Heather Cox Richardson's Blog, page 12
September 14, 2025
September 13, 2025
September 13, 2025
President Donald J. Trump has been trying to remove Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook from the board of governors, alleging she lied on a mortgage application by claiming two homes as primary residences, which could garner a lower interest rate. Yesterday Chris Prentice and Marisa Taylor of Reuters reported that documents show that, in fact, Cook told the lender who provided a mortgage that a property in Georgia for which she was obtaining a loan would be a “vacation home.”
It appears the documents that director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency Bill Pulte used to accuse her of mortgage fraud were standardized forms that her personal application specifying the house was a second home overrode. It also appears that Cook never applied for a primary residence tax exemption for the Georgia home and that she referred to the home on official documents as a “2nd home.”
In contrast, Reuters reported last week that unlike Cook, Pulte’s own father and stepmother claimed primary residence tax exemptions for two homes in different states. When that news broke, one of the towns in which they reside removed their primary residence exemption and charged them for back taxes.
Trump hoped to use the allegations against Cook to advance his control of the Federal Reserve. Now the revelation that those allegations appear to be false highlights the degree to which this administration is attempting to achieve control of the country by pushing a false narrative and getting what its officers want before reality catches up. Senator Joe McCarthy (R-WI) pioneered this technique in the 1950s when he would grab media attention with outrageous statements and outright lies that destroyed lives, then flit to the next target, leaving fact checkers panting in his wake. By the time they proved he was lying, the news cycle had leaped far ahead, and the corrections got nowhere near the attention the lies had.
While McCarthy eventually went down in disgrace, the right wing adopted his techniques of controlling politics by creating a narrative. Spin turned into a narrative that denigrated opponents as anti-American, and then into the attempt to construct a fictional world that they could make real so long as they could convince voters to believe in it. In 2004, a senior advisor to President George W. Bush told journalist Ron Suskind that people like him—Suskind—lived in “the reality-based community”: they believed people could find solutions based on their observations and careful study of discernable reality. But, the aide continued, such a worldview was obsolete.
“That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” the aide said. “We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
But once you have untethered the political narrative from reality, you are at the mercy of anyone who can commandeer that narrative.
In the wake of the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk in Utah on Wednesday, the radical right is working to distort the country’s understanding of what happened. Long before any information emerged about who the shooter was, the president and prominent right-wing figures claimed that “the Left,” or Democrats, or just “THEY,” had assassinated Kirk.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted an attack on his political opponents on social media: “There is an ideology that has steadily been growing in this country which hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved. It is an ideology at war with family and nature. It is envious, malicious, and soulless. It is an ideology that looks upon the perfect family with bitter rage while embracing the serial criminal with tender warmth. Its adherents organize constantly to tear down and destroy every mark of grace and beauty while lifting up everything monstrous and foul. It is an ideology that leads, always, inevitably and willfully, to violence—violence against those [who] uphold order, who uphold faith, who uphold family, who uphold all that is noble and virtuous in this world. It is an ideology whose one unifying thread is the insatiable thirst for destruction.”
But in fact, the alleged shooter was not someone on the left. The alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, is a young white man from a Republican, gun enthusiast family, who appears to have embraced the far right, disliking Kirk for being insufficiently radical.
Rather than grappling with reality, right-wing figures are using Kirk’s murder to prop up their fictional world. Briefly, they claimed Robinson had been “radicalized” in college. Then, when it turned out he had spent only a single semester at a liberal arts college before going to trade school, MAGA pivoted to attack those who allegedly had celebrated Kirk’s death on social media.
This morning, Miller posted: “In recent days we have learned just how many Americans in positions of authority—child services, law clerks, hospital nurses, teachers, gov[ernmen]t workers, even [Department of Defense] employees—have been deeply and violently radicalized. The consequence of a vast, organized ecosystem of indoctrination.”
Today, billionaire Elon Musk, who just months ago was a key figure in the White House, reposted a spreadsheet of “people who’ve said vile things” about Kirk’s murder. Over the list, he wrote: “They are the ones poisoning the minds of our children.” “So far, teachers and professors are by far the most represented,” the author of the list wrote.
Across the country, educators have been suspended or fired for posting opinions on social media that commented on Kirk’s death in ways officials deemed inappropriate. Legal analyst Asha Rangappa noted that “Americans are being conditioned to be snitches on their fellow citizens who don’t toe a party line on what is ‘allowed’ to be expressed. And employers are going along. It’s the new secret police.”
The deliberate attempt to create a narrative centering around “us” and “them” and to mobilize violence against that other was on display today when Musk told a giant anti-immigrant rally in the United Kingdom: “You're in a fundamental situation here…where whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die. You either fight back or you die. And that's the truth.”
Of course, that is not the truth. It is a classic case of dividing the world into friends and enemies—a tactic suggested by Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt—and inciting violence against newly identified enemies by claiming it is imperative to preempt them from using violence against your friends. Miller has vowed to use the power of the government not against the far right, where the violence that killed Kirk appears to have originated, but against MAGA’s political enemies. Flipping victims and offenders, he called his political opponents “domestic terrorists” and warned: “[T]he power of law enforcement under President Trump's leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and, if you've broken the law, to take away your freedom.”
Where that kind of rhetoric takes a society showed on the Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends Friday, when host Brian Kilmeade suggested the way to address homelessness was through “involuntary lethal injection. Or something. Just kill them.” When asked “why did we have to get to this point,” he answered: “we’re not voting for the right people.”
And that’s the heart of it. The radical right is frustrated because a majority continues to oppose them. According to Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers, Trump’s job approval rating is just 42.3% with 53.6% disapproving, and more people disapprove of all of his policies than approve of them. Unable to control the country through the machinery of democracy when it operates fairly and afraid voters will turn them out in 2026, Republicans are working to make the system even more rigged than it already is: just yesterday, Missouri lawmakers approved a mid-decade gerrymander to turn one of the state’s two Democratic seats into a Republican one.
Right now, Trump and his loyalists control all three branches of government, but Trump is not delivering what his supporters believe his fictional vision of his presidency promised. Trump telegraphed great strength and vowed he could end Russia’s war against Ukraine with a single phone call, for example. When he failed to get any buy-in at all from Russia’s president Vladimir Putin for his proposals, Trump threatened to impose strong new sanctions against Russia. This afternoon he backed away from that altogether, saying he would issue sanctions on Russia only after all NATO nations stopped buying oil from Russia and placed 50% to 100% tariffs on China. “This is not TRUMP’S WAR (it would never have started if I was President!), it is Biden’s and Zelenskyy’s WAR,” he posted.
This latest retreat from his threats against Russia after all his previous empty threats makes Trump’s claims of strength ring hollow. Russia is increasing its attacks on Ukraine, and today NATO member Romania scrambled jets when a Russian drone breached its airspace. Polish and NATO aircraft were deployed today to protect Polish airspace as well.
As Trump’s narrative falters on this and so many other fronts, MAGA is moving to the violence of the far right to achieve what he cannot. In that, they are fueled by the right-wing disinformation machine that is whitewashing Kirk’s racism, sexism, and attacks on those he disagreed with and instead portraying Kirk simply as a Christian motivational speaker attacked by a rabid left wing. Trump’s vow to award Kirk the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, posthumously reinforces that image.
The refusal of Republican lawmakers to challenge MAGA’s creation of its own reality has opened the way for believers to try to put that world into place through violence. Their victory would end the rule of law on which the United States was founded and base the government on the whims of an authoritarian cabal.
It would make the United States a country in which people who stand in the way of the regime—people like Lisa Cook—would be at the mercy of hostile officials who allege they are committing crimes in order to get rid of them.
—
Notes:
https://kyivindependent.com/romania-scrambles-jets-poland-closes-airport-over-russian-drone-alerts/
https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/data
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/12/nx-s1-5537977/redistricting-midterms-trump-missouri
Bluesky:
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September 12, 2025
September 12, 2025
Since a gunman murdered right-wing activist Charlie Kirk at an outdoor event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, both social media circles and the political sphere have been alight with accusations that “the Left” was responsible for the shooting. Prominent right-wing social media accounts called the Democratic Party “a domestic terror organization” and declared “WAR.” Billionaire Elon Musk posted: “The Left is the party of murder.”
From the Oval Office, President Donald J. Trump blamed the shooting on “the radical left” and vowed to “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.”
Without any information about the shooter, the media got in on the game, with the Wall Street Journal reporting yesterday that “[a]mmunition engraved with transgender and antifascist ideology was found inside the rifle authorities believe was used in Kirk’s shooting.” Bomb threats targeted Democratic politicians—primarily Black politicians—and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
Condemnation of the shooting was widespread. Perhaps eager to distance themselves from accusations that anyone who does not support MAGA endorses political violence, commenters portrayed Kirk as someone embracing the reasoned debate central to democracy, although he became famous by establishing a database designed to dox professors who expressed opinions he disliked so they would be silenced (I am included on this list).
Meanwhile, it was not clear the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was up to the task of finding the killer. FBI director Kash Patel and deputy director Dan Bongino were both MAGA influencers without law enforcement experience when Trump put them in charge of the agency. Once there, they focused on purging the agency of those they considered insufficiently loyal to Trump or “DEI hires.” In early August, they forced out the leader of the Salt Lake City, Utah, field office, Mehtab Syed, a decorated female Pakistani American counterterrorism agent.
Meanwhile, David J. Bier of the Cato Institute reported that one in five FBI agents have been diverted from their jobs to conduct immigration raids with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and just hours before the shooting, three former top officials at the FBI filed a lawsuit against Patel, the FBI, Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Department of Justice, and the president accusing them of unlawfully politicizing the FBI, purging it of anyone who had ever worked on a criminal investigation of Trump. The lawsuit suggests Bongino had an “intense focus on [using] his social media profiles to change his followers’ perceptions of the FBI.”
As Quinta Jurecic reported today in The Atlantic, hours after the shooting, Patel’s personal social media account posted a picture of himself and Kirk; minutes later, Patel’s official FBI account posted that the shooter was already in custody and then, an hour and a half later, said the suspect had been released. Both Patel and Bongino appeared to be focused more on posting than on doing the work to find the shooter.
This morning, Trump announced on the Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends that he had just heard “they have the person that they wanted.” That person turned out to be 22-year-old Utah native Tyler Robinson, who turned himself in to authorities after his father urged him to. Robinson’s parents are registered Republicans; he was not affiliated with a political party and was an inactive voter. Over the past years, Robinson’s mother posted a number of pictures of him and his brothers posing with guns.
Robinson had recently had a conversation with a family member about why they didn’t like Kirk’s viewpoints. Robinson appears to have admired the “Groypers,” led by Nick Fuentes, who complain that more mainstream organizations like Kirk’s Turning Point USA are not “pro-white” enough and have publicly harassed Kirk in the past.
Allison Gill of The Breakdown explained that the rumors the shooter had engraved anti-fascist rhetoric on some of the bullet casings found at the scene turned out to be a misunderstanding of terms from the video game Helldivers2. The claim that he had used “transgender ideology” was apparently a misreading of the headstamp “TRN” that marks ammunition as the product of Turkish manufacturer Turan.
Almost as soon as Robinson was identified, the tone of MAGA leader’s conversation about the shooting changed. Representative Nancy Mace (R-SC), who had used a slur to refer to the shooter as pro-transgender, posted on social media: “We know Charlie Kirk would want us to pray for such an evil, and lost individual like Tyler Robinson to find Jesus Christ. We will try to do the same.”
For his part, Trump seemed to have lost interest in Kirk even earlier. Yesterday evening, a reporter offered the president his condolences on the loss of his friend Kirk and asked Trump how he was holding up. The president answered, in full: “I think very good. And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they've been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years, and it's going to be a beauty. It’ll be an absolutely magnificent structure. And I just see all the trucks. We just started so it'll get done very nicely and it'll be one of the best anywhere in the world, actually. Thank you very much.”
The day of Kirk’s murder, Russia sent 19 drones into Poland—some armed and some unarmed—testing the strength of the neighboring country. With the help of allies, Poland shot down four of them. Poland belongs to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), with whom the U.S. shares a mutual defense agreement meaning that if it is attacked, we will come to its aid. After the attack, Poland called an emergency meeting of the North Atlantic Council, the primary political decision-making body within NATO. U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker apparently did not attend.
Although Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, called the violation “intentional, not accidental,” Trump told reporters that Russia’s sending of drones into Poland “could’ve been a mistake.” Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo reported on Tuesday that on August 27, the Trump administration returned a plane full of Russian dissidents seeking asylum in the U.S. to Moscow, where at least some of them went directly from the plane into custody.
Today, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and Supreme Allied Commander Europe General Alexus G. Grynkewich announced that NATO is launching “Eastern Sentry,” an operation to bolster NATO’s defense against Russian incursions along NATO’s eastern flank. In what appeared to be an attempt to calm NATO allies’ concerns about Trump’s "mistake" comment, acting U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Dorothy Shea told the United Nations Security Council today the U.S. will “defend every inch of NATO territory.” “The United States stands by our NATO allies in the face of these alarming airspace violations,” she said.
If the U.S. is weakening ties to traditional defensive alliances, it is attempting to flex its muscles by going after alleged drug dealers with a newly dubbed “Department of War.” On September 2, Trump announced the U.S. had struck a boat he claimed was carrying drugs to the U.S., killing 11 civilians he claimed were “Tren de Aragua Narco terrorists.” The administration posted a video of the operation online.
From the start, legal specialists noted that the U.S. made the strike without legal authority. Trump simply claimed the power to kill men he claimed were a danger to the U.S., advancing the argument that drug smuggling is the same thing as an imminent military attack on the U.S. and thus the laws of war are in force. Yesterday, that argument got even weaker when Charlie Savage and Helene Cooper of the New York Times reported that the men on the boat appeared to have been spooked by the military hardware over them and turned back to shore. “If someone is retreating, where’s the ‘imminent threat’ then?” Rear Admiral Donald J. Guter, a retired top judge advocate general for the Navy from 2000 to 2002, said to the reporters.
Today, Trump announced he was sending the National Guard not into Chicago, Illinois, where Mayor Brandon Johnson and Governor J.B. Pritzker have mounted strong opposition, but to Memphis, Tennessee. The Memphis Police Department noted: “Overall crime is at a 25-year low, with robbery, burglary, and larceny also reaching 25-year lows. Murder is at a six-year low, aggravated assault at a five-year low, and sexual assault at a twenty-year low" in the city.
Although Trump said he had the support of the mayor and the governor, Shelby County mayor Lee Harris asked Republican governor Bill Lee to “please reconsider, if this is on the table.” He said local government would welcome more state troopers to help fight crime, but “to have individuals with military fatigues, semi-automatic weapons and armored vehicles patrolling our streets is way too far, anti-democratic and anti-American.”
Lee released a statement saying he was set to speak with Trump about a “strategic mission” to use state law enforcement more effectively with an already established FBI mission in Memphis.
Meanwhile, yesterday four out of five justices on a panel of the Brazilian Supreme Court found former president Jair Bolsonaro, a close ally of Donald Trump, guilty of plotting a coup, attempting to overturn the country’s 2022 election, and committing violent acts against state institutions. They sentenced him to 27 years and three months in prison.
—
Notes:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/11/charlie-kirk-quotes-beliefs
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_237596.htm
https://www.axios.com/2025/09/12/bomb-threats-target-black-democratic-leaders
https://billmoyers.com/story/the-watchlist/
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/analysis/fbi-women-minorities-job-losses-kash-patel-rcna222988
https://www.cato.org/blog/ice-has-diverted-over-25000-officers-their-jobs
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/09/charlie-kirk-fbi-investigation/684184/
https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/documenttools/1fb5c976fb1f1bd2/ff631230-full.pdf
https://abcnews.go.com/US/manhunt-charlie-kirks-killer-enters-3rd-day-questions/story?id=125504696
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8wl2y66p9o
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/europe/poland-engages-russian-drones-airspace-first-time-rcna230251
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c147065pzdzo
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-admin-returns-russian-dissident-asylum-seekers-to-putin
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/02/us/politics/trump-venezuela-boat-drugs-attack.html
The BreakdownNEW: The Messages on the Bullets are From a Video GameI’m noticing the corporate media is relying heavily on the fact that the shooter - now in custody - engraved anti-fascist rhetoric on some of the bullets found at the scene. But to tie those phrases to actual anti-fascist movements, or Democrats, is a mistake…Read more20 hours ago · 741 likes · 94 comments · Allison Gillhttps://wreg.com/news/local/mayor-young-releases-statement-after-talks-of-national-guard-in-memphis/
https://wreg.com/news/local/mpd-memphis-overall-crime-drops-to-25-year-low/
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/11/americas/brazil-jair-bolsonaro-coup-trial-verdict-latam-intl
https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/sep/12/Tyler-Robinson-Charlie-Kirk-suspect-shooting-facts/
Youtube:
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DailyCaller/status/1966162114604937427
RepNancyMace/status/1966511199165591959
Threads:
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September 11, 2025
September 11, 2025
Twenty-four years ago today, terrorists from the al-Qaeda network used four civilian airplanes as weapons against the United States, crashing two of them into the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York City and a third into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.
Four years ago, George W. Bush, who was president on that horrific day, spoke in Pennsylvania at a memorial for the passengers of the fourth flight, United Airlines Flight 93, who on September 11, 2001, stormed the cockpit and brought their airplane down in a field, killing everyone on board but denying the terrorists a fourth American trophy.
Former president Bush said: “Twenty years ago, terrorists chose a random group of Americans, on a routine flight, to be collateral damage in a spectacular act of terror. The 33 passengers and 7 crew of Flight 93 could have been any group of citizens selected by fate. In a sense, they stood in for us all.” And, Bush continued, “The terrorists soon discovered that a random group of Americans is an exceptional group of people. Facing an impossible circumstance, they comforted their loved ones by phone, braced each other for action, and defeated the designs of evil.”
Recalling his experience that day, Bush talked of “the America I know.”
“On America’s day of trial and grief, I saw millions of people instinctively grab for a neighbor’s hand and rally to the cause of one another…. At a time when religious bigotry might have flowed freely, I saw Americans reject prejudice and embrace people of Muslim faith…. At a time when nativism could have stirred hatred and violence against people perceived as outsiders, I saw Americans reaffirm their welcome to immigrants and refugees…. At a time when some viewed the rising generation as individualistic and decadent, I saw young people embrace an ethic of service and rise to selfless action.”
Bush celebrated the selfless heroism and care for others shown by those like Welles Crowther, the man in the red bandana, who helped others out of danger before succumbing himself; the airplane passengers who called their loved ones to say goodbye; neighbors; firefighters; law enforcement officers; the men and women who volunteered for military service after the attack.
That day, and our memories of it, show American democracy at its best: ordinary Americans putting in the work, even at its dirtiest and most dangerous, to take care of each other.
But even in 2001, that America was under siege by those who distrusted the same democracy the terrorists attacked. America had seemed to drift since the end of the Cold War twelve years before, but now the country was in a new death struggle, they thought, against an even more implacable foe. To defeat the nation’s enemies, America must defend free enterprise and Christianity at all costs.
In the wake of the attacks, Bush’s popularity, which had been dropping, soared to 90 percent. He and his advisers saw that popularity as a mandate to change America, and the world, according to their own ideology. “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” he announced. He and his loyalists attacked any opposition to their measures as an attack on “the homeland.”
They tarred those who questioned the administration’s economic or foreign policies as un-American—either socialists or traitors making the nation vulnerable to terrorist attacks—and set out to make sure such people could not have a voice at the polls. Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression began to shut Democratic voices out of our government, aided by a series of Supreme Court decisions. In 2010 the court opened the floodgates of corporate money into our elections to sway voters; in 2013 it gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act; in 2021 it said that election laws that affected different groups of voters unevenly were not unconstitutional. In that year, a former Republican president claimed he won the 2020 election because, all evidence to the contrary, Democratic votes were fraudulent.
Four years ago, former president Bush mused that "[a] malign force seems at work in our common life that turns every disagreement into an argument, and every argument into a clash of cultures. So much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear, and resentment.” He said: “There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit. And it is our continuing duty to confront them.”
In doing so, we can take guidance from the passengers on Flight 93, who demonstrated as profoundly as it is possible to do what confronting such a mentality means. While we cannot know for certain what happened on that plane on that fateful day, investigators believe that before the passengers of Flight 93 stormed the cockpit, throwing themselves between the terrorists and our government, and downed the plane, they took a vote.
—
Notes:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/11/politics/transcript-george-w-bush-speech-09-11-2021/index.html
September 10, 2025
September 10, 2025
Last night, Polish forces shot down 19 Russian drones that invaded Poland’s airspace during a massive Russian air attack on Ukraine. Poland is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the Polish operation was backed by NATO member forces. Today, Poland officially activated Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which triggers a consultation whenever “the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.”
German chancellor Friedrich Merz called the Russian breach of Polish airspace a “reckless and aggressive act” that fit a broader pattern of Russian provocations against NATO’s eastern edge.
Although the United States under President Donald J. Trump has pulled back from its steadfast commitment to NATO, the U.S. was instrumental in the creation of the organization in 1949. Leaders wanted to establish a defensive alliance that could stand against Soviet aggression and that would reinforce rules to prevent countries from using violence against other countries. Such an order, based in rules rather than violence, would make it harder to start wars.
NATO guaranteed collective security because all of the member states agreed to defend each other against an attack by a third party. In 1949, when he signed the treaty, President Harry Truman called the pact a positive influence for peace. With NATO, he said, “we hope to create a shield against aggression and the fear of aggression—a bulwark which will permit us to get on with the real business of government and society, the business of achieving a fuller and happier life for all our citizens.”
The experience of the United States “in creating one nation out of…the peoples of many lands” proved that this idea could work, Truman said. “This method of organizing diverse peoples and cultures is in direct contrast to the method of the police state, which attempts to achieve unity by imposing the same beliefs and the same rule of force on everyone.”
The NATO countries did not believe that war was inevitable, Truman said. “Men with courage and vision can still determine their own destiny. They can choose slavery or freedom—war or peace. I have no doubt which they will choose…. If there is anything certain today, if there is anything inevitable in the future, it is the will of the people of the world for freedom and for peace.”
The drone incursions into a NATO country are just the latest escalation from Russia’s president Vladimir Putin after his meeting with Trump in Alaska on August 15. Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk told the Polish parliament: “I have no reason to claim we’re on the brink of war, but a line has been crossed. This situation brings us the closest we have been to open conflict since World War II.”
At 11:09 this morning, Trump responded to the attack by posting on social media: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!”
This afternoon at an outdoor event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, a gunman shot and killed 31-year-old Charlie Kirk, a right-wing activist and founder of Turning Point USA, which pushes for right-wing politics on high school, college, and university campuses. The killing appears to have been targeted. A manhunt is underway for the killer.
Although nothing more is currently known about the event, President Trump in an address from the Oval Office blamed “the radical left” for the shooting and vowed that his administration “will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity, and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials and everyone else who brings order to our country.”
Trump listed incidents of what he called “radical left political violence.” As The Guardian noted, absent from his list was violence against Democrats, including the murder in June of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband by a man who had a hit list of 45 Democratic elected officials.
Less than an hour after the Kirk shooting, during the third week of school, a shooter at Evergreen High School in Colorado wounded two students—one critically—before dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Gun violence had impacted the life of the grandfather of two boys at the school. In 2021, Mike Webb’s ex-wife Xiaojie Tan was killed in the spa shootings in the Atlanta area and today he told CNN’s Emma Tucker that a school shooting was his “greatest fear realized.” Webb said he had spoken with one of the boys, who was shaken by the events at his school. “I told him none of us should have to go through this. I said this is the world we live in and thank God you guys are OK.”
—
Notes:
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_49187.htm
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-occasion-the-signing-the-north-atlantic-treaty
https://www.newsweek.com/nato-russia-ukraine-poland-war-trump-article-4-2127472
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/10/us/at-least-2-students-shot-denver-area-high-school
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/europe/poland-engages-russian-drones-airspace-first-time-rcna230251
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/charlie-kirk-shot-utah-turning-point-usa/
Bluesky:
September 9, 2025
September 9, 2025
As Joe Perticone outlines in The Bulwark today, Republican lawmakers are greeting the release of the lewd letter in Jeffrey Epstein’s birthday book depicting the outline of a child and apparently signed by Donald Trump either by saying they don’t care or by denying the signature is Trump’s. For this to be true, someone would have had to have slipped the letter into the book when it was bound in leather in 2003, a story that makes no sense at all. But, as J.V. Last of The Bulwark notes, Trump and his loyalists, including White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, are insisting the letter is a hoax.
Last speculates this is the route they’re taking because claiming proof that Russian operatives worked to elect Trump in 2016 was a “hoax” mostly worked, because claiming the letter is a hoax is a loyalty test, or because Trump knows what else is out there and is setting a marker to declare any more revelations a lie.
Or, perhaps, all three.
As Last writes, the material in the 238-page book reveals that the friends of the convicted sex offender described him as a “super-rich” man who liked “having sex with very young girls.” But rather than recoiling from his predatory habits, they celebrated those crimes. As Last writes: “Everyone in Jeffrey Epstein’s circle knew. They knew that Epstein was a predator. They believed that his pathology defined him. And they joked about it, encouraged it, and egged him on.”
An in-depth article in the New York Times Magazine yesterday by David Enrich, Matthew Goldstein, and Jessica Silver-Greenberg detailed how top bankers at JPMorgan Chase ignored the many red flags around Epstein’s financial activities to keep the wealthy and well-connected man as a treasured client. It was only after Epstein was arrested the second time, federal prosecutors charged him with sex trafficking, and he died in his jail cell that JPMorgan filed a report retroactively flagging 4,700 transactions totaling more than $1.1 billion as suspicious.
According to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), that money included hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions involving women in Belarus, Russia, and Turkmenistan, and two Russian banks.
Epstein’s story personifies a cultural system in which wealthy white men can laugh about the horrific and illegal abuse of children—female children—comfortable in the knowledge the system will never hold them to account.
Retired Navy captain Jon Duffy encapsulated where this kind of thinking leads in an op-ed published today in Defense One, which covers issues of national security. Examining the administration's strike against a small vessel in the Caribbean last week, Duffy warned that “[t]he United States has crossed a dangerous line” into “lawless power,” operating without regard to the law.
Duffy reminded readers of the Supreme Court’s July 2024 ruling in Donald J. Trump v. United States that the president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed while exercising official duties. At the time, he notes, experts warned that the decision would “give the commander-in-chief license to commit murder,” but a majority of the court waved those concerns away. “Now,” he writes, “the president has ordered killings in international waters. Eleven people are dead, not through due process but by fiat. The defense secretary boasts about it on television. And the president will face no consequences.”
“This is no longer abstract,” Duffy writes. “The law has been rewritten in real time: a president can kill, and there is no recourse. That is not strength. That is authoritarianism.”
Duffy notes that Trump has already used the exact same logic when he sent National Guard troops into U.S. cities: “redefine the threat, erase legal distinctions, and justify force as the first tool.” He warned that “the commander-in-chief of the most destructive military power in history has been placed beyond the reach of law.”
Duffy urged military leaders to stand firm. “A republic that allows its leaders to kill without law, to wage war without strategy, and to deploy troops without limit is a republic in deep peril. Congress will not stop it. The courts will not stop it. That leaves those sworn not to a man, but to the Constitution. The oath is clear,” he wrote. “[U]nlawful orders—foreign or domestic—must be disobeyed. To stand silent as the military is misused is not restraint. It is betrayal.”
A world in which a few rich men run the federal government for their own benefit and according to their own whims looks much like the late nineteenth century.
Already, the cost of such a system to the American people is ramping up. Yesterday, Yasmeen Abutaleb and Maeve Reston of the Washington Post reported that states are facing cuts because of the Republicans’ sweeping tax and spending plan, which forces many of the responsibilities the federal government used to assume onto the states. The sudden shift of financial weight means states are cancelling infrastructure projects and scaling back benefits, even as new requirements in the law will mean increased staffing to oversee work requirements, for example.
In Maryland, Governor Wes Moore said the legislature has cut its budget by the largest margin in 16 years. He told the Washington Post journalists: “And now the federal government continues to lay off federal workers in historic numbers, slash rural health care, slash food assistance and then say to our states: ‘Now you all have to be the ones to pick up the pieces.’”
In North Carolina, Republican senator Ted Budd says that the policy of Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem that she must sign off on all expenditures over $100,000 has badly delayed recovery aid to the state after Hurricane Helene that Congress approved back in December. He says he will place holds on all Department of Homeland Security nominees until the process speeds up.
In Ellabell, Georgia, an immigration raid by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security on an electric vehicle battery plant has destabilized the project altogether. The plant was under construction by the South Korean carmaker Hyundai and the battery supplier LG Energy Solution. Federal agents swept through last week and arrested 475 people, 300 of whom were South Korean nationals. South Korean leaders are angry, and LG Energy has pulled most of its employees out of the United States. The detained workers are supposed to be repatriated tomorrow.
As Farah Stockman and Rebecca Elliott of the New York Times note, the plan was billed as the biggest economic development project in Georgia’s history. Electrive reported today that LG Energy Solution is suspending construction of the factory.
But as the Trump administration’s authoritarianism hurts Americans, state governments led by Democrats are stepping up work for their people. Today is the anniversary of the day in 1850 when California became a state, and this evening, Governor Gavin Newsom noted on social media that “[t]he Trump Administration is once again failing to do its job—and California is cleaning up their mess.”
“We're deploying state resources to protect the 2,000-year old sequoias on FEDERAL LANDS from the wildfires the federal administration are supposed to handle.”
Democratic-led states are also joining forces to address the health issues the federal government is now dropping. In the western U.S., Oregon, California, Washington, and Hawaii are coming together in a new West Coast Health Alliance to coordinate vaccine guidelines; on the East Coast a similar joint effort is underway with representatives from every New England state except New Hampshire, along with New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. New Hampshire governor Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, declined to participate, saying she doesn't want to politicize health care.
In New Mexico, one of the poorest states in the Union, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced that the state will be the first in the nation to offer universal free child care, expanding a program that lifted 120,000 of the state’s residents out of poverty by enabling them to stay in school and to work. The program also raised wages for childcare workers.
“Child care is essential to family stability, workforce participation, and New Mexico’s future prosperity,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement. “By investing in universal child care, we are giving families financial relief, supporting our economy, and ensuring that every child has the opportunity to grow and thrive.”
In Massachusetts, Governor Maura Healey announced today that she would tackle the high cost of housing in the state by cutting environmental review for certain new housing construction projects down from more than a year to 30 days. Katie Lannan of GBH News notes that this plan is designed to deliver the 222,000 new housing units Massachusetts will need in the next ten years.
Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll said: “The bottom line is we can maintain our strong environmental standards and build housing and also have nature-based solutions to address…rising climate needs and mitigation.”
In Illinois, Governor J.B. Pritzker visited with immigrant community leaders who focus on protecting constitutional rights as Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan warns of more of the ICE raids that have been sweeping in citizens and legal residents. “Many families who have lived in Illinois for years are fearful to pick up their kids from school, go to work, and live their lives freely,” the governor said. “At such an uncertain moment for our immigrant communities, it is more important than ever that people know their rights and have someone looking out for them.”
Tonight, Democrat James Walkinshaw easily won the special election to replace the late Representative Gerry Connolly (D-VA). According to Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers, the district has swung 16 percentage points toward the Democrats since the 2024 election.
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Notes:
The BulwarkDonald ❤️ JeffreyCaution: I’m going to avoid euphemism and reproduce images from the Epstein birthday book because I want everyone to see Jeffrey Epstein through the eyes of the people who knew him best…Read more21 hours ago · 1161 likes · 602 comments · Jonathan V. LastThe BulwarkGOP Senators Run From the Sight of Trump’s Epstein CardScrib-ghazi…Read more18 hours ago · 358 likes · 78 comments · Joe Perticonehttps://time.com/7315609/epsteins-birthday-book-trump-clinton/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/business/epstein-banks-wyden-trump.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/magazine/jeffrey-epstein-jp-morgan.html
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2025/09/killing-sea-americas-descent-lawless-power/407949/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/09/08/states-medicaid-snap-cuts-trump/
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/asia/south-korea-hyundai-immigration-raid-plane-us-return-rcna230011
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/11/childcare-new-mexico-poverty
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/09/new-mexico-free-universal-childcare
https://www.wmur.com/article/new-hampshire-vaccines-health-alliance-9525/65996893
https://www.electrive.com/2025/09/09/lges-halts-us-factory-construction-after-raid/
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/09/09/congress/walkinshaw-wins-va-11-00554597
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