Late Tuesday night, President Trump appeared to have had enough. While acknowledging China’s Victory Day — the country’s 80th marking the end of World War II in the Indo-Pacific – he pointedly accused Beijing, Moscow and North Korea of conspiring against the U.S.

In so doing, Trump quickly connected the dots that Elbridge Colby, his Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, has failed to or refuses to connect at the Pentagon. China, Russia, and North Korea are actively colluding to globally weaken U.S. interests.

Inexplicably, Colby also cannot comprehend that Ukraine is and always has been the Ground Zero of their war against the U.S. and its transatlantic allies.

Providentially, Ukraine has long had Trump’s back. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals always understood that the fight in eastern and southern Ukraine was bigger than national survival or territorial integrity. They get it that defeating Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Donbas is Europe’s best defense and, by extension, Washington’s own best defense in the Western hemisphere and Taiwan.

Despite occasional clashes, Trump and Zelensky are made of similar mettle. Both embody the same spirit of Trump’s immediate reaction to his attempted assassination when he defiantly stood up and roared, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Zelensky, likewise, when faced with a similar flight or fight moment in the opening days of the war, chose to stay and fight. He refused former President Joe Biden’s offer to evacuate him and, as reported by Jim LaPorta, made it clear in a Winston Churchill-like moment that he needed “ammunition, not a ride.”

Ukraine has never lost sight that Kyiv’s initial survival in February 2022 was due in part to Trump’s decisions in 2017 and 2018 to equip the Armed Forces of Ukraine with Javelin anti-tank missiles and military training. The latter was likely decisive. As then-Defense Secretary James N. Mattis noted, “We’re working with [Ukraine] on reform of their military … and to make sure that they stay independent and sovereign.”

This was in stark contrast to the Obama administration in the aftermath of Putin’s annexation of Crimea. Despite broad bipartisan passage in 2014 of the $350 million Ukraine Freedom Support Act, President Barack Obama refused to “authorize the U.S. government sale or financing of lethal weapons to Ukraine.”

The primary intent of the act was to “deter the government of the Russian Federation from further destabilizing and invading Ukraine and other independent countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.” Yet, instead of zooming in on Moscow’s kinetic threats, Team Obama veered off course.

Instead of confronting Putin, Obama’s White House obsessed more about lecturing Kyiv about its “historic battle with corruption.” Indeed, during then-Vice President Joe Biden’s December 2015 speech to Ukraine’s parliament, although he paid lip service to not allowing Russia “to redraw borders by force,” he chiefly took the position that rooting out corruption and holding free and fair elections were Kyiv’s best defense against Moscow. 

Trump, in direct contrast, was willing during his first administration to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons. His White House, as opposed to Obama’s, pushed the envelope with Putin by delivering Javelins for storage in Western Ukraine — and, in the process, earned “a sharp rebuke from Moscow, with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov accusing the U.S. of “fomenting a war.”

Domestic U.S. politics culminating in the first impeachment of Trump muddied the waters, but Zelensky has remained steadfastly consistent that he believes Trump did nothing wrong. As he said at the time, “There was no blackmail.”

Perhaps the fiercest way in which Zelensky has had Trump’s back is making it clear Putin’s war in Ukraine is part of a global assault against the West. As Zelensky warned last April, “If we do not stand firm, [Putin] will advance further. Putin’s ultimate goal is to revive the Russian empire and reclaim territories currently under NATO protection.”

Standing strong has come at a steep price for Kyiv. As of August, it has suffered 13,883 civilian deaths and another 35,548 injuries. Over 3,000 of these victims have been Ukrainian children.

But Zelensky is right. As he warned, if Putin and his Axis of Evil allies are allowed to win militarily in Ukraine, “There won’t be a safe place for [anyone].”

Ukraine’s military casualties have been even greater. Last December, Zelensky stated that 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and another 370,000 wounded. U.S. officials believe those numbers to be significantly higher.

Yet Ukraine fights on. The country’s ongoing sacrifices have bought Team Trump and Brussels critical time to see the full scale of the vast and fast-coalescing threat facing NATO and their allies.

During Labor Day weekend the optics of that threat crystalized. Witnessing Chinese President Xi Jinping walking side-by-side with Putin and North Korean President Kim Jong-un at the massive Victory Day military parade made it clear that the growing kinetic threat against the collective West is global in nature.

Putin, Xi and Kim, in their own way, are also messaging “Fight, Fight, Fight!” Their Cold War-like message was intentionally aimed directly at Team Trump — and by extension against Ukraine and Taiwan as well. 

Trump, to his great credit, finally appears to be seeing through Putin. As we urged last month, it is time for Trump to tell Putin, “Nyet.”

Ukraine has held the line now for 3 years and 7 months against the Axis of Evil. It has withstood hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers, countless Iranian drones and North Korean artillery shells, and 30,000, if not more, North Korean troops. And now, increasingly, it is facing a broad introduction of Chinese military technology on the battlefields.

It is now time for Trump to have Ukraine’s back when he speaks today with Zelensky and with other European leaders. 

Trump can achieve that by introducing game changers to increase Putin’s cost calculus. Impose the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025 that 84 Senators have already co-sponsored. Establish a no-fly zone. Make it clear that, unless Russia immediately withdraws from all of Ukraine, Team Trump will support Ukraine’s accession to NATO.

As we have long argued, the world is at war. Ukraine has had our six so far with the Axis of Evil. Going forward, we as a country must have its back as well.

Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy. Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer and led the U.S. European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012 to 2014.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will deliver Friday its first jobs report since President Trump fired its leader in response to disappointing employment data for July.

Economists are predicting more weakening in the labor market for August, which could prompt further reprisals and criticism from Trump.

“August’s employment report is likely to confirm that a marked slowdown in labor market conditions is underway,” EY-Parthenon chief economist Gregory Daco wrote in a preview of the report. 

Daco expects nonfarm payrolls to increase by just 40,000 in August, following the modest 73,000 jobs that were created in July. He sees the unemployment rate ticking up to 4.3 percent, which would be the highest level since October 2021.

Financial media company Bankrate also sees unemployment rising to 4.3 percent, citing a consensus forecast of 80,000 jobs added to the economy for August. The Wall Street Journal is estimating a middling 75,000 jobs to have been added. The economy needs to add between 80,000 and 100,000 new jobs per month to keep up with population growth.

The July jobs report showed an average of just 35,000 jobs being added to the economy across May, June and July.

That weakening was also reflected in Wednesday’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, which showed the number of job seekers exceeding the number of open jobs for the first time since 2021. There are currently 7.24 million Americans out of work while there are 7.18 million open positions.

“Job openings were lower than expected and close to pre-pandemic levels,” investment bank Raymond James economist Eugenio Aleman wrote in a Wednesday commentary. “Job openings in health care and social assistance, which has been one of the strongest sectors for job growth, was considerably lower in July.”

Trump’s firing of former BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer drew widespread criticism within the economics field, with economists on both the left and right blasting the decision.

Trump’s former BLS Commissioner William Beach called the move “totally groundless” and said it sets “a dangerous precedent.”

Survey response rates for the BLS have been down since the pandemic, lessening the quality of Labor Department surveys, and while economists have complained about that trend, none have seriously questioned the agency’s methodologies or its execution of them.

Yale Budget Lab Director Ernie Tedeschi recently noted that BLS’s first-release estimates of nonfarm payrolls have gotten “more, not less, accurate” since the 1990s — an observation that Beach called “important.”

Administration officials have demurred on whether they will trust future data releases from the BLS in the wake of McEntarfer’s firing by Trump.

“There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to make it so that the numbers are more reliable,” White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CNN last week. “I think they’ll be as good as they can be, but they need to get a lot better.”

The firing has raised concerns about the politicization of economic data, which is closely scrutinized by businesses and governments to assess economic trends.

E.J. Antoni, Trump’s pick to replace McEntarfer at the BLS, has also come under fire, with economists saying he is not qualified for the position as someone with more experience as a conservative pundit than a statistician.

They have also pointed out errors that Antoni has made.

“[Antoni] claimed that exporters were eating the tariffs based on the small rise in the import price index so far this year,” Dean Baker, an economist with the Center for Economic Policy and Research, told The Hill. “This index does not include the effect of tariffs — it looks at prices on the boat. It’s fine that he may not know a specific data series, but pretty incredible he would make big claims about it before bothering to learn about it.”

In addition to the August report, there could be more disappointing employment data coming down the pipeline as the Labor Department’s annual benchmark revision is set to be released on Tuesday. Annual benchmarking is a standard statistical procedure that aligns survey estimates to population totals.

Investment bank Nomura is expecting a downward revision of between 600,000 and 900,000 jobs for the period from April 2024 to March 2025. Pantheon Macroeconomics made a similar forecast of 750,000 fewer jobs for the benchmark adjustment.

Beyond measurement concerns, employment conditions are in an unusual place. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has described them as “curious,” reflecting a low-hiring and low-firing environment that would normally resolve toward expansion or contraction, but that has instead persisted for more than a year.

“You’ve got to be careful saying that [this] is fragile when it’s endured for a year-and-a-half, two years,” New Century Advisers chief economist Claudia Sahm told The Hill. 

“It’s not like this can go on forever, but it could just be a different human resource mindset,” she added.

In an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Fed board member Christopher Waller expressed concerns about how quickly the weakening U.S. job market could fall apart if the Fed doesn’t cut rates at its upcoming September policy meeting.

“When the labor market turns bad, it turns bad fast. … So for me, I think we need to start cutting rates at the next meeting,” Waller said.

“We don’t have to go into a lock sequence of steps. We can kind of see where things are going, because people are still worried about tariff inflation. I’m not, but everybody else is.”

Another concern is that job gains in recent months have been atypically concentrated, notably in health care and social assistance, which is greatly outpacing employment growth in the economy as a whole.

Job openings decreased in that sector by 181,000 positions in Wednesday’s labor turnover survey, suggesting that concentrated expansion, which has been bolstering employment overall, could be at risk.

“With the concentration that we’re seeing, it means a less resilient labor market, because you’re really loaded up in certain sectors,” Sahm added. “The concentration goes with this curious balance. It means we’re not as well set up for a big hit to demand.”

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said in a Wednesday interview on NewsNation’s “The Hill” that the panel will compile its own Jeffrey Epstein “list,” a tally of powerful figures related to the deceased sex offender and financier. 

“We’re going to compile a list from the victims. So at the end of the day, there’s going to be a list, whether or not there’s a list in an envelope that Epstein left behind. It doesn’t appear that there was, but I think we could put together a list,” Comer told host Blake Burman.

Comer, whose panel has been investigating the Epstein case, noted that sheer association with the late sex offender or his longtime associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, does not mean being guilty of a crime or that “you knew the crimes they were committing.” 

“But we want to know everyone that was in the circle, as well as the people who were victimizing those young girls,” the Kentucky Republican told Burman. 

The victims of Epstein said on Tuesday they are working on assembling a list of high-profile figures related to the disgraced financier after growing frustrated with the Trump administration’s handling of the case. 

“A lot of us survivors know we’ve been compiling lists of our own, and we have so many other survivors. Please come forward, and we’ll compile our own list and seek justice on our own,” Epstein accuser Lisa Phillips said in an interview with NBC News.

The FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) faced blowback, including from some Trump supporters, after releasing an unnamed, early July memo stating that Epstein died by suicide in 2019 in New York while awaiting trial and that he did not keep a so-called client list.

“There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,” the memo said.

The officials also stated in the memo that the departments do not plan to release more information from the Epstein files in order to avoid publishing personal details about victims of the late sex offender. 

The saga around the Epstein case has continued as lawmakers returned to the Capitol from the August recess. Some of the Epstein survivors testified during a closed-door meeting to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. 

So far, Comer’s panel has subpoenaed former President Clinton and ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to provide testimony. 

Comer told Burman on Wednesday that the panel is waiting to hear back from the Clintons. 

“Well, they’ll have to answer that subpoena, so they have a few more days before he’s supposed to show up,” Comer said. “I believe it’s in a couple of weeks, but we will hear from them, and I do expect them to testify.”

Comer and others on the panel also subpoenaed Epstein’s estate in late August. 

The DOJ has sent over thousands of pages of Epstein documents to the Oversight Committee. The panel released the files, although Democrats on the committee said the large majority of the material was already public. 

Comer said on Wednesday that the panel deposed former Attorney General Bill Barr, who was the head of the DOJ during Trump’s first term. 

“He answered every question, and when we do a deposition, it’s Republican and Democrat, we each get equal time, so it’s not a partisan investigation,” the Kentucky Republican said.