James' World 2

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On President Trump’s proclaimed “Liberation Day” in April, when he announced the tariffs that have upended global trade, he vowed that “jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country.” The imposition of taxes on imports, the president promised, “will pry open foreign markets and break down foreign trade barriers,” leading to lower prices for Americans.

So far, it has not worked out that way, forcing Mr. Trump to move to contain the economic and political damage.

At the White House on Monday, the president announced $12 billion in bailout money for America’s farmers who have been battered in large part by his trade policies.

Tariffs continue to put upward pressure on prices, putting the Trump administration on the defensive over deep public concern about the cost of living. On Tuesday, the president will go to Pennsylvania for the first of what the White House calls a series of speeches addressing the “affordability” problem, which last week he dismissed as “the greatest con job” ever conceived by Democrats.

China, the world’s second-largest economy and the United States’ main economic and technological competitor, released figures on Monday showing that it continues to run a record trade surplus with the rest of the world, even as its overall trade and surplus with the U.S. narrows. That suggests Beijing is quickly learning how to thrive even in a world in which the United States becomes a tougher place to do business.

And there is scant evidence to date of any wholesale return to American towns and cities of the manufacturing jobs lost to decades of automation and globalization.

Mr. Trump insists that his signature decision to impose the highest tariffs on American imports since 1930 is working, or will soon. He continues to blame his predecessor, Joseph R. Biden Jr., for every economic woe, though the argument is getting thinner and thinner as he approaches, in just six weeks, his first anniversary in office.

He finds himself in roughly the place Mr. Biden did in early 2024: Telling the American people that they are doing great, when many don’t feel that way. He has dismissed talk of high prices at grocery stores, insisting they are coming down. But inflation edged upward in September, to about a 3 percent annual increase, almost exactly where it was when his predecessor left office.

Manufacturing jobs have continued to decline gradually this year, with losses of roughly 50,000 since January. (Such numbers contributed to the dismissal in July of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after Mr. Trump announced that downward revisions to the official jobs reports were “rigged.”)

Not surprisingly, Mr. Trump tried on Monday to portray the $12 billion in emergency relief for farmers as a victory, another piece of evidence — at least to him — that his decision to impose the highest tariffs on American imports since 1930 are working, or will soon.

In recent weeks, he has promised to use the tariff income flowing into the country to cut a government check of $2,000 for every taxpayer (“not including high income people!” he exclaimed on Truth Social in November). Last week, he declared at a cabinet meeting that “at some point in the not too distant future, you wouldn’t even have income tax to pay.”

The numbers don’t quite add up: The U.S. has collected about $250 billion in tariff revenue this year — a bit shy of the $2.66 trillion in federal individual income taxes in the 2025 fiscal year.

The president has promised that tariff revenue will pay down the national debt, now at $38.45 trillion. Over the summer, he told lawmakers that other deals he is striking — some in return for lowering tariffs — would reduce some drug prices by 1,500 percent, a piece of mathematical gymnastics that left some in his audience mystified.

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The president announced $12 billion in bailout money for America’s farmers, who have been battered in large part by his trade policies. Credit…Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times

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Earlier this year, I got an Oura ring to track the state of my health. Soon, I was obsessing over my sleep and activity scores. The reports were generally positive except for one: heart rate variability, or HRV. That’s a measure of how much the time between heartbeats changes. Every morning, in bright red, my ring’s app singled out HRV and told me: “Pay attention.”

That didn’t sound good, although I had no idea why. Before wearable fitness watches, rings, and bracelets became so common and started including HRV as a data point, I had never heard of it. Even among heart doctors, its use has been limited. “I don’t think HRV is used in day-to-day clinical medical practice,” says Bryan Wilner, an electrophysiologist at the Baptist Health Miami Cardiac and Vascular Institute. “But it’s gained a lot more popularity in regular consumers with these noninvasive monitors.”

Suddenly, we are all paying attention to HRV. And as reams of data are collected from hundreds of thousands of people like me, the measure has the potential to become a far more significant tool for diagnosis and therapy, although it isn’t there yet.

The average person’s heart rate is between 60 and 100 beats per minute when they’re at rest, but it fluctuates all day long. Standing up after lying down changes your heart rate, as does jogging or fielding stressful questions at work. The time between beats changes, too, and that’s what HRV captures. Unlike arrhythmias, which are potentially dangerous disruptions in the heart’s electrical activity, HRV measures the very slight variation in periods—a matter of milliseconds—between consecutive heartbeats, tracked over a few minutes or longer.

“There is no specific [HRV] number for what’s bad, what’s good.” —Attila Roka, electrophysiologist

 

Both heart rate and HRV reflect the differing effects of the two branches of the autonomic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system, colloquially known as “fight or flight,” increases heart rate; the parasympathetic, or “rest and digest,” slows it down. Generally, the lower a person’s heart rate, the higher their HRV. A high HRV indicates a body that adapts to stressors and can recover more quickly.

It’s a sign of a balanced autonomic nervous system and a higher level of cardiovascular fitness. Low HRV signals the opposite—that the body is less able to adjust to the ups and downs of life. Stress, anxiety, high blood pressure, inadequate sleep, dehydration, and new medicines are among the many things that can lower HRV. Disease can reduce it, too. In people recovering from heart attacks or living with heart failure, low HRV is associated with a higher risk of death and further illness. “HRV is a window into how the autonomic nervous system is interacting with our heart,” Wilner says. Oura states on its app that it flags HRV because it is a sign of stress and recovery.

“There is no specific number for what’s bad, what’s good,” says Attila Roka, an electrophysiologist at the CHI Health Clinic Heart Institute and an assistant professor at Creighton University in Omaha. Anywhere from roughly 20 to 70 milliseconds is considered within normal range. The measure is highly individual, although it generally goes down with age. Mine hovered around an unusual 14 for weeks, and that’s why my ring alerted me.

An electrocardiogram is the gold standard for measuring HRV. Cutting-edge pacemakers and defibrillators monitor it, too, and experts are investigating the use of HRV with heart disease patients to predict the onset of atrial fibrillation (Afib) in time to prevent it, says Pamela Mason, chief of cardiac electrophysiology at UVA Health in Virginia. Afib is an irregular, rapid heart rhythm that can lead to blood clots and other problems. Physicians also use Holter monitors, small devices that patients wear on their chests for a few days, to capture a full picture of cardiac activity, including HRV.

Devices like Apple watches and Oura rings work by looking at pulse fluctuations rather than electrical heart signals. Few studies have examined how accurate these devices are. But what’s more important for the average person, experts say, is the relative change over time. “You need to get a baseline HRV,” Wilner says. “HRV is most powerful when you’re measuring it over several weeks and can see a graphic trend on how it’s being affected by everything that’s going on in your life.”

HRV might one day be used to assess mental health. “If you’re in a constant fight-or-flight kind of state mentally, you’re going to lose heart rate variability,” Mason says. Conditions such as depression and bipolar disorder are likely to be associated with dysregulated nervous system activity. Even among people without medical or psychiatric disorders, studies have found a link between decreasing parasympathetic activity and emotional upset, suggesting HRV tracks psychological states.

Low HRV, in relatively healthy people, does have some remedies. “The best way to improve heart rate variability is exercise,” Mason says, “and it’s going to need to be more strenuous than gentle walks.” Pick up the pace to pick up your HRV. Drinking more fluids—water is good—also helps.

For people like me, Mason’s advice is to not obsess. Instead, consider what you could do to take better care of yourself. Prodded by red HRV alerts, I drank more water and consumed less caffeine, went to bed earlier, and engaged in vigorous exercise more regularly. Since then, my HRV has been higher than 30! Not that I’m obsessing over it.

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Jay Bendt

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Friday afternoon brought a significant development in President Donald Trump’s quest to extra-constitutionally restrict birthright citizenship, when the Supreme Court granted cert in Barbara v. Trump. The case will be heard early next year. Last year’s birthright citizenship case was a technical—but vitally important—dispute around the powers of federal district court judges. This time, the administration is swinging for the fences in an effort to do away with the substance of the 14^th Amendment once and for all. On this week’s Amicus podcast, co-hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the surreal proposition that a case that should never exist is now poised to be taken seriously as a matter of law. A portion of their conversation is excerpted below, edited and condensed for clarity.

Mark Joseph Stern: This is a clean vehicle for the justices to decide whether the Constitution does, in fact, grant birthright citizenship to virtually all people born here. Trump issued an executive order on his first day back in office, on Jan. 20, 2025, that purported to strip birthright citizenship from the children of immigrants who are here on temporary visas, as well as undocumented immigrants moving forward. That, of course, violates the plain text of the 14^th Amendment, a federal statute, and more than 120 years of Supreme Court precedent. But he did it anyway. 

We thought we were going to get a big decision on this last term, but in Trump v. CASA, the Supreme Court ended up taking away the nationwide injunctions that had blocked the policy instead. This time around, Barbara v. Trump is a pretty clean shot at the fundamental question on the merits: Can Trump do this? The Justice Department is not trying to fight any kind of procedural or equitable issues here. This was a class action, and the administration accepts that. The lower courts ruled against the government. The administration is saying, “Just give us a win and tell us that we can implement this policy.” So this is the fight: This is the big one we’ve been waiting for after the fake out last year. By the end of June 2026, the Supreme Court will have told us whether or not we still have a 14^th Amendment.

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Finally, we’ll get a decision on the merits here. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Win McNamee/Getty Images, Getty Images Plus, and SupremeCourt.gov.

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The court’s three liberal justices warned of the far-reaching consequences for the structure of the modern government if the majority sided with the Trump administration in the Federal Trade Commission matter.

A decision in the president’s favor, they said, would call into question the constitutionality of job protections extended to leaders of more than two dozen other agencies Congress has charged with protecting consumers, workers, and the environment.

Justice Elena Kagan said such a ruling would “put massive, uncontrolled, unchecked power in the hands of the president.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor told the administration’s lawyer that “you’re asking us to destroy the structure of government” and to take away from Congress its ability to insulate independent agencies from political pressures.

In response, D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, said that “the sky will not fall” if the justices give the president this new power. “In fact, our entire government will move toward accountability to the people,” he said.

Since returning to the White House, Mr. Trump has fired government watchdogs, leaders of independent agencies, and rank-and-file federal workers, drawing multiple legal challenges.

The Supreme Court has generally allowed the firings to take effect through temporary emergency orders. Monday’s case presents the first opportunity for the court to issue a conclusive ruling on the underlying legal questions of Mr. Trump’s firings.

Next month, the justices will separately consider whether the president has the power to fire Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve Board governor. The justices have allowed Ms. Cook to remain in her post for now, signaling that the central bank may be uniquely insulated from presidential interference because of its history.

At issue on Monday was Mr. Trump’s firing in March of Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic member of the F.T.C. Mr. Trump said he was removing her because she did not align with his agenda, despite a law that says the president can remove commissioners only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” Ms. Slaughter promptly sued.

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The Supreme Court in Washington.Credit…Al Drago for The New York Times

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