a $5000 fine and potential loss of license.
The law does not apply to religious groups or faith-based ministries aimed at changing a person.
Therapists are allowed to provide “acceptance, support, and understanding” around areas of sexuality and gender identity as a child develops.
“Making you feel bad about who you are, or pressuring you to be someone else, that’s not legitimate therapy,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser told ABC. “The medical consensus is clear. That’s why it’s banned here in Colorado on a bipartisan basis.”
“This law allows children to be their best authentic selves, whatever it is. It doesn’t put a thumb on the scale either way,” Weiser said.
One in four American high schoolers identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual, according to a first-of-its-kind 2023 survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Three percent of teens identify as transgender and another 2 percent report questioning their gender, the survey found.
“What happens is that people do develop, their sexuality emerges, their gender emerges. Those changes happen naturally, but it’s not because some therapist has affected that change,” said Dr. Clinton Anderson, a trained psychologist who spent more than 30 years studying mental health care for LGBTQ people at the American Psychological Association (APA).
“If you are trying to make them change, and they’re not going to be successful,” Anderson added, “then the distress they bring into the therapy gets compounded by their concern about being a failure, particularly in these religious contexts.”
Attorneys for Chiles dispute the consensus scientific conclusions about the ineffectiveness of using talk therapy for a goal of conversion and any harm that may come from it.
Chiles won’t say directly whether she wants to practice conversion therapy or whether she has successfully used the treatment in the past to help a client eliminate unwanted feelings of same-sex attraction or reach better alignment with sex assigned at birth.
She said the law has a chilling effect that prevents her from even approaching the topics.
“The statute is broad, overarching language and it prevents me from doing what I want to do with clients,” she said. “Minors who are coming to me voluntarily of their own free will, who might have values different from the state and who have goals that the state has forbidden – they can’t come and have the same conversation with me that they could before this law.”
Erin Lee, a mother of three in Wellington, Colorado, says her daughter Chloe was unable to find a counselor willing to help her resolve a struggle over gender identity during puberty because of Colorado’s law.
“She had already made up this, ‘I’m gonna go by Toby now’ and ‘I’m ready to cut my hair’ and ‘I don’t wanna wear girls’ clothes anymore’,” Erin said of her then 12-year-old daughter in an interview at the family home.
“We knew she was not a boy who was trapped in the wrong body,” she said. “We thought, we have to talk to a professional so we know what to say, because if in fact she’s just experiencing normal distress over her sex, we don’t wanna push her further into this trans identity.”
Lee claims a counselor who worked briefly with Chloe “was dodging the issue entirely” because of the law, which in turn pushed Chloe deeper into depression and contemplation of suicide.
“The law as I very clearly – it’s very clearly written and, as I interpret it, it prevents counselors from being able to help kids through their gender confusion. They can only help them into it,” Erin said. She founded a grassroots advocacy group, Protect Kids Colorado, to oppose the restrictions on therapists.
Chloe, now 16, said she has become more comfortable as a cisgender girl despite what her parents have lamented was a lack of resources to help her. “I felt a lot of shame and despair that seemed absolutely inexplicable,” she recently told a gathering of parent advocates. “I’m not a boy, and I was just really really confused.”
An estimated 700,000 LGBT adults in the US have received conversion therapy –half were subjected to the practice as adolescents, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law.
“The trauma of conversion therapy can last a lifetime,” said Matthew Shurka, 37, a self-described “survivor” of four conversion therapists over five years.
After sharing feelings of sexual attraction to other boys with his parents when he was 16, Shurka’s father sought out help from licensed therapists. Some said they could cure Matthew.
“They said that I was an easy case, that I should start to see my heterosexuality come back within six weeks,” he told ABC News in an interview. “My father made this situation life or death, and he really felt that he was saving my life.”
One therapist told Shurka that a key part of treatment would be no contact with female family members — his two sisters and his mother — which lasted 3 years. He was also coached as a teenager to use Viagra to help intimacy with women.
“Maybe I was able to perform on that specific evening, but the harm that I was doing to my mental self was starting – at times, it felt irreversible,” Shurka said. “That is when I knew that suicide may be an option for me, because I knew I wasn’t changing.”
In 2018, Shurka testified in Colorado about his experience, urging lawmakers to adopt the conversion therapy ban, which they later did.
“Any therapist can share their opinion on anything. That is their freedom of speech,” he said. “But when it comes to a course of treatment, that’s professional speech. I was given a treatment to cure my homosexuality that had no basis in any scientific finding.”
The Tenth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld Colorado’s law as a legitimate regulation of “professional conduct,” which incidentally restricted speech but was not viewpoint discrimination.
The Supreme Court will decide whether to affirm that conclusion and, in the process, wade into an impassioned national debate over how to best help developing teens.
“We know that young kids right now are hurting,” said Attorney General Weiser. “One of the ways we protect young people is we let them have autonomy about who they are.”
A decision in the case — Chiles v Salazar — is expected in spring 2026.
