Carney on CPI Numbers, Jennie Taer Calls in with Exclusive Update on ICE/Biddeford and More | 7.14.26 - The Grace Curley Show Hour 1

The thing that's most impressive about this is that we got through the high gasoline and high oil price period without inflation spreading to the rest of the economy. Now that we're past that and gas prices fell down, fell a lot, we got, the headline number fell 0.4%. So just so people are clear, that means prices overall dropped. This is an actual decline in prices. That's rare. We don't usually see outside of a recession prices actually decline. But we did. We saw a decline in inflation in May. Then if you take out food and energy, they call that core CPI, prices were flat for the month. So it wasn't just gasoline. There was not much inflationary pressure in the economy at all. If services, so this is one place where there has been inflation, but if you do services excluding energy-related services, they were also flat for the month. This and rent or rent of services less rent actually fell. So the only thing, you know, the contributor was rent, but even rent. didn't go up by very much. Rent climbed just 0.1%. So this is a really great inflation report, and one that is going to put Kevin Warsh's mind at ease. It means the Fed will not be hiking anytime soon, and that will be a big relief for people who want to buy homes or even sell their homes, because it means mortgage rates will also likely come down. I want to get to Kevin Warsh in just a second here, but you talked about oil, obviously good news on that front for this report. But now we've seen the price of oil ticking back up since Trump has said that this ceasefire with Iran is basically null and void at this point. And they're going forward with these strikes. They had more strikes last night. My question for you, John, is do you foresee the price getting back up to the high that we just recently saw? Or when you look at this conflict and the back and forth, I know that a lot of these countries surrounding Iran and also countries that heavily rely on Iran for oil, they have found some workarounds. I'm not saying that it's enough and that the straight not being fully open is not impacting it. But has there been a little bit of... a few solutions that have maybe won't get the price of oil back to where we just saw that high or do you foresee it going back there I don't think it's going to go as high as it did. It went up, you know, above $110 a barrel, which, by the way, was much lower that people were talking like it might go up to $200 a barrel. We never saw anything close to that. I don't think we're going to get back up to the highs in large part because we know that both the U.S. and Iran don't.

really have an interest in having this conflict be protracted. So yes, I think there's going to be, call it, like, growing pains as we work out the relationship. And we've seen some of that already. The other day, Trump said that he wants a 20% protection fee. Today, he seems to have backed off of that. He does think that we should be compensated by these very rich oil countries. for if we're going to be, you know, protecting ships going through there. That makes sense to me. But, you know, the 20% number had really freaked people out. And that itself was sending oil prices higher. He's backed off on that. I think, you know, we're unlikely to go about, we're at $85 a barrel. I don't think we're going to go above $100 a barrel unless, you know, something unforeseen happens. The world is a crazy place. Things. you know, strange things can happen. But I actually think we're probably, that the direction is going to be lower in the future. So, you know, as we get through August and into September, we'll probably see oil prices continue to come down. Oh, wow. Okay. And now my other question, you mentioned Kevin Warsh, the new Fed chair. I wanted to highlight something he said. He's been talking a lot about regime change in policy and instituting new practices that worked. He mentioned that some of the practices in the past have worked and some of them haven't. What do you think specifically he's talking about that maybe Jerome Powell was doing or was maybe the status quo up until now that you could see him getting in there and trying to change? Well, the Fed really changed the way it conducted monetary policy, first in the wake of the financial crisis and then in the wake of the pandemic. And it never, when we got past those crises, it didn't revert to a more normal way of doing monetary policy. So, for instance, a lot of people don't even know this. There's no reserve requirement set by the Federal Reserve on banks anymore because the Fed pumped. so much reserves into the banking system that banks have way more than they could ever need. There's not, so they abandoned the requirement. I think what Kevin Warsh wants to say is, look, that might have made sense when you had a financial crisis, or it might have made sense when we were going into the pandemic and locking businesses down. We don't need that anymore. We can move away from this. system of overabunded bank reserves to something, maybe not exactly what we had beforehand, but something closer to that. Now, that will take time. We've been in this, you know, the crisis mode of the Fed since 2008. You're not, you're not going to be able to unwind that in a couple months. He's got four years, and, you know, if he gets reappointed, eight years. So I think he's going to begin the process of trying to normalize the way the Fed operates rather than continuing, these programs that were adopted, whether it was quantitative easing where it built up a huge balance sheet, or whether it was forward guidance, where the Fed was constantly promising what was going to happen in the months or even years ahead.

Those were things they decided they needed to do because we're in crisis. But then they kept doing it, and we can stop doing it now as Kevin Warsh's message. I wanted to also ask whenever we're talking about the economy, it seems like AI is in the news every single day. And just yesterday, I was reading about all these economists that were issuing a dire warning about AI and potential job displacement. How do you see AI as far as the strength of our economy goes? Is it going to be something that shakes our economy? Or do you think there's an alternative here that might not be so dire? I don't think that AI poses a dire threat to the economy at all, quite the opposite. I think it's actually going to be a boom for the economy. The idea that it's going to result in mass unemployment, I think, is a big mistake. What actually happens is when people get better at their jobs and jobs can be done more efficiently, that actually tends to increase the demand for workers. Because instead of a worker, you know, if a worker could produce, call it like 10 widgets. before AI, but after AI can produce 14 widgets in an hour, then that worker is more valuable. So I think it's, I don't foresee a crisis at all. I think there's a little psychological damage going on with the economics profession. They largely missed the financial crisis and got blamed for, you know, what were all you guys doing if you didn't foresee this bad thing happening? They then missed largely. The inflationary problem we had while Biden was president, they didn't predict it. And people started to wonder, like, why aren't you guys better at predicting a crisis? So now they see AI and they're like, okay, we're not going to get caught flat footed this time. Let's predict the crisis. And so they're predicting it. Nobody can blame them if things go bad. And then we'll all forget about it, I guess, is the gamble if things don't go bad. Yeah, no, no, I think you could be definitely onto something there. The last question I have for you, John, is about consumer sentiment. You know, you talked in the beginning of this interview about these inflation numbers. They do look good. I know grocery prices did tick up. That's one area where, you know, I go grocery shopping usually once a week for my family. And I really keep an eye on it. And if I notice, like, if I notice certain deals, I do kind of think, oh, maybe that's a good sign. But things don't really fall in the grocery store. Prices don't really fall. And in that sense, all people can really hope for is that their paychecks start to catch up with the new price of things. Talk to me about grocery stores and talk to me about how consumers are feeling about the economy right now based off what you're seeing. So we actually got relatively mild overall grocery prices. So food prices increased 0.2% in May. And they're only up 2.7% year over year. That's not actually that bad. But certain things are up a lot. Beef is up almost 12% year over year. Eggs are down a lot.

Coffee is up 12, which is dear to my heart, I love a good cup of coffee, is up almost 13% year over year. But I actually expect those prices are going to come down. So you will see relief. I don't think that we're actually stuck at this high level. I think beef prices will come down, coffee prices will come down. We will see a lot less inflation in food going forward. And that will be a big relief. As far as the consumer sentiment numbers, I've come to the place where I think you should just ignore them. There's a one of my old friends, Justin Layhart, who's at the Wall Street Journal, recently wrote an article for them pointing out that the survey is, that the University of Michigan survey is broken. That's the main consumer sentiment number that we all hear about all the time. It actually now oversamples Democrats. And Democrats will tell you that the economy is burning, a sinking ship as long as Donald Trump is president, really as long as any Republican is president. They are going to hate the economy. So that is dragged down. They drag down the consumer sentiment number so that it's a partisanship measure rather than a real consumer sentiment number. They also changed the way they did the surveys, where it's now an online survey instead of the traditional. telephone surveys, and that also seems to have warped the results. So the way I look at it is the numbers on consumer sentiment should mostly be ignored. And another justification for that is people keep spending money, right? You have these consumer sentiment numbers that would make you think it's the Great Depression. They're the worst ever they've ever been, and yet we get retail sales numbers, we get consumer, you know, household expenditure numbers. And they're doing really well. If people were really that upset about the economy, they would not be spending as much as they are. Right, right, right. The money tells a different story. Thank you so much to John Carney for joining us today. I know how busy you are, especially on a day. Like today with these new numbers out, everyone should sign out for brightbart.com back slash newsletters and follow John on Twitter. He's a great follow on X at Carney, C-A-R-N-E-Y. We will be right back. Oh, and just a reminder for everyone out there since we're talking about the economy. If you or your kids, maybe you have grandkids and they had a baby in 2025, sign up for a Trump account. I signed up my son for a Trump account and, you know, I signed up. I had to wait a few days. And that $1,000 got delivered just last week. So don't forget to do that or to remind someone in your life to do that because don't leave that money sitting on the table. We'll be right back. Thank you to John Carney. Stay with us. More of the Grace Curley show up next.

This is the Grace Curley Show. Welcome back, everyone, to the Grace Curly Show. We have a really jam-packed show, so we just had John Carney on. We're going to have Jenny Tear on in the next segment to talk about ice and updates on the ice involved shooting in Biddeford, Maine, yesterday. And at 105, we got Mike Urban on for a local story. that has raised a few red flags for me, and he was the one who broke it, so we're going to talk to him. It involves Ianna Presley and her husband and a whole lot of money, so we'll talk about that in the one o'clock hour. But right now, I want to do the poll question, which is brought to you. by J.J. Manning auctioneers, whether residential, commercial, or land, J.J. Manning can get your property sold now. To learn more, contact Charlie Gill at 800, 52101,0111, or go to J.J. Manning.com. With over 16,000 sales and satisfied clients, you can be the next one. Taylor, what is the poll question and what are the results thus far? Today's poll question, which you can vote in at Grace Curley Show.com, is what Massachusetts race are you most closely following? Governor, Suffolk County, DA, or U.S. Senate? Governor. 66% say governor. 27% say the Senate race. 7% say the Suffolk County DA's race. Yeah, I've had people. I actually had someone this morning bring it up to me about the governor's raise. You know, do you think? I noticed Taylor, and this isn't a shot at Mike Minogue, I'm sorry, this isn't a shot at short sleeve, but. he when I talk to people they are they are approaching it like oh what do you think about Minogue as if he is the the the only one running against Maurehili that's just that's just the interactions I've had I know he has more money a lot of it's his own and money is an important factor the thing I'll say about the DA's race to replace Michael Morrissey is I have started to see signs pop up I have. I've seen a macy, a couple Macy Lee signs near my, near my neighborhood and some Juna Perkins signs. Okay, so that would be Norfolk County, not Suffolk County. I got to change that. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You emailed me that too, Taylor. That's okay. We can do both. Yeah, I have started to see some signs popping up for that. The Senate race between Seth Moulton and Ed Markey, I've been watching and following just because I'm starting to get real. Strange vibes from Seth Moulton. I can't stand Ed Markey. Everyone knows this. I think we can all agree on that. But he's kind of like, he's a little out there. He always seems a little out to lunch to me. You definitely have a weird vibe to you. Yeah, yeah. Seth Moulton has an angry vibe. And given the option... Between an out-to-lunch vibe and an angry vibe, take me out to lunch and let me get a white wine spritzer. I don't want to be near this hothead. Molten, given hothead. And I can give you some evidence of that later on. But we've got Jenny Tear coming up next. Stay with us. The Grace Curley Show is on the air.

Welcome back, everyone, to The Grace Curly Show. So yesterday we opened the show with John Featherston from the main wire who was in Biddeford covering the group of activists and people who were very upset about the ICE involved shooting and were there to protest and to make their voices heard. And then later to actually a lot of them started harassing John Featherston and kind of messing with his camera or, you know, throwing expletives at him. The event that kind of triggered all of this was happened earlier that morning around 7 o'clock a.m. in Biddeford. And what then proceeded, I think, was a series of questions that have still yet to be answered and a lot of chaos, a lot of confusion. And. A dropping up the ball, I would say, by ICE to not really get the facts out about this sooner and to not handle it the way I think you need to handle something like this that's going to start catching on like wildfire and obviously is going to evoke a lot of emotions from people. Now, someone who is getting as many facts as possible is Jenny Tear from the Daily Wire. She has an exclusive out. Everyone is picking up on this. Bill Malugian, social media is running with Jenny's exclusive that ICE has ordered. agents to cease all vehicle stops after these recent shootings. Now, we talked about the one in Biddeford yesterday. There was also one in Texas last week that involved ICE. Jenny, thanks for coming on. Walk me through what information you have right now as to how ICE is going to handle these things going forward and what is prompting them to put out this new order to cease these vehicle stops. Right. Thanks so much for having me on. So obviously in the aftermath of these recent shootings, the one in Maine yesterday and last week in Houston, we have ICE responding now with a new short-term policy, it appears, that they're saying, you know, they're taking account of all their procedures, and right now they're telling officers across the country to stop making traffic stops for the time being. Three Homeland Security sources we spoke with confirm this to us. They said for now those stops are off, that the directive also has the potential to really massively drive down arrest. So this could really hinder the Trump administration's deportation agenda, which has been recently ramping up. They've been making more arrests and focusing on numbers. You know, this also makes it more difficult to make arrests. So what this means is if officers can't pull someone over. they're going to have to obtain a judicial warrant, which takes more time to actually get. Once they get that, then they're going to have to basically break down doors, and that puts them at risk and puts the public at risk because you are catching someone in their element where they could have access to weapons. So that's always a concern about those, and that's why the agency heavily relies right now on these vehicle stops. You know, the agency says that this is part of, you know, how they're responding to this shooting, which the details are still a little murky, what happened in Maine yesterday. We know that activists are saying the person who was shot was a 26-year-old Colombian man. I...

had come out and said that was not their intended target that day, but that he was trying to drive away. But I think it's interesting that they never said that he was trying to weaponize the vehicle, that he was driving or hit them in any way, which is what they've said in previous shootings. Like you said, they waited about 12 hours to get a response out. So that left people with a lot of questions. Yeah, I think that one of the aspects of their statement that they, as you pointed out, put out hours later, said that they were worried that this person that was driving away was a threat to public safety. But you're right. There was kind of a lot of law enforcement, a lot of police officers picked up on that and said, okay, so it doesn't seem like the story that we originally were hearing or that people were speculating about online, that he used the car as a weapon. really tracking with what they're saying now. The other part of this, Jenny, that I'm not understanding is the body cams, because that was a big part of the budget negotiations was that Democrats wanted body cams on these ICE officers. Do we know whether or not they had them on? And if not, why? Yeah, no, it's a great question because the Trump administration was actually on board with Democrats on that. You had Borders R. Tom Homan saying we absolutely are okay with this and we want to give transparency to the public and to lawmakers. They said in February that every federal immigration agent would be getting them in Minneapolis and then from there it would go out to the rest of the nation. But obviously, you know, we're in July now. These officers don't all have them clearly because we're not getting body camera footage from this situation. And they've said that there isn't any because those officers weren't wearing body cameras. So that is a question that I think will learn more from the investigation that the FBI is leading on this. And then also the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General's office is looking into this as well. But I think that's a huge issue now. This was funded. This was massively funded. it clearly has not been executed at this point. Yeah, and Jenny, I want you. because I know that you do so much work on the immigration front for the Daily Wire reporting wise. And I know that you are very focused on DHS when Kristi Noem was at the head. And now we have Markwayne Mullin. And one of the criticisms Kristi Noem got quite a bit was that she would kind of come out in defense of these ICE agents and maybe assert some things that ended up not being backed up by the facts later on. And she was a little too eager to get out in front of things without, you know, letting the investigation. go through in this case the criticism Markwayne Mullin is getting as we've been talking about is that it's too long of a way and you're you're kind of allowing new narratives or is speculation to take hold without giving people the facts if you were to juxtapose these two and kind of walk us through are you noticing that contrast between the new leadership and the leadership of the past

Absolutely. When we saw Secretary Noam at the helm of DHS, like you mentioned, there was a rush to respond to these things. There was a rush to go out and accuse the illegal immigrants of being the aggressor. And in a lot of cases, they were actually, you know, found out that some of the details were wrong and some of the details were incorrect. Some ICE officers were actually punished in some instances. where the department jumped the gun with statements. Now, yesterday, Mark Wing-Mullen waited hours to actually release a statement, to give details. And that weight was really concerning for a lot of folks. And it shows... Yes, that juxtaposition. When Mullen came into office, he said that he would lead a quieter deportation. He didn't want the agency being on the front page of every new site every day. He didn't want that anymore. Now, this is becoming a problem because it's becoming... the biggest news story right now with their silence. And so I think they're struggling with how to navigate communications and how to also be careful about what they say because they don't want to have egg on their face at the end of the day. And they don't want that know-em type of communication strategy. Also, Jenny, this is just something I'm curious about because there was a lot of interviews in the Portland Press Herald and in other, I would say, left-leaning outlets with witnesses and people who are nearby. And some of that stuff I've been following up on it. I'm not going to get too specific, but I've been following up and trying to find confirmation for some of the claims from witnesses or some of the things people heard. And obviously there's no body cams in this case, so that's hard. But also, when you're a reporter and you're in an area like this. and you're surrounded by people who are activists and clearly have made up their minds about a situation without waiting for the facts to come out. What's the responsibility on the reporting of taking some of these witnesses? Because then you have another witness who... was talking about how he saw the driver was being told multiple times to stop and then he put the car and drive and drove at the ice officer that is conflicting with what even ice is alluding to at this point with their statement so how do you gauge as a reporter all right this witness not so sure or can you just once someone tells you it can is it good to go to print Yeah, it can be very difficult in these situations because so many of these anti-ice activists are very organized. So when I was in Minneapolis covering the riots there in the aftermath of the Renee Good shooting, I mean, you couldn't take a lot of these folks at their word because at the same time they were outwardly protesting. They were part of some of these ice watch groups. So they clearly have an agenda. And you do have to assess that in a lot of these situations that these people are.

you know, purporting to be witnesses or purporting to have information on the details of these shootings but are out there actively trying to advocate for the dismantling of ice or aggressive towards the public, towards those ice officers. They go out from what we saw in Minneapolis. They were going out blowing whistles. They were tracking these ice officers. They were following them. The activists themselves were ramming their vehicles. I saw that happen firsthand. So you do have to take what some of these people say with a grain of salt, which makes it difficult when the details are murky. Yeah, and talk to me a little bit about that organization when it comes to these activists and how quickly I was amazed yesterday at how, and I should. I should throw in here. I don't fault any American citizen for being passionate and for wanting to get their voices heard. But when you watch something where all of a sudden you have hundreds of people flocking to an area with signs and t-shirts and a lot of times a lot of anger in venom directed at, for example, the main wire or reporters that were there on the scene, it does make me question how these things come together. Absolutely. When we were in Minneapolis, like I said, we would show up to an illegal immigrant target's home or apartment. And when we showed up, even before then, there were already dozens of people out there standing with whistles, blowing them in our faces. demonstrating out in the streets. They knew that we were coming. They had been tracking. So they're very savvy. They're very organized. And it's very concerning because they're 10 steps ahead of ICE. They know exactly their tactics. They know exactly their whereabouts. And so obviously when things like this happen, you know, ice. For its part, you have to also account for, yes, there are a surge in threats right now to those ICE officers, whether it be through vehicle hits, whether it be through just regular assaults. I've spoken with officers who have had, you know, stitches, who have had bruising, who have been hospitalized for injuries, and you can see just the damage of that type of rhetoric and activism. But at the same time, yes, there are a lot of concerns with this latest shooting that we don't know if that was the case. But of course, that's something to also take into account. And one other thing I would like your response to, Jenny, is the states that oftentimes... these events are not not in every single case but oftentimes here in massachusetts in maine we have blue states that have very contentious relationships with ice and there's not a lot of collaboration there and while ice can certainly make mistakes and as you pointed out they have in the past is that also heightening the danger here because whenever there's a loss of life it's tragic and i i know that Markwayne Mullin mullin and members of dhs they don't want to see that happening is there

If in a perfect world, these states were collaborating with ICE and were trying to help them detain criminal illegal aliens, and as they said, the worst of the worst, could that also help avoid these kind of horrible situations? Yes, because if those localities were allowing ice into the jails, then those officers wouldn't have to be following those targets out on the streets and trying to pull them over, trying to find them, looking in homes, waiting at work sites. They wouldn't be so outward. The public wouldn't be as aware of their presence, and they would simply show up to a jail. They would take someone in handcuffs. They would take that person back to an ICE detention facility, and that would be that. And so, yes, this does mean that more ICE officers are out in the streets right now. And that's the tactic the Trump administration has adopted, and they've flooded sanctuary cities because of that with ICE officers. So it's definitely a real thing. And, you know, that's obviously something that's very much in play in a state like Maine. Yeah, yeah. And I've often talked about that here in Massachusetts, too, where if you're adopting these sanctuary policies, you're oftentimes putting so many people at risk and you're sending ICE agents into situations that could be completely avoided. And everybody else around that person, sometimes that person, as we're seeing here, is not the target of the enforcement operation, but there are, there's going to be other people that are put in harm's way if these states aren't working with ICE. Jenny Tare from the Daily Wire, we thank you. so much for joining us today. I know you're going to have a busy day as you were the first one to get this major scoop about ICE. Everyone followed Jenny on X. She works for the Real Daily Wire. You can follow her at Jenny S. Tear. It's T A.E.R. And like I said before, she was the original reporter to break the story that ICE has decided to at least temporarily halt vehicle stops nationwide, which is a huge, huge update from yesterday. and I would argue or you know the way I'm reading this is that ice whatever information they have about this stop they are not happy with how the officers handled it that that's a little bit of a jump there but Taylor I don't know that is how I read it because otherwise I don't know this kind of complete pause reassessment says to me that maybe there was a procedure that wasn't followed Again, just speculating. We'll find out more as time goes on. We will be right back. We have more to get to. In the meantime, though, I wanted to fill you all in on JJ Manning auctioneers because the housing market is tricky. A lot of people are wondering, is it going to crash in 2026? Does anyone really know the answer to this question? Well, when COVID hit, everyone thought real estate prices would drop, but the opposite actually happened. So people's predictions are often... off. So no one really knows the answer. However, real estate has recently softened and it seems a bit stagnant. So what can you do to get more eyes on your property? Well, there's one process. I think you guys know what it is. It creates buzz. It stimulates the activity around your property and it is auction. JJ Manning auctions, they have a competitive bidding environment and they allow the market to quickly speak. Now, a JJ Manning auction has no negotiations. There are only clear auction terms.

So if you want to sell your property with J.J. Manning for an auction and stand apart from the masses, you can call Charlie Gill at 800 5211.1 or go to J.J. Manning.com. They've got... Coming up, July 14th in Hamden, Mass, they have a main house and an in-law house both on over 10 acres, and they recently sold properties for listeners in Hanover and Bedford, Mass. So again, call Charlie 800, 52101, or visit j.j.manning.com. We'll be right back. The Grace Curley Show will return. This is the Grace Curley Show. And I was watching, and the ice agent was yelling and drew his weapon, and he kept yelling and yelling and warning the person driving, which is when the car was put into drive and was trying to hit the ice officer. And he fired, I would say, probably four shots at him. And then... By that time, I was also through, you know, the intersection, so I just heard the popping, but I did see him draw his gun at the windshield. And then they, so then the car, you could see the car in the, like, rolling down the street. Yeah, that was an eyewitness that I believe the mainwire actually spoke to. But again, we have different witnesses saying different things. We have the statement from ICE. And Jenny Tear just talked about this. But here was the key part. The vehicle attempted to flee the scene in fearing for public safety. An officer discharged his weapon. So that does, I think. That does make me think that the vehicle was not used as an actual weapon towards the officer. But then Taylor, there's photos of the Prius where it looks like the bullet holes are in the front through the front windshield. So there's a lot here. Beyond just witnesses disagreeing with each other, but also with what ICE is saying versus what the car would have you think, there's a lot of conflicting detail. I would argue that this temporary pause in vehicle stops is less about lack of procedure or failure to follow procedure and more about the public's unwillingness to cooperate and, you know, heed to law enforcement.

I know. Markwayne Mullin's getting a lot of grief from conservatives right now who are not happy with that latest update on pausing those vehicle stops. We'll talk about it. We've got Mike Urban joining us next. Don't go anywhere.