Heather Cox Richardson's Blog, page 3
September 26, 2025
September 25, 2025
September 25, 2025
Today, with the popularity of President Donald J. Trump and his administration dropping, Trump’s disastrous performance at the United Nations, the return of comedian Jimmy Kimmel to the airwaves, and the Tuesday’s election in Arizona of Democratic representative Adelita Grijalva, who will provide the final signature on a discharge petition to demand a floor vote in the House over releasing all the government files on convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the administration appears to be making a dramatic push to seize complete control of the government.
Last night, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought tried to jam the Democrats into passing the Republicans’ continuing resolution to fund the government. Officials leaked a memo to Politico, Punchbowl News, and Axios—publications that focus on events concerning Capitol Hill—saying that if the Democrats refuse to pass the Republicans’ measure, the administration will try to fire, rather than furlough, large numbers of federal employees.
Such a move would be challenged in the courts, and the government has been forced to rehire many of the people it forced out earlier this year after those firings left agencies badly understaffed. But the threat is not idle; Vought is a Christian nationalist who has called for a “radical Constitutionalism” that demolishes the modern American state and replaces it with a powerful executive.
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) responded: “Listen Russ, you are a malignant political hack. We will not be intimidated by your threat to engage in mass firings. Get lost.” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement: “Donald Trump has been firing federal workers since day one—not to govern, but to scare. This is nothing new and has nothing to do with funding the government. These unnecessary firings will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back, just like they did as recently as today.”
Trump appears focused on September 30, when the government funding crisis will hit, and the days after it. Although courts have ruled that he does not have the power to impose tariffs willy-nilly, today Trump announced new tariffs of 100% on pharmaceuticals, 50% on kitchen and bathroom cabinets, 30% on upholstered furniture, and 25% on “Heavy (Big!) Trucks” beginning on October 1. On social media, he claimed such tariffs were necessary “for National Security and other reasons.”
Today, James LaPorta of CBS News reported that the National Archives and Records Administration improperly released Democratic representative Mikie Sherrill’s full military records to an ally of her Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, in the New Jersey governor’s race. The two candidates are tied, and Ciattarelli appears to be trying to link Sherrill to the 1994 Naval Academy cheating scandal involving more than 100 midshipmen.
Sherrill had an unblemished career in the Navy and as a midshipman, LaPorta notes. She did not turn in her cheating classmates, but she was never accused of cheating herself. The unredacted release of Sherrill’s records appears to violate the 1974 Privacy Act. Sherrill said: “That Jack Ciattarelli and the Trump administration are illegally weaponizing my records for political gain is a violation of anyone who has ever served our country. No veteran’s record is safe.”
While the National Archives maintained the release was a mistake and apologized for it, the administration’s influence in the Department of Justice tonight could not be explained away.
Days after Trump demanded that the Department of Justice move “now” to prosecute those he perceives to be his enemies, a federal grand jury has indicted former FBI director James Comey for allegedly lying to Congress and obstructing an investigation. Comey was an early casualty of Trump’s first administration, fired after he refused to kill the FBI investigation of the ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian operatives.
Over last weekend, Trump exploded at then–acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Erik Siebert, a career prosecutor, after Siebert concluded there was not enough evidence of a crime to charge Comey for allegedly lying to Congress or New York attorney general Letitia James for alleged mortgage fraud.
On Monday Trump replaced Siebert with White House aide and Trump’s former personal lawyer Lindsey Halligan, and yesterday three sources told Ken Dilanian and Carol Leonnig of MSNBC that they expected Halligan to try to get a grand jury to indict Comey before the five-year statute of limitations on lying to Congress runs out next Tuesday.
Tonight the DOJ delivered an indictment against Comey.
“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump,” Comey said tonight in a video. “But we…will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either. Somebody that I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant, and she’s right, but I’m not afraid, and I hope you’re not either. I hope instead you are engaged, you are paying attention, and you will vote like your beloved country depends upon it, which it does. My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system. I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial and keep the faith.”
The DOJ was busy today. It also sued six states—California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania—to force them to hand over their voter rolls and information identifying those voters. Matt Cohen of Democracy Docket notes that state officials from both Democratic and Republican governments have questioned why the government wants that information. This lawsuit comes after a nearly identical lawsuit the DOJ filed last week against Maine and Oregon.
Democratic secretary of state Tobias Read of Oregon called the lawsuits an attempt by President Donald Trump “to use the DOJ to go after his political opponents and undermine our elections.”
Tara Copp, Dan Lamothe, Alex Horton, Ellen Nakashima, and Noah Robertson of the Washington Post reported today that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered about 800 of the military’s top generals and admirals, along with their senior enlisted advisors, to come to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, next week. Such a demand is highly unusual, and no one knows why Hegseth has made it.
In The Bulwark, Mark Hertling, who was commander of U.S. Army Europe from 2011 to 2012, noted that the demand “is baffling and the cost will be staggering.” Instead of using the Pentagon’s secure video teleconferencing system, the personnel will require flights and accommodations that will cost millions, while the lost focus and readiness will affect their mission.
Hertling points out that “[a]dversaries and allies are watching. This sudden, global, emergency recall of America’s top brass is a flashing red light to them: Something must be wrong inside the Pentagon.”
Both Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance tried to downplay the meeting. “Why is that such a big deal?” Trump asked reporters. Vance incorrectly said the meeting is “not particularly unusual,” and said: “I think it’s odd that you guys have made it into such a big story.”
This evening, Trump signed a memorandum targeting activists and nonprofits as part of what he called a “terror network” that he claims is fueling violence, especially against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. He and his allies claim that “radical left Democrats,” or “Radical Left Terrorists,” are behind that violence, although, as scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder notes, the majority of political violence in the U.S. comes from the right.
“Titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” the memo alleges that “common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
The document gives law enforcement wide latitude to “investigate, prosecute, and disrupt entities and individuals” engaged in behavior the administration opposes, as well as nonprofit organizations that fund them. It also orders law enforcement to “question and interrogate” people “regarding the entity or individual organizing such actions and any related financial sponsorship of those actions prior to adjudication or initiation of a plea agreement.”
Former federal prosecutor Daniel Richman, who teaches at Columbia Law School, told Robert Tait and Aram Roston of The Guardian that an executive order cannot create new crimes, and Timothy Snyder noted that the memo nonetheless “undoes the basic tradition of American liberty and law, which is…that we are individuals to be judged on the basis of what we do as such. This memo, quite to the contrary, begins from the premise that the world is governed by mysterious, invisible entities to which individuals can be arbitrarily associated by the power of the government, thereby making those individuals guilty and subject to prosecution and punishment.” It makes responsibility collective, thus enabling the government to target everybody. “The groups that will…be targeted will be groups that are concerned with things like counting the votes, human rights, freedom of speech, and the rule of law.”
All this, said Snyder, is both a “big lie” and a cliché. Authoritarians always say the country is facing an emergency and that their opponents are “terrorists.” It’s a cliché to say “there’s a mysterious, bottomless, organization that we have to chase to the ends of the Earth and break all the rules to find. That’s what they always say.”
Snyder noted that Congress can pass laws to rule such behavior illegal, courts can find actions illegal and protect victims, commentators can describe reality, and citizens can say they “don’t want to be subject to an imagined emergency based on a big lie that does away with the essence of American liberty and law.” He concluded: “This has been done before. It can be stopped.”
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Notes:
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5520512-massie-grijalva-epstein-petition/
https://americanmind.org/salvo/renewing-american-purpose/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/national-archives-mikie-sherrill-military-record-jack-ciattarelli/
The BulwarkDoes Russ Vought Scare You?Rock the Vought…Read more18 hours ago · 362 likes · 133 comments · Joe Perticonehttps://abcnews.go.com/US/former-fbi-director-james-comey-indicted-days-after/story?id=125935658
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/25/trump-presidential-memorandum-political-violence
Thinking about... Trump’s terror memo (audio)Basic points on the rule of law, phantom conspiracies, big lies, and civic action. Thinking about... is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber… Listen now13 hours ago · 935 likes · 37 comments · Timothy Snyder
Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance “Show me the man and I’ll find the crime”With apologies, this is a long post for any night, let alone a Saturday, but Trump’s abuse of the power of the prosecutor and efforts to directly control the work of the Justice Department make it essential. In a world that has become a constant barrage of horribles from this president, know that what I’m writing to you about tonight is exceptionally se…Read more5 days ago · 3117 likes · 307 comments · Joyce VanceThe BulwarkAs Our Generals and Admirals Fly Home, Our Adversaries Watch and WaitWHEN I SAW THE NEWS that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had ordered all U.S. military flag officers (generals and admirals) to gather at the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia, next week along with their senior enlisted advisors, my first response was disbelief. Not d…Read more11 hours ago · 162 likes · Mark Hertlinghttps://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/09/25/hegseth-generals-quantico-meeting/
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/24/politics/white-house-mass-firings-government-shut-down
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September 24, 2025
September 24, 2025
Hours after delivering his delusional and offensive speech to the United Nations yesterday, President Donald J. Trump did an about-face on his previous support for Russia in its war against Ukraine. After he met with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, his social media account posted: “I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” which would be before Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. Trump noted the profound toll the war is taking on Russia’s economy and speculated that Ukraine might even be able to take Russian land. “In any event,” Trump posted, “I wish both Countries well. We will continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them. Good luck to all!”
As Nick Paton Walsh of CNN noted, this statement doesn’t actually change much on the ground in the war. What it does, though, is suggest that Trump has lost interest in the conflict and is attempting to wash his hands of it.
The president made a similar escape from a planned meeting with Democratic leaders scheduled for Thursday to talk about keeping the government open. Yesterday he canceled the meeting by posting on social media that “[a]fter reviewing the unserious and ridiculous demands being made by the Minority Radical Left Democrats in return for their Votes to keep our thriving Country open, I have decided that no meeting with their Congressional Leaders could possibly be productive.”
He went on to claim that Democrats want to shut down the government “unless they can have over $1 Trillion Dollars [sic] in new spending to continue free healthcare for Illegal Aliens,” and then detoured into unrelated attacks on Democrats over immigration and transgender athletes and claimed that his “HISTORIC LANDSLIDE” in the 2024 presidential election means the Democrats have to agree to his demands.
Ben Johansen and Meredith Lee Hill of Politico report that, in fact, Trump decided to cancel the meeting at the urging of House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD). Sources told the journalists that the Republican lawmakers were afraid meeting with Democrats would erode Republicans’ leverage in the struggle over funding the government.
That funding runs out on September 30, and Congress has not yet passed appropriations bills to keep it going. On September 19 the House passed a continuing resolution to keep the government funded at current levels through November 21 and to provide additional money for security for congress members. The 217–212 vote was largely along party lines, with one Democrat voting for the measure and two Republicans voting against it. Congress is not meeting this week, and after the measure passed, Speaker Johnson informed members that the House would not meet on the scheduled days of Monday, September 29, or Tuesday, September 30, thus jamming the Senate into accepting the House measure or shutting down the government.
The Senate failed to pass the House measure on the 19th, with two Republicans voting no and Democrats saying they would refuse to support any measure that did not extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies that Republicans cut in their budget reconciliation bill of July and roll back some of that act’s cuts to Medicaid. That budget reconciliation law, which Republicans call the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, allows the enhanced premium tax credits that made ACA coverage more affordable for households between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level to lapse at the end of this year. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that this change will mean 4.2 million Americans will become uninsured in the next ten years (on top of those who are expected to lose Medicaid coverage). As healthier people opt to go without insurance, premiums on those who stay in the markets are skyrocketing.
Extending the subsidies as the Democrats want is popular even among many Republicans, who recognize how hard Americans are going to be hit by rising healthcare costs. But other Republicans who continue to oppose the Affordable Care Act refuse even to consider such a change and are pushing off such a divisive issue. Taken together, the Democrats’ demands would cost around a trillion dollars, but those benefits would not go to “Illegal Aliens.”
Unless they nuke the filibuster, Republicans will need eight Democratic votes to get to the sixty votes they need to pass a continuing resolution, but they are refusing even to talk to the Democrats. In a Fox News Channel interview on September 12, Trump said of Democrats, “There is something wrong with them.… [T]hey want to give away money to this or that and destroy the country.” “Don’t even bother dealing with them,” he advised Republican lawmakers. “We will get it through because the Republicans are sticking together for the first time in a long time.”
Despite their determination to go it alone and their control of the House, the Senate, and the presidency, Republican leaders are working hard to pin a looming shutdown on the Democrats. The Democrats want no part of that storyline: “For a guy who claims to understand ‘The Art of the Deal,’ Donald Trump is awfully scared of negotiating one,” Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker said. “Trump and Congressional Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House. But they’d rather shut down the government, tank the economy, and cut healthcare benefits than do their jobs.”
Rather than engaging in the hard work of negotiation, Trump appears to want to use the government for his own ends.
After the outcry over the use of the Federal Communications Commission to strongarm ABC into suspending comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s television show, many Republicans insisted that the suspension was simply a business decision. Trump torpedoed that argument today when he took to social media to complain that Kimmel is back on the air.
Trump did not mention Kimmel’s reference to Charlie Kirk’s murder—allegedly the reason for Kimmel’s suspension—when he complained: “He is yet another arm of the [Democratic National Committee] and, to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major Illegal Campaign Contribution.” He continued: “I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative.”
Over the weekend, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Erik Siebert, a career prosecutor, resigned after he concluded there was not enough evidence of a crime to charge New York attorney general Letitia James for alleged mortgage fraud or former FBI director James Comey for allegedly lying to Congress. Siebert’s refusal to prosecute drew Trump’s wrath. On Monday, White House aide and Trump’s former personal lawyer Lindsey Halligan—who is leading the administration’s review of exhibits at the Smithsonian Institution museums—took over the job. She has no experience as a prosecutor.
Today, Ken Dilanian and Carol Leonnig of MSNBC reported that three sources have said they expect Halligan to try to get a grand jury to indict Comey before the five-year statute of limitations on lying to Congress runs out in six days. Chris Strohm of Bloomberg reports that the Department of Justice is also pushing forward with the case against Attorney General James.
While Trump persecutes those he perceives as enemies, administration figures who have called for slashing spending both at home and for foreign aid are using taxpayer money to push their own priorities overseas. Daniel Flatley and Patrick Gillespie of Bloomberg reported today that the U.S. is preparing a $20 billion rescue package to bail out Argentina’s right-wing leader Javier Milei, an ally of Donald Trump, before October elections.
They are offering this financial support despite the fact Argentina recently suspended its grain export tax, undercutting the U.S. soybean farmers who have lost their huge Chinese market because of Trump’s tariff war. Within hours, China bought up Argentina’s soybeans.
Administration officials are also ignoring the laws Congress passed to fund foreign aid and are instead funding their own priorities. In August, the administration told Congress it was not going to spend almost $5 billion Congress had appropriated for foreign aid, prompting Susan Collins (R-ME), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, to warn that “[a]ny effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law.”
Today, Noah Robertson of the Washington Post reported that the State Department has informed Congress it intends to redirect $1.8 billion of foreign aid funding toward “America First” projects like countering “Marxist, anti-American regimes” in Latin America, supporting “U.S. immigration policies” in Africa, and pursuing investments in Greenland and Ukraine, although the language of the announcement is vague enough that it is not entirely clear what these programs will do.
Robertson identifies this announcement as a dramatic change from the previous, bipartisan U.S. focus on promoting national security by promoting democracy and health and higher standards of living around the world through investments in institutions like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which the Trump administration dismantled as soon as it took office.
Top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire told Robertson said the Trump administration is “attempting to raid programs that Congress has authorized and appropriated to strengthen democracy, advance peace and support vulnerable communities and instead funnel that money into an unaccountable slush fund.”
Although Jimmy Kimmel Live! was preempted in about 23% of the homes that use television, ABC said 6.26 million people tuned in to watch. Kimmel’s usual television audience is about 1.42 million. ABC says another 26 million people watched his monologue on social media, including YouTube.
In it, Kimmel said: “This show is not important. What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this.” He called the administration’s attempt to take him off the air “un-American.”
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Notes:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/24/europe/trump-ukraine-putin-land-analysis-intl
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/23/trump-cancels-meeting-schumer-jeffries-00576176
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/12/donald-trump-shutdown-democrats-00560031
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/09/24/trump-usaid-funding/
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/24/jimmy-kimmel-return-ratings-abc-disney.html
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bessent-says-us-negotiating-20-124122527.html
https://www.agdaily.com/crops/china-buys-argentine-soybeans-tax-suspensions/
https://www.notus.org/house/mike-johnson-government-funding-house-plans-remain-recess
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September 23, 2025
September 23, 2025
In New York City this morning, the United Nations opened its General Assembly, marking the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations itself. The day began with a General Debate, the meeting in which heads of state and government outline their positions and priorities in an era of changing and complex global challenges.
Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres opened the debate, reminding the audience that leaders who had lived through the horrors of World War II had created the organization to prevent another such conflagration by establishing “cooperation over chaos, law over lawlessness, peace over conflict.” It was, he said, “a practical strategy for the survival of humanity.”
“Eighty years on,” he said, “we confront again the question our founders faced—only more urgent, more intertwined, more unforgiving: What kind of world do we choose to build together?”
He warned: that “we have entered an age of reckless disruption,” when “the principles of the United Nations…are under siege.” Will we choose “a world of raw power—or a world of laws? A world that is a scramble for self-interest—or a world where nations come together? A world where might makes right—or a world of rights for all?”
Guterres urged member states to choose “peace rooted in international law,” “human dignity and human rights,” “climate justice,” “to put technology at the service of humanity,” and “to strengthen the United Nations for the 21st century.”
Guterres recalled that his youth in Portugal was spent “in the darkness of dictatorship, where fear silenced voices and hope was nearly crushed. Yet, even in the bleakest hours—especially then—I discovered a truth that has never left me: power does not reside in the hands of those who dominate or divide. Real power resides from people, from our shared resolve to uphold dignity, to defend equality, to believe—fiercely—in our common humanity, and the potential of every human being.
“I learned early to persevere. To speak out. To refuse to surrender, no matter the challenge, no matter the obstacle, no matter the hour. We must—and we will—overcome.”
President Donald J. Trump also addressed the gathered world leaders, guests of the United States.
He began by complaining that the teleprompter wasn’t working, and also mentioned that an escalator on which he and First Lady Melania Trump had been riding had stopped shortly after they stepped onto it.
Trump’s speech went on to depict a fantasy world in which he had single-handedly saved the world. He claimed to have forged peace on two continents during his first term but said that “era of calm and stability gave way to one of the great crises of our time.” He then turned to the United States, claiming that “four years of weakness, lawlessness, and radicalism under the last administration delivered our nation into a repeated set of disasters. One year ago,” he said, “our country was in deep trouble, but today, just eight months into my administration, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world and there is no other country even close. America is blessed with the strongest economy, the strongest borders, the strongest military, the strongest friendships, and the strongest spirit of any nation on the face of the earth.”
And that was the frame for the next hour of rambling boasts and insults.
Trump claimed that he had reversed the “economic calamity” left by former president Joe Biden. He had brought down costs and inflation, he said, and economic growth and manufacturing were both booming. He claimed that in his four years, Biden had attracted less than $1 trillion in investment while he had secured $17 trillion. Tax cuts and deregulation had, he said, made the U.S. “the best country on earth to do business.”
“In my first term, I built the greatest economy in the history of the world,” he said. “We had the best economy ever, history of the world, and I’m doing the same thing again, but this time it’s actually much bigger and even better. The numbers far surpass my record-setting first term.”
Trump claimed: “On the world stage, America is respected again like it has never been respected before. You think about two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, or one year ago, we were a laughingstock all over the world.
He claimed that his administration “has negotiated one historic trade deal after another” and that “in a period of just seven months, I have ended seven unendable wars. They said they were unendable. You’re never going to get them solved…. No president or prime minister, and for that matter, no other country, has ever done anything close to that, and I did it in just seven months. It’s never happened before. There’s never been anything like that. Very honored to have done it.”
He went on: “It’s too bad that I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them. And sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any of them. I ended seven wars, dealt with the leaders of each and every one of these countries, and never even received a phone call from the United Nations offering to help in finalizing the deal. All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle. If the First Lady wasn’t in great shape, she would’ve fallen. But she’s in great shape. We’re both in good shape, we both stood.”
He then turned back to the United Nations. “That being the case, what is the purpose of the United Nations? The U.N. is such tremendous potential. I’ve always said it. It has such tremendous, tremendous potential, but it’s not even coming close to living up to that potential.”
He claimed that “[e]veryone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize,” and after detouring into a complaint that the United Nations had not chosen him to renovate the U.N. complex years ago, he attacked the U.N. for “not solving the problems it should,” as well as “creating new problems for us to solve.”
Then he turned to the white nationalist program of his administration. He blamed “uncontrolled migration” for ruining “your countries,” and blamed the United Nations for funding that migration. “In the United States, we reject the idea that mass numbers of people from foreign lands can be permitted to travel halfway around the world, trample our borders, violate our sovereignty, cause unmitigated crime, and deplete our social safety net,” he said. “You’re destroying your countries. They’re being destroyed. Europe is in serious trouble. They’ve been invaded by a force of illegal aliens like nobody’s ever seen before. Illegal aliens are pouring into Europe, and nobody’s doing anything to change it, to get them out. It’s not sustainable.”
He claimed that London has “a terrible, terrible mayor”—Mayor Sadiq Khan is Muslim and is of Pakistani descent—that it is “so changed, so changed,” and that “they” want “Sharia law.” He went on at great length about how immigration is destroying Europe and how dangerous and criminal immigrants are. He told the attendees: “I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell.”
Then he turned to another of his priorities: fossil fuels. “Energy is another area where the United States is now thriving like never before,” he said. “We’re getting rid of the falsely named renewables.” After another long harangue about renewable energy, he said: “If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail. And I’m really good at predicting things. They actually said during the campaign, they had a hat, the best-selling hat: Trump was right about everything. And I don’t say that in a braggadocious way, but it’s true. I’ve been right about everything.”
The speech was a dark fantasy of narcissism and Christian nationalism that struck at the heart of the very concept of the United Nations. In its wake, some journalists demolished Trump’s wild claims, while others bemoaned his destruction of diplomacy by berating our friends and allies while they were guests in our country. But it was foreign affairs journalist Ishaan Tharoor who captured the larger story of Trump’s speech.
“A senior foreign diplomat posted at the U.N. texts me,” Tharoor wrote, “‘This man is stark, raving mad. Do Americans not see how embarrassing this is?’”
Trump loyalists turned tonight to the idea that someone had sabotaged the president by stopping the escalator and the teleprompter. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Channel personality Jesse Watters that it looked like sabotage and she would personally see to it that there would be accountability, and Trump loyalist senator Mike Lee (R-UT) called for defunding the U.N. for “orchestrating escalator and teleprompter malfunctions.”
The United Nations correspondent for the Associated Press, Farnoush Amiri, reported that “[a] UN official said the UN understands that someone from the president’s party who ran ahead of him inadvertently triggered the stop mechanism on the escalator. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the White House was operating the teleprompter for Trump.”
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Notes:
https://www.un.org/en/high-level-week-2025
https://gadebate.un.org/en/80/secretary-general-united-nations
https://www.rev.com/transcripts/trump-speaks-at-un
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September 22, 2025
September 22, 2025
Conservative writer Bill Kristol took to social media today to say: “So many coverups. Release the Epstein files. Release the Homan tapes. Release the Venezuelan fishing boats evidence.”
Kristol was referring to three stories about which members of the administration seem to be hiding things that don’t fit their narrative.
The Republican-dominated House Oversight Committee has been slow to release records related to the investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein although interest in them is high—not least because reports that the records mention President Donald Trump seem confirmed by Federal Bureau of Investigation director Kash Patel’s refusal to answer questions from Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee about his appearance in them. Last week, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee voted not to subpoena the chief executive officers of JPMorgan Chase, Bank of New York Mellon, Bank of America, and Deutsche Bank for testimony and records for about $1.5 billion in transactions related to Epstein’s crimes.
Today, Dan Ruetenik, Cara Tabachnick, and Graham Kates of CBS News reported that they have obtained documents about the events of July 23, 2019, 18 days before Epstein’s death, when he was found unresponsive in his cell. Those documents add detail to the story already reported, in which upon regaining consciousness, Epstein first suggested he had been attacked by his cellmate but later said he couldn’t remember what had happened. As is the case with Epstein’s death, because of either human error or the faulty video system, there is no recording of the incident.
In the United Kingdom, seven charities have cut ties with Sarah Ferguson, Prince Andrew’s ex-wife, after newspapers yesterday published an email Ferguson sent to Epstein in 2011, several years after he had pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution with a minor, appearing to apologize for her public criticism of him.
In response to this weekend’s story that the FBI recorded a video in 2024 of Tom Homan, who is now Trump’s border czar, accepting $50,000 in exchange for promising to steer government contracts for border security toward the men offering the money, the White House now says that Homan didn’t take the cash. As Ken Dilanian and Carol Leonnig of MSNBC note, that’s not what they said when the reporters first asked them about it on Saturday. Dilanian and Leonnig add: “Multiple people familiar with the case say he did accept the money, as does an internal government document reviewed by MSNBC.”
National security analyst Juliette Kayyem noted that “ICE contracts are going to unknown construction companies and days old consulting firms.” Democracy Forward has filed a Freedom of Information Act request, asking the FBI and the Justice Department to release the recording of Homan accepting the $50,000.
Kristol’s reference to Venezuelan fishing boats relates to the administration’s deadly strikes against several Venezuelan boats the administration insists were smuggling drugs to the United States. The administration has shown no evidence supporting its claim to lawmakers or to the public, and legal experts warn that the strikes may be illegal.
The administration is using the power of the U.S. government to advance a right-wing project in other South American countries as well, using the economic power of the U.S. to support Trump’s allies in Brazil and Argentina. Trump has imposed a 50% tariff on goods from Brazil, claiming that Brazil engages in unfair trade practices and that the government is engaged in a “witch hunt” against Trump’s ally former president Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro was convicted this month of attempting a coup against Brazil’s government when voters turned him out of office. He has been sentenced to more than 27 years in prison. In addition to the heavy U.S. tariffs, the Treasury Department announced today that it was sanctioning the wife of the Brazilian Supreme Court justice who oversaw the prosecution of Bolsonaro. The Brazilian government called the U.S. move “a new attempt of undue interference in Brazilian internal affairs.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on social media today, fifteen minutes before Argentina’s foreign-exchange markets opened, that the U.S. will consider “all options” for stabilizing the economy of Argentina, whose right-wing president, Javier Milei, is a Trump ally. Milei’s approach to slashing government was a model for Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, but with elections coming up next month, voters are souring on his austerity measures, inflation, and the weakening currency. Bessent wrote that “Argentina is a systemically important U.S. ally.” The Economist explained more bluntly: “Scott Bessent says Uncle Sam is underwriting Mr Milei’s laboratory.”
At home, Trump signed an executive order today designating “Antifa” as a “domestic terrorist organization.” Although the director of the FBI during Trump’s first term, Christopher Wray, explained that antifa, which is short for “antifascist,” is an ideology and not an organization, the executive order says antifa is “a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law. It uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide to accomplish these goals.”
The order goes on to say that this “campaign involves coordinated efforts to obstruct enforcement of Federal laws through armed standoffs with law enforcement, organized riots, violent assaults on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other law enforcement officers, and routine doxing of and other threats against political figures and activists.”
The order calls for all government agencies to “investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations…conducted by Antifa.” Constitutional law scholar Evan Bernick noted that the point of the order was “to assert that something exists which does not exist and to make people think it (1) exists and (2) is bad.” Immigration expert Aaron Reichlin-Melnick added: “It’s a directive to the Executive Branch about what to focus…resources on.”
Today, Trump announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will be notifying doctors that if pregnant women take acetaminophen, a brand name of which is Tylenol, their baby faces a “very increased risk of autism.” This statement flies in the face of decades of evidence that, used according to directions, acetaminophen is safe during pregnancy and can be important for relieving fever and pain.
In his remarks, Trump appeared to have difficulty pronouncing the word "acetaminophen," so used the brand name “Tylenol.” Although he is not a doctor, the president offered a range of medical advice. He echoed the opinions of Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of the dangers of vaccines, although vaccines save lives and extensive research has shown no link between vaccines and autism. Trump said: “We understood a lot more than a lot of people who studied it.”
But there seemed to be a new tone coming from media outlets covering the president today. The Associated Press posted on social media: “BREAKING: President Trump promotes unproven ties between Tylenol, vaccines and autism without new evidence.” The New York Times posted: “Unproven Medical Advice[:] In a rambling news briefing, president Trump promoted unproven ties between vaccines, autism and Tylenol use by pregnant women and babies.”
There is another sign today that Trump and his loyalists have outkicked their coverage as they try to consolidate power.
In Strength in Numbers, G. Elliott Morris noted that as measured by internet searches for “Cancel Disney+,” the boycott against Disney, the parent company of ABC, is now four times as large as any similar search of a boycott over the past five years. Since ABC suspended comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show—allegedly for his comments about MAGA Republicans’ search for someone to blame, although he frequently skewers Trump and the administration—Disney’s stock has dropped 2% although the market in general is up nearly 1%.
Morris observes that “a lot of powerful people just don’t realize how unpopular Trump is.” He explains that while polls show Trump is deeply unpopular, many people confuse voters with consumers. That is, while polls frequently measure how voters feel about the president, only about 64.1% of American adults eligible to vote went to the polls in 2024. Figuring that number into Trump’s popularity shows that only about 32% of American adults voted for Trump in 2024, while 53% of adults currently disapprove of his performance in the White House, with 48% strongly opposed. So businesses that decide to try to appease Trump voters are making poor business decisions.
That has shown in the backlash over the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s show, which is widely seen as an attack on the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. As Robert Reich noted in his Substack publication, “the blowback against Disney” for Kimmel’s suspension “has been hurricane level.” It was so intense that Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr, who had threatened that ABC must suspend Kimmel or lose its broadcast license, began to deny he had had anything to do with the suspension and say that ABC had removed Kimmel for business reasons.
Today Disney issued a statement saying, “Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country. It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive.” It went on: “We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”
So, after public outcry, Kimmel’s show is back on the air. But right-wing media company Sinclair, which operates more than 35 ABC stations across the country, says it will not restore Kimmel’s show to the airwaves it controls. It announced it will preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! with news programming.
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Notes:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeffrey-epstein-claimed-cellmate-tried-to-kill-him/
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/25/nx-s1-5478620/jeffrey-epstein-crimes-timeline-legal-case
https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/white-house-now-denies-tom-homan-took-50000-cash-rcna233008
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cddmr6v0jpzo
https://time.com/7316695/how-brazil-convicted-jair-bolsonaro/
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/22/bolsonaro-prosecution-us-sanctions-00575122
https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2025/09/22/argentinas-finances-just-got-even-more-surreal
https://www.thetimes.com/world/latin-america/article/javier-milei-argentina-peronists-news-c7mkt66b9
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/22/health/trump-autism-announcement-cause-tylenol
Robert Reich“Thoughtful Conversations with Jimmy”? BulltwatFriends…Read more15 hours ago · 3099 likes · 599 comments · Robert Reichhttps://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2817406
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/media/jimmy-kimmel-abc-return-tuesday-rcna232335
Strength In NumbersA lot of powerful people just don’t realize how unpopular Trump isLast week, ABC/Disney canceled Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of television stations that carry the program. The backlash has been swift: As I…Read more21 hours ago · 260 likes · 25 comments · G. Elliott Morrishttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/08/argentina-election-javier-milei
https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-mangles-pronunciation-of-worlds-most-common-medication/
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September 21, 2025
September 21, 2025
On Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics postponed the release of the annual report on consumer expenditures—a key report for understanding inflation—without explanation. The BLS has been under stress since President Donald J. Trump fired its head, Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, after the July jobs report showed far weaker hiring statistics than expected as well as a downgrade for previous months. Officials at the BLS said the new report will be “rescheduled to a later date.”
This weekend, Dan Frosch, Patrick Thomas, and Andrea Peterson of the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is ending its annual report on household food security. Those reports began in the 1990s to help state and local officials distribute food assistance. Last year’s report found that 18 million U.S. households experienced food insecurity during 2023. In a statement, the Department of Agriculture said: “These redundant, costly, politicized and extraneous studies do nothing more than fearmonger.”
Colleen Hefflin, an expert on food insecurity, nutrition, and welfare policy at Syracuse University, told the Wall Street Journal reporters: “Not having this measure for 2025 is particularly troubling given the current rise in inflation and deterioration of labor market conditions, two conditions known to increase food insecurity.” Whitney Curry Wimbish of The American Prospect reported last week that food banks across the country are seeing more visits even as immigrants are staying away from them out of concern that their information might be shared or that Immigration and Customs Enforcement might show up.
Nutrition scholar Lindsey Smith Taillie of the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health told the reporters: “I think the only reason why you wouldn’t measure it is if you were planning to cut food assistance, because it basically allows you to pretend like we don’t have this food insecurity problem.” The budget reconciliation law the Republicans passed in July cuts funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by about 20%, or $186 billion through 2034, the largest cuts to SNAP in its history.
This news got less attention last week than the administration’s apparent determination to silence its critics. Although, as Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times pointed out on Thursday, Trump promised in his second inaugural address to “immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America,” what he appeared to mean was that he intended to free up right-wing activists to spread disinformation about elections and Covid-19.
Now, in the wake of the murder of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, as Peter Baker pointed out today in the New York Times, the administration has cracked down on the media and political opponents under the guise of tamping down words that could cause political violence. But, as Baker notes, Trump is making it clear that he is trying to stop speech that criticizes him and his administration. Last week alone, he called for people who yelled at him in a restaurant to be prosecuted and for comedians who made fun of him to be taken off the air, and he sued the New York Times.
On Friday, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that covering the administration negatively is “really illegal.” He went on: “Personally, you can’t take, you can’t have a free airwave if you’re getting free airwaves from the United States government.” As Baker notes, Trump’s chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, who wrote the chapter of Project 2025 that covers the FCC, has complained that many broadcasters have a liberal bias and that they do not serve the public interest as the FCC requires.
That attempt to control information is showing clearly at the Pentagon. In February, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threw out long-standing media outlets who had been covering the Pentagon, including NPR, the New York Times, and NBC News, and brought in right-wing outlets including Newsmax and Breitbart. On Friday the Pentagon said it would revoke press credentials for any journalists who gather information, even unclassified information, that the Pentagon has not expressly authorized for release. Hegseth has been on a crusade to figure out who is leaking negative stories about him and defense issues under his direction, and he seems to have decided to try to stop their publication rather than the leaks themselves.
Although Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell called the changes “basic, common-sense guidelines to protect sensitive information as well as the protection of national security and the safety of all who work at the Pentagon,” Washington Post reporter Scott Nover noted that this position is a “sharp departure” from decades of practice. Until this year, the Pentagon held two televised question and answer sessions a week (and, in my observation, the journalists who covered the Pentagon were excellent).
The National Press Club also weighed in on Friday’s changes. “If the news about our military must first be approved by the government, then the public is no longer getting independent reporting,” said club president Mike Balsamo. “It is getting only what officials want them to see. That should alarm every American.”
On Friday the Pentagon referred to the White House questions about a strike on a third Venezuelan boat that Trump announced on social media. “On my orders, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Trump posted. Trump said three men, whom he called “narcoterrorists,” were killed. He said the military showed him proof that the men in the boats were smuggling drugs, but he has not shared that evidence with lawmakers or the public.
As Lara Seligman reported in the Wall Street Journal on September 17, military lawyers and officials from the Defense Department are concerned that decision makers in the Pentagon are ignoring their warnings that the administration’s strikes on the vessels Trump claims are bringing drugs to the U.S. are illegal.
David Ignatius of the Washington Post recalls that when he took office, Hegseth purged from the military the judge advocate generals, who are supposed to advise leaders on the rule of law and whether orders are legal. In February, calling the top lawyers in the Army, Navy, and Air Force “roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief,” he fired them. Earlier this month, he announced he was moving as many as 600 JAG officers to serve as immigration judges.
Also on Friday, Trump announced that companies employing skilled workers who hold temporary H-1B visas would have to pay a $100,000 fee for their entry into the U.S. beginning Sunday. This set off a mad scramble as workers outside the country on business trips, vacations, or family visits rushed to get back into the U.S. before the new rule took effect. Not until Saturday did the administration clarify the new rule does not affect those who already hold visas.
Friday was a busy day. Trump also told reporters in the Oval Office that he wanted the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, “out” after Siebert declined to prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully sued the Trump Organization for fraud, for allegedly committing mortgage fraud. Siebert also declined to prosecute former FBI director James Comey, who refused to kill the investigation into the relationship between members of the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives, for allegedly lying to Congress.
Siebert was Trump’s own pick for the job and is a well-regarded career prosecutor. As legal analyst Joyce White Vance noted in Civil Discourse, Siebert managed to win the support of both the Virginia Republican Party and the senators from Virginia, both of whom are Democrats. His refusal to prosecute indicates there was not enough evidence to convict a defendant; Vance notes that’s the standard a prosecutor must meet to seek an indictment.
On Friday night, Seibert resigned.
On Saturday morning, Trump posted on social media: “He didn’t quit, I fired him!” In the evening, he posted on social media a missive that appeared to be intended as a direct message (DM) to Attorney General Pam Bondi. It read: “Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially ‘same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.’... We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT.”
In other words, Trump wants to use the power of the government to punish those he considers his enemies. As Joyce White Vance puts it: “[L]et’s be clear about what Trump wants. He wants to turn us into a banana republic where the ability to prosecute people becomes a political tool in the hands of the president. That means he wants to exercise the ultimate power to put down any opposition to his rule.” She recalled the comment attributed to Lavrentiy Beria, head of the Soviet secret police under Stalin: “Show me the man and I’ll find the crime.”
A report from Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian of MSNBC yesterday showed what a politicized justice system looks like. They reported that FBI agents last year caught Tom Homan—now Trump’s “border czar”—on video accepting $50,000 in cash from agents posing as business executives after he promised he could help them win government contracts for border enforcement in a second Trump administration. The FBI had opened an investigation after someone told them Homan was soliciting payments in exchange for contracts under a future Trump administration.
After obtaining the evidence, the FBI and the Justice Department waited to see whether Homan would provide the aid he offered once he joined the new administration. But the case stalled as soon as Trump took office, and after FBI director Kash Patel recently asked for a status update on the case, Trump appointees officially closed the investigation.
The reporters say that when asked about it, the White House, the Justice Department, and the FBI all dismissed the investigation as politically motivated and baseless.
While Trump tries to silence his critics, Russia is taking advantage of U.S. inaction to test the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. On Friday, three Russian jets entered the airspace of Estonia. Italian fighters stationed in Estonia as part of NATO’s new Eastern Sentry operation responded and forced the Russian jets out. As Poland did last week after Russian drones and jets entered its airspace, Estonian officials requested consultations with the North Atlantic Council under Article 4 of NATO’s treaty.
High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, who hails from Estonia, called Russia’s incursions over Estonia an “extremely dangerous provocation.”
—
Notes:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg3xrrzdr0o
https://www.axios.com/2025/09/19/bls-cpi-report-inflation
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/09/21/trump-usda-hunger-report-food-insecurity/
https://www.wsj.com/economy/trump-administration-cancels-annual-hunger-survey-ca3d3793
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/10/trumps-big-beautiful-bill-cuts-snap-for-millions-of-families.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/business/media/trump-kimmel-cancel-culture-free-speech.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/us/politics/trump-media-news-free-speech.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/us/politics/trump-free-speech.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/09/19/pentagon-hegseth-press-unauthorized-material/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/09/19/hegseth-national-guard-military-lawyer-purge/
https://abcnews.go.com/International/3-killed-3rd-us-strike-alleged-drug-boat/story?id=125757014
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-raises-fee-h-1b-visas-100000-rcna232525
https://prospect.org/health/2025-09-17-more-americans-going-hungry-worst-still-to-come/
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/20/donald-trump-h1b-visas-overhaul-00574345
https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-attorney-plans-resign-amid-pressure-trump-after/story?id=125750006
Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance “Show me the man and I’ll find the crime”With apologies, this is a long post for any night, let alone a Saturday, but Trump’s abuse of the power of the prosecutor and efforts to directly control the work of the Justice Department make it essential. In a world that has become a constant barrage of horribles from this president, know that what I’m writing to you about tonight is exceptionally se…Read morea day ago · 2779 likes · 298 comments · Joyce Vancehttps://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/tom-homan-cash-contracts-trump-doj-investigation-rcna232568
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/19/europe/estonia-airspace-russia-jets-latam-intl
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