America’s lenders are raising their prices, and have been for months. This is making long-term borrowing costs for the world’s most indebted nation dangerously expensive.

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Around the world, investors have been dumping U.S. government debt, and the selling is accelerating. The U.S. Treasury now has to attract new lenders by offering higher interest rates.

• Yesterday the rate on 30-year bonds hit 5.44 percent, the highest since 2004. The rate on a 10-year loan passed 5 percent, a level last seen in 2007.

• That rate affects what banks charge for mortgages and other loans. The average 30-year mortgage now costs 7.26 percent.

Causes: The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran has choked off tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and world oil prices are back above $100 a barrel. At the same time, American businesses are busier than they have been in years, and their fuel and shipping bills are rising fast.

• Lenders expect all this to drive prices up. So they want more interest to make up for dollars that will buy less later.

• The Federal Reserve raised interest rates last week for the first time since 2023, and investors expect another increase in October.

This hits our grocery bills. Diesel hit a record $6.53 a gallon this week, up 77 percent in a year. Most families never buy diesel, but nearly everything we eat depends on it: the tractor that plants the crop, the combine that harvests it, the fishing boat, the freight train, the refrigerated truck. Fuel prices account for an estimated 15 to 30 percent of what food costs.

America is already buried in debt. Imagine a family that has maxed out every credit card just as the bank raises its rates.

• This year, the government expects to spend about $1 trillion just on interest—more than it spends on the military or Medicaid. Interest takes almost 1 of every 5 tax dollars.

• Washington’s own budget office planned for 10-year borrowing to cost about 4.1 percent this year. It now costs more than 5 percent. Every old loan the government replaces with a new one now carries a higher rate.

What happens to a nation that lives on borrowed money? “[T]he borrower is servant to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7).

• Among the curses God pronounced on a disobedient Israel: “He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail” (Deuteronomy 28:44). We are among the modern descendants of biblical Israel, and we are suffering this curse.

The once-great British Empire followed this same path, and it led to its downfall. Our feature story this morning, “How Debt Destroyed the British Empire,” explains the history that is prophecy for the declining American superpower.

Many Democrats Openly Say They Want Trump Dead

About a third of Democrats would be happy if they heard Donald Trump had been assassinated at a political rally, a new poll indicates. The Center for Strategic Politics poll, published yesterday, showed 683 Democrat voters a selection of headlines and asked them how they would feel if they learned:

• “President Donald Trump was assassinated while speaking at a rally”: 23 percent positive, plus 9 percent somewhat positive

• “President Trumpet died overnight in his sleep”: 45 percent very positive; 10 percent somewhat positive

• “To ‘safeguard the Constitution’ a group of U.S. military leaders have removed President Donald Trump from power and assumed control of the United States”: 43 very positive; 16 percent somewhat positive

This shows how pervasive “Trump derangement syndrome” has become. It’s understandable that Trump’s political opponents want him out of office, but to support the violation of the Constitution or just basic laws like “thou shalt not murder” to make it happen is disturbing.

• It shows that eliminating Trump now trumps the rule of law. A republic cannot long survive if people hate their political opponents more than they love the rule of law.

Rule of law is a biblical value. “Most people don’t see that we are destroying the rule of law,” warned Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry. “And history tells us that our republic cannot stand unless that evil is corrected.” Read his free booklet No Freedom Without Law for more about the little-understood connection between obedience to law and true freedom.

Israel Attempts to Ban Arab Parties

Israel’s Central Elections Committee voted Wednesday to disqualify the Joint List, a coalition of Arab political parties that largely opposes Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. They also voted to disqualify Ra’am, a historically Islamist party that has tried to moderate its image and participated in the governing coalition from 2021 to 2022.

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party applied to disqualify the group under a provision in Israel’s Basic Law that bans political parties that reject Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state or that support armed struggle against Israel.

• Israel holds its next general elections on October 27.

Israel’s Supreme Court will probably overturn the election committee’s decision. The Knesset’s opposition parties and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara also indicated they opposed it.

• The one disqualification with broad support among the Israeli government, the opposition, the attorney general and even the Supreme Court is the disqualification of Sami Abu Shehadeh, the leader of the Joint List’s Balad party.

• Shahadeh published an article on Oct. 8, 2023, that appeared to support Hamas’s brutal massacre of 1,200 men, women and children. He said the attack was an “important historic event” that could show Arab resistance how to successfully beat Israel.

Zechariah 14:1-2 is a prophecy of the Palestinian Arabs getting organized and aggressive enough to capture East Jerusalem by force. Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry explains this in Chapter 3 of his free booklet Jerusalem in Prophecy. The banning dispute reminds the world how deeply divided Israel is and how bloodthirsty its enemies are, without and within.