Date: 1/09/2025 14:45:07
From: Neophyte
ID: 2312131
Subject: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

August 31, 2025 (Sunday)

Almost one hundred and forty-three years ago, on September 5, 1882, workers in New York City celebrated the first Labor Day holiday with a parade. The parade almost didn’t happen: there was no band, and no one wanted to start marching without music. Once the Jewelers Union of Newark Two showed up with musicians, the rest of the marchers, eventually numbering between 10,000 and 20,000 men and women, fell in behind them to parade through lower Manhattan. At noon, when they reached the end of the route, the march broke up and the participants listened to speeches, drank beer, and had picnics. Other workers joined them.

Their goal was to emphasize the importance of workers in the industrializing economy and to warn politicians that they could not be ignored. Less than 20 years before, northern men had fought a war to defend a society based on free labor and had, they thought, put in place a government that would support the ability of all hardworking men to rise to prosperity.

By 1882, though, factories and the fortunes they created had swung the government toward men of capital, and workingmen worried they would lose their rights if they didn’t work together. A decade before, the Republican Party, which had formed to protect free labor, had thrown its weight behind Wall Street. By the 1880s, even the staunchly Republican Chicago Tribune complained about the links between business and government: “Behind every one of half of the portly and well-dressed members of the Senate can be seen the outlines of some corporation interested in getting or preventing legislation,” it wrote. The Senate, Harper’s Weekly noted, was “a club of rich men.”

The workers marching in New York City carried banners saying: “Labor Built This Republic and Labor Shall Rule It,” “Labor Creates All Wealth,” “No Land Monopoly,” “No Money Monopoly,” “Labor Pays All Taxes,” “The Laborer Must Receive and Enjoy the Full Fruit of His Labor,” ‘Eight Hours for a Legal Day’s Work,” and “The True Remedy Is Organization and the Ballot.”

The New York Times denied that workers were any special class in the United States, saying that “very one who works with his brain, who applies accumulated capital to industry, who directs or facilitates the operations of industry and the exchange of its products, is just as truly a laboring man as he who toils with his hands…and each contributes to the creation of wealth and the payment of taxes and is entitled to a share in the fruits of labor in proportion to the value of his service in the production of net results.”

In other words, the growing inequality in the country was a function of the greater value of bosses than their workers, and the government could not possibly adjust that equation. The New York Daily Tribune scolded the workers for holding a political—even a “demagogical”—event. “It is one thing to organize a large force of…workingmen…when they are led to believe that the demonstration is purely non-partisan; but quite another thing to lead them into a political organization….”

Two years later, workers helped to elect Democrat Grover Cleveland to the White House. A number of Republicans crossed over to support the reformer, afraid that, as he said, “The gulf between employers and the employed is constantly widening, and classes are rapidly forming, one comprising the very rich and powerful, while in another are found the toiling poor…. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”

In 1888, Cleveland won the popular vote by about 100,000 votes, but his Republican opponent, Benjamin Harrison, won in the Electoral College. Harrison promised that his would be “A BUSINESS MAN’S ADMINISTRATION” and said that “before the close of the present Administration business men will be thoroughly well content with it….”

Businessmen mostly were, but the rest of the country wasn’t. In November 1892 a Democratic landslide put Cleveland back in office, along with the first Democratic Congress since before the Civil War. As soon as the results of the election became apparent, the Republicans declared that the economy would collapse. Harrison’s administration had been “beyond question the best business administration the country has ever seen,” one businessmen’s club insisted, so losing it could only be a calamity. “The Republicans will be passive spectators,” the Chicago Tribune noted. “It will not be their funeral.” People would be thrown out of work, but “erhaps the working classes of the country need such a lesson….”

As investors rushed to take their money out of the U.S. stock market, the economy collapsed a few days before Cleveland took office in early March 1893. Trying to stabilize the economy by enacting the proposals capitalists wanted, Cleveland and the Democratic Congress had to abandon many of the pro-worker policies they had promised, and the Supreme Court struck down the rest (including the income tax).

They could, however, support Labor Day and its indication of workers’ political power. On June 28, 1894, Cleveland signed Congress’s bill making Labor Day a legal holiday.
In Chicago the chair of the House Labor Committee, Lawrence McGann (D-IL), told the crowd gathered for the first official observance: “Let us each Labor day, hold a congress and formulate propositions for the amelioration of the people. Send them to your Representatives with your earnest, intelligent indorsement , and the laws will be changed.”

Reply Quote

Date: 2/09/2025 15:59:02
From: Neophyte
ID: 2312414
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

From her Facebook page…

“I hope everyone had a happy and relaxing Labor Day.

I’ll be back at it tomorrow.”

Reply Quote

Date: 3/09/2025 14:45:27
From: Neophyte
ID: 2312633
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 2, 2025 (Tuesday)

In the early hours of Sunday morning, in the middle of a three-day holiday weekend, the Trump administration attempted to take children out of government custody and ship them alone to their country of origin, Guatemala.

On Friday, Priscilla Alvarez of CNN broke the story that the administration was planning to move up to 600 children from the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), where they are held according to law until they can be released to a relative or a guardian living in the U.S. who can take care of them while their case for asylum in the U.S. is being processed.

ORR is an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services. Its mission, according to its website, is to promote the health, well-being, and stability of refugees, unaccompanied alien children, and other eligible individuals and families, through culturally responsive, trauma-informed, and strengths-based services. Our vision is for all new arrivals to be welcomed with equitable, high-quality services and resources so they can maximize their potential.”

Alvarez notes that unaccompanied migrant children are considered a vulnerable population and are covered by the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. That law gives them enhanced protections and care, making sure they are screened to see if they have been trafficked or are afraid of persecution in the country they come from. Congress has specified that such children can be removed from the country only under special circumstances.

Nonetheless, the administration appears to have removed about 76 of these children from the custody of ORR—the only agency with legal authority to hold them—where they were waiting to be released to a relative or guardian, and transferred them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Once they were in ICE custody, the administration planned “to put them on flights to Guatemala, where they may face abuse, neglect, persecution, or even torture,” according to a U.S. court.

At about 1:00 in the morning, Eastern Time, on Sunday, August 31, advocates for the children filed a suit to prevent the administration from removing them. Shortly after 2:30 in the morning, Judge Sparkle Sooknanan got a phone call about the case, and by 4:00 she had issued an emergency order blocking the removal and scheduled a hearing for 3:00 that afternoon. She moved it up to 12:30 when she learned that the administration was already moving some children out of the country.

Legal analyst Anna Bower was on the call for the hearing and reported that Sooknanan said: “I got a call at 2:36 am because the government chose the wee hours of the morning on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend to execute a plan to move these children. That’s why we’re here. And I tried to reach the government. I have been up since then…and didn’t reach anyone from the government until later this morning. And the imminence that the plaintiff claimed proved true, because, in fact, those planes were loaded. One actually took off and was returned. And so, absent action and intervention by the court, all of those children would have been returned to Guatemala, potentially to extremely dangerous situations.”

Some of the children were actually in a plane to be removed while the hearing was underway. Sooknanan required the government to report to her when each child was back in ORR custody. By noon Monday, according to the government’s lawyers, all the children were back in ORR custody.

The rush to deport children in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend, in apparent violation of the law, looked a great deal like the administration’s removal of undocumented immigrants from Venezuela to the notorious terrorist CECOT prison in El Salvador in March. At the time, President Donald J. Trump denied that he had signed the order invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act the administration used to justify the rendition of the men to El Salvador. “Other people handled it,” he said, even though his signature is on the document that appears in the Federal Register.

Trump’s apparent distance from that earlier removal comes to mind now because the other big story over Labor Day weekend was Trump’s relative disappearance from public view since last Tuesday. As Garrett Graff of Doomsday Scenario recorded, Trump, who normally talks to the press as often as possible, had no public appearances on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. Coming on top of Vice President J.D. Vance’s odd comment in an interview with USA Today last week that he was ready to be president if needed—“I’ve gotten a lot of good on-the-job training over the past 200 days,” he said—rumors flew. Over the weekend, “Is Trump dead?” was one of Google’s top searches.

Although he posted “NEVER FELT BETTER IN MY LIFE” on social media on Sunday, Trump continued to keep a long distance between himself and the press.

Trump appeared today in the Oval Office—an hour late—to announce he would move Space Force headquarters from Colorado to Alabama, apparently to put the rumors of his ill health to rest.

At the event, Trump referred to the recent court decision declaring many of his tariffs illegal, saying that “if you took away tariffs, we could end up being a third-world country.” In fact, the country’s economy has slowed significantly since Trump instituted his tariffs, and Trump’s agenda continues to take hits.

Yesterday, nine former directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who served under both Democratic and Republican presidents reaching back to President Jimmy Carter, published an op-ed in the New York Times warning that Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “is endangering every American’s health.”

William Foege, William Roper, David Satcher, Jeffrey Koplan, Richard Besser, Tom Frieden, Anne Schuchat, Rochelle P. Walensky, and Mandy K. Cohen listed their concerns about Kennedy’s policies. He “has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence and more,” they wrote.

“Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he’s focused on unproven treatments while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements. And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage.”

Kennedy’s firing of CDC director Dr. Susan Monarez last Wednesday, a firing Trump approved, appears to have been the event that spurred the former directors to speak up as a group. They wrote that what Kennedy has done to the CDC and to public health in the U.S. since taking office is “unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our country had ever experienced.”

The former CDC directors warned that the health of every American is at risk. They urged Congress to exercise its authority over the Department of Health and Human Services, state and local governments and private philanthropy to cover the funding Kennedy has killed, and physicians to support their patients, and they called upon all Americans to “look out for one another.”
A post on Trump’s social media account yesterday morning seemed to try to blame “Drug Companies” for “let everyone rip themselves apart, including Bobby Kennedy Jr. and CDC,” suggesting that administration officials are aware that there is a political backlash brewing over the administration’s assault on public health.

The administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, says the administration is deliberately “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.” Today, more than 85 scientists released a joint review of the U.S. Department of Energy’s new climate report, saying it was “biased, full of errors, and not fit to inform policymaking.”

Trump’s attempt to defend Russian president Vladimir Putin took another hit yesterday when Russia appeared to jam the GPS of an airplane carrying European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to Bulgaria. The European Commission is the executive branch of the European Union, which has stood firm against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and continues to support Ukraine. Russia appears to have been jamming plane GPS in the airspace around the Baltic coast since it invaded Ukraine again in 2022 but denies it is doing so.

A source told the Financial Times that the pilots of the plane carrying von der Leyen had to land using paper maps.

Today, Judge Charles Breyer of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that Trump, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegesth, and the Department of Defense acted illegally when they used the Marines and the National Guard in Los Angeles, California. (As legal analyst Bower noted, whether their deployment of the military is legal is a separate case now pending before the Ninth Circuit.)

Judge Breyer noted that Congress had spoken clearly when it passed the Posse Comitatus Act in 1878, prohibiting the use of the U.S. military to execute domestic law. “Nevertheless,” the judge wrote, “at Defendants’ orders and contrary to Congress’s explicit instruction, federal troops executed the laws.” Evidence at trial showed that armed soldiers set up protective perimeters and traffic blockages, engaged in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrated a military presence in and around Los Angeles. “In short,” he concluded, the “Defendants violated the Posse Comitatus Act.”

Breyer noted that 300 troops still remain in Los Angeles, and he warned that Trump and Hegseth have “stated their intention to call National Guard troops into federal service in other cities across the country…thus creating a national police force with the President as its chief.” The judge prohibited the defendants “from deploying, ordering, instructing, training, or using the National Guard currently deployed in California, and any military troops heretofore deployed in California, to execute the laws, including but not limited to engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants.” Breyer stayed the order until noon on September 12 to give the administration time to appeal.

Yesterday, Americans turned out across the country to protest Trump and the administration, and popular anger at government overreach may be showing in the legal system as well. Six times now, federal grand juries have declined to indict defendants picked up in connection with Trump’s deployment of troops in Washington, D.C. Although right-wing media is slamming Judge James Boasberg today for releasing Nathalie Rose Jones after she made threats against Trump, a grand jury refused to indict her.

More famously, a grand jury last week refused to indict Sean Dunn, the former Justice Department paralegal who threw a submarine sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection officer. The government charged Dunn with felony assault, for which he would have faced up to eight years in prison if convicted. Although officers tackled Dunn at the scene, the government later posted a dramatic video of heavily armed law enforcement officers going to Dunn’s apartment to arrest him.

As Liz Oyer, a former pardon attorney for the Department of Justice, said: “What’s so extraordinary about this is it shows that we the citizens are the last line of defense for our democracy…and we the citizens are standing strong.”

Reply Quote

Date: 3/09/2025 14:52:00
From: Tau.Neutrino
ID: 2312637
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Neophyte said:


September 2, 2025 (Tuesday)

In the early hours of Sunday morning, in the middle of a three-day holiday weekend, the Trump administration attempted to take children out of government custody and ship them alone to their country of origin, Guatemala.

As Liz Oyer, a former pardon attorney for the Department of Justice, said: “What’s so extraordinary about this is it shows that we the citizens are the last line of defense for our democracy…and we the citizens are standing strong.”

Very strong anti humanitarian values running through Trump’s Administration.

Profit over lives.

Reply Quote

Date: 3/09/2025 16:26:30
From: SCIENCE
ID: 2312650
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Tau.Neutrino said:

Neophyte said:

September 2, 2025 (Tuesday)

In the early hours of Sunday morning, in the middle of a three-day holiday weekend, the Trump administration attempted to take children out of government custody and ship them alone to their country of origin, Guatemala.

As Liz Oyer, a former pardon attorney for the Department of Justice, said: “What’s so extraordinary about this is it shows that we the citizens are the last line of defense for our democracy…and we the citizens are standing strong.”

Very strong anti humanitarian values running through Trump’s Administration.

Profit over lives.

well it’s important we mean if you can’t run a healthy profit then how can you afford to pay for all those lives

Reply Quote

Date: 4/09/2025 15:35:43
From: Neophyte
ID: 2312964
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 3, 2025 (Wednesday)

A Wall Street Journal–NORC poll released yesterday found that only 25% of Americans believe they have a good chance of improving their standard of living. Nearly 70% said it was no longer possible to work hard and get ahead. A majority of those polled said the generation before them had an easier time starting a business, buying a home, or staying at home to parent a child.

A different piece in the Wall Street Journal explained that there were 927 American billionaires in 2020 and 1,135 in 2024. Together, they are worth about $5.7 trillion. The 100 richest of the set control more than half of the total at about $3.86 trillion. As the number of billionaires grew, “supply side” economic policies in the U.S., designed to concentrate wealth at the top of the economy among investors rather than on the “demand side” made up of consumers, hollowed out the middle class. From 1975 to 2018, at least $50 trillion moved from the bottom 90% to the top 1%.

Yet another piece in the Wall Street Journal, this one by Katherine Hamilton and Alison Sider, noted that consumer confidence is sliding. While wealthier Americans seem to be doing fine, they write, rising distress about the economy is obvious among the middle class: those making about $53,000 to $161,000 a year. Chief economist at Morning Consult John Leer told the reporters: “There was a period of time, briefly, where the middle-income consumer looked like they were being dragged up by all that was going well in the world. Then things fell off a cliff.”

In an interview with the Financial Times published yesterday, billionaire Ray Dalio, the founder of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, warned that the U.S. today looks a lot like “what happened around the world in the 1930–1940 period.” Dalio identified the policies of President Donald J. Trump as the sort of “strong autocratic leadership that sprang out of the desire to take control of the financial and economic situation” in the 1930s.

Trump’s rise in 2016 was fueled in part by his promise to defend those left behind in the supply-side economy. But he abandoned his economic promises with his 2017 tax cuts that benefited the wealthy and corporations far more than average Americans, and rallied his supporters with culture-war issues.

In 2024, Trump ran on the argument that Democrat Joe Biden had not adequately addressed inflation—although the U.S. managed the post-pandemic inflation spike better than any other developed economy—promising that he would make prices come down “immediately.” Instead, his tariffs and deportations have sent inflation upward again, and the budget reconciliation bill he forced through Congress is already pushing people off their healthcare insurance and threatening the survival of rural hospitals.

The law Trump and the Republicans dubbed the “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” is profoundly unpopular, with about two thirds of Americans opposed to it. So today, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio, and Trump political director James Blair met with Republican congress members to tell them that people will come to like the law if “they completely rebrand it and talk about it differently.”

The administration officials told the congress members, who have been hearing from constituents angry about the law’s deep spending cuts, that they should be pushing the idea that the law helps “working families.” Vice President J.D. Vance tried this last week in Wisconsin, and this afternoon, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) appeared to take that advice out for a spin, publicly referring to the law the same way Vance did: as the “working families tax cut act.”

The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes that under the law, a family earning less than $50,000 a year would get less than $300 in tax cuts in 2027 while losing access to Medicaid and food assistance, while a filer earning more than $1 million would receive about $90,000 in tax breaks. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the 10% of Americans at the bottom of the economy will lose about $1,200 a year.

Trump’s policies are working well for his family, though. Angus Berwick of the Wall Street Journal reported that the Monday launch of their WLFI cryptocurrency netted them about $5 billion on paper. Today Eric Trump launched American Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency mining company; Kyle Khan-Mullins and Dan Alexander of Forbes reported today that he is now worth at least $3.2 billion.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to insist that he must have the powers of a dictator to make the country prosperous again. When a court found his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to justify his sweeping tariffs was illegal, he said, “If you took away tariffs, we could end up being a third-world country,” although the U.S. was not a third-world country before Trump launched his tariff war in April. He has said he will take the case before the Supreme Court.

If he loses there, as Elisabeth Buchwald wrote for CNN, the U.S. might have to pay back more than $210 billion to the American businesses that have paid the tariffs. On Monday, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo pointed to a story Louise Matsakis and Zoë Schiffer of Wired reported in late July: Wall Street companies, including Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services company run by the sons of billionaire commerce secretary Howard Lutnick since Lutnick joined the Trump administration, have been buying up the rights to collect tariff refunds if the tariffs are struck down.

Marshall notes that while making a bet on an uncertain outcome is a huge part of modern finance, the idea that a commerce secretary’s company is making bets on something the commerce secretary has significant authority over is a perfect symbol of the Trump era.

While the Trump family and loyalists cash in on their control of the government, Trump continues to assert that he requires authoritarian powers to “Make America Great Again.”

Trump has relied heavily on the Supreme Court’s defense of his leeway as the nation’s leader in foreign affairs, and after being stymied by the courts for its actions at home, the administration yesterday announced it had blown up a boat in international waters in the Caribbean with eleven people on it, alleging the boat was carrying illegal drugs to the United States from Venezuela. Although U.S. forces could have stopped the boat without destroying it and often do so, shooting at engines, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the boat posed an “immediate threat to the United States,” so the U.S. had the right to destroy it. Perhaps thinking it demonstrated power, the administration circulated a video of the strike.

Legal analyst Ryan Goodman wrote: “I worked at . I literally cannot imagine lawyers coming up with a legal basis for lethal strike of suspected Venezuelan drug boat. Hard to see how this would not be “murder” or war crime under international law that DoD considers applicable.”

Notre Dame law professor Mary Ellen O’Connell told John Hudson, Samantha Schmidt, and Alex Horton of the Washington Post that the strike violated international law. “When the president decides this is a person who can be killed summarily, there’s no restraint on him,” she told the reporters. “It’s a very dangerous new move,” since he could decide to launch similar strikes within the United States in pursuit of those he calls drug traffickers.

Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said the strike was “deeply concerning,” noting that “he administration has not identified the authority under which this action was taken, raising the question of its legality and constitutionality.” Smith added: “The lack of information and transparency from the administration is even more concerning. Does this mean Trump thinks he can use the U.S. military anywhere drugs exist, are sold, or shipped? What is the risk of dragging the United States into yet another military conflict?”

Legal analyst Joyce White Vance noted that the justification for the strike was dubious enough that even Rubio appeared to want a little distance from it, as he made a point of specifying that the U.S. acted “on the president’s orders.”

Trump has attempted to demonstrate authoritarian power with his military displays in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and yesterday he announced that “we’re going in” to Chicago, although he didn’t offer any specifics. After Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker rejected the idea the president could simply send troops, Trump appeared to back off, saying Pritzker should ask him for help. “When did we become a country where it’s OK for the U.S. president to insist on national television that a state should call him to beg for anything—especially something we don’t want?” Pritzker said. “Have we truly lost all sense of sanity in this nation, that we treat this as normal?”

A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll shows just 38% of Americans approve of Trump’s deployment of troops in Washington, D.C.

Trump has reason to be afraid of the American people for another reason, too: they want to see the files from the federal investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, especially now that they know Trump is mentioned in those files. Speaker Johnson dismissed the House early for its August break this year to avoid having to deal with the demands of members for the release of the files, but now Congress is back in session and the demands are right back on the table. Trump has tried to stop Republicans from asking for the files by warning such a demand would be seen as a hostile act against the administration.

Today the administration arranged a military flyover during the visit of President Karol Nawrocki of Poland, in honor of a Polish army pilot killed in a training exercise. The flyover occurred just at the time more than 100 of the women who survived sexual grooming, assault, and rape in their association with Epstein and his associate, convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, spoke at a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol, drowning out their words.

But it did not silence the words of survivor Jess Michaels.

“For 27 years, I thought I was the only one that Jeffrey Epstein raped. I believed I was alone, and I was kept silent by the shame that was inside me and by the fear outside in the world,” she said. “But I wasn’t the only one. None of us were. And what once kept us silent now fuels that fire and the power of our voices. We are not the footnotes in some infamous predator’s tabloid article. We are the experts and the subjects of this story. We are the proof that fear did not break us. And we don’t just speak for ourselves, but for every survivor whose story is still unspoken…. This is what power looks like. Survivors united, voices joined, refusing to be dismissed. Know this: justice and accountability are not favors from the powerful. They are obligations, decades overdue. This moment began with Epstein’s crimes, but it’s going to be remembered for survivors demanding justice, demanding truth, demanding accountability, and we will not stop until survivor voices shape justice, transform culture, and define the future. We are no longer whispers. We are one powerful voice, too loud to ignore, and we will never be silenced again.”

Reply Quote

Date: 4/09/2025 15:43:45
From: buffy
ID: 2312965
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

I’d just got that formatted and fortunately I checked before I hit submit – you beat me by a minute!

Reply Quote

Date: 4/09/2025 15:55:16
From: Neophyte
ID: 2312967
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

buffy said:


I’d just got that formatted and fortunately I checked before I hit submit – you beat me by a minute!

:-D

Reply Quote

Date: 4/09/2025 16:02:55
From: Divine Angel
ID: 2312969
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Felt like I was herding cats today.

I got pulled off my regular classes to be with the preps. But, other teachers were away so their classes got split up and extra kids put into every other class, so we ended up with three extras. One of these kids, I was with yesterday, and they were having some behavioural challenges. Today, this kid displayed exemplary behaviour, so much so that I’ve emailed the regular teacher to say how proud she’d be of this kid.

I didn’t feel like I was much help today, but the prep teacher said I did an awesome job. She’s not one for BS.

Reply Quote

Date: 4/09/2025 16:11:40
From: SCIENCE
ID: 2312973
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Divine Angel said:


Felt like I was herding cats today.

I got pulled off my regular classes to be with the preps. But, other teachers were away so their classes got split up and extra kids put into every other class, so we ended up with three extras. One of these kids, I was with yesterday, and they were having some behavioural challenges. Today, this kid displayed exemplary behaviour, so much so that I’ve emailed the regular teacher to say how proud she’d be of this kid.

I didn’t feel like I was much help today, but the prep teacher said I did an awesome job. She’s not one for BS.

so problem kids just need to be split up and put in different classes and boom well behaved kids just like that

Reply Quote

Date: 5/09/2025 17:11:00
From: Neophyte
ID: 2313349
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 4, 2025 (Thursday)

Senators challenged the decisions of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. as he testified before the Senate Finance Committee for about three hours today. Kennedy has slashed through thousands of advisors and staffers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who do not share his animosity toward vaccines and has canceled $500 million in research funding for mRNA vaccine research. Last week he fired the newly confirmed director of the CDC, Susan Monarez, when she refused to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel Kennedy had stacked with anti-vaccine advocates.

Because of Kennedy’s history of repeating debunked lies and breaking promises he made to the Senate, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), the highest ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, asked that the committee swear Kennedy in before he began his testimony. Committee chair Mike Crapo (R-ID) declined. Wyden said: “This committee’s unwillingness to swear this witness is basically a message that it is acceptable to lie to the Senate Finance Committee about hugely important questions like vaccines.”

During his testimony, Kennedy insisted his purges are designed to restore faith in the CDC after it “failed miserably” during the coronavirus pandemic. He called the CDC “the most corrupt agency at HHS, and maybe the government.” He denied the official tally that more than 1.2 million Americans have died from Covid-19, and denied that new government guidelines for the covid vaccine mean that people cannot get them. He was combative and seemed angry that he was being questioned. He repeatedly suggested Democratic senators were lying when they quoted facts or data that didn’t fit his narrative.

Republican senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a doctor who was instrumental in securing Kennedy’s confirmation, noted that pharmacies might not offer covid vaccines after Kennedy said the shots are no longer recommended for healthy adults under 65 or for children. Cassidy said “Effectively, we’re denying people vaccines.” Kennedy retorted: “You’re wrong.”

On Monday, nine former directors of the CDC wrote an op-ed in the New York Times warning that Kennedy is “endangering every American’s health,” and yesterday more than 1,000 current and former employees of the Department of Health and Human Services wrote a public letter saying that Kennedy is endangering the health of the nation by spreading inaccurate information. They called for Kennedy to resign or be fired.

Former CDC director Monarez published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today warning that Kennedy and his anti-vaccine colleagues “use a familiar playbook: discredit research, weaken advisory committees, and use manipulated outcomes to unravel protections that generations of families have relied on to keep deadly diseases at bay. Once trusted experts are removed and advisory bodies are stacked, the results are predetermined. That isn’t reform. It is sabotage.”

Egged on by President Donald J. Trump in summer 2020, people involved in the MAGA movement zeroed in on government attempts to combat the coronavirus pandemic as an assault on their freedom. Now Kennedy and adherents of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) branch of MAGA are attacking vaccines in general as a government assault on freedom.

In a letter issued to the states today, the Department of Health and Human Services reiterated that states “must respect state religious and conscience exemptions from vaccine mandates.” It reiterated Kennedy’s position that American freedom dictates the removal of the government’s power to require Americans to get vaccines. “States have the authority to balance public health goals with individual freedom,” the letter quotes Kennedy as saying. “Protecting both public health and personal liberty is how we restore faith in our institutions and Make America Healthy Again.”

Yesterday, Florida became the first state to move to eliminate all vaccine requirements for public school students. If the state legislature agrees, the move would end Florida’s previously required vaccinations for polio, tetanus, chicken pox, hepatitis B, and measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR). No state mandates the covid vaccine.

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo said that every government vaccine mandate “is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.” He added: “People have a right to make their own decisions, informed decisions. What you put into your body is because of your relationship with your body and your god. I don’t have that right. Government does not have that right.” After Florida’s announcement, CNN’s Aaron Blake noted, top Trump health advisor Mehmet Oz appeared to agree with it, saying on the Fox News Channel: “I would definitely not have mandates for vaccinations.”

For decades, the Republican Party has called for the dismantling of government regulations with the argument that such regulations were destroying American freedom. As Ronald Reagan put it in 1964 in his speech supporting Barry Goldwater for president, on the one hand there was “individual freedom consistent with law and order,” and on the other hand was “the ant heap of totalitarianism.”

But the fight over vaccines illustrates the difference between freedom from government overreach and freedom to build a life that is not cramped by preventable obstacles. The CDC estimates that between 1994 and 2003, childhood vaccinations prevented 32 million hospitalizations and 1,129,000 deaths among children, and saved at least $540 billion. Removing those vaccines removes the individual freedom to determine one’s future.

While they might not articulate these two very different forms of freedom, Americans certainly seem aware of them and appear eager to preserve the concept that the government has a role to play in protecting individuals’ freedom to build a life free of preventable obstacles. A KFF poll released today shows that 81% of American parents support public school requirements that students be vaccinated for measles and polio. In Florida, that number is 82%.

Even as Kennedy and Florida reject vaccines as government overreach that restricts freedom, Democratic states are embracing them as protecting Americans’ freedom to live without the threat of illness or death from preventable diseases. Yesterday, California, Oregon, and Washington announced a “West Coast Health Alliance” to coordinate information about vaccines and public health based in science rather than ideology. Nine states in the Northeast are forming a similar “Northeast Public Health Collaboration.”

Today Massachusetts governor Maura Healey announced measures to make sure vaccines continue to be available to all Massachusetts residents, despite the restrictions set out by Trump and Kennedy. “We won’t let Donald Trump and Robert Kennedy get between patients and their doctors,” Healey said. “When the federal government fails to protect public health, Massachusetts will step up. The actions we are announcing today will make sure people can continue to get the vaccines they need and want in Massachusetts.”

At the turn of the last century, when wealthy industrialists controlled Congress and the Supreme Court and prevented federal laws from addressing the abuses of industrialization and the concentration of wealth, certain state governments stepped in to figure out how to use government power to protect their citizens. Under Governor Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette, Wisconsin led the way, bringing together researchers, lawmakers, and state officials to craft policies that would end corruption, promote education and social welfare, and create a strong and fair economy.

The “Wisconsin Idea” made that state “literally a laboratory for wise experimental legislation aiming to secure the social and political betterment of the people as a whole,” Republican president Theodore Roosevelt wrote. “All through the Union we need to learn the Wisconsin lesson.” His presidency launched the idea that the government must defend Americans’ right to live free of economic coercion, industrial pollution, and laws that privilege corporations.

Aside from using the idea of freedom from government overreach to get rid of vaccine mandates, the Trump administration appears generally to have jettisoned that Republican position. Instead, it is using the power of the government to attack those it perceives as political enemies, the same charge made by the House of Representatives against President Richard M. Nixon as it considered impeachment proceedings in 1974.

Today the Department of Justice launched a criminal investigation into Lisa Cook, a governor of the U.S. Federal Reserve, for allegedly committing mortgage fraud by claiming two separate properties as her primary residence. Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski of Pro Publica reported today that three of Trump’s own Cabinet members—Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and EPA administrator Lee Zeldin—have all done the same.

A video released today by right-wing activist James O’Keefe—who often edits his material to mislead viewers—showed the Department of Justice’s acting deputy chief of special operations, Joseph Schnitt, saying that Jeffrey Epstein associate and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell was moved to a minimum security prison camp because the government is “offering her something to keep her mouth shut.” He also told an undercover journalist that both that the Epstein files exist and that before their release, the government will “redact every Republican and conservative person in those files and leave all the liberal, Democratic people.”

Tonight the Department of Justice published what appears to be an apology of sorts that confirms the material in the video. In an apparent screenshot of an email, Schnitt says he was talking to a woman he had met on a dating app and that his comments were “my own personal comments on what I’ve learned in the media and not from anything I’ve done or learned via work.”

Even more dramatic a government assault on freedom is the administration’s deployment of troops in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and its threat to deploy troops in Chicago and other cities. Now it has gone so far as to assert the government’s power to order the military to kill individuals Trump declares are gang members smuggling drugs, as it did by apparently killing 11 people on what they claimed was a drug boat.

With Trump and his loyalists abandoning the avowed Republican commitment to freedom from government overreach except when it serves their political interests—by attacking vaccines, for example—Americans determined to prevent the dismantling of our modern government are beginning to speak up to defend government protection of our freedom to live without unwarranted outside interference.

Recently, the 18 universities that make up the Big Ten Conference announced they will be running an ad during sporting events that “focuses on how Big Ten universities make America healthier, safer and more prosperous through everything from discovering new medical treatments to developing healthier foods to driving economic growth.”

Pushing back on the Trump administration’s attacks against universities and scientific research, they intend to highlight the importance of their work for the public good.

Reply Quote

Date: 5/09/2025 17:13:48
From: buffy
ID: 2313352
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Thank you.

Reply Quote

Date: 5/09/2025 18:45:51
From: Michael V
ID: 2313385
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Thanks, Mr N.

:)

Reply Quote

Date: 6/09/2025 15:37:28
From: Neophyte
ID: 2313637
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 5, 2025 (Friday)

Today President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War, although the 1947 abandonment of the Department of War name was not simply a matter of substituting a new name for the original one. In 1947, to bring order and efficiency to U.S. military forces, Congress renamed the Department of War as the Department of the Army, then brought it, together with the Department of the Navy and a new Department of the Air Force, into a newly established “National Military Establishment” overseen by the secretary of defense.

In 1949, Congress replaced the National Military Establishment name, whose initials sounded unfortunately like “enemy,” with Department of Defense. The new name emphasized that the Allied Powers of World War II would join together to focus on deterring wars by standing against offensive wars launched by big countries against their smaller neighbors. Although Trump told West Point graduates this year that “he military’s job is to dominate any foe and annihilate any threat to America, anywhere, anytime, and any place,” in fact, the stated mission of the Department of Defense is “to provide the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security.”

As Amanda Castro and Hannah Parry of Newsweek note, in August, Trump said he wanted the change because “Defense is too defensive…we want to be offensive too if we have to be.” By law, Congress must approve the change, which Politico estimates will cost billions of dollars, although Trump said: “I’m sure Congress will go along if we need that. I don’t think we even need that.” By this evening, nameplates and signage bearing the new name had gone up in government offices and the URL for the Defense Department website had been changed to war gov.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has pushed the change because he sees it as part of his campaign to spread a “warrior ethos” at the Pentagon. Today he said the name change was part of “restoring intentionality to the use of force…. We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality, violent effect, not politically correct. We’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders. So this War Department, Mr. President, just like America, is back.”

In 1947, when the country dropped the “War Department” name, the chief of staff of the U.S. Army—the highest-ranking officer on active duty—was five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower. It is unusual for anyone to suggest that Eisenhower, who led the Allied troops in World War II, was insufficiently committed to military strength. Indeed, the men who changed the name to “Defense Department” and tried to create a rules-based international order did so precisely because war was not a game to them. Having seen the carnage of war not just on the battlefield but among civilians who faced firebombing, death camps, homelessness, starvation, and the obscenity of atomic weapons, they hoped to find a way to make sure insecure, power-hungry men could not start another war easily.

The Movement Conservatives who took over the Republican Party in the 1980s leaned heavily on a mythologized image of the American cowboy as a strong, independent individual who wanted nothing from the government but to be left alone. That image supported decades of attacks on the modern government as “socialism,” and it has now metastasized in the MAGA movement to suggest that the men in charge of the government should be able to do whatever they want.

Just what that looks like was made clear on Wednesday when the Trump administration launched a strike on a boat carrying 11 civilians it claimed were smuggling drugs. Covering the story, the New York Times reported that “Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters.”

Today, David Philipps and Matthew Cole reported another military strike approved by Trump in his first term that was previously undisclosed. In the New York Times, they reported that in early 2019, Trump okayed a Navy SEAL mission to plant an electronic device in North Korea. The plan went awry when their activity near the shore attracted a civilian fishing boat with two or three men diving for shellfish. The SEALs killed the men on the boat, punctured their lungs with knives so the bodies would sink, abandoned the mission, and returned to base.

The administration never notified the Gang of Eight, the eight leaders of Congress who must be briefed on intelligence activities unless the president thinks it is essential to limit access to information about a covert operation. The Gang of Eight is made up of the leaders of both parties in each chamber of Congress, as well as the chairs and ranking minority members of the intelligence committee of each chamber.

Military officials appear concerned that Trump might continue to send personnel into precarious missions. Those who were involved in or knew about the North Korea mission said they were speaking up now because they are worried that such failures are often hidden and that if the public only hears about successful operations, “they may underestimate the extreme risks American forces undertake.”

Trump’s promise that his demonstrations of strength would make the U.S. a leader on the international stage is also falling apart. Barak Ravid and Dave Lawler of Axios reported that in a conversation yesterday with European Union leaders, Trump backed away from his promises to increase pressure on Russia to stop its war against Ukraine and instead told the leaders they must do it themselves.

Also yesterday, the Financial Times reported that the administration will no longer help to fund military training and infrastructure in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, Baltic nations vulnerable to Russian incursions. National security scholar Tom Nichols commented: “I am adamant about people not falling prey to conspiracy theories about Trump and the Russians, but this is a classic moment where it’s understandable to ask: If the Russians owned him, how would his actions be any different?”

The administration has not briefed Congress on the change.

Earlier this week, on September 3, leaders Xi Jinping of China, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Kim Jong Un of North Korea, and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus met in Beijing to celebrate the anniversary of the formal surrender of Japan and the end of World War II. The day before, Putin described Xi as a dear friend and said the ties between the two leaders are at an “unprecedented level.”

Trump did not appear to take the meeting well. He posted at Xi, reminding him of “the massive amount of support and ‘blood’ that the United States of America gave to China in order to help it to secure its FREEDOM from a very unfriendly foreign invader” and adding: “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against the United States of America. PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP”

India’s president, Narendra Modi, also met with Xi this week as Beijing continued to push the idea that it is now the head of a new world order. Trump responded: “Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!”

Reality is also intruding on the Republicans’ insistence that only they know how to run the economy.

Although Trump inherited a booming economy, he insisted that it was actually in terrible shape and that his tariffs would bring back manufacturing and make life better for those left behind by 40 years of economic policy that concentrated wealth at the top of society.

In fact, data released Tuesday show that U.S. manufacturing has contracted for six straight months. Economic journalist Catherine Rampell noted that the U.S. has fewer manufacturing jobs today than it had before the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. The country has lost 78,000 manufacturing jobs this year. Seventy-two percent of Texas manufacturers say the tariffs are hurting their businesses. Only 3.7% think the tariffs are helping them.

Yesterday’s immigration raid on a Hyundai Motor battery plant in Georgia is unlikely to send a reassuring message to manufacturers. U.S. agents arrested 475 individuals, more than 300 of whom were South Korean nationals. Included in the sweep were business travelers. In August, Hyundai said it would invest $26 billion in the U.S. through 2028.

Today’s new jobs report, the first since Trump fired the previous director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) after accusing her of rigging the numbers for political reasons, was poor. It showed that the U.S. added just 22,000 jobs in August, far below the expected 75,000, while the jobs numbers for June and July were revised downward by 21,000 jobs. The numbers show that the economy is faltering.

Just before the report was due to be released, the BLS website went down, an unfortunate reminder that the bureau is in turmoil. Today Em Steck and Andrew Kaczynski of CNN confirmed and expanded an August story by David Gilbert of Wired revealing what appears to be an old Twitter account belonging to E.J. Antoni, Trump’s pick to run the BLS. The account posted conspiracy theories and sexist, racist, and homophobic attacks, and parrotted Trump’s talking points.,

Last night, when asked if he would trust today’s job numbers, Trump answered: “Well, we’re going to have to see what the numbers, I don’t know, they come out tomorrow. But the real numbers that I’m talking about are going to be whatever it is. But, uh, will be in a year from now when these monstrous huge beautiful places they’re palaces of genius and when they start opening up. You’re seeing, I think you’ll see job numbers that are absolutely incredible. Right now it’s a lot of construction numbers, but you’re going to see job numbers like our country has never seen before.”

Reply Quote

Date: 6/09/2025 17:40:58
From: Michael V
ID: 2313662
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Neophyte said:


September 5, 2025 (Friday)

Today President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War, although the 1947 abandonment of the Department of War name was not simply a matter of substituting a new name for the original one. In 1947, to bring order and efficiency to U.S. military forces, Congress renamed the Department of War as the Department of the Army, then brought it, together with the Department of the Navy and a new Department of the Air Force, into a newly established “National Military Establishment” overseen by the secretary of defense.

In 1949, Congress replaced the National Military Establishment name, whose initials sounded unfortunately like “enemy,” with Department of Defense. The new name emphasized that the Allied Powers of World War II would join together to focus on deterring wars by standing against offensive wars launched by big countries against their smaller neighbors. Although Trump told West Point graduates this year that “he military’s job is to dominate any foe and annihilate any threat to America, anywhere, anytime, and any place,” in fact, the stated mission of the Department of Defense is “to provide the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security.”

As Amanda Castro and Hannah Parry of Newsweek note, in August, Trump said he wanted the change because “Defense is too defensive…we want to be offensive too if we have to be.” By law, Congress must approve the change, which Politico estimates will cost billions of dollars, although Trump said: “I’m sure Congress will go along if we need that. I don’t think we even need that.” By this evening, nameplates and signage bearing the new name had gone up in government offices and the URL for the Defense Department website had been changed to war gov.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has pushed the change because he sees it as part of his campaign to spread a “warrior ethos” at the Pentagon. Today he said the name change was part of “restoring intentionality to the use of force…. We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality, violent effect, not politically correct. We’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders. So this War Department, Mr. President, just like America, is back.”

In 1947, when the country dropped the “War Department” name, the chief of staff of the U.S. Army—the highest-ranking officer on active duty—was five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower. It is unusual for anyone to suggest that Eisenhower, who led the Allied troops in World War II, was insufficiently committed to military strength. Indeed, the men who changed the name to “Defense Department” and tried to create a rules-based international order did so precisely because war was not a game to them. Having seen the carnage of war not just on the battlefield but among civilians who faced firebombing, death camps, homelessness, starvation, and the obscenity of atomic weapons, they hoped to find a way to make sure insecure, power-hungry men could not start another war easily.

The Movement Conservatives who took over the Republican Party in the 1980s leaned heavily on a mythologized image of the American cowboy as a strong, independent individual who wanted nothing from the government but to be left alone. That image supported decades of attacks on the modern government as “socialism,” and it has now metastasized in the MAGA movement to suggest that the men in charge of the government should be able to do whatever they want.

Just what that looks like was made clear on Wednesday when the Trump administration launched a strike on a boat carrying 11 civilians it claimed were smuggling drugs. Covering the story, the New York Times reported that “Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters.”

Today, David Philipps and Matthew Cole reported another military strike approved by Trump in his first term that was previously undisclosed. In the New York Times, they reported that in early 2019, Trump okayed a Navy SEAL mission to plant an electronic device in North Korea. The plan went awry when their activity near the shore attracted a civilian fishing boat with two or three men diving for shellfish. The SEALs killed the men on the boat, punctured their lungs with knives so the bodies would sink, abandoned the mission, and returned to base.

The administration never notified the Gang of Eight, the eight leaders of Congress who must be briefed on intelligence activities unless the president thinks it is essential to limit access to information about a covert operation. The Gang of Eight is made up of the leaders of both parties in each chamber of Congress, as well as the chairs and ranking minority members of the intelligence committee of each chamber.

Military officials appear concerned that Trump might continue to send personnel into precarious missions. Those who were involved in or knew about the North Korea mission said they were speaking up now because they are worried that such failures are often hidden and that if the public only hears about successful operations, “they may underestimate the extreme risks American forces undertake.”

Trump’s promise that his demonstrations of strength would make the U.S. a leader on the international stage is also falling apart. Barak Ravid and Dave Lawler of Axios reported that in a conversation yesterday with European Union leaders, Trump backed away from his promises to increase pressure on Russia to stop its war against Ukraine and instead told the leaders they must do it themselves.

Also yesterday, the Financial Times reported that the administration will no longer help to fund military training and infrastructure in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, Baltic nations vulnerable to Russian incursions. National security scholar Tom Nichols commented: “I am adamant about people not falling prey to conspiracy theories about Trump and the Russians, but this is a classic moment where it’s understandable to ask: If the Russians owned him, how would his actions be any different?”

The administration has not briefed Congress on the change.

Earlier this week, on September 3, leaders Xi Jinping of China, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Kim Jong Un of North Korea, and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus met in Beijing to celebrate the anniversary of the formal surrender of Japan and the end of World War II. The day before, Putin described Xi as a dear friend and said the ties between the two leaders are at an “unprecedented level.”

Trump did not appear to take the meeting well. He posted at Xi, reminding him of “the massive amount of support and ‘blood’ that the United States of America gave to China in order to help it to secure its FREEDOM from a very unfriendly foreign invader” and adding: “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against the United States of America. PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP”

India’s president, Narendra Modi, also met with Xi this week as Beijing continued to push the idea that it is now the head of a new world order. Trump responded: “Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!”

Reality is also intruding on the Republicans’ insistence that only they know how to run the economy.

Although Trump inherited a booming economy, he insisted that it was actually in terrible shape and that his tariffs would bring back manufacturing and make life better for those left behind by 40 years of economic policy that concentrated wealth at the top of society.

In fact, data released Tuesday show that U.S. manufacturing has contracted for six straight months. Economic journalist Catherine Rampell noted that the U.S. has fewer manufacturing jobs today than it had before the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. The country has lost 78,000 manufacturing jobs this year. Seventy-two percent of Texas manufacturers say the tariffs are hurting their businesses. Only 3.7% think the tariffs are helping them.

Yesterday’s immigration raid on a Hyundai Motor battery plant in Georgia is unlikely to send a reassuring message to manufacturers. U.S. agents arrested 475 individuals, more than 300 of whom were South Korean nationals. Included in the sweep were business travelers. In August, Hyundai said it would invest $26 billion in the U.S. through 2028.

Today’s new jobs report, the first since Trump fired the previous director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) after accusing her of rigging the numbers for political reasons, was poor. It showed that the U.S. added just 22,000 jobs in August, far below the expected 75,000, while the jobs numbers for June and July were revised downward by 21,000 jobs. The numbers show that the economy is faltering.

Just before the report was due to be released, the BLS website went down, an unfortunate reminder that the bureau is in turmoil. Today Em Steck and Andrew Kaczynski of CNN confirmed and expanded an August story by David Gilbert of Wired revealing what appears to be an old Twitter account belonging to E.J. Antoni, Trump’s pick to run the BLS. The account posted conspiracy theories and sexist, racist, and homophobic attacks, and parrotted Trump’s talking points.,

Last night, when asked if he would trust today’s job numbers, Trump answered: “Well, we’re going to have to see what the numbers, I don’t know, they come out tomorrow. But the real numbers that I’m talking about are going to be whatever it is. But, uh, will be in a year from now when these monstrous huge beautiful places they’re palaces of genius and when they start opening up. You’re seeing, I think you’ll see job numbers that are absolutely incredible. Right now it’s a lot of construction numbers, but you’re going to see job numbers like our country has never seen before.”

FMD.

Reply Quote

Date: 6/09/2025 17:43:07
From: Divine Angel
ID: 2313666
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

“ you’re going to see job numbers like our country has never seen before”

Not since the 1930s, anyway.

Reply Quote

Date: 6/09/2025 17:49:07
From: SCIENCE
ID: 2313673
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Divine Angel said:

“ you’re going to see job numbers like our country has never seen before”

Not since the 1930s, anyway.

Job 3:14

Reply Quote

Date: 6/09/2025 18:58:07
From: ruby
ID: 2313705
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Divine Angel said:


“ you’re going to see job numbers like our country has never seen before”

Not since the 1930s, anyway.

:)))

Reply Quote

Date: 6/09/2025 18:58:36
From: SCIENCE
ID: 2313706
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

ruby said:

Divine Angel said:

“ you’re going to see job numbers like our country has never seen before”

Not since the 1930s, anyway.

:)))

do you mean (((:)))

Reply Quote

Date: 7/09/2025 15:30:32
From: Neophyte
ID: 2314052
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 6, 2025 (Saturday)

Today the social media account of President Donald J. Trump posted an AI-generated image of Trump as if he were Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore from the 1979 film Apocalypse Now in front of the Chicago skyline with military helicopters and flames and the caption “Chipocalypse Now.” Kilgore loved the war in Vietnam in which he was engaged; his most famous line was “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

Over the image, Trump’s social media post read: “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’ Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” The words were followed by three helicopter emojis, symbols the right wing uses to represent former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s goons’ disappearing political opponents by pushing them out of helicopters.

Although it has become trite to speculate about what Republicans would say if a Democratic president engaged in the behavior Trump exhibits daily, this open attack of the president on an American city is a new level of unhinged. Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo wrote: “The president of the United States just declared war, actual military war, not a metaphorical one, on a major American city, and one governed by his political opponents.” He added, accurately: “In any other period, this would be impeachment-worthy.”

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker called attention to the gravity of Trump’s post: “The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal. Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.” Under the words “Know your rights, Illinois,” and “Stay safe and stay informed,” the governor’s social media account posted information about Americans’ rights in both English and Spanish.

Trump’s threats against American citizens are outrageous, but they also feel desperate. Trump’s popularity is tanking, the economy is faltering, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is facing a chorus of calls to resign or be fired, and the American people are taking to the streets. Thousands of people turned out today in Washington, D.C., for the “We Are All D.C.” march to protest the presence of troops in the city, and in Chicago for the “Chicago Says No Trump No Troops” protest. The protests are notable for the seas of signs the peaceful protesters carry.

And then, with Congress back in session, there is the resurgence of the issue of Trump’s appearance in the Epstein files. Last week, the White House warned Republicans that voting to release the Epstein files “would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration.” Yesterday, Trump reiterated his claim that the agitation for the release of the files is a “Democrat HOAX…in order to deflect and distract from the great success of a Republican President.”

Also yesterday, lawyers for the Justice Department asked a federal judge to keep the names of two associates who received large payments from Epstein in 2018 secret. Days before the payments, the Miami Herald had started to examine the sweetheart deal Epstein got in 2008. One associate received a payment of $100,000, and the second received $250,000. As part of his plea deal, Tom Winter of NBC News reports, Epstein got a guarantee that the associates would not be prosecuted.

Last night, Trump hosted the inaugural dinner of what the White House is calling the “Rose Garden Club” in the newly-paved White House Rose Garden, telling those assembled that they were there because they are loyal to the president. “You’re the ones that I never had to call at 4:00 in the morning,” Trump told them. “You are the ones that have been my friends, and you know what I’m talking about.”

Yesterday, talking to reporters about the Epstein files, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said that Trump was “an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down.” The idea that Trump was secretly working to bring Epstein down is common fare among conspiracy theorists, but as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo suggests, Johnson’s embrace of it might well be an attempt to spin material in the files before it becomes public.

Marshall notes that journalist Michael Wolff, who interviewed Epstein at length during Trump’s first presidency, says that Epstein suspected it was Trump who told the authorities about his systemic sexual assault of girls. But if so, Marshall explains, this is damning rather than exonerating.

It’s pretty well known that Trump and Epstein had a falling out in 2004 after Trump went behind Epstein’s back to buy an estate in South Florida that Epstein wanted. But at the time, Trump was headed toward bankruptcy, and it was not clear where he was getting the money to buy the estate.

Marshall calls attention to a recent interview in which Wolff said that Epstein suspected Trump was laundering money for a Russian oligarch—and indeed, Trump did flip the property to a Russian oligarch for a profit of more than $50 million a few years after buying it—and threatened to sue Trump, bringing the money laundering to light. At that point, the Epstein investigation began.

According to Wolff, Epstein believed Trump had notified the police about what was going on at Epstein’s house, which he knew because he was a frequent visitor. Marshall speculates that Johnson mentioned that Trump was an informant because that information could well be in the files the Department of Justice has, and they’re trying to spin it ahead of time to make it sound like Trump was a hero.

But both Wolff and Marshall note that if indeed Trump turned the FBI onto Epstein, it shows he knew what was taking place at Epstein’s properties.

Johnson’s claim that Trump was an FBI informant suggests Trump’s team is worried that as more and more people get access to the files, it will be increasingly difficult to hide what’s in them. Trump’s demand for Republicans’ loyalty suggests that at least some of them are starting to recalculate it. And that, in turn, might have something to do with why he is putting troops in the streets.

Reply Quote

Date: 7/09/2025 15:37:36
From: Divine Angel
ID: 2314053
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Hollywood writers couldn’t come up with this.

Is there a guest list for the rose bush loyalty club?

Reply Quote

Date: 7/09/2025 15:39:18
From: Neophyte
ID: 2314054
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Divine Angel said:


Hollywood writers couldn’t come up with this.

Is there a guest list for the rose bush loyalty club?

At any time any one of them could join the Under The Bus Club.

Reply Quote

Date: 7/09/2025 16:29:10
From: Michael V
ID: 2314066
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Thanks.

Reply Quote

Date: 7/09/2025 18:34:07
From: ruby
ID: 2314096
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

I didn’t know what the 3 helicopters referred to in Trump’s post. Until I read Heather Cox Richardson’s latest. Yikes.
She really brings things into sharp focus and I’m grateful for everything she is documenting.

Reply Quote

Date: 8/09/2025 16:01:01
From: Neophyte
ID: 2314347
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 7, 2025 (Sunday)

Tonight is a picture night, but one a little bit different than usual.

Cartoonist and writer Liza Donnelly and I have been experimenting with different ways to integrate art, politics, and history, and since tomorrow is the anniversary of President Gerald Ford’s pardon of President Richard Nixon, we took that event out for a spin.

You can find Liza at her Substack Seeing Things; I’ll link it in the comments. It’s an illustrated review of the day’s news including people or scenes Liza sees in her travels.
I’ll be back on my regular beat tomorrow.

Reply Quote

Date: 9/09/2025 17:59:14
From: Neophyte
ID: 2314606
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 8, 2025 (Monday)

On Friday, September 5, Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell told Southern Baptist pastor and Newsmax host Tony Perkins that Trump may try to declare that “there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States” in order to claim “emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward,” overriding the Constitution’s clear designation that states alone have control over elections. Mitchell has long called for voting restrictions and was on the infamous January 2021 phone call Trump made to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger in which Trump pressed Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” that would give the state’s electoral votes to him rather than the victorious Democratic candidate, Joe Biden.

Democracy Docket, the media organization founded and run by voting rights and election lawyer Marc Elias, has been tracking the administration’s assault on democracy and has repeatedly called out both such language and Trump’s attempts to monkey with the machinery of our democracy through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and now the use of the military in Democratic-led cities.

In August, Jim Saksa of Democracy Docket explained that through intimidation, harassment, and delays, troops could keep large numbers of voters from casting ballots. The administration might even claim fraud to seize voting machines, as Trump contemplated doing in 2020. Today in Mother Jones, Ari Berman noted the administration has dismantled efforts to promote election security and is working to stack state elections boards with loyalists.

MAGA loyalist Steve Bannon recently said: “They’re petrified over at MSNBC and CNN that, hey, since we’re taking control of the cities, there’s going to be ICE officers near polling places. You’re damn right.” Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, speaking of Trump’s threatened military incursion into Chicago, observed: “This is not about fighting crime. This is about the President and his complicit lackey, Stephen Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities, and end elections.”

Yesterday the administration announced a surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents into Boston, and today it announced a surge into Chicago. Although Trump has been threatening to send in federalized National Guard troops, at least so far the announcement appears to be limited to ICE agents, who are part of the country’s regular law enforcement systems. Pritzker noted that the administration had made no effort to reach out to state officials as it would have if it actually wanted to combat crime. Instead, Pritzker said, “we are learning of their operations through their social media as they attempt to produce a reality television show.”

The apparent plan of the Trump administration reflects the strategy of Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt, whose writings seem lately to have captivated leaders on the American right, including billionaire Peter Thiel and the man who influenced him, Curtis Yarvin. Schmitt opposed liberal democracy, in which the state enables individuals to determine their own fate. Instead, he argued that true democracy erases individual self-determination by making the mass of people one with the state and exercising their will through state power. That uniformity requires getting rid of opposition. Schmitt theorized that politics is simply about dividing people into friends and enemies and using the power of the state to crush enemies. As J.D. Vance described Schmitt’s ideas in 2024: “There’s no law, there’s just power.”

Much of Schmitt’s philosophy centered around the idea that the power of a nation that is based in a constitution and the rule of law belongs to the man who can exploit emergencies that create exceptions to the constitutional order, enabling him to exercise power without regard to the law. Trump—who almost certainly has not read Schmitt himself—asserted this view on August 26: “I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States. If I think our country’s in danger—and it is in danger in the cities—I can do it.”

Although the Republicans have control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, meaning Trump should be able to get his agenda passed according to the normal constitutional order, since taking office he has operated under emergency powers. On August 22, Karen Yourish and Charlie Smart noted in the New York Times that since he took office, Trump has declared nine national emergencies and one “crime emergency” in Washington, D.C. The journalists report that since 1981, presidents have declared on average about seven national emergencies per four-year term. Trump declared that many in his first month back in office, although experts say no such emergencies exist.

Under normal constitutional provisions and laws, Trump’s actions would have required congressional approval or long regulatory review, the journalists note. Instead, he has enacted sweeping immigration measures, deregulated energy, launched a tariff war that is crushing the U.S. economy, and now put troops in U.S. cities, all on his own hook.

Even when Trump didn’t announce a new emergency, he has cited crises to justify new extreme actions, as when he (or someone; he told reporters he did not sign the order) invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to justify rendering undocumented Venezuelan immigrants to the notorious terrorist prison CECOT in El Salvador and when he justified the cuts billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” made to congressionally-approved funding because such cuts addressed “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Although the administration continues to insist voters wanted what Trump is doing, his poor job approval rating and the popular dislike of his policies across the board say the opposite. Perhaps more to the point was this weekend’s social media post from J.D. Vance, who pushed back on widespread concern that the administration’s strike against a boat in international waters last week was illegal. The administration claims that the 11 men in the boat were gang members smuggling drugs, but even if it offered evidence for such an assertion, which it has not done, the U.S. cannot legally kill civilians of a nation with whom we are not at war.

This weekend, Vance posted on social media: “Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.” Political commentator Brian Krassenstein replied: “Killing the citizens of another nation who are civilians without any due process is called a war crime.” Vance replied: “I don’t give a sh*t what you call it.”

The federal courts are working overtime to hold the administration to the rule of law. As Jay Kuo noted on September 3 in The Status Kuo, just last week saw courts invalidating most of Trump’s tariffs, stopping the administration from deporting unaccompanied children to Guatemala, and declaring his cuts to Harvard University’s funding, his use of troops in Los Angeles, and his invocation of the Alien Enemies Act illegal. Today an appeals court upheld the $83.3 million judgement a jury rendered last year against Trump in a defamation case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll.

But the Supreme Court has been overruling lower court decisions, deciding in favor of Trump’s expansion of power. Today it allowed Trump to ignore the decision of a lower court that he could not fire the last remaining Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, Rebecca Slaughter, while her case was in the courts. Since 1935, the court had said the president does not have the power to fire members of independent agencies created by Congress.

It also said today that the administration can use racial profiling, including personal appearance, language, or type of employment, to stop people in order to check their immigration status, even though that will necessarily mean that U.S. citizens and legal residents will be swept up. Essentially, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, Latino Americans must now keep papers on them at all times to prove they are citizens or they can find themselves incarcerated.

The court decided these cases without hearings, briefs, or a written decision, under what is called the “shadow docket.” Traditionally, such unsigned, unexplained decisions are used for emergencies either to keep the status quo or to resolve a procedural issue, but under Trump the court’s use of them has exploded. The court, three of whose justices Trump appointed, has sided with him in shadow docket decisions more than 70% of the time.

On September 4, Lawrence Hurley of NBC News noted that this new practice of overturning lower court rulings with no explanation is undermining faith in the judiciary. It supports the administration’s narrative that the courts are trying to subvert Trump’s presidency. As the administration has attacked the courts, violent threats against judges have dramatically increased. Hurley notes that the lower courts painstakingly research the law to reach a decision, then administration officials criticize any that doesn’t support their actions, Then Trump appeals to the Supreme Court, which rejects the judges’ decisions with little or no explanation.

Under the control of Republicans, Congress has also declined to assert its constitutional power. Yesterday, Julian E. Barnes and Catie Edmondson of the New York Times reported how Republican leaders have accepted the administration’s unilateral cuts to programs Congress approved, launches of military strikes without informing Congress, and, last week, the Pentagon’s cancellation of a classified visit to the Virginia headquarters of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency by Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Far-right activist Laura Loomer had complained about the visit. The administration has already limited congressional oversight of immigrant detention centers; now the Pentagon says it is also imposing new limits to congressional oversight of intelligence facilities.

“Is congressional oversight dead?” Senator Warner asked. “Where does this end? If none of my Republican colleagues raises an issue, does this mean we are ceding all oversight?”

The administration appears to be in a rush to replace democracy with a dictatorship before the whole administration collapses. On Saturday, Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers reported that 46% of Americans—almost half of them—“strongly disapprove” of the job Trump is doing as president while only 24% “strongly approve, a 22% enthusiasm gap.

That gap seems likely to grow. Tonight the Wall Street Journal published the 2003 birthday letter to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein bearing Trump’s signature whose existence the paper revealed in July. The image in the article by Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo was even worse than earlier reports of it: the image drawn over the words is not the outline of a woman, but of a girl. The text reads, in part, “Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything. Donald: Yes there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.” Those words from “Donald” are outlined with pubescent breasts.

The words continue: “Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.
Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: Yes we do, come to think of it.
Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?
Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.
Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
The signature, “Donald,” mimics human anatomy.
After the Wall Street Journal revealed the existence of the letter in July, Trump sued the reporters, the publisher, and the Journal’s parent company for ten billion dollars, saying the letter was “nonexistent.”

Today’s story also reported on another letter from the book that included a giant check made out for $22,500, mocked up to look like Trump wrote it to Epstein. A handwritten caption below it says: “Jeffrey showing early talents with money + women! Sells ‘fully depreciated’ to Donald Trump for $22,500. Showed early ‘people skills’ too. Even though I handled the deal I didn’t get any of the money or the girl!”

Reply Quote

Date: 9/09/2025 18:18:49
From: Michael V
ID: 2314609
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Thanks.

Reply Quote

Date: 10/09/2025 17:06:48
From: Neophyte
ID: 2314767
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 9, 2025 (Tuesday)

As Joe Perticone outlines in The Bulwark today, Republican lawmakers are greeting the release of the lewd letter in Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday book depicting the outline of a child and apparently signed by Donald Trump either by saying they don’t care or by denying the signature is Trump’s. For this to be true, someone would have had to have slipped the letter into the book when it was bound in leather in 2003, a story that makes no sense at all. But, as J.V. Last of The Bulwark notes, Trump and his loyalists, including White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, are insisting the letter is a hoax.

Last speculates this is the route they’re taking because claiming proof that Russian operatives worked to elect Trump in 2016 was a “hoax” mostly worked, because claiming the letter is a hoax is a loyalty test, or because Trump knows what else is out there and is setting a marker to declare any more revelations a lie.

Or, perhaps, all three.

As Last writes, the material in the 238-page book reveals that the friends of the convicted sex offender described him as a “super-rich” man who liked “having sex with very young girls.” But rather than recoiling from his predatory habits, they celebrated those crimes. As Last writes: “Everyone in Jeffrey Epstein’s circle knew. They knew that Epstein was a predator. They believed that his pathology defined him. And they joked about it, encouraged it, and egged him on.”

An in-depth article in the New York Times Magazine yesterday by David Enrich, Matthew Goldstein, and Jessica Silver-Greenberg detailed how top bankers at JPMorgan Chase ignored the many red flags around Epstein’s financial activities to keep the wealthy and well-connected man as a treasured client. It was only after Epstein was arrested the second time, federal prosecutors charged him with sex trafficking, and he died in his jail cell that JPMorgan filed a report retroactively flagging 4,700 transactions totaling more than $1.1 billion as suspicious.

According to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), that money included hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions involving women in Belarus, Russia, and Turkmenistan, and two Russian banks.
Epstein’s story personifies a cultural system in which wealthy white men can laugh about the horrific and illegal abuse of children—female children—comfortable in the knowledge the system will never hold them to account.

Retired Navy captain Jon Duffy encapsulated where this kind of thinking leads in an op-ed published today in Defense One, which covers issues of national security. Examining the administration’s strike against a small vessel in the Caribbean last week, Duffy warned that “he United States has crossed a dangerous line” into “lawless power,” operating without regard to the law.

Duffy reminded readers of the Supreme Court’s July 2024 ruling in Donald J. Trump v. United States that the president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed while exercising official duties. At the time, he notes, experts warned that the decision would “give the commander-in-chief license to commit murder,” but a majority of the court waved those concerns away. “Now,” he writes, “the president has ordered killings in international waters. Eleven people are dead, not through due process but by fiat. The defense secretary boasts about it on television. And the president will face no consequences.”

“This is no longer abstract,” Duffy writes. “The law has been rewritten in real time: a president can kill, and there is no recourse. That is not strength. That is authoritarianism.”

Duffy notes that Trump has already used the exact same logic when he sent National Guard troops into U.S. cities: “redefine the threat, erase legal distinctions, and justify force as the first tool.” He warned that “the commander-in-chief of the most destructive military power in history has been placed beyond the reach of law.”

Duffy urged military leaders to stand firm. “A republic that allows its leaders to kill without law, to wage war without strategy, and to deploy troops without limit is a republic in deep peril. Congress will not stop it. The courts will not stop it. That leaves those sworn not to a man, but to the Constitution. The oath is clear,” he wrote. “nlawful orders—foreign or domestic—must be disobeyed. To stand silent as the military is misused is not restraint. It is betrayal.”

A world in which a few rich men run the federal government for their own benefit and according to their own whims looks much like the late nineteenth century.

Already, the cost of such a system to the American people is ramping up. Yesterday, Yasmeen Abutaleb and Maeve Reston of the Washington Post reported that states are facing cuts because of the Republicans’ sweeping tax and spending plan, which forces many of the responsibilities the federal government used to assume onto the states. The sudden shift of financial weight means states are cancelling infrastructure projects and scaling back benefits, even as new requirements in the law will mean increased staffing to oversee work requirements, for example.

In Maryland, Governor Wes Moore said the legislature has cut its budget by the largest margin in 16 years. He told the Washington Post journalists: “And now the federal government continues to lay off federal workers in historic numbers, slash rural health care, slash food assistance and then say to our states: ‘Now you all have to be the ones to pick up the pieces.’”

In North Carolina, Republican senator Ted Budd says that the policy of Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem that she must sign off on all expenditures over $100,000 has badly delayed recovery aid to the state after Hurricane Helene that Congress approved back in December. He says he will place holds on all Department of Homeland Security nominees until the process speeds up.

In Ellabell, Georgia, an immigration raid by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security on an electric vehicle battery plant has destabilized the project altogether. The plant was under construction by the South Korean carmaker Hyundai and the battery supplier LG Energy Solution. Federal agents swept through last week and arrested 475 people, 300 of whom were South Korean nationals. South Korean leaders are angry, and LG Energy has pulled most of its employees out of the United States. The detained workers are supposed to be repatriated tomorrow.

As Farah Stockman and Rebecca Elliott of the New York Times note, the plan was billed as the biggest economic development project in Georgia’s history. Electrive reported today that LG Energy Solution is suspending construction of the factory.

But as the Trump administration’s authoritarianism hurts Americans, state governments led by Democrats are stepping up work for their people. Today is the anniversary of the day in 1850 when California became a state, and this evening, Governor Gavin Newsom noted on social media that “he Trump Administration is once again failing to do its job—and California is cleaning up their mess.”

“We’re deploying state resources to protect the 2,000-year old sequoias on FEDERAL LANDS from the wildfires the federal administration are supposed to handle.”

Democratic-led states are also joining forces to address the health issues the federal government is now dropping. In the western U.S., Oregon, California, Washington, and Hawaii are coming together in a new West Coast Health Alliance to coordinate vaccine guidelines; on the East Coast a similar joint effort is underway with representatives from every New England state except New Hampshire, along with New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. New Hampshire governor Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, declined to participate, saying she doesn’t want to politicize health care.

In New Mexico, one of the poorest states in the Union, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced that the state will be the first in the nation to offer universal free child care, expanding a program that lifted 120,000 of the state’s residents out of poverty by enabling them to stay in school and to work. The program also raised wages for childcare workers.

“Child care is essential to family stability, workforce participation, and New Mexico’s future prosperity,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement. “By investing in universal child care, we are giving families financial relief, supporting our economy, and ensuring that every child has the opportunity to grow and thrive.”

In Massachusetts, Governor Maura Healey announced today that she would tackle the high cost of housing in the state by cutting environmental review for certain new housing construction projects down from more than a year to 30 days. Katie Lannan of GBH News notes that this plan is designed to deliver the 222,000 new housing units Massachusetts will need in the next ten years.

Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll said: “The bottom line is we can maintain our strong environmental standards and build housing and also have nature-based solutions to address…rising climate needs and mitigation.”

In Illinois, Governor J.B. Pritzker visited with immigrant community leaders who focus on protecting constitutional rights as Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan warns of more of the ICE raids that have been sweeping in citizens and legal residents. “Many families who have lived in Illinois for years are fearful to pick up their kids from school, go to work, and live their lives freely,” the governor said. “At such an uncertain moment for our immigrant communities, it is more important than ever that people know their rights and have someone looking out for them.”

Tonight, Democrat James Walkinshaw easily won the special election to replace the late Representative Gerry Connolly (D-VA). According to Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers, the district has swung 16 percentage points toward the Democrats since the 2024 election.

Reply Quote

Date: 11/09/2025 17:23:58
From: Neophyte
ID: 2315149
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 10, 2025 (Wednesday)

Last night, Polish forces shot down 19 Russian drones that invaded Poland’s airspace during a massive Russian air attack on Ukraine. Poland is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the Polish operation was backed by NATO member forces. Today, Poland officially activated Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which triggers a consultation whenever “the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.”

German chancellor Friedrich Merz called the Russian breach of Polish airspace a “reckless and aggressive act” that fit a broader pattern of Russian provocations against NATO’s eastern edge.

Although the United States under President Donald J. Trump has pulled back from its steadfast commitment to NATO, the U.S. was instrumental in the creation of the organization in 1949. Leaders wanted to establish a defensive alliance that could stand against Soviet aggression and that would reinforce rules to prevent countries from using violence against other countries. Such an order, based in rules rather than violence, would make it harder to start wars.

NATO guaranteed collective security because all of the member states agreed to defend each other against an attack by a third party. In 1949, when he signed the treaty, President Harry Truman called the pact a positive influence for peace. With NATO, he said, “we hope to create a shield against aggression and the fear of aggression—a bulwark which will permit us to get on with the real business of government and society, the business of achieving a fuller and happier life for all our citizens.”

The experience of the United States “in creating one nation out of…the peoples of many lands” proved that this idea could work, Truman said. “This method of organizing diverse peoples and cultures is in direct contrast to the method of the police state, which attempts to achieve unity by imposing the same beliefs and the same rule of force on everyone.”

The NATO countries did not believe that war was inevitable, Truman said. “Men with courage and vision can still determine their own destiny. They can choose slavery or freedom—war or peace. I have no doubt which they will choose…. If there is anything certain today, if there is anything inevitable in the future, it is the will of the people of the world for freedom and for peace.”

The drone incursions into a NATO country are just the latest escalation from Russia’s president Vladimir Putin after his meeting with Trump in Alaska on August 15. Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk told the Polish parliament: “I have no reason to claim we’re on the brink of war, but a line has been crossed. This situation brings us the closest we have been to open conflict since World War II.”

At 11:09 this morning, Trump responded to the attack by posting on social media: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!”

This afternoon at an outdoor event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, a gunman shot and killed 31-year-old Charlie Kirk, a right-wing activist and founder of Turning Point USA, which pushes for right-wing politics on high school, college, and university campuses. The killing appears to have been targeted. A manhunt is underway for the killer.

Although nothing more is currently known about the event, President Trump in an address from the Oval Office blamed “the radical left” for the shooting and vowed that his administration “will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials and everyone else who brings order to our country.”

Trump listed incidents of what he called “radical left political violence.” As The Guardian noted, absent from his list was violence against Democrats, including the murder in June of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband by a man who had a hit list of 45 Democratic elected officials.

Less than an hour after the Kirk shooting, during the third week of school, a shooter at Evergreen High School in Colorado wounded two students—one critically—before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Gun violence had impacted the life of the grandfather of two boys at the school. In 2021, Mike Webb’s ex-wife Xiaojie Tan was killed in the spa shootings in the Atlanta area and today he told CNN’s Emma Tucker that a school shooting was his “greatest fear realized.” Webb said he had spoken with one of the boys, who was shaken by the events at his school. “I told him none of us should have to go through this. I said this is the world we live in and thank God you guys are OK.”

Reply Quote

Date: 12/09/2025 16:07:27
From: Neophyte
ID: 2315424
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 11, 2025 (Thursday)

Twenty-four years ago today, terrorists from the al-Qaeda network used four civilian airplanes as weapons against the United States, crashing two of them into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York City and a third into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.

Four years ago, George W. Bush, who was president on that horrific day, spoke in Pennsylvania at a memorial for the passengers of the fourth flight, United Airlines Flight 93, who on September 11, 2001, stormed the cockpit and brought their airplane down in a field, killing everyone on board but denying the terrorists a fourth American trophy.

Former president Bush said: “Twenty years ago, terrorists chose a random group of Americans, on a routine flight, to be collateral damage in a spectacular act of terror. The 33 passengers and 7 crew of Flight 93 could have been any group of citizens selected by fate. In a sense, they stood in for us all.” And, Bush continued, “The terrorists soon discovered that a random group of Americans is an exceptional group of people. Facing an impossible circumstance, they comforted their loved ones by phone, braced each other for action, and defeated the designs of evil.”

Recalling his experience that day, Bush talked of “the America I know.”

“On America’s day of trial and grief, I saw millions of people instinctively grab for a neighbor’s hand and rally to the cause of one another…. At a time when religious bigotry might have flowed freely, I saw Americans reject prejudice and embrace people of Muslim faith…. At a time when nativism could have stirred hatred and violence against people perceived as outsiders, I saw Americans reaffirm their welcome to immigrants and refugees…. At a time when some viewed the rising generation as individualistic and decadent, I saw young people embrace an ethic of service and rise to selfless action.”

Bush celebrated the selfless heroism and care for others shown by those like Welles Crowther, the man in the red bandana, who helped others out of danger before succumbing himself; the airplane passengers who called their loved ones to say goodbye; neighbors; firefighters; law enforcement officers; the men and women who volunteered for military service after the attack.

That day, and our memories of it, show American democracy at its best: ordinary Americans putting in the work, even at its dirtiest and most dangerous, to take care of each other.

But even in 2001, that America was under siege by those who distrusted the same democracy the terrorists attacked. America had seemed to drift since the end of the Cold War twelve years before, but now the country was in a new death struggle, they thought, against an even more implacable foe. To defeat the nation’s enemies, America must defend free enterprise and Christianity at all costs.

In the wake of the attacks, Bush’s popularity, which had been dropping, soared to 90 percent. He and his advisers saw that popularity as a mandate to change America, and the world, according to their own ideology. “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” he announced. He and his loyalists attacked any opposition to their measures as an attack on “the homeland.”

They tarred those who questioned the administration’s economic or foreign policies as un-American—either socialists or traitors making the nation vulnerable to terrorist attacks—and set out to make sure such people could not have a voice at the polls. Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression began to shut Democratic voices out of our government, aided by a series of Supreme Court decisions. In 2010 the court opened the floodgates of corporate money into our elections to sway voters; in 2013 it gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act; in 2021 it said that election laws that affected different groups of voters unevenly were not unconstitutional. In that year, a former Republican president claimed he won the 2020 election because, all evidence to the contrary, Democratic votes were fraudulent.

Four years ago, former president Bush mused that “ malign force seems at work in our common life that turns every disagreement into an argument, and every argument into a clash of cultures. So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear, and resentment.” He said: “There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home,” he said. “But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit. And it is our continuing duty to confront them.”

In doing so, we can take guidance from the passengers on Flight 93, who demonstrated as profoundly as it is possible to do what confronting such a mentality means. While we cannot know for certain what happened on that plane on that fateful day, investigators believe that before the passengers of Flight 93 stormed the cockpit, throwing themselves between the terrorists and our government, and downed the plane, they took a vote.

Reply Quote

Date: 12/09/2025 16:24:10
From: Michael V
ID: 2315427
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Good one.

Thanks.

Reply Quote

Date: 13/09/2025 15:41:24
From: Neophyte
ID: 2315780
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 12, 2025 (Friday)

Since a gunman murdered right-wing activist Charlie Kirk at an outdoor event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, both social media circles and the political sphere have been alight with accusations that “the Left” was responsible for the shooting. Prominent right-wing social media accounts called the Democratic Party “a domestic terror organization” and declared “WAR.” Billionaire Elon Musk posted: “The Left is the party of murder.”

From the Oval Office, President Donald J. Trump blamed the shooting on “the radical left” and vowed to “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.”

Without any information about the shooter, the media got in on the game, with the Wall Street Journal reporting yesterday that “mmunition engraved with transgender and antifascist ideology was found inside the rifle authorities believe was used in Kirk’s shooting.” Bomb threats targeted Democratic politicians—primarily Black politicians—and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

Condemnation of the shooting was widespread. Perhaps eager to distance themselves from accusations that anyone who does not support MAGA endorses political violence, commenters portrayed Kirk as someone embracing the reasoned debate central to democracy, although he became famous by establishing a database designed to dox professors who expressed opinions he disliked so they would be silenced (I am included on this list).

Meanwhile, it was not clear the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was up to the task of finding the killer. FBI director Kash Patel and deputy director Dan Bongino were both MAGA influencers without law enforcement experience when Trump put them in charge of the agency. Once there, they focused on purging the agency of those they considered insufficiently loyal to Trump or “DEI hires.” In early August, they forced out the leader of the Salt Lake City, Utah, field office, Mehtab Syed, a decorated female Pakistani American counterterrorism agent.

Meanwhile, David J. Bier of the Cato Institute reported that one in five FBI agents have been diverted from their jobs to conduct immigration raids with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and just hours before the shooting, three former top officials at the FBI filed a lawsuit against Patel, the FBI, Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Department of Justice, and the president accusing them of unlawfully politicizing the FBI, purging it of anyone who had ever worked on a criminal investigation of Trump. The lawsuit suggests Bongino had an “intense focus on his social media profiles to change his followers’ perceptions of the FBI.”

As Quinta Jurecic reported today in The Atlantic, hours after the shooting, Patel’s personal social media account posted a picture of himself and Kirk; minutes later, Patel’s official FBI account posted that the shooter was already in custody and then, an hour and a half later, said the suspect had been released. Both Patel and Bongino appeared to be focused more on posting than on doing the work to find the shooter.

This morning, Trump announced on the Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends that he had just heard “they have the person that they wanted.” That person turned out to be 22-year-old Utah native Tyler Robinson, who turned himself into authorities after his father urged him to. Robinson’s parents are registered Republicans; he was not affiliated with a political party and was an inactive voter. Over the past years, Robinson’s mother posted a number of pictures of him and his brothers posing with guns.

Robinson had recently had a conversation with a family member about why they didn’t like Kirk’s viewpoints. Robinson appears to have admired the “Groypers,” led by Nick Fuentes, who complain that more mainstream organizations like Kirk’s Turning Point USA are not “pro-white” enough and have publicly harassed Kirk in the past.

Allison Gill of The Breakdown explained that the rumors the shooter had engraved anti-fascist rhetoric on some of the bullet casings found at the scene turned out to be a misunderstanding of terms from the video game Helldivers2. The claim that he had used “transgender ideology” was apparently a misreading of the headstamp “TRN” that marks ammunition as the product of Turkish manufacturer Turan.

Almost as soon as Robinson was identified, the tone of MAGA leader’s conversation about the shooting changed. Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC), who had used a slur to refer to the shooter as pro-transgender, posted on social media: “We know Charlie Kirk would want us to pray for such an evil, and lost individual like Tyler Robinson to find Jesus Christ. We will try to do the same.”

For his part, Trump seemed to have lost interest in Kirk even earlier. Yesterday evening, a reporter offered the president his condolences on the loss of his friend Kirk and asked Trump how he was holding up. The president answered, in full: “I think very good. And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they’ve been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years, and it’s going to be a beauty. It’ll be an absolutely magnificent structure. And I just see all the trucks. We just started so it’ll get done very nicely and it’ll be one of the best anywhere in the world, actually. Thank you very much.”

The day of Kirk’s murder, Russia sent 19 drones into Poland—some armed and some unarmed—testing the strength of the neighboring country. With the help of allies, Poland shot down four of them. Poland belongs to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), with whom the U.S. shares a mutual defense agreement meaning that if it is attacked, we will come to its aid. After the attack, Poland called an emergency meeting of the North Atlantic Council, the primary political decision-making body within NATO. U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker apparently did not attend.

Although Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, called the violation “intentional, not accidental,” Trump told reporters that Russia’s sending of drones into Poland “could’ve been a mistake.” Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo reported on Tuesday that on August 27, the Trump administration returned a plane full of Russian dissidents seeking asylum in the U.S. to Moscow, where at least some of them went directly from the plane into custody.

Today, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and Supreme Allied Commander Europe General Alexus G. Grynkewich announced that NATO is launching “Eastern Sentry,” an operation to bolster NATO’s defense against Russian incursions along NATO’s eastern flank. In what appeared to be an attempt to calm NATO allies’ concerns about Trump’s “mistake” comment, acting U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Dorothy Shea told the United Nations Security Council today the U.S. will “defend every inch of NATO territory.” “The United States stands by our NATO allies in the face of these alarming airspace violations,” she said.

If the U.S. is weakening ties to traditional defensive alliances, it is attempting to flex its muscles by going after alleged drug dealers with a newly dubbed “Department of War.” On September 2, Trump announced the U.S. had struck a boat he claimed was carrying drugs to the U.S., killing 11 civilians he claimed were “Tren de Aragua Narco terrorists.” The administration posted a video of the operation online.

From the start, legal specialists noted that the U.S. made the strike without legal authority. Trump simply claimed the power to kill men he claimed were a danger to the U.S., advancing the argument that drug smuggling is the same thing as an imminent military attack on the U.S. and thus the laws of war are in force. Yesterday, that argument got even weaker when Charlie Savage and Helene Cooper of the New York Times reported that the men on the boat appeared to have been spooked by the military hardware over them and turned back to shore. “If someone is retreating, where’s the ‘imminent threat’ then?” Rear Admiral Donald J. Guter, a retired top judge advocate general for the Navy from 2000 to 2002, said to the reporters.

Today, Trump announced he was sending the National Guard not into Chicago, Illinois, where Mayor Brandon Johnson and Governor J.B. Pritzker have mounted strong opposition, but to Memphis, Tennessee. The Memphis Police Department noted: “Overall crime is at a 25-year low, with robbery, burglary, and larceny also reaching 25-year lows. Murder is at a six-year low, aggravated assault at a five-year low, and sexual assault at a twenty-year low” in the city.

Although Trump said he had the support of the mayor and the governor, Shelby County mayor Lee Harris asked Republican governor Bill Lee to “please reconsider, if this is on the table.” He said local government would welcome more state troopers to help fight crime, but “to have individuals with military fatigues, semi-automatic weapons and armored vehicles patrolling our streets is way too far, anti-democratic and anti-American.”

Lee released a statement saying he was set to speak with Trump about a “strategic mission” to use state law enforcement more effectively with an already established FBI mission in Memphis.
Meanwhile, yesterday four out of five justices on a panel of the Brazilian Supreme Court found former president Jair Bolsonaro, a close ally of Donald Trump, guilty of plotting a coup, attempting to overturn the country’s 2022 election, and committing violent acts against state institutions. They sentenced him to 27 years and three months in prison.

Reply Quote

Date: 13/09/2025 15:53:05
From: ruby
ID: 2315788
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Another good one. Thank you

Reply Quote

Date: 13/09/2025 18:00:05
From: Michael V
ID: 2315805
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Thanks.

Reply Quote

Date: 13/09/2025 18:05:02
From: party_pants
ID: 2315806
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

This morning, Trump announced on the Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends that he had just heard “they have the person that they wanted.” That person turned out to be 22-year-old Utah native Tyler Robinson, who turned himself into authorities after his father urged him to. Robinson’s parents are registered Republicans; he was not affiliated with a political party and was an inactive voter. Over the past years, Robinson’s mother posted a number of pictures of him and his brothers posing with guns.

Robinson had recently had a conversation with a family member about why they didn’t like Kirk’s viewpoints. Robinson appears to have admired the “Groypers,” led by Nick Fuentes, who complain that more mainstream organizations like Kirk’s Turning Point USA are not “pro-white” enough and have publicly harassed Kirk in the past.

Allison Gill of The Breakdown explained that the rumors the shooter had engraved anti-fascist rhetoric on some of the bullet casings found at the scene turned out to be a misunderstanding of terms from the video game Helldivers2. The claim that he had used “transgender ideology” was apparently a misreading of the headstamp “TRN” that marks ammunition as the product of Turkish manufacturer Turan.

Almost as soon as Robinson was identified, the tone of MAGA leader’s conversation about the shooting changed. Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC), who had used a slur to refer to the shooter as pro-transgender, posted on social media: “We know Charlie Kirk would want us to pray for such an evil, and lost individual like Tyler Robinson to find Jesus Christ. We will try to do the same.”
—————————————————————————

So it was an extremist nutter that shot Kirk for not being not being extremist enough??

Reply Quote

Date: 13/09/2025 18:09:24
From: Bubblecar
ID: 2315810
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

As I suspected: far night nut shoots far right nut.

Reply Quote

Date: 13/09/2025 18:13:02
From: Bubblecar
ID: 2315811
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Bubblecar said:


As I suspected: far night nut shoots far right nut.

Um, far right nut shoots far right nut.

Reply Quote

Date: 13/09/2025 18:18:00
From: party_pants
ID: 2315812
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Bubblecar said:


Bubblecar said:

As I suspected: far night nut shoots far right nut.

Um, far right nut shoots far right nut.

Extreme right shoots far right??

Reply Quote

Date: 13/09/2025 18:24:15
From: Bubblecar
ID: 2315814
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

party_pants said:


Bubblecar said:

Bubblecar said:

As I suspected: far night nut shoots far right nut.

Um, far right nut shoots far right nut.

Extreme right shoots far right??

Something like that.

Reply Quote

Date: 13/09/2025 18:41:56
From: captain_spalding
ID: 2315817
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

party_pants said:


This morning, Trump announced on the Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends that he had just heard “they have the person that they wanted.” That person turned out to be 22-year-old Utah native Tyler Robinson, who turned himself into authorities after his father urged him to. Robinson’s parents are registered Republicans; he was not affiliated with a political party and was an inactive voter. Over the past years, Robinson’s mother posted a number of pictures of him and his brothers posing with guns.

Robinson had recently had a conversation with a family member about why they didn’t like Kirk’s viewpoints. Robinson appears to have admired the “Groypers,” led by Nick Fuentes, who complain that more mainstream organizations like Kirk’s Turning Point USA are not “pro-white” enough and have publicly harassed Kirk in the past.

Allison Gill of The Breakdown explained that the rumors the shooter had engraved anti-fascist rhetoric on some of the bullet casings found at the scene turned out to be a misunderstanding of terms from the video game Helldivers2. The claim that he had used “transgender ideology” was apparently a misreading of the headstamp “TRN” that marks ammunition as the product of Turkish manufacturer Turan.

Almost as soon as Robinson was identified, the tone of MAGA leader’s conversation about the shooting changed. Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC), who had used a slur to refer to the shooter as pro-transgender, posted on social media: “We know Charlie Kirk would want us to pray for such an evil, and lost individual like Tyler Robinson to find Jesus Christ. We will try to do the same.”
—————————————————————————

So it was an extremist nutter that shot Kirk for not being not being extremist enough??

The other day, i proposed that the shooter was either a MAGAt who felt that Charlie wasn’t measuring up to expectations, or a ‘liberal’ who had reached the end of their tether.

I did consider the former to be much more likely than the latter.

Credit where it’s due: the kid was better at it than the one who took a shot at Trump. One shot, and over just about exactly the same range as that poor dumb kid in Pennsylvania let go eight shots and (possibly) just scratched his intended target.

I suspect that he was aiming for Mr. Kirk’s head, but didn’t allow anything at all for bullet-drop, or for the downward angle of the sight line.

Reply Quote

Date: 13/09/2025 19:02:21
From: Boris
ID: 2315834
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

captain_spalding said:

I suspect that he was aiming for Mr. Kirk’s head, but didn’t allow anything at all for bullet-drop, or for the downward angle of the sight line.

or aiming for centre of mass and didn’t allow for the bullet hitting high when shooting up or down. Plus nerves made him pull the trigger a little too hard so shot right.

Reply Quote

Date: 13/09/2025 19:10:56
From: captain_spalding
ID: 2315837
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Boris said:


captain_spalding said:

I suspect that he was aiming for Mr. Kirk’s head, but didn’t allow anything at all for bullet-drop, or for the downward angle of the sight line.

or aiming for centre of mass and didn’t allow for the bullet hitting high when shooting up or down. Plus nerves made him pull the trigger a little too hard so shot right.

There is something odd going on with these details, as the rifle is identified as a Mauser 98 hunting rifle in .30-06 calibre, but other reports say that the markings on bullet casings show ‘TRN’, which is a Turkish ammunition maker, Turan, based in the Turkish town of Üzümlü

This is odd, as Turan don’t make .30-06 ammunition.

Other sources say that the casings are also marked 9mm. Turan do make 9mm ammunition, but 9mm casings cannot be used for .30-06 ammunition, as the two cartridges are fundamentally different in size and design.

Much clarification is needed.

Reply Quote

Date: 13/09/2025 19:15:47
From: Boris
ID: 2315838
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

captain_spalding said:


Boris said:

captain_spalding said:

I suspect that he was aiming for Mr. Kirk’s head, but didn’t allow anything at all for bullet-drop, or for the downward angle of the sight line.

or aiming for centre of mass and didn’t allow for the bullet hitting high when shooting up or down. Plus nerves made him pull the trigger a little too hard so shot right.

There is something odd going on with these details, as the rifle is identified as a Mauser 98 hunting rifle in .30-06 calibre, but other reports say that the markings on bullet casings show ‘TRN’, which is a Turkish ammunition maker, Turan, based in the Turkish town of Üzümlü

This is odd, as Turan don’t make .30-06 ammunition.

Other sources say that the casings are also marked 9mm. Turan do make 9mm ammunition, but 9mm casings cannot be used for .30-06 ammunition, as the two cartridges are fundamentally different in size and design.

Much clarification is needed.

I think the end shot of the cartridge was just a stock pic of a TRN round and not one that was found at the scene.

Reply Quote

Date: 13/09/2025 19:16:50
From: party_pants
ID: 2315839
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

captain_spalding said:

.. based in the Turkish town of Üzümlü

Not even going to attempt to pronounce that one.

Reply Quote

Date: 13/09/2025 19:32:22
From: Michael V
ID: 2315845
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

party_pants said:


captain_spalding said:

.. based in the Turkish town of Üzümlü

Not even going to attempt to pronounce that one.

It’s not too bad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cz%C3%BCml%C3%BC

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Turkish

Reply Quote

Date: 13/09/2025 20:13:08
From: SCIENCE
ID: 2315856
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Bubblecar said:

party_pants said:

Bubblecar said:

Um, far right nut shoots far right nut.

Extreme right shoots far right??

Something like that.

wait so when they were filling the information void with accusations the sniper was left left left then it was all “death penalty that bastard political violence is bad and left are all traitor criminals” but now if this is true suddenly when it’s just fascists killing fascists there’s silence and political violence is good for saving Free America what a place

Reply Quote

Date: 13/09/2025 20:14:33
From: party_pants
ID: 2315858
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

SCIENCE said:

Bubblecar said:

party_pants said:

Extreme right shoots far right??

Something like that.

wait so when they were filling the information void with accusations the sniper was left left left then it was all “death penalty that bastard political violence is bad and left are all traitor criminals” but now if this is true suddenly when it’s just fascists killing fascists there’s silence and political violence is good for saving Free America what a place

Yep. Pretty much.

Reply Quote

Date: 13/09/2025 20:34:25
From: captain_spalding
ID: 2315867
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

party_pants said:


SCIENCE said:

Bubblecar said:

Something like that.

wait so when they were filling the information void with accusations the sniper was left left left then it was all “death penalty that bastard political violence is bad and left are all traitor criminals” but now if this is true suddenly when it’s just fascists killing fascists there’s silence and political violence is good for saving Free America what a place

Yep. Pretty much.

Well, now that the shooter has been identified as having a ‘right-wing’ background, the Republicans/MAGA/‘right’ are more willing to see the shooter as being something of a ‘victim’ in all of this, as well, and let’s not be hasty, and all that.

Reply Quote

Date: 14/09/2025 17:23:55
From: Neophyte
ID: 2316073
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 13, 2025 (Saturday)

President Donald J. Trump has been trying to remove Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook from the board of governors, alleging she lied on a mortgage application by claiming two homes as primary residences, which could garner a lower interest rate. Yesterday Chris Prentice and Marisa Taylor of Reuters reported that documents show that, in fact, Cook told the lender who provided a mortgage that a property in Georgia for which she was obtaining a loan would be a “vacation home.”

It appears the documents that director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency Bill Pulte used to accuse her of mortgage fraud were standardized forms that her personal application specifying the house was a second home overrode. It also appears that Cook never applied for a primary residence tax exemption for the Georgia home and that she referred to the home on official documents as a “2nd home.”

In contrast, Reuters reported last week that unlike Cook, Pulte’s own father and stepmother claimed primary residence tax exemptions for two homes in different states. When that news broke, one of the towns in which they reside removed their primary residence exemption and charged them for back taxes.

Trump hoped to use the allegations against Cook to advance his control of the Federal Reserve. Now the revelation that those allegations appear to be false highlights the degree to which this administration is attempting to achieve control of the country by pushing a false narrative and getting what its officers want before reality catches up. Senator Joe McCarthy (R-WI) pioneered this technique in the 1950s when he would grab media attention with outrageous statements and outright lies that destroyed lives, then flit to the next target, leaving fact checkers panting in his wake. By the time they proved he was lying, the news cycle had leaped far ahead, and the corrections got nowhere near the attention the lies had.

While McCarthy eventually went down in disgrace, the right wing adopted his techniques of controlling politics by creating a narrative. Spin turned into a narrative that denigrated opponents as anti-American, and then into the attempt to construct a fictional world that they could make real so long as they could convince voters to believe in it. In 2004, a senior advisor to President George W. Bush told journalist Ron Suskind that people like him—Suskind—lived in “the reality-based community”: they believed people could find solutions based on their observations and careful study of discernable reality. But, the aide continued, such a worldview was obsolete.

“That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” the aide said. “We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

But once you have untethered the political narrative from reality, you are at the mercy of anyone who can commandeer that narrative.

In the wake of the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk in Utah on Wednesday, the radical right is working to distort the country’s understanding of what happened. Long before any information emerged about who the shooter was, the president and prominent right-wing figures claimed that “the Left,” or Democrats, or just “THEY,” had assassinated Kirk.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted an attack on his political opponents on social media: “There is an ideology that has steadily been growing in this country which hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved. It is an ideology at war with family and nature. It is envious, malicious, and soulless. It is an ideology that looks upon the perfect family with bitter rage while embracing the serial criminal with tender warmth. Its adherents organize constantly to tear down and destroy every mark of grace and beauty while lifting up everything monstrous and foul. It is an ideology that leads, always, inevitably and willfully, to violence—violence against those uphold order, who uphold faith, who uphold family, who uphold all that is noble and virtuous in this world. It is an ideology whose one unifying thread is the insatiable thirst for destruction.”

But in fact, the alleged shooter was not someone on the left. The alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, is a young white man from a Republican, gun enthusiast family, who appears to have embraced the far right, disliking Kirk for being insufficiently radical.

Rather than grappling with reality, right-wing figures are using Kirk’s murder to prop up their fictional world. Briefly, they claimed Robinson had been “radicalized” in college. Then, when it turned out he had spent only a single semester at a liberal arts college before going to trade school, MAGA pivoted to attack those who allegedly had celebrated Kirk’s death on social media.
This morning, Miller posted: “In recent days we have learned just how many Americans in positions of authority—child services, law clerks, hospital nurses, teachers, govt workers, even employees—have been deeply and violently radicalized. The consequence of a vast, organized ecosystem of indoctrination.”

Today, billionaire Elon Musk, who just months ago was a key figure in the White House, reposted a spreadsheet of “people who’ve said vile things” about Kirk’s murder. Over the list, he wrote: “They are the ones poisoning the minds of our children.” “So far, teachers and professors are by far the most represented,” the author of the list wrote.

Across the country, educators have been suspended or fired for posting opinions on social media that commented on Kirk’s death in ways officials deemed inappropriate. Legal analyst Asha Rangappa noted that “Americans are being conditioned to be snitches on their fellow citizens who don’t toe a party line on what is ‘allowed’ to be expressed. And employers are going along. It’s the new secret police.”

The deliberate attempt to create a narrative centering around “us” and “them” and to mobilize violence against that other was on display today when Musk told a giant anti-immigrant rally in the United Kingdom: “You’re in a fundamental situation here…where whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die. You either fight back or you die. And that’s the truth.”

Of course, that is not the truth. It is a classic case of dividing the world into friends and enemies—a tactic suggested by Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt—and inciting violence against newly identified enemies by claiming it is imperative to preempt them from using violence against your friends. Miller has vowed to use the power of the government not against the far right, where the violence that killed Kirk appears to have originated, but against MAGA’s political enemies. Flipping victims and offenders, he called his political opponents “domestic terrorists” and warned: “he power of law enforcement under President Trump’s leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and, if you’ve broken the law, to take away your freedom.”

Where that kind of rhetoric takes a society showed on the Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends Friday, when host Brian Kilmeade suggested the way to address homelessness was through “involuntary lethal injection. Or something. Just kill them.” When asked “why did we have to get to this point,” he answered: “we’re not voting for the right people.”

And that’s the heart of it. The radical right is frustrated because a majority continues to oppose them. According to Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers, Trump’s job approval rating is just 42.3% with 53.6% disapproving, and more people disapprove of all of his policies than approve of them. Unable to control the country through the machinery of democracy when it operates fairly and afraid voters will turn them out in 2026, Republicans are working to make the system even more rigged than it already is: just yesterday, Missouri lawmakers approved a mid-decade gerrymander to turn one of the state’s two Democratic seats into a Republican one.

Right now, Trump and his loyalists control all three branches of government, but Trump is not delivering what his supporters believe his fictional vision of his presidency promised. Trump telegraphed great strength and vowed he could end Russia’s war against Ukraine with a single phone call, for example. When he failed to get any buy-in at all from Russia’s president Vladimir Putin for his proposals, Trump threatened to impose strong new sanctions against Russia. This afternoon he backed away from that altogether, saying he would issue sanctions on Russia only after all NATO nations stopped buying oil from Russia and placed 50% to 100% tariffs on China. “This is not TRUMP’S WAR (it would never have started if I was President!), it is Biden’s and Zelenskyy’s WAR,” he posted.

This latest retreat from his threats against Russia after all his previous empty threats makes Trump’s claims of strength ring hollow. Russia is increasing its attacks on Ukraine, and today NATO member Romania scrambled jets when a Russian drone breached its airspace. Polish and NATO aircraft were deployed today to protect Polish airspace as well.

As Trump’s narrative falters on this and so many other fronts, MAGA is moving to the violence of the far right to achieve what he cannot. In that, they are fueled by the right-wing disinformation machine that is whitewashing Kirk’s racism, sexism, and attacks on those he disagreed with and instead portraying Kirk simply as a Christian motivational speaker attacked by a rabid left wing. Trump’s vow to award Kirk the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously reinforces that image.

The refusal of Republican lawmakers to challenge MAGA’s creation of its own reality has opened the way for believers to try to put that world into place through violence. Their victory would end the rule of law on which the United States was founded and base the government on the whims of an authoritarian cabal.

It would make the United States a country in which people who stand in the way of the regime—people like Lisa Cook—would be at the mercy of hostile officials who allege they are committing crimes in order to get rid of them.

Reply Quote

Date: 14/09/2025 17:33:11
From: roughbarked
ID: 2316075
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Neophyte said:


September 13, 2025 (Saturday)

The refusal of Republican lawmakers to challenge MAGA’s creation of its own reality has opened the way for believers to try to put that world into place through violence. Their victory would end the rule of law on which the United States was founded and base the government on the whims of an authoritarian cabal.

It would make the United States a country in which people who stand in the way of the regime—people like Lisa Cook—would be at the mercy of hostile officials who allege they are committing crimes in order to get rid of them.

I do hope Trump runs out of yes people. More have to stand up and say no.

Reply Quote

Date: 14/09/2025 18:30:08
From: Michael V
ID: 2316089
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Thanks.

What an awful mess.

Reply Quote

Date: 15/09/2025 14:30:36
From: Neophyte
ID: 2316316
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 14, 2025 (Sunday)

At 10:22 on the morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, a bomb ripped through the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It was Youth Day in the historic brick church, and five young girls dressed in their Sunday best were in the ladies’ lounge getting ready for their part in the Sunday service that was about to start. As Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins were chatting and adjusting their dresses, a charge of dynamite stashed under the steps that led to the church sanctuary blasted into the ladies’ lounge. It killed the four girls instantly. Standing at the sink in the back of the room, Addie’s sister Sarah survived with serious injuries.

Just five days before, Black children had entered formerly all-white schools after an August court order required an end to segregation in Birmingham’s public schools. This decision capped a fight over integration that had begun just after the May 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision in which the Supreme Court declared segregation unconstitutional.

In that same year, in the wake of the successful 381-day Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott to protest that city’s segregated bus system, Birmingham’s Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, along with the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, and strategist and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, started the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to challenge segregation through nonviolent protest, rather than trusting the work to the courts alone.

On September 9, 1957, Shuttlesworth and his wife, Ruby, along with other Black parents, tried to enroll their children in the city’s all-white flagship John Herbert Phillips High School. A mob of white Ku Klux Klansmen met them at the school, attacking them with chains and bats; someone stabbed Ruby Shuttlesworth in the hip with a pocketknife, and an amateur videographer captured a man named Bobby Frank Cherry on video reaching for brass knuckles before diving back into the attack on Shuttlesworth.

Cherry had no children at the school.

Over the next several years, the Ku Klux Klan lost the political struggle over civil rights, and its members increasingly turned to public violence. There were so many bombings of civil rights leaders’ homes and churches that the city became known as “Bombingham.” When the Freedom Riders, civil rights workers who rode interstate buses in mixed-race groups to challenge segregation, came through Birmingham, police commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor looked the other way as KKK members beat the riders with baseball bats, chains, rocks, and lead pipes.

Connor was a perfect foil for civil rights organizers, who began a campaign of nonviolent direct action to challenge segregation in Birmingham. Shuttlesworth invited King to Birmingham to help. One of the organizers’ tactics was to attract national attention by provoking Connor, and participants in the movement began sit-ins at libraries, kneel-ins at white churches, and voter registration drives.

In April 1963, Connor got an injunction barring the protests and promised to fill the jails. He did. King’s famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail was a product of Connor’s vow, smuggled out of jail on bits of paper given to him by a sympathetic inmate. In the letter, King responded to those who opposed the civil rights protests and, claiming to support civil rights, said that the courts were the proper venue to address social injustice. King agreed that the protests created tension, but he explained that such tension was constructive: it would force the city’s leaders to negotiate. “‘Wait,’” he reminded them, “has almost always meant ‘never.’”

But Connor’s tactics had the chilling effect he intended, as demonstrators shied away from being arrested out of fear of losing their jobs and being unable to provide for their families. So organizers decided to invite children to join a march to the downtown area. When the children agreed, the SCLC held workshops on the techniques of nonviolence and warned them of the danger they would be facing.

On May 2, 1963, they gathered at the 16th Street Baptist Church, just blocks away from Birmingham’s City Hall. As students moved toward City Hall in waves, singing “We Shall Overcome,” police officers arrested more than 600 of them and blocked the streets with fire trucks. The national news covered the story.

The next day, Bull Connor tried another tactic to keep the young protesters out of the downtown: fire hoses set to the highest pressure. When observers started to throw rocks and bottles at the police with the fire hoses, Connor told police officers to use German shepherd dogs to stop them. Images from the day made the national news and began to galvanize support for the protesters.

By May 6, Connor had turned the state fairgrounds into a makeshift jail to hold the overflow of protesters he was arresting, and national media figures, musicians, and civil rights activists were arriving in Birmingham. By May 7 the downtown was shut down while Connor arrested more people and used fire hoses again. The events in Birmingham were headline news.

By May 10, local politicians under pressure from businessmen had agreed to release the people who had been arrested; to desegregate lunch counters, drinking fountains, and bathrooms; and to hire Black people in a few staff jobs.

After Connor’s insistence that he would never permit desegregation, white supremacists in Birmingham felt betrayed by the new deal, basic though it was. Violence escalated over the summer, even as King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail was widely published and praised and as civil rights activists, fresh from the Birmingham campaign, on August 28 held the March for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, D.C., where King delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech.

For white supremacists in Birmingham, the children and the 16th Street Baptist Church where they had organized were the symbols of the movement that had beaten them.

Their fury escalated in summer 1963 when a lawsuit the Reverend Shuttlesworth had filed to challenge segregation in public schools ended in August with a judge ordering Birmingham public schools to desegregate.

Five days after the first Black children entered a white school as students, four members of the Cahaba River Group, which had splintered off from another Ku Klux Klan group because they didn’t think it was aggressive enough, took action. Thomas Blanton, Robert Chambliss, Herman Cash, and Bobby Frank Cherry—the same man who in 1957 had beaten the Reverend Shuttlesworth with brass knuckles for trying to enroll his children in school—bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church. “Just wait until Sunday morning and they’ll beg us to let them segregate,” Chambliss had told his niece.

The death of innocent children—on a Sunday morning, in a house of God—at the hands of white supremacists drew national attention. It woke up white people who had previously been leery of civil rights protests, making them confront the horror of racial violence in the South. Support for civil rights legislation grew, and in 1964 that support helped legislators to pass the Civil Rights Act.

Still, it seemed as if the individual bombers would get away with their crimes. In 1968, the FBI investigation ended without indictments,

But it turned out the story wasn’t over. Bill Baxley, a young law student at the University of Alabama in 1963, was so profoundly outraged by the bombing that he vowed someday he would do something about it. In 1970, voters elected Baxley to be Alabama’s attorney general. He reopened the case, famously responding to a Ku Klux Klan threat by responding on official state letterhead: “kiss my *ss.”

The reluctance of the FBI to share its evidence meant that Baxley charged and convicted only Robert Chambliss—whose nickname in 1963 was “Dynamite Bob”—for the murder of Denise McNair.

But still the story wasn’t over. Another young lawyer named Doug Jones was in the courtroom during that trial, and in 1997, President Bill Clinton appointed Jones as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. Jones pursued the case, uncovering old evidence that had been sealed and finding new witnesses. Herman Cash had died, but in 2001 and 2002, representing the state of Alabama, Jones successfully prosecuted Thomas Edwin Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry for first-degree murder.

Chambliss, Cherry, and Blanton all died in prison: Chambliss in 1985, Cherry in 2004, and Blanton in 2020.

Doug Jones went on to serve as a Senator from Alabama from 2018 to 2021. On this anniversary of the bombing, Senator Jones talked about the events of that day, justice, healing, and what lessons today’s Americans can take from the bombing and its aftermath.

Reply Quote

Date: 15/09/2025 15:05:40
From: Michael V
ID: 2316319
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Neophyte said:


September 14, 2025 (Sunday)

At 10:22 on the morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, a bomb ripped through the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. It was Youth Day in the historic brick church, and five young girls dressed in their Sunday best were in the ladies’ lounge getting ready for their part in the Sunday service that was about to start. As Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins were chatting and adjusting their dresses, a charge of dynamite stashed under the steps that led to the church sanctuary blasted into the ladies’ lounge. It killed the four girls instantly. Standing at the sink in the back of the room, Addie’s sister Sarah survived with serious injuries.

Just five days before, Black children had entered formerly all-white schools after an August court order required an end to segregation in Birmingham’s public schools. This decision capped a fight over integration that had begun just after the May 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision in which the Supreme Court declared segregation unconstitutional.

In that same year, in the wake of the successful 381-day Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott to protest that city’s segregated bus system, Birmingham’s Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, along with the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, and strategist and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, started the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to challenge segregation through nonviolent protest, rather than trusting the work to the courts alone.

On September 9, 1957, Shuttlesworth and his wife, Ruby, along with other Black parents, tried to enroll their children in the city’s all-white flagship John Herbert Phillips High School. A mob of white Ku Klux Klansmen met them at the school, attacking them with chains and bats; someone stabbed Ruby Shuttlesworth in the hip with a pocketknife, and an amateur videographer captured a man named Bobby Frank Cherry on video reaching for brass knuckles before diving back into the attack on Shuttlesworth.

Cherry had no children at the school.

Over the next several years, the Ku Klux Klan lost the political struggle over civil rights, and its members increasingly turned to public violence. There were so many bombings of civil rights leaders’ homes and churches that the city became known as “Bombingham.” When the Freedom Riders, civil rights workers who rode interstate buses in mixed-race groups to challenge segregation, came through Birmingham, police commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor looked the other way as KKK members beat the riders with baseball bats, chains, rocks, and lead pipes.

Connor was a perfect foil for civil rights organizers, who began a campaign of nonviolent direct action to challenge segregation in Birmingham. Shuttlesworth invited King to Birmingham to help. One of the organizers’ tactics was to attract national attention by provoking Connor, and participants in the movement began sit-ins at libraries, kneel-ins at white churches, and voter registration drives.

In April 1963, Connor got an injunction barring the protests and promised to fill the jails. He did. King’s famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail was a product of Connor’s vow, smuggled out of jail on bits of paper given to him by a sympathetic inmate. In the letter, King responded to those who opposed the civil rights protests and, claiming to support civil rights, said that the courts were the proper venue to address social injustice. King agreed that the protests created tension, but he explained that such tension was constructive: it would force the city’s leaders to negotiate. “‘Wait,’” he reminded them, “has almost always meant ‘never.’”

But Connor’s tactics had the chilling effect he intended, as demonstrators shied away from being arrested out of fear of losing their jobs and being unable to provide for their families. So organizers decided to invite children to join a march to the downtown area. When the children agreed, the SCLC held workshops on the techniques of nonviolence and warned them of the danger they would be facing.

On May 2, 1963, they gathered at the 16th Street Baptist Church, just blocks away from Birmingham’s City Hall. As students moved toward City Hall in waves, singing “We Shall Overcome,” police officers arrested more than 600 of them and blocked the streets with fire trucks. The national news covered the story.

The next day, Bull Connor tried another tactic to keep the young protesters out of the downtown: fire hoses set to the highest pressure. When observers started to throw rocks and bottles at the police with the fire hoses, Connor told police officers to use German shepherd dogs to stop them. Images from the day made the national news and began to galvanize support for the protesters.

By May 6, Connor had turned the state fairgrounds into a makeshift jail to hold the overflow of protesters he was arresting, and national media figures, musicians, and civil rights activists were arriving in Birmingham. By May 7 the downtown was shut down while Connor arrested more people and used fire hoses again. The events in Birmingham were headline news.

By May 10, local politicians under pressure from businessmen had agreed to release the people who had been arrested; to desegregate lunch counters, drinking fountains, and bathrooms; and to hire Black people in a few staff jobs.

After Connor’s insistence that he would never permit desegregation, white supremacists in Birmingham felt betrayed by the new deal, basic though it was. Violence escalated over the summer, even as King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail was widely published and praised and as civil rights activists, fresh from the Birmingham campaign, on August 28 held the March for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, D.C., where King delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech.

For white supremacists in Birmingham, the children and the 16th Street Baptist Church where they had organized were the symbols of the movement that had beaten them.

Their fury escalated in summer 1963 when a lawsuit the Reverend Shuttlesworth had filed to challenge segregation in public schools ended in August with a judge ordering Birmingham public schools to desegregate.

Five days after the first Black children entered a white school as students, four members of the Cahaba River Group, which had splintered off from another Ku Klux Klan group because they didn’t think it was aggressive enough, took action. Thomas Blanton, Robert Chambliss, Herman Cash, and Bobby Frank Cherry—the same man who in 1957 had beaten the Reverend Shuttlesworth with brass knuckles for trying to enroll his children in school—bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church. “Just wait until Sunday morning and they’ll beg us to let them segregate,” Chambliss had told his niece.

The death of innocent children—on a Sunday morning, in a house of God—at the hands of white supremacists drew national attention. It woke up white people who had previously been leery of civil rights protests, making them confront the horror of racial violence in the South. Support for civil rights legislation grew, and in 1964 that support helped legislators to pass the Civil Rights Act.

Still, it seemed as if the individual bombers would get away with their crimes. In 1968, the FBI investigation ended without indictments,

But it turned out the story wasn’t over. Bill Baxley, a young law student at the University of Alabama in 1963, was so profoundly outraged by the bombing that he vowed someday he would do something about it. In 1970, voters elected Baxley to be Alabama’s attorney general. He reopened the case, famously responding to a Ku Klux Klan threat by responding on official state letterhead: “kiss my *ss.”

The reluctance of the FBI to share its evidence meant that Baxley charged and convicted only Robert Chambliss—whose nickname in 1963 was “Dynamite Bob”—for the murder of Denise McNair.

But still the story wasn’t over. Another young lawyer named Doug Jones was in the courtroom during that trial, and in 1997, President Bill Clinton appointed Jones as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. Jones pursued the case, uncovering old evidence that had been sealed and finding new witnesses. Herman Cash had died, but in 2001 and 2002, representing the state of Alabama, Jones successfully prosecuted Thomas Edwin Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry for first-degree murder.

Chambliss, Cherry, and Blanton all died in prison: Chambliss in 1985, Cherry in 2004, and Blanton in 2020.

Doug Jones went on to serve as a Senator from Alabama from 2018 to 2021. On this anniversary of the bombing, Senator Jones talked about the events of that day, justice, healing, and what lessons today’s Americans can take from the bombing and its aftermath.

Thanks.

Reply Quote

Date: 15/09/2025 15:21:52
From: AussieDJ
ID: 2316320
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Neophyte said:


September 14, 2025 (Sunday)

On this anniversary of the bombing, Senator Jones talked about the events of that day, justice, healing, and what lessons today’s Americans can take from the bombing and its aftermath.
Attached to the above post is this video –

American Conversations: Senator Doug Jones

Reply Quote

Date: 16/09/2025 17:05:15
From: Neophyte
ID: 2316558
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 15, 2025 (Monday)

Six years ago, on September 15, 2019, after about a six-week hiatus during the summer, I wrote a Facebook post that started:

“Many thanks to all of you who have reached out to see if I’m okay. I am, indeed (aside from having been on the losing end of an encounter with a yellow jacket this afternoon!). I’ve been moving, setting up house, and finishing the new book. Am back and ready to write, but now everything seems like such a dumpster fire it’s very hard to know where to start. So how about a general overview of how things at the White House look to me, today….”

I wrote a review of Trump’s apparent mental decline amidst his faltering presidency, stonewalling of investigations of potential criminal activity by him or his associates, stacking of the courts, and attempting to use the power of the government to help his 2020 reelection.

Then I noted that the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA), had written a letter to the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, on Friday, September 13, telling Maguire he knew that a whistleblower had filed a complaint with the inspector general of the intelligence community, who had deemed the complaint “credible” and “urgent.” This meant that the complaint was supposed to be sent on to the House Intelligence Committee. But, rather than sending it to the House as the law required, Maguire had withheld it. Schiff’s letter told Maguire that he’d better hand it over. Schiff speculated that Maguire was covering up evidence of crimes by the president or his closest advisors.

And I added: “None of this would fly in America if the Senate, controlled by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, were not aiding and abetting him.”

“This is the story of a dictator on the rise,” I wrote, “taking control of formerly independent branches of government, and using the power of his office to amass power.”
Readers swamped me with questions. So I wrote another post answering them and trying to explain the news, which began breaking at a breathtaking pace.
And so these Letters from an American were born.

Six years later, we are in the midst of Trump’s second term, and the patterns I saw six years ago are slicing to the heart of both the mechanics and the soul of the United States.

In that first letter where I warned of rising authoritarianism, I wrote: “So what do those of us who love American democracy do? Make noise. Take up oxygen…. Defend what is great about this nation: its people, and their willingness to innovate, work, and protect each other. Making America great has never been about hatred or destruction or the aggregation of wealth at the very top; it has always been about building good lives for everyone on the principle of self-determination. While we have never been perfect, our democracy is a far better option than the autocratic oligarchy Trump is imposing on us.”

And we have made noise, and we have taken up oxygen. All across the country, people have stepped up to defend our democracy from those who are open about their plans to destroy it and install a dictator. Democrats and Republicans as well as people previously unaligned, we have reiterated why democracy matters.

If you are tired from the last six years, you have earned the right to be.

And yet you are still here, reading, commenting, protesting, articulating a new future for the nation. And I am proud to be among you.

I write these letters because I love America. I am staunchly committed to the principle of human self-determination for people of all races, genders, abilities, and ethnicities: the idea that we all have the right to work to become whatever we wish. I believe that American democracy has the potential to be the form of government that comes closest to bringing that principle to reality. And I know that achieving that equality depends on a government shaped by fact-based debate rather than by extremist ideology and false narratives.

And so I write.

I have come to understand that I am simply the translator for the sentiments shared by millions of people who are finding each other and giving voice to the principles of democracy. Your steadfast interest, curiosity, critical thinking, and especially your kindness—to me and to one another—illustrate that we have not only the power, but also the passion, to reinvent our nation.

To those who read these letters, send tips, proofread, criticize, comment, argue, worry, cheer, award medals, and support me and one another: I thank you for bringing me along on this wild, unexpected, exhausting, and exhilarating journey.

Reply Quote

Date: 16/09/2025 17:18:47
From: Cymek
ID: 2316560
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Isn’t it obvious when you look at the USA to see how its set up to become a fascist dictatorship or a nation controlled by large corporation in cahoots with the government.

The patriotism itself is indoctrination to believe the USA is number one Joe.

Have people in subservient positions controlled by consumers who determine wages through tips

Can be elected to just about any positions of power especially if you are white and rich.

Create an underclass you convince to join the military with offers of health care and being looked after then chuck them away when the job is done.

Interfere in numerous nations internal affairs to the point you install dictators favourable to the USA in return they can do what they like

Fund and armed insurgents to fight them commies and then betray them when they aren’t of any use
Acted surprised they hate you to the point they will fly planes into buildings.

Reply Quote

Date: 16/09/2025 18:38:53
From: Ian
ID: 2316584
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

I am staunchly committed to the principle of human self-determination for people of all races, genders, abilities, and ethnicities: the idea that we all have the right to work to become whatever we wish. I believe that American democracy has the potential to be the form of government that comes closest to bringing that principle to reality.

Self-evidently no.

Reply Quote

Date: 16/09/2025 18:43:32
From: Tau.Neutrino
ID: 2316588
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Cymek said:


Isn’t it obvious when you look at the USA to see how its set up to become a fascist dictatorship or a nation controlled by large corporation in cahoots with the government.

The patriotism itself is indoctrination to believe the USA is number one Joe.

Have people in subservient positions controlled by consumers who determine wages through tips

Can be elected to just about any positions of power especially if you are white and rich.

Create an underclass you convince to join the military with offers of health care and being looked after then chuck them away when the job is done.

Interfere in numerous nations internal affairs to the point you install dictators favourable to the USA in return they can do what they like

Fund and armed insurgents to fight them commies and then betray them when they aren’t of any use
Acted surprised they hate you to the point they will fly planes into buildings.

It sounds like a pathway to anarchy, Americans would be better off without a third tier of government, do away with the White House, move towards a government like Australia.

Complex political systems involving more than 2 arms of government just invites corruption, and the population suffers because of a few thousand people who are in control of 340.1 million people.

The white house itself has a staff of 400, this rises to 1800 people from other agencies. The White House has an annual budget of $718 million.

Reply Quote

Date: 16/09/2025 19:11:44
From: Michael V
ID: 2316593
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Neophyte said:


September 15, 2025 (Monday)

Six years ago, on September 15, 2019, after about a six-week hiatus during the summer, I wrote a Facebook post that started:

“Many thanks to all of you who have reached out to see if I’m okay. I am, indeed (aside from having been on the losing end of an encounter with a yellow jacket this afternoon!). I’ve been moving, setting up house, and finishing the new book. Am back and ready to write, but now everything seems like such a dumpster fire it’s very hard to know where to start. So how about a general overview of how things at the White House look to me, today….”

I wrote a review of Trump’s apparent mental decline amidst his faltering presidency, stonewalling of investigations of potential criminal activity by him or his associates, stacking of the courts, and attempting to use the power of the government to help his 2020 reelection.

Then I noted that the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA), had written a letter to the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, on Friday, September 13, telling Maguire he knew that a whistleblower had filed a complaint with the inspector general of the intelligence community, who had deemed the complaint “credible” and “urgent.” This meant that the complaint was supposed to be sent on to the House Intelligence Committee. But, rather than sending it to the House as the law required, Maguire had withheld it. Schiff’s letter told Maguire that he’d better hand it over. Schiff speculated that Maguire was covering up evidence of crimes by the president or his closest advisors.

And I added: “None of this would fly in America if the Senate, controlled by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, were not aiding and abetting him.”

“This is the story of a dictator on the rise,” I wrote, “taking control of formerly independent branches of government, and using the power of his office to amass power.”
Readers swamped me with questions. So I wrote another post answering them and trying to explain the news, which began breaking at a breathtaking pace.
And so these Letters from an American were born.

Six years later, we are in the midst of Trump’s second term, and the patterns I saw six years ago are slicing to the heart of both the mechanics and the soul of the United States.

In that first letter where I warned of rising authoritarianism, I wrote: “So what do those of us who love American democracy do? Make noise. Take up oxygen…. Defend what is great about this nation: its people, and their willingness to innovate, work, and protect each other. Making America great has never been about hatred or destruction or the aggregation of wealth at the very top; it has always been about building good lives for everyone on the principle of self-determination. While we have never been perfect, our democracy is a far better option than the autocratic oligarchy Trump is imposing on us.”

And we have made noise, and we have taken up oxygen. All across the country, people have stepped up to defend our democracy from those who are open about their plans to destroy it and install a dictator. Democrats and Republicans as well as people previously unaligned, we have reiterated why democracy matters.

If you are tired from the last six years, you have earned the right to be.

And yet you are still here, reading, commenting, protesting, articulating a new future for the nation. And I am proud to be among you.

I write these letters because I love America. I am staunchly committed to the principle of human self-determination for people of all races, genders, abilities, and ethnicities: the idea that we all have the right to work to become whatever we wish. I believe that American democracy has the potential to be the form of government that comes closest to bringing that principle to reality. And I know that achieving that equality depends on a government shaped by fact-based debate rather than by extremist ideology and false narratives.

And so I write.

I have come to understand that I am simply the translator for the sentiments shared by millions of people who are finding each other and giving voice to the principles of democracy. Your steadfast interest, curiosity, critical thinking, and especially your kindness—to me and to one another—illustrate that we have not only the power, but also the passion, to reinvent our nation.

To those who read these letters, send tips, proofread, criticize, comment, argue, worry, cheer, award medals, and support me and one another: I thank you for bringing me along on this wild, unexpected, exhausting, and exhilarating journey.

:)

Reply Quote

Date: 16/09/2025 20:23:44
From: Tau.Neutrino
ID: 2316616
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Tau.Neutrino said:


Cymek said:

Isn’t it obvious when you look at the USA to see how its set up to become a fascist dictatorship or a nation controlled by large corporation in cahoots with the government.

The patriotism itself is indoctrination to believe the USA is number one Joe.

Have people in subservient positions controlled by consumers who determine wages through tips

Can be elected to just about any positions of power especially if you are white and rich.

Create an underclass you convince to join the military with offers of health care and being looked after then chuck them away when the job is done.

Interfere in numerous nations internal affairs to the point you install dictators favourable to the USA in return they can do what they like

Fund and armed insurgents to fight them commies and then betray them when they aren’t of any use
Acted surprised they hate you to the point they will fly planes into buildings.

It sounds like a pathway to anarchy, Americans would be better off without a third tier of government, do away with the White House, move towards a government like Australia.

Complex political systems involving more than 2 arms of government just invites corruption, and the population suffers because of a few thousand people who are in control of 340.1 million people.

The white house itself has a staff of 400, this rises to 1800 people from other agencies. The White House has an annual budget of $718 million.

They can still have a President but behaves more like a PM. They can still have the White House but Cabinet is decided by Congress and the Senate. Maybe our Government could sell them a new tailored political system, modernised and streamlined with essential services.?

Reply Quote

Date: 16/09/2025 20:42:17
From: SCIENCE
ID: 2316621
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

alleged

Reply Quote

Date: 16/09/2025 20:46:33
From: SCIENCE
ID: 2316622
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

alleged


Reply Quote

Date: 16/09/2025 20:47:16
From: Tau.Neutrino
ID: 2316623
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

SCIENCE said:

alleged


Charlie’s dead Jim.

Reply Quote

Date: 16/09/2025 21:05:51
From: Tau.Neutrino
ID: 2316625
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Tau.Neutrino said:


Tau.Neutrino said:

Cymek said:

Isn’t it obvious when you look at the USA to see how its set up to become a fascist dictatorship or a nation controlled by large corporation in cahoots with the government.

The patriotism itself is indoctrination to believe the USA is number one Joe.

Have people in subservient positions controlled by consumers who determine wages through tips

Can be elected to just about any positions of power especially if you are white and rich.

Create an underclass you convince to join the military with offers of health care and being looked after then chuck them away when the job is done.

Interfere in numerous nations internal affairs to the point you install dictators favourable to the USA in return they can do what they like

Fund and armed insurgents to fight them commies and then betray them when they aren’t of any use
Acted surprised they hate you to the point they will fly planes into buildings.

It sounds like a pathway to anarchy, Americans would be better off without a third tier of government, do away with the White House, move towards a government like Australia.

Complex political systems involving more than 2 arms of government just invites corruption, and the population suffers because of a few thousand people who are in control of 340.1 million people.

The white house itself has a staff of 400, this rises to 1800 people from other agencies. The White House has an annual budget of $718 million.

They can still have a President but behaves more like a PM. They can still have the White House but Cabinet is decided by Congress and the Senate. Maybe our Government could sell them a new tailored political system, modernised and streamlined with essential services.?

Their political system is broken maybe other countries should give them that message?

Reply Quote

Date: 16/09/2025 21:11:33
From: party_pants
ID: 2316626
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Tau.Neutrino said:


Tau.Neutrino said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

It sounds like a pathway to anarchy, Americans would be better off without a third tier of government, do away with the White House, move towards a government like Australia.

Complex political systems involving more than 2 arms of government just invites corruption, and the population suffers because of a few thousand people who are in control of 340.1 million people.

The white house itself has a staff of 400, this rises to 1800 people from other agencies. The White House has an annual budget of $718 million.

They can still have a President but behaves more like a PM. They can still have the White House but Cabinet is decided by Congress and the Senate. Maybe our Government could sell them a new tailored political system, modernised and streamlined with essential services.?

Their political system is broken maybe other countries should give them that message?

For a very reasonable fee, I am prepared to draft a new system for them.

Reply Quote

Date: 16/09/2025 21:21:49
From: Tau.Neutrino
ID: 2316629
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

party_pants said:


Tau.Neutrino said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

They can still have a President but behaves more like a PM. They can still have the White House but Cabinet is decided by Congress and the Senate. Maybe our Government could sell them a new tailored political system, modernised and streamlined with essential services.?

Their political system is broken maybe other countries should give them that message?

For a very reasonable fee, I am prepared to draft a new system for them.

They certainly need a new system, it just needs to be pointed out to them that there are alternatives.

Reply Quote

Date: 16/09/2025 21:31:14
From: party_pants
ID: 2316630
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Tau.Neutrino said:


party_pants said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Their political system is broken maybe other countries should give them that message?

For a very reasonable fee, I am prepared to draft a new system for them.

They certainly need a new system, it just needs to be pointed out to them that there are alternatives.

Sadly I don’t think they are capable of such reforms. Not without a war.

Reply Quote

Date: 16/09/2025 21:51:53
From: Witty Rejoinder
ID: 2316632
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Tau.Neutrino said:


Tau.Neutrino said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

It sounds like a pathway to anarchy, Americans would be better off without a third tier of government, do away with the White House, move towards a government like Australia.

Complex political systems involving more than 2 arms of government just invites corruption, and the population suffers because of a few thousand people who are in control of 340.1 million people.

The white house itself has a staff of 400, this rises to 1800 people from other agencies. The White House has an annual budget of $718 million.

They can still have a President but behaves more like a PM. They can still have the White House but Cabinet is decided by Congress and the Senate. Maybe our Government could sell them a new tailored political system, modernised and streamlined with essential services.?

Their political system is broken maybe other countries should give them that message?

Unfortunately the people of other nations are not as willing as Australians to judge their countries’ governance in accordance with global best practice and usually suffer as a result. In the US this is called American exceptionalism and another example would be the way the French want to run their economy in defiance of any sound financial principles as practiced elsewhere.

Reply Quote

Date: 16/09/2025 22:22:55
From: Tau.Neutrino
ID: 2316637
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

party_pants said:


Tau.Neutrino said:

party_pants said:

For a very reasonable fee, I am prepared to draft a new system for them.

They certainly need a new system, it just needs to be pointed out to them that there are alternatives.

Sadly I don’t think they are capable of such reforms. Not without a war.

Maybe they are trying to make Charlie a martyr or some new twisted Christian figure of some kind?

Reply Quote

Date: 17/09/2025 08:22:51
From: Tau.Neutrino
ID: 2316695
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Tau.Neutrino said:


SCIENCE said:

alleged


Charlie’s dead Jim.

He went where there is life but not has we know it, Jim.

Reply Quote

Date: 17/09/2025 16:30:54
From: Neophyte
ID: 2316808
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 16, 2025 (Tuesday)

The phrase that kept coming up over the last several days was “make fetch happen.” It’s a reference to the film Mean Girls, when one of the characters tries to make the word “fetch” trendy, using it to mean “cool” or “awesome.” Another character eventually slaps back: “Stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen. It’s NOT going to happen!”

Over the weekend, it appeared MAGA leaders were trying to make fetch happen, hoping to distract attention from Trump’s and popular anger about the economy, corruption, the administration’s disregard for the law, and the Epstein files by trying to gin up the idea that the United States is being torn apart by political violence coming from what MAGA figures called “the left,” or “Democrats,” or just “THEM.”

Their evidence was the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk last Wednesday in Utah, although the motive of the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, remains unclear. Today the state of Utah indicted Robinson on seven counts, including aggravated murder. But a 2024 report from a research arm of the Department of Justice itself noted that “ince 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists.” Julia Ornedo of The Daily Beast reported that the Department of Justice removed the report from its website after the shooting.

But as G. Elliott Morris explains in Strength in Numbers, “ost Americans reject political violence in all circumstances, especially when you measure it carefully.” Morris notes that only a small fraction of Americans genuinely support political violence: about 9% approve of threats against political opponents, 8% approve of harassment, 6% support nonviolent felonies, and about 4% support using violence. Morris notes that both Democrats and Republicans significantly overestimate their political opponents’ willingness to use violence and that social media elevates extremists, making them appear more numerous than they are.

Morris explains that violent acts associated with politics happen because members of that small minority respond to rhetoric coming from political leaders. Violent metaphors polarize audiences and attract “high-aggression followers.” Reducing violence requires political elites to tone down their rhetoric.

It also helps for leaders to reinforce democratic norms.

On that, President Donald Trump is in some trouble. Olivier Knox of U.S. News & World Report reported yesterday that U.S. farmers “are not OK.” Droughts and flooding from climate change as well as higher costs for fertilizer and equipment were cutting into operations even before Trump’s tariffs hit. The U.S. used to be China’s top source for soybeans, but in retaliation for the new tariffs, China has replaced the output of U.S. farmers with soybeans from Brazil. Cuts to food programs have hit small producers, while the administration’s crackdowns on undocumented immigration have created shortages of workers.

There were more farm bankruptcies by the end of July than in all of 2024. The administration appears to be considering providing emergency aid for farmers as it did during the trade wars of Trump’s first term, although those programs often help larger producers more than smaller ones.

Knox notes that agriculture, food, and related industries contributed about $1.5 trillion to the economy—about 5.5% of gross domestic product—in 2023, making up about 22.1 million jobs.

Matt Egan reported in CNN today that Americans’ credit scores “are falling at the fastest pace since the Great Recession as Americans struggle to keep up with the high cost of living and the return of student debt payments.” The average FICO score, which assesses a borrower’s creditworthiness, dropped by 2 points this year, the largest drop since 2009.

Meanwhile, Stuart Anderson reported in Forbes that the officials who launched the raid on a Hyundai plant in Georgia, which has caused an uproar in South Korea after U.S. officials arrested more than 300 Korean workers, had a warrant to look for four people from Mexico. According to Anderson, once the officials were there, they decided to meet the quotas established by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller by arresting South Koreans.

A deep story by Eric Lipton, David Yaffe-Bellany, Bradley Hope, Tripp Mickle, and Paul Mozur in the New York Times yesterday suggested that the Trump administration has engaged in an astonishingly corrupt deal in which two multibillion-dollar deals appear to be intertwined.

In May an investment firm run by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who controls the sovereign wealth of the United Arab Emirates, announced it would invest $2 billion in World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency start-up founded by the Trump family and by Steve Witkoff and his son Zach Witkoff. Steve Witkoff is Trump’s Middle East envoy. Two weeks later, the administration permitted the UAE to gain access to hundreds of thousands of the world’s scarcest and most advanced computer chips as part of a new deal to turn the UAE into an artificial intelligence powerhouse. G42, a technology company controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon, would receive many of the chips.

“While there is no evidence that one deal was explicitly offered in return for the other,” the reporters write, “the confluence of the two agreements is itself extraordinary.” “Put plainly, while the U.A.E. was negotiating with the White House to secure chips for G42, a G42 employee was helping the Witkoffs and the Trumps make money.”

Yesterday, Trump filed a $15 billion lawsuit against the New York Times and some of its leading reporters for a grab bag of reasons, alleging “the Times is a full-throated mouthpiece of the Democrat Party.” The case filing praised Trump fulsomely for his success as a politician, entertainer, and entrepreneur. The New York Times said the case “lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting…. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.”

Also on Monday, Trump posted on social media that U.S. military forces have struck another boat, apparently from Venezuela, killing three people. Trump said they were “positively identified, extraordinarily violent drug trafficking cartels and narcoterrorists,” but offered no evidence. Today he told reporters that forces had also “knocked off” another boat, but the military did not respond to questions about the claim.

Today, FBI director Kash Patel testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Patel is under scrutiny for his performance during the search for Kirk’s killer and for cuts he’s made to the agency. When pressed on the files concerning the Epstein investigation, Patel told Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) that the material in the case files is limited and does not show that Epstein trafficked girls to any people other than himself. “There is no credible information—none…that he trafficked to other individuals. And the information we have again is limited.”

Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) expressed astonishment at this statement. Then Patel yelled at Schiff when the senator challenged Patel’s assertion that the Bureau of Prisons alone made the unprecedented decision to move Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum-security work camp after she spoke to Department of Justice officials. Hailey Fuchs and Kyle Cheney of Politico noted that the White House congratulated Patel for tangling with Schiff, whom Trump calls “Pencil Neck.”

But the president has not been able to get away from the Epstein files. Activists projected an image of Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein onto the walls of Windsor Castle as Trump and First Lady Melania Trump landed in the United Kingdom for a state visit with King Charles III and Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Channel 4 television announced today that while the president is in the country, it will run a special show listing more than 100 lies Trump has told so far in his second term. Trump v. the Truth will air on Wednesday and will offer fact-checking of the president’s statements.

In Washington, D.C., work crews have begun moving some trees and cutting down others around the East Wing of the White House to prepare for Trump’s $200 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom.

Reply Quote

Date: 17/09/2025 16:56:42
From: Michael V
ID: 2316812
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Thanks.

More of the same, but always different. Always concerning.

Reply Quote

Date: 18/09/2025 16:21:01
From: Neophyte
ID: 2317001
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 17, 2025 (Wednesday)

This evening, John Koblin, Michael M. Grynbaum, and Brooks Barnes of the New York Times reported that ABC was pulling the television show of comedian Jimmy Kimmel off the air. The suspension is allegedly over his comments Monday about the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, although Chris Hayes of All In pointed out that after CBS pulled Stephen Colbert, another political comedian, off the air in July, President Donald Trump told reporters that comedians Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel would be “next. They’re going to be going. I hear they’re going to be going.”

Kimmel has one of the top late-night television shows, attracting younger viewers in the 18-49 year old demographic. He delivers monologues that skewer President Donald J. Trump and the administration. His YouTube channel, which replays his show, has more than twenty million subscribers.

During his monologue on Monday’s show, Kimmel said: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half staff which got some criticism but on a human level you can see how hard the president is taking this.”

Kimmel then played a clip of Trump’s response to a reporter who asked how the president was holding up after Kirk’s death. Trump answered: “I think very good. And by the way right there you see all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House which is something they’ve been trying to get as you know for about for 150 years and it’s gonna be a beauty.”

On the podcast of right-wing influencer Benny Johnson on Wednesday, chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Brendan Carr said that Kimmel’s words were part of a “concerted effort to try to lie to the American people” and that the FCC was “going to have remedies that we can look at.” “Frankly, when you see stuff like this,” he said, “I mean look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Carr explained: “There’s actions we can take on licensed broadcasters. And frankly, I think that it’s really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say…‘We’re not gonna run Kimmel anymore…because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC.’”
The largest operator of ABC affiliates, Nexstar—which needs FCC approval for a $6.2 billion merger—said it would stop airing Kimmel’s show from its stations. Then ABC suspended Kimmel’s show.

Benny Johnson, the podcaster on whose show Carr threatened Kimmel, was one of the influencers Russian state media funded to spread propaganda before the 2024 election. After Kimmel’s suspension, Johnson posted on social media: “We did it for you, Charlie. And we’re just getting started.”

Exactly two hundred and thirty-eight years ago today, on September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the men we know now as the Framers signed their final draft of a new constitution for the United States, hoping it would fix the problems of the first attempt to create a new nation. During the Revolutionary War, the Second Continental Congress had hammered out a plan for a confederation of states, but with fears of government tyranny still uppermost in delegates’ minds, they centered power in the states rather than in a national government.

The result—the Articles of Confederation—was a “firm league of friendship” among the thirteen new states, overseen by a congress of men chosen by the state legislatures and in which each state had one vote. The new pact gave the federal government few duties and even fewer ways to meet them. Indicating their inclinations, in the first substantive paragraph the authors of the agreement said: “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”

Within a decade, the states were refusing to contribute money to the new government and were starting to contemplate their own trade agreements with other countries. An economic recession in 1786 threatened farmers in western Massachusetts with the loss of their farms when the state government in the eastern part of the state refused relief; in turn, when farmers led by Revolutionary War captain Daniel Shays marched on Boston, propertied men were so terrified their own property would be seized that they raised their own army for protection.

The new system clearly could not protect property of either the poor or the rich and thus faced the threat of landless mobs. The nation seemed on the verge of tearing itself apart, and the new Americans were all too aware that both England and Spain were standing by, waiting to make the most of the opportunities such chaos would create.

And so, in 1786, leaders called for a reworking of the new government centered not on the states, but on the people of the nation represented by a national government. The document began, “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union….”

The Constitution established a representative democracy, a republic, in which three branches of government would balance each other to prevent the rise of a tyrant. Congress would write all “necessary and proper” laws, levy taxes, borrow money, pay the nation’s debts, establish a postal service, establish courts, declare war, support an army and navy, organize and call forth “the militia to execute the Laws of the Union,” and “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.”

The president would execute the laws, but if Congress overstepped, the president could veto proposed legislation. In turn, Congress could override a presidential veto. Congress could declare war, but the president was the commander in chief of the army and had the power to make treaties with foreign powers. It was all quite an elegant system of paths and tripwires, really.

A judicial branch would settle disputes between inhabitants of the different states and guarantee every defendant a right to a jury trial.

In this system, the new national government was uppermost. The Constitution provided that “he Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States” and promised that “the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion….”

Finally, it declared: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

But after their experience throwing off the yoke of what they considered an overly powerful king, those concerned about creating too powerful a national government worried the new government would endanger individual liberty. They demanded that the framers of the new government enumerate the ways in which it could not intrude on the rights of the people.
In 1789 the new Congress passed ten amendments to the Constitution, and the states ratified them the same year. Taken together, the amendments were known as the Bill of Rights.

The first of those amendments prohibits the government from intruding on the basic liberties that enable individuals to challenge it. It prohibits the government from establishing a state religion or infringing on the right of individuals to publish whatever they wish, to assemble peacefully, or to ask the government to remedy unfair situations.
It prohibits the government from infringing on the right of individuals to speak freely, without fear of government retaliation.

Americans take their First Amendment rights seriously. In April 2025, a Pew Research Center poll showed that 92% of Americans thought it was important “that the media can report the news without state/government censorship.”

Kimmel’s suspension has produced an uproar. Comedian Paul Scheer noted that Kimmel is off the air but Brian Kilmeade of the Fox News Channel, who recently called for killing homeless Americans by “involuntary lethal injection,” is still employed. The union that represents the musicians on Kimmel’s show called the suspension “a direct attack on free speech and artistic expression,” adding: “These are fundamental rights that we must protect in a free society.” The Writers Guild of America posted: “The right to speak our minds and to disagree with each other—to disturb, even—is at the heart of what it means to be a free people…. If free speech applied only to ideas we like, we needn’t have bothered to write it into the Constitution…. Shame on those in government who forget this founding truth.”

On CNN, conservative pundit David Frum called it “state repression.” On his show, right-wing activist Tucker Carlson said: “if they can tell you what to say, they’re telling you what to think. There is nothing they can’t do to you because they don’t consider you human…. A free man has a right to say what he believes.”

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker posted: “This is an attack on free speech and cannot be allowed to stand. All elected officials need to speak up and push back on this undemocratic act.” He pointed out that in 2023, Brendan Carr himself posted: “Free speech is… the check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream.” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) warned of a coming campaign to “use the murder of Charlie Kirk as a pretext to use the power of the White House to wipe out Trump’s critics and his political opponents.”

From England, where he is on a state visit, Trump posted: “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what needed to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT”

Two hundred and thirty-eight years ago today, the Framers signed their names to the blueprint for a new government established by “We the People of the United States.”

Reply Quote

Date: 18/09/2025 16:50:07
From: Michael V
ID: 2317007
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Thanks.

Reply Quote

Date: 19/09/2025 15:38:58
From: Neophyte
ID: 2317275
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 18, 2025 (Thursday)

Since he took office in 2017, President Donald J. Trump has worked hard to convince Americans that they are divided into two partisan camps: Republicans, whom he defines as those people loyal to him, and Democrats, a group made up of everyone else. In his first term, when actual Republicans, some of whom he appointed himself, challenged him, he simply redefined them as Democrats. In his telling, major figures in the investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign’s association with Russian operatives, including special counsel Robert Mueller and his staff, FBI director James Comey, and deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, were all Democrats.

In 2020, when Utah senator Mitt Romney voted to convict Trump on one of the charges on which the House impeached him, Trump tweeted a video calling him a “Democrat secret asset” who “tried to infiltrate Trump’s administration” while “posing as a Republican.” Romney was the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nominee.

In Trump’s worldview, it appears, those who oppose him, those he calls “Democrats,” are anti-American and dangerous. In his first term, he insisted those people were organized as “Antifa,” for “anti-fascist.” In summer 2020, in the midst of protests after the murder of George Floyd, Trump threatened to designate “Antifa” as a “major terrorist organization.” When FBI director Chris Wray, whom Trump appointed himself, said antifa is an ideology, not an organization, Trump posted: “I look at them as a bunch of well funded ANARCHISTS & THUGS who are protected because the Comey/Mueller inspired FBI is simply unable, or unwilling, to find their funding source, and allows them to get away with ‘murder’. LAW & ORDER!”

Dividing a population into friends and enemies is a tool of authoritarians, clearly articulated by Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt, who is enjoying a burst of popularity right now in the American right wing. MAGA figures have pushed the idea that the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk last week, apparently by a lone gunman, could be blamed on “Democrats” or “THEM.” Last night, after news broke that ABC was suspending comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s television show, the Trump administration announced it was putting the teeth of the government into this division of the world.

His social media account posted: “I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION. I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Legal experts point out that government officials can designate “foreign terrorist organizations,” but that there is no legal grounds for designating any domestic organization a “terrorist organization,” especially in light of the First Amendment that protects free speech and the right of Americans to assemble peacefully. Even if the designation can’t actually be made, though, the rhetorical division of the country into Americans and “Antifa” serves to divide the country into friends and enemies.

But the uproar over the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel brought to light a different, far more American, division in this country. Americans could divide along partisan lines so long as the guardrails of a secular, evidence-based, liberal democracy remained in place. But as the Trump administration smashes through those guidelines, it appears that rather than being divided along partisan lines, Americans are beginning to realign as “We the People” against a wannabe authoritarian.

Yesterday, Republican political strategist Karl Rove, who was a key member of President George W. Bush’s administration, pushed back against the friends and enemies distinction in the Wall Street Journal. “No,” he wrote. “Charlie Kirk wasn’t killed by ‘them.’ ‘They’ didn’t pull the trigger. One person did, apparently a young man driven by impulse and a terrible hate. If there were a ‘they’ involved, law enforcement would find ‘them’ and the justice system would hold ‘them’ accountable. But ‘he’ and ‘him’ are the correct pronouns for this horrendous act…. Using Charlie’s murder to justify retaliation against political rivals is wrong and dangerous. It will further divide and embitter our country. No good thing will come of it.”

As Trump’s popularity continues to plummet—The Economist today has his approval rating at -17%, down 2.6 points since last week—it’s becoming clearer every day that opposition to the president is not partisan. Yesterday, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Susan Monarez testified before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, where she explained that Health and Human Services Director Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is operating according to his ideology without regard for science. Kennedy fired her after she refused to rubber stamp his plans to change the childhood vaccination schedule without research supporting such a change.
Trump appointed Monarez.
Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) warned yesterday against the panelists Kennedy appointed to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices after he purged the panel making changes to the childhood vaccine schedule. Not only Kennedy but also insurance companies appear to have little confidence in the decisions of Kennedy’s panel. They say they will disregard any changes and continue covering the cost of vaccines—a clear sign they consider vaccines beneficial to helping people stay healthy.

John Yoo, the former deputy assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush who wrote the legal justification for torture during the war on terror, pushed back on the extreme powers Trump is claiming to kill those he labels terrorists. “There has to be a line between crime and war,” Yoo said. “We can’t just consider anything that harms the country to be a matter for the military. Because that could potentially include every crime.”

Some voices on the right who, in the past, were protected by the laws and norms of democracy are now calling out its loss. Last night, after the administration pressured ABC to suspend Kimmel’s show, right-wing media host Tucker Carlson explained why a government must not be able to limit speech. “You hope that a year from now, the turmoil we’re seeing in the aftermath of his murder won’t be leveraged to bring hate speech laws to this country. And trust me…if that does happen, there is never a more justified moment for civil disobedience than that, ever, and there never will be, because if they can tell you what to say, they’re telling you what to think. There’s nothing they can’t do to you, because they don’t consider you human. They don’t believe you have a soul. A human being with a soul, a free man, has a right to say what he believes, not to hurt other people, but to express his views.”

Today, agents from the Department of Homeland Security arrested New York City comptroller Brad Lander and public advocate Jumaane Williams along with ten other city and state elected officials near federal immigration courts when they tried to conduct oversight of people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the building.

Reply Quote

Date: 19/09/2025 18:09:48
From: Michael V
ID: 2317313
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Thanks for posting this, Mr N.

Reply Quote

Date: 20/09/2025 15:57:01
From: Neophyte
ID: 2317545
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 19, 2025 (Friday)

Today U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday threw out the $15 billion lawsuit President Donald J. Trump filed on September 15 against the New York Times for defamation. The judge, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, called the complaint “decidedly improper and impermissible” and took Trump’s lawyers to task for using a legal complaint as a public forum for abusive language.

Noting that the two defamation counts followed eighty pages of praise for Trump and allegations against the “hopelessly compromised and tarnished ‘Gray Lady,’“—an old nickname for the New York Times—he set a forty-page limit on any amended complaint.

The administration’s pressure on ABC to fire comedian Jimmy Kimmel is very unpopular, as G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers notes, with people polled by YouGov on September 18 seeing it as an attack on free speech.

That unpopularity showed today when podcaster and senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) celebrated Kimmel’s firing but called the threat of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr to retaliate against ABC “unbelievably dangerous.” Cruz called Carr’s threats “right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.’”

He explained: “I think it is unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying, ‘We’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.’”

Democratic political strategist Simon Rosenberg noted that three new polls out this week show Trump’s approval rating dropping and commented that voters don’t like “his dictator sh*t.” AP-NORC observed that Republicans are growing pessimistic about the direction of the country. While the share of all American adults who say the country is off track has increased 13 percentage points since June, from 62% to 75%, the biggest change has been among Republicans. In June, 29% of Republicans were concerned about the direction of the country; now that number is 51%.

Most American adults think Trump has gone too far with his tariffs, his use of presidential power, and sending troops into U.S. cities.

Democratic lawmakers this week have reflected the growing opposition to Trump and his administration. Today in The Contrarian, Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker wrote that Trump’s attacks on Chicago aren’t really about stopping crime. Instead, Trump is creating chaos and destabilizing the country in order to erode our democratic institutions and cement his power.

Pritzker warned that Trump “has become increasingly brazen and deranged in his rhetoric and his actions” and that the things he “is doing and saying are un-American.” In contrast, Pritzker held up as a model “our collective Midwestern values of hard work, kindness, honesty and caring for our neighbors,” and urged people to “be loud—for America.”

Yesterday Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) spoke at the Center for American Progress. He, too, outlined the administration’s attacks on the rule of law and blamed “billionaires padding their stock portfolios and buying up politicians,” “self-interested CEOs cynically dialing up the outrage and disinformation on their social media platforms,” and “politicians who saw more value in stoking grievance than solving problems” for creating the conditions that ushered Trump into the presidency.

Schiff called for restoring American democracy through legislation, litigation, and mobilization. He noted that Democrats have just introduced a package of reforms to put into law the norms Trump has violated. Democrats have also introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission decision permitting unlimited corporate money to flow into elections. While this legislation almost certainly won’t pass in a Republican-dominated Congress, he noted, it would force a debate.

He also noted that Democrats are conducting oversight, demanding accountability for wrongdoing and attacks on the rule of law, and are creating a record. Their victories, he noted, have been “modest,” but they have, for example, managed to force the administration to rehire employees at the National Weather Service and succeeded in preserving U.S. Department of Agriculture field offices in California.

Litigation has been more successful, Schiff said. Since January, plaintiffs have brought more than 400 suits against the administration, and courts have halted the administration’s policies in more than 100 of them. Wrongly fired civil servants have been reinstated, funding has been restored to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, deportation flights have been grounded, Trump’s tariffs have been struck down.

“Ultimately, though,” Schiff said, “the most powerful check on Trump’s authoritarianism is not Congress. It is not the courts. It is the American people.”

And that was the rallying cry of Representative Jason Crow (D-CO) in Congress yesterday.

Crow, who entered Congress in 2019, is a former Army Ranger who completed three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was with the 82nd Airborne Division and the 75th Ranger Regiment.

In his speech, Crow warned that Trump is tearing down the walls of our democracy and called out “some of our most elite and powerful individuals and institutions” for “failing to defend our democracy.” He noted that “ome of our nation’s most powerful law firms have bent the knee. Some of our finest universities are buckling. Some of the most powerful CEOs have capitulated. And some of the largest media companies are simply surrendering.”

“If those with power and influence want to sell off our rights and freedoms to enrich themselves, then Americans should make it clear that cowardice and greed will fail them,” he said.
“We will not shop at your stores. We will not tune into your TV and radio stations. We will not send our kids and our money to your universities, or use your services if you are going to enable our slide to authoritarianism.”

Crow contrasted those elite failures with “the courage we’ve seen from everyday citizens”:

Coach Youman Wilder, who stood up to ICE agents when they started interrogating kids on a baseball diamond in Harlem. A schoolteacher in Twisp, Washington, who joins protests against cuts to Medicaid and SNAP every Saturday because, she says, “Democracy only works if we work it.” Massive demonstrations across the nation in April. Parents in Washington, D.C., patrolling schoolyards to protect the rights of students and other parents as ICE agents are raiding and the National Guard is on the streets. Journalists around the country “reporting the truth, despite threats to them and their family.”

“There is courage everywhere we look,” Crow said. “We have not yet lost our power. “

He continued: “Now is the time…for us to stand with all those defending democracy.

“Defending free speech.
“Defending freedom of religion.
“Defending due process.
“Defending the rule of law.
“Defending the right of schoolchildren to learn without fear of being shot.
“Defending government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

“As a young paratrooper, leading an infantry platoon in the invasion of Iraq,” he said, he was responsible for young men: “Black, White, Asian, Hispanic. From the North, from the South, East, and West. From farms and from cities. Rich and poor.

“When I think of America, I still think of those young paratroopers. How we came together, despite our differences, we served together, we fought together, we found great strength in one another.

“That is America.”

“There’s a tradition in the paratroopers,” he said, “that the leader of the unit jumps out of the plane first and then the others follow.”

He concluded: “I’m ready to jump.”

Reply Quote

Date: 20/09/2025 16:01:28
From: SCIENCE
ID: 2317546
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Neophyte said:

September 19, 2025 (Friday)

Today U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday threw out the $15 billion lawsuit President Donald J. Trump filed on September 15 against the New York Times for defamation. The judge, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, called the complaint “decidedly improper and impermissible” and took Trump’s lawyers to task for using a legal complaint as a public forum for abusive language.

thankfully they still have a captured supreme court to push this shit right up to and then they win

Reply Quote

Date: 20/09/2025 18:10:56
From: Michael V
ID: 2317576
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Thanks.

Reply Quote

Date: 21/09/2025 16:44:50
From: Neophyte
ID: 2317832
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 20, 2025 (Saturday)

Is it possible that the last time I posted a picture was September 1? No wonder I’m tired.

Let’s take the night off and get back to it tomorrow.

I’ve been spending as much time on the water as possible these days, and the light in the crisp fall air is spectacular. Here is what the Maine coastline looked like this week from a kayak:

Reply Quote

Date: 21/09/2025 16:47:00
From: Michael V
ID: 2317834
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Neophyte said:


September 20, 2025 (Saturday)

Is it possible that the last time I posted a picture was September 1? No wonder I’m tired.

Let’s take the night off and get back to it tomorrow.

I’ve been spending as much time on the water as possible these days, and the light in the crisp fall air is spectacular. Here is what the Maine coastline looked like this week from a kayak:


She deserves a day off!

Reply Quote

Date: 21/09/2025 16:47:19
From: Bubblecar
ID: 2317835
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Neophyte said:


September 20, 2025 (Saturday)

Is it possible that the last time I posted a picture was September 1? No wonder I’m tired.

Let’s take the night off and get back to it tomorrow.

I’ve been spending as much time on the water as possible these days, and the light in the crisp fall air is spectacular. Here is what the Maine coastline looked like this week from a kayak:


That’s a pleasant view.

Reply Quote

Date: 22/09/2025 17:44:30
From: Neophyte
ID: 2318143
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 21, 2025 (Sunday)

On Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics postponed the release of the annual report on consumer expenditures—a key report for understanding inflation—without explanation. The BLS has been under stress since President Donald J. Trump fired its head, Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, after the July jobs report showed far weaker hiring statistics than expected as well as a downgrade for previous months. Officials at the BLS said the new report will be “rescheduled to a later date.”

This weekend, Dan Frosch, Patrick Thomas, and Andrea Peterson of the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is ending its annual report on household food security. Those reports began in the 1990s to help state and local officials distribute food assistance. Last year’s report found that 18 million U.S. households experienced food insecurity during 2023. In a statement, the Department of Agriculture said: “These redundant, costly, politicized and extraneous studies do nothing more than fearmonger.”

Colleen Hefflin, an expert on food insecurity, nutrition, and welfare policy at Syracuse University, told the Wall Street Journal reporters: “Not having this measure for 2025 is particularly troubling given the current rise in inflation and deterioration of labor market conditions, two conditions known to increase food insecurity.” Whitney Curry Wimbish of The American Prospect reported last week that food banks across the country are seeing more visits even as immigrants are staying away from them out of concern that their information might be shared or that Immigration and Customs Enforcement might show up.

Nutrition scholar Lindsey Smith Taillie of the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health told the reporters: “I think the only reason why you wouldn’t measure it is if you were planning to cut food assistance, because it basically allows you to pretend like we don’t have this food insecurity problem.” The budget reconciliation law the Republicans passed in July cuts funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by about 20%, or $186 billion through 2034, the largest cuts to SNAP in its history.

This news got less attention last week than the administration’s apparent determination to silence its critics. Although, as Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times pointed out on Thursday, Trump promised in his second inaugural address to “immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America,” what he appeared to mean was that he intended to free up right-wing activists to spread disinformation about elections and Covid-19.

Now, in the wake of the murder of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, as Peter Baker pointed out today in the New York Times, the administration has cracked down on the media and political opponents under the guise of tamping down words that could cause political violence. But, as Baker notes, Trump is making it clear that he is trying to stop speech that criticizes him and his administration. Last week alone, he called for people who yelled at him in a restaurant to be prosecuted and for comedians who made fun of him to be taken off the air, and he sued the New York Times.

On Friday, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that covering the administration negatively is “really illegal.” He went on: “Personally, you can’t take, you can’t have a free airwave if you’re getting free airwaves from the United States government.” As Baker notes, Trump’s chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, who wrote the chapter of Project 2025 that covers the FCC, has complained that many broadcasters have a liberal bias and that they do not serve the public interest as the FCC requires.

That attempt to control information is showing clearly at the Pentagon. In February, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threw out long-standing media outlets who had been covering the Pentagon, including NPR, the New York Times, and NBC News, and brought in right-wing outlets including Newsmax and Breitbart. On Friday the Pentagon said it would revoke press credentials for any journalists who gather information, even unclassified information, that the Pentagon has not expressly authorized for release. Hegseth has been on a crusade to figure out who is leaking negative stories about him and defense issues under his direction, and he seems to have decided to try to stop their publication rather than the leaks themselves.

Although Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell called the changes “basic, common-sense guidelines to protect sensitive information as well as the protection of national security and the safety of all who work at the Pentagon,” Washington Post reporter Scott Nover noted that this position is a “sharp departure” from decades of practice. Until this year, the Pentagon held two televised question and answer sessions a week (and, in my observation, the journalists who covered the Pentagon were excellent).

The National Press Club also weighed in on Friday’s changes. “If the news about our military must first be approved by the government, then the public is no longer getting independent reporting,” said club president Mike Balsamo. “It is getting only what officials want them to see. That should alarm every American.”

On Friday the Pentagon referred to the White House questions about a strike on a third Venezuelan boat that Trump announced on social media. “On my orders, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Trump posted. Trump said three men, whom he called “narcoterrorists,” were killed. He said the military showed him proof that the men in the boats were smuggling drugs, but he has not shared that evidence with lawmakers or the public.

As Lara Seligman reported in the Wall Street Journal on September 17, military lawyers and officials from the Defense Department are concerned that decision makers in the Pentagon are ignoring their warnings that the administration’s strikes on the vessels Trump claims are bringing drugs to the U.S. are illegal.

David Ignatius of the Washington Post recalls that when he took office, Hegseth purged from the military the judge advocate generals, who are supposed to advise leaders on the rule of law and whether orders are legal. In February, calling the top lawyers in the Army, Navy, and Air Force “roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief,” he fired them. Earlier this month, he announced he was moving as many as 600 JAG officers to serve as immigration judges.

Also on Friday, Trump announced that companies employing skilled workers who hold temporary H-1B visas would have to pay a $100,000 fee for their entry into the U.S. beginning Sunday. This set off a mad scramble as workers outside the country on business trips, vacations, or family visits rushed to get back into the U.S. before the new rule took effect. Not until Saturday did the administration clarify the new rule does not affect those who already hold visas.

Friday was a busy day. Trump also told reporters in the Oval Office that he wanted the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, “out” after Siebert declined to prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully sued the Trump Organization for fraud, for allegedly committing mortgage fraud. Siebert also declined to prosecute former FBI director James Comey, who refused to kill the investigation into the relationship between members of the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives, for allegedly lying to Congress.

Siebert was Trump’s own pick for the job and is a well-regarded career prosecutor. As legal analyst Joyce White Vance noted in Civil Discourse, Siebert managed to win the support of both the Virginia Republican Party and the senators from Virginia, both of whom are Democrats. His refusal to prosecute indicates there was not enough evidence to convict a defendant; Vance notes that’s the standard a prosecutor must meet to seek an indictment.

On Friday night, Seibert resigned.

On Saturday morning, Trump posted on social media: “He didn’t quit, I fired him!” In the evening, he posted on social media a missive that appeared to be intended as a direct message (DM) to Attorney General Pam Bondi. It read: “Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially ‘same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.’… We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT.”

In other words, Trump wants to use the power of the government to punish those he considers his enemies. As Joyce White Vance puts it: “et’s be clear about what Trump wants. He wants to turn us into a banana republic where the ability to prosecute people becomes a political tool in the hands of the president. That means he wants to exercise the ultimate power to put down any opposition to his rule.” She recalled the comment attributed to Lavrentiy Beria, head of the Soviet secret police under Stalin: “Show me the man and I’ll find the crime.”

A report from Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian of MSNBC yesterday showed what a politicized justice system looks like. They reported that FBI agents last year caught Tom Homan—now Trump’s “border czar”—on video accepting $50,000 in cash from agents posing as business executives after he promised he could help them win government contracts for border enforcement in a second Trump administration. The FBI had opened an investigation after someone told them Homan was soliciting payments in exchange for contracts under a future Trump administration.

After obtaining the evidence, the FBI and the Justice Department waited to see whether Homan would provide the aid he offered once he joined the new administration. But the case stalled as soon as Trump took office, and after FBI director Kash Patel recently asked for a status update on the case, Trump appointees officially closed the investigation.

The reporters say that when asked about it, the White House, the Justice Department, and the FBI all dismissed the investigation as politically motivated and baseless.

While Trump tries to silence his critics, Russia is taking advantage of U.S. inaction to test the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. On Friday, three Russian jets entered the airspace of Estonia. Italian fighters stationed in Estonia as part of NATO’s new Eastern Sentry operation responded and forced the Russian jets out. As Poland did last week after Russian drones and jets entered its airspace, Estonian officials requested consultations with the North Atlantic Council under Article 4 of NATO’s treaty.

High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, who hails from Estonia, called Russia’s incursions over Estonia an “extremely dangerous provocation.”

Reply Quote

Date: 23/09/2025 17:00:41
From: Neophyte
ID: 2318306
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 22, 2025 (Monday)

Conservative writer Bill Kristol took to social media today to say: “So many coverups. Release the Epstein files. Release the Homan tapes. Release the Venezuelan fishing boats evidence.”

Kristol was referring to three stories about which members of the administration seem to be hiding things that don’t fit their narrative.

The Republican-dominated House Oversight Committee has been slow to release records related to the investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein although interest in them is high—not least because reports that the records mention President Donald Trump seem confirmed by Federal Bureau of Investigation director Kash Patel’s refusal to answer questions from Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee about his appearance in them. Last week, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee voted not to subpoena the chief executive officers of JPMorgan Chase, Bank of New York Mellon, Bank of America, and Deutsche Bank for testimony and records for about $1.5 billion in transactions related to Epstein’s crimes.

Today, Dan Ruetenik, Cara Tabachnick, and Graham Kates of CBS News reported that they have obtained documents about the events of July 23, 2019, 18 days before Epstein’s death, when he was found unresponsive in his cell. Those documents add detail to the story already reported, in which upon regaining consciousness, Epstein first suggested he had been attacked by his cellmate but later said he couldn’t remember what had happened. As is the case with Epstein’s death, because of either human error or the faulty video system, there is no recording of the incident.

In the United Kingdom, seven charities have cut ties with Sarah Ferguson, Prince Andrew’s ex-wife, after newspapers yesterday published an email Ferguson sent to Epstein in 2011, several years after he had pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution with a minor, appearing to apologize for her public criticism of him.

In response to this weekend’s story that the FBI recorded a video in 2024 of Tom Homan, who is now Trump’s border czar, accepting $50,000 in exchange for promising to steer government contracts for border security toward the men offering the money, the White House now says that Homan didn’t take the cash. As Ken Dilanian and Carol Leonnig of MSNBC note, that’s not what they said when the reporters first asked them about it on Saturday. Dilanian and Leonnig add: “Multiple people familiar with the case say he did accept the money, as does an internal government document reviewed by MSNBC.”

National security analyst Juliette Kayyem noted that “ICE contracts are going to unknown construction companies and days old consulting firms.” Democracy Forward has filed a Freedom of Information Act request, asking the FBI and the Justice Department to release the recording of Homan accepting the $50,000.

Kristol’s reference to Venezuelan fishing boats relates to the administration’s deadly strikes against several Venezuelan boats the administration insists were smuggling drugs to the United States. The administration has shown no evidence supporting its claim to lawmakers or to the public, and legal experts warn that the strikes may be illegal.

The administration is using the power of the U.S. government to advance a right-wing project in other South American countries as well, using the economic power of the U.S. to support Trump’s allies in Brazil and Argentina. Trump has imposed a 50% tariff on goods from Brazil, claiming that Brazil engages in unfair trade practices and that the government is engaged in a “witch hunt” against Trump’s ally former president Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro was convicted this month of attempting a coup against Brazil’s government when voters turned him out of office. He has been sentenced to more than 27 years in prison. In addition to the heavy U.S. tariffs, the Treasury Department announced today that it was sanctioning the wife of the Brazilian Supreme Court justice who oversaw the prosecution of Bolsonaro. The Brazilian government called the U.S. move “a new attempt of undue interference in Brazilian internal affairs.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on social media today, fifteen minutes before Argentina’s foreign-exchange markets opened, that the U.S. will consider “all options” for stabilizing the economy of Argentina, whose right-wing president, Javier Milei, is a Trump ally. Milei’s approach to slashing government was a model for Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, but with elections coming up next month, voters are souring on his austerity measures, inflation, and the weakening currency. Bessent wrote that “Argentina is a systemically important U.S. ally.” The Economist explained more bluntly: “Scott Bessent says Uncle Sam is underwriting Mr Milei’s laboratory.”

At home, Trump signed an executive order today designating “Antifa” as a “domestic terrorist organization.” Although the director of the FBI during Trump’s first term, Christopher Wray, explained that antifa, which is short for “antifascist,” is an ideology and not an organization, the executive order says antifa is “a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law. It uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide to accomplish these goals.”

The order goes on to say that this “campaign involves coordinated efforts to obstruct enforcement of Federal laws through armed standoffs with law enforcement, organized riots, violent assaults on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other law enforcement officers, and routine doxing of and other threats against political figures and activists.”

The order calls for all government agencies to “investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations…conducted by Antifa.” Constitutional law scholar Evan Bernick noted that the point of the order was “to assert that something exists which does not exist and to make people think it (1) exists and (2) is bad.” Immigration expert Aaron Reichlin-Melnick added: “It’s a directive to the Executive Branch about what to focus…resources on.”

Today, Trump announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will be notifying doctors that if pregnant women take acetaminophen, a brand name of which is Tylenol, their baby faces a “very increased risk of autism.” This statement flies in the face of decades of evidence that, used according to directions, acetaminophen is safe during pregnancy and can be important for relieving fever and pain.

In his remarks, Trump appeared to have difficulty pronouncing the word “acetaminophen,” so used the brand name “Tylenol.” Although he is not a doctor, the president offered a range of medical advice. He echoed the opinions of Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of the dangers of vaccines, although vaccines save lives and extensive research has shown no link between vaccines and autism. Trump said: “We understood a lot more than a lot of people who studied it.”

But there seemed to be a new tone coming from media outlets covering the president today. The Associated Press posted on social media: “BREAKING: President Trump promotes unproven ties between Tylenol, vaccines and autism without new evidence.” The New York Times posted: “Unproven Medical Advice In a rambling news briefing, president Trump promoted unproven ties between vaccines, autism and Tylenol use by pregnant women and babies.”

There is another sign today that Trump and his loyalists have outkicked their coverage as they try to consolidate power.

In Strength in Numbers, G. Elliott Morris noted that as measured by internet searches for “Cancel Disney+,” the boycott against Disney, the parent company of ABC, is now four times as large as any similar search of a boycott over the past five years. Since ABC suspended comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show—allegedly for his comments about MAGA Republicans’ search for someone to blame, although he frequently skewers Trump and the administration—Disney’s stock has dropped 2% although the market in general is up nearly 1%.

Morris observes that “a lot of powerful people just don’t realize how unpopular Trump is.” He explains that while polls show Trump is deeply unpopular, many people confuse voters with consumers. That is, while polls frequently measure how voters feel about the president, only about 64.1% of American adults eligible to vote went to the polls in 2024. Figuring that number into Trump’s popularity shows that only about 32% of American adults voted for Trump in 2024, while 53% of adults currently disapprove of his performance in the White House, with 48% strongly opposed. So businesses that decide to try to appease Trump voters are making poor business decisions.

That has shown in the backlash over the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s show, which is widely seen as an attack on the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. As Robert Reich noted in his Substack publication, “the blowback against Disney” for Kimmel’s suspension “has been hurricane level.” It was so intense that Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr, who had threatened that ABC must suspend Kimmel or lose its broadcast license, began to deny he had had anything to do with the suspension and say that ABC had removed Kimmel for business reasons.

Today Disney issued a statement saying, “Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country. It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive.” It went on: “We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”

So, after public outcry, Kimmel’s show is back on the air. But right-wing media company Sinclair, which operates more than 35 ABC stations across the country, says it will not restore Kimmel’s show to the airwaves it controls. It announced it will preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! with news programming.

Reply Quote

Date: 23/09/2025 17:22:21
From: Michael V
ID: 2318307
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Thanks.

Reply Quote

Date: 24/09/2025 16:33:25
From: Neophyte
ID: 2318484
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 23, 2025 (Tuesday)

In New York City this morning, the United Nations opened its General Assembly, marking the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations itself. The day began with a General Debate, the meeting in which heads of state and government outline their positions and priorities in an era of changing and complex global challenges.

Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres opened the debate, reminding the audience that leaders who had lived through the horrors of World War II had created the organization to prevent another such conflagration by establishing “cooperation over chaos, law over lawlessness, peace over conflict.” It was, he said, “a practical strategy for the survival of humanity.”

“Eighty years on,” he said, “we confront again the question our founders faced—only more urgent, more intertwined, more unforgiving: What kind of world do we choose to build together?”

He warned: that “we have entered an age of reckless disruption,” when “the principles of the United Nations…are under siege.” Will we choose “a world of raw power—or a world of laws? A world that is a scramble for self-interest—or a world where nations come together? A world where might makes right—or a world of rights for all?”

Guterres urged member states to choose “peace rooted in international law,” “human dignity and human rights,” “climate justice,” “to put technology at the service of humanity,” and “to strengthen the United Nations for the 21st century.”

Guterres recalled that his youth in Portugal was spent “in the darkness of dictatorship, where fear silenced voices and hope was nearly crushed. Yet, even in the bleakest hours—especially then—I discovered a truth that has never left me: power does not reside in the hands of those who dominate or divide. Real power resides from people, from our shared resolve to uphold dignity, to defend equality, to believe—fiercely—in our common humanity, and the potential of every human being.

“I learned early to persevere. To speak out. To refuse to surrender, no matter the challenge, no matter the obstacle, no matter the hour. We must—and we will—overcome.”

President Donald J. Trump also addressed the gathered world leaders, guests of the United States.

He began by complaining that the teleprompter wasn’t working, and also mentioned that an escalator on which he and First Lady Melania Trump had been riding had stopped shortly after they stepped onto it.

Trump’s speech went on to depict a fantasy world in which he had single-handedly saved the world. He claimed to have forged peace on two continents during his first term but said that “era of calm and stability gave way to one of the great crises of our time.” He then turned to the United States, claiming that “four years of weakness, lawlessness, and radicalism under the last administration delivered our nation into a repeated set of disasters. One year ago,” he said, “our country was in deep trouble, but today, just eight months into my administration, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world and there is no other country even close. America is blessed with the strongest economy, the strongest borders, the strongest military, the strongest friendships, and the strongest spirit of any nation on the face of the earth.”

And that was the frame for the next hour of rambling boasts and insults.

Trump claimed that he had reversed the “economic calamity” left by former president Joe Biden. He had brought down costs and inflation, he said, and economic growth and manufacturing were both booming. He claimed that in his four years, Biden had attracted less than $1 trillion in investment while he had secured $17 trillion. Tax cuts and deregulation had, he said, made the U.S. “the best country on earth to do business.”

“In my first term, I built the greatest economy in the history of the world,” he said. “We had the best economy ever, history of the world, and I’m doing the same thing again, but this time it’s actually much bigger and even better. The numbers far surpass my record-setting first term.”

Trump claimed: “On the world stage, America is respected again like it has never been respected before. You think about two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, or one year ago, we were a laughingstock all over the world.

He claimed that his administration “has negotiated one historic trade deal after another” and that “in a period of just seven months, I have ended seven unendable wars. They said they were unendable. You’re never going to get them solved…. No president or prime minister, and for that matter, no other country, has ever done anything close to that, and I did it in just seven months. It’s never happened before. There’s never been anything like that. Very honored to have done it.”

He went on: “It’s too bad that I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them. And sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any of them. I ended seven wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries, and never even received a phone call from the United Nations offering to help in finalizing the deal. All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle. If the First Lady wasn’t in great shape, she would’ve fallen. But she’s in great shape. We’re both in good shape, we both stood.”

He then turned back to the United Nations. “That being the case, what is the purpose of the United Nations? The U.N. is such tremendous potential. I’ve always said it. It has such tremendous, tremendous potential, but it’s not even coming close to living up to that potential.”

He claimed that “veryone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize,” and after detouring into a complaint that the United Nations had not chosen him to renovate the U.N. complex years ago, he attacked the U.N. for “not solving the problems it should,” as well as “creating new problems for us to solve.”

Then he turned to the white nationalist program of his administration. He blamed “uncontrolled migration” for ruining “your countries,” and blamed the United Nations for funding that migration. “In the United States, we reject the idea that mass numbers of people from foreign lands can be permitted to travel halfway around the world, trample our borders, violate our sovereignty, cause unmitigated crime, and deplete our social safety net,” he said. “You’re destroying your countries. They’re being destroyed. Europe is in serious trouble. They’ve been invaded by a force of illegal aliens like nobody’s ever seen before. Illegal aliens are pouring into Europe, and nobody’s doing anything to change it, to get them out. It’s not sustainable.”

He claimed that London has “a terrible, terrible mayor”—Mayor Sadiq Kahn is Muslim and is of Pakistani descent—that it is “so changed, so changed,” and that “they” want “Sharia law.” He went on at great length about how immigration is destroying Europe and how dangerous and criminal immigrants are. He told the attendees: “I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell.”

Then he turned to another of his priorities: fossil fuels. “Energy is another area where the United States is now thriving like never before,” he said. “We’re getting rid of the falsely named renewables.” After another long harangue about renewable energy, he said: “If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail. And I’m really good at predicting things. They actually said during the campaign, they had a hat, the best-selling hat: Trump was right about everything. And I don’t say that in a braggadocious way, but it’s true. I’ve been right about everything.”

The speech was a dark fantasy of narcissism and Christian nationalism that struck at the heart of the very concept of the United Nations. In its wake, some journalists demolished Trump’s wild claims, while others bemoaned his destruction of diplomacy by berating our friends and allies while they were guests in our country. But it was foreign affairs journalist Ishaan Tharoor who captured the larger story of Trump’s speech.

“A senior foreign diplomat posted at the U.N. texts me,” Tharoor wrote, “‘This man is stark, raving mad. Do Americans not see how embarrassing this is?’”

Trump loyalists turned tonight to the idea that someone had sabotaged the president by stopping the escalator and the teleprompter. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Channel personality Jesse Watters that it looked like sabotage and she would personally see to it that there would be accountability, and Trump loyalist senator Mike Lee (R-UT) called for defunding the U.N. for “orchestrating escalator and teleprompter malfunctions.”

The United Nations correspondent for the Associated Press, Farnoush Amiri, reported that “ UN official said the UN understands that someone from the president’s party who ran ahead of him inadvertently triggered the stop mechanism on the escalator. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the White House was operating the teleprompter for Trump.”

Reply Quote

Date: 24/09/2025 16:39:18
From: Divine Angel
ID: 2318487
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

How does one sit through this delulu speech without laughing and/or throwing things?

Reply Quote

Date: 24/09/2025 16:58:19
From: SCIENCE
ID: 2318489
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Divine Angel said:

How does one sit through this delulu speech without laughing and/or throwing things?

Adderall¡

wait

Reply Quote

Date: 24/09/2025 17:36:33
From: Cymek
ID: 2318506
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Divine Angel said:


How does one sit through this delulu speech without laughing and/or throwing things?

Fear of firing squad ?

Reply Quote

Date: 24/09/2025 17:47:27
From: SCIENCE
ID: 2318509
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Cymek said:


Divine Angel said:

How does one sit through this delulu speech without laughing and/or throwing things?

Fear of firing squad ?

so barbaric, at least give them alpha tea

Reply Quote

Date: 25/09/2025 17:01:12
From: buffy
ID: 2318791
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 24, 2025 (Wednesday)

Hours after delivering his delusional and offensive speech to the United Nations yesterday, President Donald J. Trump did an about-face on his previous support for Russia in its war against Ukraine. After he met with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, his social media account posted: “I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” which would be before Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. Trump noted the profound toll the war is taking on Russia’s economy and speculated that Ukraine might even be able to take Russian land. “In any event,” Trump posted, “I wish both Countries well. We will continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them. Good luck to all!”

As Nick Paton Walsh of CNN noted, this statement doesn’t actually change much on the ground in the war. What it does, though, is suggest that Trump has lost interest in the conflict and is attempting to wash his hands of it.

The president made a similar escape from a planned meeting with Democratic leaders scheduled for Thursday to talk about keeping the government open. Yesterday he canceled the meeting by posting on social media that “fter reviewing the unserious and ridiculous demands being made by the Minority Radical Left Democrats in return for their Votes to keep our thriving Country open, I have decided that no meeting with their Congressional Leaders could possibly be productive.”

He went on to claim that Democrats want to shut down the government “unless they can have over $1 Trillion Dollars in new spending to continue free healthcare for Illegal Aliens,” and then detoured into unrelated attacks on Democrats over immigration and transgender athletes and claimed that his “HISTORIC LANDSLIDE” in the 2024 presidential election means the Democrats have to agree to his demands.

Ben Johansen and Meredith Lee Hill of Politico report that, in fact, Trump decided to cancel the meeting at the urging of House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD). Sources told the journalists that the Republican lawmakers were afraid meeting with Democrats would erode Republicans’ leverage in the struggle over funding the government.

That funding runs out on September 30, and Congress has not yet passed appropriations bills to keep it going. On September 19 the House passed a continuing resolution to keep the government funded at current levels through November 21 and to provide additional money for security for congress members. The 217–212 vote was largely along party lines, with one Democrat voting for the measure and two Republicans voting against it. Congress is not meeting this week, and after the measure passed, Speaker Johnson informed members that the House would not meet on the scheduled days of Monday, September 29, or Tuesday, September 30, thus jamming the Senate into accepting the House measure or shutting down the government.

The Senate failed to pass the House measure on the 19th, with two Republicans voting no and Democrats saying they would refuse to support any measure that did not extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies that Republicans cut in their budget reconciliation bill of July and roll back some of that act’s cuts to Medicaid. That budget reconciliation law, which Republicans call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, allows the enhanced premium tax credits that made ACA coverage more affordable for households between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level to lapse at the end of this year. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that this change will mean 4.2 million Americans will become uninsured in the next ten years (on top of those who are expected to lose Medicaid coverage). As healthier people opt to go without insurance, premiums on those who stay in the markets are skyrocketing.

Extending the subsidies as the Democrats want is popular even among many Republicans, who recognize how hard Americans are going to be hit by rising healthcare costs. But other Republicans who continue to oppose the Affordable Care Act refuse even to consider such a change and are pushing off such a divisive issue. Taken together, the Democrats’ demands would cost around a trillion dollars, but those benefits would not go to “Illegal Aliens.”

Unless they nuke the filibuster, Republicans will need eight Democratic votes to get to the sixty votes they need to pass a continuing resolution, but they are refusing even to talk to the Democrats. In a Fox News Channel interview on September 12, Trump said of Democrats, “There is something wrong with them.… hey want to give away money to this or that and destroy the country.” “Don’t even bother dealing with them,” he advised Republican lawmakers. “We will get it through because the Republicans are sticking together for the first time in a long time.”

Despite their determination to go it alone and their control of the House, the Senate, and the presidency, Republican leaders are working hard to pin a looming shutdown on the Democrats. The Democrats want no part of that storyline: “For a guy who claims to understand ‘The Art of the Deal,’ Donald Trump is awfully scared of negotiating one,” Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker said. “Trump and Congressional Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House. But they’d rather shut down the government, tank the economy, and cut healthcare benefits than do their jobs.” ​

Rather than engaging in the hard work of negotiation, Trump appears to want to use the government for his own ends.
After the outcry over the use of the Federal Communications Commission to strongarm ABC into suspending comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s television show, many Republicans insisted that the suspension was simply a business decision. Trump torpedoed that argument today when he took to social media to complain that Kimmel is back on the air.

Trump did not mention Kimmel’s reference to Charlie Kirk’s murder—allegedly the reason for Kimmel’s suspension—when he complained: “He is yet another arm of the and, to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major Illegal Campaign Contribution.” He continued: “I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative.”

Over the weekend, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Erik Siebert, a career prosecutor, resigned after he concluded there was not enough evidence of a crime to charge New York attorney general Letitia James for alleged mortgage fraud or former FBI director James Comey for allegedly lying to Congress. Siebert’s refusal to prosecute drew Trump’s wrath. On Monday, White House aide and Trump’s former personal lawyer Lindsey Halligan—who is leading the administration’s review of exhibits at the Smithsonian Institution museums—took over the job. She has no experience as a prosecutor.

Today, Ken Dilanian and Carol Leonnig of MSNBC reported that three sources have said they expect Halligan to try to get a grand jury to indict Comey before the five-year statute of limitations on lying to Congress runs out in six days. Chris Strohm of Bloomberg reports that the Department of Justice is also pushing forward with the case against Attorney General James.

While Trump persecutes those he perceives as enemies, administration figures who have called for slashing spending both at home and for foreign aid are using taxpayer money to push their own priorities overseas. Daniel Flatley and Patrick Gillespie of Bloomberg reported today that the U.S. is preparing a $20 billion rescue package to bail out Argentina’s right-wing leader Javier Milei, an ally of Donald Trump, before October elections.

They are offering this financial support despite the fact Argentina recently suspended its grain export tax, undercutting the U.S. soybean farmers who have lost their huge Chinese market because of Trump’s tariff war. Within hours, China bought up Argentina’s soybeans.

Administration officials are also ignoring the laws Congress passed to fund foreign aid and are instead funding their own priorities. In August, the administration told Congress it was not going to spend almost $5 billion Congress had appropriated for foreign aid, prompting Susan Collins (R-ME), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, to warn that “ny effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law.”

Today, Noah Robertson of the Washington Post reported that the State Department has informed Congress it intends to redirect $1.8 billion of foreign aid funding toward “America First” projects like countering “Marxist, anti-American regimes” in Latin America, supporting “U.S. immigration policies” in Africa, and pursuing investments in Greenland and Ukraine, although the language of the announcement is vague enough that it is not entirely clear what these programs will do.
Robertson identifies this announcement as a dramatic change from the previous, bipartisan U.S. focus on promoting national security by promoting democracy and health and higher standards of living around the world through investments in institutions like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which the Trump administration dismantled as soon as it took office.

Top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire told Robertson said the Trump administration is “attempting to raid programs that Congress has authorized and appropriated to strengthen democracy, advance peace and support vulnerable communities and instead funnel that money into an unaccountable slush fund.”

Although Jimmy Kimmel Live! was preempted in about 23% of the homes that use television, ABC said 6.26 million people tuned in to watch. Kimmel’s usual television audience is about 1.42 million. ABC says another 26 million people watched his monologue on social media, including YouTube.

In it, Kimmel said: “This show is not important. What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.” He called the administration’s attempt to take him off the air “un-American.”

Reply Quote

Date: 26/09/2025 16:27:55
From: buffy
ID: 2319014
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 25, 2025 (Thursday)

Today, with the popularity of President Donald J. Trump and his administration dropping, Trump’s disastrous performance at the United Nations, the return of comedian Jimmy Kimmel to the airwaves, and the Tuesday’s election in Arizona of Democratic representative Adelita Grijalva, who will provide the final signature on a discharge petition to demand a floor vote in the House over releasing all the government files on convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the administration appears to be making a dramatic push to seize complete control of the government.

Last night, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought tried to jam the Democrats into passing the Republicans’ continuing resolution to fund the government. Officials leaked a memo to Politico, Punchbowl News, and Axios—publications that focus on events concerning Capitol Hill—saying that if the Democrats refuse to pass the Republicans’ measure, the administration will try to fire, rather than furlough, large numbers of federal employees.
Such a move would be challenged in the courts, and the government has been forced to rehire many of the people it forced out earlier this year after those firings left agencies badly understaffed. But the threat is not idle; Vought is a Christian nationalist who has called for a “radical Constitutionalism” that demolishes the modern American state and replaces it with a powerful executive.

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) responded: “Listen Russ, you are a malignant political hack. We will not be intimidated by your threat to engage in mass firings. Get lost.” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement: “Donald Trump has been firing federal workers since day one—not to govern, but to scare. This is nothing new and has nothing to do with funding the government. These unnecessary firings will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back, just like they did as recently as today.”

Trump appears focused on September 30, when the government funding crisis will hit, and the days after it. Although courts have ruled that he does not have the power to impose tariffs willy-nilly, today Trump announced new tariffs of 100% on pharmaceuticals, 50% on kitchen and bathroom cabinets, 30% on upholstered furniture, and 25% on “Heavy (Big!) Trucks” beginning on October 1. On social media, he claimed such tariffs were necessary “for National Security and other reasons.”

Today, James LaPorta of CBS News reported that the National Archives and Records Administration improperly released Democratic representative Mikie Sherrill’s full military records to an ally of her Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, in the New Jersey governor’s race. The two candidates are tied, and Ciattarelli appears to be trying to link Sherrill to the 1994 Naval Academy cheating scandal involving more than 100 midshipmen.

Sherrill had an unblemished career in the Navy and as a midshipman, LaPorta notes. She did not turn in her cheating classmates, but she was never accused of cheating herself. The unredacted release of Sherrill’s records appears to violate the 1974 Privacy Act. Sherrill said: “That Jack Ciattarelli and the Trump administration are illegally weaponizing my records for political gain is a violation of anyone who has ever served our country. No veteran’s record is safe.”

While the National Archives maintained the release was a mistake and apologized for it, the administration’s influence in the Department of Justice tonight could not be explained away.

Days after Trump demanded that the Department of Justice move “now” to prosecute those he perceives to be his enemies, a federal grand jury has indicted former FBI director James Comey for allegedly lying to Congress and obstructing an investigation. Comey was an early casualty of Trump’s first administration, fired after he refused to kill the FBI investigation of the ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian operatives.

Over last weekend, Trump exploded at then–acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Erik Siebert, a career prosecutor, after Siebert concluded there was not enough evidence of a crime to charge Comey for allegedly lying to Congress or New York attorney general Letitia James for alleged mortgage fraud.

On Monday Trump replaced Siebert with White House aide and Trump’s former personal lawyer Lindsey Halligan, and yesterday three sources told Ken Dilanian and Carol Leonnig of MSNBC that they expected Halligan to try to get a grand jury to indict Comey before the five-year statute of limitations on lying to Congress runs out next Tuesday.

Tonight the DOJ delivered an indictment against Comey.

“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump,” Comey said tonight in a video. “But we…will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either. Somebody that I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant, and she’s right, but I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either. I hope instead you are engaged, you are paying attention, and you will vote like your beloved country depends upon it, which it does. My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system. I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial and keep the faith.”

The DOJ was busy today. It also sued six states—California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania—to force them to hand over their voter rolls and information identifying those voters. Matt Cohen of Democracy Docket notes that state officials from both Democratic and Republican governments have questioned why the government wants that information. This lawsuit comes after a nearly identical lawsuit the DOJ filed last week against Maine and Oregon.

Democratic secretary of state Tobias Read of Oregon called the lawsuits an attempt by President Donald Trump “to use the DOJ to go after his political opponents and undermine our elections.”

Tara Copp, Dan Lamothe, Alex Horton, Ellen Nakashima, and Noah Robertson of the Washington Post reported today that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered about 800 of the military’s top generals and admirals, along with their senior enlisted advisors, to come to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, next week. Such a demand is highly unusual, and no one knows why Hegseth has made it.

In The Bulwark, Mark Hertling, who was commander of U.S. Army Europe from 2011 to 2012, noted that the demand “is baffling and the cost will be staggering.” Instead of using the Pentagon’s secure video teleconferencing system, the personnel will require flights and accommodations that will cost millions, while the lost focus and readiness will affect their mission.

Hertling points out that “dversaries and allies are watching. This sudden, global, emergency recall of America’s top brass is a flashing red light to them: Something must be wrong inside the Pentagon.”

Both Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance tried to downplay the meeting. “Why is that such a big deal?” Trump asked reporters. Vance incorrectly said the meeting is “not particularly unusual,” and said: “I think it’s odd that you guys have made it into such a big story.”

This evening, Trump signed a memorandum targeting activists and nonprofits as part of what he called a “terror network” that he claims is fueling violence, especially against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. He and his allies claim that “radical left Democrats,” or “Radical Left Terrorists,” are behind that violence, although, as scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder notes, the majority of political violence in the U.S. comes from the right.

“Titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” the memo alleges that “common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

The document gives law enforcement wide latitude to “investigate, prosecute, and disrupt entities and individuals” engaged in behavior the administration opposes, as well as nonprofit organizations that fund them. It also orders law enforcement to “question and interrogate” people “regarding the entity or individual organizing such actions and any related financial sponsorship of those actions prior to adjudication or initiation of a plea agreement.”

Former federal prosecutor Daniel Richman, who teaches at Columbia Law School, told Robert Tait and Aram Roston of The Guardian that an executive order cannot create new crimes, and Timothy Snyder noted that the memo nonetheless “undoes the basic tradition of American liberty and law, which is…that we are individuals to be judged on the basis of what we do as such. This memo, quite to the contrary, begins from the premise that the world is governed by mysterious, invisible entities to which individuals can be arbitrarily associated by the power of the government, thereby making those individuals guilty and subject to prosecution and punishment.” It makes responsibility collective, thus enabling the government to target everybody. “The groups that will…be targeted will be groups that are concerned with things like counting the votes, human rights, freedom of speech, and the rule of law.”

All this, said Snyder, is both a “big lie” and a cliché. Authoritarians always say the country is facing an emergency and that their opponents are “terrorists.” It’s a cliché to say “there’s a mysterious, bottomless, organization that we have to chase to the ends of the Earth and break all the rules to find. That’s what they always say.”

Snyder noted that Congress can pass laws to rule such behavior illegal, courts can find actions illegal and protect victims, commentators can describe reality, and citizens can say they “don’t want to be subject to an imagined emergency based on a big lie that does away with the essence of American liberty and law.” He concludes: “This has been done before. It can be stopped.”

Reply Quote

Date: 26/09/2025 18:36:18
From: buffy
ID: 2319035
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

>>Tara Copp, Dan Lamothe, Alex Horton, Ellen Nakashima, and Noah Robertson of the Washington Post reported today that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered about 800 of the military’s top generals and admirals, along with their senior enlisted advisors, to come to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, next week. Such a demand is highly unusual, and no one knows why Hegseth has made it.

In The Bulwark, Mark Hertling, who was commander of U.S. Army Europe from 2011 to 2012, noted that the demand “is baffling and the cost will be staggering.” Instead of using the Pentagon’s secure video teleconferencing system, the personnel will require flights and accommodations that will cost millions, while the lost focus and readiness will affect their mission.

Hertling points out that “dversaries and allies are watching. This sudden, global, emergency recall of America’s top brass is a flashing red light to them: Something must be wrong inside the Pentagon.”

Both Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance tried to downplay the meeting. “Why is that such a big deal?” Trump asked reporters. Vance incorrectly said the meeting is “not particularly unusual,” and said: “I think it’s odd that you guys have made it into such a big story.” <<

I find this report very disquieting.

Reply Quote

Date: 26/09/2025 18:52:30
From: captain_spalding
ID: 2319043
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

buffy said:


>>Tara Copp, Dan Lamothe, Alex Horton, Ellen Nakashima, and Noah Robertson of the Washington Post reported today that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered about 800 of the military’s top generals and admirals, along with their senior enlisted advisors, to come to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, next week. Such a demand is highly unusual, and no one knows why Hegseth has made it.

In The Bulwark, Mark Hertling, who was commander of U.S. Army Europe from 2011 to 2012, noted that the demand “is baffling and the cost will be staggering.” Instead of using the Pentagon’s secure video teleconferencing system, the personnel will require flights and accommodations that will cost millions, while the lost focus and readiness will affect their mission.

Hertling points out that “dversaries and allies are watching. This sudden, global, emergency recall of America’s top brass is a flashing red light to them: Something must be wrong inside the Pentagon.”

Both Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance tried to downplay the meeting. “Why is that such a big deal?” Trump asked reporters. Vance incorrectly said the meeting is “not particularly unusual,” and said: “I think it’s odd that you guys have made it into such a big story.” <<

I find this report very disquieting.

Let’s not panic.

It might just be Keg-party Pete’s version of Trump’s ‘big’ D.C. military parade.

That is, he feels that he’s not been given enough attention lately, and he just wants to get all the generals to come and see him, just because he can.

A chance to preen in front of them, to harangue them for not being sufficiently and outwardly MAGA, and to tell them, ‘i’m the Defence Secretary, y’know, i’m your boss, nyah, nyah, nyah’.

It’s the Trumper way.

Then, he can go to Trump, and tell him that ‘i done good, boss, i got all them generals, and i gave ‘em whut for, told ‘em all that they oughtta worship theground you walk on’, and receive a pat on the head from a small hand.

Reply Quote

Date: 27/09/2025 16:58:00
From: Neophyte
ID: 2319217
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 26, 2025 (Friday)

Today Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that twenty men who were awarded the Medal of Honor for their participation in the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre would keep their medals, despite more than a century of controversy over them. The defense secretary who preceded Hegseth, General Lloyd Austin, had ordered a review of the awarding of those medals to “ensure no awardees were recognized for conduct inconsistent with the nation’s highest military honor.” Hegseth today called the men “brave soldiers” and said: “We’re making it clear that deserve those medals.”

It’s fitting that Hegseth, a political appointee whose tenure has been marked by incompetence, would defend the awarding of those particular Medals of Honor, because they were awarded to cover up the incompetence of political appointees that led to the deaths of at least 230 peaceful Lakotas, as well as about twenty-five soldiers who were caught in their own crossfire.

The road to Wounded Knee started in 1884, when voters angry that the Republicans had sold out to big business elected Democrat Grover Cleveland to the presidency. The first Democrat to occupy the White House since before the Civil War, he promised to lower the tariffs that squeezed ordinary Americans in order to protect big business. Horrified at the growing opposition to a government that worked for those industrialists who would soon be called “robber barons,” Republicans began to circulate pamphlets as soon as Cleveland was elected, claiming that lowering the tariff would destroy the economy and warning that voters must return Republicans to power or face economic ruin.

In 1888, Cleveland nonetheless won the popular vote by about 100,000 votes, but after an extraordinarily corrupt campaign, Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison won in the Electoral College. This is “A BUSINESS MAN’S ADMINISTRATION,” the editors of a pro-Harrison newspaper boasted. They predicted that “business men will be thoroughly well content with it.”

Knowing that the popular mood had turned against tariffs and the party that protected them, Harrison Republicans looked for ways to cement their control over the government.

Adding to the Union new states they believed would vote Republican would give them two more seats per state in the Senate, as well as a seat per state in the House of Representatives, and thus three more electors in the Electoral College, for each state has a number of electors equal to the number of senators and representatives combined. Between November 1889 and July 1890 the Republicans added five new states to the Union. They added Washington, Idaho, and Montana. They also divided the huge Dakota Territory in two, creating North Dakota and South Dakota. The new states should give the Republicans ten new seats in the Senate, Harrison’s men noted happily.

But the western half of what was supposed to become South Dakota belonged to the Lakotas. In 1889 the government forced the Lakotas to sign treaties agreeing to sell about half of their land and to move closer to six agencies on smaller reservations in what would soon be a new state. The government promised rations, health, care, education, and help with transitioning to a farming economy in exchange for the land, but that plan ran afoul of politics almost immediately.

The War Department and the Department of the Interior had fought over management of the Indigenous peoples in the U.S. for decades. Reservations were overseen by an “Indian agent,” who was in sole charge of spending the tens of thousands of dollars Congress appropriated to fund the various treaties the government had negotiated with different tribes. From that money, the agent was supposed to contract for food, clothing, tools, and supplies, as well as for the building of schools, mills, warehouses, and so on. Until 1883 this had been a plum political position, awarded to a political loyalist with the expectation that providing promised rations to Indigenous Americans was the least of his concerns: he was expected to spread that money to political allies to shore up their support.

The Army hated this system. If political appointees mismanaged their work, it was Army officers and their men who had the dangerous job of fighting angry warriors. Politicians noted that the Army all too often killed indiscriminately, and they refused to give up their power. But military men resented that political mistakes could cost soldiers their lives.

In 1883, after a disappointed office seeker assassinated President James A. Garfield, Congress had passed the Civil Service Act that was supposed to do away with awarding government jobs based on political patronage. Cleveland had taken that charge seriously and had installed agents instructed to fulfill their job description. Harrison’s men, though, knew they needed western votes to hold control of the newly admitted states, and they spun the system back to one based on patronage.

Their most unfortunate appointment was that of Daniel Royer to the Pine Ridge Reservation. Royer was a staunch Republican, but he was also a failed medical man with a budding drug addiction and little knowledge of Lakotas. After he arrived in October 1890, the Lakotas named him “Young-Man-Afraid-of-Indians.”

Since being corralled on the six smaller reservations the previous year, the Lakotas had endured a deadly influenza epidemic that swept the U.S. and much of Europe and killed a number of Lakotas who were already weak from respiratory viruses. Then, hot winds in summer 1890 had burned dry first the Lakotas’ vegetable gardens, then their crops, and finally, the native hay.

Settlers suffering in the same drought abandoned their new homesteads and went back east. Hungry and desolate, Lakotas had to stay. Then a new census count came in lower than expected, and government officials cut their rations. Destitute and in real danger of starvation, some Lakotas turned to a new religious movement, the Ghost Dance, that promised to bring back the world of game and plenty that had been theirs before the coming of easterners.

The Ghost Dancers never hurt their non-Indigenous neighbors or threatened their property, and few settlers paid them much attention. But Royer interpreted the religious enthusiasm as a sign of an approaching war. Less than a week after arriving at Pine Ridge, Royer warned his superiors in the Interior Department in Washington, D.C., that he might need troops to keep order.

General Nelson Miles of the U.S. Army, who commanded the Division of the Missouri that included Pine Ridge, went to the reservation, where the Lakotas explained their crushing circumstances and suggested that neither Royer nor his predecessor had been much help. Miles brushed off Royer’s panic and told the Lakotas they could dance as they wished. When Royer told the Lakotas the next day that they must stop participating in the Ghost Dance, they laughed at him.

Back East, President Harrison and his men were focused on the 1890 midterms. Despite popular demand for a lower tariff, in a raucous congressional session in October, Republicans actually raised tariff rates, promising voters that the McKinley Tariff would finally make the country boom.

A month later, angry voters took away the Republicans’ slim majority in the House and handed the Democrats a majority of more than two to one. Republicans hung onto power only through their lock on the Senate. There, the admission of the new states made up for losses elsewhere, and the Republicans had four more senators than their opponents did.

But of those four, three had voted against the McKinley Tariff. So the survival of the tariff hung on just one vote: that of a senator from South Dakota. In the nineteenth century, senators were chosen by the state legislature, and it looked at first as if the Republicans had won South Dakota’s. But then news broke that ballot boxes had been tampered with. Suddenly, the legislature was in play for all parties. Whoever won would control South Dakota’s Senate seat and the fate of the McKinley Tariff.

The Ghost Dance had continued to spread across the South Dakota reservations, and Royer was growing increasingly frightened. Some of the other agents were also agitated, sending back to their superiors letters full of exaggerated rumors. But Miles and officers stationed at the forts in South Dakota, all of whom had first-hand experience with the Lakotas, denied that the Lakotas were planning a war. Instead, the officers blamed the Lakotas’ anger on the mismanagement of food and supplies by the political appointees at the Interior Department. As soon as the agents addressed the Lakotas’ very real suffering, they said, the Ghost Dance movement would fade.

But with control of the South Dakota legislature hanging in the balance, Harrison was leaning toward sending in troops. Settlers liked the military, which brought contracts and government money into the chronically poor West. On November 20, 1890, troops marched into Pine Ridge.

Alarmed, Ghost Dancers rushed to the Badlands, where they could defend themselves.

For the next month, Army officers worked to bring the Ghost Dancers in the Badlands back to Pine Ridge. Then, on December 15, just as it seemed they had convinced them to return, a police officer murdered the famous leader Sitting Bull at Standing Rock Reservation on the northern edge of the state, and his panicked kinfolk fled south to Pine Ridge to take shelter with the renowned negotiator Red Cloud. Army officers were afraid the band would take news of Sitting Bull’s death to the Lakotas in the Badlands, derailing the negotiations, and set out to intercept them.

On December 28, on the southern side of the state, two members of the Lakota band from the north overtook two Army scouts watering their horses and told the scouts they were on their way to Pine Ridge. The scouts informed their commander, who intercepted the Lakotas with guns and demanded an unconditional surrender. The Lakotas agreed, and the troops and the tired and hungry Lakotas set off for Pine Ridge. That night, they all camped inside the reservation, at Wounded Knee Creek.

During the night, a new commander, James Forsyth, took over. Dead set on a show of force, he insisted on disarming the Lakotas before they set off for the agency. Many of the young men refused to give up their guns, which were the only way they could feed their families through the winter. As soldiers tried to wrench a gun from a man’s hands, it went off into the sky. “Fire! Fire on them!” Forsyth screamed.

The soldiers did. The first volley brought down the men who were being disarmed, as well as about twenty-five of the soldiers themselves, who had moved into a circle around the Lakota men and boys during the course of the morning. In the haze from the gun smoke, Lakota men grabbed weapons from nearby soldiers and dove for the dry creek bed that ran behind the camp, hoping to hike along it and get away. The women and children had been separated from the men during the morning. When the firing began, women ran for the wagons and horses.

But they could not escape. Over the next two hours, frenzied soldiers hunted down and killed every Lakota they could find. Soldiers trained artillery on the fleeing wagons as troops on horseback combed the hills for fugitives. Some of the escaping women were ridden down three miles from the encampment. When the wagons stopped moving, the soldiers moved the guns to the creek bed and shot everyone who moved. Within a few hours, at least 230 Lakotas, mostly women and children, were dead.

The outcry against this butchery started in the Army itself. Miles was incensed that the simple surrender of a peaceful band of Lakotas had become what he called a “criminal military blunder and a horrible massacre of women and children.” He demanded an inquiry into Forsyth’s actions. Miles’s report was so damning his own secretary asked him to soften it.

But President Harrison’s administration was in terrible electoral trouble, and his men wanted no part of an attack on soldiers that would imply that Harrison’s agents had first created a war and then mismanaged it. They dismissed Miles’s report with their own, which blamed the Lakotas for the massacre and concluded that the soldiers had acted the part of heroes. In spring 1891, President Harrison awarded the first of twenty Medals of Honor that would go to soldiers for their actions at Wounded Knee.

In the end, though, all of the political maneuvering by Harrison’s men came to naught. After months of squabbling, the South Dakota legislature rejected the Republican candidate and chose an Independent senator who caucused with the Democrats. And in 1892, Harrison lost the presidency to Grover Cleveland, who promised lower tariffs and a return to civil service reform.

Reply Quote

Date: 27/09/2025 16:58:38
From: buffy
ID: 2319218
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Thanks Neo.

Reply Quote

Date: 27/09/2025 17:09:26
From: Neophyte
ID: 2319219
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

buffy said:


Thanks Neo.

Thanks for putting up the last couple of days’ write-ups :-)

Reply Quote

Date: 27/09/2025 17:32:08
From: Peak Warming Man
ID: 2319222
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

>>Since being corralled on the six smaller reservations the previous year, the Lakotas had endured a deadly influenza epidemic that swept the U.S. and much of Europe and killed a number of Lakotas who were already weak from respiratory viruses. Then, hot winds in summer 1890 had burned dry first the Lakotas’ vegetable gardens, then their crops, and finally, the native hay.

Global warming.

Reply Quote

Date: 27/09/2025 17:42:09
From: buffy
ID: 2319226
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Neophyte said:


buffy said:

Thanks Neo.

Thanks for putting up the last couple of days’ write-ups :-)

No problems. If I notice it is up on her Facebook and you haven’t copied it to here, I’m happy to do it. I read it as I format it.

Reply Quote

Date: 27/09/2025 17:54:06
From: Witty Rejoinder
ID: 2319232
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Peak Warming Man said:


>>Since being corralled on the six smaller reservations the previous year, the Lakotas had endured a deadly influenza epidemic that swept the U.S. and much of Europe and killed a number of Lakotas who were already weak from respiratory viruses. Then, hot winds in summer 1890 had burned dry first the Lakotas’ vegetable gardens, then their crops, and finally, the native hay.

Global warming.

You’d be a good candidate for federal opposition leader with that attitude.

Reply Quote

Date: 28/09/2025 17:05:55
From: Neophyte
ID: 2319381
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 27, 2025 (Saturday)

Yesterday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released items from a third batch of documents associated with the criminal investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The Republicans have been slow-walking the release of those files since news broke that they mention President Donald J. Trump, a close friend of Epstein during the years of his sex trafficking. The batch of documents includes phone message logs, flight logs and manifests, and Epstein’s daily schedule.

Those documents show that billionaire Peter Thiel, who financially supported Vice President J.D. Vance’s Senate campaign, and Trump ally Steve Bannon had scheduled meetings with Epstein. And they show that Elon Musk had a pending trip to Epstein’s private island.

Trump responded hours later by ordering his administration to declassify and release all government records related to…Amelia Earhart. Earhart was an early American aviator, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. On July 2, 1937, she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean. Her disappearance and presumed death have fascinated people ever since.

But these are not the files most Americans are seeking right now.

Since yesterday, Trump has been active on social media. He has warned pregnant women in all caps: “DON’T USE TYLENOL UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, DON’T GIVE TYLENOL TO YOUR YOUNG CHILD FOR VIRTUALLY ANY REASON, BREAK UP THE MMR SHOT INTO THREE TOTALLY SEPARATE SHOTS (NOT MIXED!), TAKE CHICKEN P SHOT SEPARATELY, TAKE HEPATITAS B SHOT AT 12 YEARS OLD, OR OLDER, AND, IMPORTANTLY, TAKE VACCINE IN 5 SEPARATE MEDICAL VISITS!”

Trump is not a doctor. His recommendations appear to come from the secretary of health and human services he appointed, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is neither a doctor nor a scientist. The danger of giving medical advice without expertise shows: among other things, the MMR—measles, mumps, and rubella—vaccine is not available in three separate shots.

Trump has demanded that Microsoft fire its global affairs president, Lisa Monaco, who as deputy attorney general in the Biden administration helped coordinate the response of the Department of Justice to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. Trump posted on social media that Monaco is “a menace to U.S. National Security, especially given the major contracts that Microsoft has with the United States Government.”

Trump has claimed the FBI placed “274 FBI Agents into the Crowd just prior to, and during, the January 6th Hoax,” “probably acting as Agitators and Insurrectionists,” noting that this “is different from what Director Christopher Wray stated, over and over again!” He went on: “Christopher Wray, the then Director of the FBI, has some major explaining to do. That’s two in a row, Comey and Wray, who got caught LYING.”

In fact, a report from the Department of Justice inspector general shows that there were no undercover FBI agents at the January 6 riots. There were 26 confidential human sources who worked with the FBI during the events, but the inspector general found that none were “authorized by the FBI to enter the Capitol or a restricted area or to otherwise break the law on January 6, nor was any CHS directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6.”

When people pointed out that Trump himself appointed Wray, he posted: “For those who are interested, and there aren’t many of you, Christopher Wray was recommended to me by Sloppy Chris Christie when Chris was in my “good graces”—which was a very long time ago!”

Trump posted a cartoon today of an angry version of himself telling a sad version of Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell—yet another Trump appointee—“YOU’RE FIRED!” Trump is eager to get rid of Powell, who is not lowering interest rates to pump up the economy as fast as Trump wants.

Trump also posted: “At the request of Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, I am directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists. I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Zane Sparling, Fedor Zarkhin, and Zaeem Shaikh of The Oregonian/OregonLive compiled a timeline of protests against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland. They noted that the last arrest of protesters by Portland police was on June 19, bringing the total to 25, and the last arrest by federal officers was on July 4, bringing the total to 22.

After a Labor Day protest downtown, more than 100 people marched to the ICE building and set up a makeshift guillotine. Federal officers responded with tear gas and pepper balls. On September 4 the Fox News Channel aired a story about the Labor Day protests, but mixed in clips from 2020 showing protesters burning the base of the Thompson Elk Fountain and a federal officer pepper-spraying a protester. The next day, Trump said he was considering federal intervention. “They’ve ruined that city,” he said. “It’s like living in hell.”

On September 17, Portland officials said ICE had violated its land use agreement by holding detainees for longer than 12 hours, opening the door for the city to force ICE to move. Two days later, The Oregonian/OregonLive published a video of federal agents hitting nonviolent protesters and using chemical spray on them. Portland mayor Keith Wilson called for a full investigation; Trump said people in Portland are “out of control and crazy,” and vowed to “stop that pretty soon.”

On September 22 the president signed an executive order designating “Antifa” as “a major terrorist organization,” and three days later he called demonstrators in Portland “professional agitators and anarchists.” The day after that, September 26—yesterday—Democratic members of Oregon’s congressional delegation, including Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and representatives Suzanne Bonamici, Maxine Dexter, and Andrea Salinas, visited the ICE facility. They called out the violence against protesters and said they were “not at all satisfied with the answers and the evasion” they got from ICE agents about their treatment of detainees.

In response to Trump’s announcement that he was directing Secretary Hegeseth to send troops, authorized to use full force, to Portland, Senator Wyden—who has led the push to force the Treasury to turn over Epstein-related Treasury records of at least $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions to Senate investigators—posted a video of the ICE facility Trump claims is under siege.

There were no people there at all.

“My message to Donald Trump is this,” Wyden posted: “we don’t need you here. Stay the hell out of our city.”

Reply Quote

Date: 28/09/2025 17:25:24
From: SCIENCE
ID: 2319383
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Neophyte said:

in suspicious transactions to Senate investigators—posted a video of the ICE facility Trump claims is under siege.

There were no people there at all.

“My message to Donald Trump is this,” Wyden posted: “we don’t need you here. Stay the hell out of our city.”

so this is all a beat up and nobody has been abducted

Reply Quote

Date: 28/09/2025 17:31:10
From: buffy
ID: 2319384
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Thanks Neo…I was distracted by sorting pictures of wildflowers.

Reply Quote

Date: 29/09/2025 16:01:56
From: Neophyte
ID: 2319559
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 28, 2025 (Sunday)

Late last night, President Donald J. Trump shared on social media a deep fake video that appeared to be a clip from his daughter-in-law Lara Trump’s Fox News talk show My View. In the video’s split screen, Lara Trump, on the left, says: “President Donald J. Trump has announced a historic new healthcare system, the launch of America’s first MedBed hospitals and a national MedBed card for every citizen.” As she speaks, the video shows a building with the caption: “MEDBED HOSPITALS: THE NEW ERA IN HEALTHCARE.”

Then the video shows a clip of Trump saying: “Every American will soon receive their own MedBed card.” As the video shows what looks like a futuristic hospital, complete with what appear to be podlike beds, he continues: “With it, you’ll have guaranteed access to our new hospitals led by the top doctors in the nation, equipped with the most advanced technology in the world.”

The camera then goes back to Trump saying, “These facilities are safe”—the camera switches back to a hospital scene—“modern, and designed to restore every citizen to full health and strength.” The video then switches back to Trump, who says: “This is the beginning of a new era in American healthcare.”

Lara Trump takes over as a scene of people applauding Trump runs beside her. She says: “In this first phase, only a limited number of MedBed cards will be released. Registration details will be announced very soon.”

MedBeds are imaginary magical beds, sort of like a tanning bed, that diagnose or cure health problems instantly and painlessly. The idea is popular in QAnon forums, and believers claim that Trump is already secretly installing the beds in hospitals.

It is unclear why Trump posted an obviously fake video, touting an obviously fake product, although healthcare is uppermost in politics these days. The Democrats say they will not agree to the Republicans’ continuing resolution to keep the government open unless the Republicans agree to extend the premium tax credit that subsidizes health care insurance for people making between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty limit. Without that extension, millions of Americans will lose their health insurance, and healthcare premiums for everyone in the Affordable Health Care market will go up, often dramatically.

If MedBeds were real and “every citizen” could use them, as the deep fake video suggests, no one would need to worry about losing their healthcare insurance.

Someone took the video down from Trump’s timeline this morning.

On Friday, Republicans took the stand that Democrats would pay for shutting down the government. A White House official told Dasha Burns of Politico that Trump would not negotiate. “He read all the sh*t they’re asking for, and he said, ‘on second thought, go f*ck yourself,’” the White House official told Burns. Yesterday, though, Punchbowl reported that Trump will meet with Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) are expected to be there as well.

The government is funded through Tuesday, September 30.

Also taking place Tuesday is the meeting Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth abruptly called last week for hundreds of the nation’s top military officers at the Quantico, Virginia, Marine Corps base. When Trump talked to reporters on Thursday, he did not appear to understand that Hegseth had called U.S. military officers to Quantico, appearing to think he had invited military leaders from other countries. “I love it, I mean I think it’s great,” Trump said. “Let him be friendly with the generals and admirals from all over the world. You act like this is a bad thing. Isn’t it nice that people are coming from all over the world to be with us?”

Today Tara Copp, Dan Lamothe, Noah Robertson, and Alex Horton of the Washington Post reported that Trump has decided that he will go to the gathering himself.

Trump told Yamiche Alcindor and Alexandra Marquez of NBC News: “It’s really just a very nice meeting talking about how well we’re doing militarily, talking about being in great shape, talking about a lot of good, positive things. It’s just a good message,” Trump said. “We have some great people coming in and it’s just an ‘esprit de corps.’ You know the expression ‘esprit de corps’? That’s all it’s about. We’re talking about what we’re doing, what they’re doing, and how we’re doing.”

In a phone interview with NBC White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor today, Trump suggested he was backing off from the threat he posted on social media to send troops to Portland to handle “domestic terrorists.” The Democratic governor of Oregon, Tina Kotek, has told Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem that there is no need for troops and they do not have the authority to deploy the military there. “We can manage our own local public safety needs,” Kotek said. “There is no insurrection, there is no threat to national security.”

Evan Watson of KGW8 in Portland, Oregon, reported that Trump told Alcindor they were “looking at” sending troops. “I spoke to the governor, she was very nice,” Trump added. “But I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different.’ They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place…it looks like terrible.”

In fact, Zane Sparling, Fedor Zarkhin, and Zaeem Shaikh of The Oregonian/OregonLive noted yesterday that Trump’s first threat to send federal troops to Portland came on September 5, a day after the Fox News Channel aired a “special report” about a protest that had taken place four days before, on Labor Day. The report about the Labor Day protest misleadingly mixed in clips from 2020 showing protesters burning the base of the Thompson Elk fountain and a federal officer pepper-spraying a person.

This afternoon Hegseth called 200 members of the Oregon National Guard into federal service for 60 days. Less than six hours later, Oregon attorney general Dan Rayfield sued President Trump, Secretary of Defense Hegseth, Secretary of Homeland Security Noem, and their respective departments, saying the National Guard has been unlawfully deployed for law enforcement duties.

Late this afternoon, Trump praised his remodeling of the Oval Office to include copious gold fixtures, some of which match polyurethane appliqué available from the home improvement store Home Depot. On social media, Trump posted: “Some of the highest quality 24 Karat Gold used in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room of the White House. Foreign Leaders, and everyone else, ‘freak out’ when they see the quality and beauty. Best Oval Office ever, in terms of success and look!!! President DJT”

Reply Quote

Date: 29/09/2025 17:27:11
From: buffy
ID: 2319573
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

I don’t know…just when you think he can’t come up with anything more ridiculous…he comes up with something more ridiculous.

Reply Quote

Date: 30/09/2025 15:16:09
From: Neophyte
ID: 2319771
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 29, 2025 (Monday)

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) left a meeting with President Donald J. Trump this afternoon without a deal to keep the government open past the last day of the fiscal year, which is tomorrow: Tuesday. The president and Vice President J.D. Vance appeared to consider opening up negotiations over extending the premium tax subsidies for healthcare insurance that will expire at the end of 2025 because of the budget reconciliation bill the Republicans passed in July, but they insisted the Democrats must fund the government before talks begin.

“We think when they say ‘later,’ they mean ‘never,” Schumer told reporters. He noted that Democrats had asked repeatedly for meetings about the measure and the Republicans refused, so Democrats had no input on the continuing resolution. Jeffries pointed out that far from being willing to work with Democrats, House Republicans have left town. “House Democrats are here,” he said. “Senate Democrats are here. The Senate is ready to act. House Republicans on vacation right now…. They’re not serious about actually reaching a bipartisan agreement that meets the needs of the American people. If House Republicans were serious, they’d be here right now.”

Schumer told reporters that in their discussions, Trump did not appear to be aware that Americans are facing huge increases in their healthcare insurance payments because of the budget reconciliation bill.

Tonight, Trump’s social media account posted a deepfake video of Schumer and Jeffries speaking to reporters. In the doctored video, Schumer talks with Mexican music playing in the background, while Jeffries stands beside him wearing what appears to be a colorful Mexican sombrero and sporting a mustache with the ends waxed and turned up.

In the video, Schumer’s image is made to say: “There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Nobody likes Democrats anymore. We have no voters left because of all of our woke, trans bullsh*t. Not even Black people want to vote for us anymore, even Latinos hate us. So we need new voters. And if we give all these illegal aliens free healthcare, we might be able to get them on our side so they can vote for us. They can’t even speak English, so they won’t realize we’re just a bunch of woke pieces of sh*t, you know? At least for a while, until they learn English and they realize they hate us too.”

When Lawrence O’Donnell asked Jeffries to comment on the video, he responded: “It’s a disgusting video and we’re going to continue to make clear: bigotry will get you nowhere.”

Jeffries continued: “We are fighting to protect the healthcare of the American people in the face of an unprecedented Republican assault. On all the things, Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, Republicans are closing our hospitals, nursing homes, and community-based health clinics, and have effectively shut down medical research in the United States of America. Clearly, Donald Trump and Republicans know that they have a very weak position, because they are hurting everyday Americans while continuing to reward their billionaire donors, just like they did in that one big, ugly bill with massive tax breaks. Democrats are united in the House and the Senate, and the point that we’ve made will continue to be clear. We are fighting to lower the high cost of healthcare, prevent these dramatically increased premiums, copays, and deductibles that will take place in a matter of days unless Republicans are willing to act in terms of renewing the Affordable Care Act tax credits.”

Hugo Lowell of The Guardian reported today that White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has been leading the administration’s strikes on boats that the White House claims were smuggling drugs to the U.S., although it has offered no evidence of that claim either to lawmakers or to the public. Julie Turkewitz of the New York Times reported that “n an interview, one woman who identified herself as the wife of one of the dead men said that her husband was a fisherman with four children who left one day for work and never came back.”

Tomorrow is not only the last day of the fiscal year, it is also the date Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth set for what was to be his own highly unusual meeting with more than 800 military leaders and their senior enlisted advisors. Hegseth did not specify the purpose of the meeting. Since he called it hastily last week, news reports have suggested that he intended to talk to the generals and admirals about “soldier ethos.” Now Trump says he intends to go to the meeting himself and give the military leaders a pep talk.

We’ll see.

Noah Robertson, Tara Copp, Alex Horton, and Dan Lamothe of the Washington Post reported today that eight current and former officials have told them there is a deep rift between the political appointees at the Pentagon and the military leaders there.

The journalists report that in a reordering of U.S. military priorities, Hegseth is withdrawing forces from Europe, reducing the concentration of power and consolidating commands abroad while focusing on using the military in the U.S. and neighboring countries. According to the reporters, General Dan Caine, Trump’s hand-picked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, shares others’ concerns about the reworking of U.S. priorities.

Also tomorrow, as Michael Sainato of The Guardian reports, the resignations of more than 100,000 federal workers will take effect as part of the Trump administration’s cuts to the federal workforce. Those leaving say they were forced out through fear and pressure from administration officials, reminding Sainato of the comment from Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, who wants to destroy the modern government. Last October he said of federal workers: “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down.… We want to put them in trauma.”

This year’s cuts to the government workforce will mean the loss of at least 275,000 workers, the largest decline in civilian federal employment in a single year since World War II.

Reply Quote

Date: 1/10/2025 18:01:15
From: Neophyte
ID: 2320047
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

September 30. 2025 (Tuesday)

Last Thursday, September 25, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suddenly announced he was calling about 800 of the nation’s top military generals and admirals, along with their top enlisted advisors, to meet at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Virginia, today. Such a meeting was unprecedented, and its suddenness meant military leaders across the world had to drop everything to run to Washington, D.C., at enormous financial cost for the country. Under those extraordinary circumstances, speculation about what Hegseth intended to say or do at the meeting has been widespread.

Now we know. This morning, in front of a giant flag backdrop that echoed the opening scene from the movie Patton, Hegseth harangued the career military leaders, pacing as if he were giving a TED talk. The event was streamed live to the public, making it clear that the hurry to get everyone to Washington, D.C., in person was not about secrecy.

In his speech, Hegseth reiterated his vision of a military based in what he calls the “warrior ethos.” Ignoring the military’s mission of preventing wars through deterrence, its professional and highly educated officer corps, and its modern structure as a triumph of logistics, he told the military leaders that today was “the liberation of America’s warriors, in name, in deed and in authorities. You kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct and don’t necessarily belong always in polite society.”

He claimed that “we have the strongest, most powerful, most lethal, and most prepared military on the planet. That is true, full stop. Nobody can touch us. It’s not even close.” But then Hegseth, who became defense secretary from his position as a weekend host on the Fox News Channel, complained that “our warriors” are not “led by the most capable and qualified combat leaders.”

He claimed that “foolish and reckless politicians” had forced the military “to focus on the wrong things” and that it had promoted too many leaders “based on their race, based on gender quotas.” “We became the woke department,” he said. “We are done with that sh*t.” He is loosening rules about hazing and bullying, changing physical fitness reforms with the idea that they will get women out of combat roles, and prohibiting beards, which will force Black men out of the service, for Black men suffer at a much higher rate than white men do from a chronic skin condition that makes shaving painful and can cause scarring.

He also said he was tired of seeing “fat troops” and “fat generals and admirals,” and that he would institute a second physical fitness test every year.

“f the words I’m speaking today are making your heart sink,” Hegseth said, “then you should do the honorable thing and resign.”

The military leaders listened to Hegseth without expression, in keeping with the military’s longstanding tradition of rejecting partisanship. While Hegseth paused for applause that did not materialize, he seemed to be playing to the cameras rather than his live audience.

In contrast, when President Donald J. Trump took the stage, he seemed uncomfortable at the lack of audience participation in what was essentially a rally speech. “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before,” he began. “This is very interesting. Don’t laugh, don’t laugh. You’re not allowed to do that. You know what? Just have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud. And if you want to do anything you want, you can do anything you want. And if you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room.”

The president who received five draft deferments—four for college, one for bad feet—continued to a room full of career officers: “Of course, there goes your rank, there goes your future. But you just feel nice and loose, okay, because we’re all on the same team. And I was told that, sir, you won’t hear a murmur in the room.”

For the next 70 minutes, he spoke slowly, slurring words, delivering to the hundreds of professionals who had rushed from around the world to attend this meeting a rambling, incoherent stream of words that jumped from what appeared to be prepared remarks to his own improvisation. He covered the “Gulf of America,” the seven or eight wars he claims to have ended, the “millions and millions of lives” he has saved, nuclear weapons (one of the two “n-words” he informed the military leaders you can’t say), his demanding “beautiful paper, the gorgeous paper” with “the real gold writing” when he signs things (“I love my signature. I really do. Everyone loves my signature,” he said), finding $31 billion on “the tariff shelf,” making Canada the 51st state, his dislike of the “aesthetics” of certain Navy ships, wild claims about his 2024 electoral victory, the press, America First, immigrants from prisons and mental institutions, and Venezuelans not daring to go out in boats for fear the U.S. will “blow out of existence.”

The speech was highly partisan, attacking former president Joe Biden by name eleven times, calling him “the auto pen” and claiming his administration was really run by “radical left lunatics.” “We were not respected with Biden,” Trump said.

“They looked at him falling downstairs every day. Every day, the guy is falling downstairs. He said, It’s not our President. We can’t have it. I’m very careful. You know, when I walk downstairs for, like, a month, stairs, like these stairs, I’m very—I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record. Just try not to fall, because it doesn’t work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen and it became a part of their legacy. We don’t want that. You walk nice and easy. You’re not having—you don’t have to set any record. Be cool. Be cool when you walk down, but don’t—don’t pop down the stairs. So one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a President, but he would bop down those stairs. I’ve never seen it. Da-da, da-da, da-da, bop, bop, bop. He’d go down the stairs. Wouldn’t hold on. I said, It’s great. I don’t want to do it. I guess I could do it. But eventually, bad things are going to happen, and it only takes once. But he did a lousy job as president. A year ago, we were a dead country. We were dead. This country was going to hell.”

Like Hegseth’s, Trump’s speech seemed to have been designed to announce a new mission for the military. He claimed the U.S. has domestic enemies, “insurrectionists” “paid by the radical left,” and said that cities “that are run by the radical-left Democrats…they’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them out one by one. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war, too. It’s a war from within…. And I told Pete we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military—National Guard, but military—because we’re going into Chicago very soon. That’s a big city with an incompetent governor. Stupid governor.” Trump told the audience that “our inner cities” are “a big part of war now.”

A former defense official told Jack Detsch and Leo Shane III of Politico the meeting was “a waste of time for a lot of people who emphatically had better things they could and should be doing. It’s also an inexcusable strategic risk to concentrate so many leaders in the operational chain of command in the same publicly known time and place, to convey an inane message of little merit.”

Either one of those speeches, in full view of the American public and foreign governments, would be enough to torpedo an administration before Trump. But the day was not over.

The Senate adjourned today without agreeing to the continuing resolution the House passed to fund the government until November 21. The Republicans refused to include the Democrats in any of their negotiations, and the Democrats, whose votes the Senate needed to pass the measure, said they would not agree to a continuing resolution unless it included a fix to extend the premium tax credits that support healthcare insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act. While Republicans extended the 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, they let the premium tax credits run out at the end of this year. Without that support, healthcare insurance premiums will skyrocket.

“We are shutting down,” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said tonight, “because Donald Trump thinks he’s a king. This was totally avoidable, but Donald Trump told Republicans, ‘Don’t negotiate with Democrats.’… We didn’t shut down when Joe Biden was president. Why? Because Democrats, when they were in the majority, took their responsibility to govern seriously, reached out across the aisle, and built bipartisan funding agreements with the Republicans…. We aren’t asking for the moon. We are simply saying, we don’t want health insurance premiums to go up by 75% on the American public. That’s what Republicans have engineered as a means to pay for their giant tax cut for billionaires and corporations. We aren’t asking for some big new healthcare program. We’re simply saying, if we’re gonna vote for a budget, we want that budget to not increase premiums on families across this country by 75%, bankrupting American families. You know what else we want? We want this president to start acting… lawfully.”

House Democrats have been running a 24-hour live stream in which they and guests are talking about the shutdown and the importance of protecting health care.

Republicans seem aware that shutting down the government at the same time many Americans see their healthcare premiums jump dramatically will not be popular. Although the Hatch Act prohibits the use of government resources for partisan gain, the White House ignored the act to blame Democrats for the shutdown. This afternoon, Emine Yücel of Talking Points Memo reported that federal employees at the Social Security Administration, Small Business Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Commerce—and as well as other agencies—received an email blaming Democrats for the looming shutdown. It said Trump “opposes a government shutdown,” but Democrats were “blocking this Continuing Resolution in the U.S. Senate due to unrelated policy demands.”

The website for the Department of Housing and Urban Development showed a banner reading: “The Radical Left are going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their $1.5 trillion wish lists of demands. The Trump administration wants to keep the government open for the American people.” Melody Schreiber of The Guardian reported that the Department of Veterans’ Affairs said in a statement that “Radical liberals in Congress” were attempting to shut down the government “to achieve their crazy fantasy of open borders, ‘transgender’ for everybody and men competing in women’s sports.”

This evening, Trump posted on social media three pictures of Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) in the Oval Office with bright red caps placed on the Resolute Desk in front of them bearing the words “Trump 2028.”

But Trump’s ability to project dominance is weakening, and today’s performance didn’t help.

In Boston today, Judge William G. Young answered an anonymous correspondent who trolled the judge on June 19 by writing a postcard that said: “TRUMP HAS PARDONS AND TANKS…. WHAT DO YOU HAVE?” Young reproduced the writing at the top of his decision finding that Trump’s attempted deportations of legal residents for their pro-Palestinian speech violated the First Amendment. Then the judge answered: “Dear Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People of the United States—you and me—have our magnificent Constitution.”

Judge Young explained how Trump’s officers are using fear—through masked ICE agents, for example—“to terrorize Americans” so they stop resisting the president’s attempts to silence opposition. But, the judge went on, “The United States is a great nation, not because any of us say so. It is great because we still practice our frontier tradition of selflessness for the good of us all. Strangers go out of their way to help strangers when they see a need. In times of fire, flood, and national disaster, everyone pitches in to help people we’ve never met and first responders selflessly risk their lives for others. Hundreds of firefighters rushed into the Twin Towers on 9/11 without hesitation desperate to find and save survivors. That’s who we are. And on distant battlefields our military ‘fought and died for the men marched among.’ Each day, I recognize (to paraphrase Lincoln again) that the brave men and women, living and dead, who have struggled in our Nation’s service have hallowed our Constitutional freedom far above my (or anyone’s) poor power to add or detract. The only Constitutional rights upon which we can depend are those we extend to the weakest and most reviled among us.”

The judge concluded: “I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected.

“Is he correct?”

Reply Quote

Date: 2/10/2025 15:33:08
From: Neophyte
ID: 2320193
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

October 1, 2025 (Wednesday)

Last night, as the government barreled toward a shutdown, President Donald J. Trump posted yet another doctored video on social media. This one showed House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) reacting to Trump’s deepfake video of September 29 that faked Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) attacking Democrats and racial minorities and showed Jeffries sporting a Mexican sombrero and waxed mustache while Mexican music played.

On September 29, Jeffries told MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell: “It’s a disgusting video and we’re going to continue to make clear: bigotry will get you nowhere. We are fighting to protect the healthcare of the American people in the face of an unprecedented Republican assault.”

Trump’s video from last night replayed Jeffries’s statement up to “bigotry will get you nowhere.” Then four images of Trump, each wearing a sombrero and playing an instrument in a mariachi band, popped up behind Jeffries, whose image suddenly had a sombrero and a mustache again.

The president does not appear to be taking the government shutdown very seriously.

Republicans are though: not to resolve it, but to use it to attack Democrats. Republicans control the Senate and could end the filibuster for the continuing resolution that would fund the government, thus enabling them to pass it through the Senate with a simple majority if they wanted to. Instead, they want Democratic votes for it, evidently wanting to make sure Republicans alone do not take the blame for their budget reconciliation bill of July as its deeply unpopular measures are becoming clear.

That measure cut Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits as well as a slew of other programs. While it extended tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, Republicans permitted the premium tax credit for purchasing health insurance under the Affordable Healthcare Act to lapse at the end of this year. The end of that program is already sending healthcare insurance premiums skyrocketing.

Democrats say they will not agree to a continuing resolution to fund the government until the premium tax credits are extended past their end date of 2025. Republicans want to force Democrats to abandon this demand, thus getting at least a semblance of a buy-in to the dramatic cuts that are already hitting Americans hard.

Administration officials are making sure the shutdown doesn’t affect their own priorities. They have prioritized the $20 billion bailout of Argentina’s failing economy as essential, so it will proceed. The bailout will help right-wing leader Javier Milei, a Trump ally. Judd Legum of Popular Information reported Monday that the bailout will also help billionaire hedge fund manager Rob Citrone, an associate of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who has invested heavily in Argentine companies and in Argentine debt.

The White House says construction of Trump’s ballroom in place of the East Wing of the White House will also continue during the shutdown.

Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought has weaponized the shutdown by continuing his illegal impoundments of congressionally approved funding, but this time using them solely against states with Democratic senators. Today he said he is canceling $8 billion in funding for programs that he claims “fuel the Left’s climate agenda.” “The projects are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA,” Vought posted on social media. Amelia Benavides-Colón of NOTUS reports that states have not yet been notified of the plan.

Vought also announced on social media: “Roughly $18 billion in New York City infrastructure projects have been put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional DEI principles.” He said he was referring to funding for the Hudson River Tunnel Project known as Gateway, and the Second Avenue Subway project.

The publication of a new document today shows that the administration has launched another power grab, this one in foreign affairs. On September 29, Trump signed an executive order giving to Qatar security guarantees that are much like those guaranteed by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The order says: “The United States shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States. In the event of such an attack, the United States shall take all lawful and appropriate measures—including diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military—to defend the interests of the United States and of the State of Qatar and to restore peace and stability.”

An executive order is not a treaty and can be overturned by another president, but the declaration of a military commitment to a foreign nation without ratification by the Senate as the Constitution requires shows the belief of administration officials that they can act as they wish without consulting Congress.

The agreement appeared to come to pass during the Monday visit of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House, and likely reflects Qatar’s demand for a guarantee that Israel’s recent strike on Qatar would not be repeated. But the deal shows just how ill advised Trump’s illegal demand for, and then receipt of, a $400 million luxury 747-8 from Qatar turned out to be, for now it certainly looks as if Qatar received U.S. military commitments in exchange for a used plane.

Usually, administrations asserting authoritarian power make gains because they are popular. The Trump administration, though, is neither popular nor likely to become more popular as its policies hurt ordinary Americans.

Today the National Employment Report of the payroll processing company ADP said that the U.S. lost 32,000 jobs in the private sector in September. The ADP National Employment Report measures the labor market based on weekly payroll data of more than 26 million private-sector employees. ADP also revised August’s employment growth, which had been recorded as 54,000 jobs, down to a loss of 3,000.

The independent ADP report has taken on additional significance since Trump has undermined the U.S. government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). In August he fired the commissioner of the BLS Erika McEntarfer, complaining that she had “RIGGED” jobs figures “to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.” To replace her, he nominated right-wing economist E.J. Antoni, whose scholarship was not nearly as strong as his support for Trump. Then Em Steck and Andrew Kaczynski of CNN uncovered a racist, sexist, and anti-LGBTQ Twitter account of Antoni’s.

Today Trump withdrew Antoni’s nomination after Republican senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska refused to meet with him, suggesting he could not be confirmed.
Also today, Leonardo Garcia Venegas, an American citizen born in Florida but currently living in Baldwin, Alabama, and working in construction, filed a lawsuit against the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice and officials including Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and Attorney General Pam Bondi. The complaint says that “wice in the past few months, federal immigration officers have raided…private construction sites…without a warrant, and detained Leo simply for being at work. Both times, Leo told the officers he was a citizen and showed them his REAL ID, an identification card issued only to citizens and lawful residents. But the officers still wouldn’t let him go.”

“Once immigration officers are on a site,” the suit alleges, “they preemptively seize everybody they think looks undocumented. And they detain these workers indefinitely—even those who have a REAL ID—until the officers eventually check the legal status of the people they’ve detained. Sometimes it takes 20 minutes; sometimes it takes days.”

On September 8, in a case that permits Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to use racial profiling, Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that such profiling is acceptable because “f the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.” In practice, though, reports of abuses have become so commonplace that such encounters have been dubbed “Kavanaugh stops.”

The suit lists similar detentions of U.S. citizens, for example:

“Jorge Luis Hernández Viramontes, a U.S. citizen, was arrested while working at a carwash. Immigration agents took him to a nearby warehouse for questioning even though he had shown them his state-issued identification.”

“Javier Ramirez, a U.S. citizen, was handcuffed during a workplace raid at a tow yard where he worked despite screaming, ‘I have my passport! I have my ID! I’m a U.S. citizen!’”
“Jonathan Guerrero, a U.S. citizen, was handcuffed at gunpoint by immigration officers while working at a car wash in his hometown.”

“Julio Noriega, a U.S. citizen, was detained after he handed out his resume at a Jiffy Lube and put in the back of a van without the chance to tell the officers he’s a citizen. The officers drove Mr. Noriega around for four hours and then held him at a detention center for six more hours before someone checked his wallet and realized he was a citizen.”

“Andrea Velez, a U.S. citizen, was tackled by immigration officers on the sidewalk between her mom’s car and her office door.”

“Hediberto Ramirez Perez was arrested during a workplace raid at a nutrition-bar factory despite carrying his employment-verification ID card; immigration officers told him, ‘We don’t care about that for the moment.’”

Such detentions, the lawsuit alleges, violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. Venegas hopes to make this a class action suit to stop the government from continuing its abusive policies.

Reply Quote

Date: 2/10/2025 15:49:18
From: Michael V
ID: 2320196
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Ta.

Reply Quote

Date: 3/10/2025 15:40:03
From: Neophyte
ID: 2320498
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

October 2, 2025 (Thursday)

At about 1:00 on Tuesday morning, federal agents from Border Patrol, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) raided an apartment building on Chicago’s South Shore Drive. Using helicopters and large vehicles, as well as flash-bang grenades, and dressed in military fatigues, agents broke down the doors of the residents of the five-story building and pulled them from their homes in zip ties, some of them naked. Agents left the people tied up outside for hours before letting all but 37 of them go. The apartments residents returned to were trashed.

Cindy Hernandez of the Chicago Sun-Times reported on the raid, noting that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said some of those arrested “are believed to be involved in drug trafficking and distribution, weapons crimes and immigration violators.” It also said the neighborhood was “a location known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates.”

But, as Hernandez reports, DHS did not offer any evidence to support its assertions. Some of the people detained during the raid are U.S. citizens.

Eyewitness Eboni Watson told Cate Cauguiran, Craig Wall, Tre Ward, and Lissette Nuñez of ABC News 7 that the people “was terrified. The kids was crying. People was screaming. They looked very distraught. I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner, because they was bringing the kids down, too, had them zip tied to each other. That’s all I kept asking. What is the morality? Where’s the human? One of them literally laughed. He was standing right here. He said, ‘f*ck them kids.’”

Eyewitness Darrell Ballard told the reporters: “We’re under siege. We’re being invaded by our own military.”

Today, Charlie Savage and Eric Schmitt of the New York Times reported that the Trump administration informed congressional committees that the president has decided the U.S. is in a formal “armed conflict” with the drug cartels the administration has labeled terrorist organizations. If the U.S. is engaged in such an armed conflict, the administration said, those suspected of smuggling drugs for the cartels are “unlawful combatants.”

This declaration backfills the administration’s justification for striking three boats in the Caribbean in September, killing 17. According to international law, Savage and Schmitt explain, in an armed conflict it’s lawful for a country to kill enemy fighters even when they don’t pose a direct threat.

This redefinition is problematic not just because most overdose deaths in the U.S. come from fentanyl from Mexico, not drugs from Venezuela, the home base of the boats the administration struck. Legal experts say that trafficking an illicit consumer product is not the same as armed conflict. It is problematic also because the administration did not identify any of the drug cartels it claims it is engaging in armed conflict, who must be engaged in organized armed combat to be part of an armed conflict.

Even more problematic, as retired judge advocate general (JAG) lawyer Geoffrey S. Corn, who was the Army’s senior advisor for interpreting the laws of war, told Savage and Schmitt, the administration’s declaration is an “abuse” that crosses a major legal line. “This is not stretching the envelope,” he said. “This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart.”

Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, posted: “Every American should be alarmed that Pres Trump has decided he can wage secret wars against anyone he labels an enemy. Drug cartels must be stopped, but declaring war & ordering lethal military force without Congress or public knowledge—nor legal justification—is unacceptable.”

The declaration means that the administration is laying claim that the U.S. is in an active armed conflict, which would give the president extraordinary wartime powers. This dovetails with the September 17 demand of DHS that the “media and the far left” must stop “the demonization of President Trump, his supporters, and DHS law enforcement.” It also supports Trump’s warning to military leaders on Tuesday that “e’re under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy,” followed by complaints that “Venezuela emptied its prison population into our country” and a vow to “straighten…out” the cities “run by the radical left Democrats.”

That assault is underway now, not only through raids like the one in Chicago on Tuesday, but also by administration figures who are using the government shutdown to hurt Democrats and their constituencies. Independent journalist Marisa Kabas reported this morning that the Department of Education changed out-of-office email replies for furloughed employees from generic messages to ones blaming Democrats for the government shutdown. Leah Feiger and Vittoria Elliott of Wired reported that when employees changed their out-of-office responses back to neutral language, the message changed back to blaming the Democrats.

Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought has vowed to cut $26 billion from projects in New York City that Congress approved, despite the illegality of such impoundments, and has vowed to slash the federal government, again without a lawful basis for such cuts. A shutdown gives Vought no more legal authority than he ever had.

Jordain Carney of Politico reports that even Republicans are concerned about the damage Vought is doing to their own constituents as he attempts to weaponize the government against Democrats. But, as Carney reports, Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) says the Republicans have no control over what Vought might do.

The nation’s rapid advance toward authoritarianism is one story right now, but there is another: the administration is rotting from inside.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo reports that the groundwork required for the mass layoffs Vought has threatened is not apparent, suggesting the administration is trying to project power it does not have.

The Republicans are trying to pin the blame for the shutdown on the Democrats, but Trump is apparently so unstable he is hurting their cause. The Democrats are insisting they will not be complicit in slashing through Americans’ healthcare. The law the Republicans passed in July—the one they call the “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act”—extended tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations but permitted the premium tax credits that subsidized the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) to expire at the end of 2025, and people are already seeing dramatic increases in their healthcare premiums.

On Tuesday, after his 70-minute incoherent speech to the nation’s top military leaders, Trump proved Democrats’ point when he told White House reporters that the administration intends to use the shutdown to cut programs the American people want, including ones that give them access to medical care.

Trump said: “We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for and irreversible by them. Like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like. And you all know Russell Vought, he’s become very popular recently because he can trim the budget to a level that you couldn’t do any other way. So they’re taking a risk by having a shutdown because because of the shutdown, we can do things medically, and other ways, including benefits. We can cut large numbers of people out.” Then, as if recognizing that he had just proved the Democrats’ point, he added a non sequitur: “We don’t want to do that, but we don’t want fraud, waste, and abuse, and you know we’re cutting that.”

Trump reiterated his support for Vought’s program today, posting: “I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent. I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.”

This is another unforced error, with Trump tying himself to Project 2025 after assuring voters before the 2024 election that he had nothing to do with it and knew nothing about it. An NBC News poll from late September 2024 showed that voters who knew about Project 2025 hated it. Only 4% of voters said they liked the plan. It was unpopular even among voters identifying as MAGA Republicans; only 9% of them liked it. As the administration has put Project 2025 into place, it’s unlikely people like it more than they did before. Government agencies are not “Democrat Agencies”; they are agencies that provide services and protections for all Americans. Cuts to them have been widely unpopular.

Yesterday, the day after Trump’s 70-minute rambling talk in front of the nation’s top military leaders, Representative Madeleine Dean (D-PA) confronted House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). A camera caught the exchange:

Dean: “The president is unhinged. He is unwell.”

Johnson: “A lot of folks on your side are, too. I don’t control him.”

Dean: “Oh my God, please. That performance in front of the generals?”

Johnson: “I didn’t see it.”

Dean: “That is so dangerous! You know I serve on Foreign Affairs and Appropriations, this is a collision of those two things. Our allies are looking elsewhere. Our enemies are laughing. You have a president who is unwell.”

Johnson: “I just left the Speaker’s apartment.”

Trump has been posting on social media often since Tuesday but has not appeared in public. Vice President J.D. Vance took the White House press briefing today to answer questions about the government shutdown.

Reply Quote

Date: 4/10/2025 17:08:13
From: Neophyte
ID: 2320798
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

October 3, 2025 (Friday)

Although President Donald J. Trump has not appeared in public since Tuesday, his social media account has been posting up a storm. Just three weeks ago, administration officials were insisting that Democrats were responsible for hateful political speech. Trump’s account last night posted images of prominent Democrats, including former President Joe Biden, with the heading “THE PARTY OF HATE, EVIL, AND SATAN.” It went on to say: “The Democratic Party is Dead! They have no leadership! o message! o hope! heir only message for America is to hate Trump!”

The Trump account posted another AI video last night, as well. Set to the music of Blue Öyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” the video shows Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance as band members—Trump on cowbell and Vance on drums—and features Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought as the Grim Reaper.

As the video shows the U.S. Capitol, changed song lyrics say: “Here the power’s gone.” Under Vought, they say: “Russ Vought is the reaper. He wields the pen, the funds, and the brain… Dems you babies… gonna tie your hands… won’t be able to fly… cry baby end your plan.” The video shows people as zombies walking past an unemployment office, then shows Democratic leaders behind a chorus of “blah, blah, blah, blah, blah” before ending with a Halloween-nightmare image of AI ghouls trick-or-treating in MAGA garb.

Veterans of the U.S. national security community posting as The Steady State noted that “a president posting a video depicting his opponents as prey for the Grim Reaper and zombies outside the ‘unemployment office’ is the opposite of what we expect in a healthy democracy.”

Russell Vought is not an elected official. He is best known for his contributions to Project 2025, a plan for gutting the U.S. government and installing a theocratic dictatorship. Project 2025 was so unpopular when it came to light last summer—only 4% of voters who knew about it wanted to see it enacted—that Trump insisted he had nothing to do with it. Trolling the American people with the idea that Congress has no power and Russell Vought is running the government to destroy it is an odd choice for a president who is already deeply unpopular.

But turning the government over to unelected individuals who ignore the law is a theme for this presidency. First, billionaire Elon Musk, who ran the “Department of Government Efficiency,” (DOGE) apparently with the help of Vought, impounded congressionally appropriated funds and fired government workers. Then reports surfaced that deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller was in charge of deportations, detentions, and the attempt to get rid of diversity programs, while also exercising influence over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Now Trump appears to be turning the reins of the government over to Russell Vought.

Turning the powers of the government over to unelected bureaucrats has not been going terribly well. On September 25, from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (HSGAC), top-ranking Democrat Gary Peters (D-MI) and his staff issued a report on the actions of DOGE, which slashed through government funding and fired employees on a crusade to combat what they called “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

The hurried actions of those working for DOGE collapsed vital services, leaving government officials backpedaling. On September 24 the Associated Press examined the effect of DOGE on the General Services Administration (GSA), an agency established in the 1940s to manage the thousands of workplaces used by federal employees. DOGE employees targeted the GSA as a prime example of waste, fraud, and abuse. They abruptly canceled almost half of the leases for government space—without telling the tenants—and called for generating savings by selling off federally owned buildings. They also cut staff at headquarters by 79%, portfolio managers by 65%, and facilities managers by 35%.

The Associated Press reports that 131 leases expired without the government actually leaving the office space, costing the agencies steep fees. Now officials are asking hundreds of GSA workers to come back after what the Associated Press says “amounts to a seven-month paid vacation.” Chad Becker, a former real estate official with the GSA, told the Associated Press: “Ultimately, the outcome was the agency was left broken and understaffed. They didn’t have the people they needed to carry out basic functions.”

The report from Senator Peters suggests that DOGE was efficient in at least one way: individuals associated with DOGE created databases that “contain highly sensitive personally identifiable information on every American” and that “can be manipulated with little to no oversight.” The report found even more concerning that administration officials “were unable or unwilling” to say who was “functionally in charge of significant policy changes at these agencies.”

Some agencies couldn’t say what data DOGE had accessed or what the DOGE teams were doing. Some agency officials would not directly acknowledge they had DOGE teams, although Executive Order 14158 required each agency to have at least four DOGE people. And agency officials refused to show investigators offices or the infrastructure of Starlink, the satellite internet service controlled by Elon Musk.

The report concluded that DOGE has violated the law and created unprecedented privacy and cybersecurity risks, while the secrecy surrounding DOGE prevented congressional oversight and public accountability. The report called for shutting down the accessible database DOGE created, revoking DOGE access to private information, reasserting agency control, identifying DOGE employees, and conducting a comprehensive audit of what sensitive data DOGE compiled.

The escalating raids on undocumented immigrants are also running afoul of the law. Tuesday’s raid on an apartment building in Chicago, in which residents, including U.S. citizens, were detained, has galvanized opposition. Today, after reports that children were zip tied, separated from their parents, and detained for several hours, Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker directed state agencies to evaluate the treatment of children during the raid and to “determine any formal steps or investigations that the state should initiate to hold federal agents accountable.”

Today in Nashville, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw rebuked the Justice Department and its top officials for prosecuting Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an undocumented immigrant, on federal charges in what appears to be a vindictive prosecution. Crenshaw said officials from the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security might have prosecuted Abrego for filing a successful lawsuit challenging his unlawful deportation to El Salvador. Alan Feuer of the New York Times notes that vindictive prosecution motions are very hard to win, and the fact that the court is even considering it is “a hugely embarrassing blow to the Trump administration.”

A second federal court today rejected the administration’s attempt to end birthright citizenship, saying it is unconstitutional.

On Monday, Hugo Lowell of The Guardian reported that Stephen Miller has directed the administration’s strikes on Venezuelan boats, taking precedence over secretary of state and national security advisor Marco Rubio.

Today, Defense Secretary Hegseth announced he had ordered a strike on another boat off the coast of Venezuela, killing four people Hegseth called “narcoterrorists.” Both Hegseth and Trump posted a video in which a small speedboat was blown to fragments by a strike. Trump declared that the boat was “loaded with enough drugs to kill 25 TO 50 THOUSAND PEOPLE.” The administration declared yesterday that such strikes are justified because it considers the U.S. in an armed conflict with drug cartels. Legal experts reject this assertion.

If Trump’s reliance on unelected bureaucrats to run his administration has led officials astray, another video posted by the Department of Homeland Security today seemed to offer a different window onto what the president is trying to accomplish. The video shows a bar with words in a font that mimics that of early video games, saying: “LIFE AFTER ALL CRIMINAL ALIENS ARE DEPORTED.” Behind the bar runs a series of images of the United States in the late 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. It shows Trump himself as a young man and what appears to be the Trump Tower in New York City in the early 1980s.

The nostalgic hope for reclaiming Trump’s glory days has tucked within it the McDonalds Mac Tonight moon image, an image used by white supremacists.

The world depicted in that video reflects the period before Trump met convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but that story is not going away. The House of Representatives was supposed to be back in session on Monday, but House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has sent members home until October 14. Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME) noted today that Johnson appears to be delaying the swearing-in of newly elected Arizona representative Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat.

Grijalva says she will sign the discharge petition that will require the speaker to bring to the House floor a vote on instructing the Department of Justice to release the files from the investigation into Epstein’s actions, which needs only one more signature to force the vote.

Regarding Johnson’s declaration that the House will take another week away from the Capitol rather than coming back to negotiate a way to end the government shutdown and preserve Americans’ access to healthcare, Pingree asked: “Is this about the shutdown, or is this about the Epstein files?”

Reply Quote

Date: 4/10/2025 18:11:22
From: Michael V
ID: 2320807
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Thanks.

Reply Quote

Date: 4/10/2025 18:16:04
From: party_pants
ID: 2320808
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Michael V said:


Thanks.

no worries :)

Reply Quote

Date: 4/10/2025 18:19:27
From: Michael V
ID: 2320809
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

party_pants said:


Michael V said:

Thanks.

no worries :)

Sure.

Reply Quote

Date: 4/10/2025 18:22:07
From: SCIENCE
ID: 2320810
Subject: re: Heather Cox Richardson - September 2025

Michael V said:

party_pants said:

Michael V said:

Thanks.

no worries :)

Sure.

LOL

Reply Quote