August 31, 2026 (Monday)

Alex Horton and Tara Copp of the Washington Post reported on Sunday, August 30, that military leaders are warning Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that a plan to continue large-scale operations in Iran is unsustainable and is weakening their ability to protect U.S. interests in other places, including at home.

The warning is in the classified Secretary of Defense Orders Book of August 14 and is laid out by the heads of the Army, Navy, and Air Force and the four-star commanders who oversee U.S. operations in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Trump’s insistence that he must keep all options open, including the ability to launch major attacks, has forced more than 50,000 troops to be kept on alert for months. Plans to extend that alert made the Navy’s top admiral, along with leaders of the U.S. European Command, the U.S. Pacific Command and the U.S. Southern Command, register that they did not concur with those plans, although their disagreement does not mean they will not execute the order.

Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle warned that the Navy, which has borne the brunt of operations against Iran, cannot sustain its current level of support for the war. Barely a quarter of the Navy’s destroyer fleet is currently able to deploy, while delays in maintenance are threatening the readiness of other ships.

Leaders of the Army and Air Force concurred with the plan to extend force deployments but warned that there would be significant risk to such an extension.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell took to social media to push back against the story, saying, “Publishing highly classified assessments from the Secretary’s orders book is a crime. It’s a betrayal of the force…. We are in great shape around the world. This story isn’t about readiness. It’s TDS and PDS —they hate President Trump and Secretary Hegseth more than they love America.”

Charlotte Clymer of Charlotte’s Web Thoughts pointed out that Hegseth has either fired or forced into early retirement several admirals and generals whom he considered insufficiently loyal in what appears to be “an ongoing, blatant campaign of intimidation to keep senior brass in the Pentagon toeing the line and not pushing back against administration officials.” And yet, a broad range of military leaders are speaking out against the administration’s plans in Iran.

“If any of the defense secretaries under Presidents Biden, Obama, or Bush had gotten this degree and range of pushback from top uniformed personnel, there would be immediate congressional hearings, calls for resignations, and talks of impeachment,” Clymer writes. “Moveover,” she notes, “someone had to leak the information contained in this classified briefing and did so knowing that it would further confirm the extraordinary weakness the Trump administration has exhibited in its apparently dead-on-arrival ‘negotiations’ with the Iranian regime to end the war.”

National security scholar Tom Nichols commented: “This is a good time to note that Hegseth is terrible at his job, that the Pentagon is a mess, that he should never have been confirmed, and that he should be fired first thing in the morning. But in this administration, sycophancy is more important than competence.”

At 10:18 last night, Trump posted an AI video of military strikes and fires on what appears to be Iran’s Kharg Island, a major storage facility for Iran’s oil and the seaport for about 90% of its oil exports. The caption read: “Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!!! President DJT.”

The Defense Department this morning clarified that the U.S. had not attacked Kharg Island. The U.S. did claim to have launched attacks on two Iranian rocket launchers yesterday as they attempted to mine the Strait of Hormuz. Iran claimed to retaliate with strikes against Jordan, which the Jordanian military said were all intercepted. The price of oil rose again.

At 8:09 this morning, Trump posted: “Iran is officially a Failed Nation. IT IS DEAD! They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, they have no currency, they are not paying their soldiers or police, Inflation is at 300%, and their leadership is in total disarray and incapable of properly representing the country. The only thing they have is FAKE NEWS from the USA, a willingness to kill their protesters (now over 100,000 people dead. They must be tried for war crimes against humanity!), and a good line of “BULLSH*T.” Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Trump continues to try to sell an image about Iran that does not reflect reality. In that, he appears to have the support of Defense Secretary Hegseth, who has restricted journalists’ access to the Pentagon and last week oversaw the firing of three staffers at the military publication Stars and Stripes.

In January the Pentagon tried to take away protections for the paper’s editorial independence, and last week it fired Erik Slavin, editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes, and Lara Korte, a reporter who covers the Middle East. Max Lederer, the paper’s publisher, announced he would retire at the end of September but was pushed out immediately.

The three are suing Hegseth, the Defense Department, Principal Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Andrew Brey, and Defense spokesperson Sean Parnell, saying they were being attacked “for speaking up as private citizens in support of the press’s freedom to cover military operations, its need to reach all servicepersons, and in retaliation for their publication of a news report on deteriorating conditions aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln during its extended tour of duty in the Mid-East.” They called the firings a “blatant violation” of the First Amendment and called out the “extraordinary censorship efforts” of the Defense Department.

But it appears Hegseth is doing more than just trying to stop negative press. Last week, Will Sommer of The Bulwark reported that the Pentagon has hired right-wing social media influencers as special government employees, using taxpayer money to amplify Hegseth’s viewpoints and attack anyone who tries to hold the Trump administration to account.
Sommer also noted that an active-duty U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, Adam D’Ortona, posts pro-Hegseth and anti-Democratic material during working hours in violation of the military’s traditional nonpartisanship.

Sommers reported on a video by former representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who commented: “How many more people that are blue checkmarks on X, that are putting out information on behalf of the federal government and Donald Trump and the Republican Party…are actually special government employees being paid by your tax dollars?”

A story in the Washington Post by Dan Lamothe and Tara Copp yesterday found more. They report that the Pentagon has secretly hired several right-wing military veterans with large social media accounts, including Rob Maness, Kurt Schlichter, and Thomas Anderson, to boost Hegseth’s positions. A Pentagon spokesperson would not comment on the content of their jobs, whether they are receiving a taxpayer-funded salary, or how long their employment is expected to last.

In Public Notice today, Paul Waldman notes that Trump intended to show strength when he made a show of changing the name of Lake Ontario last week, but it really shows he is “weak and getting weaker.” He is still trying to shore up his fantasy world even as the real world is asserting its power.

On Saturday, Trump made an exception in his war on the media, praising CNN’s pollster Harry Enten “because he was willing to show that Donald J. Trump is six times more popular than Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, or any other President.”

Tonight Michael R. Gordon and Marcus Weisgerber of the Wall Street Journal reported that Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has submitted his resignation after struggling with Hegseth for months over Hegseth’s firing of senior Army officers and over the direction of the military.

Driscoll’s departure, the journalists note, leaves the Army without any Senate-confirmed civilian or military leaders.

Neophyte said:

August 31, 2026 (Monday)

Alex Horton and Tara Copp of the Washington Post reported on Sunday, August 30, that military leaders are warning Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that a plan to continue large-scale operations in Iran is unsustainable and is weakening their ability to protect U.S. interests in other places, including at home.

The warning is in the classified Secretary of Defense Orders Book of August 14 and is laid out by the heads of the Army, Navy, and Air Force and the four-star commanders who oversee U.S. operations in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Trump’s insistence that he must keep all options open, including the ability to launch major attacks, has forced more than 50,000 troops to be kept on alert for months. Plans to extend that alert made the Navy’s top admiral, along with leaders of the U.S. European Command, the U.S. Pacific Command and the U.S. Southern Command, register that they did not concur with those plans, although their disagreement does not mean they will not execute the order.

Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle warned that the Navy, which has borne the brunt of operations against Iran, cannot sustain its current level of support for the war. Barely a quarter of the Navy’s destroyer fleet is currently able to deploy, while delays in maintenance are threatening the readiness of other ships.

Leaders of the Army and Air Force concurred with the plan to extend force deployments but warned that there would be significant risk to such an extension.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell took to social media to push back against the story, saying, “Publishing highly classified assessments from the Secretary’s orders book is a crime. It’s a betrayal of the force…. We are in great shape around the world. This story isn’t about readiness. It’s TDS and PDS —they hate President Trump and Secretary Hegseth more than they love America.”

Charlotte Clymer of Charlotte’s Web Thoughts pointed out that Hegseth has either fired or forced into early retirement several admirals and generals whom he considered insufficiently loyal in what appears to be “an ongoing, blatant campaign of intimidation to keep senior brass in the Pentagon toeing the line and not pushing back against administration officials.” And yet, a broad range of military leaders are speaking out against the administration’s plans in Iran.

“If any of the defense secretaries under Presidents Biden, Obama, or Bush had gotten this degree and range of pushback from top uniformed personnel, there would be immediate congressional hearings, calls for resignations, and talks of impeachment,” Clymer writes. “Moveover,” she notes, “someone had to leak the information contained in this classified briefing and did so knowing that it would further confirm the extraordinary weakness the Trump administration has exhibited in its apparently dead-on-arrival ‘negotiations’ with the Iranian regime to end the war.”

National security scholar Tom Nichols commented: “This is a good time to note that Hegseth is terrible at his job, that the Pentagon is a mess, that he should never have been confirmed, and that he should be fired first thing in the morning. But in this administration, sycophancy is more important than competence.”

At 10:18 last night, Trump posted an AI video of military strikes and fires on what appears to be Iran’s Kharg Island, a major storage facility for Iran’s oil and the seaport for about 90% of its oil exports. The caption read: “Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!!! President DJT.”

The Defense Department this morning clarified that the U.S. had not attacked Kharg Island. The U.S. did claim to have launched attacks on two Iranian rocket launchers yesterday as they attempted to mine the Strait of Hormuz. Iran claimed to retaliate with strikes against Jordan, which the Jordanian military said were all intercepted. The price of oil rose again.

At 8:09 this morning, Trump posted: “Iran is officially a Failed Nation. IT IS DEAD! They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, they have no currency, they are not paying their soldiers or police, Inflation is at 300%, and their leadership is in total disarray and incapable of properly representing the country. The only thing they have is FAKE NEWS from the USA, a willingness to kill their protesters (now over 100,000 people dead. They must be tried for war crimes against humanity!), and a good line of “BULLSH*T.” Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Trump continues to try to sell an image about Iran that does not reflect reality. In that, he appears to have the support of Defense Secretary Hegseth, who has restricted journalists’ access to the Pentagon and last week oversaw the firing of three staffers at the military publication Stars and Stripes.

In January the Pentagon tried to take away protections for the paper’s editorial independence, and last week it fired Erik Slavin, editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes, and Lara Korte, a reporter who covers the Middle East. Max Lederer, the paper’s publisher, announced he would retire at the end of September but was pushed out immediately.

The three are suing Hegseth, the Defense Department, Principal Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Andrew Brey, and Defense spokesperson Sean Parnell, saying they were being attacked “for speaking up as private citizens in support of the press’s freedom to cover military operations, its need to reach all servicepersons, and in retaliation for their publication of a news report on deteriorating conditions aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln during its extended tour of duty in the Mid-East.” They called the firings a “blatant violation” of the First Amendment and called out the “extraordinary censorship efforts” of the Defense Department.

But it appears Hegseth is doing more than just trying to stop negative press. Last week, Will Sommer of The Bulwark reported that the Pentagon has hired right-wing social media influencers as special government employees, using taxpayer money to amplify Hegseth’s viewpoints and attack anyone who tries to hold the Trump administration to account.
Sommer also noted that an active-duty U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, Adam D’Ortona, posts pro-Hegseth and anti-Democratic material during working hours in violation of the military’s traditional nonpartisanship.

Sommers reported on a video by former representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who commented: “How many more people that are blue checkmarks on X, that are putting out information on behalf of the federal government and Donald Trump and the Republican Party…are actually special government employees being paid by your tax dollars?”

A story in the Washington Post by Dan Lamothe and Tara Copp yesterday found more. They report that the Pentagon has secretly hired several right-wing military veterans with large social media accounts, including Rob Maness, Kurt Schlichter, and Thomas Anderson, to boost Hegseth’s positions. A Pentagon spokesperson would not comment on the content of their jobs, whether they are receiving a taxpayer-funded salary, or how long their employment is expected to last.

In Public Notice today, Paul Waldman notes that Trump intended to show strength when he made a show of changing the name of Lake Ontario last week, but it really shows he is “weak and getting weaker.” He is still trying to shore up his fantasy world even as the real world is asserting its power.

On Saturday, Trump made an exception in his war on the media, praising CNN’s pollster Harry Enten “because he was willing to show that Donald J. Trump is six times more popular than Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, or any other President.”

Tonight Michael R. Gordon and Marcus Weisgerber of the Wall Street Journal reported that Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has submitted his resignation after struggling with Hegseth for months over Hegseth’s firing of senior Army officers and over the direction of the military.

Driscoll’s departure, the journalists note, leaves the Army without any Senate-confirmed civilian or military leaders.

I remember reading articles about the USA navy readiness before Trump was even on the scene or his first presidency.
Stress and maintenance issues were mentioned.
Plus once enjoying invulnerability from attack how would they react if hit

Cymek said:

Neophyte said:

August 31, 2026 (Monday)

Alex Horton and Tara Copp of the Washington Post reported on Sunday, August 30, that military leaders are warning Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that a plan to continue large-scale operations in Iran is unsustainable and is weakening their ability to protect U.S. interests in other places, including at home.

The warning is in the classified Secretary of Defense Orders Book of August 14 and is laid out by the heads of the Army, Navy, and Air Force and the four-star commanders who oversee U.S. operations in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Trump’s insistence that he must keep all options open, including the ability to launch major attacks, has forced more than 50,000 troops to be kept on alert for months. Plans to extend that alert made the Navy’s top admiral, along with leaders of the U.S. European Command, the U.S. Pacific Command and the U.S. Southern Command, register that they did not concur with those plans, although their disagreement does not mean they will not execute the order.

Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle warned that the Navy, which has borne the brunt of operations against Iran, cannot sustain its current level of support for the war. Barely a quarter of the Navy’s destroyer fleet is currently able to deploy, while delays in maintenance are threatening the readiness of other ships.

Leaders of the Army and Air Force concurred with the plan to extend force deployments but warned that there would be significant risk to such an extension.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell took to social media to push back against the story, saying, “Publishing highly classified assessments from the Secretary’s orders book is a crime. It’s a betrayal of the force…. We are in great shape around the world. This story isn’t about readiness. It’s TDS and PDS —they hate President Trump and Secretary Hegseth more than they love America.”

Charlotte Clymer of Charlotte’s Web Thoughts pointed out that Hegseth has either fired or forced into early retirement several admirals and generals whom he considered insufficiently loyal in what appears to be “an ongoing, blatant campaign of intimidation to keep senior brass in the Pentagon toeing the line and not pushing back against administration officials.” And yet, a broad range of military leaders are speaking out against the administration’s plans in Iran.

“If any of the defense secretaries under Presidents Biden, Obama, or Bush had gotten this degree and range of pushback from top uniformed personnel, there would be immediate congressional hearings, calls for resignations, and talks of impeachment,” Clymer writes. “Moveover,” she notes, “someone had to leak the information contained in this classified briefing and did so knowing that it would further confirm the extraordinary weakness the Trump administration has exhibited in its apparently dead-on-arrival ‘negotiations’ with the Iranian regime to end the war.”

National security scholar Tom Nichols commented: “This is a good time to note that Hegseth is terrible at his job, that the Pentagon is a mess, that he should never have been confirmed, and that he should be fired first thing in the morning. But in this administration, sycophancy is more important than competence.”

At 10:18 last night, Trump posted an AI video of military strikes and fires on what appears to be Iran’s Kharg Island, a major storage facility for Iran’s oil and the seaport for about 90% of its oil exports. The caption read: “Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!!! President DJT.”

The Defense Department this morning clarified that the U.S. had not attacked Kharg Island. The U.S. did claim to have launched attacks on two Iranian rocket launchers yesterday as they attempted to mine the Strait of Hormuz. Iran claimed to retaliate with strikes against Jordan, which the Jordanian military said were all intercepted. The price of oil rose again.

At 8:09 this morning, Trump posted: “Iran is officially a Failed Nation. IT IS DEAD! They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, they have no currency, they are not paying their soldiers or police, Inflation is at 300%, and their leadership is in total disarray and incapable of properly representing the country. The only thing they have is FAKE NEWS from the USA, a willingness to kill their protesters (now over 100,000 people dead. They must be tried for war crimes against humanity!), and a good line of “BULLSH*T.” Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Trump continues to try to sell an image about Iran that does not reflect reality. In that, he appears to have the support of Defense Secretary Hegseth, who has restricted journalists’ access to the Pentagon and last week oversaw the firing of three staffers at the military publication Stars and Stripes.

In January the Pentagon tried to take away protections for the paper’s editorial independence, and last week it fired Erik Slavin, editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes, and Lara Korte, a reporter who covers the Middle East. Max Lederer, the paper’s publisher, announced he would retire at the end of September but was pushed out immediately.

The three are suing Hegseth, the Defense Department, Principal Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Andrew Brey, and Defense spokesperson Sean Parnell, saying they were being attacked “for speaking up as private citizens in support of the press’s freedom to cover military operations, its need to reach all servicepersons, and in retaliation for their publication of a news report on deteriorating conditions aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln during its extended tour of duty in the Mid-East.” They called the firings a “blatant violation” of the First Amendment and called out the “extraordinary censorship efforts” of the Defense Department.

But it appears Hegseth is doing more than just trying to stop negative press. Last week, Will Sommer of The Bulwark reported that the Pentagon has hired right-wing social media influencers as special government employees, using taxpayer money to amplify Hegseth’s viewpoints and attack anyone who tries to hold the Trump administration to account.
Sommer also noted that an active-duty U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, Adam D’Ortona, posts pro-Hegseth and anti-Democratic material during working hours in violation of the military’s traditional nonpartisanship.

Sommers reported on a video by former representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who commented: “How many more people that are blue checkmarks on X, that are putting out information on behalf of the federal government and Donald Trump and the Republican Party…are actually special government employees being paid by your tax dollars?”

A story in the Washington Post by Dan Lamothe and Tara Copp yesterday found more. They report that the Pentagon has secretly hired several right-wing military veterans with large social media accounts, including Rob Maness, Kurt Schlichter, and Thomas Anderson, to boost Hegseth’s positions. A Pentagon spokesperson would not comment on the content of their jobs, whether they are receiving a taxpayer-funded salary, or how long their employment is expected to last.

In Public Notice today, Paul Waldman notes that Trump intended to show strength when he made a show of changing the name of Lake Ontario last week, but it really shows he is “weak and getting weaker.” He is still trying to shore up his fantasy world even as the real world is asserting its power.

On Saturday, Trump made an exception in his war on the media, praising CNN’s pollster Harry Enten “because he was willing to show that Donald J. Trump is six times more popular than Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, or any other President.”

Tonight Michael R. Gordon and Marcus Weisgerber of the Wall Street Journal reported that Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has submitted his resignation after struggling with Hegseth for months over Hegseth’s firing of senior Army officers and over the direction of the military.

Driscoll’s departure, the journalists note, leaves the Army without any Senate-confirmed civilian or military leaders.

I remember reading articles about the USA navy readiness before Trump was even on the scene or his first presidency.
Stress and maintenance issues were mentioned.
Plus once enjoying invulnerability from attack how would they react if hit

And all this firing of senior military personal is very reminiscent of Stalin and Hitler when the paranoia set in and they believed they were a threat.

Thanks for posting HCR.

September 1, 2026 (Tuesday)

Yesterday, by a vote of 5–4, the United States Supreme Court allowed Trump to continue to build his ballroom. The five right-wing justices concluded that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which had sued to stop the construction of the ballroom, did not have legal standing to sue and that national security considerations came down on the side of construction.

The majority said it was not resolving the issue of whether the project is legal.

It was Chief Justice John Roberts who covered that aspect of the controversy. He wrote in dissent that the project is “likely unlawful.” “The White House is an iconic American building whose symbolism and history are wrapped up in its architecture,” Roberts wrote. He wrote that it is critical to “ensure that those responsible follow the rules in deciding what to tear down and what to build up at the People’s House.”

Nonetheless, as Josh Gerstein of Politico reported, the project will likely be completed before the question of its legality is resolved.

Trump’s behavior in his second term is a logical outcome of the theory of the “unitary executive.” Under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, those eager to stop Congress from passing legislation that benefited the American people at the expense of businessmen began to argue for the idea that because the president was the head of one of the three branches of the U.S. government, he could not be checked by either of the other two branches: the legislative branch (Congress) or the judicial branch (the courts).

On July 1, 2024, the United States Supreme Court, stacked with Trump’s appointees, took this theory to a conclusion that overturned the central premise of American democracy: that no one is above the law.

It decided that the president of the United States has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for crimes committed as part of the official acts at the core of presidential powers. The court also said it should be presumed that the president also has immunity for other official acts as well, unless that prosecution would not intrude on the authority of the executive branch.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts said that a president needs such immunity to make sure the president is willing to take “bold and unhesitating action” and make unpopular decisions, although no previous president ever asserted that he was above the law or that he needed such immunity to fulfill his role. Roberts’s decision didn’t focus at all on the interest of the American people in guaranteeing that presidents carry out their duties within the guardrails of the law.

This permission structure appears to have convinced Trump he can do whatever he wishes, including rigging elections so he cannot lose.

Yesterday Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, who is the top-ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, exposed what appears to be a plot to steal the 2026 midterm elections.

Blumenthal released a letter he had written to Postmaster General David Steiner calling attention to an official whistleblower report, which he attached to the letter.

It’s eye-popping.

The whistleblower warns that there are “potentially catastrophic problems in the development of the United States Postal Service’s…new system for handling federal election ballot mail.” According to the whistleblower, the “process for the creation and implementation of an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” for delivering ballots to voters for the midterm election has been “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed.”

The whistleblower says “the administration has hidden the high likelihood that the new ballot mail verification processes will result in major disruptions in mail ballots ever getting delivered to voters. As presently designed, if even one bar code on one single ballot in a bulk-mailing of 10,000 ballots fails to properly scan during the verification process, the entire batch is rejected and sent back to the state—effectively stopping the ballots from being mailed to voters.”

The complaint continues: “Even under ordinary circumstances this would be problematic because of predictable errors in any barcode scanning process.” But the rushed IT development of the new system means it “will almost certainly have significant operating problems when released to the public.” The whistleblower notes that multiple officials from the USPS have described the development process for the system as “a sh*t show.”

The whistleblower said that work on the “USPS election ballot mail IT project” began in June 2026 and has continued despite an injunction from a federal court ordering work on it to stop. Normally, it would take “nine months to a year or more” to roll out a project “of this complexity, magnitude, and importance.” Considering the rush and the consequences, the whistleblower wondered “whether catastrophic failure would be a feature rather than a bug.”

The complaint says: “The apparently sloppy and rushed manner in which the Federal Ballot Mail Portal and supporting IT systems are being built poses significant risk. Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all.”

Blumenthal noted that the USPS has a restrained role as a mail carrier. It has never before played a gatekeeping function and yet is now building an entirely new system to put itself “in a position to refuse to mail ballots that state election officials have determined should be sent out.” He called for Postmaster General Steiner to “to abandon this ill-conceived, unconscionable plan and ensure that all Americans can exercise their constitutional right to vote, including by mail, without interference by USPS.”

Blumenthal demanded Steiner answer no later than Friday whether the USPS has stopped work on the project as ordered by the courts, as well as provide the names of those who worked on the project and the dates they were active. By September 8, he wants to see all records about the project.

Blumenthal told reporters: “The main takeaway for me is that the Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans. One third of all Americans cast their ballots by mail, and the USPS puts all of their votes at risk.”

The administration’s attack on elections is especially concerning considering the recent suggestions that Trump is spending most of his time on his legacy projects like the ballroom, leaving him largely unaware of what is going on in the administration. Nancy A. Youssef, Missy Ryan, and Michael Scherer of The Atlantic reported yesterday that when Army Secretary Dan Driscoll went directly to Trump with his concerns about what Hegseth is doing to the Army, Trump was surprised to learn “how many generals and other top officers had been fired, pushed out, or passed over for promotion under Hegseth” and “expressed concern about the deep cuts to the Army’s senior leadership.”

Driscoll resigned yesterday.

As for the plan to sabotage mail-in voting? Representative Joe Morelle (D-NY), the top-ranking Democrat on the House Committee on House Administration, which oversees the administration of federal elections, posted: “These whistleblower allegations are extraordinary. If Trump Administration officials knowingly built a system designed to prevent Americans from receiving their ballots, that is not election security. It is a betrayal of our Constitution and the American people.”

September 2, 2026 (Wednesday)

A number of pundits, especially Republican pundits, interpreted Trump’s win in 2024 as a permanent political realignment proving that post–World War II liberalism was dead. That conviction appeared to help feed Trump’s insistence that he had won a “landslide” and had a “mandate” to enact draconian policies.

Skeptics disagreed with this interpretation, noting that Trump’s victory in the popular vote was small— more people voted for someone else than for him— and that the 2024 election appeared to be determined by inflation and the pandemic, two things that had little to do with political positions. Rather than being an embrace of a political ideology, it appeared the swing toward Trump had more to do with anti-incumbent feeling, especially over inflation.

Still, after the 2024 election, hopeful Republicans set out to redistrict states like Texas to try to guarantee they would hold on to control of Congress after the 2026 election. They redrew districts based on the idea that what they thought was a new coalition would last, banking especially on Hispanic voters continuing to cast their ballots for Republicans. With that expectation, they created gerrymanders that shaved their margins thinner than they had been before the redistricting.

And then, in the elections of November 2025, dramatic gains by Democrats across Texas made some observers wonder if the gerrymandering of Texas hadn’t been a “dummymander,” teeing districts up for Democrats in a blue wave.

After the election, G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers noted that the anti-incumbent feeling had turned against the Republicans and that voters were even more strongly opposed to Republicans than they had been against Democrats in 2024. He explained that by then, Republicans had lost an average of 25 points of support from the very voters they were counting on to create their new coalition: young people, nonwhite voters, and working-class/lower-income voters.

And then, in a special election on January 31, 2026, voters flipped a seat in the Texas Senate from Republican to Democratic in a historically Republican-dominated district in Tarrant County. Democrat Taylor Rehmet, an Air Force veteran and machinist, defeated right-wing Republican Leigh Wambsganss for a seat that Republicans have held since the early 1990s.

Robert Downen of Texas Monthly noted that in the final days of the campaign, the Wambsganss campaign spent $310,000 while Rehmet spent nothing, and Daniel Nichanian of BoltsMag posted that overall, Wambsganss spent nearly $2.2 million more than Rehmet in the campaign. Both Texas governor Greg Abbott and Trump himself publicly supported Wambsganss.

Voters flipped a district that Trump won by 17 points in 2024 to Rehmet, electing him by a 14.4-point margin. Without the minor-party candidates in the vote, the swing from the Republican in 2024 was 32 points toward the Democrats.

Liz Crampton of Politico noted that “Republicans are in full-out panic mode” after the election, especially over the swing of Hispanic voters toward Rehmet. Republican consultant Mike Madrid referred back to the newly gerrymandered maps and the voting patterns of young Hispanic men when he told Crampton: “They’ve banged three of these five new Republican seats on a demographic that Democrats were never able to turn out for 30–40 years.” Now, though, they had turned toward Democrats as Trump’s arrests, detentions, and deportation policies had “angered and upset them.”

In the wake of the election, Trump immediately began talking about nationalizing voting in the country, despite the provisions in the U.S. Constitution establishing that states, not the federal government, are in charge of elections. “If you think about it, a state is an agent for the federal government in elections,” Trump said during a press conference at the White House in early February. “I don’t know why the federal government doesn’t do them anyway.”

Trump’s allies began talking about rigging the election by sending armed officers to the polls. Steve Bannon said on his podcast: “You’re damn right, we’re going to have ICE surround the polls come November. We’re not going to sit here and allow you to steal the country again. And you can whine and cry and throw your toys out of the pram all you want, but we will never again allow an election to be stolen.”

Since then, the administration has worked hard to take over the midterm elections, but so far everything it has tried has been blocked by the courts or failed in Congress. It is 0–23 in its effort to take over state voter data with the apparent plan of running it through a program designed to make sure noncitizens aren’t receiving welfare benefits for which they’re not eligible, a process that mistakenly flags citizens as noncitizens with a failure rate of at least 14%.

Courts also blocked Trump’s attempt to use the United States Postal Service (USPS) as a gatekeeper to stop ballots that the federal government decides shouldn’t be delivered even though state agencies determine they should be. We learned yesterday that, despite court orders, the administration’s plan to use the USPS to impose federal control on elections has continued. It has rushed into place a system a whistleblower warns would throw out entire batches of up to 10,000 ballots if a single one gets rejected.

This is a deliberate attempt to skew the midterm election. An analysis by Charles Stewart III of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Election Data and Science Lab shows that Democrats vote by mail more than Republicans. In 2024, 37% of Democrats voted by mail, while only 24% of Republicans did.

Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters yesterday that he is not ruling out sending Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to the polls. “The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place or we’re serving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down,” Mullin said. “ICE’s job is immigration, customs enforcement. That’s their job…if we’re serving a warrant we will be where we need to be.”

Maya Yang of the Guardian notes that Mullin’s threat flies in the face of federal law, which prohibits armed agents from “any place where a general or special election is held.”

Last night, in Tarrant County, Texas, county commissioners tried an even cruder way of rigging the election. As Cecelia Lenzen of the Texas Tribune reported, they voted 3–2 along party lines to get rid of 92 of the polling sites the county had in 2022 before the midterm election. In 2022 there were 316 election sites; the Republican commissioners cut that number to 224. They also cut three sites for early voting, from 50 to 47. Republicans voted for the cuts; Democrats voted against them.

“It’s not about cost. This is about power. This is very political. This is campaigning from the dais,” said Democrat Alisa Simmons. Throughout the eight-hour meeting about the cuts, speakers from the audience called on the commissioners to increase, rather than decrease, the number of voting sites for the more than 1.3 million people registered to vote in Tarrant County.

Those 1.3 million people are more than live in Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, Rhode Island, or Montana, and about the same number of people who live in Maine or New Hampshire.

Voters in Tarrant County had plenty to say to the Republican commissioners about the cuts. One constituent warned: “You guys are out!” When County Judge Tim O’Hare refused to look at him, the man called out the disrespect. “What could possibly be so important, Mr. O’Hare? Can you listen to me, please? Hello? Hello? Can you look at my eyes, please?”

O’Hare answered: “I can hear every word you’re saying. You can use your minute however you choose.”

The man responded: “I want you to look me in the eyes.”

When O’Hare still wouldn’t, the man continued: “Yeah, look down because down is what you’re going in November. So keep looking where you’re going. Okay? ’Cause this is what we’re doing after this from now until November, whether you cut these places or not. We’re going and we’re knocking on doors and we’re bringing people out. And we’re telling them where the voter locations are, and we’re helping them get there, and nothing you can do can stop us from removing you in November.”

Thanks.

Could the KKK provide ballot security
Being anonymous they wouldn’t have to worry about being attacked by racists outside of the polling place and allow free voting to take place

September 3, 2026 (Thursday)

Election analyst Charlie Cook told Republicans today to “brace themselves” for the midterms. “The three most plausible outcomes are that it will be bad, really bad, or truly horrible.”

To stop voters from turning Republicans out of office and handing Democrats control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, or both, the Trump administration is trying to implement a new rule for the United States Postal Service that would enable it to act as a gatekeeper for who can vote by mail. Such a measure flies in the face of the fact that the Constitution gives states, not the federal government, control over elections, while the role of the USPS is simply to carry mail. Nonetheless, the administration insists this novel measure is necessary to combat voter fraud.

There is widespread consensus that voter fraud is not a real issue in the United States. Notably, President Donald J. Trump himself votes by mail, along with about a third of all U.S. voters.

On Monday, news broke that a whistleblower has said there are “potentially catastrophic problems in the…new system for handling federal election ballot mail.” “As presently designed,” the whistleblower said, “if even one bar code on one single ballot in a bulk-mailing of 10,000 ballots fails to properly scan during the verification process, the entire batch is rejected and sent back to the state—effectively stopping the ballots from being mailed to voters.”

Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts has blocked the administration’s plan until September 10. Today, a day before the state starts sending out mail-in ballots to voters, she held a hearing about whether to extend that block.

“We are 70 days from the election and I have nothing from the USPS about how this will happen,” she said to Michael Velchik, the Justice Department lawyer representing the Postal Service. Lawyers for the USPS suggested the new plans were independent of Trump’s March executive order calling for a national list of citizens against which the USPS would check mail-in ballots.

Talwani expressed concern that the new system could cause “major disenfranchisement” and said it was “puzzling” that there is such a rush to put the system in place. She also noted that if states wanted such a system, they could have put one in place. “Why is it you want U.S.P.S. to stop batches of ballots from your voters?” she asked a lawyer for a group of Republican-dominated states. “You can decide you want those measures in your state,” she said. “I don’t understand—you come to me and say, ‘We really want to have election integrity in our state decided by U.S.P.S.’?”

Apparently concerned about the direction of the hearing, Solicitor General John Sauer went directly to the Supreme Court this afternoon to ask it to let the new restrictions on mail-in ballots go into effect. As Law Dork’s Chris Geidner notes, although Talwani found that the new requirements were significant and likely unconstitutional, the Department of Justice is arguing that the new rule “imposes only modest requirements on the use of the federal postal system” and “does not regulate state administration of elections.”

With just four days of work under their belts after the August recess, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) today canceled votes for the last two weeks in September, leaving the House with only another four days in Washington between now and the midterms. Leaving town will protect Republicans from having to weigh in on Trump’s wild AI posts that he has won the war in Iran, his threats to sic the Federal Communications Commission on journalists who report his tanking job approval ratings, or his claims that the economy is thriving.

Today G. Elliott Morris and David Nir of Strength in Numbers noted that “Donald Trump is acting like he wants to lose the midterms.” Their evidence is that he has taken to supporting the losing side of issues. “From tweeting his support for data centers…to renaming Lake Ontario to lavishly spending on the White House ballroom, Donald Trump is constantly taking positions that are opposed by the vast majority of voters.”

Yesterday the U.S. Mint began selling $1 “gold” coins bearing Trump’s likeness and “LIBERTY 1776–2026” on one side and the presidential seal on the other. The mint says the gold-colored coins, which are composed of copper, zinc, manganese, and nickel, are legal tender, as well as collectibles to honor the nation’s 250th birthday. Although the coins are worth a dollar, Aimee Picchi of CBS News reports, a roll of twenty-five costs $61, and a hundred of them cost $154.50.

Today Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced that the administration is beginning the construction of Trump’s 250-foot triumphal arch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, despite lack of approvals for the structure.

In June, Senator Angus King (I-ME) and five Democratic lawmakers who sit on committees responsible for national parks and resources wrote to Burgum to oppose “in the strongest terms” Trump’s proposed triumphal arch. They pointed out that there are many different laws the construction would break. “Most fundamentally,” though, they wrote, the arch falls within an area called Area I that Congress established in the 1986 Commemorative Works Act. In that law, Congress specified that any commemorative work within Area I requires Congress to pass a law authorizing the memorial.

Congress has done no such thing.

Luke Broadwater and Emily Badger of the New York Times reported that Representative Donald S. Beyer Jr. (D-VA), whose district includes Arlington National Cemetery, said that Trump and Burgum were “disregarding the risks and rushing this towering monument to Trump’s vanity because they believe Republicans will get crushed in November.”

There is already speculation about what the midterms will bring.

Nandita Bose, Humeyra Pamuk, and Gram Slattery reported today at Reuters that Trump’s top aides are trying to keep events in Iran quiet before the midterms to keep the conflict out of the news and avoid making voters even angrier than they already are, but are already considering ramping up attacks after the election is over.

The election might also change calculations about a new Epstein Files Transparency Act 2.0, backed by Representatives Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY). The new measure would give state courts access to the Epstein files to launch their own prosecutions since the Department of Justice under Trump is stonewalling the process.

Khanna and Massie are trying to force the House to vote on the measure by pushing it to the floor under a discharge petition, which bypasses the House speaker. Joshua Barajas of PBS News reported Massie’s comment to the Washington Times, in which he said that if the three Republicans necessary to reach the 218-signature threshold to push through the discharge petition won’t sign it before the midterms, he is confident of sufficient support after the election if Democrats retake the majority in the House.

Americans can really go on about things. American politics makes its own complexity, a bit like how a bush fire makes its own weather, America should look to forming a simple government like Nauru. Too many people in American politics, it needs reforms.

Tau.Neutrino said:

Americans can really go on about things. American politics makes its own complexity, a bit like how a bush fire makes its own weather, America should look to forming a simple government like Nauru. Too many people in American politics, it needs reforms.

They do seem to approach many things in an overly complex or strange manner allowing corruption or hiding what’s going on.
What’s interesting is the approach of minimal government involvement in the lives of the population.
However this throws away protection from exploitation and also allow lots of unhealthy choices because of lack of government oversight
The freedom part also ends when you have something the government wants.

Cymek said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Americans can really go on about things. American politics makes its own complexity, a bit like how a bush fire makes its own weather, America should look to forming a simple government like Nauru. Too many people in American politics, it needs reforms.

They do seem to approach many things in an overly complex or strange manner allowing corruption or hiding what’s going on.
What’s interesting is the approach of minimal government involvement in the lives of the population.
However this throws away protection from exploitation and also allow lots of unhealthy choices because of lack of government oversight
The freedom part also ends when you have something the government wants.

Their federal government distances itself from the population while grabbing more money from the population.

Tau.Neutrino said:

Americans can really go on about things. American politics makes its own complexity, a bit like how a bush fire makes its own weather, America should look to forming a simple government like Nauru. Too many people in American politics, it needs reforms.

It is a product of their history. At the time of the revolution against British colonial rule there were not many examples around of countries not ruled by a king. So they had to make it up as they went along. They got most of it right but they got a few things wrong too. One is too much executive power in the hands of one person: the president is more or less a king, but not for life and his children have no right of succession. As far as their voting system goes, yes it is too complicated and convoluted, but it was thought up before modern communications and railways. Things had to be done at a local level and then consolidated into a national outcome through a process. If you were starting up a new country today without any baggage you wouldn’t do it their way.

party_pants said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Americans can really go on about things. American politics makes its own complexity, a bit like how a bush fire makes its own weather, America should look to forming a simple government like Nauru. Too many people in American politics, it needs reforms.

It is a product of their history. At the time of the revolution against British colonial rule there were not many examples around of countries not ruled by a king. So they had to make it up as they went along. They got most of it right but they got a few things wrong too. One is too much executive power in the hands of one person: the president is more or less a king, but not for life and his children have no right of succession. As far as their voting system goes, yes it is too complicated and convoluted, but it was thought up before modern communications and railways. Things had to be done at a local level and then consolidated into a national outcome through a process. If you were starting up a new country today without any baggage you wouldn’t do it their way.

They aren’t really any different to any empire from history.
All of them collapse pretty much in the same manner.
Over extended, become complacent in superiority (not realising humans are pretty much equal in capability given the chance), corrupt to the point nothing gets done without greasing the wheels.
They also value military and economic might instead of basic human rights for their own people.
Their own population deserve better care as they are actual living people far more valuable than money.

Voter fraud in first world democratic nations should be rare to almost never happen.
Its set up to prevent this very thing happening on a large scale.
You’d need to override so many safeguards and need thousands of people involved who never say anything.
If its easy then you aren’t a democracy which is how the USA seems to be heading with these reforms which are the opposite of what they claim.

Dontcha miss the days when the biggest US presidential scandal was Bill Clinton denying sexual relations with “that woman”?

Cymek said:

party_pants said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Americans can really go on about things. American politics makes its own complexity, a bit like how a bush fire makes its own weather, America should look to forming a simple government like Nauru. Too many people in American politics, it needs reforms.

It is a product of their history. At the time of the revolution against British colonial rule there were not many examples around of countries not ruled by a king. So they had to make it up as they went along. They got most of it right but they got a few things wrong too. One is too much executive power in the hands of one person: the president is more or less a king, but not for life and his children have no right of succession. As far as their voting system goes, yes it is too complicated and convoluted, but it was thought up before modern communications and railways. Things had to be done at a local level and then consolidated into a national outcome through a process. If you were starting up a new country today without any baggage you wouldn’t do it their way.

They aren’t really any different to any empire from history.
All of them collapse pretty much in the same manner.
Over extended, become complacent in superiority (not realising humans are pretty much equal in capability given the chance), corrupt to the point nothing gets done without greasing the wheels.
They also value military and economic might instead of basic human rights for their own people.
Their own population deserve better care as they are actual living people far more valuable than money.

Their rich elite abuse children and so does the general population, yes they have lots of issues. They need deep cleaning. They will jail people like Cosby but not those who went to abuse children on Epstein Island. Double standards abound over there.

Divine Angel said:

Dontcha miss the days when the biggest US presidential scandal was Bill Clinton denying sexual relations with “that woman”?

He never went to that Island either, he was at home with Hillary.

Cymek said:

party_pants said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Americans can really go on about things. American politics makes its own complexity, a bit like how a bush fire makes its own weather, America should look to forming a simple government like Nauru. Too many people in American politics, it needs reforms.

It is a product of their history. At the time of the revolution against British colonial rule there were not many examples around of countries not ruled by a king. So they had to make it up as they went along. They got most of it right but they got a few things wrong too. One is too much executive power in the hands of one person: the president is more or less a king, but not for life and his children have no right of succession. As far as their voting system goes, yes it is too complicated and convoluted, but it was thought up before modern communications and railways. Things had to be done at a local level and then consolidated into a national outcome through a process. If you were starting up a new country today without any baggage you wouldn’t do it their way.

They aren’t really any different to any empire from history.
All of them collapse pretty much in the same manner.
Over extended, become complacent in superiority (not realising humans are pretty much equal in capability given the chance), corrupt to the point nothing gets done without greasing the wheels.
They also value military and economic might instead of basic human rights for their own people.
Their own population deserve better care as they are actual living people far more valuable than money.

Yeah, pretty much. A bit like ancient Athens: a democracy at home but tyrants abroad. Eventually they lost their allies and were defeated by their enemies. The US relentlessly pursues abroad the interests of US big business and the capital owning class. Their foreign policy has been profit over principle for nearly the last century.

But they have got to a point domestically where only the capital owning classes have a way of making money, while the rest of the real economy shrinks. They are acting like an empire because they are desperate to hold onto their profits. At some point the international system of trade turns from a voluntary system of mutual benefit to coercion aimed at preserving their interests. Trump has just stomped on the accelerator and sped up the decline a bit.

party_pants said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

Americans can really go on about things. American politics makes its own complexity, a bit like how a bush fire makes its own weather, America should look to forming a simple government like Nauru. Too many people in American politics, it needs reforms.

It is a product of their history. At the time of the revolution against British colonial rule there were not many examples around of countries not ruled by a king. So they had to make it up as they went along. They got most of it right but they got a few things wrong too. One is too much executive power in the hands of one person: the president is more or less a king, but not for life and his children have no right of succession. As far as their voting system goes, yes it is too complicated and convoluted, but it was thought up before modern communications and railways. Things had to be done at a local level and then consolidated into a national outcome through a process. If you were starting up a new country today without any baggage you wouldn’t do it their way.

^^^

party_pants said:

Cymek said:

party_pants said:

It is a product of their history. At the time of the revolution against British colonial rule there were not many examples around of countries not ruled by a king. So they had to make it up as they went along. They got most of it right but they got a few things wrong too. One is too much executive power in the hands of one person: the president is more or less a king, but not for life and his children have no right of succession. As far as their voting system goes, yes it is too complicated and convoluted, but it was thought up before modern communications and railways. Things had to be done at a local level and then consolidated into a national outcome through a process. If you were starting up a new country today without any baggage you wouldn’t do it their way.

They aren’t really any different to any empire from history.
All of them collapse pretty much in the same manner.
Over extended, become complacent in superiority (not realising humans are pretty much equal in capability given the chance), corrupt to the point nothing gets done without greasing the wheels.
They also value military and economic might instead of basic human rights for their own people.
Their own population deserve better care as they are actual living people far more valuable than money.

Yeah, pretty much. A bit like ancient Athens: a democracy at home but tyrants abroad. Eventually they lost their allies and were defeated by their enemies. The US relentlessly pursues abroad the interests of US big business and the capital owning class. Their foreign policy has been profit over principle for nearly the last century.

But they have got to a point domestically where only the capital owning classes have a way of making money, while the rest of the real economy shrinks. They are acting like an empire because they are desperate to hold onto their profits. At some point the international system of trade turns from a voluntary system of mutual benefit to coercion aimed at preserving their interests. Trump has just stomped on the accelerator and sped up the decline a bit.

Yeah, it’s a bit like that.

Thanks.

Such strange goings on.

Neophyte said:

August 31, 2026 (Monday)

Alex Horton and Tara Copp of the Washington Post reported on Sunday, August 30, that military leaders are warning Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that a plan to continue large-scale operations in Iran is unsustainable and is weakening their ability to protect U.S. interests in other places, including at home.

The warning is in the classified Secretary of Defense Orders Book of August 14 and is laid out by the heads of the Army, Navy, and Air Force and the four-star commanders who oversee U.S. operations in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Trump’s insistence that he must keep all options open, including the ability to launch major attacks, has forced more than 50,000 troops to be kept on alert for months. Plans to extend that alert made the Navy’s top admiral, along with leaders of the U.S. European Command, the U.S. Pacific Command and the U.S. Southern Command, register that they did not concur with those plans, although their disagreement does not mean they will not execute the order.

Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle warned that the Navy, which has borne the brunt of operations against Iran, cannot sustain its current level of support for the war. Barely a quarter of the Navy’s destroyer fleet is currently able to deploy, while delays in maintenance are threatening the readiness of other ships.

Leaders of the Army and Air Force concurred with the plan to extend force deployments but warned that there would be significant risk to such an extension.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell took to social media to push back against the story, saying, “Publishing highly classified assessments from the Secretary’s orders book is a crime. It’s a betrayal of the force…. We are in great shape around the world. This story isn’t about readiness. It’s TDS and PDS —they hate President Trump and Secretary Hegseth more than they love America.”

Charlotte Clymer of Charlotte’s Web Thoughts pointed out that Hegseth has either fired or forced into early retirement several admirals and generals whom he considered insufficiently loyal in what appears to be “an ongoing, blatant campaign of intimidation to keep senior brass in the Pentagon toeing the line and not pushing back against administration officials.” And yet, a broad range of military leaders are speaking out against the administration’s plans in Iran.

“If any of the defense secretaries under Presidents Biden, Obama, or Bush had gotten this degree and range of pushback from top uniformed personnel, there would be immediate congressional hearings, calls for resignations, and talks of impeachment,” Clymer writes. “Moveover,” she notes, “someone had to leak the information contained in this classified briefing and did so knowing that it would further confirm the extraordinary weakness the Trump administration has exhibited in its apparently dead-on-arrival ‘negotiations’ with the Iranian regime to end the war.”

National security scholar Tom Nichols commented: “This is a good time to note that Hegseth is terrible at his job, that the Pentagon is a mess, that he should never have been confirmed, and that he should be fired first thing in the morning. But in this administration, sycophancy is more important than competence.”

At 10:18 last night, Trump posted an AI video of military strikes and fires on what appears to be Iran’s Kharg Island, a major storage facility for Iran’s oil and the seaport for about 90% of its oil exports. The caption read: “Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!!! President DJT.”

The Defense Department this morning clarified that the U.S. had not attacked Kharg Island. The U.S. did claim to have launched attacks on two Iranian rocket launchers yesterday as they attempted to mine the Strait of Hormuz. Iran claimed to retaliate with strikes against Jordan, which the Jordanian military said were all intercepted. The price of oil rose again.

At 8:09 this morning, Trump posted: “Iran is officially a Failed Nation. IT IS DEAD! They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, they have no currency, they are not paying their soldiers or police, Inflation is at 300%, and their leadership is in total disarray and incapable of properly representing the country. The only thing they have is FAKE NEWS from the USA, a willingness to kill their protesters (now over 100,000 people dead. They must be tried for war crimes against humanity!), and a good line of “BULLSH*T.” Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Trump continues to try to sell an image about Iran that does not reflect reality. In that, he appears to have the support of Defense Secretary Hegseth, who has restricted journalists’ access to the Pentagon and last week oversaw the firing of three staffers at the military publication Stars and Stripes.

In January the Pentagon tried to take away protections for the paper’s editorial independence, and last week it fired Erik Slavin, editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes, and Lara Korte, a reporter who covers the Middle East. Max Lederer, the paper’s publisher, announced he would retire at the end of September but was pushed out immediately.

The three are suing Hegseth, the Defense Department, Principal Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Andrew Brey, and Defense spokesperson Sean Parnell, saying they were being attacked “for speaking up as private citizens in support of the press’s freedom to cover military operations, its need to reach all servicepersons, and in retaliation for their publication of a news report on deteriorating conditions aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln during its extended tour of duty in the Mid-East.” They called the firings a “blatant violation” of the First Amendment and called out the “extraordinary censorship efforts” of the Defense Department.

But it appears Hegseth is doing more than just trying to stop negative press. Last week, Will Sommer of The Bulwark reported that the Pentagon has hired right-wing social media influencers as special government employees, using taxpayer money to amplify Hegseth’s viewpoints and attack anyone who tries to hold the Trump administration to account.
Sommer also noted that an active-duty U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, Adam D’Ortona, posts pro-Hegseth and anti-Democratic material during working hours in violation of the military’s traditional nonpartisanship.

Sommers reported on a video by former representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who commented: “How many more people that are blue checkmarks on X, that are putting out information on behalf of the federal government and Donald Trump and the Republican Party…are actually special government employees being paid by your tax dollars?”

A story in the Washington Post by Dan Lamothe and Tara Copp yesterday found more. They report that the Pentagon has secretly hired several right-wing military veterans with large social media accounts, including Rob Maness, Kurt Schlichter, and Thomas Anderson, to boost Hegseth’s positions. A Pentagon spokesperson would not comment on the content of their jobs, whether they are receiving a taxpayer-funded salary, or how long their employment is expected to last.

In Public Notice today, Paul Waldman notes that Trump intended to show strength when he made a show of changing the name of Lake Ontario last week, but it really shows he is “weak and getting weaker.” He is still trying to shore up his fantasy world even as the real world is asserting its power.

On Saturday, Trump made an exception in his war on the media, praising CNN’s pollster Harry Enten “because he was willing to show that Donald J. Trump is six times more popular than Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, or any other President.”

Tonight Michael R. Gordon and Marcus Weisgerber of the Wall Street Journal reported that Army Secretary Dan Driscoll has submitted his resignation after struggling with Hegseth for months over Hegseth’s firing of senior Army officers and over the direction of the military.

Driscoll’s departure, the journalists note, leaves the Army without any Senate-confirmed civilian or military leaders.

The Republicans could end this tomorrow. Bar stewards.

September 4, 2026 (Friday)

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. In 1884, 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 had,” 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. Each year, the first Monday in September would honor the country’s workers.

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.”

September 5, 2026 (Saturday)

Events of Friday, September 4, showed the Trump administration in a nutshell.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani of the District of Massachusetts blocked Trump’s plan to use the United States Postal Service to screen mail-in voters. Referring to the final rule the USPS is trying to put into place, Talwani wrote: “Unauthorized by the Elections Clause, the Final Rule clashes with Congress’s statutory scheme, and is unconstitutional where it intrudes not only on Congress’s Elections Clause powers but also that power left to the States.”

In other words, the plan is both illegal and unconstitutional.

As Jacob Knutson and Jim Saksa of Democracy Docket reported, Talwani was responding to a lawsuit over the plan brought by groups defending the right to vote, including the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts and Democratic attorneys general from 24 states and the District of Columbia. Talwani agreed that the rule threatens the voting rights of millions of American citizens.

Hours after Judge Talwani’s order, the Trump administration asked U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to permit the rule to go into effect, claiming it simply “imposes modest informational requirements on senders of outbound federal ballot mailings.” Contradicting Talwani, the Department of Justice lawyers claimed: “The Rule does not displace a single State election law. And it need not and should not prevent a single voter from voting by mail.”

Meanwhile, a day after Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced the administration was starting work on the 250-foot (76-meter) triumphal arch Trump wants in Washington, D.C., U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered the administration to give the court at least 48 hours’ notice before doing anything except dig pits to identify cultural artifacts at the site. She noted that in April the administration agreed to provide 14 days’ notice before any construction started, an agreement ordered by the court.

Burgum’s announcement suggested the administration is pushing the project forward without going through any of the required permitting or obeying the law that requires Congress to pass a law allowing another memorial in the protected area of Washington, D.C., known as Area I.

Questioned about the war in Iran, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday that it is actually not a war but “a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us.” He compared the Iran war, which is in its sixth month without congressional authorization of any sort and has taken the lives of 18 U.S. service members, to the much longer Vietnam War which he claimed took more than 100,000 service members’ lives (the Department of Defense says the actual number was 58,220).

Trump also denied that military personnel are seeing record long deployments, and insisted that the U.S. controls the Strait of Hormuz. He turned back to the argument that the war was to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, although those discussions now appear to be off the table as the U.S. tries to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Jonathan Swan, Adam Entous, Maggie Haberman, and Eric Schmitt of the New York Times reported on Friday that although Trump and members of the administration insist that reports of a shortage of crucial munitions are a lie, government investigators forced about 50 members of the U.S. military’s Joint Staff—about 2,000 officials who coordinate operations and policy with commanders around the world—to take lie detector tests to determine if they had been the source of the leaks to journalists.

The journalists note that such a proceeding is unprecedented and comes as Hegseth works harder and harder to control information coming from the Pentagon. “Mass polygraph tests have never been administered to the top ranks of the U.S. military in modern history,” they write.

Also on Friday, Catie Edmondson and Carolyn Y. Johnson reported in the New York Times that the Defense Department and the National Institutes of Health have signed an agreement providing a framework to collaborate on biodefense and pandemic preparedness. According to officials who spoke with the reporters, the deal could mean moving as much as $2 billion from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—roughly one-third the budget of the agency Dr. Anthony Fauci used to run—to the Pentagon.

Amidst reports that the Navy has run out of money, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been trying unsuccessfully to push through Congress a short-term injection of $350 billion on top of the additional $150 billion congressional Republicans gave the Pentagon last year. Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, accused the Defense Department of “trying to rob N.I.H. of billions of dollars that Congress provided for medical research so that it can pad the Pentagon’s budget.”

NIH director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya appeared to confirm the agreement when he posted on social media that “far from siphoning money away from research, this partnership between and focuses on research projects that will drive discoveries to improve the health of American citizens and members of the military.”

In the White House on Friday, Trump appeared to misunderstand not only that since World War II trade has made the United States wealthy, but also the concept of trade itself. “We could do tremendous good for ourselves by just not trading with other countries,” he said. “We lose with Mexico $195 billion a year. They have nothing that we have to have, I mean, hot tamales, tomatoes, a couple of things.”

Aside from the fact the U.S. imports machinery, agricultural products, vehicles, auto parts, electronics, and so on from Mexico, readers on social media noted: “The trade deficit is not a debt, it does not represent losing money to the other country. It means more goods were imported from it than exported to it. Why has to do with many factors, mainly the United States has more highly paid, skilled, and educated service workers.”

On Friday, the White House debuted computer games on the official White House website. The “games” are ripoffs of older games like Snake, this one with a white man in a suit picking up Black, Asian, and Latino men and putting them in orange jumpsuits. There was also apparently one ripping off Tetris, which was apparently about building Trump’s wall, but it disappeared as the real Tetris posted: “At Tetris we believe in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them. To our fans everywhere: we love you, we see you, and we’re grateful to have you in our community.

“P.S. The Tetris Company was not involved in the creation of ‘Build the Wall’.

“P.P.S. We take copyright infringement very seriously.”

On Friday, September 4, the administration also reiterated its determination to roll back environmental protections, proposing a new rule that would end protections against pollution and industrial impacts for a significant number of streams and wetlands. As Zahra Hirji of Bloomberg reported, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed redefining which bodies of water would qualify for federal protection.

Also on Friday, the United Nations General Assembly voted 164–1, with six countries abstaining, for a resolution changing the world map to more accurately reflect the sizes of the continents. As Jewel Bright of NPR reports, the commonly-used Mercator projection, created by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569, was designed to enable navigators to plot courses on the straight lines of compass bearings. It distorts the size of landmasses, making the ones closest to the poles disproportionately large, while areas close to the Equator—like Africa—are shown as significantly smaller than they really are.

The African Group, made up of 54 African member states, introduced the resolution, which is not binding but will put the weight of the U.N. behind a different map projection that shows the continent sizes much more accurately. The United States was the only country to vote against the measure.

Also on Friday, Joe Sommerlad of the Independent confirmed reporting from the Washington Examiner the day before that, according to a White House official, First Lady Melania Trump will not attend Trump’s novel midterm convention next week in Dallas. She joins at least 45 Republican lawmakers who told Mia McCarthy, Meredith Lee Hill, and Jordain Carney of Politico they are steering clear of participating in an event with the deeply unpopular president for which tickets for Republican lawmakers start at $25,000.

One lawmaker called the event “a waste of time,” explaining: “You shouldn’t be having to rally your base at this point. You should be trying to convince independents. Independents are not attending nor watching the midterm convention.” Republican National Committee press secretary Natalie Baldassarre countered that “the outreach and enthusiasm to attend, participate, and speak at this historic midterm convention has been incredible.”

In an interview with Ben Terris of New York Magazine published Friday, Trump agreed that Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) was right to say that he was putting his name on things now because nobody else will when he’s gone. “That’s true,” Trump told Terris. “Nobody will do it once I’m gone. When I leave here, nobody will.”

“ Friday, Trump agreed that Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) was right to say that he was putting his name on things now because nobody else will when he’s gone. “That’s true,” Trump told Terris. “Nobody will do it once I’m gone. When I leave here, nobody will.””

Untrue.
“Here lies Donald Trump”

September 6, 2026 (Sunday)

Storm clouds over the horizon looked like mountains last week as I came in from a late afternoon paddle in the kayak.

There’s a lot going on, but it feels like we could all use a break on this holiday weekend.

I’ll be back at it tomorrow.

Neophyte said:

September 6, 2026 (Sunday)

Storm clouds over the horizon looked like mountains last week as I came in from a late afternoon paddle in the kayak.

There’s a lot going on, but it feels like we could all use a break on this holiday weekend.

I’ll be back at it tomorrow.

Good lad.

Neophyte said:

September 6, 2026 (Sunday)

Storm clouds over the horizon looked like mountains last week as I came in from a late afternoon paddle in the kayak.

There’s a lot going on, but it feels like we could all use a break on this holiday weekend.

I’ll be back at it tomorrow.

Nice!

:)

Neophyte said:

September 6, 2026 (Sunday)

Storm clouds over the horizon looked like mountains last week as I came in from a late afternoon paddle in the kayak.

There’s a lot going on, but it feels like we could all use a break on this holiday weekend.

I’ll be back at it tomorrow.

😍

September 7, 2026 (Monday)

Since yesterday, President Donald J. Trump has been posting on social media at a frantic pace, showing AI images of himself with President George Washington on his own account and, on the official White House account, a video of himself as the DC Comics Green Lantern superhero. The White House social media account ripped off Green Lantern’s oath, captioning the video: “In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil’s might beware my power… Green Lantern’s light!”

Back on his own account, Trump posted images of Space Force uniforms that mimic those of Starship Troopers, whose design the director of that 1997 film claimed was meant to invoke Nazis. He also posted two AI images of himself in what appears to be a spaceship with his hands on buttons as two nuclear mushroom clouds billow off planet Earth behind him, and two images of himself as a sort of superhero dark lord with a dark army around him with the captions “THEY WILL NEVER SLEEP AGAIN,” “GIVE THEM NIGHTMARES,” and “THEY WILL DREAM OF US FOREVER.”

He posted multiple images of himself changing maps or of new maps showing the change of the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” and the state of New Mexico to “New America,” and labeling the Strait of Hormuz as “NEW U.S. Territory.” He showed the colors of the United States over the North American continent, and he posted “before” and “after” maps in which Iran was replaced with a silhouette image of his own head, as well as an AI image of a U.S. military plane blowing up Iran’s Kharg Island with the caption: “Bye bye, Kharg,” along with repeated claims that Iran is collapsing. He posted an AI-generated image of himself beating Canadian prime minister Mark Carney at hockey and saying, “GET UP, GOVERNOR,” an insulting reference to Canada as a U.S. state.

He also posted an image of the moon with the caption: “THE MOON IS OURS” along with a U.S. flag.

And, of course, many of the things Trump posted claimed he would “GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS THE GREATEST PRESIDENT OF ALL TIME!” He posted AI images of former president Joe Biden wearing a Trump 2024 hat and anti-Trump actor Robert DeNiro holding up a shirt saying “TRUMP IS MY PRESIDENT.” He posted an AI image of what seemed to be the luxury liner RMS Titanic, labeled “DUMOCRATIC PARTY,” sinking in flames.

He acknowledged complaints about the fact he has pocketed more than two billion dollars from rapid-fire stock trading since taking office a second time. He posted an image of himself trading stocks at his desk in the Oval Office at a screen that reads “BOUGHT: INTEL $20” and another that reads “NOW $95” with the caption: “I do this for our Country, not myself. I’ve made Hundreds of Billions of Dollars on Stocks, and many other type Holdings, for the U.S.A., not myself, and all I do is get criticized by the Radical Left Dumocrats. Very unfair, but what can you do! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

He reiterated his demand for the SAVE America voter suppression act and claimed: “Except for the RADICAL LEFT that wants to RAISE YOUR TAXES, and wreck our Economy, EVERYONE LOVES TAX CUTS! My Big Beautiful Bill was the BIGGEST relief in HISTORY for hardworking families—Nobody’s seen anything like it!”

It seems likely that he and his aide Natalie Harp, who is apparently behind much of his social media, think trolling the country is a good way to keep attention focused on Trump rather than on rising inflation, corruption, or the war in Iran.

There is much to distract from. On CNN today, pollster Harry Enten noted that while Trump enjoyed a 20-point advantage over Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent, in 2024 on economic issues, Trump’s approval rating for how he is handling the economy is now 41 points underwater. “We’re talking about a switcheroo in the wrong direction of 61 points on this Labor Day,” Enten said. “It is not a happy Labor Day, indeed, for President Trump when it comes to how those who are employed view him on the economy.”

Also today, when Martha Raddatz of ABC News noted that gas and diesel prices are soaring, with the Labor Day gasoline average at $4.10 a gallon compared with $3.16 last year, she played a clip of Trump telling an audience that when they had to “pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember, you’re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have—a country, really, it’s the number one state sponsor of terror in the world. We don’t want to have them have a nuclear weapon. So remember that, when you have to pay a little bit more, you’re at $4, it’s okay. I mean, it’s, I’m not, I’m not. I will never apologize. I did the right thing.”

Raddatz asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright today about when we might see a nuclear agreement with Iran, since it’s already been six months of higher prices and there doesn’t seem to be one on the table. Wright answered: “There may not be a nuclear agreement. It may be simply destroying their capabilities to do it. An agreement may await a next administration in Iran. We simply don’t know that. But I think what the president was communicating there is how critically important this is.”

Tonight, Trump posted: “Oil prices will drop precipitously, like everything else is dropping (but more!), when we WIN the war with Iran. Three Dollars a gallon, but ultimately, below Two Dollars a gallon. It will all happen quickly, and Iran will never have a Nuclear Weapon. MAGA! President DJT”

But while at some level Trump might think he is being clever by keeping the focus on himself, what he is really doing is demonstrating that he is no longer even trying to govern and is instead retreating into a world where he simply does whatever he wants without regard for the country. In the early hours of Trump’s rants yesterday, even before they had gained their full momentum, Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME) called out the Republicans who are refusing to exercise their constitutional powers to protect the country.

“This is truly unhinged,” she posted on social media over a video of his posts. “I don’t want to hear ‘oh, it’s just Trump being Trump’ or he’s ‘trolling.’ Republicans cannot keep shrugging this off. Congress, the Cabinet + everyone around him has a responsibility to stop enabling this dangerous behavior and start asking whether he is fit to hold office.”

Today Trump acknowledged the Labor Day holiday, saying: “Happy Labor Day to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics, Communists, and Dumocrats who will do anything possible to destroy our Country. These Deranged People, after fighting for 10 years, should finally acknowledge that your Favorite President (ME!), knows how to WIN! They should be exhausted by now but, sadly, they’re not. They’re going to give it one last shot at ruining America, but we’re not going to let that happen. We’re going to win the Midterms, BIG, and SAVE AMERICA! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Former president Joe Biden had a different message for the country on Labor Day: “I’ve said it my entire career,” he posted on social media, “the middle class built America. And unions built the middle class. To every worker who’s ever punched a clock, worked a double, or walked a line for fair wages—and to everyone who stands up for them, at the bargaining table, in the statehouse, or on the shop floor: thank you. This country runs in large part because of you.”

For my part, I hope everyone had a restful Labor Day and is ready to face the fall season—and the midterm elections—with renewed energy.

Thanks.

Having Trump as your favourite president is like having a favourite bout of diarrhoea.

Divine Angel said:

Having Trump as your favourite president is like having a favourite bout of diarrhoea.

1987, man that was gooooood.

Neophyte said:

September 7, 2026 (Monday)

It seems likely that he and his aide Natalie Harp, who is apparently behind much of his social media, think trolling the country is a good way to keep attention focused on Trump rather than on rising inflation, corruption, or the war in Iran.

And not the Epstein files…

Neophyte said:

There is much to distract from. On CNN today, pollster Harry Enten noted that while Trump enjoyed a 20-point advantage over Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent, in 2024 on economic issues, Trump’s approval rating for how he is handling the economy is now 41 points underwater. “We’re talking about a switcheroo in the wrong direction of 61 points on this Labor Day,” Enten said. “It is not a happy Labor Day, indeed, for President Trump when it comes to how those who are employed view him on the economy.”

1.2 million dumped off the voter rolls. Link analysis: South Carolina removed 1.2 million voters from the rolls since 2022

Neophyte said:

“This is truly unhinged,” she posted on social media over a video of his posts. “I don’t want to hear ‘oh, it’s just Trump being Trump’ or he’s ‘trolling.’ Republicans cannot keep shrugging this off. Congress, the Cabinet + everyone around him has a responsibility to stop enabling this dangerous behavior and start asking whether he is fit to hold office.”

Will the Republicans finally take action?

ms spock said:

Will the Republicans finally take action?

No.

Currently, Trump occupies the media all of the time.

Trump essentially is the government, ruling by decree/executive order, or at least, trying to.

With control of both the Congress and the Senate, the Republicans can ensure that both of them do, essentially, nothing.

This leaves the Republican Congress and Senate members lots of free time to pursue graft, corruption, and profiteering.

That might all change after the November elections, but, right now, the Republicans are busy grabbing everything that they can to add a final layer to the feathering of their nests.

They’re quite content for Trump to carry on as he does, at least until after the mid-term elections. If, somehow, they come out of those ok, then the Trump matter might need to be addressed.

captain_spalding said:

ms spock said:

Will the Republicans finally take action?

No.

Currently, Trump occupies the media all of the time.

Trump essentially is the government, ruling by decree/executive order, or at least, trying to.

With control of both the Congress and the Senate, the Republicans can ensure that both of them do, essentially, nothing.

This leaves the Republican Congress and Senate members lots of free time to pursue graft, corruption, and profiteering.

That might all change after the November elections, but, right now, the Republicans are busy grabbing everything that they can to add a final layer to the feathering of their nests.

They’re quite content for Trump to carry on as he does, at least until after the mid-term elections. If, somehow, they come out of those ok, then the Trump matter might need to be addressed.

Agree with all that. Add one extra point:

Trump/MAGA have taken over the party and they heavily influence who gets chosen as the party candidate for the election. Pretty much only factional cronies get to run. They spent huge dollars competing against any other factional or independent voices contesting the primaries. Trump has many wealthy donors who are quite happy to grab whatever they can too.

party_pants said:

captain_spalding said:

ms spock said:

Will the Republicans finally take action?

No.

Currently, Trump occupies the media all of the time.

Trump essentially is the government, ruling by decree/executive order, or at least, trying to.

With control of both the Congress and the Senate, the Republicans can ensure that both of them do, essentially, nothing.

This leaves the Republican Congress and Senate members lots of free time to pursue graft, corruption, and profiteering.

That might all change after the November elections, but, right now, the Republicans are busy grabbing everything that they can to add a final layer to the feathering of their nests.

They’re quite content for Trump to carry on as he does, at least until after the mid-term elections. If, somehow, they come out of those ok, then the Trump matter might need to be addressed.

Agree with all that. Add one extra point:

Trump/MAGA have taken over the party and they heavily influence who gets chosen as the party candidate for the election. Pretty much only factional cronies get to run. They spent huge dollars competing against any other factional or independent voices contesting the primaries. Trump has many wealthy donors who are quite happy to grab whatever they can too.

Well, don’t be surprised if there’s another assassination attempt on Trump.

You can always find some dumb kid with a gun, and somehow convince him to take a shot at the President. Who knows, one of them may actually be able to shoot straight.

Then the Republicans’ problem disappears in an instant, and they can make him into a martyr and a saint, and there’s all sorts pomp, ceremony, and panoply in which to indulge, and all sort of inquiries that can shit suspicion all over the place, and his family is relieved of him (i’d really like an invite to the post-shooting party at Melania’s place), the family won’t care as they’ll be busy fighting over the estate, the Epstein files might finally go away rather than ‘sully the memory of’ a President killed in office, and the Republicans might garner some sympathy votes in 2028.

All for the price of one bullet and one dumb kid.

party_pants said:

captain_spalding said:

ms spock said:

Will the Republicans finally take action?

No.

Currently, Trump occupies the media all of the time.

Trump essentially is the government, ruling by decree/executive order, or at least, trying to.

With control of both the Congress and the Senate, the Republicans can ensure that both of them do, essentially, nothing.

This leaves the Republican Congress and Senate members lots of free time to pursue graft, corruption, and profiteering.

That might all change after the November elections, but, right now, the Republicans are busy grabbing everything that they can to add a final layer to the feathering of their nests.

They’re quite content for Trump to carry on as he does, at least until after the mid-term elections. If, somehow, they come out of those ok, then the Trump matter might need to be addressed.

Agree with all that. Add one extra point:

Trump/MAGA have taken over the party and they heavily influence who gets chosen as the party candidate for the election. Pretty much only factional cronies get to run. They spent huge dollars competing against any other factional or independent voices contesting the primaries. Trump has many wealthy donors who are quite happy to grab whatever they can too.

But how long can it last?

captain_spalding said:

party_pants said:

captain_spalding said:

No.

Currently, Trump occupies the media all of the time.

Trump essentially is the government, ruling by decree/executive order, or at least, trying to.

With control of both the Congress and the Senate, the Republicans can ensure that both of them do, essentially, nothing.

This leaves the Republican Congress and Senate members lots of free time to pursue graft, corruption, and profiteering.

That might all change after the November elections, but, right now, the Republicans are busy grabbing everything that they can to add a final layer to the feathering of their nests.

They’re quite content for Trump to carry on as he does, at least until after the mid-term elections. If, somehow, they come out of those ok, then the Trump matter might need to be addressed.

Agree with all that. Add one extra point:

Trump/MAGA have taken over the party and they heavily influence who gets chosen as the party candidate for the election. Pretty much only factional cronies get to run. They spent huge dollars competing against any other factional or independent voices contesting the primaries. Trump has many wealthy donors who are quite happy to grab whatever they can too.

Well, don’t be surprised if there’s another assassination attempt on Trump.

You can always find some dumb kid with a gun, and somehow convince him to take a shot at the President. Who knows, one of them may actually be able to shoot straight.

Then the Republicans’ problem disappears in an instant, and they can make him into a martyr and a saint, and there’s all sorts pomp, ceremony, and panoply in which to indulge, and all sort of inquiries that can shit suspicion all over the place, and his family is relieved of him (i’d really like an invite to the post-shooting party at Melania’s place), the family won’t care as they’ll be busy fighting over the estate, the Epstein files might finally go away rather than ‘sully the memory of’ a President killed in office, and the Republicans might garner some sympathy votes in 2028.

All for the price of one bullet and one dumb kid.

Lee Harvey Oswald?

roughbarked said:

party_pants said:

captain_spalding said:

No.

Currently, Trump occupies the media all of the time.

Trump essentially is the government, ruling by decree/executive order, or at least, trying to.

With control of both the Congress and the Senate, the Republicans can ensure that both of them do, essentially, nothing.

This leaves the Republican Congress and Senate members lots of free time to pursue graft, corruption, and profiteering.

That might all change after the November elections, but, right now, the Republicans are busy grabbing everything that they can to add a final layer to the feathering of their nests.

They’re quite content for Trump to carry on as he does, at least until after the mid-term elections. If, somehow, they come out of those ok, then the Trump matter might need to be addressed.

Agree with all that. Add one extra point:

Trump/MAGA have taken over the party and they heavily influence who gets chosen as the party candidate for the election. Pretty much only factional cronies get to run. They spent huge dollars competing against any other factional or independent voices contesting the primaries. Trump has many wealthy donors who are quite happy to grab whatever they can too.

But how long can it last?

It depends on whether or not the mid-terms in November go smoothly and the result is accepted. I get the feeling that if things go badly for Trump then ICE will be mobilised to interfere in the election count – seizing ballot machines, arresting any non-white people lining up to vote… that sort of thing. if that happens and then there is no “robust push-back”, then democracy will be dead in the USA. This can’t be left to the courts to take months to sort out by legal argument.

Then it will last as long as Trump lives.

ms spock said:

Neophyte said:

September 7, 2026 (Monday)

It seems likely that he and his aide Natalie Harp, who is apparently behind much of his social media, think trolling the country is a good way to keep attention focused on Trump rather than on rising inflation, corruption, or the war in Iran.

And not the Epstein files…

Neophyte said:

There is much to distract from. On CNN today, pollster Harry Enten noted that while Trump enjoyed a 20-point advantage over Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent, in 2024 on economic issues, Trump’s approval rating for how he is handling the economy is now 41 points underwater. “We’re talking about a switcheroo in the wrong direction of 61 points on this Labor Day,” Enten said. “It is not a happy Labor Day, indeed, for President Trump when it comes to how those who are employed view him on the economy.”

1.2 million dumped off the voter rolls. Link analysis: South Carolina removed 1.2 million voters from the rolls since 2022

Neophyte said:

“This is truly unhinged,” she posted on social media over a video of his posts. “I don’t want to hear ‘oh, it’s just Trump being Trump’ or he’s ‘trolling.’ Republicans cannot keep shrugging this off. Congress, the Cabinet + everyone around him has a responsibility to stop enabling this dangerous behavior and start asking whether he is fit to hold office.”

Will the Republicans finally take action?

Most unlikely.

September 8, 2026 (Tuesday)
On Sunday, Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (Alternativ für Deutschland, or AfD) party won 43.8% of the vote in a legislative election in the small state of Saxony-Anhalt, formerly part of Soviet-dominated East Germany. The AfD is anti-immigrant and pro-Russia and has won the support of both Vice President J.D. Vance and billionaire Elon Musk.

When Musk posted “Well done!” in German to the co-founder of AfD, Alice Weidel, another AfD leader responded with thanks, posting: “If we take on responsibility here, I would very much welcome the opportunity for strong and constructive cooperation. Germany would then once again be a place worth investing in. Best regards from Saxony-Anhalt!”

Jon Henley of the Guardian noted that right-wing leaders across Europe celebrated the outcome, including ousted Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who called the election results “a huge night for Germany and Europe,” adding: “Buckle up. This is just the beginning.”

Musk was the largest donor to any political committee in the 2024 U.S. elections, putting around $290 million into the 2024 election to help elect President Donald J. Trump and Republicans. On August 28, Andrew Howard, Erin Doherty, and Meredith Lee Hill of Politico reported that Musk was planning to meet with House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) as he considered investing at least $100 million to elect Republicans in the midterm elections.

Since that meeting, Musk has plowed money into the Texas Senate race to support Texas attorney general Ken Paxton against Democratic nominee James Talarico. According to Theodore Schleifer of the New York Times, Musk’s investments—many through political action committees—target Senate races in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio, as well as House races in at least California, Wisconsin, and Washington.

Musk’s open attempt to buy elections for the Republicans should be bigger news, not only because of the political power his money has given to one man, but also because of what his behavior says about the MAGA administration’s ideology and its goals.

After supporting Trump in 2024, Musk appeared to become the head of the Department of Government Efficiency—the administration was coy about who actually held that title—where he worked to slash government spending. On February 3, he posted on his social media: “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.” Musk called USAID—the United States Agency for International Development—“a criminal organization” and “a viper’s nest of radical left-marxists who hate America.”

In July 2026, Ari Daniel, David Augustine, Kazeem Olawale Nasiru, and Lameck Nyagudi of NPR reported on a study by Boston University infectious disease modeler Brooke Nichols that estimated more than 700,000 people had died from the sudden stop in USAID funding, including more than half a million children in developing countries.

And yet, for all his talk about slashing government expenditures, Musk’s DOGE did not appear to save much. Emilio Perez Ibarguen of Politico reported in August, when DOGE officially ended, that a report by the Government Accountability Office found that the savings it claimed were in large part exaggerated or couldn’t be corroborated.

Meanwhile, government contracts continued to flow to Musk’s businesses. As Desmond Butler, Trisha Thadani, Emmanuel Martinez, Aaron Gregg, Luis Melgar, Jonathan O’Connell, and Dan Keating reported in the Washington Post in February 2025, Musk himself has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of taxpayer dollars in history, taking in at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits over the course of more than 20 years. Once he was in power in Trump 2.0, government investigations into those businesses ended.

The very public nature of Musk’s antics has helped to wake the public up to the fact that our current system is skewed toward billionaires. In July, economist Paul Krugman noted a growing backlash against those billionaires. A poll by UMass Amherst found that 58% of Americans think billionaires are a threat to democracy, and 45% of them say the U.S. is an oligarchy, “a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.” As Krugman noted, only 28% of those polled disagreed.

Krugman pointed out that wealth has been concentrating at the top of the U.S. economy for decades, so the growing wave against that concentration of wealth appears to be driven by those like Musk and Trump himself, who has flaunted his use of taxpayer money for his own interests while dismissing the pain of regular Americans.

This flow of taxpayer dollars to favored businesses rather than to programs that serve the needs of the people seems to be a feature rather than a bug in the Trump administration and reflects its rejection of democracy in favor of the right-wing axis of authoritarianism.

Last night, Tarini Parti, Josh Dawsey, Michelle Hackman, and Summer Said of the Wall Street Journal published a deep investigation into the machinations of Corey Lewandowski when his colleague Kristi Noem was secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. They report that Lewandowski, who was Trump’s campaign manager for part of 2016, appeared to offer aid to foreign countries navigating U.S. bureaucracy in the department for a fee, selling government services for his own gain.

The journalists also report that Lewandowski may have been involved in awarding government contracts improperly, an accusation covered in a November 14, 2025, article by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski of ProPublica. The Wall Street Journal reporters note that Congress gave the Department of Homeland Security an additional $75 billion to spend during Trump’s term on deportations, detention facilities, and technology, providing deep pockets for corruption.

While the administration appears to have sidelined Noem and Lewandowski since Noem resigned under pressure in March, the journalists say Lewandowski “has told people close to him he expects the president would pardon him in the event of a criminal case.”

Lewandowski responded on social media that the story was “just another example of the kind of anonymous-source, politically driven reporting that Americans have seen time and again. We’ve lived through the Russia collusion hoax the fake Birthday card and countless other sensational allegations that ultimately failed to withstand scrutiny. I’m tremendously proud of my work as a volunteer in advancing this administration’s agenda and remain confident that the facts and not anonymous accusations will ultimately speak for themselves.”

But, of course, every official investigation into the 2016 election, including the one conducted by the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee and unanimously adopted, agreed that Russia did work to get Trump elected in 2016. And while Trump claims he did not create the birthday card to child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein apparently bearing Trump’s signature on a drawing of a nude girl that was produced by the Epstein estate, the story was convincing enough that it helped to push Congress to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act and the first case he brought against the Wall Street Journal for publishing the story was dismissed. A second case is pending.

There is, in fact, increasing pushback against the world Musk and Trump are trying to put into place instead of liberal democracy. In the U.S., the growing opposition to data centers, which seems to represent anger at the very wealthy tech bros who want to call the shots, is perhaps a sign of the direction the wind in the U.S. is blowing.

Whether that popular pressure can withstand the extraordinary amounts of money Musk and other right-wing billionaires are pouring into the midterms is unclear. Judd Legum of Popular Information reported today that Musk is funding an advertising campaign encouraging people in swing states to check their voting registration status at a different website than the one run by the Election Assistance Commission, which is an independent agency of the U.S. government.

Instead, Musk’s campaign urges people to go to “votesafe . org,” which collects their full name, home address, date of birth, email address, cell phone number, IP address and location (which identifies city and zip code), every link clicked, every page looked at, and voter registration status, among other information.

Legum reports that the privacy policy of the website “allows America PAC to ‘share’ or ‘sell’ personal information ‘with our business partners,’” including “whether you are registered to vote” and “how you submit your vote… where permitted by law.” America PAC can also sell “inferences” it makes about a user, including “psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities and aptitude.”

A new documentary about Musk by filmmaker Alex Gibney argues, as Steven Zeitchik of the Hollywood Reporter put it, that Musk is “a dangerous huckster is stealthily aggregating power to exploit us, primarily by centralizing and controlling massive amounts of data.” The documentary, called “Musk,” notes that, under Musk, DOGE had access to federal IT systems and, as Zeitchik recalls, a whistleblower warned that members of DOGE accessed and shared sensitive data from the Social Security Administration.

Zeitchik reports on the onscreen comments of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Geoffrey Hinton, known as “the godfather of AI,” who said: “It’s fairly clear to me that Trump is hell-bent on corrupting the midterm elections,” he says onscreen. “If you wanted to corrupt those midterm elections and you wanted to use AI, all you needed to do was get detailed information on U.S. citizens. And what DOGE did looked like just what you would do.”

In Europe, in the wake of the rise of the AfD, German defense minister Boris Pistorius said today that Germany will send missiles to Ukraine to help it fight off a winter incursion from Russia.

“ The very public nature of Musk’s antics has helped to wake the public up to the fact that our current system is skewed toward billionaires.”

It will trickle down, Reagan promised it!

Ta.

So well written. So disheartening.

Michael V said:

Ta.

So well written. So disheartening.

Radio news today said a new poll shows if an election were held today, Labor would win but One Nation would be the new opposition 🫪

Neophyte said:

September 8, 2026 (Tuesday)
On Sunday, Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (Alternativ für Deutschland, or AfD) party won 43.8% of the vote in a legislative election in the small state of Saxony-Anhalt, formerly part of Soviet-dominated East Germany. The AfD is anti-immigrant and pro-Russia and has won the support of both Vice President J.D. Vance and billionaire Elon Musk.

When Musk posted “Well done!” in German to the co-founder of AfD, Alice Weidel, another AfD leader responded with thanks, posting: “If we take on responsibility here, I would very much welcome the opportunity for strong and constructive cooperation. Germany would then once again be a place worth investing in. Best regards from Saxony-Anhalt!”

Jon Henley of the Guardian noted that right-wing leaders across Europe celebrated the outcome, including ousted Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who called the election results “a huge night for Germany and Europe,” adding: “Buckle up. This is just the beginning.”

Musk was the largest donor to any political committee in the 2024 U.S. elections, putting around $290 million into the 2024 election to help elect President Donald J. Trump and Republicans. On August 28, Andrew Howard, Erin Doherty, and Meredith Lee Hill of Politico reported that Musk was planning to meet with House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) as he considered investing at least $100 million to elect Republicans in the midterm elections.

Since that meeting, Musk has plowed money into the Texas Senate race to support Texas attorney general Ken Paxton against Democratic nominee James Talarico. According to Theodore Schleifer of the New York Times, Musk’s investments—many through political action committees—target Senate races in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio, as well as House races in at least California, Wisconsin, and Washington.

Musk’s open attempt to buy elections for the Republicans should be bigger news, not only because of the political power his money has given to one man, but also because of what his behavior says about the MAGA administration’s ideology and its goals.

After supporting Trump in 2024, Musk appeared to become the head of the Department of Government Efficiency—the administration was coy about who actually held that title—where he worked to slash government spending. On February 3, he posted on his social media: “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.” Musk called USAID—the United States Agency for International Development—“a criminal organization” and “a viper’s nest of radical left-marxists who hate America.”

In July 2026, Ari Daniel, David Augustine, Kazeem Olawale Nasiru, and Lameck Nyagudi of NPR reported on a study by Boston University infectious disease modeler Brooke Nichols that estimated more than 700,000 people had died from the sudden stop in USAID funding, including more than half a million children in developing countries.

And yet, for all his talk about slashing government expenditures, Musk’s DOGE did not appear to save much. Emilio Perez Ibarguen of Politico reported in August, when DOGE officially ended, that a report by the Government Accountability Office found that the savings it claimed were in large part exaggerated or couldn’t be corroborated.

Meanwhile, government contracts continued to flow to Musk’s businesses. As Desmond Butler, Trisha Thadani, Emmanuel Martinez, Aaron Gregg, Luis Melgar, Jonathan O’Connell, and Dan Keating reported in the Washington Post in February 2025, Musk himself has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of taxpayer dollars in history, taking in at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits over the course of more than 20 years. Once he was in power in Trump 2.0, government investigations into those businesses ended.

The very public nature of Musk’s antics has helped to wake the public up to the fact that our current system is skewed toward billionaires. In July, economist Paul Krugman noted a growing backlash against those billionaires. A poll by UMass Amherst found that 58% of Americans think billionaires are a threat to democracy, and 45% of them say the U.S. is an oligarchy, “a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.” As Krugman noted, only 28% of those polled disagreed.

Krugman pointed out that wealth has been concentrating at the top of the U.S. economy for decades, so the growing wave against that concentration of wealth appears to be driven by those like Musk and Trump himself, who has flaunted his use of taxpayer money for his own interests while dismissing the pain of regular Americans.

This flow of taxpayer dollars to favored businesses rather than to programs that serve the needs of the people seems to be a feature rather than a bug in the Trump administration and reflects its rejection of democracy in favor of the right-wing axis of authoritarianism.

Last night, Tarini Parti, Josh Dawsey, Michelle Hackman, and Summer Said of the Wall Street Journal published a deep investigation into the machinations of Corey Lewandowski when his colleague Kristi Noem was secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. They report that Lewandowski, who was Trump’s campaign manager for part of 2016, appeared to offer aid to foreign countries navigating U.S. bureaucracy in the department for a fee, selling government services for his own gain.

The journalists also report that Lewandowski may have been involved in awarding government contracts improperly, an accusation covered in a November 14, 2025, article by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski of ProPublica. The Wall Street Journal reporters note that Congress gave the Department of Homeland Security an additional $75 billion to spend during Trump’s term on deportations, detention facilities, and technology, providing deep pockets for corruption.

While the administration appears to have sidelined Noem and Lewandowski since Noem resigned under pressure in March, the journalists say Lewandowski “has told people close to him he expects the president would pardon him in the event of a criminal case.”

Lewandowski responded on social media that the story was “just another example of the kind of anonymous-source, politically driven reporting that Americans have seen time and again. We’ve lived through the Russia collusion hoax the fake Birthday card and countless other sensational allegations that ultimately failed to withstand scrutiny. I’m tremendously proud of my work as a volunteer in advancing this administration’s agenda and remain confident that the facts and not anonymous accusations will ultimately speak for themselves.”

But, of course, every official investigation into the 2016 election, including the one conducted by the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee and unanimously adopted, agreed that Russia did work to get Trump elected in 2016. And while Trump claims he did not create the birthday card to child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein apparently bearing Trump’s signature on a drawing of a nude girl that was produced by the Epstein estate, the story was convincing enough that it helped to push Congress to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act and the first case he brought against the Wall Street Journal for publishing the story was dismissed. A second case is pending.

There is, in fact, increasing pushback against the world Musk and Trump are trying to put into place instead of liberal democracy. In the U.S., the growing opposition to data centers, which seems to represent anger at the very wealthy tech bros who want to call the shots, is perhaps a sign of the direction the wind in the U.S. is blowing.

Whether that popular pressure can withstand the extraordinary amounts of money Musk and other right-wing billionaires are pouring into the midterms is unclear. Judd Legum of Popular Information reported today that Musk is funding an advertising campaign encouraging people in swing states to check their voting registration status at a different website than the one run by the Election Assistance Commission, which is an independent agency of the U.S. government.

Instead, Musk’s campaign urges people to go to “votesafe . org,” which collects their full name, home address, date of birth, email address, cell phone number, IP address and location (which identifies city and zip code), every link clicked, every page looked at, and voter registration status, among other information.

Legum reports that the privacy policy of the website “allows America PAC to ‘share’ or ‘sell’ personal information ‘with our business partners,’” including “whether you are registered to vote” and “how you submit your vote… where permitted by law.” America PAC can also sell “inferences” it makes about a user, including “psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities and aptitude.”

A new documentary about Musk by filmmaker Alex Gibney argues, as Steven Zeitchik of the Hollywood Reporter put it, that Musk is “a dangerous huckster is stealthily aggregating power to exploit us, primarily by centralizing and controlling massive amounts of data.” The documentary, called “Musk,” notes that, under Musk, DOGE had access to federal IT systems and, as Zeitchik recalls, a whistleblower warned that members of DOGE accessed and shared sensitive data from the Social Security Administration.

Zeitchik reports on the onscreen comments of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Geoffrey Hinton, known as “the godfather of AI,” who said: “It’s fairly clear to me that Trump is hell-bent on corrupting the midterm elections,” he says onscreen. “If you wanted to corrupt those midterm elections and you wanted to use AI, all you needed to do was get detailed information on U.S. citizens. And what DOGE did looked like just what you would do.”

In Europe, in the wake of the rise of the AfD, German defense minister Boris Pistorius said today that Germany will send missiles to Ukraine to help it fight off a winter incursion from Russia.

When they mean bloated government spending it means welfare, healthcare, people, living creatures, etc
They want to weaken government rules and guidelines on exploitation

Cymek said:

When they mean bloated government spending it means welfare, healthcare, people, living creatures, etc
They want to weaken government rules and guidelines on exploitation

Sounds vaguely familiar, maybe some country somewhere in Europe once went down that path in the 1930s…?

Divine Angel said:

“ The very public nature of Musk’s antics has helped to wake the public up to the fact that our current system is skewed toward billionaires.”

It will trickle down, Reagan promised it!

team sports democracy good

Neophyte said:

Musk is funding an advertising campaign encouraging people in swing states to check their voting registration status at a different website than the one run by the Election Assistance Commission, which is an independent agency of the U.S. government.

Instead, Musk’s campaign urges people to go to “votesafe . org,” which collects their full name, home address, date of birth, email address, cell phone number, IP address and location (which identifies city and zip code), every link clicked, every page looked at, and voter registration status, among other information.

Legum reports that the privacy policy of the website “allows America PAC to ‘share’ or ‘sell’ personal information ‘with our business partners,’” including “whether you are registered to vote” and “how you submit your vote… where permitted by law.” America PAC can also sell “inferences” it makes about a user, including “psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities and aptitude.”

Let’s hope security software flags this as a phishing website.

September 9, 2026 (Wednesday)

Yesterday, at a White House event honoring those who sacrificed their lives on 9/11, President Donald Trump went off script and claimed he had taken a crew downtown “right after this happened. They were, they had no hesitation. Everybody went down with me. We went down as a big group of people. Wasn’t too much we could do, I’ll be honest. It was raw. Nobody’s seen anything like it ever. We had other buildings. United States Steel Building was creaking. Really creaking. And we thought it was going to fall down. The truth is it creaked a lot. It creaked. It still creaks, but uh, it never came down. And uh, I’ll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us and two firemen—big strong guys, and I’m not the smallest guy in the world—they grabbed me under the arm, said, ‘Got to get out of here.’ And they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I’m big. They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said, ‘Fellas, I can run myself.’ But they were amazing. But they thought it was coming down. It didn’t come down, U.S. Steel.”

In fact, as CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale reported, there is no evidence for any of this story. Trump was at Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan when the planes hit the World Trade Center, and there is no evidence for any of his other claims, either. Trump’s nephew, Fred Trump, added that Trump did not have a big building under construction at the time and the “only crew he claimed to bring to the site would have been secretarial and accounting employees.” The younger Trump said he was so offended by President Trump’s claim that he felt the “need to speak out.”

The White House said, “He was a private citizen at the time, not everything he did was documented,” and White House spokesperson Davis Ingle attacked the media for “using this to try to attack him.”

Trump posted on social media: “Everything I said was exactly accurate.”

Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on U.S.-made goods went into effect yesterday, matching Trump’s tariffs on Canada dollar for dollar and rate for rate, covering about $20 billion in U.S. goods. Trump responded by escalating his trade war with Canada even further, banning certain products outright, and establishing new tariffs on Canadian motorcycles, alcohol, and dairy products on September 29.

The U.S. and Iran are striking at each other again. The U.S. said it attacked and destroyed five Iranian oil tankers on Tuesday; Iran said it targeted two U.S. ships and eight oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday as they tried to traverse an area Iran has said is off-limits. They also said they had fired at a U.S. military base in Jordan. The price of oil has surged as fighting resumed, with the cost of Brent crude rising above $100 a barrel.

Tonight, Jennifer Jacobs of CBS News reported that Iran’s strikes on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan caused damage to “ultiple American military aircraft.” Jacobs also posted that U.S. forces launched more than 30 Patriot missiles in their defense against the Iranian strikes.

Today Trump told reporters that the Iranians are prolonging the war because of the U.S. midterm elections and that he expects the war on Iran will end and gas prices will come down as soon as the elections are over. “They can’t hold out any longer,” Trump said. “They’re desperate to try and affect the election so that we can get a nice, weak group of people in there and leave them alone and let them have their nuclear weapons.”

But tonight, Alexander Ward, Shelby Holliday, and Michael R. Gordon of the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s top advisors have warned him that the Iran war could continue for the rest of his term. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has already extended the deployment of some of the troops in the Middle East and has planned for additional extensions.

The conflict is already straining the military and disrupting global oil markets.

What is most astonishing about the nation’s economic and military problems is that they are entirely self-inflicted at the whim of one man. On October 19, 2024, the month before Trump was reelected, The Economist called the American economy “the envy of the world.” “The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust,” wrote Simon Rabinovitch and Henry Curr. “Expect that to continue.”

But Trump insisted the economy was weak and that tariff walls would make it boom. Months after taking office, he grabbed Congress’s authority to levy tariffs and on “Liberation Day” began trade wars around the globe, hobbling the free trade system that had underpinned global trade since World War II. When the Supreme Court ruled his power grab unconstitutional, he turned to temporary powers to achieve the same results.

And now we are in a trade war with our longtime friend and ally Canada, and the president is posting insulting memes about Canada’s prime minister on social media. Economist Paul Krugman wrote today: “I don’t think there has ever been a dispute this stupid. Bear in mind that this crisis is entirely gratuitous.”

“As Trump’s failures, from soaring fuel prices to plunging approval, multiply,” Krugman wrote, “he is doubling down on his disrespect for and attempted bullying of our northern neighbor and former ally. That is, you should think of this conflict not as something reflecting U.S. national interests, but as a form of self-medication from a sundowning president.”

Krugman called attention to the fact that the economies of the U.S. and Canada have been tied closely since at least 1965. Canada supplies about 60% of U.S. aluminum and about 70% of the oil refined in the Midwest. It supplies almost all of the lumber the U.S. uses for framing in new homes. This trade war will do real damage to both economies.

The Iran war, too, was self-inflicted and has been conducted without authorization by Congress as required by the Constitution and by the 1973 War Powers Act. Trump appeared to think the U.S. military could get rid of the head of the Iranian regime when it attacked Iran on February 28 as it had done to the head of Venezuela in just hours the previous month. Repeatedly, Trump has expressed surprise that Iran seized control of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s seaborne oil had passed before the attacks.

And while Trump is now trying to justify the attacks by claiming he is working for a nuclear-free Iran, under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated between the U.S., China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Iran during the Obama administration, Iran agreed to reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium significantly and allow inspections in exchange for relief from some sanctions. The Strait of Hormuz remained open. Although inspectors said Iran was honoring the deal, Trump took the U.S. out of the JCPOA in 2018, and the following year, Iran resumed work on enriched uranium necessary for a nuclear weapon.

Meanwhile, reports of corruption in the administration continue to drop.

Cat Zakrzewski and Aaron Schaffer of the Washington Post reported yesterday that Trump gave his executive assistant Natalie Harp and two other young female employees gifts of $45,000 in cash last year. That amount is about a third of their $150,000 annual salary. He gave $20,000 to Walt Nauta, who was Trump’s co-defendant in the case of Trump retaining classified documents after he left office.

The chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, Richard Painter, told the journalists the gifts appear to violate federal law: federal employees can’t receive salary supplements from outside sources. The acting director of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) under Obama, Don Fox, said the legality of the gifts was not clear, in part because such payments are “not a circumstance that OGE ever really envisioned. This just doesn’t happen.”

Bill Allison of Bloomberg reported yesterday that Steve Witkoff earned $107 million in 2025 from the holding company that keeps his share of World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency venture he and the Trump family founded and in which Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the brother of the United Arab Emirates’ president, has invested half a billion dollars. Witkoff is Trump’s special agent for the Middle East and has been negotiating with Russia. Trump reported earning more than $594 million in 2025 from the same venture.

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen of Axios reported today that they are hearing from top White House officials and elected Republicans that they are no longer even trying to persuade Trump to do something or not to do something. They are worn out, VandeHei and Allen report. “They know they can’t stop him and they don’t even try.”

“Trump insiders calculate they lived by Trump and so will die by Trump, rather than break with Trump.”

Their utter dereliction of duty to the United States of America has opened the field for Democrats. Yesterday, Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker’s team announced the creation of a new political action committee that will invest at least $20 million in Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives. Shia Kapos of Politico reported that the “Ready for the Fight” PAC, which echoes the phrase the governor uses to end his political speeches, is targeting seats currently held by Republicans.

“Democrats must think big and take the fight to every corner to support candidates in often-overlooked races,” Pritzker said.

On CNN tonight, Pritzker warned Americans not to believe Trump’s lies. “This is the president who ran in 2024 and told you that on day one he was going to lower prices, he was going to end forever wars. And what do you know? He’s done neither. In fact, he’s done the opposite. Prices have gone up since he took office, and, of course, we’re in this endless war in Iran. He can’t stop it. Does not know what he’s doing. And after complaining about Joe Biden’s age, he himself—President Trump, that is—is suffering from dementia, and I think we can all see that. So I think that that’s what I would say about whatever he’s promising for the future, you know he never delivers.”

Tonight, at the “Trumpapaloosa” midterm convention in Dallas that Trump insisted on holding to rally his base, he promised that if the Republicans win the midterm elections, he will give all adult Americans a check for $5,000, a plan that would cost more than a trillion dollars and would require congressional approval. He called it the “Trump Dividend,” thanks to “our tremendous strength and success economically.”

Tonight, at the “Trumpapaloosa” midterm convention in Dallas that Trump insisted on holding to rally his base, he promised that if the Republicans win the midterm elections, he will give all adult Americans a check for $5,000, a plan that would cost more than a trillion dollars and would require congressional approval. He called it the “Trump Dividend,” thanks to “our tremendous strength and success economically.”

See? Economics does trickle down!

Divine Angel said:

Tonight, at the “Trumpapaloosa” midterm convention in Dallas that Trump insisted on holding to rally his base, he promised that if the Republicans win the midterm elections, he will give all adult Americans a check for $5,000, a plan that would cost more than a trillion dollars and would require congressional approval. He called it the “Trump Dividend,” thanks to “our tremendous strength and success economically.”

See? Economics does trickle down!

yeah but Nepal should show yous all what happens if the high ups can’t keep the trickle from becoming a great redistribution

SCIENCE said:

Divine Angel said:

Tonight, at the “Trumpapaloosa” midterm convention in Dallas that Trump insisted on holding to rally his base, he promised that if the Republicans win the midterm elections, he will give all adult Americans a check for $5,000, a plan that would cost more than a trillion dollars and would require congressional approval. He called it the “Trump Dividend,” thanks to “our tremendous strength and success economically.”

See? Economics does trickle down!

yeah but Nepal should show yous all what happens if the high ups can’t keep the trickle from becoming a great redistribution

!!!

September 10, 2026 (Thursday)

We woke up today to news that Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militants have taken control of the city and seaport of Mocha and much of the shoreline of the Red Sea near the Bab el-Mandeb strait, another chokepoint for world trade including trade in oil. With the Strait of Hormuz largely closed, Saudi Arabia has relied for seagoing transport on the Red Sea route that empties into the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.

As Diana Roy of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote in July, the Red Sea is one of the most important routes for global shipping. It carries twelve to fifteen percent of the global maritime trade every year, worth about $1 trillion. The waterway extends about 1,400 miles from the Suez Canal—which connects it to the Mediterranean Sea—at the northern end to the Bab El-Mandeb strait in the south.

The Iran-backed Houthis are in a struggle against the Saudi Arabia–backed Yemeni government. A fragile truce has been in place since 2022, but clashes between the two forces have escalated for weeks, and on Tuesday, September 8, Houthi attacks on Saudi targets started fires at oil facilities and wounded more than 70 people.

The Yemeni government told Reuters that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have guided the Houthi advance, and according to Zachary Cohen, Katie Bo Lillis, and Kylie Atwood of CNN, U.S. officials think that hundreds of IRGC officers are currently in Yemen working with the Houthis to shut down the Bab el-Mandeb. The journalists note that CNN has previously reported that in case U.S. negotiations were unsuccessful, Iran had planned an economic “nuclear option”: closing the Bab el-Mandeb.

Cohen, Lillis, and Atwood reported this afternoon that more than 100 U.S. military advisors are in Saudi Arabia as part of a new joint forces command, providing the Saudis with intelligence and helping them find Houthi targets.

The sources who told the journalists about the joint effort emphasized that the U.S. routinely shares intelligence with the Saudis and that it is neither participating directly in the strikes nor providing operational support. Still, U.S. airstrikes on the Houthis in 2025 killed 153 civilians and wounded 243 others in Yemen in 2025.

The price of oil jumped to $109 a barrel, and U.S. gasoline rose to an average of about $4.28 a gallon. GasBuddy said the national average price of diesel had hit $6.00 for the first time in history. Just a year ago, the national average was about $3.70.

GasBuddy issued a statement, saying: “While gasoline gets the headlines, diesel is the fuel that moves the economy, powering the freight trucks, trains, agricultural equipment, and construction machinery behind nearly everything Americans buy. That means its impact reaches far beyond the transportation sector. As diesel climbs, higher supply chain costs work their way into the price of groceries, household goods, deliveries, and countless other products families rely on every day, even for households that never fuel a diesel vehicle.”

GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis, Patrick De Haan, said the new record “will be a particularly painful one for the economy” and is “likely to reignite inflation up and down the supply chain.” He continued: “I suggest Americans anticipate a costlier holiday season, as it appears diesel prices could continue climbing as geopolitical tensions continue to remain a main factor.”

While all this was going on, tonight President Trump attended the second day of his Dallas rally to fire up his base before the midterm elections. There, a video from the Republican National Committee intoned: “And on June 14th, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker,’ so God gave us Trump.”

Neophyte said:

September 10, 2026 (Thursday)

We woke up today to news that Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militants have taken control of the city and seaport of Mocha and much of the shoreline of the Red Sea near the Bab el-Mandeb strait, another chokepoint for world trade including trade in oil. With the Strait of Hormuz largely closed, Saudi Arabia has relied for seagoing transport on the Red Sea route that empties into the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.

As Diana Roy of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote in July, the Red Sea is one of the most important routes for global shipping. It carries twelve to fifteen percent of the global maritime trade every year, worth about $1 trillion. The waterway extends about 1,400 miles from the Suez Canal—which connects it to the Mediterranean Sea—at the northern end to the Bab El-Mandeb strait in the south.

The Iran-backed Houthis are in a struggle against the Saudi Arabia–backed Yemeni government. A fragile truce has been in place since 2022, but clashes between the two forces have escalated for weeks, and on Tuesday, September 8, Houthi attacks on Saudi targets started fires at oil facilities and wounded more than 70 people.

The Yemeni government told Reuters that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have guided the Houthi advance, and according to Zachary Cohen, Katie Bo Lillis, and Kylie Atwood of CNN, U.S. officials think that hundreds of IRGC officers are currently in Yemen working with the Houthis to shut down the Bab el-Mandeb. The journalists note that CNN has previously reported that in case U.S. negotiations were unsuccessful, Iran had planned an economic “nuclear option”: closing the Bab el-Mandeb.

Cohen, Lillis, and Atwood reported this afternoon that more than 100 U.S. military advisors are in Saudi Arabia as part of a new joint forces command, providing the Saudis with intelligence and helping them find Houthi targets.

The sources who told the journalists about the joint effort emphasized that the U.S. routinely shares intelligence with the Saudis and that it is neither participating directly in the strikes nor providing operational support. Still, U.S. airstrikes on the Houthis in 2025 killed 153 civilians and wounded 243 others in Yemen in 2025.

The price of oil jumped to $109 a barrel, and U.S. gasoline rose to an average of about $4.28 a gallon. GasBuddy said the national average price of diesel had hit $6.00 for the first time in history. Just a year ago, the national average was about $3.70.

GasBuddy issued a statement, saying: “While gasoline gets the headlines, diesel is the fuel that moves the economy, powering the freight trucks, trains, agricultural equipment, and construction machinery behind nearly everything Americans buy. That means its impact reaches far beyond the transportation sector. As diesel climbs, higher supply chain costs work their way into the price of groceries, household goods, deliveries, and countless other products families rely on every day, even for households that never fuel a diesel vehicle.”

GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis, Patrick De Haan, said the new record “will be a particularly painful one for the economy” and is “likely to reignite inflation up and down the supply chain.” He continued: “I suggest Americans anticipate a costlier holiday season, as it appears diesel prices could continue climbing as geopolitical tensions continue to remain a main factor.”

While all this was going on, tonight President Trump attended the second day of his Dallas rally to fire up his base before the midterm elections. There, a video from the Republican National Committee intoned: “And on June 14th, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker,’ so God gave us Trump.”

Amen

September 11, 2026 (Friday)

Last night was the second night of the Republican midterm convention Trump staged to fire up his base. Such a midterm convention is rare—the purpose of national conventions is to pick a president and write a platform—but Trump has turned the Republican Party into a vehicle for his own power and apparently thinks putting himself at the center of the midterms can overcome the headwinds the Republicans are battling.

Or perhaps, with his approval ratings hitting a new low, he just wanted to stand in front of cheering crowds again.
The audience at the American Airlines Center in Dallas was sparse, and according to Kara Voght of the Wall Street Journal, many who were there had received their tickets for free from state parties or right-wing groups like Moms for Liberty. But, she wrote, “everyone wanted to watch another episode of the Trump show.”

Although the crowd was small enough that it did not fill the arena, Trump got the absolute loyalty he demanded from those who had turned out. At the event, he led the crowd in an oath. “Please raise your right hand,” he shouted. “I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States. That loves us so much he can’t even breathe.” The crowd chanted dutifully after him.

“That I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it any way—I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try and cheat like hell like they do, they’d never, there’s never been bigger cheaters, they don’t care. I am gonna go out and I’m gonna get my friends, my family, and we are going to vote on November third or we are going to vote before that!” The crowd erupted in applause.

Once again, he promised that if the Republicans held control of the House and Senate after the midterms, he would distribute a $5,000 check to all adult U.S. citizens, a plan that would cost more than a trillion dollars even if it were legal for him to do so (which it is not).

But while the Trump show in Dallas was being broadcast to the president’s fans, reality was very much on the minds of those watching events in the Middle East.

There are two main shipping routes for oil and other products out of the region, and both have strategic chokepoints. The Strait of Hormuz sits on the eastern side of the Arabian Peninsula where the Persian Gulf empties into the Arabian Sea. The Bab el-Mandeb strait sits on the western side of the Arabian Peninsula. It pinches the outlet of the Red Sea on its way to the Arabian Sea and from there to the Indian Ocean and world markets.

When Trump struck Iran in February 2026, Iranian forces took control of the Strait of Hormuz, largely stopping traffic of oil through the outlet. And so Saudi Arabia, which is the world’s largest oil exporter and a close ally of the United States, relied on sending exports via the Red Sea route, passing through the Bab el-Mandeb strait.

It did so by moving oil across the Arabian Peninsula from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea through the East-West oil pipeline, which runs about 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) across Saudi Arabia. It can move about 7 million barrels of crude oil per day and has been sending about 5 million a day since the outbreak of the war on Iran. From there, oil can be loaded onto tankers and shipped down the Red Sea, through the Bab el-Mandeb, and on to global markets.

Yesterday Iran-backed Houthi militants swept along the shoreline of the Red Sea toward the Bab el-Mandeb. They captured the seaport and city of Mocha, which is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the strait, from Saudi-backed Yemeni forces.

Today Yemeni government officials told Mohammed Ghobari, Eman Abouhassira, and Yasmine Ghania of Reuters that the Houthis have taken the coastal town of Dhubab, which sits on the Yemen mainland at the point of the strait. The sources said Yemeni forces had also evacuated the island of Perim, which sits about a third of the way between the mainland and the Djibouti shore to the west. Later this afternoon, sources said the Houthis had captured the island.

Although the Houthis do not control the Djiboutian side of the strait, they now threaten shipping through the passage. Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline has also come under attack. Spencer Kimball of CNBC reports that the Saudi Energy Ministry announced the pipeline had been shut down as a precautionary measure after it had sustained a number of attacks. Kylie Atwood, Katie Bo Lillis, Thomas Bordeaux, and Zachary Cohen of CNN added that the attacks apparently originated in Iraq, that U.S. officials had told them that pumping stations had been hit, and satellite imagery showed smoke coming from one of them and fire damage at another.

The price of oil briefly jumped to about $110 a barrel on Friday. Diesel prices moved to $6.06 a gallon, up 60% since the U.S. and Israel first attacked Iran in February.

Trump and his advisors have said they plan to strangle Iran economically through their blockade of Iranian ports. Now it appears Iran is retaliating with a plan to strangle the U.S. economy by slowing the transport of oil even further.

Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11, the day terrorists from the al-Qaeda network used four civilian airplanes as weapons against the United States.

President Donald Trump did not attend the commemoration at Ground Zero, now the National September 11 Memorial, in downtown Manhattan because, according to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Dana Rubinstein, and Sally Goldenberg, he wanted to deliver a speech but the event organizers don’t allow speeches, focusing on nonpartisanship and honoring the victims. Trump responded to the story with a personal attack on Haberman, calling her “Maggot.”

Instead, Trump went to the Pentagon, where he delivered a speech tying his war on Iran to the attacks of 9/11, saying: “We salute every member of the United States military who served in the ‘war on terror’. And we salute the service members working right now to ensure the world’s number one sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will never ever have a nuclear weapon.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth added: “We’re still sending terrorists where they belong—to hell. And tankers to the bottom of the ocean where they belong, and we are ensuring that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. The economic pressure tightens every day.”

All four living ex-presidents and first ladies—Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush and Laura Bush, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, Joe Biden and Jill Biden—attended the Ground Zero commemoration in Manhattan. There the victims’ names were read, and the ceremony for the first time included a moment of silence for those who died of illnesses related to conditions in the aftermath of the buildings’ collapse.

Fifteen years ago, a wonderful student introduced me to the issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, volume 2, number 36, published on November 14, 2001. Famously, the cover of the issue is entirely black. Written by J. Michael Straczynski, the story takes on the impossible question: How, in a city that hundreds of superheroes call home, were those superheroes powerless to stop the 9/11 attacks?

“The sane world will always be vulnerable to madmen,” Spider-Man answers when a devastated couple fleeing from the devastation challenges him, “because we cannot go where they go to conceive of such things. We could not see it coming. We could not be here before it happened. We could not stop it. But we are here now. You cannot see us for the dust, but we are here. You cannot hear us for the cries, but we are here.”

But the superheroes Spider-Man identified in the chaos did not wear capes. They wore hats that said “FDNY” and “FEMA” and “POLICE.” The “true heroes,” Spider-Man said, were those ordinary people who ran back into the buildings to rescue others waiting in the dark, who joined together to storm the cockpit of a hijacked airplane and bring it down to the ground before it could hit the Capitol or White House, and who helped each other to safety or to face the terror.

They were ordinary men and women “made extraordinary by acts of compassion, and courage, and terrible sacrifice,” and who rejected “the self-serving proclamations of holy warriors of every stripe.”

“ The audience at the American Airlines Center in Dallas was sparse”

An interesting choice of venue, considering the date. Or maybe it’s because it’s “American” Airlines and he’s all about yay America.

Divine Angel said:

“ The audience at the American Airlines Center in Dallas was sparse”

An interesting choice of venue, considering the date. Or maybe it’s because it’s “American” Airlines and he’s all about yay America.

I’m guessing it’s just a corporate sponsorship naming rights thing. Like our stadium here is now officially called Optus Stadium, even though it has nothing to do with phones.

party_pants said:

Divine Angel said:

“ The audience at the American Airlines Center in Dallas was sparse”

An interesting choice of venue, considering the date. Or maybe it’s because it’s “American” Airlines and he’s all about yay America.

I’m guessing it’s just a corporate sponsorship naming rights thing. Like our stadium here is now officially called Optus Stadium, even though it has nothing to do with phones.

Let’s not forget Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

Divine Angel said:

party_pants said:

Divine Angel said:

“ The audience at the American Airlines Center in Dallas was sparse”

An interesting choice of venue, considering the date. Or maybe it’s because it’s “American” Airlines and he’s all about yay America.

I’m guessing it’s just a corporate sponsorship naming rights thing. Like our stadium here is now officially called Optus Stadium, even though it has nothing to do with phones.

Let’s not forget Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

Indeed

Divine Angel said:

party_pants said:

Divine Angel said:

“ The audience at the American Airlines Center in Dallas was sparse”

An interesting choice of venue, considering the date. Or maybe it’s because it’s “American” Airlines and he’s all about yay America.

I’m guessing it’s just a corporate sponsorship naming rights thing. Like our stadium here is now officially called Optus Stadium, even though it has nothing to do with phones.

Let’s not forget Four Seasons Total Landscaping.

LOL

Thanks for posting.

September 12, 2026 (Saturday)

On Thursday, in The New Republic, conservative judge J. Michael Luttig published a dire warning to the Republican Party…and to all Americans. In the piece, Luttig outlined how Republicans could refuse to seat elected Democrats in January after a Democratic victory in the 2026 midterm elections of November. “The coming crisis,” the piece says, would be “The Final Battle for America’s Democracy.”

Luttig spelled out that Trump is fighting a war against America’s democracy. While the refusal of Vice President Mike Pence to assist his power grab made it fail in January 2021, Luttig notes, today Trump and his Republican congressional allies are more determined than ever to take over the country.

Luttig focuses on the ability of House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to prevent the recognition of duly-elected Democratic representatives on January 3. Johnson has the power, Luttig says, to remove the current House clerk, Kevin McCumber, and replace him temporarily with a MAGA loyalist who will refuse to list Democrats on the roll of those elected to the 120th Congress.

In this scenario, once Democrats are eliminated, they will have to get a federal court to order the temporary clerk to list their names. If a court does so, another crisis point will arrive if the clerk simply refuses to obey the order. Then it’s possible the courts will stay out of the fight until the 120th Congress formally convenes and the Republicans vote not to seat the Democrats. That vote would be reviewable by the courts, including the Supreme Court.

But that review would take weeks, if not months, paralyzing the United States and leaving the country “helplessly vulnerable to all the world’s evil, as it would have been in January 2021 had Mike Pence not thwarted Donald Trump’s plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election.” And at that point, how would the current Supreme Court answer the question: “Is the United States of America a democracy, in which ‘We the People’ elect our representatives to the Congress and to the presidency, or is it not?”

As if to illustrate Luttig’s warning, House speaker Johnson told attendees at Trump’s convention in Dallas on Thursday: “We cannot and will not allow them to take the majority in the Congress. We’re not gonna do it.”

Trump’s attempt to use the United States Postal Service to screen mail-in voting has recently had a test run. Yesterday, Jim Saksa of Democracy Docket picked up a story from Jeff Berlew of the Tallahassee Democrat to report that the USPS rejected mailed ballots from Leon County, in Florida, because the words “return service requested” were only 0.236 inches from the election office’s return address. They were supposed to be a full quarter-inch apart. So, the delivery of those mail in ballots came down to a federal complaint about a spacing issue of 0.014 of an inch.

“It’s ridiculous,” Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley told Berlew. But, as Saksa notes, the rejection of ballots for such a petty flaw shows what will likely happen if the Supreme Court lifts the injunction blocking the postal service from implementing the new rules it has put in place since Trump ordered such interference in a March executive order.

On Thursday, September 10, Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times reported that the Department of Justice (DOJ) under Trump has sent threatening letters to at least thirty top election officials in the states, warning that those officials “are currently under investigation” and are subject to “ongoing litigation,” and so must not destroy any records relating to the 2024 election. As Corasaniti notes, the administration has sued 30 states for their voter lists and has lost 23 of the cases and won none. Trump has claimed to be the victim of voter fraud since the 2016 primaries but has never produced any proof of his claims.

In July, Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the civil rights division in the DOJ, threatened state election officials with criminal prosecution if any noncitizens cast a ballot in their state (although it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote), and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin threatened election officials with criminal prosecution if they did not put Trump’s election changes into effect.

Election officials already follow the laws about retaining documents, so the letters seem to be about threatening them. Nevada secretary of state Francisco Aguilar, a Democrat, told Corasaniti: “It’s the constant ‘flood the zone’ of harassment and intimidation and threats of legal action hoping we’d fold at some point.” But, he added, “We’re going to continue to follow the law and do what’s in the best interest of our voters.”

And what of the MAGA Republicans Trump would like to see in Congress?

Liz Goodwin of the Washington Post reported yesterday that 25-year-old Stephen Woytek, a top campaign staffer for Senator Jon Husted (R-OH), has recently cultivated a public playlist of songs celebrating the former country of Rhodesia, in which a white minority ruled over a Black majority, captioning it “homesick for a place that no longer exists.” Rhodesia is a rallying cry for white supremacists who deplore the change that created Zimbabwe. Woytek also appears to be a historical reenactor who appears to have both worn Nazi uniforms and used a photo of Nazi soldiers as his Facebook profile picture.
Ohio governor Mike DeWine appointed Husted to the Senate to replace J.D. Vance after Vance was elected to the vice presidency, and Husted is now locked in a battle for that seat with former senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat known for his defense of labor. A statement for Husted said that while Woytek “denies negative intent,” the campaign was parting ways with him.

As Goodwin notes, growing numbers of younger Republicans have been expressing support for white nationalism and the Nazis.

Indeed, in his warning, Luttig did not single out Democrats to protect democracy; as he noted in a piece on his Substack in August, plenty of people are already fighting. He called out Republicans.

“There was a time not long ago when virtually every member of Congress could be expected to commit to the peaceful transfer of congressional power in advance of an election,” Luttig wrote. But now, “n a damning indictment of the president and today’s congressional Republicans, it would be hard to find even one congressional Republican with the integrity, sense of duty to country, honor, and courage to put America above the Republican Party, let alone above Donald Trump.”

He urged Republicans “to decide that they are not going to betray their oaths and their country one last time for Donald Trump,” and to make it clear to Trump and Johnson that they will not participate in any unconstitutional plan to deny Democrats seats in the new Congress.

He warned them that should Republicans go along with such machinations and the Supreme Court overrule them, the Republican Party “would finally meet the fate to which it has been destined since January 6, 2021, and cement its place in history as the most corrupt political party ever to emerge in the United States of America for its second attempt in six years to defy the will of the American people on Election Day.”

“The writing is already on the wall, Republicans,” the conservative jurist wrote. “The Republican Party in particular must finally loose the chains of its political and moral enslavement to Donald Trump and separate itself from the MAGA political party cult.”

Today, in Ireland, where he traveled for the Irish Open at his golf club in Doonbeg, Trump told reporters: “We had a rigged election. As you know, it was totally rigged. Because I won three times. I didn’t win twice. I won three times.”

I’ve been saying for months that there will be interference in the mid-terms. There might not be a fair result. After that, all bets are off. The US will no longer be an ally but a threat to many countries. Expect a string of countries to start building their own nuclear weapons for their own independent strategic deterrent. In that circumstance, we would do well to do the same, forget the AUKUS submarines, go for nuclear capable supersonic/hypersonic drones and ballistic missiles instead.

party_pants said:

I’ve been saying for months that there will be interference in the mid-terms. There might not be a fair result. After that, all bets are off. The US will no longer be an ally but a threat to many countries. Expect a string of countries to start building their own nuclear weapons for their own independent strategic deterrent. In that circumstance, we would do well to do the same, forget the AUKUS submarines, go for nuclear capable supersonic/hypersonic drones and ballistic missiles instead.

I mentioned just after trump got elected whether the midterms would be fair or even held. someone pooh-poohed the idea.

JudgeMental said:

party_pants said:

I’ve been saying for months that there will be interference in the mid-terms. There might not be a fair result. After that, all bets are off. The US will no longer be an ally but a threat to many countries. Expect a string of countries to start building their own nuclear weapons for their own independent strategic deterrent. In that circumstance, we would do well to do the same, forget the AUKUS submarines, go for nuclear capable supersonic/hypersonic drones and ballistic missiles instead.

I mentioned just after trump got elected whether the midterms would be fair or even held. someone pooh-poohed the idea.

It wasn’t me.

party_pants said:

JudgeMental said:

party_pants said:

I’ve been saying for months that there will be interference in the mid-terms. There might not be a fair result. After that, all bets are off. The US will no longer be an ally but a threat to many countries. Expect a string of countries to start building their own nuclear weapons for their own independent strategic deterrent. In that circumstance, we would do well to do the same, forget the AUKUS submarines, go for nuclear capable supersonic/hypersonic drones and ballistic missiles instead.

I mentioned just after trump got elected whether the midterms would be fair or even held. someone pooh-poohed the idea.

It wasn’t me.

correct. Not mentioning who though.

party_pants said:

JudgeMental said:

party_pants said:

I’ve been saying for months that there will be interference in the mid-terms. There might not be a fair result. After that, all bets are off. The US will no longer be an ally but a threat to many countries. Expect a string of countries to start building their own nuclear weapons for their own independent strategic deterrent. In that circumstance, we would do well to do the same, forget the AUKUS submarines, go for nuclear capable supersonic/hypersonic drones and ballistic missiles instead.

I mentioned just after trump got elected whether the midterms would be fair or even held. someone pooh-poohed the idea.

It wasn’t me.

It was diddly squat.

party_pants said:

JudgeMental said:

party_pants said:

I’ve been saying for months that there will be interference in the mid-terms. There might not be a fair result. After that, all bets are off. The US will no longer be an ally but a threat to many countries. Expect a string of countries to start building their own nuclear weapons for their own independent strategic deterrent. In that circumstance, we would do well to do the same, forget the AUKUS submarines, go for nuclear capable supersonic/hypersonic drones and ballistic missiles instead.

I mentioned just after trump got elected whether the midterms would be fair or even held. someone pooh-poohed the idea.

It wasn’t me.

Nor myself.

don’t worry the strong and responsible leaders of Australia will still be licking the anus

SCIENCE said:

don’t worry the strong and responsible leaders of Australia will still be licking the anus

JudgeMental said:

party_pants said:

I’ve been saying for months that there will be interference in the mid-terms. There might not be a fair result. After that, all bets are off. The US will no longer be an ally but a threat to many countries. Expect a string of countries to start building their own nuclear weapons for their own independent strategic deterrent. In that circumstance, we would do well to do the same, forget the AUKUS submarines, go for nuclear capable supersonic/hypersonic drones and ballistic missiles instead.

I mentioned just after trump got elected whether the midterms would be fair or even held. someone pooh-poohed the idea.

From memory, diddly-squat seems to think all will be fair and Democratic.

Sept 12 audio. The writing’s on the wall

Thanks for posting, buffy.

September 13, 2026 (Sunday)

On Saturday, September 12, Dario Amodei, the chief executive officer of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, published a 3,800-word essay calling for AI companies to slow down their improvement of AI models.

Amodei expressed concern that AI models are themselves pushing advances faster than engineers can understand them. He noted that July’s OpenAI–Hugging Face incident, in which programs designed to hack into systems found weaknesses that permitted them to escape the “sandbox” in which designers were testing them for about a week before anyone noticed had, luckily, been relatively harmless, but warned that “in my opinion, a swarm that possessed greater capabilities but a similar level of misalignment could have caused catastrophic damage.” Within a year, he warned, such a swarm could take over the entire internet, causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.

In his essay, Amodei called for AI companies to commit to giving embedded third-party evaluators access to their work, rather like the regulatory supervisors in banking. He called for AI companies in democratic countries to establish safety standards and limit their rate of progress. And he called for “he US and other democratic governments attempt to coordinate with authoritarian governments, to the extent this is possible, while taking seriously the challenges of verifying compliance.”

Today on Face the Nation, Amodei explained to host Jo Ling Kent: “My view here is it has always been very strange that this technology is being built by a private company. People ask me that question all the time. Why isn’t this being built by government? And the strangest thing about it is, I agree with them. I’m uncomfortable. Government didn’t build this technology. This company, this technology came from the private sector, and we—Anthropic, and I would hope other companies, have done everything we can to try to have legitimate oversight mechanisms.

“I think the government and the public need to have a stake. And this is why we’ve supported regulation of the technology. Regulation constrains the private companies. Regulation allows the public and its elected representatives to have a say, and limits what the private companies can do.”

Asked if he would be willing to give the technology itself to the government, Amodei answered that he might be willing to give it to the right combination of governments. “I want to be very clear about this,” he said. “I am concerned that one single government could abuse this technology just as easily as a single company could. But I think a combination of democratically elected governments—I don’t know about hand over, but some kind of oversight, some kind of joint governance. Again, that would be the work of years, but I wonder if that’s the direction we need to go in.”

As Mike Isaac of the New York Times noted, Amodei’s call came days after an Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, resigned, posting on social media that neither OpenAI nor Anthropic was “acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” They are, he said, building “superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.”

“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” Coxon said. He claimed that people at OpenAI might not yet realize what they’re constructing, while those at Anthropic do understand but believe “they are locked in a race to get there first—they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk.”

Critics are skeptical, suggesting that AI leaders are hyping their product to make it appear more valuable than it really is. There is widespread concern that the massive spending on AI infrastructure like data centers and chips might not deliver the revenue and profits that would justify such spending. In June, Kate Brennan, associate director of independent research institute AI Now, told Aimee Picchi of CBS News: “The returns are not coming in, and the claims that are being made, in terms of efficiency or productivity numbers, are not netting out.”

Others wonder if Amodei’s public concerns aren’t designed to get the government to regulate AI in such a way that it creates a framework that would make it hard for smaller companies to break into the market.

Still, Kate Conger of the New York Times noted last week that in July, more than 1,300 employees from Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, and Google’s DeepMind—all leading AI companies—signed an open letter asking the U.S. government to regulate AI to slow down its development. Conger also notes that in August, more than 100 tech companies offered their models to hospitals and infrastructure systems to enable them to guard against cyberattacks powered by AI.

After Amodei’s essay appeared, Sam Altman, the chief executive officer of OpenAI; Elon Musk, who has been increasing spending on AI through his SpaceX rocket company; and Demis Hassabis, chair of Google DeepMind, all posted their support for slowing down the pace of AI improvements.

On October 30, 2023, President Joe Biden issued Executive Order 14110, calling for the “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.” The document said AI must be safe and secure. It called for the promotion of “responsible innovation, competition, and collaboration” and specified that AI must engage U.S. workers and advance equity and civil rights as well as privacy and civil liberties. The development of AI must protect consumers, it said, and the government must make sure the technology is deployed responsibly.

Revoking this executive order was one of the first things Trump did on January 20, 2025. Published in the official register on January 23, Trump’s order “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence” called for reviewing “all policies, directives, regulations, orders, and other actions taken” under Biden’s order and suspending, revising, or rescinding them. “e must,” the order said, “develop AI systems that are free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas.”

During his second term, Trump and his sons have invested heavily in companies tied to the AI boom. Trump has called AI data centers “the oil of the next 50 years” and says they are delivering wealth and investment to communities in the U.S. In July he insisted that data centers are “Cash Cows,” creating taxes and jobs that “amount to LIQUID GOLD!”
But the American people disagree. A YouGov poll from late August showed that only 24% of Americans think the construction of data centers is a good thing, while twice that number, 47%, say it’s bad. A majority of Americans, 61%, don’t want one in their town. In response to their growing unpopularity, the administration is seeking to exempt data centers from having to notify the public about how much air pollution they will release.

As Cat Zakrzewski, Violet Jira, and Nitasha Tiku of the Washington Post reported, when asked today about the calls to slow down the development of AI models, Trump dismissed them, saying that the U.S. needed to stay ahead of China. He brushed off the warnings calling for the slower pace coming from the industry’s leaders.

“I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up,” Trump told reporters. “And they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”

David Sacks, the venture capitalist who heads the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, accused the AI leaders of trying to avoid “massive product-liablity exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack.”

A Wall Street Journal article today by Richard Rubin and Justin Lahart offered a different perspective on the fight over regulating AI. In a piece about the growing U.S. debt, they note that the Trump administration insists it can overcome the rising deficits it’s mounting and the debt that has recently hit 100% of the nation’s gross domestic product and topped $40 trillion through growth.

The idea that the U.S. could sustain high spending with low taxes by growing its way out of debt has been a driving force in the Republican Party since the 1980s, but as Rubin and Lahart note, the U.S. has not had the sustained 3% growth such a scenario requires since the 1990s, when companies were adopting computers and baby boomers were at their peak employment. During those years, under President Bill Clinton, the U.S. wiped out its deficit.

But then President George W. Bush pushed through another big tax cut and launched two unfunded wars, and both deficits and debt climbed again. By this century, the authors note, the conditions of the 1990s were reversed: baby boomers are retiring and productivity is slowing.

And yet Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told an audience at Southern Methodist University last week that he expects to see 3% growth again after the end of the war on Iran. “he underlying economy is very, very strong,” he said, “and I think reaccelerating.” This expected growth seems to be what’s behind the administration’s faith that it can continue to cut taxes while dramatically increasing spending on the military and the Department of Homeland security.

Last week, Rubin and Lahart note, Trump told the Fox News Channel: “We’re gonna take care of the 40 trillion over a period of time through growth. We’re growing at a faster rate than we’ve ever grown before.” While the U.S. is not, in fact, growing at a record pace—growth during Trump’s second term has sat at 1.9%—it appears the administration may be looking at a giant boost in productivity led by AI as its Hail Mary pass.

Thanks for posting.

Yet another good HCR read.

Heather Cox Richardson on Trump’s $5,000 to be elected.

Link

Neophyte said:

September 13, 2026 (Sunday)

On Saturday, September 12, Dario Amodei, the chief executive officer of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, published a 3,800-word essay calling for AI companies to slow down their improvement of AI models.

Amodei expressed concern that AI models are themselves pushing advances faster than engineers can understand them. He noted that July’s OpenAI–Hugging Face incident, in which programs designed to hack into systems found weaknesses that permitted them to escape the “sandbox” in which designers were testing them for about a week before anyone noticed had, luckily, been relatively harmless, but warned that “in my opinion, a swarm that possessed greater capabilities but a similar level of misalignment could have caused catastrophic damage.” Within a year, he warned, such a swarm could take over the entire internet, causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.

In his essay, Amodei called for AI companies to commit to giving embedded third-party evaluators access to their work, rather like the regulatory supervisors in banking. He called for AI companies in democratic countries to establish safety standards and limit their rate of progress. And he called for “he US and other democratic governments attempt to coordinate with authoritarian governments, to the extent this is possible, while taking seriously the challenges of verifying compliance.”

Today on Face the Nation, Amodei explained to host Jo Ling Kent: “My view here is it has always been very strange that this technology is being built by a private company. People ask me that question all the time. Why isn’t this being built by government? And the strangest thing about it is, I agree with them. I’m uncomfortable. Government didn’t build this technology. This company, this technology came from the private sector, and we—Anthropic, and I would hope other companies, have done everything we can to try to have legitimate oversight mechanisms.

“I think the government and the public need to have a stake. And this is why we’ve supported regulation of the technology. Regulation constrains the private companies. Regulation allows the public and its elected representatives to have a say, and limits what the private companies can do.”

Asked if he would be willing to give the technology itself to the government, Amodei answered that he might be willing to give it to the right combination of governments. “I want to be very clear about this,” he said. “I am concerned that one single government could abuse this technology just as easily as a single company could. But I think a combination of democratically elected governments—I don’t know about hand over, but some kind of oversight, some kind of joint governance. Again, that would be the work of years, but I wonder if that’s the direction we need to go in.”

As Mike Isaac of the New York Times noted, Amodei’s call came days after an Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, resigned, posting on social media that neither OpenAI nor Anthropic was “acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” They are, he said, building “superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.”

“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” Coxon said. He claimed that people at OpenAI might not yet realize what they’re constructing, while those at Anthropic do understand but believe “they are locked in a race to get there first—they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk.”

Critics are skeptical, suggesting that AI leaders are hyping their product to make it appear more valuable than it really is. There is widespread concern that the massive spending on AI infrastructure like data centers and chips might not deliver the revenue and profits that would justify such spending. In June, Kate Brennan, associate director of independent research institute AI Now, told Aimee Picchi of CBS News: “The returns are not coming in, and the claims that are being made, in terms of efficiency or productivity numbers, are not netting out.”

Others wonder if Amodei’s public concerns aren’t designed to get the government to regulate AI in such a way that it creates a framework that would make it hard for smaller companies to break into the market.

Still, Kate Conger of the New York Times noted last week that in July, more than 1,300 employees from Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta, and Google’s DeepMind—all leading AI companies—signed an open letter asking the U.S. government to regulate AI to slow down its development. Conger also notes that in August, more than 100 tech companies offered their models to hospitals and infrastructure systems to enable them to guard against cyberattacks powered by AI.

After Amodei’s essay appeared, Sam Altman, the chief executive officer of OpenAI; Elon Musk, who has been increasing spending on AI through his SpaceX rocket company; and Demis Hassabis, chair of Google DeepMind, all posted their support for slowing down the pace of AI improvements.

On October 30, 2023, President Joe Biden issued Executive Order 14110, calling for the “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.” The document said AI must be safe and secure. It called for the promotion of “responsible innovation, competition, and collaboration” and specified that AI must engage U.S. workers and advance equity and civil rights as well as privacy and civil liberties. The development of AI must protect consumers, it said, and the government must make sure the technology is deployed responsibly.

Revoking this executive order was one of the first things Trump did on January 20, 2025. Published in the official register on January 23, Trump’s order “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence” called for reviewing “all policies, directives, regulations, orders, and other actions taken” under Biden’s order and suspending, revising, or rescinding them. “e must,” the order said, “develop AI systems that are free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas.”

During his second term, Trump and his sons have invested heavily in companies tied to the AI boom. Trump has called AI data centers “the oil of the next 50 years” and says they are delivering wealth and investment to communities in the U.S. In July he insisted that data centers are “Cash Cows,” creating taxes and jobs that “amount to LIQUID GOLD!”
But the American people disagree. A YouGov poll from late August showed that only 24% of Americans think the construction of data centers is a good thing, while twice that number, 47%, say it’s bad. A majority of Americans, 61%, don’t want one in their town. In response to their growing unpopularity, the administration is seeking to exempt data centers from having to notify the public about how much air pollution they will release.

As Cat Zakrzewski, Violet Jira, and Nitasha Tiku of the Washington Post reported, when asked today about the calls to slow down the development of AI models, Trump dismissed them, saying that the U.S. needed to stay ahead of China. He brushed off the warnings calling for the slower pace coming from the industry’s leaders.

“I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up,” Trump told reporters. “And they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”

David Sacks, the venture capitalist who heads the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, accused the AI leaders of trying to avoid “massive product-liablity exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack.”

A Wall Street Journal article today by Richard Rubin and Justin Lahart offered a different perspective on the fight over regulating AI. In a piece about the growing U.S. debt, they note that the Trump administration insists it can overcome the rising deficits it’s mounting and the debt that has recently hit 100% of the nation’s gross domestic product and topped $40 trillion through growth.

The idea that the U.S. could sustain high spending with low taxes by growing its way out of debt has been a driving force in the Republican Party since the 1980s, but as Rubin and Lahart note, the U.S. has not had the sustained 3% growth such a scenario requires since the 1990s, when companies were adopting computers and baby boomers were at their peak employment. During those years, under President Bill Clinton, the U.S. wiped out its deficit.

But then President George W. Bush pushed through another big tax cut and launched two unfunded wars, and both deficits and debt climbed again. By this century, the authors note, the conditions of the 1990s were reversed: baby boomers are retiring and productivity is slowing.

And yet Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told an audience at Southern Methodist University last week that he expects to see 3% growth again after the end of the war on Iran. “he underlying economy is very, very strong,” he said, “and I think reaccelerating.” This expected growth seems to be what’s behind the administration’s faith that it can continue to cut taxes while dramatically increasing spending on the military and the Department of Homeland security.

Last week, Rubin and Lahart note, Trump told the Fox News Channel: “We’re gonna take care of the 40 trillion over a period of time through growth. We’re growing at a faster rate than we’ve ever grown before.” While the U.S. is not, in fact, growing at a record pace—growth during Trump’s second term has sat at 1.9%—it appears the administration may be looking at a giant boost in productivity led by AI as its Hail Mary pass.

“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” Coxon said. He claimed that people at OpenAI might not yet realize what they’re constructing, while those at Anthropic do understand but believe “they are locked in a race to get there first—they believe no one else will act responsibly, so they must do it themselves, despite the risk.”

😱😱😱

Heather Cox Richardson with her friend Dr Joanne Freeman on Trump and the economy.

Link

roughbarked said:

Sept 12 audio. The writing’s on the wall

Egads

September 14, 2026 (Monday)

This morning, Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski of ProPublica broke the news that Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the wedding of Donald Trump Jr. and Bettina Anderson in May. Kremlev attended the wedding along with a large group of Russians whose presence, the journalists note, puzzled the other guests.

This news reveals an extraordinary development, the journalists note: “a member of Putin’s circle financially supporting the president’s son and gaining intimate access to the Trump family.”

Frank Montoya Jr., a retired FBI official who worked in senior counterintelligence roles, told the reporters: “If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something. This should be unthinkable for the son of the president. End of story.”

A spokesperson for Don Jr. told Edith Olmsted of The New Republic that Don and Kremlev met “a couple of years ago” and that Kremlev is a “personal friend,” “not someone he has a business relationship with.”

Bettina Trump posted to social media that Kremlev hadn’t actually attended their wedding but “very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding. It was an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend, and something for which we were and remain incredibly grateful.”

“Friendship doesn’t require a political motive,” she wrote. “Generosity doesn’t automatically come with an agenda. And sometimes a wedding gift is simply a wedding gift.” The names of both Bettina Trump and Don Jr. were at the bottom of her statement.

Later in the day, news broke that the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security had released a report detailing how the now-closed detention camp in the Florida Everglades, offensively dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” violated the standards of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The report says the center failed in six categories: medical care, food service, personal hygiene, recreation, environmental health and safety, and special management units.

People were crammed into overcrowded cells they couldn’t leave as often as required, were allowed showers only three times a week, and had little access to medical care, lawyers, clean water, or safe food. Some people were locked in tiny individual metal cages with about 18 square feet of floor space for up to 2 hours, some of which were outdoors. The staff told those from the inspector general’s office that people asked to stay in the enclosures, which they called “calming areas” where detainees could “reflect on their behavior choices, manage their emotions, reduce stress and practice self-directed behavior,” though the inspectors found “at least one instance” in which the cages “may have been used as a disciplinary tool.” The report says such confinement was “unprecedented” and “highly unconventional.” “Confining individuals in small metal enclosures for any reason presents significant risks to detainee health and well-being,” the inspector general wrote.

Gillian Brockell of The American Prospect suggested that the inspector general’s report “is likely part of a cover-up.” She noted that eight months ago, Amnesty International reported that the outdoor cages were too small for someone to stand up, that they had no awning, and that people were chained to them. The Amnesty International report also said time in the cages could be longer than two hours.

Then Nick Corasaniti and Hamed Aleaziz reported in the New York Times on another whistleblower, this one alleging that in their zeal to find noncitizens on voter rolls, inspectors under the direction of top Homeland Security leaders may have broken state laws. The Department of Homeland Security launched the “Unlawful Voter Initiative” last month, deploying hundreds of agents to look through voter rolls to try to find evidence of voter fraud.

The whistleblower says inspectors have about twelve minutes per case to determine a voter’s citizenship status and voting history, and it appears they have been posing as those individual voters by using birth dates or partial Social Security numbers they gleaned from both internal and external sources to find wrongdoing. Some states require users to declare they are the individual voters whose records they are seeking.

Corasaniti and Aleaziz note that the office of the chief counsel at DHS defended the use of state databases in such a way, but also said that agents “are not personally liable for conducting these searches when done as part of their official duties and properly documented.”

Once the agents began reviewing individuals’ information, they created records of those they claimed were “unlawful voters,” despite the fact that officers were concerned about the quality of the databases they were using to make such a determination. DHS itself noted that the data was flawed, and warned that “there will be U.S. citizens in this population,” and has been opaque about how they compiled the database.

According to a letter written by Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), the top-ranking Democrat on the Committee on Rules and Administration, and Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the Senate minority leader, to Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director Joseph B. Edlow, the department’s training video says the database was compiled with “supplemental magic.”

Taken together, the administration’s continued flirtation with Vladimir Putin and his associates, its use of our tax dollars to imprison immigrants in substandard conditions, and its determination to rig the 2026 election add up to an attempt to establish an authoritarian government.

Aside from the public outrage over the day’s stories, there are other signs that the administration’s position is weakening. After the weekend’s warnings about AI, stocks in AI companies and companies that produce chips fell today. Not only are members of the Trump family heavily invested in AI-related industries, but also it seems administration officials are counting on extraordinary AI-fueled economic growth to address the growing U.S. deficit and debt that Trump has run up.

So Trump posted frantically on social media today. He began just after the stock market opened with a post pushing back on the warnings of AI leaders that AI development needs government regulation. “The only control or “guardrails” that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” He complained: “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!”

In a later post, he insisted that “The only reason the AI/Data Center outburst is happening is because the United States is leading, by a lot, every other country. Don’t kill the Golden Goose!”

A third post said that the warnings about AI are all “a HOAX, no different from RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA—UKRAINE, UKRAINE, UKRAINE—IMPEACHMENT HOAX #1—IMPEACHMENT HOAX #2—and all of the other HOAXES and SCAMS that America was forced to endure through the Destructionists’ and Deviants’ foul play and illegal conduct.” AI and data centers, he wrote, will be “the Greatest Economic Development Engine in History—Bigger than Oil, Gold, Diamonds, or even the Internet. It will not be stopped by brilliantly run Destructive Forces during the Term of President DONALD J. TRUMP!”

He continued in a fourth post: “The people that say AI is going to destroy the World, and that Data Centers are bad for your neighborhood, are the same people that said, just a short time ago, that the World would be extinguished by ‘Climate Change.’ That HOAX never worked out for them, and now they’re on to the next one. These people are Revolutionaries, but Revolutionaries for a Bad and Evil Cause.“

Today the Environmental Protection Agency said that to “unleash” American energy, it is getting rid of rules that limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that use coal and natural gas. It also intends to prevent future administrations from making any such regulations.

With oil executives warning that the United States—and the world—is in a fuel crisis, energy is clearly on Trump’s mind. He tried to blame the spike in diesel prices not on his war on Iran, which has led to the closing of the two main arteries for tankers carrying oil out of the Middle East, but on Ukraine, which has been hitting Russian oil infrastructure to hobble the sale of oil that is enabling Russia to continue its invasion. “The World’s Diesel price rise is mostly caused by the Russia/Ukraine War, not Iran,” Trump posted.

Minutes later, he wrote that the “failing Nation of Iran wants to make a deal, quickly and badly. I will determine whether or not the U.S.A. will choose to engage—The concept of which we are open to.” Then he posted that he had “just received a Report that the United States is producing more Exquisite and Elite Weapons than at any time in our History. They are being delivered on a daily basis to our Forces in the Middle East, and beyond.”

And then, minutes later, he claimed that “Oil is flowing through the Hormuz Strait. The Countries of the World, which have been no help to us whatsoever, should, and will, reimburse the United States of America when this SCAM Confligration is all over. We are doing it much more for others, than we are for ourselves, and we have been for Generations!”
Then he posted: “I hope everyone realizes that price increases throughout America were caused by Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, not by ‘TRUMP.’”

Then, once again, he promised to give every American adult $5,000.

Tonight, over public dissents from Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court refused to allow Trump to put into place his new orders for the United States Postal Service to screen mail-in ballots. This means Trump’s attempt to stop the transmission of mail-in ballots will not be in effect for the 2026 midterm elections.

“ Then he posted: “I hope everyone realizes that price increases throughout America were caused by Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, not by ‘TRUMP.’””

Dear Mr Biden,
Please reduce fuel prices from your actions in Iran.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Thanks for posting.

>>Tonight, over public dissents from Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court refused to allow Trump to put into place his new orders for the United States Postal Service to screen mail-in ballots. This means Trump’s attempt to stop the transmission of mail-in ballots will not be in effect for the 2026 midterm elections.<<

This is a Good Thing.

Divine Angel said:

“ Then he posted: “I hope everyone realizes that price increases throughout America were caused by Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, not by ‘TRUMP.’””

Dear Mr Biden,
Please reduce fuel prices from your actions in Iran.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

300000000 americese love this

September 15, 2026 (Tuesday)

Seven 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.

Seven years later, we are approaching the midpoint of Trump’s second term, and the patterns I saw seven 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 seven 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.

Ta.

Beautifully written!

I hope that you are feeling better and the new heart is going well.

September 16, 2026 (Wednesday)

Yesterday U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper of the District of Columbia refused to permit the Kennedy Center board, stacked by Trump with his own loyalists, to return Trump’s name to the facade of the building. Cooper reiterated that Congress had prohibited such an addition and would have to change that law in order to make the addition of Trump’s name legal.

The board of the Kennedy Center promptly appealed and voted to close the venue for two years for renovations. Then Trump posted on social media that those renovations couldn’t take place unless the court approved the addition of his name to the building. Without that, he posted, “unfortunately, the Building is destined to doom. Isn’t that too bad?”

Although the Kennedy Center board insisted that only Trump’s name on the building would restore donations, in fact, the Washington Post reports that ticket sales and fundraising plunged when Trump added his name to the building in the first place.

Nonetheless, Trump posted that he is the only one who can save it, “because I have the ability to raise the money, and the ability to construct—that few others have. I also have the strength and power of the Presidency, which will be needed do what must be done, and give it a strong shot at Greatness again!”

As George Conway of the Bulwark noted, “To destroy things he can’t possess or control is his essential nature.”

It is also as if Trump is self-soothing by celebrating his core identity even as his incompetence and greed have driven the United States, and the world, into crisis.

But even that is not providing him comfort these days. Representative Joyce Beatty (D-OH), an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center board and the member who sued over his takeover of the center, explained to Symone Sanders-Townsend of MS NOW that Trump called into the board meeting after the court decision and “went into a tantrum.”

While most people appear to have refused to confront Trump to his face—Maine governor Janet Mills’s “We’ll see you in court” was so rare it made headlines—Beatty took him on. She recounted: “It was the most unprofessional thing that I’ve ever witnessed or been a part of it.” But after he called her “an obstructionist” and “dumb” and said he thought she was “incompetent,” she retorted: “I know you’re incompetent.” Beatty appealed to the chair to stop Trump’s unprofessional behavior, but when he continued to berate her, claiming it would be her fault if someone were killed at the center, she responded: “You’re already killing people, we’re at war.” And when he talked about what a great developer he was, she “reminded him that he had more bankruptcies than anybody in the room.”

“I mean, it really went there,” Beatty told Sanders-Townsend. “I was not going to let him bully me, intimidate me. And the facts stand for themselves.”

Indeed, these days, facts across the board are challenging Trump’s image of himself.

Panic is sounding across the U.S. about oil prices. The Houthis in Yemen, backed by Iran, are threatening the Bab el-Mandeb strait at the outlet of the Red Sea on its way to the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, threatening the delivery of another 4% of the world’s oil supply to global markets. Saudi Arabia had diverted oil shipments from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea through the East-West pipeline across the country, but officials have closed the pipeline after strikes. Today, senior executives from Shell and Equinor warned that the world is looking at tightening supplies of oil and “price volatility” as the industry is losing the ability to offset the disruptions.

On X, Patrick De Haan, a petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, charted the rise of diesel prices in the U.S. this week. Diesel jumped $0.82 a gallon in Fort Stewart, Georgia; $0.82 in Moorhead, Minnesota; $0.75 in Athens, Georgia. In the twelve hours before 1:30 this afternoon, Eastern time, gasoline jumped $0.30 a gallon in Lawrence County, Ohio, and Edwardsburg, Michigan. It jumped $0.28 a gallon in Des Moines, Iowa. De Haan reported that gas prices in and around Chicago appeared to be rising to $4.99 a gallon today.

As De Haan noted, it was “no shock, with diesel setting new all-time records and showing no signs of slowing,” that the Federal Reserve raised interest rates today for the first time since July 2023. Trump has been adamant that he wants to see interest rates lowered and has threatened to cut off trade with certain countries unless the Fed lowered them. But rising inflation meant that the board instead voted unanimously to raise rates by a quarter of a percentage point to a target range of 3.75% to 4%.

Trump did not take the news well. “Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World—BY FAR,” he posted. “LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!”

At a political rally in North Carolina, Trump suggested that the Fed is attacking him personally. “They’re raising the rates to make Trump do as bad as they can possibly do,” he said, referring to himself in the third person. “The problem they have is that we have the greatest economy in history.” “So they’re raising that only for political reasons and that’s a raise against Trump.”

In Ireland, where he traveled for the Irish Open golf tournament at his course in Doonbeg, Trump told reporters on Sunday that the U.S. might stay in Iran and “keep the oil” as the U.S. did in Venezuela. He claimed Venezuelan oil has “paid for the war many times.”

But—even aside from the fact invading a country and taking its resources violates the U.N. charter—there is no record of that money or where it is going. In January 2026, a U.S. official told Jarrett Renshaw of Reuters that the U.S. had completed its first sale of Venezuelan oil, valued at $500 million. That money was to be held in a U.S. account in Qatar, not the U.S. Treasury.

Yesterday, testifying before the House Financial Services Committee, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent refused to answer questions Representative Sean Casten (D-IL) asked about the Venezuelan oil money.

Bessent refused to say how much money from Venezuelan assets—including gold, as well as oil—had flowed through Treasury accounts or accounts managed by Treasury since January, and said he had no knowledge of whether the money was flowing to “the U.S. government, U.S. persons, or U.S. corporations.” He deflected by saying simply: “Again…this is the, uh, one of the largest assets that maybe ever to go on the U.S. balance sheet.”

Yesterday was a big day for revelations about the war on Iran. Jonah Kaplan of CBS News published photographs showing the damage caused to buildings, vehicles, and equipment at U.S. bases in the Middle East by Iranian strikes. Active service members leaked the photos to CBS News because, as one said, “This is major damage to our bases that hasn’t been communicated to the American public. We’re standing there with our eyes closed getting punched in the face.” “We’re not defending these bases,” the service member said. “We’re just watching them get destroyed.”

John Ismay of the New York Times reported on a new report from the Pentagon’s inspector general on Monday explaining that the first four months of the Iran war caused “strategic inventory shortfalls”; that Iranian strikes have destroyed “hundreds of buildings and structures” at U.S. bases in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates; that dozens of military aircraft have been damaged or destroyed; and that the Defense Department has limited facilities for medical treatment in the region and has had to relocate helicopters for medical evacuations from Iraq and Kuwait.

A new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that the Iran war, which has taken 18 U.S. lives and wounded more than 800 servicemembers, has also cost the U.S. about $38 billion as of August 1 and could cost as much as $2 billion a month while it goes on, and that it will continue to drive inflation.

For the third time, the House passed a war powers resolution directing Trump to remove U.S. military personnel from hostilities against Iran unless Congress explicitly authorizes him to keep them there. Seven Republicans joined the Democrats to pass the measure by a vote of 220 to 204.

Yesterday Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) blindsided House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) by introducing eight counts of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The first three articles accuse him of “waging war in contravention of the War Powers Resolution of 1973.” The fourth accuses him of “ignoring laws that minimize civilian casualties.” The fifth accuses him of directing “the extrajudicial killings of at least 221 persons aboard seagoing vessels” in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. The sixth accuses him of “suppressing free speech” through his attempts to silence Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a Navy veteran. The seventh article accuses him of the “kidnapping of a sovereign foreign leader,” Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro. The final article charges Hegseth with waging an “unlawful war in Yemen,” in 2025.

Massie told CNN that he had kept his plan secret to prevent House leadership from keeping him from the floor to read the articles. To protect Republican lawmakers from having to take a stand either for or against the Iran war, Speaker Johnson canceled votes set for Thursday and sent the House home until November 9, 2026, after the midterm elections.

Johnson blasted Massie, saying: “Secretary Hegseth has done an extraordinary job, the Department of War. We’re in the middle of international conflicts right now, and we should not be playing games with national security.” As for sending lawmakers home early, he said: “It’s time for our members to go home to their districts and make their case to the American people, to go and explain all the great things we’ve done.”

Trump apparently does not think voters will swing behind the Republicans based on their record. News broke on Monday that the Supreme Court would not allow him to implement new rules that would allow the United States Postal Service to screen mail-in ballots, something Trump insisted was imperative to purify voting.

On Tuesday, he dropped the facade that the rule was about anything other than rigging the election and expressed anger that his three hand-picked appointees to the Supreme Court did not do his bidding.

“Republicans just got another bad decision from the United States Supreme Court,” he posted. “This Supreme Court is bullied and cajoled by the Radical Left into making decisions that have set America back at least a hundred years. These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves.”

Oh my goodness…

Ta.

September 17, 2026 (Thursday)

In 1761, 55-year-old Benjamin Franklin attended the coronation of King George III and later wrote that he expected the young monarch’s reign would “be happy and truly glorious.” Fifteen years later, in 1776, he helped to draft and then signed the Declaration of Independence. An 81-year-old man in 1787, he urged his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to rally behind the new plan of government they had written.

“I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them,” he said, “For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.”

The framers of the new constitution hoped 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 lawmakers’ 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 13 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.”

“I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such,” Franklin said after a weary four months spent hashing it out, “because I think a general Government necessary for us,” and, he said, it “astonishes me…to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our…States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats.”

“On the whole,” he said to his colleagues, “I can not help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility—and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.”

On September 17, 1787, they did.

September 18, 2026 (Friday)

According to the American Automobile Association, diesel hit its highest recorded average price today at just above $6.44 per gallon. Diesel moves most of the consumer goods in the United States. Iran’s news agency reported today that a political advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader said Iran would not reopen the Strait of Hormuz until President Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu are removed from power.

As the conflict drags on with no coherent U.S. strategy, J.P. Morgan wrote yesterday, “We simply don’t know how to model the endgame.” Today Bloomberg reported that Saudi Arabia has told European refiners that they will not be receiving crude oil next month because of the shutdown of the East-West pipeline.

John Stoehr of The Editorial Board noted that the economic pain of this moment appears to be turning the media against Trump. He called attention to a hard-hitting piece in the Washington Post yesterday by Evan Halper, Rachel Chason, and Joyce Sohyun Lee warning of “huge jumps in the prices of gasoline and diesel…despite the Trump administration’s assurances.”

Trump responded to this shift in coverage this afternoon by announcing he is banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. “Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America,” Trump wrote. “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”

Trump’s anger at the press was probably fed today by three scoops.

Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen of CNN reported that this spring, the U.S. military set out to intercept a Chinese ship in the Middle East after an intelligence report said it was carrying components for a nuclear weapons program. After preparing to board the ship and sending up planes, officials realized that the report had been generated by AI. It was, a source told the reporters, “entirely false.” But it almost “started a war.”

Audrey Decker and Mark Satter of Politico reported that a shipment of F-35 fighter jet parts headed from Australia to the U.S. for repairs this summer was diverted to Hong Kong and disappeared, raising the possibility that China could have accessed key components of a highly classified U.S. weapons system.

Noah Robertson, Tara Copp, Warren P. Strobel, and Alex Horton of the Washington Post reported today that at least four more U.S. service members have died in the Middle East during the Iran war than the Department of Defense has announced. Three military contractors have also died since the combat began.

Trump’s fury at MS NOW might have come from Joe Scarborough, who noted on Morning Joe this morning that the latest Fox News poll showed that people trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle inflation and prices, by 15 points: 55% to 40%. In 2022, the advantage went to Republicans by 49% to 40%. Scarborough noted that Republicans are beginning to break from Trump.

All of these crises—the price crisis, caused by the oil crisis, caused by the Iran crisis, which has created a military crisis while the country is staggering under a deportation crisis—appear finally to be making some Republicans rethink their support for Trump and his policies.

On Monday, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal reported that although Republican lawmakers are celebrating Trump’s tariffs in public, they are privately seeking exemptions from tariffs for manufacturers in their own state. “Tariffs for thee, exemptions for me,” the board wrote in a piece detailing the efforts of Senator Katie Britt of Alabama to stop tariffs in private while praising them in public.

The board explained that this lie shows “why blunderbuss trade wars are an economic mistake, along with how tariffs deepen the D.C. swamp.” Big companies can push their interests through a senator, it noted, but “who speaks for the little guy being walloped?”

In The New Republic, Greg Sargent reported that Trump’s super PAC, called MAGA Inc., has just begun to pour $100 million into the midterms. Sargent notes that they are spending that money in at least 17 districts that Trump won in 2024 by more than five points, including six districts he won by ten points or more. “If those are in danger, then a lot of other seats that are considered similarly safe for Republicans must be on the chopping block,” Larry Sabato, the founder of the nonpartisan political analysis and handicapping newsletter Sabato’s Crystal Ball, told Sargent.

Social media user Thomas Long suggested that their investments showed that Republicans had written off districts they had won in 2024 by five points or less and are trying to protect those in the 5- to 15-point range. Sargent agreed, posting: “Very possible that what I’m reporting here is the beginning of Rs starting to write off the Trump +3, +4, +5 districts and now starting to put money into the Trump +8, +9, +10, +12 districts to save those.”

In Kansas, prominent Trump ally Kris Kobach, who is running for reelection as the state’s attorney general, said he has no plans to ask Trump for an endorsement before the midterm elections. “I don’t think it’s necessary,” he said. Tim Carpenter of News From the States reports that while Trump carried Kansas by 57.1% of the vote in 2024, an August YouGov/Economist poll showed his job performance rating at –17 in the state.

In Florida, Republican Representative Maria Elvira Salazar, a former broadcast journalist and Trump supporter, spoke to the camera in an ad designed to look like she was challenging Trump directly. “Mr. President,” she said, “some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far. In July, fifty percent of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record.” Blaming his advisors rather than Trump, she warned: “Be careful what your advisors are telling you about immigration policy. The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today…. I’m not talking about giving them amnesty,” she said. “I’m talking about giving them a dignified life in this promised land.”

Like Salazar, other Republicans are advancing the idea that the problem with the Republican Party these days is a poisonous MAGA element from which they are trying to distance themselves. In Texas the need to create that distance became imperative when Bo French, the Republican candidate to head the Texas Railroad Commission that oversees the oil and gas industry, posted a racist attack on University of Texas football fans. His comments threaten to sour Hispanic voters even further on Republican candidates.

On Wednesday, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), who was primaried out of his seat by Trump-backed challenger Ken Paxton, posted a Wall Street Journal article titled: “Why I’m Voting for a Texas Democrat.” The op-ed was written by Karl Rove, Republican strategist and senior advisor to President George W. Bush. Rove wrote that the raw racism, religious bigotry, and sexism coming from French has driven him to support French’s Democratic opponent, Jon Rosenthal, for railroad commissioner.

Rove warned that the racists, “misogynists who worship hypermasculinity, conspiracy nuts seeking clicks for profit, and religious bigots who won’t differentiate between Muslim terrorists and Muslim American patriots…are diminishing the Republican Party.” “I’ll have no part of it,” he wrote. The Republican Party’s “stables need a cleaning,” he wrote. “This is a good place to start.”

In a second repost of the op-ed, Cornyn quoted: “The GOP’s stables need a cleaning. This is a good place to start.”

On Wednesday, right-wing political blogger Erick Erickson warned of a “group of white guys” who have “subtly inserted themselves into conservative institutions and church organizations,” and “even surround the Vice President of the United States.” “To varying degrees, they embrace white nationalism, antisemitism, and even Nazi sympathies,” he wrote.

“Some of them believe the United States is at a tipping point, and they want to push it over the edge and rebuild it in their image.”

Erickson, too, called out Bo French. He also called out Charles Haywood, whose fortune has enabled him to shape boards and institutions, and right-wing broadcaster Nick Fuentes, who is radicalizing young men and urging them to infiltrate the Republican Party. Erickson warned that they are moving into extremism from different directions and that “the institutions of the right are absorbing both without resistance.”

Notably, though, neither Rove, nor Cornyn, nor Erickson called for French to drop out of the race.

In a marked change from usual political divisions, in contests across the country Republican leaders have endorsed Democrats. Megan Cartwright of Newsweek reported that in Texas, more than twenty current and former Republican officials, as well as other party leaders, have endorsed Democrat James Talarico for the U.S. Senate over Republican state attorney general Ken Paxton. One of those endorsing Talarico is Lionel Sosa, who advised President George W. Bush’s campaign.

Republican former senator Jeff Flake of Arizona had endorsed Georgia Democratic senator Jon Ossoff for reelection.

In Kansas, former two-time Republican governor Bill Graves has endorsed Democrat Adam Hamilton for U.S. Senate over sitting Republican senator Roger Marshall.

In Montana, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, Marc Racicot, has endorsed Democratic U.S. House of Representatives candidate Sam Forstag.

In Florida, Democratic candidate for governor David Jolly, who was once a Republican member of Congress, has picked up support from a group called “Republicans for Jolly.” The group includes a man who ran for the Republican nomination to run against Jolly.

In the All-In Podcast this week, Vice President J.D. Vance asked voters to “Give us another chance.” Perhaps recognizing that his framing was not one that would inspire confidence, he corrected himself: “Or give us another couple of years to continue to work on the amazing things that we’ve been doing for the past two years.”

The clip of him asking voters for another chance made the rounds in the media. When MS NOW’s Morning Joe showed it, the producers continued the clip to include his second point. He said: “And the second argument I’d make is, even if you don’t agree with us on every issue, the other party is consumed by craziness.” At that point, the panel burst out laughing.

The clip continued: “They’re consumed by people who want to steal everything, who want to give the country over to illegal aliens and criminals.”

Host Joe Scarborough, who was once a Republican member of Congress himself, apparently couldn’t stand it. “Who want to steal everything?” he echoed. “You work for a guy who has made more trades in the stock market than every member of the House and Senate combined. You work for a guy whose family has made billions and billions of dollars off of so-called public service. We could go down the list, but we don’t have over three hours. It’s such a disingenuous thing for you to say.

“And make things better? JD,…you know, I know I wake up early, and sometimes I forget things, but I think it was you in ’24, promising us: ‘Oh, if you’ll only vote for Donald Trump, we’ll end those forever wars. He won’t take us to war with Iran, but Kamala will.’ Right? Promised that. No more wars, no more stupidity, no more inflation. The Ukraine war would end on the first day.”

Thanks Neophyte!

Neophyte said:

“Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America,” Trump wrote.

Then maybe Trump and his administration should stop telling FICTION and LIES.

September 19, 2026 (Saturday)

On September 19, 1676, three hundred and fifty years ago today, Nathaniel Bacon and his followers burned Jamestown, the capital of the Virginia Colony. The destruction of the seat of government was the culmination of a year of conflict between Governor Sir William Berkeley and poor settlers in the colony. Fears of another such uprising in the future led Virginia lawmakers to make sure poor men would not make common cause, passing laws to divide them along racial lines.

The crisis had begun a year before, in the fall of 1675, when Thomas Mathew refused to pay members of the Doeg tribe what they believed they were owed for goods they had sold him. They raided his farm on the northern neck of Virginia, taking some of his pigs. A number of Doegs were killed in the skirmish.

The Virginia militia retaliated for the raid but mistakenly fell on a village of Susquehannocks, who were actually allied with the Virginia government. Blindsided and furious, the Susquehannocks began to raid local farms.

The raids set a smoldering power struggle within the colony ablaze.

Since the colony’s beginning in 1607, both English custom and the drive to produce cash crops had created a clear line between men who had land and power and those who worked for them. Horrific death rates made those men who had paid for the passage of workers from England to North America drive them hard to get as much labor out of them as possible before they died.

After the arrival of Africans to the colony in 1619, those enslaved people joined indentured white workers to make common cause against their “masters.” They worked and socialized together and, according to advertisements and court cases, ran away, committed crimes, and had children together.

They also suffered similar punishments when they ran afoul of the law. And those few who lived past the deadly early years of their servitude shared similar access to the benefits of freedom, although slaves could not simply outlive their contracts but had to buy their way out of bondage with money they earned in their spare time.

At first, so many poor Virginians died in the colony that the few who survived posed little threat to their former masters. But by the 1660s, the survivors had grown into a large population of poor men, white and Black both, who were free but could not afford prime land in the eastern part of the colony, so they migrated to the western frontier hoping to become farmers.

There, these settlers thoroughly resented the eastern government that seemed to ignore their interests. In 1675 they saw the increased fighting with the local tribes as an opportunity to weaken those tribes and take their lands.

But Governor Berkeley disagreed. He wanted to avoid an expensive war and he wanted to honor a 1646 treaty under which allied tribes paid an annual tribute to the colonial government and fought alongside the English against tribes that didn’t have such an agreement.

Nathaniel Bacon had arrived in the colony in 1674. He was well connected and wealthy—he was actually related to Berkeley by marriage—but was frustrated that Berkeley wasn’t following his advice. Bacon began to speak for the angry westerners and by spring 1676 had welded them into a powerful coalition that was attacking local Indigenous tribes without the government’s blessing. Finally, Berkeley declared Bacon a rebel.

Under Bacon, vagrants and poor farmers, including former slaves and servants, went to war against the Pamunkey tribe and the Indigenous tribes who lived around them. And then they marched on Jamestown. On July 30, 1676, Bacon issued the Declaration of the People of Virginia, complaining that the governor had raised taxes too high, was corrupt, had put his own “ignorant” judges in place, and had failed to protect settlers against Indigenous Americans. He included a list of Berkeley supporters he called “Confederates, aiders, and assisters” of Berkeley’s perfidy. Bacon ordered them all to surrender to him within four days and declared that he and his men intended to confiscate their estates.

In a dramatic affront to the colonial system in which leaders held their positions by virtue of the Crown, Bacon signed his name “Nathaniel Bacon, Generall by Consent of the people.”

Bacon’s men held control of Jamestown from July through September before Berkeley’s forces forced them to retreat. Berkeley’s men abandoned the town when Bacon’s men tried to recapture it. Aware that more of the governor’s men were on their way, Bacon’s forces burned the town down on September 19.

On October 26, Bacon died from dysentery, the “Bloodie Flux,” and the rebellion fell apart. But the crisis had left the colony in ruin with its people dead or wounded, farms plundered or burned, crops ruined from lack of care.

In the wake of Bacon’s Rebellion, Virginia’s wealthy elite set out to preserve their control over the colony. They pushed Indigenous Americans off their land and enslaved those who fought back. From 1670 to 1715, colonists enslaved between 30,000 and 50,000 Indians. Entire tribes disappeared, and white farmers moved onto their lands.

And the elites set out to drive wedges between Black slaves and white servants, establishing greater punishments for Black Virginians. In 1705 the Virginia Slave Codes pulled all those regulations together and went further. They prohibited Black Americans from owning cattle, hogs, or horses. They made it legal to kill an enslaved Virginian in the process of “correcting” them. And they made enslavement hereditary.

At the same time, they gave white servants new legal rights and limited the length of white indentures. The assembly passed laws requiring masters to provide white servants with food and clothing, as well as money to set themselves up after they earned their freedom. This, combined with a booming tobacco market, enabled more white men to buy land. The assembly also reduced the poll taxes for voting, making it easier for poor white men to vote.

And they made it costly for white and Black Virginians to socialize. Any white person attempting to marry across race lines would be fined and sent to jail, and the minister performing such a marriage would be fined the astonishing price of ten thousand pounds of tobacco. White servant women who had mixed-race children had to either pay a whopping fine or have their term of service extended for five years. And the child would be a slave until they turned thirty-one.

As leaders bound Black Americans more tightly into slavery, they courted white Virginians into joining the cultural and social world from which they had previously been excluded. Wealthier Virginians reached out to their less-prosperous neighbors, rubbing elbows with poorer white men in taverns and welcoming them into their imposing homes to emphasize that they were all friends.

Indeed, the needs of poor white landowners were not all that different from those of wealthier planters, and it was easy to believe that all Virginia voters had the same interests. They understood what it meant to be under the thumb of a tyrant, for they saw enslaved people and their enslavers all around them. They believed that owning land made a man independent, for that was their experience. And, unlike the royal officials who used their offices to enrich their friends, Virginia voters could argue that they had the best interests of the country at heart. They were free and independent.

They were, one might say, created equal.

Gosh!

Heather Cox Richardson speaks with Jennifer Welch about the concentration camps in America.

Link

(Heather calls them concentration camps.).

September 20, 2026 (Sunday)

Thousands of people gathered outside the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Friday evening to protest Trump’s takeover of the building and his threat to shut it down or even demolish it unless his name goes onto the facade. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper of the District of Columbia has ordered the board of the center to give 30 days’ notice before making any major physical changes to the building.

Recognizing the leeway the courts have given him over anything that falls under “national security,” Trump this morning decided to take a proactive approach to making sure the courts don’t stop his triumphal arch. He announced on social media:

“At the strong request of the United States Military, and for National Security purposes, I have agreed to convert the magnificent Triumphal Arch, planned since the Civil War Era many years ago, at the Receptive Circle adjoining the Arlington Memorial Bridge, into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage. There will be no facility like this anywhere in the World. Out of the 59 top cities and Capitals, Washington, D.C., IS THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD THAT DOES NOT HAVE A TRIUMPHAL ARCH, but it will now and, by far, the greatest of them all!”

This is the same justification he made for his ballroom where the East Wing used to be. When it became clear that his claim to need an entertainment space up to his aesthetic standards would not fly, he began to claim that the ballroom is imperative for national security. We have since learned that there already is a secure space under the White House, built in secret during President Barack Obama’s administration.

Dan Diamond reported in the Washington Post last Wednesday, September 16, that officials from the National Park Service have agreed that the construction will adversely affect Arlington National Cemetery, the Lincoln Memorial, and several dozen other historical sites, but urged those concerned about historic preservation to sign on to the project through a memorandum of agreement that will stand as approval by noon tomorrow anyway.

The document asserts that the arch is supposed “to celebrate 250 years of American independence by honoring America’s founding principles.” Now Trump says the arch is imperative for “National Security purposes” and will have drones and snipers.

Rebecca Miller, executive director of the DC Preservation League, responded to the request to sign the document: “This is not consistent with NPS practice, NPS regulations, or the intent of the National Historic Preservation Act.”

While Trump suggests he will defend the United States from atop his triumphal arch, our European allies are much more concerned with Russia’s drone strike last Sunday on a passenger train traveling from Kyiv, Ukraine, to Warsaw, Poland. The train was just over a mile—two kilometers—from the Polish border when the drone hit at a border crossing. The drone hit just after a convoy carrying former leaders and high-level diplomats, including former U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson, had passed through.

The train operators were warned of the coming drone and no one was hurt, but European leaders widely interpreted the strike so close to Poland as, in the words of Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s high representative for foreign and security policy, “clearly a message to the western world.”

Poland is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Twelve nations founded NATO in 1949 to resist Soviet aggression. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, NATO’s mission shifted toward crisis management, and then to resisting the aggression of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin.

Over the years, NATO has grown to include 32 countries, 30 of which are in Europe (the U.S. and Canada are the two NATO countries in North America). The success of their collective defense system rests on Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that an attack against any one member of NATO will be treated as an attack against all of them. So a threat to Poland threatens all the NATO countries.

Russia has been pushing NATO countries with what European leaders call “hybrid attacks.” Rather than launching classic military attacks, Putin has been allowing drones to go into NATO airspace, cutting undersea telecommunications networks on which European countries depend, and possibly placing bombs on a train in France.

Russia has been a bad actor for years, destabilizing NATO countries by flooding them with disinformation that affects elections, paying for political parties, bribing politicians, and so on. But the increase in Russian provocations now seems to be related to Putin’s attempt to undercut European support for Ukraine as Ukraine’s drones have brought the war home to Russia’s oil industry and to the Russian people.

In a speech on Wednesday, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, former prime minister of the Netherlands, noted that “Russia wants to stop us helping Ukraine—but their actions will only lead us to do more for Ukraine.”

Kurt Volker, who served as U.S. ambassador to NATO under President George W. Bush, told NPR’s Elissa Nadworny that President Trump “has largely looked at all of this and said, that’s a European problem. He doesn’t feel a threat to the United States from Russia, and he doesn’t see a need for the U.S. to increase its pushback on Russia at all.” “I disagree with this,” Volker said. “I think that we have a vested interest in freedom and free people everywhere being safe and prosperous. It creates a better world for us.”

Trump’s stand is interesting in light of news that Russia has been helping Iran in its fight against the United States, sending upgraded munitions as well as satellite imagery and targeting data to hit U.S. forces in the Middle East.

Last week, CNN reported that fourteen Russian spy satellites moved over the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, used by the U.S., two days before a devastating March 27 attack by Iran. A CNN investigation showed that the spacecraft had access to a large spectrum of data. U.S. officials and international intelligence sources told CNN that the information the satellites gathered helped Iranian forces conduct some of its most precise attacks against American forces and assets.

Two months later, a Russian close to Putin footed the bill for a three-day celebration for Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding to Bettina Anderson. According to Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski of ProPublica, Umar Kremlev spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the event, held on private islands in the Bahamas.

On Tuesday, September 15, the Department of Justice announced charges against five people working for Russian intelligence “to conduct attacks and murders around the world, including in the United States.” The indictment alleges that a network of Russian hit men has operated since at least 2024 and has recruited U.S. citizens to surveil and murder people, intending to target “all the countries that are helping Ukraine.” As Daniel Boffey and Andrew Roth of the Guardian note, it was an unwritten rule of the Cold War that Russia would not attack people in the U.S. (although Russian agents are widely believed to be behind the murder of U.S. journalist Paul Klebnikov in Moscow in 2004).

On September 16, Congress passed a major sanctions package targeting Russian officials, the energy sector, financial institutions, and the “shadow fleet” of tankers that get around sanctions by using shell corporations and flying under the flags of countries with a loose regulatory system. The measure is named the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, in honor of the late South Carolina senator.

But on Thursday, September 17, Anton Troianovski of the New York Times reported that Trump is suggesting Putin will be more willing to end his war if the U.S. makes business deals with Russia regardless of whether it stops its assault on Ukraine. In February, Troianovski reported that Gentry Beach, a Texas investor with ties to the Trumps, signed an agreement last fall with one of the biggest energy companies in Russia to develop Alaska’s natural gas resources.

According to a September 14 piece by Dexter Filkins in the New Yorker, the Trump administration has essentially privatized U.S. foreign policy for their own interests. The “generally held view,” a former U.S. official told Filkins, is that Russia has offered administration officials and their allies business deals in exchange for their supporting Russian demands against Ukraine. A classified report a European intelligence agency provided to Filkins lists Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, special envoy Steve Witkoff, former envoy Richard Grenell, and Gentry Beach as people who might participate in any of ten money-making ventures on the table.

The world, and the place of the United States in it, is changing fast. In June, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called it “shameful” that European allies did not help the U.S. attack on Iran and said the U.S. would review its military commitments to Europe. On September 17, Dan De Luce, Gordon Lubold, Courtney Kube, and Abigail Williams of NBC News reported that the Pentagon is weighing a plan to pull tens of thousands of troops and weapons, ships, and planes out of Europe despite the warnings of NATO allies about Russia’s increasingly aggressive moves.

In Wednesday’s speech, Rutte outlined what he called NATO 3.0. If NATO 1.0 was the phase of the organization that pushed back against the Soviet Union and NATO 2.0 was the period from then until now, he said, NATO 3.0 is one in which the weight of NATO shifts away from the United States and toward the United Kingdom, Europe, and Canada.

September 21, 2026 (Monday)

On September 18, while White House chief of staff Susie Wiles was out of town, Trump suddenly announced he was banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. “Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America,” Trump wrote. “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose deep unpopularity means he is likely eager to curry favor with Trump, promptly posted that the Defense Department fully supported Trump’s decision. He claimed that the same outlets, which recently have reported that Russia has been helping Iran target U.S. troops and that the Defense Department has not fully accounted for deaths of servicemembers or destruction of U.S. military bases, “endangered our troops with false stories, leaks, and trafficked in fiction and lies about the President, our Warriors, and their mission.”

The next day, reporters from those outlets attempting to enter the White House complex where the press facilities are located were denied entry, and Secret Service agents confiscated their press badges.

On Sunday afternoon, Trump posted an image of three full black trash bags, labeled “CNN,” “MSNBC,” and “Politico,” outside the White House.

This morning, after the weekend’s backlash, he posted: “The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America. It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control. It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!”
There’s that “national security” claim again: the same justification he’s using for building his ballroom and now his triumphal arch. It is also, not coincidentally, the excuse President Richard M. Nixon floated for covering up the Watergate break-in in June 1972.

In any case, no one’s buying it. MAGA Republicans have tried to claim that President Joe Biden cancelled 400 press passes. In fact, in 2023 the Biden administration tightened the rules to get a “hard” press pass that allows repeated, unaccompanied access to the press area of the White House. To have one, a reporter had to renew it annually, be employed full-time as a reporter, have a Washington, D.C., area address, and have had recent access to the White House. With that change, the number of White House hard passes fell from 1,417 to 975 because many of those who held passes didn’t reapply. Those people could still get day passes. In any event, these changes regarded individual reporters, not entire media outlets.

The Biden White House did not identify the one journalist whose hard pass application was denied.

Today CNN, MS NOW, and Politico sued Trump, Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung, Secret Service director Sean Curran, and White House chief of staff Wiles for violating both the Fifth and the First Amendments. “This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment, nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles,” the lawsuit says. It says Trump banned the outlets and the reporters to retaliate against the reporters for their past news coverage “because he deemed it ‘negative’ and chilling future reporting about him and his administration’s policies and actions.”

They are suing for the restoration of their press credentials for their coverage of the White House.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, appointed by Trump to the bench in 2017, was assigned the case. Although Trump appointed Kelly, in 2018, the judge ruled that Trump’s revoking of journalist Jim Acosta’s hard press pass likely violated his due process rights. Trump groused that the news outlets “have drawn a great Judge, for them, a man who ruled in favor of Jim Acosta.” Apparently anticipating a loss, he has already vowed to appeal.

He ranted that journalists were demeaning the Oval Office by reporting negative stories about him. “Virtually every story about me, or anything having to do with me, is negative, wrong and, in many cases, DANGEROUS for our Country! No matter how GREAT my Achievements, they trivialize and demean,” he posted. “I have an obligation to fight for the Success and Safety of our Country. FAKE NEWS IS A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY, and I will do whatever is necessary to make sure that the U.S.A. thrives.”

Podcaster Allison Gill noted that Judge Kelly ordered the government to respond to the lawsuit by tomorrow, and that he has set a hearing for Wednesday afternoon at 3:30.

Perhaps of even more concern to Trump is that the major news networks are refusing to cover him on television, starving him of media oxygen.

ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News take turns providing the television coverage of the president, and CNN was supposed to be in charge of the TV pool today. With CNN banned, the other networks refused to take its place, leaving television coverage of Trump suspended. A.J. Katz of The Wrap reported on their joint statement, in which they said: “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”

This afternoon, Trump held an event at the White House, but without a press pool, there was no audio. It was just footage of Trump standing with a group of people and apparently talking.

The White House advertised “The White House App” on social media, claiming users could “et real-time updates and live events streamed DIRECTLY to your phone. No noise. Just the news that matters most—straight from the Trump Administration. DOWNLOAD NOW,” it said.

Users were not kind. One commented: “I’d rather launch my phone into the sun than install a government propaganda app.” Others noted that the administration is eager to get its hands on user information, and only a fool would install what could be spyware on their phone.

Peter Alexander of MS NOW had his own response to Trump’s attacks on the press: “This is not normal. This is not business as usual,” he said.

“What’s happening right now is different. The latest threat against our cherished freedoms protected by the U.S. Constitution. The media is not perfect. There’s a debate to be had about who you trust, where you should get your news.

“This is something bigger, though. Among the privileges, the duties of a free press, are to hold power to account, to ask the difficult questions, to document history as it happens. The president says fake news is reporting that is untrue. In fact, it’s reporting that he finds unflattering.

“And here’s the reality. A little more than seven weeks until the midterms, many of the facts are unflattering. Where to begin? Gas prices, now $4.48 a gallon on average, $1.50 more than where they were before the war with Iran began. Ask farmers about the price of diesel, now at a record high, nearly $6.50 a gallon.

“All of it due to a war the president started, a war he vowed would be done within weeks but is now in its seventh month. Eighteen American service members dead, if not more, and that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.

“A trade war with Canada, an obsession with the Kennedy Center, if it’s not demolished like the East Wing, then there’s the grift, the self-dealing, a Russian oligarch paying for Trump’s son’s wedding party, billions of dollars made by the Trump family.

“Those are the facts. They may be unflattering, but they are not fake.

“I’ve been there since the beginning. Trump’s frustration, this fury, it didn’t happen overnight. On the campaign trail, I remember, before he even took office, he would yell at us in the bullpen in the back of those large rallies, riling up the MAGA crowd. Once elected, he would insult reporters to their face—I’ve been there—and he would call journalists the enemy of the people. As one of my former colleagues described it, Trump is trying to discredit the messenger, to create a vacuum where his version of reality fills that void.

“But the answer from journalists is simple. To report more, with more sources, more digging, more facts.”

Trump has his own answer. The White House YouTube channel announced this afternoon that at 7:00 tonight it will launch “TRUMP TV: The Essentials Station.”

The comment feature on the channel is turned off.

Neophyte said:

September 21, 2026 (Monday)

On September 18, while White House chief of staff Susie Wiles was out of town, Trump suddenly announced he was banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. “Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America,” Trump wrote. “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose deep unpopularity means he is likely eager to curry favor with Trump, promptly posted that the Defense Department fully supported Trump’s decision. He claimed that the same outlets, which recently have reported that Russia has been helping Iran target U.S. troops and that the Defense Department has not fully accounted for deaths of servicemembers or destruction of U.S. military bases, “endangered our troops with false stories, leaks, and trafficked in fiction and lies about the President, our Warriors, and their mission.”

The next day, reporters from those outlets attempting to enter the White House complex where the press facilities are located were denied entry, and Secret Service agents confiscated their press badges.

On Sunday afternoon, Trump posted an image of three full black trash bags, labeled “CNN,” “MSNBC,” and “Politico,” outside the White House.

This morning, after the weekend’s backlash, he posted: “The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America. It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control. It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!”
There’s that “national security” claim again: the same justification he’s using for building his ballroom and now his triumphal arch. It is also, not coincidentally, the excuse President Richard M. Nixon floated for covering up the Watergate break-in in June 1972.

In any case, no one’s buying it. MAGA Republicans have tried to claim that President Joe Biden cancelled 400 press passes. In fact, in 2023 the Biden administration tightened the rules to get a “hard” press pass that allows repeated, unaccompanied access to the press area of the White House. To have one, a reporter had to renew it annually, be employed full-time as a reporter, have a Washington, D.C., area address, and have had recent access to the White House. With that change, the number of White House hard passes fell from 1,417 to 975 because many of those who held passes didn’t reapply. Those people could still get day passes. In any event, these changes regarded individual reporters, not entire media outlets.

The Biden White House did not identify the one journalist whose hard pass application was denied.

Today CNN, MS NOW, and Politico sued Trump, Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung, Secret Service director Sean Curran, and White House chief of staff Wiles for violating both the Fifth and the First Amendments. “This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment, nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles,” the lawsuit says. It says Trump banned the outlets and the reporters to retaliate against the reporters for their past news coverage “because he deemed it ‘negative’ and chilling future reporting about him and his administration’s policies and actions.”

They are suing for the restoration of their press credentials for their coverage of the White House.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, appointed by Trump to the bench in 2017, was assigned the case. Although Trump appointed Kelly, in 2018, the judge ruled that Trump’s revoking of journalist Jim Acosta’s hard press pass likely violated his due process rights. Trump groused that the news outlets “have drawn a great Judge, for them, a man who ruled in favor of Jim Acosta.” Apparently anticipating a loss, he has already vowed to appeal.

He ranted that journalists were demeaning the Oval Office by reporting negative stories about him. “Virtually every story about me, or anything having to do with me, is negative, wrong and, in many cases, DANGEROUS for our Country! No matter how GREAT my Achievements, they trivialize and demean,” he posted. “I have an obligation to fight for the Success and Safety of our Country. FAKE NEWS IS A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY, and I will do whatever is necessary to make sure that the U.S.A. thrives.”

Podcaster Allison Gill noted that Judge Kelly ordered the government to respond to the lawsuit by tomorrow, and that he has set a hearing for Wednesday afternoon at 3:30.

Perhaps of even more concern to Trump is that the major news networks are refusing to cover him on television, starving him of media oxygen.

ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News take turns providing the television coverage of the president, and CNN was supposed to be in charge of the TV pool today. With CNN banned, the other networks refused to take its place, leaving television coverage of Trump suspended. A.J. Katz of The Wrap reported on their joint statement, in which they said: “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”

This afternoon, Trump held an event at the White House, but without a press pool, there was no audio. It was just footage of Trump standing with a group of people and apparently talking.

The White House advertised “The White House App” on social media, claiming users could “et real-time updates and live events streamed DIRECTLY to your phone. No noise. Just the news that matters most—straight from the Trump Administration. DOWNLOAD NOW,” it said.

Users were not kind. One commented: “I’d rather launch my phone into the sun than install a government propaganda app.” Others noted that the administration is eager to get its hands on user information, and only a fool would install what could be spyware on their phone.

Peter Alexander of MS NOW had his own response to Trump’s attacks on the press: “This is not normal. This is not business as usual,” he said.

“What’s happening right now is different. The latest threat against our cherished freedoms protected by the U.S. Constitution. The media is not perfect. There’s a debate to be had about who you trust, where you should get your news.

“This is something bigger, though. Among the privileges, the duties of a free press, are to hold power to account, to ask the difficult questions, to document history as it happens. The president says fake news is reporting that is untrue. In fact, it’s reporting that he finds unflattering.

“And here’s the reality. A little more than seven weeks until the midterms, many of the facts are unflattering. Where to begin? Gas prices, now $4.48 a gallon on average, $1.50 more than where they were before the war with Iran began. Ask farmers about the price of diesel, now at a record high, nearly $6.50 a gallon.

“All of it due to a war the president started, a war he vowed would be done within weeks but is now in its seventh month. Eighteen American service members dead, if not more, and that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.

“A trade war with Canada, an obsession with the Kennedy Center, if it’s not demolished like the East Wing, then there’s the grift, the self-dealing, a Russian oligarch paying for Trump’s son’s wedding party, billions of dollars made by the Trump family.

“Those are the facts. They may be unflattering, but they are not fake.

“I’ve been there since the beginning. Trump’s frustration, this fury, it didn’t happen overnight. On the campaign trail, I remember, before he even took office, he would yell at us in the bullpen in the back of those large rallies, riling up the MAGA crowd. Once elected, he would insult reporters to their face—I’ve been there—and he would call journalists the enemy of the people. As one of my former colleagues described it, Trump is trying to discredit the messenger, to create a vacuum where his version of reality fills that void.

“But the answer from journalists is simple. To report more, with more sources, more digging, more facts.”

Trump has his own answer. The White House YouTube channel announced this afternoon that at 7:00 tonight it will launch “TRUMP TV: The Essentials Station.”

The comment feature on the channel is turned off.

Thanks…you beat me to it by about 30 seconds!

Ta.

September 22, 2026 (Tuesday)

In 1945, still reeling from World War II, representatives from 50 nations reached back to the U.S. Constitution when they wrote the Preamble to the United Nations charter. “WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS” were, they wrote, “DETERMINED to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained.”

Central to that effort was the principle, stated in Article 2, that “ll Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

The U.N. General Assembly has been meeting in New York City since September 8, and today began its high-level General Debate, the annual meeting of the heads of state and heads of government that launches the General Assembly session. At the General Debate, all 193 U.N. member states are invited to address the General Assembly.

By tradition, Brazil speaks first because it was the first to volunteer to speak in 1955 when no other country would. Because the United States is the country that hosts the United Nations, it usually speaks second.

In his speech today, President Donald J. Trump, reading haltingly off a teleprompter, said: “I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world? Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?”

Much of the Iranian delegation walked out.

Trump’s immediate switch to a talking point about the midterms suggests that his speech was aimed at U.S. voters more than the U.N. audience, but it should not be overlooked that he stood in front of world leaders and rejected the premise of the U.N.

Touting his own “Board of Peace” and continuing his fiction that he has solved multiple wars, he outlined a fantasy worldview of himself as a powerful dictator, a man of action who rejects the diplomacy at the heart of the U.N.

“I do not believe in letting problems fester,” he declared. “They only become harder to solve. So while others have talked, I have acted. While others have spoken of peace, I have made peace. While others have ignored threats, I have confronted them. While others have talked of courage, America has shown it. While others have promised strength, I have used it to make America the most powerful country in the world.”

Rejecting the principles on which the U.N. was founded, Trump instead embraced the idea that powerful countries will have spheres of influence, dominating their neighbors. This is the worldview advanced by Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, who seeks to have control over the decisions made by the countries around Russia, including Ukraine. In this worldview, as Trump sees it, the United States will control the western hemisphere.

“To the victor belong the spoils,” he told the U.N. in a perverse echo of the world the U.N. founders set out to change. “You’ve all heard that.”

Trump threatened Mexico and boasted of U.S. attacks on Venezuela that removed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro from power and replaced him with Delcy Rodríguez, who was willing to work with the Trump administration to allow the U.S. access to Venezuelan oil fields.

“Our actions in Venezuela are proof that the United States will no longer permit threats to America to gain a foothold anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. And if necessary, we will use our unmatched military might to secure the vital national interests of the United States.”

“My administration is also seeking a fundamental change in the situation in Cuba,” Trump said, “where the communist regime is under great pressure, the biggest pressure they’ve ever been under. It’s an absolutely failed state. It’s failing like never before and it will fall. Marco Rubio is handling a negotiation. He’s deep into negotiations with Cuba. Let’s see what happens.”
The Cuban delegation walked out.

In an echo of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Vice President J.D. Vance, Trump went full white nationalist, accusing the “U.N.’s top human rights officials” of wanting the U.S. “to open up our borders to gangs and criminals from world’s most dangerous places…. It is deeply ironic that the United Nations has an entire institution, the UNESCO group of people and countries devoted to protecting cultural heritage. Yet with their ceaseless promotion of mass migration, these globalists are actively destroying the greatest cultures and most extraordinary heritage in all of history. There is no human right to illegal immigration, but there is a right to remain a sovereign nation, and we want to remain a sovereign nation and so should you.”

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, the former prime minister of Portugal, asked the nations of the world to hold fast to a different vision.

He warned that “we are witnessing an extraordinary transfer of power away from governments to a handful of private corporations and individuals,” whose “reach now extends across politics, economies, information flows, technological development, and the civic space on which societies depend.”

“At the very moment when humanity faces an unprecedented convergence of threats, our mechanisms for collective action are under growing strain.”

There are two routes open, Guterres said. Either the world will fragment into “transactionalism,” “rising tensions and deepening mistrust,” “fractured markets and weakened institutions,” “shrinking cooperation and zero-sum calculations,” or it will move toward “networked multipolarity,” a “world built on interdependence—and sustained by a dense web of economic, political, social, and technological connections. A world in which multiple centres of influence coexist within a common framework of international law and shared rules.”

Against the backdrop of Russia’s debacle in Ukraine and the U.S. morass in Iran, Guterres noted that the world’s superpowers have learned that “their power isn’t so super. That their power has limits.”

He urged countries to hold fast to the principles of the United Nations: “The primacy of international law. Upholding human dignity. And the pursuit of justice in all its dimensions.”

“It comes down to this,” he said, “Will we act to ensure that power is governed by law or by force? By cooperation or coercion?”

Force must not “be the final arbiter of whose lives, rights, and future matter,” he said.

He called out the war in Iran and conflicts in the Middle East; Israel’s onslaught on the Palestinians in Gaza “with a scale of killing and destruction unlike anything I have witnessed in all my years as Secretary-General”; “violence, displacement and settlement expansion by Israel in the Occupied West Bank”; Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in violation of the U.N. charter; the war on civilians in Sudan, with millions displaced; and escalating violence in Myanmar.

Guterres added that “o discussion of inequality can ignore its most universal form: The inequality between men and women. Everywhere, women and girls continue to face discrimination, violence, exclusion, and abuse. Around the world: Their rights are being rolled back. Their voices silenced. Their bodies turned into battlegrounds. And their freedoms treated as bargaining chips.

“This is an outrage—and a profound waste for humanity. Peace is more durable when women are at the table. Economies are more dynamic when women have equal opportunity. Societies are more resilient when girls can learn, lead, and live free from fear. And institutions are more effective when power is shared equally.”
“Equality is not a dream,” Guterres said. “It is a decision.”

“Excellencies,” he said, “The test before us is whether power will be exercised with the law—or beyond it.”

“In the face of a global catastrophe more than 80 years ago,” Guterres said, “the United Nations was created as an act of defiance. The defiance of people who refuse to surrender the future to fear. The defiance against the self-defeating notion that might makes right. The defiance of countries that know our futures are bound together.

“The defiance of hope.”

Neophyte said:

September 22, 2026 (Tuesday)

In 1945, still reeling from World War II, representatives from 50 nations reached back to the U.S. Constitution when they wrote the Preamble to the United Nations charter. “WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS” were, they wrote, “DETERMINED to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained.”

Central to that effort was the principle, stated in Article 2, that “ll Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

The U.N. General Assembly has been meeting in New York City since September 8, and today began its high-level General Debate, the annual meeting of the heads of state and heads of government that launches the General Assembly session. At the General Debate, all 193 U.N. member states are invited to address the General Assembly.

By tradition, Brazil speaks first because it was the first to volunteer to speak in 1955 when no other country would. Because the United States is the country that hosts the United Nations, it usually speaks second.

In his speech today, President Donald J. Trump, reading haltingly off a teleprompter, said: “I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world? Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?”

Much of the Iranian delegation walked out.

Trump’s immediate switch to a talking point about the midterms suggests that his speech was aimed at U.S. voters more than the U.N. audience, but it should not be overlooked that he stood in front of world leaders and rejected the premise of the U.N.

Touting his own “Board of Peace” and continuing his fiction that he has solved multiple wars, he outlined a fantasy worldview of himself as a powerful dictator, a man of action who rejects the diplomacy at the heart of the U.N.

“I do not believe in letting problems fester,” he declared. “They only become harder to solve. So while others have talked, I have acted. While others have spoken of peace, I have made peace. While others have ignored threats, I have confronted them. While others have talked of courage, America has shown it. While others have promised strength, I have used it to make America the most powerful country in the world.”

Rejecting the principles on which the U.N. was founded, Trump instead embraced the idea that powerful countries will have spheres of influence, dominating their neighbors. This is the worldview advanced by Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, who seeks to have control over the decisions made by the countries around Russia, including Ukraine. In this worldview, as Trump sees it, the United States will control the western hemisphere.

“To the victor belong the spoils,” he told the U.N. in a perverse echo of the world the U.N. founders set out to change. “You’ve all heard that.”

Trump threatened Mexico and boasted of U.S. attacks on Venezuela that removed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro from power and replaced him with Delcy Rodríguez, who was willing to work with the Trump administration to allow the U.S. access to Venezuelan oil fields.

“Our actions in Venezuela are proof that the United States will no longer permit threats to America to gain a foothold anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. And if necessary, we will use our unmatched military might to secure the vital national interests of the United States.”

“My administration is also seeking a fundamental change in the situation in Cuba,” Trump said, “where the communist regime is under great pressure, the biggest pressure they’ve ever been under. It’s an absolutely failed state. It’s failing like never before and it will fall. Marco Rubio is handling a negotiation. He’s deep into negotiations with Cuba. Let’s see what happens.”
The Cuban delegation walked out.

In an echo of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Vice President J.D. Vance, Trump went full white nationalist, accusing the “U.N.’s top human rights officials” of wanting the U.S. “to open up our borders to gangs and criminals from world’s most dangerous places…. It is deeply ironic that the United Nations has an entire institution, the UNESCO group of people and countries devoted to protecting cultural heritage. Yet with their ceaseless promotion of mass migration, these globalists are actively destroying the greatest cultures and most extraordinary heritage in all of history. There is no human right to illegal immigration, but there is a right to remain a sovereign nation, and we want to remain a sovereign nation and so should you.”

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, the former prime minister of Portugal, asked the nations of the world to hold fast to a different vision.

He warned that “we are witnessing an extraordinary transfer of power away from governments to a handful of private corporations and individuals,” whose “reach now extends across politics, economies, information flows, technological development, and the civic space on which societies depend.”

“At the very moment when humanity faces an unprecedented convergence of threats, our mechanisms for collective action are under growing strain.”

There are two routes open, Guterres said. Either the world will fragment into “transactionalism,” “rising tensions and deepening mistrust,” “fractured markets and weakened institutions,” “shrinking cooperation and zero-sum calculations,” or it will move toward “networked multipolarity,” a “world built on interdependence—and sustained by a dense web of economic, political, social, and technological connections. A world in which multiple centres of influence coexist within a common framework of international law and shared rules.”

Against the backdrop of Russia’s debacle in Ukraine and the U.S. morass in Iran, Guterres noted that the world’s superpowers have learned that “their power isn’t so super. That their power has limits.”

He urged countries to hold fast to the principles of the United Nations: “The primacy of international law. Upholding human dignity. And the pursuit of justice in all its dimensions.”

“It comes down to this,” he said, “Will we act to ensure that power is governed by law or by force? By cooperation or coercion?”

Force must not “be the final arbiter of whose lives, rights, and future matter,” he said.

He called out the war in Iran and conflicts in the Middle East; Israel’s onslaught on the Palestinians in Gaza “with a scale of killing and destruction unlike anything I have witnessed in all my years as Secretary-General”; “violence, displacement and settlement expansion by Israel in the Occupied West Bank”; Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in violation of the U.N. charter; the war on civilians in Sudan, with millions displaced; and escalating violence in Myanmar.

Guterres added that “o discussion of inequality can ignore its most universal form: The inequality between men and women. Everywhere, women and girls continue to face discrimination, violence, exclusion, and abuse. Around the world: Their rights are being rolled back. Their voices silenced. Their bodies turned into battlegrounds. And their freedoms treated as bargaining chips.

“This is an outrage—and a profound waste for humanity. Peace is more durable when women are at the table. Economies are more dynamic when women have equal opportunity. Societies are more resilient when girls can learn, lead, and live free from fear. And institutions are more effective when power is shared equally.”
“Equality is not a dream,” Guterres said. “It is a decision.”

“Excellencies,” he said, “The test before us is whether power will be exercised with the law—or beyond it.”

“In the face of a global catastrophe more than 80 years ago,” Guterres said, “the United Nations was created as an act of defiance. The defiance of people who refuse to surrender the future to fear. The defiance against the self-defeating notion that might makes right. The defiance of countries that know our futures are bound together.

“The defiance of hope.”

Nice. Thanks.

September 23, 2026 (Wednesday)

Yesterday, William Turton, Avi Asher-Schapiro, Molly Redden, and Kirsten Berg of ProPublica published a blockbuster story reporting that the anti-corruption group of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) for engaging in a pay-to-play scheme in which defense contractor Navatek made illegal donations to her 2020 campaign and later got multimillion-dollar contracts from the government. Collins is the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

And yet, the story continues, when he returned to the White House in 2025, Trump fired the investigators building the case and largely stopped investigating public corruption.

While the primary witness in the case was Martin Kao, the man who allegedly engaged in the bribery, the ProPublica journalists corroborated much of Kao’s account through legal records, FBI evidence, and interviews with people who worked with Navatek and the FBI.

Collins’s deputy chief of staff Annie Clark said Collins’s office “vigorously” denies allegations of bribery and pay-to-play, but she did admit that “the Collins campaign disgorged the illegal contributions that Martin Kao had made without our knowledge.” Emails suggest that, in fact, her office did know about the deal. After a $150,000 donation, a staff member from her office emailed a lobbyist for Navatek to ask for Kao’s phone number, writing: “Senator Collins would like to call Martin to thank him.”

Although the story’s authors report that Navatek never produced a product the military needed, it did, in fact, receive millions in defense contracts.

The bribery angle of this story is huge. So, too, is that the story suggests that Trump, at least, might perceive that he has something to hold over Collins’s head to keep her behind his actions, even when they have dramatically weakened her power at the head of Appropriations.

The 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Charles Dudley Warner and Mark Twain that gave the late nineteenth century its nickname was not about the riches of the industrialists who came to be known as robber barons. It was about the political corruption of the era. In the book, unscrupulous speculators bribed congressmen. “A Congressional appropriation costs money,” a railroad man tells a naive youth who wonders where a $200,000 appropriation has gone. He listed the bribes his project required and noted that the “high moral” lawmakers cost more than the usual ones.

It was an era in which lawmakers lived by the “spoils system,” as in “to the victor go the spoils.” Lawmakers at the time rewarded their business followers with government contracts and put supporters into political office. The businessmen and officials, in turn, would hire workers on the condition they voted for the party the boss supported. “Every good man looks after his friends,” as one politician put it.

The U.S. outlawed the spoils system in 1883 after a disappointed office seeker assassinated President James Garfield, replacing it with the merit-based Civil Service Reform Act, or Pendleton Act. Trump has ripped up those civil service protections, making much of the government staff again political appointees. Curiously, at the United Nations yesterday, Trump used the phrase “to the victor belong the spoils.”

The relationship between the MAGA Republican agenda and the misuse of tax dollars is becoming more and more obvious since ProPublica ran the story last November of how contracts from the Department of Homeland Security appeared to be going to those personally tied to then–Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and her ally Corey Lewandowski.

In July 2026, Tarini Parti, Josh Dawsey, Michelle Hackman, and Summer Said of the Wall Street Journal confirmed that Lewandowski “effectively controlled billions in spending at Homeland Security.” Lewandowski responded, somewhat halfheartedly, that the story was “just another example of the kind of anonymous-source, politically driven reporting that Americans have seen time and again,” and emphasized that he was “a volunteer in advancing this administration’s agenda.”

Stories of the Trump administration’s misuse of taxpayer money are starting to drop fast and furious.

Yesterday, Liz Essley Whyte of the Wall Street Journal reported that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. funded enhanced security for himself by taking funds from the department’s Office of Minority Health. Whyte notes that the Reagan administration created the Office of Minority Health after a landmark report showed that Black life expectancy in the U.S. was shorter than white Americans’ and that Black babies were more likely than white babies to die.

Christina Jewett and Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times reported today that, over the past year, Kennedy has also accepted $4 million in book advances and more than $270,000 in gifts from allies connected to the “Make American Healthy Again,” or MAHA, movement interested in changes to government policies. Kennedy’s wife, Cheryl Hines, accepted $210,000 in consulting fees from a MAHA advocacy group.

On a far larger scale is the use of tax dollars to pay authoritarian governments to imprison immigrants from the United States who are not their own citizens.

On Monday, David Nakamura and Adam Taylor of the Washington Post reported that the State Department’s “Office of Remigration” has pledged at least $410 million to facilitate third-country renditions to expel migrants that U.S. courts say cannot be returned to their home countries for fear they will be harmed or killed. So the U.S. has sent more than 25,000 people to at least 28 third countries, including Eswatini, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, and Sierra Leone, for a fee. That money includes $81 million in direct payments to 13 foreign governments, as well as funding for agencies that will then contribute to those countries.

Those countries either imprison the migrants or send them back to their home countries, a loophole that enables the administration to get around the prohibition on the U.S. sending them there. Last Friday, a federal appeals court found that this policy is unlawful. The administration will appeal to the Supreme Court.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has ordered the deals, and Christian Ehrhardt, a State Department official, has secured them.

Nakamura and Taylor explain that the Office of Remigration—the word “remigration” is popular with white nationalists who seek to expel racial minorities and immigrants through ethnic cleansing—reverses the previous U.S. emphasis on resettling refugees and instead focuses on expelling them, including into places where there is strong evidence they will be tortured. The administration is locking in these deals as quickly as possible, the journalists report, exercising “minimal oversight over how the money is spent and how the migrants are treated, even though some of the third countries are ruled by authoritarian regimes.”

A former State Department official who left the department over the policy told Nakamura and Taylor that the administration wanted “fast money, with no strings attached. The whole point was to circumvent notification that money was being sent to a government known to be corrupt.” The plan appears to be to create such terror in migrant communities that people here self-deport, and others are afraid to come.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council notes that “Congress should demand answers from those responsible for diverting taxpayer funding intended to protect people from persecution to some of the world’s worst authoritarians, for purposes which clearly violate human rights.”

On Sunday an agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, a Venezuelan food delivery driver, in the back in Austin, Texas. With a bullet still lodged in his body, he was discharged from a hospital to ICE custody, where he spent the night in pain on a cold floor. Nick Miroff of The Atlantic reported yesterday that the officer was a recent hire who was not wearing a body camera, despite the promise of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin that all ICE agents would wear cameras. News outlets reported that the officer had been issued one.

The Department of Homeland Security set out to add 10,000 new agents last year after Congress provided billions of dollars to double the ICE workforce. ICE ramped up its hiring by offering $50,000 signing bonuses and cutting normal vetting procedures, sometimes not even checking fingerprints or identities or conducting a job interview. David Brouillette, the ICE officer with a volatile history who killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, in July, was also a recent hire. On September 15, Alex Horton, Joyce Sohyun Lee, Maria Sacchetti, and Ted Hesson of the Washington Post reported that ICE has been quietly firing some of those hastily hired.

ICE told the Washington Post reporters: “ICE is hiring the best of the best to go after the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens including drug traffickers, murderers, and pedophiles. When individuals fall short of that standard—personnel decisions are made. This is standard practice in almost every American workplace.”

Officials told Miroff that the agents who stopped Garcés Pérez used a commercial database and federal immigration file that identified the man’s plates as belonging to someone with an outstanding deportation order; his lawyer said he had a valid work permit and is an asylum seeker, and that the deportation order came because notice of his immigration court hearing was sent to the wrong address. After a public outcry, officials took Garcés Pérez back to the hospital on Monday.

Ryan Quinn of Inside Higher Ed reported Monday that the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality are running far behind where they should be in terms of funding for the fiscal year, which ends on September 30.

Trump fired the board of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in April, and the foundation is now effectively being run by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), a former NSF board member told Quinn. The director of OMB is Russell Vought, a key author of Project 2025. “And OMB is directing the agency to direct its grant-making dollars in ways that are very different from federal law as passed by Congress in its budget,” the former board member said.

Quinn noted that Nature attributed the funding shortfall mainly “to the agency keeping more than $1 billion in an account, much of which is for the White House’s Grand Research Challenges project, which is meant to support specific fields, including artificial intelligence.” The Trump family and the president’s allies are heavily invested in the AI sector.

And then there are Trump’s vanity projects. Even before Trump announced that the American taxpayer wouldn’t pay a dime for the White House ballroom project, the administration had already signed contracts that put the American taxpayer on the hook for more than $300 million for it.

Today Sarah Blaskey and Jonathan O’Connell of the Washington Post reported that James McCrery II, the first architect on Trump’s ballroom, resigned when Trump insisted on a design that did not meet fire codes. Normally, White House construction would be managed by federal agencies required by law to comply with building safety codes, but White House officials have routed the ballroom through the tiny Executive Residence office that is exempt from rules because it is not a federal agency.

McCrery warned that Trump’s design did not have enough emergency exits or measures to contain a fire, which could spread quickly from the kitchen below the ballroom to the event space above it, and pointed out that the design was not up to code.

Trump waved off his concerns. “I am the code,” he said.

Neophyte said:

September 23, 2026 (Wednesday)

Yesterday, William Turton, Avi Asher-Schapiro, Molly Redden, and Kirsten Berg of ProPublica published a blockbuster story reporting that the anti-corruption group of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) for engaging in a pay-to-play scheme in which defense contractor Navatek made illegal donations to her 2020 campaign and later got multimillion-dollar contracts from the government. Collins is the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

And yet, the story continues, when he returned to the White House in 2025, Trump fired the investigators building the case and largely stopped investigating public corruption.

While the primary witness in the case was Martin Kao, the man who allegedly engaged in the bribery, the ProPublica journalists corroborated much of Kao’s account through legal records, FBI evidence, and interviews with people who worked with Navatek and the FBI.

Collins’s deputy chief of staff Annie Clark said Collins’s office “vigorously” denies allegations of bribery and pay-to-play, but she did admit that “the Collins campaign disgorged the illegal contributions that Martin Kao had made without our knowledge.” Emails suggest that, in fact, her office did know about the deal. After a $150,000 donation, a staff member from her office emailed a lobbyist for Navatek to ask for Kao’s phone number, writing: “Senator Collins would like to call Martin to thank him.”

Although the story’s authors report that Navatek never produced a product the military needed, it did, in fact, receive millions in defense contracts.

The bribery angle of this story is huge. So, too, is that the story suggests that Trump, at least, might perceive that he has something to hold over Collins’s head to keep her behind his actions, even when they have dramatically weakened her power at the head of Appropriations.

The 1873 novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Charles Dudley Warner and Mark Twain that gave the late nineteenth century its nickname was not about the riches of the industrialists who came to be known as robber barons. It was about the political corruption of the era. In the book, unscrupulous speculators bribed congressmen. “A Congressional appropriation costs money,” a railroad man tells a naive youth who wonders where a $200,000 appropriation has gone. He listed the bribes his project required and noted that the “high moral” lawmakers cost more than the usual ones.

It was an era in which lawmakers lived by the “spoils system,” as in “to the victor go the spoils.” Lawmakers at the time rewarded their business followers with government contracts and put supporters into political office. The businessmen and officials, in turn, would hire workers on the condition they voted for the party the boss supported. “Every good man looks after his friends,” as one politician put it.

The U.S. outlawed the spoils system in 1883 after a disappointed office seeker assassinated President James Garfield, replacing it with the merit-based Civil Service Reform Act, or Pendleton Act. Trump has ripped up those civil service protections, making much of the government staff again political appointees. Curiously, at the United Nations yesterday, Trump used the phrase “to the victor belong the spoils.”

The relationship between the MAGA Republican agenda and the misuse of tax dollars is becoming more and more obvious since ProPublica ran the story last November of how contracts from the Department of Homeland Security appeared to be going to those personally tied to then–Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem and her ally Corey Lewandowski.

In July 2026, Tarini Parti, Josh Dawsey, Michelle Hackman, and Summer Said of the Wall Street Journal confirmed that Lewandowski “effectively controlled billions in spending at Homeland Security.” Lewandowski responded, somewhat halfheartedly, that the story was “just another example of the kind of anonymous-source, politically driven reporting that Americans have seen time and again,” and emphasized that he was “a volunteer in advancing this administration’s agenda.”

Stories of the Trump administration’s misuse of taxpayer money are starting to drop fast and furious.

Yesterday, Liz Essley Whyte of the Wall Street Journal reported that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. funded enhanced security for himself by taking funds from the department’s Office of Minority Health. Whyte notes that the Reagan administration created the Office of Minority Health after a landmark report showed that Black life expectancy in the U.S. was shorter than white Americans’ and that Black babies were more likely than white babies to die.

Christina Jewett and Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times reported today that, over the past year, Kennedy has also accepted $4 million in book advances and more than $270,000 in gifts from allies connected to the “Make American Healthy Again,” or MAHA, movement interested in changes to government policies. Kennedy’s wife, Cheryl Hines, accepted $210,000 in consulting fees from a MAHA advocacy group.

On a far larger scale is the use of tax dollars to pay authoritarian governments to imprison immigrants from the United States who are not their own citizens.

On Monday, David Nakamura and Adam Taylor of the Washington Post reported that the State Department’s “Office of Remigration” has pledged at least $410 million to facilitate third-country renditions to expel migrants that U.S. courts say cannot be returned to their home countries for fear they will be harmed or killed. So the U.S. has sent more than 25,000 people to at least 28 third countries, including Eswatini, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, and Sierra Leone, for a fee. That money includes $81 million in direct payments to 13 foreign governments, as well as funding for agencies that will then contribute to those countries.

Those countries either imprison the migrants or send them back to their home countries, a loophole that enables the administration to get around the prohibition on the U.S. sending them there. Last Friday, a federal appeals court found that this policy is unlawful. The administration will appeal to the Supreme Court.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has ordered the deals, and Christian Ehrhardt, a State Department official, has secured them.

Nakamura and Taylor explain that the Office of Remigration—the word “remigration” is popular with white nationalists who seek to expel racial minorities and immigrants through ethnic cleansing—reverses the previous U.S. emphasis on resettling refugees and instead focuses on expelling them, including into places where there is strong evidence they will be tortured. The administration is locking in these deals as quickly as possible, the journalists report, exercising “minimal oversight over how the money is spent and how the migrants are treated, even though some of the third countries are ruled by authoritarian regimes.”

A former State Department official who left the department over the policy told Nakamura and Taylor that the administration wanted “fast money, with no strings attached. The whole point was to circumvent notification that money was being sent to a government known to be corrupt.” The plan appears to be to create such terror in migrant communities that people here self-deport, and others are afraid to come.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council notes that “Congress should demand answers from those responsible for diverting taxpayer funding intended to protect people from persecution to some of the world’s worst authoritarians, for purposes which clearly violate human rights.”

On Sunday an agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, a Venezuelan food delivery driver, in the back in Austin, Texas. With a bullet still lodged in his body, he was discharged from a hospital to ICE custody, where he spent the night in pain on a cold floor. Nick Miroff of The Atlantic reported yesterday that the officer was a recent hire who was not wearing a body camera, despite the promise of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin that all ICE agents would wear cameras. News outlets reported that the officer had been issued one.

The Department of Homeland Security set out to add 10,000 new agents last year after Congress provided billions of dollars to double the ICE workforce. ICE ramped up its hiring by offering $50,000 signing bonuses and cutting normal vetting procedures, sometimes not even checking fingerprints or identities or conducting a job interview. David Brouillette, the ICE officer with a volatile history who killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford, Maine, in July, was also a recent hire. On September 15, Alex Horton, Joyce Sohyun Lee, Maria Sacchetti, and Ted Hesson of the Washington Post reported that ICE has been quietly firing some of those hastily hired.

ICE told the Washington Post reporters: “ICE is hiring the best of the best to go after the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens including drug traffickers, murderers, and pedophiles. When individuals fall short of that standard—personnel decisions are made. This is standard practice in almost every American workplace.”

Officials told Miroff that the agents who stopped Garcés Pérez used a commercial database and federal immigration file that identified the man’s plates as belonging to someone with an outstanding deportation order; his lawyer said he had a valid work permit and is an asylum seeker, and that the deportation order came because notice of his immigration court hearing was sent to the wrong address. After a public outcry, officials took Garcés Pérez back to the hospital on Monday.

Ryan Quinn of Inside Higher Ed reported Monday that the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality are running far behind where they should be in terms of funding for the fiscal year, which ends on September 30.

Trump fired the board of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in April, and the foundation is now effectively being run by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), a former NSF board member told Quinn. The director of OMB is Russell Vought, a key author of Project 2025. “And OMB is directing the agency to direct its grant-making dollars in ways that are very different from federal law as passed by Congress in its budget,” the former board member said.

Quinn noted that Nature attributed the funding shortfall mainly “to the agency keeping more than $1 billion in an account, much of which is for the White House’s Grand Research Challenges project, which is meant to support specific fields, including artificial intelligence.” The Trump family and the president’s allies are heavily invested in the AI sector.

And then there are Trump’s vanity projects. Even before Trump announced that the American taxpayer wouldn’t pay a dime for the White House ballroom project, the administration had already signed contracts that put the American taxpayer on the hook for more than $300 million for it.

Today Sarah Blaskey and Jonathan O’Connell of the Washington Post reported that James McCrery II, the first architect on Trump’s ballroom, resigned when Trump insisted on a design that did not meet fire codes. Normally, White House construction would be managed by federal agencies required by law to comply with building safety codes, but White House officials have routed the ballroom through the tiny Executive Residence office that is exempt from rules because it is not a federal agency.

McCrery warned that Trump’s design did not have enough emergency exits or measures to contain a fire, which could spread quickly from the kitchen below the ballroom to the event space above it, and pointed out that the design was not up to code.

Trump waved off his concerns. “I am the code,” he said.

Could also imagine with this happening that money for military projects gets siphoned off and the project is substandard.
Like the Russkies do

“Dah, Putin thinks its nuclear warhead but is box of pinball parts”

Heather Cox Richardson is livestreaming now.

Link

September 24, 2026 (Thursday)

After a hearing yesterday about Trump’s Friday ban of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House campus, very early this morning—I was still awake writing yesterday’s letter—U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly granted the request of the media outlets to stop Trump’s order banning members of their organizations from the White House complex.

Kelly, whom Trump appointed to the bench in 2017, challenged the argument of the White House that it had banned the journalists because they had endangered national security, noting that the stories to which administration lawyers claimed to object were “routine.” In fact, one of the stories the White House claimed endangered national security was based on a press call from the White House itself. According to Oliver Darcy, who writes the media newsletter Status, the anonymous “senior administration official” who provided the quotations on the call was none other than Vice President J.D. Vance.

Kelly ordered the credentials of 78 journalists restored immediately.

This morning, the White House continued to deny reporters from CNN, Politico, and MS NOW access to the White House campus. Their lawyers asked for an emergency hearing because the administration had “already repeatedly violated the Court’s Order,” and soon after the judge ordered the administration to respond, the reporters were once again allowed into the area.

And then tonight, at least CNN and MS NOW were blocked from access to the White House state dinner with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. After Trump posted on social media that CNN and MS NOW (he called it MSDNC) were refusing to cover Xi’s visit “because they knew how good it would be, they didn’t want credit to be given to ‘TRUMP,’” the White House told CNN it could send only an audio producer and a cameraman to the event, not a reporter or producer. Senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes said: “They again said that we were specifically denied access and that they were not letting in the CNN editorial presence.”

This morning, Trump complained on social media that “he Media is trying to cover up how well things are going before the Midterms, just to help Democrats.”

And that’s the gist of Trump’s attacks on media outlets: MAGA is falling apart, and he either lives in a fantasy world or hopes to stem that collapse by issuing propaganda that will convince voters he is actually winning.

The fantasy world thesis has supporting evidence in an image posted on Trump’s social media account this morning, showing Trump and Xi standing together on a red carpet in front of an airplane apparently labeled Air China. There is a military aircraft flying over a circle of stars with the words “Only Trump” superimposed in a German-style blackletter font. Behind Trump, to his right, is a young woman who looks like Trump’s loyal aide Natalie Harp standing with her hand over her heart.

Journalist Aaron Rupar of Public Notice noted that the image was a digitally altered photo in which the image of the chief officer of protocol of the United States, Monica Crowley, had been replaced by an image that appears to be Harp.

Convincing voters he is winning is an even harder sell.

The Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration is its signature policy, and last week a federal appeals court stopped the Trump administration from sending migrants to third countries, finding that the short timeline for those renditions stripped deportees of their right to due process. The administration appears to have continued the renditions, arguing that the court had not officially notified a lower court of its decision and thus it was not yet in effect, prompting an appeals court to clarify that the flights must stop.

Today Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the Supreme Court to step in to permit those renditions to third countries. He said that disruption of the administration’s “plans…imposes massive costs on the government and invariably requires new rounds of diplomatic engagement with countries who may be all the more skeptical of our removal efforts given the disruption.”

Also today, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for ignoring his previous orders and continuing to hold people in “inhumane and unconstitutional” conditions at Manhattan’s 26 Federal Plaza, depriving detainees of “sleep, sanitary living conditions, basic personal hygiene needs, sufficient food and water, and adequate medical care.” Although, as Josephine Walker of Axios points out, the administration likely sees the appalling conditions of its prisons as a way to induce migrants to leave, the judge required ICE to provide adequate space and humane conditions for detainees.

Meanwhile, as Ryan J. Foley of the Associated Press reported today, a report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that ICE had no strategic plan for spending the unprecedented $45 billion Congress gave it in Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, and has wasted tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on slapdash plans for mass detention.

It spent nearly $3 million for tents at Guantanamo Bay that were never used, $20 million for maintaining warehouses that were never used to house detainees and are now being sold, and excessive rates to lock people up. Foley reports that the Department of Homeland Security told the GAO that it would have a plan for spending its windfall by August 31, 2027, nearly a year from now.

After Trump announced the U.S. would accept meat from other countries in order to lower food prices, on September 22 the Department of Agriculture announced the recall of more than 167,000 pounds (75,750 kg) of raw pork, beef, and goat. The items were produced without federal inspection but carried false marks claiming they had been inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency said the food “should be considered misbranded and unsafe to eat.”

Trump’s insistence that the country suffers from voter fraud isn’t going well, either.

In California, Republican sheriff Chad Bianco and the Riverside County sheriff’s department confiscated more than 650,000 ballots after California voters agreed to redistrict the state to offset the Republican mid-decade redistricting of Texas. The state’s Democratic attorney general immediately ordered him to return the ballots, saying he had no authority to confiscate them and that the seizure was intended to make people distrust elections.

As Uwa Ede-Osifo of the Guardian reported, the California Supreme Court today ordered Blanco to return the ballots, saying that it was Blanco, rather than voters, who was endangering elections: “Allowing law enforcement unfettered access to ballots, or the ability to handle and count them in secret, based on unregulated protocols, itself creates a substantial risk to election integrity,” it said.

On Saturday, California governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that makes it a felony to seize ballots from a county elections office.

Trump’s own claims of voter fraud also took a hit this week. As Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times reported today, in July, Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin claimed they had found more than 270,000 noncitizens on voter rolls in California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Mullin stated that there were as many as 15,903 noncitizens on the voter rolls in Nevada.

But when officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) met with Nevada election officials in August, they admitted Mullin’s number was inflated. After the meeting, one wrote to say that the department had confirmed just 185 people on the voter rolls were not citizens. They sent Nevada officials a list of those 185 names.

On Tuesday, Nevada told the federal government that the 185 people on the government’s list are all citizens. “Our records do not support DHS’s claims, and DHS has still not provided evidence to change that,” said Francisco Aguilar, Nevada’s Democratic secretary of state. “Instead, DHS officials continue their attempts to intimidate election officials into compliance and deter voters with huge claims of fraud with no evidence. Repeating unsupported claims does not make them true.”

Trump’s job approval rating continues to drop. Fifty Plus One aggregated new polls today and found that only 34.7% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the presidency, while 62.1% disapprove.

Meridith McGraw, Maggie Severns, and Suzanne Vranica of the Wall Street Journal reported today that an ad airing in major U.S. markets shows Trump promising to “defeat communism, Marxism in America once and for all,” before showing images of Trump at White House events as a choir sings “Love Me.” At the end of the ad, the screen reads: “Paid for by the U.S. government.”

Former campaign finance official Daniel Weiner called the ad “an astonishing misuse of public resources in the campaign context, one of the most blatant I’ve ever seen.” Democratic lawmakers wrote to the White House demanding the ad be taken down, calling it “government propaganda” more fitting for North Korea than the U.S. and “an egregious and illegal misuse of Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars.”

According to the Wall Street Journal reporters, the White House says the ad is a “public service announcement,” “reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad.”

September 25, 2026 (Friday)

I learned late this afternoon that, in addition to being Dolly Parton Day, today is National Lobster Day, honoring the cultural and economic history of the lobster industry. That industry thrives in Maine because of unique conditions in the water offshore where the cold Labrador Current and the warm Gulf Stream mix over the shallow continental shelf, creating one of the richest habitats for marine life on the planet.

Lobsters have been vital in the creation of Maine’s coastal communities, but the industry’s current place of pride is recent. Until the mid–twentieth century, lobster was considered poor man’s food. Before then, it was not lobster but fish that shaped society on the coast of New England.

Fish were central to the English settlement of the North American continent. In the 200 years between 1300 and 1500 CE, fish were a limited resource and brought sky-high prices in Europe. As the fish in the North Sea became scarcer in the late 1400s, fishermen and explorers began to push into the Atlantic. There, they found such a bonanza of fish in the nutrient-rich water that scholars have called its discovery and the trade it sparked the “Fish Revolution.” Cod, especially, but also haddock and hake, concentrated on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland.

A member of the crew with Italian John Cabot, who was sailing for the English crown, noted in 1497 that there were so many cod on the Grand Banks that they “can be taken not only with nets but with fishing baskets.” In 1502 the first recorded landing of Atlantic cod in Europe fetched £180, equivalent to about £1.2 million in 2016, with a buying power at the time of just shy of £76 million, close to $100 million today.

Fishing meant big money, and British fishermen were among those who tried their hand in the fog of the Grand Banks, making an annual trip to toss their hooks overboard. They beheaded and gutted their catch, splitting each fish in half like a book, salted the fish, and then dried them on shore. By 1600 they had moved into the Gulf of Maine, where they landed in places like Monhegan Island and Damariscove, where they dried the fish until they were hard before taking their catch back to Europe.

As European fishermen landed in North America, they brought with them European diseases for which the Indigenous populations had no immunities. The tribes were wiped out, so that when the Pilgrims arrived in 1620—on Cape Cod—they found a land so rich and yet depopulated that they believed God had prepared it for them.

The fish trade continued to be so important to New Englanders that almost two centuries later, when their new nation negotiated for its independence, the first thing leaders demanded after independence and national boundaries was continued access to the fisheries.

On September 3, 1783, negotiators signed the Treaty of Paris officially ending the Revolutionary War between Great Britain and the United States. The Preamble of the document promised that King George III and the United States of America would “forget all past misunderstandings and differences that have unhappily interrupted the good correspondence and friendship which they mutually wish to restore.”

The first article of the treaty contained the king’s acknowledgment that the thirteen states that made up the new United States were “free, sovereign, and independent.”

The second article established the boundaries of the new nation.

The third article, which came even before those protecting debts and calling for the return of confiscated property, protected the rights of American fishermen to “take fish of every kind on the Grand Bank, and on all the other banks of Newfoundland; also in the of St. Lawrence, and at all other places in the sea, where the inhabitants of both countries used at any time heretofore to fish.”

September 26, 2026 (Saturday)

Trump’s war on the free press is continuing. Last night, Scott Nover of the Washington Post reported that the White House would not allow reporters from CNN on Air Force One as part of the press pool to cover the president as he traveled to Tennessee for a college football game. CNN is a member of the pool made up of the five major TV networks. The other two outlets Trump tried to ban from the White House, MS NOW and Politico, are part of a different pool. CNN was scheduled to provide the television footage for the trip.

At 6:51 this morning, Trump’s social media account posted: “Why should perpetrators of FAKE NEWS, like CNN and MSDNC, be allowed access to a very sacred place, the White House? Despite my big Election Win, almost 100% of “TRUMP” coverage is negative, and has been for years!”

He followed up at 8:22 with “FAKE NEWS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED IN THE WHITE HOUSE!!! IT HAS GONE ON FAR TOO LONG, AT A TREMENDOUS COST TO OUR COUNTRY.”

Later in the morning, he told reporters: “I love an open, free press. What I don’t like is the fake press. What we don’t want is—we don’t want fake news.”

As bad news continues to plague the administration, Trump has reasons for wanting to control the press.

On Thursday, in a scathing letter, a key prosecutor in the case of the six people charged with felonies after a protest outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Broadview detention facility in Illinois—the Broadview Six—resigned under protest.

Sheri Mecklenburg was a career prosecutor in the Department of Justice who was near retirement and appeared to have doubts about the felony charges against the six protesters. In the protest, people surrounded an ICE vehicle, but only the six, all of whom were active in Democratic politics, were charged.

When the cases fell apart because of prosecutorial misconduct, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Andrew Boutros, a strong Trump supporter, laid all of the blame for the misconduct on Mecklenburg, claiming he had been out of the loop in how the case was progressing.

But in her resignation letter, Mecklenburg said she was retiring so she could defend herself. She wrote that she had kept Boutros fully informed of the case and that he was using her as a scapegoat for his own misconduct. She said he had “personally directed” the felony prosecution after she objected “that the case was better suited to misdemeanor charges.” She says he threatened to fire her if she tried to push back on the false allegations.

Mecklenburg’s resignation and allegations illuminate the Trump administration’s efforts to persecute political opponents. Boutros’s tenure as U.S. attorney has been so problematic that there had been an exodus of senior officials from the office, and more than 100 former prosecutors signed a letter warning of failure of leadership in the office and the poisoning of the office with “once-forbidden political considerations.”

Perhaps of more concern to Trump is the report yesterday from Julia Jacobs of the New York Times that whistleblowers who used to work at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts say that six months ago, Trump loyalists running the center cancelled plans to fix the leaking roof they now claim is so dangerous the center must be closed and repaired. Those repairs, they say, will require the addition of Trump’s name to the building.

The whistleblowers claim that the center’s board put the $1.4 million that had been allocated to fix the roof toward Trump’s repainting of the building’s columns, which cost $4.4 million.

As his job approval numbers continue to decline and as individuals and the courts try to stop his unlawful actions, Trump is pushing ever harder to cement his power.

The courts have given him leeway in national security, and he is using that leeway. A recent New York Times/Siena poll showed that 69% of the American people disapprove of Trump’s handling of the war in Iran—59% of them strongly—and only 27% approve (15% strongly).

And yet, on Friday, September 25, Alexander Ward and Summer Said of the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump has told aides that he is planning to start bombing Iran again after the midterm elections. Iran has offered to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and reopen talks about nuclear weapons if the U.S. ends its blockade of Iranian ports, but Trump has rejected the offer, and his belief that the Iranians won’t meet his demands makes him think he’ll need to ramp up strikes again.

But, the reporters say, Trump’s views could shift over the coming weeks as conditions, including the midterms, change.

At the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, September 22, Trump told the heads of state and heads of government in the audience that his administration is “seeking a fundamental change” in the government of Cuba.

James LaPorta of CBS News reports that the U.S. Army Reserve is considering whether it can provide support units, including police forces and medical personnel, to the U.S. Southern Command, which covers Latin America south of Mexico, the waters around Central and South America, and the Caribbean, including Cuba.

The memo CBS reviewed doesn’t say for what operation the troops would be needed “in 90 to 120 days,” but LaPorta reports that “multiple U.S. officials” said the planning is for a potential operation aimed at Cuba.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that Trump has invited Russia’s president Vladimir Putin to the Group of 20 (G20) summit in December in Miami, Florida. The G20 is a forum of the world’s biggest advanced and emerging economies to coordinate economic policy, and by extending the invitation, Trump is offering to welcome Putin back into global organizations without ending his invasion of Ukraine. The administration suggests that Putin will be more likely to end the war if he is included than if he is not, a position critics note gives Putin legitimacy without changing his behavior.

Yesterday, as Casey He of Politico reported, fourteen senators led by Armed Services Committee chair Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the top-ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, urged Trump to rescind the invitation. “President Putin bears sole responsibility for launching Russia’s full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine,” they wrote. “Allowing him to participate in a G20 Summit in the United States raises serious concerns about legitimizing and normalizing a government that continues to attack Ukrainian civilian targets every day.”

Today, Pranshu Verma of the Washington Post reported that earlier this month, the U.S. and Russia worked together to weaken a United Nations plan to regulate AI weapons. They stripped out a provision to make sure humans review the targets AI has selected for a military strike—a provision that would likely have avoided the U.S. strike on the Iranian school at the start of the Iran War—and took out requirements that AI systems must act in a “predictable” and “reliable” manner. They also removed a requirement that those using the systems take “ethical considerations” into account.

At the same time he is flexing U.S. muscle internationally, Trump is also continuing to try to cement as much power as he can at home.

Continuing to try to lock the United States into the use of fossil fuels, today he announced he was getting rid of the vehicle fuel economy standards established under former President Joe Biden.

Yesterday the administration announced it is refusing to spend $810 million Congress appropriated on a bipartisan basis to fund research in Health and Human Services and for programs that serve immigrants and minority groups, calling it “wasteful and harmful government spending that does not benefit American citizens.”

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent, nonpartisan agency that watches over how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars, is very clear that such “pocket rescissions” are illegal. The Constitution places the power of the purse in Congress alone, requiring the president to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” If the president can decide not to fund programs Congress has appropriated funding for, he effectively takes over the power of the purse. And yet, director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, has claimed the right to such power.

As Frank Thorp V and Kyla Guilfoil of NBC News reported, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), vice chair of the Appropriations Committee, called the move a “theft from the American people.”

“Russ Vought’s message to Congress is that your votes don’t count, and your laws are optional,” Murray said. “It is now time for my Republican colleagues who said they would never let this happen to stand up and join us to stop this, and remind this administration this is not how this works.”

And so, while Trump is trying to cement power, opposition continues to grow.

But now it appears that Trump has yet another power move on his mind.

Jake Spring and Stephanie Apstein of the Washington Post reported tonight that the administration is considering hosting a Major League Baseball game at a national park. It has been scouting where it could build a baseball facility in Grand Teton National Park.

September 27, 2026 (Sunday)

A friend tells me that when I take a night off, other people feel they can take a night off, too.

Let’s do it.

I’ll see you tomorrow

September 28, 2026 (Monday)

It has become routine for Trump to spend the weekend posting wildly on social media, and this weekend was no exception.

After attacking the press on Saturday morning, at 9:18 he posted a video with foreboding music that sped up as the video played, showing a glowering Trump walking down a hall toward the camera while his voice intoned: “This is the final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, Marxists, and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all.”

The administration clearly set out to provoke a backlash when it played what appeared to be the same ad later in the day during NFL games, Fox News Sunday, Saturday Night Live, and several college football games with the addition of the words: “Paid for by the U.S. Government.”

As Stephen Collinson of CNN noted, Trump often tries to provoke a response to his outrageous behavior in order to feed the narrative that he is under attack from an establishment deep state because he is trying to save the nation. And this did, indeed, provoke a response. While the White House maintained the ad was a “public service announcement,” Richard Painter, who served as a White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said using public funds for “government-sponsored propaganda” could be “an impeachable offense.”

That image worked well enough in his 2016 campaign that he recycled it for the 2024 campaign, when videos nearly identical to the one he posted on Saturday appeared repeatedly. But its power now seems to be primarily in its ability to reinforce Trump’s fantasy of himself. Thirty-six thousand social media users liked a post that read: “Why is there a Donald Trump ad during an NFL game when he’s not running for office and why is the US government paying for a political ad”

Trump seemed to be working overtime on boosting his self-image on social media on Saturday, posting a series of videos showing a triumphal movie version of his second term, narrated by MAGA supporters. One video from2023 showed him attacking Democrats, other videos showed him winning his second term, setting out at top speed to fulfill his campaign promises, hosting the UFC mixed martial arts fight at the White House, and launching Operation Epic Fury against Iran. Still others intoned heroic literature, including “If” by Rudyard Kipling (that’s the one that starts: “If you can keep your head when all about you/ Are losing theirs and blaming it on you”) with Trump as the hero.

While the first video seemed intended to rally his supporters, the rest of the videos, with their litany of broken promises—“expel the warmongers”?—and the praise of supporters who have left or been cast out of the government, felt weirdly like a requiem.

And the ads created yet another headache for Republican lawmakers hoping to retain control of Congress after the midterm elections. On Friday the administration announced it is refusing to spend about a billion dollars Congress appropriated for programs that help the American people—a refusal the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) says is illegal—and on Saturday, Trump used taxpayer money for his own vanity ads.

That misuse of public money comes on top of the administration announcement last week that it was removing about 760,000 people from Affordable Care Act health coverage rolls, claiming they were fraudulently enrolled in the program and that cutting them and dishonest brokers would save $2.2 billion.

For the past week, Trump’s collapsing job approval numbers and the increasing chances that the Democrats will prevail in the upcoming midterm elections have dominated the media. In the New Yorker, Susan Glasser wrote about “The Week Republicans Finally Panicked About Trump.” She notes that “o modern president has ever gone into a midterm election this unpopular.” His approval rating is now twice as low as it was in 2018 when Republicans lost forty-one House seats.

At Strength in Numbers, G. Elliott Morris reported on September 25 that only 24% of American adults say the U.S. is better off under Trump than it had been under Biden. Fifty-eight percent say it’s worse off, and most of them say it’s much worse. Morris notes that in the last month, Trump’s approval rating has fallen most sharply among voters who identified themselves as Republicans.

Today Morris reported that media coverage of the Republicans’ midterm convention failed to come close to the number of stories about the Iran war, about Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and about the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Epstein files.

On Saturday, Patrick Thomas and Lindsay Wise of the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s tariffs that undermined the sales of agricultural products, his imports of foreign beef, and the rising costs of diesel, gas, and fertilizer have eroded his support in the agricultural areas that used to be the backbone of his support.

On Sunday, Samuel Benson and Eric Bazail-Eimil of Politico reported that Republicans in battleground states—Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Texas, and even Florida—are on defense as their voters turn against the ICE agents conducting raids in the states. An ICE agent’s shooting of a food delivery driver from Venezuela in Austin, Texas, on September 20 is highlighting the issue, especially since the agent was not wearing a body camera as required.

Like the tariffs, the raids are challenging the loyalty of even those who voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2024. Although voters in counties that depend on agriculture supported Trump by almost 78%, on September 24 the Kansas Livestock Association, Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association, and Texas Cattle Feeders Association released a statement warning that ICE activity is endangering their animals and operations, and has a “massive chilling effect” on “the legal, documented, skilled workers that put beef on the table and keep the cattle supply chain moving.”

In what appears to be a dig at the president, they note that their supply chains are already under pressure and call the raids “a costly and unnecessary impact to cattle producers already suffering from unwelcome political interference to both the markets as well as the physical supply chain.”

Rural areas, which tend to have more people employed in agriculture, fishing, and logging, as well as longer travel distances, are particularly hard hit by the high prices of diesel and gasoline caused by the Iran war. Yesterday, Gregory S. Schneider and Evan Halper of the Washington Post reported that the skyrocketing price of diesel has pushed Republican candidates even in staunchly Republican districts to call for an end to the war in Iran.

In Iowa, Representative Ashley Hinson, who voted four times against forcing Trump to end the Iran war and is now the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, is one of those now complaining about the high cost of gas and diesel. Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers of Michigan also previously supported the war but now is saying “he war with Iran needs to end and end quickly.”

Republicans hoping to retain control of Congress after the midterms are fighting uphill battles in contested states, and some of their candidates are in the news for all the wrong reasons. In Maine the Portland Press Herald today published a scathing op-ed from the Editorial Board titled: “It’s Maine’s turn to be concerned about Susan Collins.”

The board ripped into Senator Collins’s dismissive response to ProPublica’s story that her 2020 campaign accepted an illegal $150,000 contribution from a defense contractor in exchange for a U.S. government contract. Indeed, Collins’s attacks on ProPublica to undermine the story prompted it to issue a follow-up report calling her claims “incorrect and misleading.”

In Texas, some Republican leaders backed away from Bo French, the Republican nominee for the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry in the state, after a racist social media post about University of Texas football fans, but it turns out that post is the tip of the iceberg. Today Andrew Kaczynski of CNN reported that in the past six years, French has repeatedly called for public executions of his political opponents, including former president Barack Obama, using the hashtag “HangEmHigh.”

Kaczynski reports that neither Texas governor Greg Abbott, who is running for reelection, nor the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, state attorney general Ken Paxton, has withdrawn his endorsement of French.

In Kansas, Senator Roger Marshall is facing outrage after a New York Times story by Sarah Kliff on September 8 revealed that Marshall, an obstetrician-gynecologist, sued more than 700 of his patients for outstanding bills. Kliff reports that Marshall’s office charged patients an 18% annual interest rate and garnished their wages and their bank accounts, and that eighty-one of his patients were arrested for missing court dates. Most of those unable to pay their bills were from a rural county with higher than average rates of poverty and lack of health insurance. The unpaid bills were as little as $101.

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers are starting to blame Trump and his appointees for their unpopularity with voters. Although—or perhaps because—Republican senators confirmed a number of those appointees, they are now turning on at least some of them.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullins’s raids are unpopular with Republican lawmakers, but Burgess Everett and Shelby Talcott of Semafor reported today that Republican senators are fed up with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. A Republican senator told the reporters: “There are a lot of people that are really upset with the war in Iran and how it’s being played out. We feel it’s hurting our chances in the elections in the fall, and it seems rather haphazard.” The senator continued: “We don’t like what we’re seeing when it comes to the pulling of officers off of the promotion lists. We don’t like what we see with…indiscriminate firings of admirals and generals across the force.”

And Trump apparently can no longer command the attention of those who supported his MAGA agenda. On September 23, Neil Mehta, Brian Whitton, and Sabrina Rodriguez of the Wall Street Journal reported the results of their analysis of almost 70,000 hours of podcasts by right-wing creators. Mentions of Trump’s name have dropped nearly 70% from their peak before the 2024 election. Suggesting just how unpopular he is, the people still talking about Trump are his opponents.

On Thursday, Zach Everson, research director for Public Citizen’s Trump Accountability Project reports, a Trump company filed a trademark application for “TRUMP TV,” the new streaming channel the White House launched after Trump’s ban of reporters from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House campus left him without television coverage for a day.

On Friday, Everson reports, “a Trump-owned company applied…to trademark ‘MAGA’ and ‘45-47’ for streaming apps, TV broadcasting, and news and commentary on politics and current events.”

Thanks, I just remembered to check for this. You’ve saved me the effort.

:)

Thanks for posting.

Michael V said:

Thanks for posting.

+1

Michael V said:

Thanks for posting.

+1

Posted in the Ravelry group on Facebook.

“How about a picture of Heather Cox Richardson admiring my knitting?
See her speak if you can- she has an inspiring take on where we are in history (boy do I hope she’s right.)

Also- you know you’re a nerd if you fan-girl over a history professor. Having her admire my knitting? Gosh, I almost swooned.”

September 29, 2026 (Tuesday)

The scene that unfolded today at a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee was a snapshot of politics in the U.S. today. Testifying under oath was Jack Smith, who as special counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice investigated Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and his retention of classified documents after he left office in 2021.

Questioning Smith were the senators, whose speech in Congress is protected. Article I, Section 6 of the U.S. Constitution states: “The Senators and Representatives…shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.”

The courts have interpreted this clause to give lawmakers broad protection for what they say in Congress. Republicans have used this protection to make outrageous accusations and to spread disinformation. That practice was on display in spades today.

Former attorney general Merrick Garland appointed Smith special counsel on November 18, 2022, three days after Trump announced he was running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Garland said that since both Trump and Biden were likely to be presidential candidates, his appointment of Smith was meant to underscore “the Department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters. It also allows prosecutors and agents to continue their work expeditiously, and to make decisions indisputably guided only by the facts and the law.”

Trump was not happy about the appointment, calling Smith “a hit man for Obama.”

In June 2023 a grand jury indicted Trump on 37 “felony violations of our national security laws” and “participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice,” in his retention of classified documents. Charged alongside Trump was his aide Walt Nauta, who is now the director of Oval Office operations. In December, after Trump was reelected, Smith dropped Trump from the case because of the long-standing position of the Department of Justice that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted. Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee overseeing the case, has blocked the release of Smith’s report, although it is standard for a special counsel to release a final report.

It is the other case that was the focus of today’s Senate hearing.

On August 1, 2023, a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., charged Trump with four felony offenses “arising from his efforts to unlawfully retain power by using fraud and deceit to overturn the 2020 election results,” as Smith’s final report put it. Trump challenged the indictment on the grounds that a president has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions performed as part of his official duties and that his actions trying to overturn the election were part of his official duties.

On July 1, 2024, the Supreme Court largely agreed with Trump, upending the principle that the United States was a nation of laws, not of men. The Trump v. United States decision sent Smith back to the drawing board to take the case, now stripped of anything that could fall under “official duties,” before another grand jury, and that grand jury returned an indictment for the same offenses. But after Trump was reelected, Smith moved on November 25 to dismiss the case because of the long-standing position of the Department of Justice that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted.

The case can be resumed once Trump is no longer president.

It’s unclear why Senate Republicans thought it was a good idea to remind people of Trump’s attempt to overthrow an election when the midterms are less than forty days away. Some of them, though, clearly intended to appeal either to Trump or to the MAGA base by using their protected speech to insult and abuse Smith.

Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) launched a hit on Smith, setting up the idea he was part of a conspiracy with Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney Fani Willis and her colleague Nathan Wade to persecute Trump.

Schmitt asked Smith: “Did you go to an NBA game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks on February 3, 2024?”

Smith looked confused at the sudden turn in the hearing and asked Schmitt to repeat the question. Once Schmitt did, and asked him if he had ever been to Atlanta during his time as special counsel, Smith answered: “I really don’t think so. It’s possible I flew through the Atlanta airport on the way to Florida, but I do not have a recollection of going to Atlanta. I definitely did not go to a Hawks game. I’m sure of that.”

“Did you ever meet Nathan Wade or Fani Willis in your time as special counsel,” Schmitt asked.

“No,” Smith answered.

Then Schmitt pounced: “What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warrior/Hawks game on February 3, 2024, the day after Willis and Wade announced their affair?” A staffer briefly flashed a poster board. Then Schmitt said: “I don’t think you know that we have this stuff, so I’ll give you a second to process it so you don’t, you know, perjure yourself.”

Smith said: “You just took it down really quick. If I could look at that again?”

Schmitt answered: “We’ll put it in a file. You can respond. I think you’ve already perjured yourself.” He went on to call Smith a “villain” and a “dirtbag.”

Smith said: “f this is the correct basketball game, I recall going to a University of Maryland basketball game where Caitlin Clark was playing right around that time…. You could check if that was the exact date. It was Maryland playing Iowa, I think, February of 2024.”

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) figured it out. Schmitt was accusing Smith of being in Atlanta at an Atlanta Hawks game, where he could hypothetically have met up with Willis and Wade. In reality, he was in Maryland at a game in which Maryland played the University of Iowa: the Hawkeyes.

Klobuchar addressed Schmitt: “Could it then be that University of Iowa’s the Hawkeyes, could that be it, and maybe before we show this kind of thing…that might be the confusion over the names of the team but perhaps you should’ve looked at it more carefully….”

Schmitt exploded, accusing her of “trying to rehabilitate the witness.” And yet, newscasters who reviewed tapes of the games found Smith in the stands at the Maryland game.

“You had the teams wrong, sir,” Klobuchar told Schmitt.

Indeed, although Schmitt’s poster board featured a picture of Fani Willis and another of the Atlanta arena, the messages on it appeared to be between Smith’s deputy special counsel J.P. Cooney and another person, asking, “Is 109 Row 1 reserved for Jack?” Hunter Walker of Talking Points Memo notes that the Atlanta State Farm Arena uses letters to denote rows in section 109 rather than numbers. The University of Maryland arena uses numbers.

After the hearing, Schmitt appeared on The Charlie Kirk Show, where host Andrew Kolvet cheered Schmitt’s attack on Smith. “Jack Smith is a total dirtbag and you caught him out on this NBA game…in Atlanta,” Kolvet said. “It was a great moment. Good for you on that.”

So Schmitt got his right-wing media hit from a completely fabricated storyline. One newscaster noted: “When a witness lies under oath before Congress, he can face prison. When a senator gets it wrong, he says he was just ‘asking questions’.”

Smith, in contrast, stood firmly on facts and the rule of law. “I have been fortunate to serve a country that I love for nearly 30 years in local, national, and international settings,” he said in his opening statement. “My service has spanned both Republican and Democratic administrations. I am not a politician, and I have no partisan loyalties. My career has been dedicated to serving our country by upholding the rule of law and the core principles on which our country was founded.

“I believe that there is no role for politics in the proper administration of justice. A prosecutor’s decisions must be based on the facts and the law. The status, power, prominence, or political affiliation of the subject of an investigation must play no role in decisions to investigate, prosecute, or decline prosecution.”

As special counsel, Smith said, he and his office “took actions based on the facts and the law.” “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity,” he said. “If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat.”

“The charges against President Trump were the result of the evidence,” he said. “Grand juries in two separate districts reached this conclusion based on his actions…. Rather than accept his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results and prevent the lawful transfer of power….
“And…President Trump stored classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago social club after he left office in January 2021 and he repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents. Highly sensitive information was held in non-secure locations, including a bathroom and a ballroom where events and gatherings took place.”

Smith promised to answer the senators’ questions truthfully. “I will not be silenced by the continued threats of prosecution from the President or others.”

“As I appear before you today, it is my belief that the rule of law faces challenges unlike any we have experienced in our lifetime. Individuals are threatened with criminal investigation because they are perceived to have opposed the President. Predetermined outcomes increasingly seem to take precedence over the Justice Department’s long-standing core values, traditions, and norms. History teaches that the rule of law is rarely destroyed all at once. It is often weakened by attacks on the institutions and public servants sworn to uphold it. Since January 2025, we have witnessed precisely such an effort, including the vilification of the career prosecutors, FBI agents, and support staff who served on my team, simply because of their unwavering commitment to the fair and impartial administration of justice without regard for any personal costs.

“I myself have been threatened with jail by the President of the United States.

“I remain confident, however, that the rule of law will endure because so many continue to uphold it faithfully each day. Throughout our legal system, public servants have remained faithful to their oaths despite extraordinary pressure to do otherwise. Their example demonstrates that while fear may be contagious, courage is as well.”

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