Editor's Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and alternative September 2026 news and views. See our News Reports section for coverage of earlier dates, months and years.

Excerpts below are from the authors' words except for subheads and occasional "Editor's notes"

Sept. 16

Special Report: Shocking Damage From Iran To U.S. Middle East Bases Revealed

Here (and below) are a shocking series of photos released by CBS News of damage earlier this year -- hidden until now from the American public -- done to US military bases in the Middle East.

• Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, Things Are Really Going To Sh-t For Trump Now, Simon Rosenberg, right, Sept. 16, 2026. “We’re standing there with our eyes closed getting punched in the face” -- Pete Hegseth must go, now. New photos obtained exclusively by CBS News reveal for the first time the widespread damage and destruction of buildings and vehicles at multiple U.S. positions across the Middle East, as a result of Iranian missile and drone attacks.

Top Headlines

President Trump is portrayed as master of Venezuela and its oil (illustration via The Hartmann Report based on Trump's own self-promotions).

• The Hartmann Report, Commentary, Trump Took Control of Another Country’s Oil Fortune. Where the Hell Is the Money? Thom Hartmann, right, Sept. 16, 2026. Trump boasts about billions from Venezuelan oil, but lawmakers are still fighting to learn where the money is, who controls it, and who’s getting paid…At any other time in American history, it would end the career of somebody like Scott Bessent, our limited-intelligence Treasury Secretary. It came out yesterday when Illinois Congressman Sean Casten was questioning him about the “billions of dollars” that Trump keeps claiming America is “getting” from selling Venezuelan oil.
• New York Times, The World Economy Is Becoming Wary of the U.S., Alan Rappeport, Sept. 16, 2026. America’s position of global economic stability is starting to look shakier as the Trump administration piles on debt and doubles down on sanctions.
• New York Times, Why Israel Wants More One-Ton Bombs From the U.S. and Why the Sale Is Controversial, David M. Halbfinger and John Ismay, Sept. 16, 2026. The Trump administration plans to deliver 60,000 of the powerful munitions at a time when opposition is growing in Washington to arms sales to Israel.
• New York Times, Fed Raises Interest Rates in Push for ‘Timelier’ Retreat in Inflation, Colby Smith, Sept. 16, 2026. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time since 2023, putting its new leader, Kevin Warsh, at odds with President Trump. “The plain fact is that inflation is too high,” Mr. Warsh said.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion:Bill Smokes the Hopium Pipe in the Land of Corn, Bill Kristol and  Andrew Egger, Sept. 16, 2026. Here we were thinking nothing interesting would happen in Congress for the rest of the year—and suddenly there was Rep. Thomas Massie yesterday, introducing articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

News Roundups

This is an image President Trump posted on portraying himself as celebrating (using the dance moves of a favorite song, "YMCA," by the disco group "The Village People")the destruction of Iran's Karg Island in the Strait of Hormuz on Aug. 30, 2026 -- a claim he reinforced with a statement shown below but which was refuted by other sources.

• The Parnas Perspective, GOP Sends Congress Home to Dodge Impeachment, McConnell Struggles to Vote, Trump Lashes Out as Fed Defies Him, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 16, 2026. House Republicans spent this week doing everything they could to avoid a fight they’re clearly terrified of losing. Rather than let a privileged impeachment resolution against Pete Hegseth come to a vote, GOP leadership canceled tomorrow’s session entirely and sent members home to campaign until after the midterms, a move that lines up neatly with a new poll showing Trump’s approval underwater on every major issue and a majority of voters now wanting someone to check him rather than back him.
• The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Big News: Record Number of Republicans Break and Urge Trump to End War, Canada Invited to EU, Trump Seeks to Rewrite History at Museums, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 16, 2026. Last night I had the honor of giving the keynote address at Webster University, standing in front of a room full of young people and talking about finding their power and their voice at a moment when so many forces are telling them to stay quiet. It’s a message I believe in more with every story I cover, because the same week I was telling students their voice matters, seven House Republicans found theirs and broke with Trump on Iran, Canada found its and started walking toward Europe instead of Washington, and museum curators found theirs and refused to bend to a White House trying to rewrite their work off the walls. Power and voice aren’t abstract concepts. They’re what happens when people who could stay quiet decide not to.

More On Middle East Wars 

• New York Times, Saudi Pipeline Attack Risks ‘Disastrous’ Loss of Millions of Barrels of Oil, Lisa Friedman, Sept. 16, 2026. Estimates vary on how long it could take before a crucial pipeline is repaired, but a prolonged shutdown could push oil prices to their highest levels in months.
• New York Times, House Directs Trump to Halt War With Iran or Secure Congress’s Approval, Robert Jimison, Sept. 15, 2026 (print ed.). It was the fifth time that a chamber of the Republican-controlled Congress has voted to rein in President Trump’s war powers as discontent with the conflict grows among voters.
• New York Times, Houthis and Saudis Trade Claims of Military Attacks as Conflict Escalates, Ismaeel Naar, Hari Raj, Sanjana Varghese and Aric Toler, Sept. 16, 2026. The Houthis, an Iran-backed militia in Yemen, said they had downed a Saudi jet, while Saudi authorities accused the group of firing a drone near Mecca. The Houthis denied doing so.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

• New York Times, Kennedy Center Closes Its Doors Despite a Judge’s Order, Julia Jacobs and Zach Montague, Sept. 16, 2026 (print ed.). The announcement came after President Trump said he would cancel a $257 million renovation of the venue if his name is not returned to the building.
• PoliticusUSA News and Comment, Trump Threw A Crazy Tantrum Over Not Being Allowed To Add His Name To Kennedy Center, Jason Easley, Sept. 16, 2026. Those on a call witnessed Donald Trump yelling and screaming after a judge blocked him from adding his name to the Kennedy Center.

More On U.S. Governance

• Roll Call, Surgeon general nominee won’t renounce RFK Jr. vaccine decisions, Ariel Cohen, Sept. 16, 2026. Surgeon general nominee Nicole Saphier, seeking to be confirmed as the nation’s top health educator and spokesperson, on Wednesday declined to fully distance herself from the Trump administration’s changes to the childhood vaccine schedule when pressed by a prominent Republican.
• Washington Monthly, Can the House Clerk Lead a Midterm Coup? Garrett Epps, Sept. 16, 2026. It’s happened before. Will the Constitution face such a near-death experience on January 3?
• Roll Call, One Republican rages against House’s early exit, Nina Heller, Sept. 16, 2026. In rare use of ‘personal privilege,’ Massie rebukes House cancellation of votes.
• The Daily with Sarah Jones, Mitch McConnell Is So Out Of It That His Handlers Had To Guide Him To Vote, Sarah Jones, right, and Jason Easley, Sept. 16, 2026. During the Agricultural Committee’s markup of the Farm Bill, Sen. Mitch McConnell almost voted with the Democrats until he was instructed by his handlers how to vote.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics 

William Kristol (Photo illustration by Sarah Rogers of The Bulwark with photos from Getty, Shutterstock and The Bulwark).

• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Field of Dreams? William Kristol, Sept. 16, 2026. I’m not, you’ll be shocked to hear, a Midwesterner. I grew up in New York City, went to school in Boston, taught in Philadelphia and then in Boston, and moved to Washington in 1985. That was supposed to be for a year. It’s now stretched to four decades. So I’ve spent my entire life among the huddled masses in teeming East Coast cities. And I’ve enjoyed it.
• The Contrarian, Opinion: Democratic Hand-wringing About the Party’s ‘Brand’ Is Misplaced, Jennifer Rubin, right,  Sept. 16, 2026. 48 Days to the Midterms. Corporate mercenary is a bipartisan profession. You’ve heard it over and over again from establishment, hand-wringing Democrats: ‘The Democratic brand stinks.’ What follows is often a rant about how the left is making life difficult for centrists to win, which is a tip the “analysis” about the party’s reputation might be tainted by sectarian self-interest. That is actually just wrong — and politically dumb.
• To the Contrary, Opinion: The World Reels. Trump Throws a Tantrum, Charlie Sykes, right, Sept. 16, 2026. Plus: The Texas GOP has a bigot problem. Who knew?

Artificial Intelligence Threats, Advocates

• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Nobody Wants Killer Robots. That May Not Be Enough, Andrew Egger, right, Sept. 16, 2026. Nobody Wants Killer Robots. That May Not Be Enough. A large, growing, and cross-partisan bunch agree: It’s sort of crazy that AI companies are charging toward a future of intelligent robots they’re not sure they can keep under control and which might have an outside chance of killing us all. What they don’t have, at least yet, is anything resembling a shared action plan to build a political coalition around.
• Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Corporate mercenary is a bipartisan profession, Judd Legum, right, and Rebecca Crosby, Sept. 16, 2026. The AI industry tapped Jay Carney to rebuild ties with Democrats. He spent years at Amazon fighting AI regulation.

More Global News 

• New York Times, E.U. Offers to Make Canada ‘Associate Member’ as U.S. Ties Weaken for Both, Jeanna Smialek and Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Sept. 16, 2026. Canada and the European Union have been confronting an increasingly challenging relationship with the United States under President Trump.
• The Guardian, Kosovo’s former president jailed for 25 years over war crimes, Peter Beaumont, Sept. 16, 2026. Hashim Thaçi faced multiple counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, torture and persecution. Photograph: Ferdi Limani/Getty ImagesWar crimesKosovo’s former president jailed for 25 years over war crimes. 

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice 

• Hope for America, Opinion: Kash Patel is not going to like this post, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Sept. 15, 2026. At exactly 9:30 this morning, the director of the FBI, Kash Patel, stood in front of photojournalists, members of Congress, and their staff, wearing a deep blue suit with a delicate pastel pink tie. With his right hand held up high and his left hand clenched tight at his thigh, he pledged “to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” Minutes later, he was defending his department’s decision to remove bestiality as an automatic disqualification for employment with the FBI, making it possible for applicants who engaged in repulsive acts with an animal to still be eligible to join the most powerful law enforcement agency in the country.

More On U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Religion

• Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. 15, 2026 [Trump's Mental Decline -- And Why Letters from an American], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Sept. 16, 2026. Seven years ago, on September 15, 2019, after about a six-week hiatus during the summer, I wrote a Facebook post that started. 

Special Report: Shocking Damage To U.S. Middle East Bases Revealed

Here (and below) are a shocking series of photos released by CBS News of damage -- long hidden from the American public -- done to US bases in the Middle East.

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, Things Are Really Going To Sh-t For Trump Now, Simon Rosenberg, right, Sept. 16, 2026. “We’re standing there with our eyes closed getting punched in the face” -- Pete Hegseth must go, now. 

I just had a great talk with Jen Rubin over at the Contrarian about our current moment. In getting ready for our talk, Jen and I discussed how we were both struggling to capture what we are witnessing now so we spent some time wordsmithing and kicking things around.

Here is some of what we came up with….

• Trump is unraveling
• The wheels are coming off
• Things are spiraling out of control
• Wow are things are going to sh-t now
• The rot is growing
• He’s melting!!!!!!!

I’ve been saying for months that things were going to get worse for Trump and the Rs as we got closer to the election but man I did not expect it to get as bad as it has……

I will be sharing our discussion via email later this afternoon. Let’s spend some time now diving into the great unraveling/rotting/imploding we are seeing……

Here are a shocking series of photos released by CBS News of damage done to US bases in the Middle East:

From the story:

New photos obtained exclusively by CBS News reveal for the first time the widespread damage and destruction of buildings and vehicles at multiple U.S. positions across the Middle East, as a result of Iranian missile and drone attacks.

The images were sent to CBS News by active service members on condition of anonymity because of rigid media restrictions within the military.

“This is major damage to our bases that hasn’t been communicated to the American public,” one deployed service member told CBS News. “We’re standing there with our eyes closed getting punched in the face.”

So the US has not only suffered an extraordinary and humiliating defeat in the Middle East - one Trump keeps lying about everyday - but oil prices have soared globally and gas/diesel prices in the US have soared too. Diesel may soon hit $7 a gallon in some states, just in time for the fall harvest.

And as bad as all that is it could get worse. From the NYT:

Let’s join the Massie Impeachment effort today. Call your Senators and House Rep and demand they Impeach and remove Hegseth without delay.

In an extraordinary, historic, and humiliating failure of Trump’s foreign policy Canada is in essence leaving its alliance with the U.S. and attempting to forge a new, formal alliance with Europe.

On Monday the Supreme Court nuked Trump’s ridiculous mail ballot ploy. Trump’s corrupt crypto bill died in the Senate yesterday. Last night, the MAGA-led House rebuked Trump on his failed Iran war. Today, the Senate is likely to rebuke him on his tariffs. Anti-data centers bills are gaining GOP support in both chambers as the corrupt, addled madman doubles down on unregulated AI, data centers, the whole thing……..

Economist Mike Zaccardi released this powerful graphic that captures the economic dynamic we’ve been discussing here - wages and salaries are down and health care costs are rising for everyone:

Top Stories

President Trump is portrayed as master of Venezuela and its oil (illustration via The Hartmann Report based on Trump's own self-promotions).

The Hartmann Report, Commentary, Trump Took Control of Another Country’s Oil Fortune. Where the Hell Is the Money? Thom Hartmann, right, Sept. 16, 2026. Trump boasts about billions from Venezuelan oil, but lawmakers are still fighting to learn where the money is, who controls it, and who’s getting paid…

At any other time in American history, it would end the career of somebody like Scott Bessent, our limited-intelligence Treasury Secretary. It came out yesterday when Illinois Congressman Sean Casten was questioning him about the “billions of dollars” that Trump keeps claiming America is “getting” from selling Venezuelan oil.

Bessent agreed with Trump, saying the oil and oil money we’ve seized from that country is “one of the largest assets to ever go on the U.S. balance sheet.” Billions and billions of dollars.

So Casten asked him a simple question: Can you tell us who controls that money and where it is? Can you confirm “whether or not those [funds] are flowing to U.S. persons?”

Bessent’s answer was a shocking single word: “No.” He ain’t talkin…

Did Trump take the oil and the money from the oil? Bessent refuses to say. Trump refuses to say. Nobody, in fact, in the Trump regime will tell us where that money is or who controls it or even who’s making the money accrued on its interest.

Here’s what we do know:

Three days after Trump kidnapped President Maduro and his wife, he went on his Nazi-infested social media site and wrote that Venezuela’s oil revenues would be controlled by him personally “as President of the United States.”

Three days after that, he signed an executive order declaring a “national emergency” involving that oil so no court or creditor could touch the money, screwing the bondholders and oil companies to which Venezuela owed roughly $150 billion.

Then Trump started selling the oil we’d seized from Venezuela. The first load, according to Reuters and Semafor, went to commodity trading companies Vitol and Trafigura for about $500 million, groups that the Washington Post said both carry histories of bribery schemes tied to oil sales.

And that money didn’t go to the Treasury account that was described in Trump’s own executive order. Instead, it went to a bank account in Qatar, right after that country’s leaders gave him a $400 million jet. A senior official explained to Semafor that Qatar was chosen as a “neutral location” where money “can flow freely” without risk of seizure.

Senator Elizabeth Warren was outraged, and told the world what most of us were thinking at the time:

“There is no basis in law for a president to set up an offshore account that he controls so that he can sell assets seized by the American military. That is precisely a move that a corrupt politician would be attracted to.”

In January, Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified to the Senate that $300 million had been sent to Venezuela to cover government payroll needs and another $200 million was “still sitting” in Doha. He referred to the entire operation as “novel” and “a short-term mechanism.”

But a month later, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on CNBC that the account had been closed and no more money would be flowing to or through Qatar…and nobody has identified where it went, or where it is, since then.

Where’s the money?

House Foreign Affairs committee ranking member Gregory Meeks called it “an offshore slush fund.” Bessent, questioned by Casten back in February refused to say which accounts the Treasury Department was even using, even though Trump’s executive order had named him/Treasury as the custodian for the funds. Casten and Senator Chris Van Hollen again demanded to know where the money was in March, and were again stonewalled. And then again this week.

Meanwhile, the pile of money is growing, particularly given the oil crisis provoked by Trump’s idiotic war against Iran. Using Bloomberg tanker-tracking data, the Council on Foreign Relations published an April estimate that:

“In the first four months of the United States exerting control over Venezuela’s oil exports, almost one hundred million barrels of oil worth an estimated $8 billion have flowed through a process marked by no transparency and minimal oversight.”

A State Department official testified to Congress back in April that around $3 billion had gone back to Venezuela, but Trump boasted in July that the US had sold more than $13 billion in stolen Venezuelan oil and suggested he could divert those funds to the American military or anywhere else he wanted.

Back in June, Marco Rubio tried to assuage Congress’ concerns by saying that accounting firm KPMG “audits every disbursement.” But when the libertarian Reason Magazine dug into it in August they found that neither the agreements nor the audits have been published.

And the so-called “Transparent Sovereignty” website the Venezuelan government set up to show the world its oil transactions only lists one single sale. Apparently, Trump is even telling them what he’s done with their oil, or where their money went.

And it’s not just oil. In March, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum flew a planeload of American mining executives to Caracas and came home bragging about having made off with over $100 million in gold. He set up a deal to sell it to reportedly bribe-friendly Trafigura with the proceeds going into, well, nobody knows where.

This is an old script that Trump appears to be following here, one many corrupt petrostates pioneered long ago.

For example, in 2014 Nigeria’s central bank governor, Lamido Sanusi, accidentally revealed to his Senate that roughly $20 billion in oil revenue had never made it into the national treasury. President Goodluck Jonathan’s response was to fire him and call the money a “phantom.” When PriceWaterhouseCoopers finally audited the books, it found at least $1.48 billion was simply gone.

I’ve done international relief work in some of the most corrupt nations in the world, been offered bribes and threatened for not taking them, and the pattern I’m seeing here is eerily familiar. They never announce the looting; they just stop letting you know where anything went or who ended up with it. Most people figure that it must be okay since it’s not being reported or discussed, and the conversation dies away.

So, here we are. Trump:

— announced that he’d taken the oil,— then that he’d taken the money from the sale of the oil and put it in a bank with the country that had given him a free 747 jet,— hired traders with bribery records,— refused to publish the contracts,— put his own hand-picked cabinet members in charge of both the disbursements and oversight, and— then sent Bessent to Congress to say, “No” when asked if we could please, please know where it’s all gone.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress seem to have developed a sudden case of lockjaw.

Congressmen Casten and Joaquin Castro have introduced into the House the Venezuela Oil Proceeds Transparency Act to force the GAO to audit the Qatar account and whatever’s followed it. Republicans refuse to let it out of committee, and Mike Johnson won’t give it a chance on the floor.

This is not how democracies are supposed to work, a message we should all convey to our elected representatives at 202-224-3121.

Pass it along.

New York Times, The World Economy Is Becoming Wary of the U.S., Alan Rappeport, Sept. 16, 2026. America’s position of global economic stability is starting to look shakier as the Trump administration piles on debt and doubles down on sanctions.

Global investors are balking at U.S. bonds. Talk of the dollar’s dwindling power is getting louder. Foreign governments are hauling their gold out of American vaults.

Almost two years into President Trump’s second term, the world economy is increasingly looking for ways to distance itself from America. Concerns about a $40 trillion debt burden, the excessive use of sanctions to solve foreign policy problems and Mr. Trump’s penchant for pushing the limits of the rule of law are raising questions about the appeal of the United States as a haven for global investment.

Despite pledges by foreign companies and nations to invest in the United States — in many cases to curry favor with the White House — capital is starting to seek alternative destinations.

“Geopolitical factors and U.S. weaponization of the dollar through financial sanctions are causing central banks and other official investors to attempt to diversify away from dollar assets,” said Eswar Prasad, the former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China division.

The United States is not yet an investment pariah. Private investors are still pouring money into American financial markets and stocks, artificial intelligence infrastructure is booming and no rival currency is poised to topple the dollar imminently.

In testimony before Congress on Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that he remained confident in the credibility of the U.S. financial system, arguing that bond auctions continue to operate successfully and that the dollar is still thriving as measured by its share of global transactions.

“The U.S. is in fact the leader, and the leader does not fear competition,” Mr. Bessent said. “Competition makes us better.”

But cracks in America’s economic dominance are starting to show.

The most glaring example has been in the bond market. Yields have been soaring as investors nervous about the mounting national debt demand a higher rate of return for buying Treasury bonds. This week, the yield on the 10-year Treasury topped 5 percent, reaching its highest level since 2007.

A decision to raise rates on Wednesday could help to alleviate concerns about the Fed’s grip on elevated inflation, fears that have injected more jitters into bond markets.

The ominous bond threshold was crossed a week after the Treasury Department purchased $5.2 billion of its own debt maturing in the next 10 to 20 years, part of a plan to inject demand into the Treasury market to try to push prices higher and yields lower. Mr. Bessent said investors were failing to understand the underlying strength of the economy and dared them to bet against him.

“It’s my dream,” Mr. Bessent said last week at Southern Methodist University. “I have asymmetric information. I am the house now.”

With the United States’ long-term fiscal situation looking shaky, some countries are starting to wonder if America is a wise investment. This month, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the largest in the world, said it planned to reduce its holdings of U.S. Treasuries as it looks elsewhere for stronger returns.

And then there is the future of the dollar.

Nearly 90 percent of global foreign exchange transactions are in dollars. But the share of dollars being held in central bank reserves has been steadily declining over the past decade, falling to 56 percent at the end of 2025 from 64 percent in 2015.

New York Times, Why Israel Wants More One-Ton Bombs From the U.S. and Why the Sale Is Controversial, David M. Halbfinger and John Ismay, Sept. 16, 2026. The Trump administration plans to deliver 60,000 of the powerful munitions at a time when opposition is growing in Washington to arms sales to Israel.

The Trump administration’s decision to send 60,000 powerful one-ton bombs to Israel as part of a $2.8 billion deal — one of the largest arms agreements ever — will allow Israel to replenish its supply of a munition it considers vital.

The weapons became the focus of great tension between the Biden administration and Israel after one-ton bombs were widely used in densely populated areas of Gaza where Israel had steered civilians for their safety.

With opposition to military assistance to Israel growing in Washington, such a huge sale of heavy bombs, paid for by the U.S. government, could be an effort by the administration to stock up the Israeli arsenal before political shifts in the United States make such shipments impossible, analysts said. It is certain to set off an outcry in Congress.

The Israeli military pivoted toward the use of the one-ton bombs after the Hamas-led attack against southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, drastically changing its shopping list, U.S. government data show. In 2025, Israel bought nearly eight times as many one-ton bombs from the United States as it did from 2012 to 2015.

Israel’s emphasis on buying and using some of the largest bombs currently made runs counter to that of most other modern militaries, which have been making their aerial munitions smaller and even more accurate in the hopes of limiting civilian casualties during combat.

Israel has used a vast amount of the one-ton bombs in large part to target the tunnel network Hamas developed in Gaza for its fighters, weapons and command centers. Israeli officials have said that Hamas fighters intentionally embed themselves among civilians, forcing the Israeli military to risk killing civilians.

A New York Times investigation in December 2023 found that the Israeli military routinely used one-ton bombs in the weeks immediately after the 2023 attack and identified more than 200 instances of Israel dropping the powerful munitions, including in densely populated areas.

Here is a closer look at the transaction and its significance.What bombs are being sold?

According to a U.S. official, Israel will receive 20,000 Mk-84 bombs and another 20,000 BLU-117 bombs. The two types of one-ton bombs are nearly identical.

The bombs are highly versatile, experts say. They can be set to detonate above ground, sending shrapnel 1,000 feet in any direction, or, with delayed fuses, set to explode underground. They can be fitted with kits that allow them to hit targets with precision and from a long range. The craters from one-ton bombs can be up to 50 feet deep.

In addition to the 40,000 Mk-84 and BLU-117 bombs, Israel will also receive 20,000 I-2000 Penetrator warheads, which explode on delay after busting through a surface like soil, rock or concrete, the U.S. official said. They also weigh a ton each, but because their casings are thicker and far heavier, they carry far less explosive power than the Mk-84 and BLU-117 bombs.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

According to the U.S. Army office that oversees bomb procurement, “ideal targets” for one-ton bombs “are buildings, rail yards and lines of communication.” The 250- and 500-pound bombs more typically used by the U.S. military are designed for “soft, fragment sensitive targets” like troops, fuel storage tanks and radars, the office said.

The $2.8 billion purchase is being funded from the Pentagon’s budget for foreign military sales. That means the money effectively flows from U.S. taxpayers to Israel’s military and then to U.S. munitions manufacturers.

New York Times, Live Updates: Fed Raises Interest Rates in Push for ‘Timelier’ Retreat in Inflation, Colby Smith, Sept. 16, 2026. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates for the first time since 2023, putting its new leader, Kevin Warsh, at odds with President Trump. “The plain fact is that inflation is too high,” Mr. Warsh said.

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday, the first major step by Kevin M. Warsh, the central bank’s chairman, to combat elevated inflation. The decision, which was supported by all 12 members of the Federal Open Market Committee, marked the first rate rise from the Fed since July 2023.

The increase lifts the Fed’s benchmark rate — which serves as the basis for lenders to set rates for all kinds of debt — to a new range of 3.75 to 4 percent. Mr. Warsh, who was appointed earlier this year by President Trump, said the central bank had concluded that prices have been rising too quickly. “The plain fact is that inflation is too high and has been for too long,” he said.

The Fed’s decision, while expected, came as Mr. Trump continued to press for the central bank to lower rates. He said over the weekend that the United States “should be paying the lowest interest rate in the world, and earlier this month went as far as threatening to cut off a broad swath of trade if the Fed did not lower rates.

In his post-announcement remarks, Mr. Warsh avoided responding to a question about Mr. Trump’s desires. “I’ve got nothing for you,” he said.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion:Bill Smokes the Hopium Pipe in the Land of Corn, Bill Kristol and  Andrew Egger, Sept. 16, 2026. Here we were thinking nothing interesting would happen in Congress for the rest of the year—and suddenly there was Rep. Thomas Massie yesterday, introducing articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The eight articles charge Hegseth—among other things—with waging unlawful wars in Iran and Yemen despite the disapproval of Congress, carrying out extrajudicial killings against suspected drug traffickers, and ignoring laws that minimize civilian casualties. Which, yeah—hard to argue against it!

Several Democrats have introduced impeachment articles against Hegseth before, but Massie’s effort goes further: Because he introduced them as a privileged resolution from the floor, the House will have to vote on them tomorrow unless House Speaker Mike Johnson calls a recess early. Happy Wednesday.

News Roundups

This is an image President Trump posted on portraying himself as celebrating (using the dance moves of a favorite song, "YMCA," by the disco group "The Village People")the destruction of Iran's Karg Island in the Strait of Hormuz on Aug. 30, 2026 -- a claim he reinforced with a statement shown below but which was refuted by other sources.

The Parnas Perspective, GOP Sends Congress Home to Dodge Impeachment, McConnell Struggles to Vote, Trump Lashes Out as Fed Defies Him, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 16, 2026. House Republicans spent this week doing everything they could to avoid a fight they’re clearly terrified of losing.

Rather than let a privileged impeachment resolution against Pete Hegseth come to a vote, GOP leadership canceled tomorrow’s session entirely and sent members home to campaign until after the midterms, a move that lines up neatly with a new poll showing Trump’s approval underwater on every major issue and a majority of voters now wanting someone to check him rather than back him.

Meanwhile the Iran war keeps generating grim numbers of its own, from a U.S. official’s warning of a looming military “breakdown” to reporting that Russian satellites may have helped Iran target American bases. Add a hacked Flock camera that reveals exactly how much these surveillance systems actually track, a Trump-Beatty shouting match over the Kennedy Center, and a Fed rate hike delivered squarely against the White House’s wishes, and you’ve got a week that makes the case for itself.

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Here’s everything you need to know.

• New video from the Senate today shows Mitch McConnell struggling to vote:
• Mike Johnson Sends House Home Until After Election Fearing Impeachment:

Republicans are terrified, and it showed this week when House leaders punted the Hegseth impeachment vote until after the midterms rather than force vulnerable members to take a stance. GOP leadership canceled Thursday’s votes and sent the House home until November 9th, effectively delaying Rep. Thomas Massie’s privileged impeachment resolution against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth even though it legally required action within two legislative days. Leaders insisted the schedule change had nothing to do with Massie, but Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed the effort as “a publicity stunt” that will “immediately be tabled,” while simultaneously avoiding the vote entirely before Election Day. Johnson instead urged members to go home and campaign on the party’s record, touting tax cuts and a “126-year low” violent crime rate rather than defend Hegseth’s handling of the Iran war on the record.

That fear is backed up by hard numbers: a new New York Times/Siena poll finds Democrats with a nearly 9-point edge heading into the midterms as Trump’s approval craters to 38 percent. A majority of voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of every major issue polled, including the economy, immigration, tariffs and especially the cost of living, where disapproval hit 71 percent, a 13-point jump since January. Voters trust Democrats more than Republicans on nearly everything, including issues that powered Trump’s 2024 win, with a 7-point edge on the economy and immigration alike, and even 29 percent of Republicans now say the economy is better than a year ago, down from 72 percent in January. The erosion is sharpest among young voters, at just 18 percent approval, and lower-wage earners, who favor Democrats 63 to 31 percent, a group Trump narrowly won in 2024.

The poll also found something more dangerous for the GOP than any single issue: voters increasingly want someone to check Trump, not support him. Forty nine percent of all voters said they’d rather back a candidate who provides a check on Trump, compared to just 26 percent who want one who supports him, and for the first time in his second term a majority, 52 percent, said they “strongly” disapprove of him. The war in Iran is compounding the damage, with more than three-quarters of independents and nearly a quarter of Trump’s own 2024 voters disapproving of his handling of it as gas prices climb above $4 a gallon. Voters also see Republicans as more extreme and more corrupt than Democrats, even as Democrats carry their own baggage, with half of voters calling the party too far left. Still, independent voters like 21-year-old Elizabeth Gloden, who backed Trump in 2024, are now switching sides, saying simply, “I’m not really seeing the change I wanted to see.”

JD Vance’s closing pitch to voters ahead of the midterms is simply asking them for patience: “Give us another chance. Give us another couple of years.”

Iran War:

A U.S. official told The Intercept the Iran war could eventually cause a “breakdown” in the military’s ability to sustain the fight, citing damaged bases and warships, depleted defensive munitions, casualties, maintenance problems and increasingly difficult logistics. With regional facilities disrupted, Navy ships now have to move supplies more than 2,000 miles from Diego Garcia, producing sea transits and logistics cycles of 14 to 18 days that one official called “difficult and ultimately unsustainable.” A second official cited a “complete lack of planning” for the conflict. A Pentagon inspector general report separately put the war’s cost at $33.4 billion through June 30, including $22.3 billion in munitions, and found Iranian attacks damaged or destroyed hundreds of structures across U.S. installations in eight countries. CNN has separately estimated the U.S. has burned through nearly 80% of its prewar THAAD interceptor stock and roughly half its Patriot supply, though Hegseth disputes those figures.

The House voted 220-204 for the third time to try to limit Trump’s war powers on Iran, with seven Republicans defecting, while the White House closed ranks around Hegseth after Rep. Thomas Massie filed impeachment articles against him. Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters Hegseth is “doing a phenomenal job” and disputed even calling the conflict a “war,” arguing Congress already found no wrongdoing by Trump or Hegseth. House Speaker Mike Johnson separately declared the Iran nuclear issue “taken care of” and pivoted to blaming Democrats and Biden for gas prices, which have climbed to $4.37 a gallon, about 30 cents higher than a month ago. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the war has cost around $38 billion since February and could run $2-3 billion more per month for as long as it continues, driven mostly by munitions replacement.

Saudi Arabia accused Iran-backed Houthi rebels of attempting to target Mecca with a drone, a claim the Houthis dismissed as a “worn-out lie,” even as the Guardian reported U.S. officials met Houthi leaders in Oman over the weekend and decided not to help Saudi Arabia repel the group’s advance in Yemen. The Houthis reportedly assured Washington they have no intention of attacking U.S. or international shipping in the Red Sea, and will only target Saudi-linked vessels over Riyadh’s blockade of Yemen, leading Trump to condemn the Houthi advance rhetorically while declining military support for Saudi Arabia. The Houthis claimed in return that they shot down a Saudi F-15 fighter jet and struck an Aramco facility in Yanbu, though no supporting evidence was provided. A former deputy U.S. ambassador to Yemen said a “tacit understanding” now exists between Washington and the Houthis, leaving Saudi Arabia pushing for either a diplomatic deal or a regional coalition with Pakistan, Turkey and others to push the Houthis back.

CNN reported that Russian spy satellites may have helped Iran target U.S. bases during its attacks, including the March strike on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia that injured 12 U.S. soldiers and destroyed a Boeing E-3 Sentry surveillance aircraft. Tracking data reportedly showed the satellites, which include imaging, radio-signal detection and radar capabilities, passing over targeted U.S. sites just before Iranian strikes hit them, with analysts saying the precision would have been implausible without that intelligence. Saudi security expert Dr. Nawaf Obaid called it “Russian payback” for U.S. support of Ukraine’s strikes on Russian targets, saying it has reshaped “the security architecture of the region going forward.” The reporting adds a new dimension to a war that has already pushed oil prices above $100 a barrel and kept the Strait of Hormuz and a key Saudi east-west pipeline disrupted for months.

Flock Cameras Hacked:

A hacker collective called stegan0gram physically tore down a Flock Safety license plate camera and copied its stored data, sharing the files with 404 Media and WIRED to expose how the surveillance system actually works. The hackers recovered an encryption key from an unencrypted “media” partition on the device’s Android OS, unlocking videos and stills that Flock had described as protected by on-device encryption. Analysis of the recovered logs showed the camera photographed roughly 50,200 vehicles and generated about 1.6 million images over 21 days of activity, averaging around 3,300 vehicles a day and peaking at 4,454. One hacker explained the motive bluntly: “Why just destroy them when we can reverse engineer them and find the secrets of those spying on us?” The breach follows a wave of vandalism and arrests targeting Flock cameras nationwide, with some towns dropping the cameras entirely and one police department building a 3D-printed decoy camera to bait vandals.

The analysis revealed the cameras explicitly detect people, not just vehicles, plates, and bicycles, a capability WIRED says is typically overlooked in public debate about the technology. When reporters extracted the camera’s own detection models and ran them against its recovered footage, the software readily identified people, including a reporter’s selfie and, across more than 27,000 short video clips, 11 clips of motorcyclists. The plate-reading software also proved sloppy in practice, mistaking bumper stickers, dealership frames, and in one case an American flag patch on a motorcycle saddlebag for license plates. Flock insists its cameras don’t perform facial recognition, and investigators found no evidence of active face-recognition beyond Android’s unused default capabilities. The findings build on prior WIRED and 404 Media reporting showing Flock’s national network lets more than 2,000 agencies, including ICE, search local camera data, in some cases bypassing state bans on sharing it.

Flock called the removal and tampering illegal, while a security researcher and a former police officer offered competing takes on the vigilante approach. A Flock spokesperson said the company received no vulnerability report through its official disclosure process and couldn’t assess the hackers’ claims with the “limited information” provided, urging them to report findings properly instead. Former Pawtucket, Rhode Island officer and Flock critic Noel Pichardo said he understood the hackers’ frustration but warned that “vigilantism will only crystallize the police and the state at large in their belief that this tool is necessary.” The recovered logs also captured mundane technical chaos inside the device, including more than 27,000 “no space left on device” storage errors and a recurring health-check log message reading “Who’s a good boy?!” that appeared over 12,000 times. One hacker acknowledged the legal risk, saying, “Being investigated is a legit concern and something we are trying to avoid... we are careful and try to keep a low profile.”

Other News:

Rep. Joyce Beatty said Trump threw a “tantrum” and called her “dumb” and “incompetent” during a virtual Kennedy Center board meeting Tuesday, immediately after a federal judge blocked his name from being added to the building for a second time. Beatty, an ex-officio board member who brought the lawsuit behind the ruling, called it “the most unprofessional thing that I’ve ever witnessed,” saying Trump accused her of being an obstructionist before she fired back, “I know you’re incompetent.” She said Trump also invoked safety concerns, warning he’d hold her responsible if something fell from the ceiling and killed someone, to which she replied that people were already dying from the wars and starvation his policies were causing. The board, which Trump hand-picked, voted the same day to close the center indefinitely, citing financial strain and safety issues, a move Beatty and other critics call holding the center hostage until it bears Trump’s name. A White House spokesman countered that Trump “stepped up to save” a center that had “rotted” under Democratic oversight for decades.

Fed Raises Rates for First Time in Three Years Despite Trump Pressure. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by a quarter point on Wednesday, the first such hike in three years, after Chairman Kevin Warsh acted despite discouraging inflation and consumer price data. The move came just four months after Trump appointed Warsh and directly against the White House’s wishes, with Trump having recently threatened to curtail trade with U.S. partners unless the Fed cut rates instead. A Duke University survey found near-unanimous agreement among former Fed officials that a hike was necessary, but Warsh faced a genuine bind: holding rates steady risked rattling bond markets and investor confidence, while raising them seven weeks before the midterms risked political backlash from Trump. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett had signaled the administration’s preference days earlier, arguing an “independent Fed” should “stay out of the way of elections.” How Trump responds remains unclear, though further trade restrictions in retaliation would risk pushing consumer prices even higher.

The Justice Department charged five people, allegedly working for Russian intelligence, in a scheme to surveil, recruit and carry out targeted killings, including a plot to murder a Russian dissident believed to be in the Washington, D.C. area. An indictment unsealed Tuesday names Russian national Yuri Khrameev, his son Kirill Khrameev, Cuban nationals Oemis Romagoza Durruthy and Yaidel Delgado Suarez, and Venezuelan national Angel Eduardo Castro, all still at large, with three of the five also facing murder-for-hire conspiracy charges. Attorney General Todd Blanche said the network recruited people inside the U.S. to conduct surveillance on Russian dissidents, including one living stateside and another in Lithuania, and prosecutors say one recruit was allegedly offered $40,000 to “eliminate” or “disappear” a person in the U.S., while another was offered $25,000 last year to kill someone in Lithuania. The Kremlin brushed off the charges, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying “until we hear and see any credible evidence and arguments based on tangible facts, we do not believe it is necessary to comment,” consistent with Russia’s past denials of running such operations on foreign soil. The case adds to a growing list of alleged Russian assassination and intimidation plots targeting dissidents abroad, underscoring how far that campaign may be reaching into U.S. soil itself. This is from the release announcing the indictment:

House Oversight Chair James Comer has introduced the Survivor’s Voice Protection Act, his committee’s first piece of legislation to come directly out of its ongoing Epstein investigation. The bill would void and make unenforceable any NDA that prevents someone, including sexual abuse survivors, from disclosing information about that abuse, and it would apply retroactively to agreements signed before the law takes effect. It also creates a fiduciary duty to report grooming of a minor to law enforcement, defining grooming broadly to include behavior meant to build trust or normalize sexual conduct with a minor even if no in-person meeting occurred. Comer said the investigation showed how “powerful men weaponized nondisclosure agreements to silence survivors,” and the committee has now conducted 19 depositions and interviews tied to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. The rollout comes a day after Comer’s panel voted to recommend holding billionaire Leon Black in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over his Epstein-related NDAs.

WSJ Exposes Britt’s Private Tariff Exemption Requests After Public Praise. The Wall Street Journal editorial board excoriated Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) this week for publicly defending Trump’s tariffs while privately seeking exemptions for Alabama companies. The WSJ obtained a FOIA email showing Britt’s legislative director asked the U.S. Trade Representative’s office for exemptions for five specific Alabama manufacturers roughly ten months before Britt publicly praised the tariffs and mocked the Supreme Court for overturning them. The board argued her private objections were actually well-founded, writing that they show how “blunderbuss trade wars are an economic mistake” and how tariff carve-outs let big companies with Senate access get relief while “the little guy being walloped” has no one to plead his case. Britt’s office defended her, saying she also raised the same concerns publicly in Senate hearings and got Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to look into at least one request, while reaffirming her support for Trump’s broader trade agenda. The WSJ noted this “tariffs for thee, exemptions for me” pattern isn’t unique to Britt, pointing to Sen. Josh Hawley and others as prior examples.

U.S. Fast-Tracked Deportation of Ecuadorean Politician Despite Torture Findings. José Serrano, a former Ecuadorean interior minister and critic of President Daniel Noboa, was deported to Ecuador on August 28 in a stunningly rapid reversal by Trump-appointed immigration appeals judges, who overturned a ruling that had found he was likely to be tortured if sent home. A U.S. immigration judge had granted Serrano protection from removal in May, citing evidence that Ecuador tortures political prisoners, but three appellate judges appointed under Trump reviewed and reversed that decision within a single day, an unprecedented turnaround former appellate judges say normally takes weeks. Serrano’s lawyers say he has since been held in a maximum-security prison modeled on El Salvador’s CECOT, and that guards photographed him naked and threatened to send the footage to Noboa, a close Trump ally in anti-drug-trafficking efforts in Latin America. Noboa, who has long sought Serrano’s return over a 2023 presidential candidate assassination Serrano is accused of orchestrating, took credit for the deportation on social media within minutes of it happening and warned his own political rival, “You’re next.” The Times ties the case to a broader pattern of the Trump administration reshaping immigration courts, which fall under the Justice Department rather than the judiciary, to serve political ends, including a similar prior case involving a Colombian activist deported after opposing a Trump-endorsed foreign leader.

Paramount Threatens to Leave California Amid Antitrust Fight Over WBD Merger. Paramount has told Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Attorney General Rob Bonta that the company is “deadly serious” about leaving California entirely, according to sources, after months of leaks suggesting CEO David Ellison would relocate if blue-state attorneys general didn’t drop their antitrust suit against Paramount’s $111 billion merger with Warner Bros Discovery. The move comes as that merger remains tied up in a lawsuit filed by a dozen states and the Writers Guild of America, with a trial not set to start until March 2027 despite settlement talks scheduled for next month and a hearing next week over Paramount’s request for a $1.88 billion bond to cover anticipated losses. Those losses reportedly stem largely from a $7 million-per-day fee built into the WBD contract that kicks in October 1, a deadline Paramount’s exit threat arrives just ahead of. Mayor Bass’s office said she remains focused on protecting entertainment jobs in Los Angeles, while neither Paramount nor Bonta’s office commented on how advanced the relocation plans actually are. Any move would carry mostly symbolic and economic weight rather than legal impact on the antitrust case itself, though it adds pressure alongside the Trump administration’s DOJ backing Paramount and a possible Supreme Court intervention still looming over the deal.

Former President Barack Obama announced that the family’s dog Sunny has died at age 13. The Portuguese water dog joined the Obama family in 2013 during their second term in the White House, and Obama said “all of us, including our first dog, Bo, immediately fell in love.” He remembered Sunny as athletic and protective of Bo despite disliking water, an unusual trait for the breed, and said “we will miss her terribly, and imagine she’s with her big brother now, making sure he’s okay.”

A new Government Accountability Office report found the Trump administration spent an estimated $9.5 billion last year on paid administrative leave for federal workers amid DOGE-driven staff cuts. Use of such leave jumped 435 percent from 2023 to 2025, with salary costs rising sixfold, and about $6.7 billion of that came from a “deferred resignation program” that nearly 140,000 federal employees opted into after Elon Musk’s DOGE effort launched mass firings and dissolved USAID. The GAO cautioned its figures were estimates, noting the Office of Personnel Management “does not know the actual costs of the paid administrative leave used for workforce reduction efforts” because it isn’t tracked separately from general leave. The federal workforce has shrunk by more than 271,000 employees since Trump took office, reversing a decade of year-over-year growth, and the White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Charlie Kirk’s family accused Utah Valley University and state officials of a string of “reckless decisions” that left him exposed to the rooftop sniper who killed him, in a wrongful death notice that precedes a possible lawsuit. Attorneys said the university failed to conduct an adequate risk assessment, establish a secure perimeter, or use standard safeguards like drone rooftop monitoring, bag checks or metal detectors, despite Kirk being Trump’s “close friend and political ally” and a rooftop shooter having targeted Trump the year before. The notice names the university, its then-president, its police chief and the state of Utah, and the school said it would respond “consistent with our established processes.” Tyler Robinson, who turned himself in a day after the shooting and told his partner he “had enough of his hatred,” is charged with aggravated murder and eligible for the death penalty, with prosecutors citing surveillance footage, DNA evidence and a note reading “I had the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk, and I took it.”

A Golden Retriever named Nash in San Diego responded to a home intruder not by barking, but by bringing the man his toy and trying to get him to play. Nash’s owner, who wasn’t home at the time, watched the whole encounter unfold live on his phone. He said the family had expected Nash to bark and scare off intruders, joking that “Nash is not the greatest guard dog... he did the exact opposite.”

A tiny English village voted overwhelmingly, 285 to 26, to symbolically secede from the United Kingdom in protest of a plan to house up to 1,200 migrants at a nearby military base. Piddington’s roughly 350 residents backed the non-binding referendum after raising fears about safety, crime and property values near the former Bicester base, with parish chairman Tim McNally declaring the area “the Principality of Piddington” and sending “an absolute message... to the world.” Some supporters compared the vote to World War II’s Battle of Britain, while critics said the campaign stoked anti-immigrant sentiment amid a broader wave of U.K. protests over asylum housing. Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he understood “the strength of feeling” but stressed the government needs “a fair plan” spreading the burden nationally, as refugee advocates warned that remote military-style housing “undermined social cohesion” for people who had already fled war and violence.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey is proposing new investments in maternal and postpartum health programs following renewed public discussion sparked by the high-profile Lindsay Clancy trial. Healey announced the proposal Tuesday alongside mothers who shared personal stories about the mental health challenges they faced during pregnancy and after giving birth, saying the goal is to improve access to mental health care and support services for families statewide. She said mothers experiencing mental health struggles should know they are “seen, heard and supported.” Kerly Germain-Carmichael, one of the mothers who spoke at the event, described experiencing anxiety and depression after giving birth to her son in 2022 and said finding support during that period was critical. The article is paywalled beyond this point, so further specifics on the actual funding or program details aren’t available from this source.

Nicole Saphier testifies before senators on Wednesday. (Screenshot/Courtesy Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee)

Roll Call, Surgeon general nominee won’t renounce RFK Jr. vaccine decisions, Ariel Cohen, Sept. 16, 2026. Surgeon general nominee Nicole Saphier, seeking to be confirmed as the nation’s top health educator and spokesperson, on Wednesday declined to fully distance herself from the Trump administration’s changes to the childhood vaccine schedule when pressed by a prominent Republican.

During a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, outgoing Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-La., attempted to get Saphier on the record that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine does not cause autism and that a universal recommendation for a hepatitis B vaccine at birth should remain in place.

Saphier would not openly refute the stances of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or President Donald Trump, both of whom have suggested a link between autism and the MMR vaccine.

The discussion occurred at the outset of a hearing to consider Saphier’s nomination. Also appearing were Chris Klomp, who’s nominated to be deputy HHS secretary, and Timothy Westlake, up for assistant HHS secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use.

Saphier attracted the heaviest questioning from senators, many of whom grilled her on whether she would knowingly spread misinformation if Kennedy, right, asked her to do so.

“Well, humbly, I don’t know what causes autism, but I have not seen repeatable evidence that will suggest it causes autism,” Saphier said when Cassidy asked her if she believed that the MMR vaccine is a cause.

Cassidy interrupted Saphier to say her answer gave “too much wiggle room” and asked her to be more specific because nominees can “use wiggle room to do things that are quite contrary.”

Saphier told him that she did not believe the vaccines to be lethal, as Trump once suggested, and would recommend the shots, but she appreciated that some parents are skeptical of the vaccine and the Trump administration is trying to appeal to these people.

“I’m not sure that you reach people who are vaccine-hesitant by feeding into their own truths,” Cassidy responded. “The way to dispel confusion is not to sell more confusion.”

As for the hepatitis B vaccine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine panel in December voted to drop the universal recommendation that babies receive it at birth after Kennedy cast doubt on the validity of the shot. Cassidy, a longtime liver doctor who treated hepatitis, is a strong proponent.

A judge temporarily blocked the panel’s recommendations in March, including the change to the hepatitis B vaccine.

“I support universal hepatitis B vaccination,” Saphier told Cassidy. But she would not go as far as saying that Kennedy should keep the recommendation in place, much to Cassidy’s chagrin.

When Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, asked Saphier about flavored vaping, the nominee again had to contend with the Trump administration versus conventional medical wisdom.

“As a physician, I don’t want anyone smoking anything. The lungs are very sensitive and they don’t regenerate,” Saphier said. She added that “if flavor [vapes] can entice an adult to quit smoking cigarettes, then maybe it’s something to be considered.”

In May, the Food and Drug Administration authorized four new fruit- and menthol-flavored vapes. Former FDA Commissioner Marty Makary deeply disagreed with the decision and resigned from his post soon after it was made. Rich Danker, a top HHS spokesperson, also resigned in protest of the vaping decision.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said he was very disappointed in the administration’s shuttering of the CDC’s smoking cessation office. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, added that Saphier’s past work as a social media influencer could help make her an effective anti-smoking spokesperson for the nation.

“I am as anti-smoking, anti-tobacco as you could imagine anyone to be,” Saphier responded.Measles

Saphier’s appearance resembled Klomp’s at the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday, where he toed the line between portraying himself as a trustworthy, policy-focused nominee while declining to fully distance himself from Kennedy’s vaccine policies.

In questioning Klomp on Wednesday, Cassidy pointed to four measles deaths in Pennsylvania. The CDC has yet to update its website to reflect these deaths, as Kennedy and Pennsylvania officials have feuded over whether they were a result of measles or other causes.

Cassidy said there’s a perception that the agency is “trying to dance around the sensitivities of [Kennedy] as opposed to being straightforward with the American people.”

Klomp said if confirmed, HHS would “address the operational shortcomings and create a clear definition of measles-related death.”

Washington Monthly, Can the House Clerk Lead a Midterm Coup? Garrett Epps, law professor, Sept. 16, 2026. It’s happened before. Will the Constitution face such a near-death experience on January 3?

How many House Republicans would be willing to follow Donald Trump and Mike Johnson and violate their constitutional oaths? How many Republicans might seize the opportunity to rid themselves of both figures, who are, behind closed doors, not terribly popular?

If the House Republicans try to steal the majority, will Democrats turn to the Supreme Court? The Court’s majority has been inconstant—having granted Trump criminal immunity, it has also blocked some of his most outrageous power grabs. If the Luttig scenario plays out, the Court’s majority will be forced to choose once and for all.

* * * * * * * * *But what was not generally known at the time was that the plot would have been foiled—even, if necessary, by bayonets. Lincoln had dispatched troops, who were concealed inside the Capitol, ready to occupy the House chamber. As president, he had sent young soldiers into battle, where many were slaughtered for the Union cause; he seemed to be sanguine at the prospect of battle reaching the Capitol itself. He told one of his allies, “If Mr. Etheridge undertakes revolutionary proceedings, let him be carried out on a chip, and let our men organize the House.”So passed the first crisis.

* * * * * * * * *I came across the story some years ago, while researching my book, Democracy Reborn, a narrative of the framing of the Fourteenth Amendment. That framing took place in the late winter of 1865 and the spring of 1866, and it was the endpoint of a series of hair’s-breadth escapes for democracy from the forces of the Slave Power and its northern allies, who actively sought to subvert the Union war effort and deliver a post-Appomattox victory to pro-slavery forces.

The first episode occurred in December 1863, after the Union was defeated at the polls nearly as badly as at First and Second Bull Run. On election day in 1862, the Civil War effort was going badly, and the fall midterms produced disaster for the healthy Republican majority elected to the House in 1860. Capitalizing on public disgust, the Democrats gained a whopping 27 seats, bringing them within 15 seats of the Republicans who had won the House two years earlier. This produced a rarity in American history: a genuine plot for a coup d’etat, engineered by none other than the Clerk of the House, a Democrat named Emerson Etheridge, a holdover from the days when pro-slavery forces ruled the House, who made it known that he had a plan.On the first day of the House, he would skip a few names—just enough to produce a “membership” with a Democratic majority. A Democratic speaker, S.S. “Sunset” Cox, would take control and the Republicans would be shut out of power in the House.

The plan leaked.

It turned out that not every Northern Democrat had the stomach, or the devotion to slavery, needed to overturn an American election. Emerson called his truncated roll, omitting 16 Republicans who he claimed had not presented valid credentials. Representative Thaddeus Stevens, a leading Radical Republican, immediately moved that the omitted names be called. Because some opposition members stayed loyal to the Constitution, the House narrowly voted to seat the omitted members, and the crisis passed.

But what was not generally known at the time was that the plot would have been foiled—even, if necessary, by bayonets. Lincoln had dispatched troops, who were concealed inside the Capitol, ready to occupy the House chamber. As president, he had sent young soldiers into battle, where many were slaughtered for the Union cause; he seemed to be sanguine at the prospect of battle reaching the Capitol itself. He told one of his allies, “If Mr. Etheridge undertakes revolutionary proceedings, let him be carried out on a chip, and let our men organize the House.”

Rep. Thomas Massie, seen here in May, vented his frustration at Speaker Mike Johnson in a floor speech Wednesday that also doubled as a swan song for the Kentucky Republican, who won’t be returning for the 120th Congress. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

Roll Call, One Republican rages against House’s early exit, Nina Heller, Sept. 16, 2026. In rare use of ‘personal privilege,’ Massie rebukes House cancellation of votes.

Rep. Thomas Massie, seen here in May, vented his frustration at Speaker Mike Johnson in a floor speech Wednesday that also doubled as a swan song for the Kentucky Republican, who won’t be returning for the 120th Congress.

As the House heads home early this week with no plans to return until November, at least one Republican isn’t happy about it.

In a rare use of members’ “personal privilege,” Rep. Thomas Massie continued a feud with Speaker Mike Johnson, who earlier this month accused the Kentucky Republican of “not participating as a full member of the Congress.”

House procedure allows members to raise questions of personal privilege on the floor to respond to criticism of their integrity as elected representatives, but they have seldom taken advantage of it in recent years.

“I’m here today to let you know that I’m a full participating member of the House of Representatives. In fact, when other people want to go home, I’m here to work. I’m here to get justice for the Epstein victims, the survivors. I am here to get the price of food and fuel down for our constituents. We’ve got solutions. We just refuse to pass them,” he said on the House floor Wednesday as he raged against his own party.

Massie spent an hour on the House floor Wednesday afternoon lambasting the House’s truncated schedule and suggesting leaders were trying to leave town so they wouldn’t have to deal with his quests for transparency and accountability — namely his latest effort to require the Justice Department to release more files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his push to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Earlier in the day, House leaders announced they would cancel votes on Thursday — a decision that came after Johnson had already lopped two weeks off the House schedule that had been planned for later in September, as members return to their districts to campaign ahead of the midterms.

A discharge petition launched by Massie in September to bring another Epstein-related bill to the House floor, dubbed the Epstein Files Transparency Act II, is nearing the required 218 signatures. The biggest obstacle for Massie is Republican support of his effort. If every House Democrat signs the petition, he’ll need one more Republican.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the only Republicans who had signed were Massie and Reps. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., and Ralph Norman, R-S.C. None of those three will be returning to Congress next year, with Massie losing his primary to a challenger backed by President Donald Trump and Mace and Norman both falling short in their unsuccessful bids for South Carolina governor.

The bill would allow state attorneys general, victims and members of Congress to sue the Justice Department for failing to disclose documents as required under the law he championed last fall.

And he’s not the only Republican unhappy — Norman called the canceled votes “unacceptable” on X Wednesday afternoon.

“The House has now canceled at least 63 scheduled voting days this Congress, including nine days this month alone, and now we’re leaving Washington until after the election. The Founders did not envision taking this much time off and still getting paid. If Members of Congress want to go home and campaign instead of doing the job taxpayers sent us here to do, then their campaigns ought to be paying them, NOT the American taxpayer,” he wrote.

Massie’s first attempt to force the Justice Department to release Epstein files, which he led alongside Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., easily passed the House after a battle to bring it to the floor against the wishes of leadership. It was signed into law last November.

“What would a fully participating member of Congress do if he got a law enacted against the will of the president, against the will of the speaker … against all odds, and then the chief law enforcement officer of the country will not follow the law? What would a fully participating member of Congress do? Well, I think he’d do what I did,” Massie said.

Massie is hoping to make the most of his limited time left in Congress. “I’m going to do something every week, so that I won’t be sitting at home saying, ‘I wish I’d done that,’” he said in June.

Some, however, took umbrage at Massie’s actions.

“Sadly we have Members of Congress who didn’t get picked by their 5th Grade Kickball Team and are taking out their frustration on the institution of the House of Representatives. #MoveOn,” Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., wrote on X Wednesday as Massie’s floor speech went on.

Massie doesn’t see it the same way.

“Why would we be canceling days when the country is burning? The inflation is rampant. There are things we could do here. Why would we cancel our own majority?” he said.

The Daily with Sarah Jones, Mitch McConnell Is So Out Of It That His Handlers Had To Guide Him To Vote, Sarah Jones, right, and Jason Easley, Sept. 16, 2026. During the Agricultural Committee’s markup of the Farm Bill, Sen. Mitch McConnell almost voted with the Democrats until he was instructed by his handlers how to vote.

Watching Republicans literally wheel Mitch McConnell back into the US Senate, when the Kentucky Senator does not seem to know what is going on, should add fuel to the debate about term limits for members of Congress.

McConnell looks like a shell of his former self and clearly like he should not be in the Senate or taking votes right now, but Republicans are engaging in a charade with what remains of Mitch McConnell because of rules that McConnell pushed Republicans in Kentucky to adopt so that he could never be replaced by a Democrat.

At McConnell’s urging, Republicans took the power of naming his or any other Kentucky senator’s successor out of the hands of the governor. Instead, the governor must select the appointee from a list approved by the state legislature.

There are also rules about special elections and elections to fill the remainder of a senator’s term.

Republicans in Kentucky aren’t worried about a Democrat filling McConnell’s seat. They are worried about Rep. Thomas Massie, who was chased out of his House seat by Trump because of his efforts to get the Epstein files released.

Massie is why McConnell is being dragged around and the country has to witness scenes like what happened during the Farm Bill markup on Wednesday.Mitch McConnell Is Not Well

Some may try to play this off as normal, but what happened at the committee vote clearly was not normal.

As the roll call vote was being held, McConnell’s handlers can be seen speaking to him, as if they were reminding him what was going on. When Sen. McConnell’s name was called, he started to vote No along with the Democrats, but then an aide behind him and beside him said something to him, likely telling him to vote yes, so McConnell then voted aye.

Mitch McConnell is the same person who once made up a Senate rule to deny Merrick Garland a Supreme Court confirmation vote, but then broke that rule so that Trump could get another Supreme Court justice on the bench before the 2020 election.

When asked about his hypocrisy, McConnell laughed and said that the rule was only for Democrats.

I don’t feel like Mitch McConnell deserves much sympathy in terms of politics, but the people of Kentucky deserve a senator who is capable of doing the job. Republicans are playing Weekend at Bernie’s with Mitch McConnell.

McConnell is alive, but being alive and being able to function aren’t the same thing.

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Big News: Record Number of Republicans Break and Urge Trump to End War, Canada Invited to EU, Trump Seeks to Rewrite History at Museums, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 16, 2026. Last night I had the honor of giving the keynote address at Webster University, standing in front of a room full of young people and talking about finding their power and their voice at a moment when so many forces are telling them to stay quiet. It’s a message I believe in more with every story I cover, because the same week I was telling students their voice matters, seven House Republicans found theirs and broke with Trump on Iran, Canada found its and started walking toward Europe instead of Washington, and museum curators found theirs and refused to bend to a White House trying to rewrite their work off the walls. Power and voice aren’t abstract concepts. They’re what happens when people who could stay quiet decide not to.

That’s the throughline of today’s newsletter: from a war powers revolt in Congress to a Smithsonian fight over who gets to tell America’s story, to an old ally quietly building a new home for itself abroad. Let’s get into it.

Thank you to everyone who’s already a paid subscriber, and to everyone who showed up last night in person, it means more than you know. If you’re not a subscriber yet, I’d ask you to consider becoming one. Independent journalism like this only survives because readers choose to fund it directly, and every subscription helps me keep showing up, whether that’s in a courtroom, at a board meeting, or in a college auditorium telling the next generation their voice counts too.Subscribed

Here’s the news:

Iran war:

Seven House Republicans broke with Trump to help pass a resolution reining in his Iran war powers. The House adopted the measure 220 to 204 late Tuesday, with Reps. Thomas Massie, Brian Fitzpatrick, Warren Davidson, Tom Barrett, Nancy Mace, Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn joining all voting Democrats, marking the third significant blow to the administration since the conflict began and the largest bipartisan defection yet (up from just four Republicans on a similar July vote). The concurrent resolution, led by Rep. Seth Moulton, calls on Trump to terminate the use of U.S. forces against Iran, but it’s symbolic only, it doesn’t carry the force of law and isn’t subject to a presidential veto. Republicans who backed it argue the original 60 day War Powers Resolution window already expired, while the administration and most GOP members maintain Trump is acting within his constitutional authority as commander in chief. The vote is the sixth time the House has taken up an Iran war powers resolution this year, and it also helped fuel Massie’s separate push to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Vice President JD Vance, right, predicted the war will shift into a “much different phase” within a couple of months, while defending the administration’s handling of it. He told the New York Post that Trump, as commander in chief, is the one who determines “when conflicts start and when they stop,” and pushed back on the idea that the U.S. is engaged in “aggressive operations,” saying flatly, “We’re just not.” Vance acknowledged public impatience with the war’s length but offered no specific timeline beyond the vague forecast. His comments echoed an earlier deflection from a September 3rd press conference, where he told reporters that ending the war depended on when Iranian strikes on shipping “stop having an effect on world energy markets.” The remarks come as the war has become a defining midterm issue, with Republicans divided and Democrats hammering Trump over a “forever war.”

Oil markets are absorbing new shocks as strikes disrupt key export routes, with the State Department now warning Americans against travel to Saudi Arabia. Crude loadings stopped at Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu port on the Red Sea, a 400,000 barrel per day refinery operation that had served as a workaround for disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, according to sources familiar with the matter. Oil analyst Andy Lipow warned the disruption could be “catastrophic” for consumers, especially Northeast heating oil customers facing “absolute sticker shock.” Separately, the State Department reissued a level 3 travel warning for Saudi Arabia over the risk of Iranian drone and missile targeting of American interests, and a level 4 “do not travel” warning for the Yemen border over terrorism risk. Together the moves reflect how the conflict is spreading economic and safety consequences well beyond the immediate battlefield.

CBS News obtained exclusive photos showing extensive, previously undisclosed damage to U.S. bases from Iranian missile and drone strikes. Images from Prince Sultan Air Force Base in Saudi Arabia show a destroyed Boeing E-3 Sentry surveillance aircraft, while photos from Camp Buehring in Kuwait show hollowed-out buildings and destroyed vehicles. One deployed service member told CBS, “This is major damage to our bases that hasn’t been communicated to the American public... we’re standing there with our eyes closed getting punched in the face,” and separately said “we’re not defending these bases, we’re just watching them get destroyed.” The Pentagon’s inspector general this week reported equipment losses worth up to $3.7 billion, including nearly 60 aircraft, across strikes on U.S. positions in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman and Jordan. The Pentagon did not respond to CBS’s request for comment on the photos.

Smithsonian:

The Trump administration is preparing temporary signs accusing the Smithsonian’s American history museum of ideological bias. A September 3 letter from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, obtained by The Atlantic, says the National Park Service plans to install about a dozen signs outside the museum at an estimated cost of $84,000, following an executive order Trump signed in July. The letter, sent in response to inquiries from Senators Jeff Merkley and Lisa Murkowski, extensively quotes museum director Anthea Hartig and outgoing Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch in an effort to frame them as ideologues, including resurfacing a 2020 lecture where Hartig acknowledged white privilege and a 2000 essay where Bunch discussed racial discrimination in the museum field. The signs’ final text hasn’t been written yet, and even Park Service staff working on the project reportedly don’t know who will write it. Burgum’s letter calls the move “necessary” and argues visitors deserve “important context” about the “personal viewpoints” curators are advancing.

Museum leadership is pushing back, and the fight is part of a broader pattern of pressure on the Smithsonian. Hartig told two House committees this summer that “our work is governed by the Smithsonian’s standards of scholarship, accuracy, independence, and nonpartisanship... the museum does not take sides in America’s political debates,” pointing to hundreds of patriotic objects and dozens of George Washington references already on display. Trump has also separately demanded the museum remove an abstract sculpture and replace it with a 30-foot George Washington statue, and Burgum’s letter singles out exhibits touching on transgender Americans and language guidance around the term “undocumented immigrant.” Conservative groups often tied to the administration’s history initiatives, including PragerU and Hillsdale College, both told The Atlantic they aren’t involved in writing the sign text, and Heritage Foundation fellow Mike Gonzalez declined to confirm or deny any role. The Smithsonian, which is partially federally funded but has historically operated independently with its own governing body, has been fending off pressure from the administration since March 2025.

Canada and the European Union:

The EU offered Canada a path to becoming its first “associate member,” as both drift from Washington under strain from Trump. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made the offer during a speech in Strasbourg with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney seated beside her, telling him “I would like to work with you on opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the European Union,” an announcement met with a standing ovation from lawmakers. Details on what associate membership would actually entail remain scant, but officials say Canada and the EU are working toward closer cooperation on trade, tech regulation, critical minerals and security ahead of an October summit. Von der Leyen also pitched a European equivalent to NATO’s mutual defense clause and a new European Security Council that would include non-EU partners like Britain, Norway, Ukraine, and Canada. The push reflects Carney’s own framing from a Davos speech earlier this year, that “middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”

The overture comes as both Canada and the EU face deteriorating relationships with the United States. Trump has waged a trade war with Canada and repeatedly called for it to become the 51st state, and talks between the two countries collapsed entirely last month, prompting a wave of Canadian patriotism and polls showing roughly four in five Canadians now support closer EU integration. Meanwhile the U.S. has pulled back support for NATO and Ukraine, leaving Europe scrambling to shore up its own defenses amid recent drone incursions and other provocations attributed to Russia. One EU lawmaker, Barry Andrews of Ireland, put it bluntly: “China, Russia and the U.S. have turned their backs on international law. We need new allies.” The move still faces roadblocks, since some EU member states worry that offering too much to an associate could diminish the value of full membership, but Canada and the EU already have a free trade agreement making about 90 percent of trade between them tariff-free.

Other News:

A House panel voted unanimously, 41-0, to recommend Leon Black be held in contempt of Congress over Epstein files subpoenas. The billionaire financier refused to comply with subpoenas seeking his testimony and all nondisclosure agreements he’s a party to, and did not appear for his scheduled September 3 deposition, instead suing to block the subpoenas as “invalid” and an overreach of the committee’s legislative authority. Chairman James Comer said “subpoenas are not suggestions; they carry the force of law and require full compliance,” and stressed Black’s testimony is crucial because he maintained a close personal relationship with Epstein during the years Epstein was trafficking women. Black’s attorneys called the markup “a complete abomination” and accused Comer of violating House rules, while Black himself has said he regrets ever doing business with Epstein but “had no knowledge of any of Epstein’s heinous conduct,” despite paying him roughly $170 million from 2013 to 2017. More than a dozen Epstein survivors had urged Black to comply before his deposition, arguing his NDAs could shed light on his relationship with Epstein and others in his orbit; the resolution now heads to the full House, where Speaker Mike Johnson’s office has not said whether it will be taken up.

Federal firefighters say they’re being pushed past a breaking point during one of the most extreme wildfire seasons on record, and the government is failing them. Nine active firefighters and several retirees told the Guardian that a critical shortage of experienced supervisory personnel, combined with Trump administration directives prioritizing aggressive “direct attack” tactics, has left crews spread dangerously thin, with one firefighter saying “accidents have been through the roof” amid widespread fatigue from near-nonstop assignments since April. Wildfires are overrunning firefighters at the highest rate in 20 years, with 12 dangerous “entrapments” recorded by mid-August and 14 on-duty deaths this year, including three firefighters killed at Colorado’s Knowles fire in the most deadly entrapment in 13 years. Five senators warned in a letter that crews have “worked more fires than is safe” using temporary, underqualified supervisory structures, a claim that stands in stark contrast to Forest Service chief Tom Schultz’s congressional testimony that the agency’s firefighting workforce is “stronger than at any point in recent years” and “fully staffed.” By mid-September roughly 54,400 fires had burned more than 8.4 million acres, 149% of the 10-year average, and the country spent 48 consecutive days at the highest national preparedness level, nearly double the typical yearly average, leaving veteran advocates like retired fire chief Bobbie Scopa warning that doubling up leadership responsibilities “sets everyone up for failure.”

A new report warns the AI datacenter construction boom will triple the world’s annual toxic e-waste within 25 years, with no plan in place to handle it. The Basel Action Network calculated that AI-driven equipment retirement, including server racks weighing 1,360 kilograms each and the copper, steel and concrete needed for cooling and power systems, could generate up to 13 million metric tons of waste per year by 2030, enough to fill shipping containers that would circle the globe six times. The equipment isn’t designed for repair or reuse and must be completely replaced every two to five years, and the report notes electronic waste is already the fastest-growing waste stream on the planet, with only a fifth of it properly managed worldwide. There are currently 4,871 new datacenters in the US construction pipeline, part of a roughly $7 trillion global buildout over the next five years that BAN’s white paper notes is “roughly the cost of ending world hunger for the next 75 years.” The report arrives as a separate coalition of environmental and health experts called on the federal government to address air pollution from datacenter power generation, which they estimate could cause hundreds of thousands of new asthma cases and as many as 1,300 premature deaths annually in the US.

A television news helicopter crashed in a Los Angeles neighborhood, killing at least three people while covering an earlier fatal bus crash nearby. The NBC4 chopper went down near a one-story commercial building in Chatsworth in the San Fernando Valley and burst into flames, with fire officials still working to determine how many victims were inside the aircraft versus in the parking lot below; one person was hospitalized in unclear condition. Fire captain Branden Silverman described the helicopter as “pretty well destroyed,” and more than 50 firefighters responded after the wreckage ignited four cars and two storage containers on the ground. The crash happened roughly 90 minutes after an SUV slammed into the middle of an MTA city bus about 1.5 miles away, killing at least two people and injuring six others, an accident the helicopter crew had been sent to cover. The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration are now investigating what caused the crash.

A major national study found more than half of US adults have experienced physical violence and nearly half have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime. The Tulane University and UC San Diego survey of 2,720 adults, conducted in English and Spanish, found the physical violence rate identical between women and men at 52%, though women most often experienced it at the hands of a spouse or partner (61%) while men most often experienced it from a stranger (38%). Sexual violence showed a starker gender gap, with 68% of women and 29% of men reporting it over their lifetime, and researchers found nearly one in five women reported potentially lethal intimate partner violence involving beating, strangulation, or a weapon, compared with 3% of men. Co-author Anita Raj said the findings show why relying on crime reports alone understates the true scope of the problem, warning “we also don’t want to find out about it at that point because if we’re finding out at that point, the risk for fatality has now gone up.” Economic hardship compounded the risk sharply: adults evicted in the past year were seven times more likely to report recent physical violence and nearly five times more likely to report intimate partner violence, and the study’s release came just three days after a quadruple stabbing in Louisiana killed a mother, her daughter, her son and his girlfriend.

Amnesty International found Iranian security forces ran a coordinated campaign of killing, torture and sexual abuse against protesters in the 2022 uprising, and that the resulting impunity paved the way for even bloodier crackdowns since. Drawing on leaked state documents and testimony, the group verified 377 deaths, including 56 children, from the demonstrations that erupted after Mahsa Amini died in police custody, and documented 16 cases of detainees being raped, including a 14-year-old girl and boys aged 16 and 17, describing state agents penetrating victims with batons, glass bottles and hosepipes. Leaked orders instructed forces to “respond mercilessly and go as far as causing death,” and the findings echo earlier Guardian reporting from 2022 describing medics’ accounts of security forces shooting female protesters in the face and genitals. Amnesty’s secretary general Agnès Callamard said the investigation “exposes the layers of command and coordination behind the Iranian authorities’ deadly protest crackdowns,” linking street-level agents to a hierarchical chain of command. The group named 87 officials for potential prosecution for crimes against humanity, including the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and said the 2022 crackdown’s impunity directly enabled the killing of thousands of protesters over 48 hours during January 2026’s anti-government uprising.

Saudi Arabia accused Iran-backed Houthi rebels of attempting to attack Mecca, declaring the holy city a “red line” in the escalating conflict, while the Houthis denied targeting it and accused Riyadh of “fabrications and lies.” Saudi military spokesman Maj. Gen. Turki al-Malki said air defenses intercepted a drone south of the city just before 7 p.m. local time Tuesday, and warned there would be no hesitation to take “necessary and deterrent measures” against the rebels. The Houthis said their operations have targeted Saudi oil facilities and military bases far from Mecca, and their rapid ground advance in Yemen, including capture of a key Red Sea port, has already shut down a crucial oil pipeline and threatens a second major shipping route through the Bab el-Mandeb strait. The escalation threatens to open a second front alongside the ongoing US-Israel war with Iran, with Brent crude near $108 a barrel and US diesel prices hitting a record $6.31; the US upgraded its travel advisory for Saudi Arabia to Level 3 and barred government employees from the Yemen border area, even as Trump said over the weekend the Houthis told him they “don’t want to fight with us” and predicted things would work out “fine and dandy.”

New satellite data shows Earth’s ice sheets have lost 12.5 trillion tons of ice since 1979, with the melt accelerating and driven increasingly by warmer ocean water rather than warmer air. An international team combining European and NASA satellite data found five-sixths of the melt now comes from warmer waters eating away at ice sheets from below and the sides, contributing to roughly an inch of global sea level rise since 1979, and researchers note that for every third of an inch of additional rise, another 2 to 3 million people get flooded at least once a year. Greenland’s Jakobshavn glacier is now retreating up to 164 feet a day, and study co-author Eric Rignot said “we are melting the polar regions, sea level is rising worldwide and will exacerbate the vulnerability of coastal regions.” Scientists said the changes lag global warming by decades, meaning ice loss will likely continue for decades even if warming stopped today, and outside expert David Holland said he’s concerned because most of the loss is coming from more abrupt “dynamical” processes, exactly what would be expected in an ice sheet instability collapse scenario. A brief pause in the acceleration from 2020 to 2023 turned out to be a short-term weather fluctuation rather than a trend reversal, with researchers saying the accelerating pattern has since picked back up.

Texas executed a man convicted in a 2005 triple murder Wednesday, while a Georgia execution scheduled for the same night was halted by a judge just hours earlier. LeJames Norman, 40, was sentenced to die for fatally shooting three roommates during a botched robbery in which he and an accomplice were searching for cocaine that turned out not to exist; the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied clemency, and his attorneys’ last-ditch appeal to the US Supreme Court followed a lower court’s rejection of a stay. Stacey Humphreys, convicted of killing two real estate agents in a 2003 robbery at an Atlanta-area model home, received a stay after his lawyers invoked a new Georgia law letting survivors of abuse seek reduced sentences, though the state has vowed to appeal in hopes of still carrying out the execution as scheduled. Humphreys’ lawyers separately argue his sentence was tainted by a biased juror and an improperly constituted clemency board, claims that Justice Sonia Sotomayor said last year deserved further scrutiny rather than being left “caught in a web of procedural barriers.” Texas’s execution was its fifth this year, while Georgia has yet to carry out any, and Florida remains the nation’s busiest death chamber, accounting for more than half of the 25 executions carried out nationwide so far in 2026.

Belarus agreed to free 25 more political prisoners in exchange for the US lifting sanctions on two Belarusian companies, part of an ongoing negotiation to ease strongman Alexander Lukashenko’s international isolation. Trump envoy John Coale announced the deal from Minsk, saying “we agreed to an interim deal, and as a show of goodwill Belarus will release 25 people and in exchange the United States will lift sanctions on two companies,” though that number is far smaller than the 250 prisoners Coale secured in his last visit back in March. The sanctions being lifted target Lakokraska, a paint manufacturer, and Bellesbumprom, a state forestry and paper conglomerate, with penalties dating back to 2008 and 2023 respectively, and Coale also pledged to help Belarus recover tens of millions of dollars in frozen assets held by US banks. Rights group Viasna says Belarus still holds more than 900 political prisoners on charges like “extremism” or insulting the president, even after hundreds have been released since Coale’s diplomacy began last year, including Nobel laureate Ales Bialiatski. Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya welcomed the releases but cautioned against mistaking them for real reform, saying “the purpose should be to empty the prisons, not to rehabilitate the dictatorship,” and noting Lukashenko continues backing Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Japan now has more than 100,000 people aged 100 or older for the first time on record, underscoring the country’s rapidly aging and shrinking population. Health ministry figures released to mark the country’s Respect the Aged holiday show 107,677 centenarians, up nearly 8,000 from the previous year, with almost 88% of them women; the country’s oldest woman, Kyoto’s Fuyo Kishimoto, is 114, while its oldest man, Hikaru Kato, is 112. Health Minister Kenichiro Ueno credited medical advances and healthy lifestyles for the milestone, but acknowledged Japan must keep its social security system sustainable as the population ages, and a separate government survey found more than 20% of unmarried adults aged 18 to 34 say they never intend to marry, with nearly half seeing no benefit in it, citing the high costs of raising children. Japan’s fertility rate fell to a record low of 1.14 in 2025, far below the 2.1 needed to sustain the population, and experts project Japan’s population will shrink from 126 million to roughly 87 million by 2070, with nearly 40% of that population 65 or older. There were only 153 centenarians in Japan when record-keeping began in 1963, a figure that didn’t top 1,000 until 1981 and didn’t cross 10,000 until 1998.

Toxic haze from Indonesia’s worst wildfires in 11 years is spreading across Southeast Asia, sickening more than 12.5 million people and pushing regional air quality to hazardous levels. The fires, intensified by “super-El Niño” drought conditions, are hitting Borneo’s West Kalimantan province especially hard, and respiratory illness visits in the region’s hardest-hit provinces more than doubled in the first nine days of September alone, from roughly 51,000 to over 113,000 cases; one local clinic reported treating nearly as many breathing-difficulty cases in 11 days as it saw in all of August. Volunteers are running a door-to-door “Oxygen House” campaign, delivering oxygen cylinders to residents and firefighters struggling to breathe, while neighboring Singapore and Malaysia are also seeing air quality deteriorate from the drifting smog. Indonesia’s fires generated 19.7 million metric tons of emissions in the week ending September 7 alone, more than a third of the entire global total that week according to the EU’s Copernicus monitoring service, and fires have burned nearly 500,000 acres from January through July with an estimated 1.4 million additional acres burned in August. Indonesia has deployed more than 50 aircraft for water drops and cloud seeding, and Japan sent three Chinook helicopters and 180 crew members last week to assist with firefighting efforts.

More On Middle East Wars 

New York Times, Saudi Pipeline Attack Risks ‘Disastrous’ Loss of Millions of Barrels of Oil, Lisa Friedman, Sept. 16, 2026. Estimates vary on how long it could take before a crucial pipeline is repaired, but a prolonged shutdown could push oil prices to their highest levels in months.

The continued closure of a critical pipeline in Saudi Arabia risks keeping 4 percent of the world’s oil supply from reaching international markets and driving energy prices even higher.

Saudi Arabia scrambled this week to reroute roughly four million barrels of oil a day when it temporarily shut its East-West pipeline, which it said on Friday was damaged by an Iran-backed militia. The pipeline, a 750-mile network that transports crude across Saudi Arabia to ports on the Red Sea, had been the kingdom’s primary way of exporting oil since the war in Iran began in February.

And there are scant signs that the threat to Saudi oil supplies will ease anytime soon. In addition to the drone attack on the pipeline, the Iranian-backed Houthi rebel group in Yemen gained control of a strategic Red Sea port and hit energy facilities in Saudi Arabia. On Wednesday the Houthis claimed they had downed a Saudi fighter jet, as Saudi Arabia said the Houthis had fired a drone near the Muslim holy city of Mecca.

Now, running out of options and under pressure to rapidly restore supply lines, Saudi Arabia is facing the prospect of a severe energy crisis with global implications, analysts said.

“It is unprecedented,” said Amena Bakr, head of Middle East & OPEC+ Insights at Kpler, a maritime data firm.

“We have two major waterways obstructed, active attacks, Iran escalating attacks, proxies being active and no signs of diplomatic talks,” Ms. Bakr said. “It’s a disastrous situation when you’re looking at it from an energy security angle.”

Any extended disruption to the pipeline network of Saudi Arabia, long the world’s biggest oil exporter, would send shock waves through the global energy market. Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, hovered around $107 per barrel on Wednesday, up 50 percent from its prewar level.

The world could lose 120 million barrels of crude if the East-West Pipeline is offline for a month, according to estimates from Kpler.

New York Times, House Directs Trump to Halt War With Iran or Secure Congress’s Approval, Robert Jimison, Sept. 15, 2026 (print ed.). It was the fifth time that a chamber of the Republican-controlled Congress has voted to rein in President Trump’s war powers as discontent with the conflict grows among voters.

The House on Tuesday voted for a third time to direct President Trump to end the war in Iran or seek explicit authorization to continue it, delivering another bipartisan rebuke to his handling of the conflict as fighting in the region continues and American voters increasingly disapprove.

Seven Republicans joined Democrats in supporting the resolution, which does not carry the force of law but seeks to compel the administration to either halt the operation or win a vote of Congress approving it. But the action in the Republican-led chamber was the latest sign of frustration on Capitol Hill over the ongoing conflict and its domestic impacts, including high gas prices, weeks before midterm elections in which control of Congress is at stake.

Lawmakers voted 220 to 204 in favor of the resolution, which was offered by Representative Seth Moulton, Democrat of Massachusetts and a combat veteran, who said the war with Iran “has not only failed, but backfired.” 

New York Times, Houthis and Saudis Trade Claims of Military Attacks as Conflict Escalates, Ismaeel Naar, Hari Raj, Sanjana Varghese and Aric Toler, Sept. 16, 2026. The Houthis, an Iran-backed militia in Yemen, said they had downed a Saudi jet, while Saudi authorities accused the group of firing a drone near Mecca. The Houthis denied doing so.

The Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen and the Saudi authorities on Wednesday accused each other of sharply escalating their attacks, adding to fears that their recent return to war could further destabilize the Middle East.

The Houthis claimed to have downed a Saudi fighter jet, while Saudi Arabia accused the group of firing a drone near Mecca, the holiest site for Muslims.

A spokesman for the Houthi military, Yahya Saree, said on social media that the group had shot down a Saudi F-15 fighter jet over Yemeni territory using a locally made missile. The Houthis released footage and photographs late Wednesday of what they said was the crash site. The wreckage of the downed jet seems to be consistent with that of the F-15 jets in the Royal Saudi Air Force, a review of the images by The New York Times found. However, the exact location of the wreckage could not be confirmed.

The Saudi authorities did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Saree made the claim hours after Saudi Arabia said that its military had shot down a Houthi drone outside Mecca. The drone was intercepted and destroyed south of Mecca on Tuesday as it headed toward prohibited airspace over the city, Maj. Gen. Turki Al-Maliki, the spokesman for the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen, said in a statement on social media.

Mr. Saree denied that the Houthis had targeted Mecca, dismissing the allegation as “fabrication and lies.”

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption

New York Times, Kennedy Center Closes Its Doors Despite a Judge’s Order, Julia Jacobs and Zach Montague, Sept. 16, 2026 (print ed.). The announcement came after President Trump said he would cancel a $257 million renovation of the venue if his name is not returned to the building.

Simmering turmoil over the future of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts boiled over on Tuesday as the center abruptly closed to the public and President Trump threatened to cancel a planned $257 million renovation if his name was not returned to the front of the building.

Allies of Mr. Trump have been pushing for months to close the center for major renovations and to honor the president by affixing his name to its marble facade. A federal judge has blocked both efforts.

On Tuesday, the center aggressively tested the judge’s order not to close by shutting its doors in what officials called an emergency action designed to protect people from deteriorating conditions inside the building. Shortly after 4:30 p.m., employees heard a sudden notice on the P.A. system: “The center is now closed to the public. Please exit the center by way of the Hall of States.”

By the evening, security guards stationed outside entrances to the main lobby were turning people away. One officer said the building had just closed.

The Kennedy Center said in a statement that an immediate temporary closure of the building was necessary for safety reasons but that an extended closure would begin once the court gives its approval. Earlier on Tuesday, the center’s Trump-allied board voted — for a third time — to close the building, citing a recent incident in which a five-foot-long section of ceiling plaster fell amid a storm.

But lawyers for Representative Joyce Beatty, a Democratic ex officio board member whose lawsuit is at the center of the court battle, signaled that they would view any closure as in direct conflict with a court order.

“If true,” the lawyers, Norm Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky, said in a statement, “it would appear a direct violation of the court’s order and courting contempt.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Judge Christopher R. Cooper barred the center from honoring Mr. Trump with an inscription on the institution’s exterior. He ruled it would violate his previous order that blocked the board from renaming the center.

“Simply put, defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” Judge Cooper wrote. “The board resolution bucks a federal court order and a statute Congress enacted.”

The Kennedy Center quickly filed a notice of appeal, and Mr. Trump responded on social media with a stark ultimatum. If an appeals court does not agree to allow his name back on the building, he said in the post, he would block the renovation of the center that he has been championing for more than a year.

“If the ruling is a negative one, which it should not be, and is not overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court,” he said in the post, “the Reconstruction and the Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place.”

He also said the building would close “immediately.”

Such a decision means less than it did months ago, when the center’s main building still hosted musicals, orchestral programs and other performances. The center’s programming schedule has been largely bare since July, when it was initially slated to close, leaving a mostly empty building.

Judge Cooper has ruled that the center must be maintained as a living memorial to Kennedy, and he has yet to ratify the center’s plan, approved by the board last month, to close the main building while keeping open a smaller offshoot of the center known as the Reach.

The White House declined to comment.

For weeks, Mr. Trump’s allies have suggested that the president’s continued commitment to the Kennedy Center was contingent on some conspicuous acknowledgment on the center’s exterior. A recent draft resolution submitted to board members said the center was at risk of bankruptcy but could be saved by fund-raising by Mr. Trump — if he were to receive “appropriate recognition.”

Mr. Trump’s made that quid pro quo even more clear in his social media post on Tuesday. It said that $17 million raised by the president had been put into the center’s account “to keep it afloat.”

The post followed a day of rage directed at those blocking his agenda for the Kennedy Center. Shortly before the judge’s ruling was publicly released, Mr. Trump declared on social media that the center was in a “virtual state of collapse.” He called Judge Cooper “very hostile and conflicted” and predicted that the building was “destined to doom” unless it was allowed to close.

Mr. Trump continued those arguments during a virtual board meeting on Tuesday afternoon, where he got into a bitter argument with Ms. Beatty, according to two people familiar with the meeting. They said that Mr. Trump and Ms. Beatty, who have been at odds in court for months, traded personal attacks: The president said the congresswoman had “never built anything” in her life, while Ms. Beatty called Trump “ignorant” and blamed him for the center’s financial problems.

The center first affixed the president’s name to the building in December after the board voted to recognize his role in securing $257 million from Congress for the sweeping renovation project.

In May, Judge Cooper ruled that the renaming was unlawful and could only be decided by Congress, which had authorized the creation of the center and its dedication to Kennedy. The judge ordered the letters spelling out the president’s name removed from the marble.

As it pursued an appeal, the center complied, installing a towering matrix of scaffolding covered in tarps that obscured much of the signage and is still up.

Last month its board voted to restore Mr. Trump’s name in a different form. The resolution approved by the board proposed an inscription under the building’s main signage that would read “renovated and restored by President Donald J. Trump.”

Calling the decision “linguistic gymnastics,” the judge wrote that the new inscription would violate his previous order, as would a proposal to rename the center’s grounds the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”

The board’s attempt to inscribe Mr. Trump’s name was met with furious objections from Democratic lawmakers, including Ms. Beatty, whose lawyers called the effort a “breathtaking act of defiance” and asked the judge to block the center from adding the inscription.

“Legal sanity has once again prevailed over Trump’s vanity,” Ms. Beatty’s lawyers said in a statement following the order on Tuesday.

PoliticusUSA News and Comment, Trump Threw A Crazy Tantrum Over Not Being Allowed To Add His Name To Kennedy Center, Jason Easley, Sept. 16, 2026. Those on a call witnessed Donald Trump yelling and screaming after a judge blocked him from adding his name to the Kennedy Center.

Before Trump claimed he had closed the Kennedy Center because the building was dangerous and in need of repair, he showed up on a call with the Center’s board to throw a tantrum over a judge blocking him from adding his name to the building.

America is at war. Oil is over $100/barrel, inflation has made life unaffordable, but the President Of The United States made time to be on a call about a building.

CNN reported:

“It was f**king crazy,” said one source familiar with the exchange between Trump and Rep. Joyce Beatty, whose lawsuit has prevented Trump’s name from being added to the building.

Another source said Trump screamed, blaming Beatty for getting the courts involved and leading to the downfall of the performing arts center. Beatty told Trump he had put the Kennedy Center into deep debt, the third source said.

Trump has operated this way for as long as anyone can remember. His presidency has done the same thing to te country as a whole. Debt is how Trump operates.

The president put the Kennedy Center into debt by making it toxic to the point where performers canceled and donations dried up.Trump Can’t Legally Close The Kennedy Center

Only Congress can close the Kennedy Center, because it is a living memorial to JFK that Congress has the power to oversee. The Kennedy Center was created by an act of Congress and is federally funded through a public-private partnership. Congress has the ultimate authority over the Center.

Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) is on the Kennedy Center Board and told CNN’s Kaitlin Collins about the call.

Rep. Beatty said:

We were in our Kennedy Center board meeting today. It was virtual. It was first announced that Beatty v. Trump lawsuit, that the judge had rendered the decision that, again, for the second time, that it would be unlawful for Donald Trump to put his name on the Kennedy Center.

Shortly after that, we went into talking about the proposal to renovate the Kennedy Center. And at that time, there were a series of questions that I had proposed, and the President threw a tantrum. I think he was upset because he had lost, and it had been reported.There was a lot of things that I thought were very unprofessional. This is the Chairman of the Board and the President of the United States. So, he picked the wrong person to try to attack my character and to berate me. I was not going to let him tell me that he thought I was incompetent.

So, I responded by telling him, I knew he was incompetent. He wanted to blame me if someone died, if something happened, if the ceiling fell in. And I reminded him, he has us at war, and people are dying. He has tariffs and taxes that are preventing people from buying food or being able to have affordable housing and other things. So, it was a tit for tat.

And this is the Chairman of the Board. I was disappointed, but I was not going to let him get away with bullying, bullying me because that's what he does. He tries to intimidate people, he tries to bully them because he didn't get his way because, he wanted this to be his vanity project.

The Kennedy Center flourished for decades before Donald Trump got involved.

The president doesn’t have the authority to close the Center. The board doesn’t have the authority to close the Center. Congress has the authority to close the Kennedy Center, change its name, and authorize repairs.

Rep. Beatty promised that she will continue to fight Trump in court over the Kennedy Center, so Trump hasn’t won.

The Kennedy Center may continue to struggle for the rest of Trump’s term, but like the country, it will flourish again after Donald Trump is gone.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

William Kristol (Photo illustration by Sarah Rogers of The Bulwark with photos from Getty, Shutterstock and The Bulwark).

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Field of Dreams? William Kristol, Sept. 16, 2026. I’m not, you’ll be shocked to hear, a Midwesterner. I grew up in New York City, went to school in Boston, taught in Philadelphia and then in Boston, and moved to Washington in 1985. That was supposed to be for a year. It’s now stretched to four decades. So I’ve spent my entire life among the huddled masses in teeming East Coast cities. And I’ve enjoyed it.

But I do try occasionally to venture out of the Acela corridor to see what’s up in the rest of America. And so I’m writing from Iowa City, where I spoke at the University of Iowa last night. It’s different out here! Farms and prairies, to say nothing of amber waves of grain! And friendly people! Amazing! If a bit disorienting.

What’s also disorienting is my sense, reinforced by (admittedly limited) conversations here, that Democrats can win here and elsewhere west of the Mississippi. Not just in Iowa and Texas, which everyone knows are in play. I wonder if the blue wave couldn’t also wash over to the Great Plains states, to Kansas and Nebraska and South Dakota.

Yes, I know, Donald Trump won all five of these states by at least 13 points in 2024. So flipping them is a daunting prospect. On the other hand, he is roughly 13 points less popular nationally than he was on Election Day two years ago. And given the impact of his tariffs and the gas prices in Iowa, he may have fallen further out here. So it’s reasonable that Democrats have a shot in Iowa (Trump +13.2 percent in 2024) and Texas (Trump +13.7 percent). Kansas (Trump +16.1), Nebraska (+20.5 percent), and South Dakota (Trump +29.2 points) are more challenging. But wave years, plus good candidates, can do surprising things.

On Texas, I’ll just point out that in the ten most recent public polls, Republican Ken Paxton is ahead in only one, and that’s by a point. He’s tied in another. And the Democratic nominee, James Talarico, leads in the other eight surveys by anywhere from two to six points.

One can argue that gravity will kick in, as it has in the past, and drag the Democrat down to earth. But the whole point of a wave is that it overcomes, to some extent, gravity. And the gravitational pull isn’t that daunting. In 2018, the most recent Trump midterm, Beto O’Rourke came within 2.6 points of Ted Cruz. Trump is weaker now than he was then, and Paxton is weaker than Cruz. Read Sarah Longwell’s account of her most recent focus group, consisting of Texans who voted for Trump in 2024 but who now disapprove of him. A majority say they’d vote for Talarico. So Texas is a very real possibility for the Democrats.

As are Iowa and the Great Plains states to the west. Voters—quite reasonably—are unhappy with their Republican senators who have, or their GOP candidates who will, rubberstamp Trump’s tariffs and his war.

Here in Iowa, seven public polls in the last month are split between three that have Republican Ashley Hinson ahead, three that have Democrat Josh Turek leading. The most recent poll has the race dead even. I’d put Turek as a slight favorite. And the Democrat, Rob Sand, should win the governor’s race.

What about the Great Plains states? In Nebraska, independent candidate Dan Osborn is running against Sen. Pete Ricketts. The Democratic party has intelligently cleared the field for Osborn. The two most recent polls there have Osborn tied and up by four. He came within seven points of Deb Fischer two years ago. The environment is more than seven points better this year, and Fischer was a stronger candidate than Ricketts. Yes, Nebraska went for Trump by 20.5 percent in 2024. But it’s in play.

Meanwhile, in South Dakota, the Democrats have also organized themselves to step aside in favor of an independent candidate. Brian Bengs, who enlisted in the Navy out of high school, and then went to college and law school and returned to active military service with the Air Force before retiring as a lieutenant colonel, is facing incumbent Mike Rounds, a career politician who’s been in office at the state and federal level for thirty-five years. Trump won the state in 2024 by 29 points. But one recent poll has the senate race even; the other has Rounds up by only three points. It could well remain competitive until the end.

Meanwhile, Kansas features one of the most impressive Democratic candidates of this cycle, Adam Hamilton, the well-known pastor of a large Methodist church in the Kansas City area. He’s facing a notably unimpressive—even by current Republican senatorial standards—one-term incumbent, Republican Sen. Roger Marshall. Trump carried Kansas by 16 points in 2024. But one recent poll had Hamilton up one, another had Marshall up by only five. In this race, candidate quality could help put Hamilton over the top.

And while I’m smoking hopium, let me not neglect the Mountain West. A recent poll by the Montana Free Press shows the Republican nominee, former Hill staffer Kurt Alme, at 38 percent of the vote. He’s ahead of independent Seth Bodnar, a West Point graduate, Army officer, and former business executive, by eight points. The Democratic nominee, Alani Bankhead, trails at sixteen percent. If more Democrats abandon Bankhead for Bodnar, or if at some point Bankhead steps aside and endorses Bodnar (even though it would be too late for her to get off the ballot), Bodnar could win. (More on Montana below.)

And if you really want to think I’m getting carried away, wait until I tell you about Idaho (Trump +36.5 points!). There, Democrats have also cleared the field for an independent candidate, another impressive Army veteran, Todd Achilles. He’s running against 83-year-old (!) incumbent Jim Risch. Maybe Idaho will send Risch back to D.C. to serve until he’s 89. But maybe not?

Okay. Maybe the good cheer and optimism of Iowans has gone to my head. This is, after all, the home of the field of dreams. But I don’t know. I’m from New York, and I love New York. But we New Yorkers inflicted Donald Trump on this great nation. Why shouldn’t it be Middle America that comes to our rescue?

AROUND THE BULWARK

• JD Vance Privately Advised Hillary Clinton’s Campaign in 2016... On Bulwark Takes, SAM STEIN is joined by CHRIS WHIPPLE, who wrote for Vanity Fair about the remarkable political transformation of JD Vance.
• Thomas Massie Has a Nasty Surprise for Pete Hegseth... On The Next Level, ANDREW EGGER (sitting in for Sarah) joins JVL and TIM MILLER to discuss Mitch McConnell’s triumphant (?) return to the Senate, Donald Trump casually floating conspiracy theories over the Butler, Pennsylvania assassination attempt, and Thomas Massie’s articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth.
• The Next Big Dem Proposal: Let Kids Eat Free... School lunches were free to all kids during the pandemic; a prominent think-tank wants to bring back the idea and make it permanent, JONATHAN COHN reports in The Breakdown.
• We Only Know 5 Percent... JONATHAN SWAN joins TIM MILLER on The Bulwark Daily to discuss his new book and his theory that the media only knows 5 percent of what is happening inside the administration—particularly when it comes to national security, the money-making, and the self-dealing.
• Join Mona Charen and Sonny Bunch for our September Book Club at 1:30 p.m. EDT today. They’ll be chatting LIVE with our Bulwark+ members about The Odyssey. Join using this link.
• Mona and Sonny read Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer. Even if you haven’t read it or seen the film, still stop by. This will be an interactive discussion about a story that has it all—sex, violence, hatred, revenge, and all the passions! A replay will be available for Bulwark+ members today on the site and for everyone else on Saturday’s edition of The Mona Charen Show.

Quick Hits

DEATH OF AN INSTITUTION: The Trump-appointed board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted on Tuesday to close the building. The cause of the institution’s death was the pettiness of the president of the United States.

To recap: Last year, Donald Trump deliberately MAGAfied the Kennedy Center, replacing its board and senior staff with allies, micromanaging its programming, and even trying to rename the place after himself. When donors fled, ticket sales plummeted, and judges ordered his name removed, Trump turned spiteful: The building was in such a state of disrepair, he insisted, that it would need to be shuttered for years, if not for good.

This week, the board stated that Trump had raised the money to repair the building, but suggested that repairs wouldn’t move forward unless Trump got credit in the form of—you guessed it—his name on the building. They generously offered ten options for how to credit Trump, each involving some sort of inscription on the main building’s facade. A federal judge on Tuesday blocked that motion, ruling that “Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing.”

The board subsequently voted to close the building. Trump, unsurprisingly, crashed out online, posting that unless his name was put on the building, “the Reconstruction and the Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place.” He asked the Supreme Court to intervene.

This is truly a microcosm of the Trump experience: harm the institution, claim only you can save the institution, but refuse to do so unless you get credit for it. There are no acts of generosity, just acts of megalomania constrained only by the limited checks and balances we still have as a society. As our colleague Catherine Rampell put it in our office Slack: We now occupy an interesting space on the democracy-totalitarianism continuum, in which Trump doesn’t have the power to rename an institution but does have the power to close it. In the meantime, actual performing artists who depend on performances at the Kennedy Center will suffer. They don’t matter to Trump. The only performance he cares about is the one where he gets center stage.

CHECK PLEASE?: The Congressional Budget Office has an estimate of how much the Iran war cost as of August 1. The headline figure: $38 billion more than what the Department of Defense already planned to spend. More than half of that expense came from the expenditure of precision weapons, especially missile interceptors. Fuel costs alone accounted for nearly $3 billion spent, both because the military consumed more fuel than it expected pre-war, and because the war itself drove up fuel costs.

CBO also included a rough sketch of the war’s macroeconomic effects. By next spring, the report projects, inflation will be higher by 0.6 percent than it would have been without the war. Notably, this analysis doesn’t include the latest spike in diesel prices caused by this month’s attack on the Saudi oil pipeline and the Houthi threats to the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

What wasn’t in the report was almost as notable as what was: no long-term costs for veterans’ benefits, and no data whatsoever from the Department of Defense, which stonewalled CBO and forced it to use publicly available data for its models. Without the Pentagon’s cooperation, CBO was also unable to come up with an accounting of the losses in the American military facilities Iran damaged or destroyed.

And, of course, the meter is still running.

BLUE MONTANA?: Our Lauren Egan has been writing about “Bernie Dogs”—the Democratic candidates running in tough districts who have been endorsed by both Bernie Sanders and the Blue Dog Coalition, and who form a crucial part of Democrats’ hopes to run up the score in the House this November. This isn’t just a feint to make Republicans play defense: At least some Democrats believe they’ve got a real shot this year in a bunch of typically safe Republican districts, and they’re spending money accordingly.

In Montana’s 1st District, for instance, Democrat Sam Forstag’s campaign is shelling out $190,000—not chump change in Montana’s media market—on new ads talking up his blue-collar bona fides as a former smokejumper. “Sixteen bucks an hour for years,” Forstag says in the ads, first reported by The Bulwark. “That’s what I made jumping out of planes to fight wildfires. I know what it’s like to work a thousand hours of overtime and barely get by.”

The district has been an afterthought in recent elections. Republican Ryan Zinke won it by 19 points in 2022 and was reelected by 8 points in 2024. But today, it’s a tossup: New polling from The Bench, a Democratic organization supporting Forstag, shows him with a narrow 45–43 lead over Republican Aaron Flint, which is partially attributable to a 16-point favorability advantage.

The Contrarian, Opinion: Democratic Hand-wringing About the Party’s ‘Brand’ Is Misplaced, Jennifer Rubin, right,  Sept. 16, 2026. 48 Days to the Midterms. Corporate mercenary is a bipartisan profession.

You’ve heard it over and over again from establishment, hand-wringing Democrats: ‘The Democratic brand stinks.’ What follows is often a rant about how the left is making life difficult for centrists to win, which is a tip the “analysis” about the party’s reputation might be tainted by sectarian self-interest. That is actually just wrong — and politically dumb.

For starters, it’s a mindset trapped in 2024 when, let’s face it, Vice President Kamala Harris (or the Biden presidency, if you prefer) was a drag on the party around the country across multiple demographic groups, resulting in a Republican trifecta victory. (When you see how far above that floor that Democrats are now running, you can see the magnitude of the 2024 campaign’s failure.) But that was almost two years ago. Democrats’ “brand” is not where it was then.

“When asked which political party they think is more in touch with the concerns of most people in the United States, 46 percent of voters think the Democratic Party, 35 percent think the Republican Party, and 13 percent volunteer that there is no difference,” Quinnipiac pollsters found.

Meanwhile, party identification has soared, rising to a 10-point advantage. “As recently as 2024, Republicans and Independents who lean toward the Republican Party held a slight edge over Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents,” the New York Times reported. However, Democrats now are situated similarly to where they were in “the final quarter of the 2018 midterm cycle, when nearly 49 percent of Americans identified as Democrats. That year, the Democratic Party gained more than 40 seats in the House.” Don’t expect that many House seat pickups, thanks to MAGA re-redistricting, but the shifts in Democrats’ favor have nevertheless been enormous, especially among Hispanics and young voters. In contrast to 2024, when Republicans had a 1-point advantage with young voters, Democrats now lead by 16 points, while Democrats’ edge with Hispanics “has increased by nine percentage points over the same period.”

For a supposedly cruddy “brand,” Democrats are doing fairly well. Since 2024, Democrats have actually surged, overperforming in state races, special elections, and primary turnout. And the midterm map continues to expand for Democrats.

The brand grousers will come back and say: Yeah, but Democrats have to keep defending themselves against accusations that they are communists, obsessed with transgender Americans, or are weak on border security. Really?! Waiting for Republicans to stop making baseless accusations or for legacy media to stop parroting those claims is a fool’s errand. Politics in an era of a Republican Party unbound by truth or decency necessitates confronting daily the propaganda and hysteria generated by a MAGA cult for whom demonization, dehumanization, and distortion are second nature. The best campaigners (e.g., Pete Buttigieg, Texas Senate nominee James Talarico, or Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff) dispense with specious arguments and strategically pivot to attack Republicans as corrupt puppets of foreign actors and proponents of crony capitalism, not free markets — among other assaults on our democracy.Subscribed

Underlying brand agonizing is a fundamental misunderstanding about politics and public opinion. The American public is cynical and habitually ill-disposed toward politicians. Nearly 90 percent of voters believe they are all corrupt. One could debate how much of that is deserved — though multiple fruitless forever wars, economic crises, and widening income inequality suggest their stance is not unfounded — or argue that Democrats have taken too long to go on offense on reform (they have). However, expecting voters to express undiluted confidence in their party is unrealistic, to put it mildly.

The danger in perpetuating the “brand stinks” whining is two-fold. First and foremost, worries about offense perpetuate the milquetoast politics that voters plainly are not in the mood to hear. If the primary season has revealed anything, it is that forceful rhetoric directed at a corrupt oligarchy, billionaire donors, and a two-tiered system of justice — rather than mushy moderation — is what drives voters’ support. Fiery denunciation of ICE excesses has been embraced by the voters, for example, not mealy-mouthed calls for restraint — or worse, the inclination to avoid immigration as an issue altogether.) Voters want decisive change — dramatic, fundamental, and systemic change.

Second, the “brand stinks” mantra has become a precursor to untimely and ill-conceived intercine war against the party’s more left-leaning members. There will be plenty of time to debate the agenda should Democrats capture majorities in one or both houses. An entire 2028 presidential campaign awaits, in which strongly held views on the direction of the party can be hashed out. But to spend a nanosecond bemoaning the views of a socialist in a New York City congressional district (or of a fringe influencer whom the vast majority of voters have never heard of) is political malpractice. With less than 7 weeks until Election Day (and far less before early voting rolls out around the country), whimpering that one segment of the party is making it harder for others to win (when there is zero evidence that is the case) is a gift to Republicans looking to make the election about anything but their own dismal record.

The bottom line: There has been a sea change in the political environment since 2024, in large part because MAGA Republicans have shown their true colors: their disregard for ordinary voters, their frightful extremism, and their deeply corrupt core. They, not Democrats, have the severe “brand” problem. Democrats’ best chance for maximizing victory rests with making sure voters understand that contrast.

Democratic candidates up and down the ticket would do well to follow the examples of success over the last two years: go on offense against Republican corruption and reverse Robin Hood economics, denounce billionaire elites who rig the system in their favor, and definitely join Trump’s call in asking voters to “pretend” he is on the ballot. In fact, for all practical purposes, Trump is on the ballot; and only a rout of his Republican enablers will the disastrous policies and corruption free-for-all come to an end. That is a brand that voters can get behind. 

To the Contrary, Opinion: The World Reels. Trump Throws a Tantrum, Charlie Sykes, right, Sept. 16, 2026. Plus: The Texas GOP has a bigot problem. Who knew?

Meeting the moment: The tectonic plates of the world order are shifting as the Houthis advance and the War in the Mideast expands; the Saudis are under siege; and a world-wide energy crunch looms. Meanwhile, Canada, spurned by the US, moves toward becoming a new “associate member” of the European Union. The bond markets are freaking; warnings about the existential threats of AI continue to spread; and Republican poll numbers crater.

And yet, on Tuesday, 48 days before the midterm elections, the president chose to spend his time on this: Lashing out at his appointees on the Supreme Court, making utterly baseless and paranoid claims that the 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania was a “Democrat Plot”; and throwing a snit over his name being removed from the Kennedy Center: “Trump 'Threw a Tantrum' After Vote to Close Kennedy Center.”¹

After losing in federal court, a petulant Trump is threatening to shut down the memorial to the late president altogether unless he gets his name restored to the building: because — deep within his etiolated heart — this is what he cares about.

At the same time, Trump sent up a “bat signal,” to his MAGA base, declaring that calls to pump the breaks on AI development were a “HOAX.” As the Dispatch’s Nick Cattogio notes:

“When a ‘hoax’ is afoot, populists are expected to rally behind their president, no questions asked…. [It’s] essentially an incantation by which Trump’s political operation turns very bad political developments into loyalty tests for their ultra-loyal base.”

Some of the usual stooges echoed their master’s voice, but — as is increasingly the case — much of the public is just ignoring him, putting Trump radically on the wrong side of what is becoming a bipartisan, populist issue. (“Poll: Americans say there’s a serious risk of AI destroying humanity.”)

Overall, about two out of three Americans say there is at least a “moderate” risk that advanced AI could destroy humanity, with majorities across parties, genders and age groups holding that view. Americans who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 are [only] somewhat more likely to see such a risk (70%) than those who voted for President Donald Trump (60%).

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, “bestiality,” has entered the conversation, reminding us, once again, that we live in the dumbest of all possible timelines. “Kash Patel defends FBI hiring policy on applicants who have engaged in bestiality.” Even Republicans were bewildered by the tolerance of animal buggery.

Patel said the change was recommended to him after he saw various “cases” in which qualified FBI applicants were denied consideration because they had been forced into bestiality as a result of human trafficking.

“I say this with respect to the person who recommended it, why didn’t you just say: ‘What planet did you parachute in from?’” Kennedy replied.

We still await the answer.

Artificial Intelligence Threats, Advocates

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Nobody Wants Killer Robots. That May Not Be Enough, Andrew Egger, right, Sept. 16, 2026. Nobody Wants Killer Robots. That May Not Be Enough.

A large, growing, and cross-partisan bunch agree: It’s sort of crazy that AI companies are charging toward a future of intelligent robots they’re not sure they can keep under control and which might have an outside chance of killing us all. What they don’t have, at least yet, is anything resembling a shared action plan to build a political coalition around.

This was my main takeaway from yesterday’s “Pro-Human Assembly,” a D.C. conference hosted by the Future of Life Institute and organized around the group’s “Pro-Human AI Declaration,” released earlier this year.

The new explosion of AI extinction warnings has earned the group new attention. And although some in the AI space are dismissive—one attendee described it to me as “a really twee attempt to stand athwart history yelling ‘stop’”—they can boast real reach. Organizers noted yesterday that their declaration has passed a million signatories, and the conference drew speakers from across the political spectrum: Sen. Bernie Sanders spoke minutes before MAGA populist maven Steve Bannon.

And yet, listening to Bernie and Bannon speak, it was hard to avoid the conclusion that AI risk advocates share little except a conviction that something must be done.

For Sanders, the main thing was to rein in U.S.-manufactured AI first. “If the lives of every man, woman, and child are going to be fundamentally changed by this technology, then the people of this country must make the decisions about AI, and not just a handful of oligarchs.” Sanders’ proposals are sweeping: to require half the board members of large AI companies to be appointed by the public, to temporarily pause advanced AI development altogether, to permanently ban the development of “artificial superintelligence,” and more.

What about winning the AI race against China? For Sanders, the only possibility was both countries agreeing to slow down in tandem: “I very much hope that at their AI summit next week, President Trump will negotiate a comprehensive treaty with President Xi to establish a pause on advanced AI development.”

Bannon’s approach couldn’t have been more different. For him, any efforts to rein in U.S.-made AI would be pointless at best and self-defeating at worst if they require us to take China at their word. It’s ridiculous even to contemplate slowing U.S. AI development, he argued, until we have launched, and won, a total economic war on the Chinese tech sector in the same way America “choked off” the Soviet Union. “That’s what we have to do today to the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. “No deals, no agreements. . . . No black market chips, no free ride off American technology, no stealing American tech.”

As we keep saying: AI is such a new issue that it hasn’t had enough time to split along partisan lines and ossify there. Trump’s hard pivot this week into “everyone who doesn’t want AI is an idiot or a commie traitor” may get the ball rolling on that; the outcome of the summit with Xi may contribute as well. For now though, it’s still hard to envision a coalition that not only opposes AI development but agrees on a plan to slow it—a gridlock that could end up sticking us with an increasingly unpopular status quo. 

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Corporate mercenary is a bipartisan profession, Judd Legum, right, and Rebecca Crosby, Sept. 16, 2026. The AI industry tapped Jay Carney to rebuild ties with Democrats. He spent years at Amazon fighting AI regulation.

The AI industry tapped Jay Carney to rebuild ties with Democrats. He spent years at Amazon fighting AI regulation.Judd Legum and Rebecca CrosbySep 16READ IN APPWhite House Press Secretary Jay Carney waves at the end of his last White House briefing at the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House June 18, 2014 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The AI industry has placed a huge bet on President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. For example, in the 2026 cycle alone, AI executives and corporations have donated $42 million to MAGA Inc., Trump’s super PAC.

But the political winds may be changing. Trump’s popularity is near an all-time low. Republicans could lose control of one or both chambers of Congress in November’s midterm elections.

This all comes at a time when the public is increasingly concerned about the safety of frontier AI models, data center construction, and the impact of AI on their jobs. AI companies are looking to the federal government for help.

In a essay this month, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for “regulation that targets all US frontier AI companies.” While this is framed around an altruistic concern about safety, Amodei acknowledged that government regulation would allow AI incumbents to coordinate their activities while avoiding “antitrust” issues. Amodei’s letter was endorsed by the two other biggest AI players, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI CEO Elon Musk.

Trump, however, immediately rejected the idea. “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

According to reports, the AI industry may now be hedging its bets.

According to Politico, Jay Carney, who served as White House press secretary during the Obama administration, has been tapped “to run a new initiative aimed at shaping national AI policy.” Carney has been hired by SV Angel, an investment firm led by Ron Conway, a major Democratic donor.

The new initiative is called “Project Blueprint,” which the New York Times reports is an effort to “rebuild bonds between leaders in the artificial intelligence sector and Democrats who are demanding new rules to regulate the technology.”

On X, former Vice President Kamala Harris called Carney’s hiring an “encouraging effort to bring industry and government leaders together.”

It is unclear who should be encouraged by Carney’s new role. While Carney worked for a Democratic administration, he abandoned public service more than a dozen years ago.

After leaving the Obama administration, Carney spent seven years as a hired gun for Amazon, where he reported directly to Jeff Bezos. (His official title was Senior Vice President, Global Corporate Affairs.) In that role, Carney fought against government efforts to protect privacy and regulate AI.

A 2021 Reuters article describes Carney as the “architect of [an] under-the-radar campaign to smother privacy protections.” Internal documents obtained by Reuters revealed that Carney’s “mission included defeating restrictions on artificial intelligence and biometric technologies, along with blocking efforts to make companies disclose the data they keep on consumers.”

A memo reviewed by Reuters said that such restrictions could “impede growth for [Amazon’s] Alexa-powered devices.” It celebrated Carney’s role in “killing or amending privacy bills in ‘over 20 states.’”

Early in his tenure, Carney’s team targeted “a Washington state bill to regulate biometrics, including voice recordings, fingerprints and face scans.” The bill eventually passed “but only after lobbyists for Amazon and other firms had chiseled away at its privacy protections by convincing lawmakers to insert alternative language, often verbatim.” Among other concessions, voice recordings were exempted, sparing Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant from regulation. In an internal document, Amazon celebrated that the revised legislation “would have ‘little, if any, direct impact on Amazon’s practices.’”

After joining the company, Carney criticized Amazon’s lobbying efforts as “frugal” and “narrow.” Under Carney’s leadership, by 2020, “Amazon had registered at least 180 lobbyists in 44 U.S. states, up from at least 62 lobbyists in 27 states in 2014, the year before Carney arrived.”

At Amazon, Carney expanded a program called “Watering the flowers.” According to a 2019 CNBC report, “The flowers represent elected officials, and the goal is to create a well-tended ‘garden’ of pro-Amazon policymakers, from state governors and senators down to local officials and economic development teams.”

In a 2025 interview, Carney said in his corporate roles he spent “a lot of time thinking about how we can flood the zone with our narrative.”

"If you are interested in how the American right went insane, TPM is your actual publication of record," declared historian Rick Perlstein. We agree, and recommend that if you want to keep tabs on the reactionary movement that has gripped American politics and culture, sign up for TPM's flagship newsletter, The Brief.Carney attacked whistleblower, dismissed concerns about poor working conditions

While at Amazon, Carney also dismissed concerns about conditions in the workplace. In 2015, the New York Times published an article alleging poor conditions for Amazon’s corporate employees. The article quoted a former Amazon employee, Bo Olson, who said, “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.”

Two months after the article was published, Carney posted a rebuttal on Medium. To discredit their accounts, Carney included additional details about some of the employees the Times had interviewed, including Olson.

“Attributed to Bo Olson, the image of countless employees crying at their desks set the tone for a front-page story that other media outlets described as ‘scathing,’ ‘blistering,’ ‘brutal’ and ‘harsh.’ Olson’s words were so key to the narrative the Times wished to construct that they splashed them in large type just below the headline,” Carney wrote. “Here’s what the story didn’t tell you about Mr. Olson: his brief tenure at Amazon ended after an investigation revealed he had attempted to defraud vendors and conceal it by falsifying business records.” Olson denied the allegation.

In 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported that Carney was directly involved in a series of posts on Twitter (now X) responding to criticisms by some politicians. In one case, an official Amazon account responded to a post from Representative Mark Pocan (D-WI) that said, “Paying workers $15/hr doesn’t make you a ‘progressive workplace’ when you union-bust & make workers urinate in water bottles.”

“You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us,” Amazon wrote back. (The company later apologized for the tweet and acknowledged “that drivers can and do have trouble finding restrooms.”) According to the Wall Street Journal, “Unlike most tweets from Amazon’s news account, these tweets were crafted by executives including Mr. Bezos and Mr. Carney.”Carney v. unions

Carney also participated in anti-union efforts while at Amazon.

In April 2020, Carney defended Amazon’s firing of Chris Smalls, an Amazon warehouse worker who led a walkout at a Staten Island warehouse over worker protections during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amazon said that Smalls “was fired for violating a company-imposed 14-day quarantine after he came into contact with an employee who tested positive for the coronavirus.” Smalls said that he was “singled out after pleading with management to sanitize the warehouse and be more transparent about the number of workers who were sick,” arguing that others had come into contact with the positive worker “for longer periods of time,” VICE reported.

“Amazon’s warehouse workers protested because people are getting sick on the job. Their demands were not radical: a safer workplace, protective gear and paid sick leave,” Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wrote on X. “Amazon’s response? Retaliate by firing a worker who helped organize the walk-out.” Carney responded to the post, “I’m confused. Thought you wanted us to protect our workers? Mr. Smalls purposely violated social distancing rules, repeatedly, & was put on Paid 14-day quarantine for COVID exposure.”

Leaked notes from an internal Amazon leadership meeting obtained by VICE, however, show that “company executives discussed a plan to smear” Smalls. Leadership reportedly “discussed encouraging Amazon executives to use Smalls to discredit the wider labor movement at Amazon.”

In 2021, Carney also responded to a post from Sanders supporting an effort to unionize a warehouse in Alabama. “Amazon workers in Alabama are sick and tired of being treated like robots. They are standing up and fighting back, and I am proud to support them,” Sanders wrote. “With all due respect, Senator @BernieSanders, you’re wrong on this. We treat our employees with dignity and respect. We offer a $15 min wage, health care from day one, and a safe, inclusive workplace,” Carney wrote.

More Global News 

New York Times, E.U. Offers to Make Canada ‘Associate Member’ as U.S. Ties Weaken for Both, Jeanna Smialek and Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Sept. 16, 2026. Canada and the European Union have been confronting an increasingly challenging relationship with the United States under President Trump.

The European Union has invited Canada to work toward becoming the bloc’s first “associate member,” a title meant to underscore Canada’s growing closeness to the 27-nation union as both face deteriorating relationships with the United States.

President Trump has waged a relentless trade war with Canada, challenging the nation’s economy. The United States has pulled back support for NATO and Ukraine, leaving the European Union scrambling to shore up its defenses. That has left both looking for new partners as the alliances established after World War II shift.

“We must urgently reimagine our partnerships,” said Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Union’s executive arm, on Wednesday during a speech in Strasbourg, France. Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, was seated directly to Ms. von der Leyen’s left as she made her address.

“I would like to work with you on opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the European Union,” Ms. von der Leyen told him.

Though details remain scant and the linkup is not a done deal, the announcement Wednesday was met with a standing ovation from lawmakers, and Mr. Carney and Ms. von der Leyen shook hands warmly as she made the announcement.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Canada? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Ms. von der Leyen said the proposal was “not a partnership against anyone else, but for our common strength.” But it is clear that Europe and Canada see themselves caught between a competitive China and an at-times-hostile Trump administration.

“China, Russia and the U.S. have turned their backs on international law,” Barry Andrews, a member of the European Parliament from Ireland, said in a statement after Ms. von der Leyen’s speech. “We need new allies.”

Mr. Carney gave a headline-grabbing speech at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, this year during which he argued that the world order that emerged from the Cold War was facing a “rupture, not a transition,” and that “middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”

Wednesday’s announcement was a vivid demonstration of that strategy.

Ms. von der Leyen did not lay out in detail what associate membership to the European Union might entail. But European diplomats and officials in recent days have made it clear that Canada and the European Union, which will meet for a summit at the end of October, are working toward closer cooperation on technology regulation, trade and the supply of critical minerals.

They are also working to team up on security and defense. Ms. von der Leyen highlighted that point in her remarks, noting that Europe had faced a recent series of drone incursions and other provocations, many of them attributed to Russia.

“Hybrid threats facing Europe are less and less hybrid, and less and less threats,” she said on Wednesday.

Ms. von der Leyen called for a European equivalent to a NATO provision that allows for the convening of defense-related meetings when a nation is threated, known as Article 4. The European Union already has a little-known collective defense guarantee, but Ms. von der Leyen pitched “Europe’s own Article 4” and said that when it was “triggered by one member state, all member states would convene.”

She also called for a new leaders’ group, the European Security Council, that would include non-E.U. partners in Europe like Britain, Norway and Ukraine, and also Canada.

The push to bring Canada closer is likely to encounter roadblocks. E.U. member states have warned offering too many benefits to a would-be associate would diminish the value of full membership, for instance.

The Guardian, Kosovo’s former president jailed for 25 years over war crimes, Peter Beaumont, Sept. 16, 2026. Hashim Thaçi faced multiple counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, torture and persecution. Photograph: Ferdi Limani/Getty ImagesWar crimesKosovo’s former president jailed for 25 years over war crimes

Hashim Thaçi, 58, was convicted by The Hague for crimes committed while he was senior commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army

Peter Beaumont Senior international correspondentWed 16 Sep 2026 09.40 EDTSharePrefer the Guardian on Google

Hashim Thaçi, the former president of Kosovo, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison by a tribunal in The Hague for war crimes, including dozens of murders, committed during his time as a senior commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army during the country’s war for independence from Serbia in the late 1990s.

The European-backed Kosovo Specialist Chambers, convicted Thaci, 58, and three other former senior commanders of 96 murders, and counts of torture, cruel treatment and arbitrary detention directed at political opponents and civilians.

The convictions come at the end of a years-long process, strongly opposed by many in Kosovo, to bring accountability for crimes committed by KLA commanders during the 1998-99 war in which war crimes were committed by both sides.

Thaçi, who resigned from office nearly six years ago to face charges, stood in silence in The Hague as the presiding judge Charles Smith read out the sentence.

The former president, who served as the head of political directorate of the KLA’s general staff, faced multiple counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity alongside the three other former leaders of the KLA who are widely regarded as national heroes in their homeland.

In addition to the murders, Thaçi was also convicted for the illegal detention of 385 people, torture of 303 people and cruel treatment of about 50.Crowds chant as people wait for the decision of The Kosovo Specialist Chambers against leaders of former Kosovo Liberation ArmyView image in fullscreenCrowds chant as people wait for the decision of The Kosovo Specialist Chambers against leaders of former Kosovo Liberation Army. Photograph: Ferdi Limani/Getty Images

Once a hardliner, Thaçi shifted towards a more moderate political identity after being courted by western diplomats who suggested he could be a central figure in Kosovo’s post-war settlement.

At the heart of the prosecution’s case was the degree to which the convicted men had senior operational command over the KLA as a centrally-led armed force and whether the crimes amounted to a pattern of abuse.

The ⁠court ruled that Thaçi had “actively participated in and encouraged crimes”. Smith said: “The scale and nature of the crimes committed were very serious”.

He added: “The so-called ​intelligence on which many of these victims were arrested, detained and ‌killed was little more than unverified rumours. Based ‌on that information, victims were called and described as spies and collaborators and violently treated.”

Smith said Thaçi “used his position, leadership, authority and standing” to encourage crimes but insisted the trial was “not about the legitimacy of the Kosovo Liberation Army” or its ultimate goal of securing independence for Kosovo, which at the time was a province in Serbia. Thaçi could appeal the verdict.

Prosecutors at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers court in The Hague had asked for a maximum 45-year prison sentence for Thaçi and the other defendants, Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi who had all denied the charges against them.

Krasniqi received 25 years in prison, Selimi 13 years and Veseli 18 years. Thaçi also faces a separate trial on charges of intimidating witnesses that will begin this month.

The three-judge panel ⁠dismissed six charges of crimes against humanity and said prosecutors had failed to show these happened as part ​of widespread or systematic attacks against the civilian population ​as a whole.

Known by the nom de guerre of Commander Snake during the war, Thaçi stood out among the KLA leadership as an intelligent and articulate figure who would later charm diplomats – most notably the US secretary of state Madeleine Albright – at the negotiations in Rambouillet that ended the conflict.

But behind the self-assured image he projected as a senior political figure, he was long dogged by allegations of a darker and more ruthless side from his time as a wartime commander.

Thaçi’s defence partly rested on the notion that while serious abuses did occur, the KLA was a not a strictly centralised organisation, claiming that Thaçi’s senior position in the rebel group did not indicate culpability for crimes committed by local units.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice 

Hope for America, Opinion: Kash Patel is not going to like this post, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Sept. 15, 2026. At exactly 9:30 this morning, the director of the FBI, Kash Patel, stood in front of photojournalists, members of Congress, and their staff, wearing a deep blue suit with a delicate pastel pink tie. With his right hand held up high and his left hand clenched tight at his thigh, he pledged “to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” Minutes later, he was defending his department’s decision to remove bestiality as an automatic disqualification for employment with the FBI, making it possible for applicants who engaged in repulsive acts with an animal to still be eligible to join the most powerful law enforcement agency in the country.

Senator Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, opened the line of questioning by reading directly from an internal FBI memo issued this past June. “According to a memo issued this June, the FBI has lowered its hiring standards by dropping automatic disqualification for applicants who have stolen from employers, paid for sex, or engaged in bestiality,” Durbin said. What followed might be one of the most embarrassing moments in FBI history. The Director attempted to justify the unjustifiable, degrading his office, and humiliated the entire department in the process.

Durbin went straight to the heart of the matter, asking Patel whether these were the “qualified candidates” the FBI had been losing. Patel never actually answered the question. Instead, he said, “What we did was, we did not want to punish victims of bestiality, victims who were trafficked. We did not want to make it an automatic disqualification for the FBI to consider you if you are a victim of these awful, heinous acts.” Durbin didn’t let it go. He kept pushing. “What I’m reading to you is that you dropped automatic disqualification for applicants who have been engaged in bestiality. Not victims of bestiality, applicants who have engaged,”

Patel was trapped and dug in deeper. “Applicants who have engaged in bestiality means they were victims of bestiality because they were forced to do so.” Then he added, “At this FBI we are not going to criminalize and prevent victims from serving.”

Rather than explain why the FBI suddenly changed a policy that once automatically disqualified applicants who acknowledged engaging in bestiality, Patel decided to explain it away by trying to create a narrative in which “engaged in bestiality” somehow meant those applicants were victims of animal assaults and had been forced to participate against their will. The director has quite a creative imagination to come up with a cover story like that. I often wonder if the Trump administration has a team sitting on standby around the clock just to manufacture enough spin to explain away anything, even things as absurd as this.

While so much of the attention today went to bestiality, the actual policy change applies specifically to applicants who engaged in that act or animal cruelty before the age of eighteen; it still helped bury the other two changes to their hiring policy: theft from a previous employer and paying for sex. When they removed bestiality as an automatic disqualification, they also made stealing from an employer more than three years ago no longer an automatic bar to joining the FBI, and neither is having paid for sex fewer than three times more than 10 years ago. Bestiality rightfully caught many of our eyes when these changes came to light, but maybe that also meant the more likely wrongdoings were not given nearly as much attention as they deserved. And maybe that was the point.

It wasn’t just Democrats trying to make sense of what was happening. Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, a Republican, was equally dumbfounded. Patel treated him like an enemy as well, telling him that the old rules “automatically disqualified any individual who participated on either side of it.” Kennedy stopped and asked, “Either side of what? The bestiality?” and then added, “So you disqualified the animal?” Patel thought this was all too funny and responded with, “Well, we have great canines, but we’re not going to disqualify them.” Kennedy was rightfully not impressed with his answer and pressed on with his questioning, “I’m really trying to understand.” Before asking, “On what planet” was this change suggested? and “How do you involuntarily do bestiality?” Bewildered, he finally asked, “But you’re not telling us today that if a human being had sex with an animal, that they can still be an FBI agent?”

The hearing lasted nearly 5 hours, starting just after 9 AM, and the bestiality exchange was sadly just the beginning. What followed was shouting, deflection, insults, political double talk, and a complete disrespect for what the FBI used to be when it had competent leadership.

Senator Cory Booker seemed completely done with Director Patel before he even could answer a single question, telling him at one point that “He’s an incompetent lackey.” With his voice rising, he added that “He’s like an 18-year-old kid who wants to join a fraternity that he could never be a member of, doing keg stands and chugging with friends. He’s an embarrassment to the agency and wouldn’t qualify even to be an FBI agent.”

Patel’s response showed exactly why there is so much outrage over him holding such an important position in our government. He said, “I don’t have much to say. This guy called me a thug. It’s kind of ironic. He’s running for president of the United States. He just got his 20-second ad campaign.” That was the Director of the FBI at an oversight hearing. There is no dignity left, or maybe there never was any to begin with. Booker was ready to respond, though: “Here’s the thing, Mr. Patel. I think you’re not gonna be around long. I think this might be your last oversight hearing. Because, as much as you supplicate yourself to the will of Donald Trump and not the Constitution of the United States of America, Donald Trump has shown us in his first term and in this term, he is not loyal to people like you. He will cut you loose.” What followed was shouting between the two, and the Director of the FBI calling a senator’s words “false information.” Booker ended up yelling back to Patel, telling him, “I am not afraid of you!” Patel just couldn’t control himself and screamed at him, “You are the biggest mockery in the United States Senate, and you’re sitting next to Schiff.” This is who is leading our top law enforcement agency.

Senator Adam Schiff took a different approach with his line of questioning, focusing instead on the hundreds of FBI agents who have been fired after working on investigations involving Donald Trump. Schiff noted that there was very little Democrats could do about it while Republicans were in control of Congress, but then warned Patel of what was to come: “While this Congress is not going to investigate the wrongful termination of potentially hundreds of agents for working on properly predicated investigations, the next Congress will.”

More On U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Religion

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. 15, 2026 [Trump's Mental Decline -- And Why Letters from an American], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Sept. 16, 2026. Seven years ago, on September 15, 2019, after about a six-week hiatus during the summer, I wrote a Facebook post that started:

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

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

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

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

“This is the story of a dictator on the rise,” I wrote, “taking control of formerly independent branches of government, and using the power of his office to amass power.”

Readers swamped me with questions. So I wrote another post answering them and trying to explain the news, which began breaking at a breathtaking pace.

And so these Letters from an American were born.

Seven years later, we are approaching the midpoint of Trump’s second term, and the patterns I saw seven years ago are slicing to the heart of both the mechanics and the soul of the United States.

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

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

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

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

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

And so I write.

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

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

Sept. 15

Top Headlines

• New York Times, Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Restrictions on Mail Voting, Abbie VanSickle, Sept. 15, 2026 (print ed.). The ruling blocks the Trump administration from dramatically changing how Americans vote by mail in the midterm elections.
• New York Times, Trump’s Effort to Assert Control Over Elections Continues, Despite Court Loss, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Sept. 15, 2026 (print ed.). President Trump has launched a broad, governmentwide effort to take more control of state-run elections and sow doubt about the outcome.

Exclusive On U.S. Intelligence Officer's Child Sex Scandal, Creating UK Diplomatic Dispute

Is the new US embassy in London, a $1 billion glas cube portrayed in a CNN photo, at the center of a major child porn scandal and cover-up?

• The Wayne Madsen Report via Substack, Investigative Commentary: Major pedophile scandal at U.S. embassy in London covered-up by a media influenced by pedophile-friendly oligarchs, Wayne Madsen, right, author of 28 books and former Navy Intelligence officer, Sept 14-15, 2026. Press censorship imposed at a national level by the Trump regime has resulted in the public being under-informed about a diplomatic cover-up of a pedophilia scandal at the U.S. embassy in London while Donald Trump and his family were basking in media limelight next door in Ireland. The Trump regime blindsided the government of Prime Minister Andy Burnham by flying out of London a U.S. military attaché whose brother was arrested in Illinois for possession of child sex abuse material. 

News Roundups

• The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Congress Investigates Don Jr.'s Wedding, Trump Family Distances, Trump Blasts SCOTUS as Losses Mount, Cameras Banned From Recording McConnell, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 15, 2026. Today’s rundown has a real headline story. A Russian businessman with deep ties to the Kremlin bankrolled Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding after-party, and Congress just decided that is worth investigating. On top of that, Trump’s administration had one of its worst nights in court yet, McConnell finally showed his face after three months but reporters were barred from recording him, and there is a long list of other news you need to see. Let’s get into it.
• The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Mitch McConnell Returns as I Spent the Day at His House, Trump Melts Down Over AI, Major Whistleblower Report, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 14, 2026. Trump spirals on Truth Social, alleging a “SICK conspiracy” against AI and calling critics traitors. President Trump declared Monday that a “SICK conspiracy” is being waged against artificial intelligence and the data centers that run it, describing the people behind it as “Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers.” He singled out Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei by name, writing, “The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel,’ and we will continue to do so! We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!” He did not specify what conduct he was referring to, what criminal power he meant, or who exactly the alleged conspirators are.

Special Report: More On Russian Oligarch, Trump Family Wedding

A group photo shows about 35 people including Donald Trump Jr., his wife Bettina Anderson, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Tiffany Trump and Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev (with little more than his forehead and nose visible in the back row).

• ProPublica, Investigative Reporting: Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas Wedding Was Secretly Bankrolled by Russian Oligarch Close to Putin, Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski, Sept. 14, 2026. The oligarch, Umar Kremlev, spent hundreds of thousands on expenses like renting out a private island. He appears to have met Trump Jr. only recently, but he attended the intimate wedding with a large group of other Russian guests.

More On U.S. Markets, Economy, Inflation, Jobs

Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, called on industry leaders to slow A.I. development for fear of losing control of the technology. Shown at right is Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI.

• New York Times, Tech Stocks Shudder in Response to Calls to Slow A.I. Progress, Joe Rennison, Sept. 15, 2026 (print ed.). Companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence in Asia, Europe and the United States posted declines after tech leaders expressed worries about the safety of “frontier” A.I. technology.
• The Hartmann Report, Is America About to Get the Biggest “Special Assessment” in History? Thom Hartmann, Sept. 14-15, 2026. The bond market is warning that 45 years of Republican tax cuts and exploding debt may finally force ordinary Americans to pay for a party the wealthy already enjoyed.
• New York Times, Key U.S. Borrowing Rate Near 20-Year High as Oil Prices Fluctuate, Jason Karaian, Sept. 15, 2026. The interest rate on a key U.S. government bond reached a nearly two-decade high, oil prices remained elevated and stock markets wavered on Tuesday amid intensifying turmoil in global markets.

More On Artificial Intelligence Fears

• Hope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump’s high IQ hoax, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Sept. 14, 2026. At 9:58 this morning, Donald Trump was locked away deep inside the White House when he began panicking online in front of the entire world. Over the course of almost 10 hours, the President posted on social media 7 times about the exact same thing, spiraling out of control over artificial intelligence, with each post growing more unhinged than the next. He started by telling us all that our president has everything under control because of his genius-level intelligence: “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” 
• Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Why Is Trump Still Boosting AI? Paul Krugman, right, Sept. 15, 2026. Will AI transform the economy? The jury is still out on that one: So far there is little evidence for either the massive job losses or the soaring productivity growth industry leaders threatened/promised, but it’s still early days.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Odd Trump Out, William Kristol, right, Sept. 15, 2026. Whom should you listen to on the issue of artificial intelligence? You could listen to the American public.You could listen to people working on AI. You could listen to people running the biggest AI companies. So we’ve got the executives, the experts, and the public lined up on one side. On the other side? President Trump.
• New York Times, China’s Top Spy Chief Warns A.I. Is a Threat to Party Rule, Lily Kuo, Sept. 15, 2026 (print ed.). Even as Beijing urges the United States not to hype the dangers of A.I., its own spy chief is framing the technology as a threat to the Communist Party’s security.
• Politico, Trump says only guardrails that AI needs is ‘STRONG AND SMART’ president, Elleiana Green and Owen Dahlkamp, Sept. 14-15, 2026. The president is trying to shut down a growing push for AI regulation, amid calls from leaders to slow the production of artificial intelligence.President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks with reporters on Air Force One

More On Middle East Wars

• New York Times, News Analysis: Saudi Arabia Faces ‘Worst-Case Scenario’ After Being Rebuffed by Trump, Vivian Nereim, Sept. 15, 2026 (print ed.). The kingdom is in a state of strategic shock after coming under attack from an emboldened Iran and failing to win more U.S. military support, analysts say. 
• New York Times, News Analysis: Gulf Arab States Explore New Options as U.S. Bases Fail to Deter Iran, Vivian Nereim, Sept. 15, 2026. The American presence in these countries has not shielded them from retaliation during the Iran war. Now they are hoping direct talks with Iran could help.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Is ICE Dropping Fentanyl? Andrew Egger, right, Sept. 14, 2026. Because most people are much more comfortable with the idea of deporting killers and drug dealers than law-abiding grandmas, the Trump administration has long couched its mass deportation agenda as an effort targeting “the worst of the worst.” And the Department of Homeland Security has lately been playing up its efforts against international bad actors like drug cartels, with Secretary Markwayne Mullin announcing last week that DHS was changing its seal² to better reflect its posture of “war every single day” against those actors.
• New York Times, Whistle-Blower: Federal Agents May Have Broken State Laws in Search for Voter Fraud, Nick Corasaniti and Hamed Aleaziz, Sept. 15, 2026 (print ed.). Agents expressed concern about being directed by top Homeland Security leaders to use private information to look up voter records in state databases.  
• Talking Feds Substack, A Pro-Trump Prosecutor Draws the Line, Harry Litman, Sept. 14, 2026. "If you want indictments where there's no evidence, you have an ethical problem."
• Emptywheel, Analysis:The Grand Conspiracy … Adrift on a Skiff, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Sept. 14, 2026. Those of you who followed the stolen documents case surely appreciate the irony that one reason Joe DiGenova quit his position leading the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy last week had to do with DOJ’s refusal to give him his own SCIF.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

• Popular Information, How Trump is spending his $400 million war chest, Judd Legum, right, Sept. 14, 2026. President Trump has amassed over $400 million through his super PAC, MAGA Inc. This is an unprecedented figure, dwarfing the largest cash piles collected in previous midterm elections. 
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: SCOTUS Dashes Trump’s Last, Best Midterm Hope, Andrew Egger, right, Sept. 15, 2026. Let’s get a few caveats out of the way up front. Yes, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has sometimes let Donald Trump get away with too much. And yes, there are still myriad ways Trump could try to tamper with the upcoming midterms—and it’s all but certain that he’ll try to spin any Democratic victories as fraudulent, at least in the minds of his own base.
• MS Now, Opinion: Trump’s easiest path to saving the GOP’s midterms just disappeared, James Downie, Sept. 14, 2026. The August inflation report had a few bright spots, but in political terms, the president and the Republicans are out of time. The quickest path to a surprisingly strong midterm for the GOP was through a sharp economic revival. That path is now closed.
• Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, Oil Prices Keep Rising, The Trump Project Keeps Deteriorating, A Win In Sweden, Protecting Our Elections, Simon Rosenberg, right, Sept. 14, 2026. Over the past few days (here, here, here) we’ve discussed how as the economy continues to deteriorate so does the political standing of Trump and the Rs. Here’s more confirmation of the deterioration of their brand from a new CBS poll.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Greatest Danger of All Would Be to Do Nothing, William Kristol, right, Sept. 14, 2026. In recent months, we’ve learned about artificial intelligence agents escaping captivity. Now we’re seeing the political debate over artificial intelligence escaping captivity.
• The Contrarian, Opinion: What to Defund, Jennifer Rubin, right, Sept. 14, 2026. 50 Days to the Midterms. First and foremost, Democrats should refuse to fund the illegal, reckless Iran War and must eliminate funds for continued deployment of personnel and material that depletes our readiness and leaves us vulnerable elsewhere. They can condition additional funding for the Pentagon on compliance with congressional investigations, and can defund overtly politicized gatherings of the type Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has conducted. 
• New York Times, N.Y. Democratic House Candidate Admits to Bondage Photo Shoot, Andy Newman, Sept. 15, 2026 (print ed.). Christopher Gallant, who is running against Representative Nick LaLota on Long Island, acknowledged that the photos that surfaced in media reports on Monday were legitimate.
• New York Times, With Trump’s Plans Blocked, States Work to Restore Trust in Mail Voting, Nick Corasaniti, Anna Griffin and Richard Fausset, Sept. 15, 2026. President Trump’s efforts to restrict mail voting ahead of the midterms were thwarted by the Supreme Court, but they have sowed confusion and doubt among some voters.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Trump Learns You Can’t Spell Mail Without an L, Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger, Sept. 15, 2026. President Trump spent much of yesterday posting about his unlimited support for AI development and data-center construction and calling criticism of it a “hoax.”

More On U.S. High Tech, Media, Education, Sports, Religion

• New York Times, Opinion: A New Book Seeks to Shame the Elites Who Caved to Trump, Michelle Goldberg, Sept. 15, 2026 (print ed.). The thing I’ve found most shocking about Donald Trump’s second presidency is not the epic grift, the ICE paramilitary violence or the assaults on free speech. These abuses, while horrifying, are predictable. What has stunned me has been the capitulation of so many American elites to Trump’s vulgar authoritarianism.
• Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. 13, 2026 [Warnings On AI], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Sept. 14, 2026. On Saturday, September 12, Dario Amodei, the chief executive officer of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, published a 3,800-word essay calling for AI companies to slow down their improvement of AI models.
• Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: I Disagree with my colleagues every day on Fox, Jessica Tarlov (Fox News co-host), Sept. 14, 2026. Here’s what I’ve learned about winning the conversation.
• The Wrap, Byron Allen’s Local Now Adds 111 Gray Media Stations, Lucas Manfredi, Sept. 14, 2026. Byron Allen’s Local Now has added 111 free, ad-supported streaming channels to its lineup that will carry coverage from Gray Media’s local stations across the U.S., TheWrap can reveal exclusively.
• The Daily Beast, ‘60 Minutes’ Star Defies MAGA Bosses With Brutal Grilling, Erkki Forster, Updated Sept. 14 2026. NO HOLDING BACK. Lesley Stahl wasn’t pulling her punches as she quizzed a major Trump ally.

Top Stories

New York Times, Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Restrictions on Mail Voting, Abbie VanSickle, Sept. 15, 2026 (print ed.). The ruling blocks the Trump administration from dramatically changing how Americans vote by mail in the midterm elections.

The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a Trump administration plan to dramatically change how Americans vote by mail in the lead-up to the midterm elections, a major loss for President Trump, who has long claimed without evidence that fraud is rampant in mail voting.

The ruling was a resounding win for Democratic-led states and voting rights groups, which had argued that the plan was unconstitutional and an existential threat to the democratic process.

The Trump administration’s efforts, they had said, would introduce chaos and confusion as early voting gears up in many states.

Still, the weekslong legal tussle over the issue may have sown its own kind of confusion, a victory of sorts for Mr. Trump as he seeks to cast doubt on the integrity of the vote in an election his party might lose.

The majority provided a one-paragraph explanation for the ruling, writing that the government was “unlikely to succeed on the merits.”

The order was unsigned, which is typical in emergency rulings. It gave no vote count. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote a concurrence. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.

The battle over the Trump administration’s plan to change mail-in voting has played out over the last few weeks in a dizzying series of legal developments, even as states began sending out ballots.

Trump administration lawyers had urged the justices to step in and clear the way for its plan to use the Postal Service to screen ballot envelopes after they are submitted by state elections officials. The new rules would require states to submit lists of voters approved to receive mail ballots. The Postal Service would then deliver mail ballots only to the voters on the lists.

The plan would also require states to use an envelope approved by the Postal Service, including a unique bar code for each voter. Some states have argued that redesigning ballots so close to the election would be challenging or perhaps impossible, causing delays.

New York Times, Trump’s Effort to Assert Control Over Elections Continues, Despite Court Loss, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Sept. 15, 2026 (print ed.). President Trump has launched a broad, governmentwide effort to take more control of state-run elections and sow doubt about the outcome.

The Supreme Court on Monday dealt President Trump a major blow when it blocked his executive order to restrict mail ballots. But Mr. Trump’s battle to assert control over the election process is far from finished.

The stymied attempt to have the U.S. Postal Service screen mail ballots was just one piece of a broader effort involving the full power of the federal government to take more control of state-run elections.

Just days before the Supreme Court blocked Mr. Trump’s mail ballot order, the Justice Department sent threatening letters to at least 30 top election officials across the country, escalating a fight to gain access to private voter data and election records.

Federal agents are scouring voter rolls managed by states for noncitizens, despite a lack of evidence of widespread fraud. Mr. Trump’s homeland security secretary recently pushed for an investigation into whether a commonly used voting machine can be trusted, casting doubt on digital voting systems.

“This is far from over,” said Benjamin Hovland, who was ousted from the independent, bipartisan Election Assistance Commission by the Trump administration this year.

Mr. Hovland acknowledged that the Supreme Court’s decision mitigated “real-world impact” on voters and election workers, particularly since voters in some states have already begun to mail in their ballots. But he said Mr. Trump’s actions were alarming.

“What you’re seeing is using the apparatus of government, using federal agencies, using taxpayer dollars, to push that narrative that only undermines confidence in our democracy and ultimately hurts voters and election officials,” Mr. Hovland said.

Mr. Trump argues that he is trying to secure the integrity of the vote, but his claims of widespread fraud in the election system have been investigated and debunked repeatedly, and critics say his actions needlessly sow doubt about the outcome of the vote.

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

There are stark differences between now and Mr. Trump’s first term, when his attempts to undermine the election results in 2020 ran into stiff pushback not only from the courts but also from his own government officials. In his second term, Mr. Trump has surrounded himself with loyalists willing to turn his obsession over the country’s election systems into a blitz of federal actions. He has also installed election deniers in key posts.

The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday did, however, add to a string of mounting losses for Mr. Trump, who said this year that he wanted to “take over” and nationalize elections. Even before the Supreme Court decision, two lower court judges ruled that Mr. Trump’s changes to mail-in balloting were most likely illegal and should not be imposed so close to the November elections.

Exclusive On U.S. Intelligence Officer's Child Sex Scandal, Creating UK Diplomatic Dispute

Is the new US embassy in London, a $1 billion glas cube portrayed in a CNN photo, at the center of a major child porn scandal and cover-up?

The Wayne Madsen Report via Substack, Investigative Commentary: Major pedophile scandal at U.S. embassy in London covered-up by a media influenced by pedophile-friendly oligarchs, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 28 books and former Navy Intelligence officer, Sept 14-15, 2026. Press censorship imposed at a national level by the Trump regime has resulted in the public being under-informed about a diplomatic cover-up of a pedophilia scandal at the U.S. embassy in London while Donald Trump and his family were basking in media limelight next door in Ireland.

The Trump regime blindsided the government of Prime Minister Andy Burnham by flying out of London a U.S. military attaché whose brother was arrested in Illinois for possession of child sex abuse material. In June of this year, the attaché’s brother, Benjamin T. Morris, 33, the then-arts director for the Quad City Arts Building in Rock Island, Illinois, was arrested in as police sting operation for attempting to entice minors on-line. Morris was subsequently charged on 32 criminal counts, including production and dissemination of CSAM. A judge has denied Morris bail, citing a continuing threat to the public.

Attache’s brother Benjamin T. Morris

When the U.S. embassy in London became aware that Morris had shared CSAM with his brother at the U.S. embassy in London, embassy security personnel, including US Marine security guards, conducted a dawn raid of the attaché's flat in Putney in southwest London.

The U.S. personnel allegedly recovered illicit child pornography material on the attaché’s electronic devices. The U.S. personnel took the attaché into custody, flying him out of the country via a chartered Kalitta Air Boeing 747 cargo plane from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. The aircraft landed at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

At no time before and during the attaché’s secret exfiltration from United Kingdom territory did the U.S. embassy or the U.S. State or Justice Departments inform British law enforcement of the action. The Trump regime abused the umbrella afforded by diplomatic protection to evade justice in the host nation, thus bypassing the British police and avoiding a future extradition process.

The U.S. embassy provided no advance warning to the London Metropolitan Police about their plans to raid the attaché’s flat. U.S. personnel have no powers of arrest in Britain and the use of Marines and other non-law enforcement personnel to carry out a police matter also taints the chain-of-custody of evidence recovered from the flat. Marines are not trained in criminal forensics, a fact that will likely be used by the attaché’s defense attorney at a future trial.

Prosecutors for the Rock Island County State's Attorney's Office in Illinois have alleged Morris was exchanging CSAM with his brother, the attaché in London. The FBI, under the incompetent command of Kash Patel, is reportedly examining numerous electronic devices belonging to Morris, and, since his brother’s exfiltration from London, the FBI is likely also conducting forensic analysis of the former attaché’s devices.

The incident has resulted in a cross-party condemnation of the U.S. action. There are demands that if crimes were committed on British soil, the U.S. embassy suspect should face trial in an English court. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has held meetings with Metropolitan Police officials on the incident. Conservative shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy said the U.S. action constituted “a cover-up” and that the attaché “should face trial in an English court.” Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty accused the U.S. of bypassing jurisdictional authority and said it was “completely unacceptable,” “absolutely grotesque,” and proof that the U.S. government was “protecting alleged pedophiles.” The U.S. has a history of protecting its diplomatic and military personnel from facing justice in British courts.Kalitta Air commits to using ExxonMobil aviation lubricants across its fleet | ExxonMobil Aviation

The London Metropolitan Police did not to itself any favors in its statement on the incident: "On Tuesday August 25, US authorities made us aware of an investigation they are conducting into suspected offences in London relating to indecent images of children.” The American authorities only informed the London police after the attaché’s aircraft had cleared UK airspace. Scotland Yard and Home Office personnel were not given an opportunity to interview the attaché.

The U.S. is not releasing the name of the attaché, who is claimed to have been reassigned to “other duties” in the United States.

The U.S. Defense Attaché Office (DAO), located at the embassy complex at 33 Nine Elms Lane in London, has a large staff that includes a Senior Defense Attaché, U.S. Naval Attaché, and attachés and assistant attachés from the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard.

The attaché, who is said to be around 39, used the address DPO, AE (Diplomatic Post Office, Armed Forces Europe/Middle East/Africa). One previous address used by the attaché is located on Burwell Street on Joint Base Bolling-Anacostia in southwest Washington, DC. The attaché is believed to have been previously assigned to the Military Liaison Office/Office of Defense Cooperation at U.S. Military Group – Finland at the U.S. embassy at Itäinen Puistotie 14 in Helsinki. His role included providing Finland with U.S. military hardware as a new member of NATO.

The exfiltration operation of the attaché would have been authorized by U.S. ambassador Warren Stephens. He is the former chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Stephens Inc., a privately held investment bank in Little Rock, Arkansas. Stephens essentially bought the ambassadorship to the Court of St. James by contributing $6 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Note: All information in the column above was obtained from public, non-classified sources available to anyone.

The U.S. State Visit to the UK: Commemorating Our Close Bond

Amb. Warren Stephens and Trump

The breach of diplomatic protocol and the use of a CIA-connected cargo plane to exfiltrate Benjamin Morris’s brother and his electronic devices from the UK is evidence of a wider pedophilia network. The Trump regime’s cover-up of the Morris case continues its obfuscation of other pedophilia crimes, including the Jeffrey Epstein matter. The secrecy around the Morris investigation also points to the possible use of the U.S. embassy in London, which enjoys extraterritorial diplomatic immunity, as a nexus for the exchange of CSAM and AI-generated CSAM.

The State Department has a jaded history of covering-up the pedophile activities of its personnel at its embassies, particularly in Southeast Asia. An unnamed State Department source defended the violation of British sovereignty in the attaché’s exfiltration, stating, “If we had ceded ground and waited, there could have been delays and diplomacy that could have gone on for weeks or months.” Or CSAM exposures that may have led to other Trump regime officials.

Meanwhile, the corporate media in the U.S. is all but ignoring the embassy scandal in London, as is their practice in similar matters.

News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Congress Investigates Don Jr.'s Wedding, Trump Family Distances, Trump Blasts SCOTUS as Losses Mount, Cameras Banned From Recording McConnell, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 15, 2026. Today’s rundown has a real headline story. A Russian businessman with deep ties to the Kremlin bankrolled Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding after-party, and Congress just decided that is worth investigating. On top of that, Trump’s administration had one of its worst nights in court yet, McConnell finally showed his face after three months but reporters were barred from recording him, and there is a long list of other news you need to see. Let’s get into it.

Quick personal note before we dive in. I am genuinely relieved I don’t have to go back to Mitch McConnell’s house again anytime soon, and I am even more relieved that all the MAGA accounts who spent last week attacking me over it can now go find someone else to yell at for a while. It has been a stretch.

And stick around, because after today’s rundown, I have more Epstein research to share with you. Here’s the news:

Congress Investigates Don Jr.’s Wedding as Trump Family Distances itself From Don Jr.:

A Russian businessman with Kremlin ties bankrolled Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding after-party, an extraordinary breach of ethical norms for a president’s family. Umar Kremlev, president of the International Boxing Association and a close associate of Vladimir Putin, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to rent a private island in the Bahamas and stage a fireworks show for the May celebration, according to ProPublica and The New York Times. Trump Jr. and his wife Bettina acknowledged the gifts on Instagram, describing Kremlev as “our dear friend” who “very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding,” and insisting “Friendship doesn’t require a political motive.” President Trump denied any knowledge of the arrangement, telling reporters, “I have no idea who Umar is, never heard of him, and he didn’t pay for Don and Bettina’s wedding,” calling it merely “an ‘afterparty’ given in their honor. Not a big deal!” Ethics experts were far less dismissive, with the Campaign Legal Center’s Kedric Payne saying, “A gift from such an unusual source puts a red flag on the matter,” and retired FBI official Frank Montoya Jr. bluntly noting, “If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something. This should be unthinkable for the son of the president.”

The top House Oversight Democrat is now formally investigating, previewing how aggressively he’d probe the Trump family if Democrats retake the House. Rep. Robert Garcia, left, sent letters to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and to Trump Jr. himself, writing that ProPublica’s reporting on Kremlev’s role “may be the most serious allegation against you to date” and that “Oversight Democrats are investigating the numerous ways in which the Trump family have sought to enrich themselves on the basis of their proximity to President Donald Trump.” He’s demanding a full guest list, records of contact between Trump Jr. and Kremlev, any communications with the White House or intelligence officials about the oligarch, and documentation of “all purchases made for your wedding by foreign nationals.” Garcia also wants to know whether Trump Jr. holds a security clearance, whether he disclosed the Kremlev relationship to the White House, and whether the elder Trump’s absence from the wedding was connected to Kremlev’s involvement, writing, “Any possible foreign entanglement deserves close scrutiny.” For now these are only voluntary requests Garcia can’t enforce, but that changes entirely if he wins the Oversight gavel in January, when he’d gain subpoena power to compel testimony and documents.

The fallout has rippled through the rest of the Trump family, with Melania Trump moving fastest to distance herself. Her office stressed she “does not, and has never had, a relationship with Mr. Kremlev” and “played no role whatsoever in organizing the wedding event,” a pointed response given that Kremlev also helps lead a Russian organization under Ukrainian sanctions for allegedly abducting Ukrainian children, an issue central to the first lady’s own advocacy work reuniting families. Eric Trump likewise moved to put daylight between himself and the oligarch, with his spokesman telling ProPublica, “Eric has absolutely no clue who this person is, nor has never heard his name,” despite having attended the wedding himself. Bettina Trump pushed back hard against the scrutiny, writing on Instagram, “So, for anyone determined not to let the facts get in the way of a good story: NO CONSPIRACY, NO MYSTERY. Just a private family wedding, a wonderful weekend with friends and one hell of a party.” The story has also become a political cudgel, with Hunter Biden reportedly mocking the couple over the revelation, and even guests at the party questioning who Kremlev was and why he was there.

Major night of losses in Court:

Supreme Court blocks Trump’s mail ballot rule from taking effect for the midterms. The Court on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s emergency bid to enforce a new Postal Service regulation on mail-in ballots, in a decision that appeared to split 7-2, with only Thomas and Alito dissenting. The rule would have forced states to submit voter lists to the Postal Service for verification before ballots went out, a role the Postal Service has never played, and a lower court had already found it was likely unlawful. California Attorney General Rob Bonta called it “a victory for our democracy,” while League of Women Voters CEO Celina Stewart said the rule was “an extraordinary attempt to interfere with voting in all 50 states.” Alito wrote in dissent that he found the federal government’s argument more persuasive, and Kavanaugh, despite ultimately blocking the rule, wrote separately that he saw a “fair prospect” the Postal Service actually had the authority to issue it.

Donald Trump erupted at the Court in response. A federal judge refuses to pause sanctions against Trump’s DOJ in its “insurrectionist slush fund” IRS lawsuit. The judge declined to halt her sanctions order while the administration appeals, rejecting the DOJ’s attempt to delay accountability in the case, which challenged Trump’s tax amnesty scheme. In her ruling, the judge stressed there is “a significant interest in knowing that the judiciary is fair and that the same rules apply equally to all litigants,” a direct rebuke of the administration’s effort to get special treatment. The case adds to a growing pile of legal defeats for the DOJ this year. It signals judges are losing patience with the administration’s litigation tactics. The sanctions stand while the appeal plays out, keeping the pressure on Trump’s legal team.

Trump’s DOJ goes 0 for 23 in district court on its voter roll crusade, but keeps appealing anyway. The department has now lost every district court ruling on its demand that states hand over unredacted, statewide voter registration databases, with fresh losses in Nevada and Minnesota bringing the total to 23 straight defeats. DOJ has appealed 20 of those losses across ten federal circuits, arguing a decades-old civil rights law gives the attorney general power to compel the data, a theory courts nationwide have repeatedly rejected. Its only completed appeal ended in defeat too, when the Sixth Circuit tossed the theory and later declined to rehear the case en banc. Attorney General Todd Blanche has said taking the fight to the Supreme Court is “a possibility,” vowing the department is “not going to stop,” and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon has pointed to sympathetic language from Sixth Circuit judges as reason to try again there. Despite the unbroken losing streak, DOJ shows no sign of narrowing or dropping the legal theory driving the entire campaign.

Mitch McConnell:

Video of a “zombie” looking Mitch McConnell returning to the Senate sparks internet uproar, and reporters were barred from filming it themselves. McConnell cast his first vote since mid-June on Monday, breaking a three month absence that began with a hospitalization after a fall and a mild case of pneumonia. Reporters covering his return were barred from recording video of him in the chamber, leaving the public reliant on secondhand footage instead. That footage, published by TMZ, showed McConnell arriving on Capitol Hill with his mouth agape and appearing to space out, and it spread fast online with commentators calling it “zombie-like.” In a statement, McConnell described his recovery as “a long and often frustrating process” and said that while he’s not “quite back to 100%,” he’ll “do my best to be present for tough votes when our Conference needs me.”

The backlash online was brutal, and even allies piled on. One X user wrote, “Mitch looks like he is a zombie being remotely controlled. This is SO STRANGE!!!! Is he even alive?” while another called him “the deadest alive person.” A third user said, “It’s actually terrifying that Mitch McConnell gets to make decisions that affect all of us.” Right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer went furthest, writing, “Like I said, Mitch is brain dead,” and adding, “You can’t look at his face and say he’s not a vegetable. He’s not even responding to cognition tests. It’s like wheeling a corpse around. Worse than what the Democrats did with Joe Biden to be honest. He looks incapacitated. Brain dead.” The camera ban only deepened questions over how much the public is actually being allowed to see of his condition.

Other news:

Trump claims his midterm convention “beat” the NFL in the ratings, but the actual numbers say otherwise. The GOP scheduled its first ever midterm convention against the season’s opening NFL games, and Trump’s Wednesday night speech drew about 3 million viewers combined across Fox News, Newsmax, and NewsNation, compared to more than 25 million for the Seahawks-Patriots opener on NBC and Peacock. Trump nonetheless posted the next morning, before any ratings were even available, that “the overall numbers beat the NFL,” calling the event “a major, sold out hit, far bigger, better, and more important than anyone thought possible.” He also pointed to the speech “streaming all over the place” to suggest a bigger combined audience, but CNN notes the most viewed YouTube clips of his night one speech only have hundreds of thousands of views. His shorter night two speech fared no better by comparison, pulling about 3 million viewers across the same three networks while the NFL’s first ever game in Melbourne, streamed on Netflix, drew 18.5 million in the US. Trump did not post about the ratings again after that.

Costco starts rationing motor oil as a key ingredient shortage, driven by the Iran war, pushes prices sharply higher. The retailer hiked its Kirkland Signature full synthetic oil from the mid-$30s to $57.99 and now caps purchases at two units per membership every seven days, with Mobil 1 also capped at five units. Industry group ILMA’s CEO Holly Alfano said the real culprit is a shortage of Group III base oil, whose price has jumped 235 percent since the Middle East war began, since roughly 40 percent of US supply comes from Middle Eastern facilities damaged in the fighting and another 30 percent from South Korea, which relies on Middle Eastern crude. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has compounded the problem by raising shipping costs and lengthening delivery times, and oil companies are also prioritizing crude for gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel over motor oil ingredients since those are more profitable right now. Costco’s competitors, including Walmart, AutoZone, and Amazon, haven’t introduced similar limits yet, but Alfano said she doesn’t expect the market to normalize until at least the end of next year, since new Group III production capacity in the US and rebuilt Middle East facilities won’t be ready before then.

US confirms for the first time that it has active weapons deployed in space, and analysts warn it will accelerate a dangerous arms race with Russia and China. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink announced Monday at the Air, Space, Cyber Conference that Washington now has “on-orbit” space-control weapons circling the globe, though he declined to detail specifics. A Space Force spokesperson said such capabilities can include “employing kinetic and non-kinetic means to affect adversary capabilities” for both offensive and defensive purposes. China’s foreign ministry responded by accusing the US of “preparing for war in outer space” and warned against turning space into “a battlefield, as well as an arms race there.” Astronomer Jonathan McDowell said it was reasonable to assume the weapons are likely signal jammers, and predicted Russia and China will now “respond in kind” by deploying their own. He added that he finds it “questionable whether this is in the US national interest,” warning it isn’t too late to change course and work with China instead, since “they are the real competitors in space now.”

Houthi rebels seize two strategic Red Sea islands, deepening fears of a global oil supply crisis. Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militants captured Greater and Lesser Hanish, located 160 kilometers north of the Bab al-Mandab strait, extending their rapid advance after already taking the port of Mokha and Perim island. The seizures come as Saudi Arabia simultaneously grapples with attacks on a critical oil pipeline by Iran-allied militants in Iraq, forcing Riyadh to reroute exports even as its east-west pipeline remains down for what could be weeks. Nearly 94,000 people in Yemen have fled their homes this month alone, with roughly 200 schools converted into shelters and more than 2,000 refugees crossing into Djibouti, just 32 kilometers from a US military base there. Analysts at Rystad Energy said 2.6 million to 4 million barrels a day that normally move through the closed pipeline are now at risk of “disappearing from the market,” and Chevron’s CEO said the world’s oil stockpile buffers have been “played out,” making a quick price drop hard to envision. Brent crude rose to nearly $107 a barrel Tuesday, and US diesel prices topped $6 a gallon for the first time last week.

The EPA moves to repeal emissions limits on coal and gas power plants, one of the administration’s biggest rollbacks of Biden-era climate policy yet. The change would scrap a 2024 rule requiring power plants to use carbon capture technology, and the agency separately proposed eliminating all other greenhouse gas rules by arguing it lacks authority to regulate them at all. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin framed it as protecting affordability, saying the move would “unleash” American energy, while the agency claimed it would save industry more than $300 billion. Environmental groups, already suing over the administration’s earlier repeal of the endangerment finding, promised new litigation, with the Sierra Club’s Patrick Drupp calling it “full-throated climate denial” that will mean “more pollution, more extreme weather, higher electricity bills.” The rollback comes as this summer set heat records nationwide, with July the hottest month ever recorded in the US and June through August the warmest such stretch on record, and a law firm partner who oversaw the EPA’s Supreme Court docket said the case likely won’t reach the high court before Trump leaves office.

A UK inquiry finds hospital failures let nurse Lucy Letby keep killing babies longer than she should have. Inquiry chair Kathryn Thirlwall said a “complete failure” to protect infants at the Countess of Chester Hospital, driven by dysfunctional management, meant some of Letby’s murders could have been prevented had staff acted sooner. Letby, convicted in 2023 of murdering seven newborns and attempting to murder six others by insulin overdose, air injection, or force-feeding, remains Britain’s most prolific modern child killer despite a growing campaign questioning her guilt. Thirlwall stressed her report did not weigh in on Letby’s innocence or guilt, saying, “Once there was suspicion that Letby may be causing harm deliberately, safeguarding steps should have been taken,” adding bluntly, “Suspicion is enough.” She recommended reforms including cameras on cots and incubators, tighter insulin storage, and a formal NHS protocol for suspected deliberate harm, while three senior hospital managers remain under investigation for gross negligence manslaughter.

Sabotage disrupts Dutch train service just hours before the king’s ceremonial opening of parliament. Rail operator ProRail said pipes were deliberately attached to tracks at more than 20 locations, mostly in rural areas in the middle and east of the Netherlands, forcing all nearby trains to halt and causing serious disruptions including to international routes to Germany. King Willem-Alexander was still set to deliver his budget speech Tuesday afternoon outlining 2027 spending plans. ProRail spokesperson Joke van der Cruysen said, “We discovered materials that had been deliberately placed there,” officially classifying it as sabotage, while the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD joined police in investigating. No motive or suspect has been identified yet, though the disruption lands amid months of unrelated protests over the government’s budget from labor unions and farmers, some of whom had planned their own demonstration in The Hague the same day. The sabotage also snarled road traffic since several level crossings had to stay closed.

Gavin Newsom says he won’t run for president in 2028 if Kamala Harris runs again. Newsom told CNN in an interview aired Monday, “I wouldn’t run if she ran,” arguing that a race between two California Democrats would be an electoral “gift” for everyone else and pure “mutual assured destruction.” He said the case for Harris over him would be strong, calling it “objectively true” that she’d already run twice while he never has, and adding, “That would be the case you’d make. Pretty good one, actually.” Newsom pointed to how closely their political bases and friend groups overlap, saying, “I wouldn’t do that to people.” Harris has not said whether she’ll run again, telling supporters this year only that she’s “thinking about it,” while Newsom, whose term ends in months, has said he’ll seriously weigh a bid after the midterms.

Harry and Meghan switch their children’s school just days into the term, citing security concerns. Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, had only just started at an undisclosed school after the family moved back to Britain from California last month, before their parents pulled them out for another one. A spokesperson said the move followed “a discussion with the family’s security team about the practicalities of their current arrangements,” stressing it reflected no issue with the school itself. Royal commentator Emily Nash said the original school sat far enough away that the commute left the children exposed to traffic congestion, adding, “they risked sitting in traffic where they were potentially exposed to greater threats.” The switch comes as the couple awaits a government decision on publicly funded security protection, and amid continued strain with the royal family after a recent letter reaffirmed they’d remain nonworking, private royals during their renewed UK stay.

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Mitch McConnell Returns as I Spent the Day at His House, Trump Melts Down Over AI, Major Whistleblower Report, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 14, 2026. I need to tell you what happened to me today before we get into anything else.

I went back to Mitch McConnell’s house this morning to do my job, and after weeks of facing attacks for doing this work, we have the truth. I stayed on the beat, I stayed outside that house, and we got something major. Mitch McConnell has returned to the United States Senate, and we have the video of him doing it. You’re going to see it in a moment, along with the statement his office just put out.

That’s not the only major interview in tonight’s rundown either. I sat down with Judge John Jones, a Bush appointee who has spent his career on the federal bench, to get his read on where this country actually stands right now. You are not going to want to miss what he had to say.

But before we get into any of it, I need to ask you directly. Nights like tonight, showing up at that house, getting threatened, and still bringing you the tape anyway, that only happens because people like you make it possible. This work is not funded by a network or a corporation. It is funded by subscribers. So if you have not subscribed yet, do it right now, hit that button, turn on notifications, and if you’re already a subscriber, share this with one person today. 

Mitch McConnell Update:

I just got back from Mitch McConnell’s house, and we have now seen him. Mitch McConnell has returned to the United States Senate. I spent most of the day outside of his home. We have the first video of him right now:

Trump Spirals Online:

Trump spirals on Truth Social, alleging a “SICK conspiracy” against AI and calling critics traitors. President Trump declared Monday that a “SICK conspiracy” is being waged against artificial intelligence and the data centers that run it, describing the people behind it as “Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers.” He singled out Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei by name, writing, “The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel,’ and we will continue to do so! We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!” He did not specify what conduct he was referring to, what criminal power he meant, or who exactly the alleged conspirators are. In his own words, he declared, “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” In a follow up post an hour later, he added, “Don’t kill the Golden Goose,” and later called the entire safety debate a “HOAX.”

The outburst came two days after AI’s own top executives called for a slowdown, and it rattled the stock market. Trump’s rant followed an essay from Amodei arguing companies should deliberately slow the pace at which they improve AI capabilities, warning that within six to 12 months a swarm of rogue AI agents could be capable of “taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet,” causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. OpenAI’s Sam Altman said he agreed “that we need to pace the frontier,” while Elon Musk posted that “Dario is right,” and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis signed on as well. The market reaction was immediate, with Nasdaq futures falling more than 1 percent overnight and chip stocks sliding, Intel down nearly 6 percent, Micron around 5 percent, and Nvidia roughly 3 percent, as investors priced in a possible slowdown in hardware demand. Shares in SoftBank and European data center suppliers including ASML, Siemens Energy, and Schneider Electric fell as well.

Trump calls into Nvidia’s All-In Summit to declare “the robots will not be taking over.” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang put President Trump on speakerphone in front of a large crowd at the All-In Podcast’s summit Monday, where Trump dismissed AI safety concerns as a “hoax” and told attendees, “the robots will not be taking over.” He also claimed, without offering specifics, that some communities were once “dying” but are now “really wealthy” because of data centers built in their area. Huang did not push back on any of it, instead telling Trump, “We’re going to make sure that everybody wins in the AI race in America. Every industry, every company, every state, every people,” while also flattering him by noting he was speaking to “thousands” of people.

Even inside his own administration, Trump’s dismissiveness is making people nervous. Vice President JD Vance cast doubt on the executives’ motives, calling their push for regulation a possible “Trojan horse,” and said, “I have to say, personally, I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them,” though he acknowledged “there are obvious risks to AI, there are some benefits to AI.” CNN reported that some White House officials privately admit they are worried about Trump’s apparent lack of concern over AI’s dangers, a position he has held for months and shown little sign of reconsidering despite the mounting warnings. White House AI adviser David Sacks has accused Amodei’s company of running “a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fearmongering,” telling both Anthropic and OpenAI they are free to slow down on their own but should stop seeking an antitrust waiver from Washington to do it. House Speaker Mike Johnson said he hopes to convene talks this week between Trump, lawmakers, and AI executives, even as Trump claims, without evidence, that Chinese President Xi Jinping “announced that China will be doing absolutely nothing to stand in the way of AI, or its future” ahead of Xi’s planned visit to Washington next week.

Trump blames Biden for high prices, over 600 days into his own term. In a separate post Monday, more than 600 days into his second term, President Trump said he hopes everyone realizes that former President Biden is to blame for the higher prices Americans are currently facing. No further detail, quotes, or context were included in the post. That’s genuinely all there is on this one, the source material only gave that single line, so let me know if you come across the full post and I can build it out further.

Major Whistleblower Report:

Whistleblower alleges federal agents may have broken state laws hunting for voter fraud. A nearly 30 page whistleblower report given to Senators Chuck Schumer and Alex Padilla alleges that federal agents, under direction from top Homeland Security leaders, may have violated state laws while searching for noncitizens on voter rolls as part of what DHS calls the “Unlawful Voter Initiative.” Agents allegedly posed as individual voters, using personal data like birth dates and partial Social Security numbers pulled from internal and external sources to look up voter records on public facing state websites, even though states like Virginia explicitly limit those tools to voters searching their own records. DHS’s own chief counsel office acknowledged the legal risk internally, telling agents they “are not personally liable for conducting these searches when done as part of their official duties and properly documented,” a line the watchdog group that produced the report called evidence that “there may be legal implications for accessing these websites” even as officers were required to keep doing it. In a public statement, DHS rejected any suggestion of wrongdoing, saying, “The Department accessed publicly available data from states’ voter rolls and cross referenced them with known aliens in our systems. It’s not rocket science; it’s an easy step to secure our elections.”

Agents were reportedly pushed through cases so fast that eligible citizens are likely being wrongly flagged. According to the whistleblower, agents were required to complete at least 40 voter reviews per eight hour shift, leaving roughly 12 minutes to determine each person’s citizenship and voting history, a pace that raises serious doubts about accuracy. Each review is logged in a database that can affect a person’s immigration status or legal residency, and the investigation relies on data described to agents only as “source data,” with officials at one point saying some immigration information had been added using “supplemental magic,” according to the report. That data reportedly includes alien identification numbers that remain permanently in a person’s DHS file even after they become citizens, meaning legally registered voters who were once noncitizens are likely being misidentified as unlawful voters. Some agents grew reluctant to flag people based on data they suspected was faulty, and the report concluded bluntly that “the current process is knowingly sweeping known U.S. citizens in as potentially ‘unlawful voters.’”

Democrats are demanding the operation be shut down, calling it an attempt to undermine the midterms. Schumer and Padilla sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin demanding the initiative be halted and posing a dozen specific questions about how it is being run. Schumer said in an interview, “This is just the latest example of how far Donald Trump will go to interfere in our elections,” adding, “We’ve never seen anything quite like this. Department of Homeland Security is actually pulling away these law officers, these federal law enforcement officers, away from the work they’re supposed to do.” Padilla raised a related concern about privacy and accuracy, saying, “I do think the American people value keeping their personal information private. The other thing that’s concerning here, that the American people who would be offended by, is the knowing inaccuracy of what they’re doing, whether it’s the data or their sham analysis. It’s going to produce false positives.” The operation grows out of Trump’s long standing focus on noncitizen voting, despite decades of research showing it is exceedingly rare, and voting rights advocates worry eligible voters could be wrongly disqualified from the fall midterms or that Trump could use the investigation to cast doubt on results he dislikes.

Missouri Secretary of State:

Fired election integrity director accuses Missouri’s secretary of state of fabricating evidence to dodge a federal inquiry. Nick La Strada, who Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins fired as director of election integrity in May, filed a lawsuit alleging Hoskins’ team plotted to fabricate a fake whistleblower complaint to submit as evidence in a federal Help America Vote Act inquiry into discrepancies in 2024 vote count data. The lawsuit claims Hoskins’ then chief of staff discussed routing the fabricated complaint through an “IP scrambler” and a “burner” phone so it couldn’t be traced, in a call La Strada said he was excluded from but later reported to Hoskins. After reporting the conversation, La Strada’s Capitol access badge was disabled and he was told his presence wasn’t needed at the federal hearing, though he showed up and testified anyway. Days later he was fired, and his attorney Erin Vernon said at a news conference, “In essence, defendant office, by the actions of defendant Hoskins, fired the director of election integrity for having too much integrity.”

La Strada also alleges Hoskins illegally overturned a certified local election result. The lawsuit claims Hoskins ordered a retabulation of write-in votes in a Marshall, Missouri city election after the certified result had already named a winner by a single vote, and that the retabulation produced a different winner entirely. La Strada alleges Hoskins threatened city officials if they didn’t comply with the reordered result, even though only a judge has legal authority to order a recount once an election has been certified. Vernon emphasized the seriousness of Hoskins operating without any director of election integrity since firing La Strada, saying, “That’s a very big problem heading into elections, and they’ve shown they don’t want someone telling them what they can’t do and what the law in fact is.” Hoskins, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment on the lawsuit.

A separate allegation claims Hoskins misused public funds to influence a St. Louis County ballot measure. La Strada says he personally warned Hoskins in April 2025 that using taxpayer money to fund a mailer opposing St. Louis County’s Proposition B, a measure that would have changed county department head appointment powers, appeared to be an election law violation. The measure was ultimately defeated at the ballot box. This is now the second lawsuit filed against Hoskins in recent days, after five Missouri voters sued him last week alleging he violated state law by neglecting his official duties. La Strada, a longtime Republican who won four consecutive elections as Pettis County clerk before Hoskins hired him, is currently overseas serving as a U.S. election observer in Bosnia and Herzegovina and did not attend the news conference announcing his own lawsuit.

Other news:

DHS’s own watchdog confirms migrants were held in phone booth sized cages at Alligator Alcatraz. A new inspector general report has for the first time confirmed what advocates long alleged, that immigrants detained at Florida’s now shuttered Alligator Alcatraz facility were confined in outdoor metal cages roughly 4 by 4 feet, just 16 square feet, with indoor versions at 18 square feet, both less than half the 37 square foot minimum required by ICE detention standards. Facility staff called them “calming areas” meant for detainees to “de-escalate,” and a sign on one cell said its purpose was to let detainees “reflect on their behavior choices, manage their emotions, reduce stress and practice self-directed behavior.” Records show 79 detainees were held in these cages between July 2025 and January, with the longest stint lasting nearly two hours, and the inspector general concluded plainly that “the use of such restrictive spaces is highly unconventional and does not align with standards for humane treatment.” An earlier Amnesty International report based on detainee interviews went much further, describing detainees shackled hand and foot inside what they called “the box” for hours without water or shade, concluding that “the use of the ‘box’ as a form of punishment constitutes torture.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who toured the facility with President Trump and championed it as central to the deportation effort, said when asked about the new report that he had not read it, adding only, “I know that it was inspected, all those standards. The goal was not to apply those standards but to exceed those standards.”

Rep. Al Green forces a House-wide vote on impeaching Trump, teeing up a pre-midterm headache for Democrats. Longtime Texas Democrat Al Green announced Monday he’s using a privileged resolution to force the full House to vote on impeaching President Trump by Wednesday, citing federal immigration officers’ killing of two U.S. citizens this year. In a letter to colleagues, Green argued Democrats shouldn’t wait for planned post-midterm investigations, writing, “The available overwhelming evidence sufficiently demonstrates that President Trump is unfit and dangerous to our democracy.” The vote puts Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in an awkward spot, since he’s tried to keep Democrats focused on cost-of-living issues ahead of November, and 127 House Democrats joined Republicans to kill Green’s last impeachment push in June 2025. Green, 79, lost his primary to a younger challenger and has repeatedly clashed with Trump on the House floor, including waving his cane and shouting during a joint address and holding up a sign reading “Black People Aren’t Apes” during the State of the Union. The resolution itself brands Trump “a great threat to democracy and the Constitution for current high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Retired conservative judge warns America is “sleepwalking” toward another Jan. 6. Retired federal Judge J. Michael Luttig told MS NOW he believes the country is heading toward a repeat of the Capitol riot, saying, “That’s exactly what I envision, which is the next Jan. 6, 2021. This time, however, it will be Donald Trump and Mike Johnson refusing to peacefully transfer power to the next Congress of the United States.” Luttig argued Trump has spent his second term laying groundwork for a “final battle in his war against America’s democracy” by trying to seize control of the electoral process despite having “no power or authority whatsoever” to do so under the Constitution. He warned that even a decisive Democratic win in November would not guarantee the party gets seated as the majority in the new Congress, saying, “The House Republicans could still refuse to seat even a large Democratic majority elect under the Constitution of the United States,” though he acknowledged a landslide would make that “much more difficult,” not impossible. Luttig said Trump has been “as transparent as one could possibly be” about his intentions, adding that if America is sleepwalking into January 2027 the way it did before Jan. 6, 2021, “it’s no one’s fault but their own.” He closed by calling on lawmakers to commit publicly to upholding the Constitution, warning, “This is the final battle for America’s democracy. If this is the time of America’s testing, if America doesn’t rise to this moment, this moment under this president, Donald Trump, then there is no America in the future.”

El Niño just crossed into “super” territory, and it’s not done growing. An already strong El Niño has strengthened at a breakneck pace since being declared in June, and its key strength measure, NOAA’s Niño 3.4 Relative Oceanic Niño Index, has now hit 2.0 degrees Celsius above average, crossing the threshold for “very strong” and earning the unofficial “super” label. Forecasters say there is a 75 percent chance it peaks by the end of the year as the strongest El Niño since records began in 1950, and this event is unfolding in a far hotter world than past record setters due to climate change. It has already reshaped this year’s hurricane seasons, suppressing Atlantic activity so severely that the season has gone a record long stretch without its first hurricane, while supercharging the Pacific season with 16 storms including two Category 5 hurricanes and three separate systems threatening Hawaii in under a month. El Niño has also driven Indonesia’s punishing wildfire season by drying out the country’s peatland forests, and it contributed to this past August becoming Earth’s hottest on record, a trend scientists say could push 2027, and possibly 2026, to become the hottest year ever measured globally.

Newsom says he won’t run for president in 2028 if Harris runs again. California Governor Gavin Newsom told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview taped while the two were fly fishing in Montana that he would step aside for Kamala Harris, saying, “I don’t know if she runs but we’ll see. But I wouldn’t run if she ran.” When Tapper pushed back with some skepticism, Newsom doubled down, saying, “Of course not. Why would I? I wouldn’t do that to her. I wouldn’t do that to you. I wouldn’t waste everyone’s time. Who needs that?” Newsom argued a shared primary would only benefit other candidates, calling it “a gift from God for everybody else” and “mutually assured destruction” that “services no greater good,” while acknowledging the case for Harris running instead of him, saying, “She had a shot and you’ve never run and she’s run twice. That’s objectively true.” He also pointed to their overlapping political base from their days as San Francisco politicians, saying, “The Venn diagram is just pure crossover. I wouldn’t do that to people,” a notably more definitive stance than his comments back in February, when he said only that “fate will determine” whether the two would end up running against each other.

A Mississippi man has been denied bond after pleading not guilty in the killing of Tasia Fortune. Jarques Ratliff, 51, appeared in Jackson Municipal Court and was formally charged with murder in the death of Fortune, a 29-year-old Black mother of four who was found hanging from a tree behind an abandoned home last month. His attorney argued Ratliff was not a flight risk and was “gainfully employed,” but the judge ordered him held with no bond after a law enforcement official present called him “a danger to the citizens of Jackson.” Police Chief RaShall Brackney, who said investigators had an “association” between Ratliff and Fortune, called the arrest “an important development” but stressed “it’s not the conclusion,” adding that additional arrests are expected. Fortune’s mother told the Associated Press she cried upon learning of the arrest, saying the family remains “in disbelief” and “still don’t have a lot of answers.” A cause of death and motive have still not been released.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warns Ukraine’s drone war is about to get far more dangerous. Schmidt, who now runs rocket maker Relativity Space and has advised the Pentagon on AI, told NBC News that the pace of battlefield innovation in Ukraine is unlike anything he has seen, warning that Russia has closed the technological gap that once favored Kyiv. He said Russia has begun fitting cheap Iranian designed Shahed drones with small Chinese jet engines, letting them exceed 300 miles per hour compared to roughly 110 miles per hour for older versions, making them far harder for Ukraine’s existing interceptors to stop. Schmidt predicted that artificial intelligence will soon let computers coordinate massive drone swarms directly, saying, “Humans can’t run a swarm of 1,000 drones, but a computer can. So what I think will happen is computers will develop war plans within a swarm.” He described the current front line bluntly, saying, “The battlefield today is a no man’s land where nothing moves because there are drones and anti-drones above you,” and warned that without more Western money and technology, “Whoever plays the game of fastest innovation to scale will win this war.”

The 10-year Treasury yield topped 5 percent for the first time since 2023 as oil and diesel prices spike. The surge came after Saudi Arabia shut a critical pipeline and postponed talks with Iran and Gulf countries over the Strait of Hormuz, sending Brent crude above $109 a barrel and pushing the national average price of diesel to a fresh all time high of $6.23 a gallon. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said he expects the pipeline back online “very soon” but could not give an exact timeline, even as the Associated Press reported the damage could keep it offline for weeks. Vessel traffic through Hormuz has slowed to a trickle, with just 14 ships passing through Sunday, and gas prices have already climbed more than 45 percent since the U.S. and Israel launched the Iran war. Economist Diane Swonk warned the ripple effects will be significant, saying, “The cost of diesel gets into just about everything, from running a farm to the cost of food, but also everything across the economy that’s shipped,” while markets now price in better than 90 percent odds the Federal Reserve raises interest rates Wednesday for the first time since 2023.

Macklemore says he was dropped from Ed Sheeran’s tour after Robert Kraft organized a stadium boycott over his pro Palestinian statements. The rapper wrote on Instagram that Sheeran told him Patriots owner Robert Kraft rallied other stadium owners to issue an ultimatum, that Sheeran would be barred from their venues if Macklemore remained on the tour, after Macklemore performed his song “Hind’s Hall” and told a New Jersey crowd, “Free Palestine.” Kraft confirmed the decision in a statement, citing “a broader history of rhetoric and imagery that we believe has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community,” while saying he’d “welcome the opportunity to sit down with Macklemore and discuss the facts” toward what he called their shared goal of “peace for all people.” Macklemore said his conversations with Sheeran, whom he called a friend, ended in “fundamental disagreement,” recounting that Sheeran told him the words “Free Palestine” were hurtful to people he’d spoken with, to which Macklemore responded that this reflected “a fundamental disconnect” given the tens of thousands of Palestinian children killed in the war. Fellow artist Pink also weighed in, saying she wasn’t trying to get anyone fired but objected to displaying “violent images” of the war to a stadium of families, writing, “You don’t get to decide that for us.” Macklemore closed by saying he isn’t the victim, writing that the real victims are Palestinians “forced to live through unimaginable violence.”

Four people were hospitalized after a construction crane collapsed in Miami’s Brickell neighborhood. Miami Fire Rescue said the crane came down on Southeast 12th Street and Brickell Bay Drive, landing on top of a construction box trapping two workers, ages 29 and 27, inside, while a third worker, the crane operator, jumped clear as it tipped over. Fire Rescue Chief Robert Hevia described a complex scene where crews fought a vehicle fire while simultaneously cutting through the metal box to free the trapped workers, all of whom were ultimately extracted successfully. A driver whose SUV caught fire when the crane landed on its hood escaped by climbing out the back after reversing away from the falling crane. A nearby resident described hearing “a tremendous crash” and seeing flames “shooting up 20, 30 feet in the air,” and all four injured people, including the crane operator, were taken to the hospital with what officials described as minor injuries as OSHA prepares to investigate. 

Special Report: More On Russian Oligarch, Trump Family Wedding

A group photo shows about 35 people including Donald Trump Jr., his wife Bettina Anderson, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Tiffany Trump and Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev (with little more than his forehead and nose visible in the back row).

ProPublica, Investigative Reporting: Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas Wedding Was Secretly Bankrolled by Russian Oligarch Close to Putin, Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski, Sept. 14, 2026. The oligarch, Umar Kremlev, spent hundreds of thousands on expenses like renting out a private island. He appears to have met Trump Jr. only recently, but he attended the intimate wedding with a large group of other Russian guests.

In May, Donald Trump Jr. had a wedding on a pair of private islands.

This man’s role has been secret until now.Credit: Little Pipe Cay/Lux Hospitality Bahamas; Laura Gordon Photography via Instagram; Laura Gordon PhotographyTrump AdministrationThe oligarch, Umar Kremlev, spent hundreds of thousands on expenses like renting out a private island. He appears to have met Trump Jr. only recently, but he attended the intimate wedding with a large group of other Russian guests.by Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Joshua Kaplan and Alex MierjeskiSeptember 14, 2026, 5:00 amChange Appearance

On May 24, Donald Trump Jr. was celebrating in the Bahamas, as scantily clad dancers in stilettos and sailor caps performed for him and his guests. It was the last night of his wedding, a lavish, three-day party held across a pair of ultra-exclusive private islands. A five-tier funfetti cake had been airlifted in from Florida, and helicopters and seaplanes descended on the islands before guests settled into their oceanfront villas. That night on the beach, Trump Jr. lifted his bride into the air while fireworks launched from a barge over the sea.

“It was everything we dreamed of and more,” his wife later wrote on Instagram.

That dream was heavily funded by a secret benefactor: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin.

Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev, right, and Donald Trump Jr. (Reuters photo).

Kremlev footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and interviews with three people familiar with the event. The oligarch paid to rent out one of the private islands, where a reception was held and where guests slept. He also covered other big-ticket items, like the fireworks show, and his team helped plan the event. Kremlev is the head of the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports group that has been financed by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. The wedding payments came from an IBA-affiliated entity in Dubai that the boxing association uses for financial transactions.

The guest list numbered around 50. It included Trump Jr.’s brother-in-law Jared Kushner, Eric Trump — and Kremlev, an imposing man with a shaved head who speaks limited English. The oligarch was part of a large group whose presence puzzled other attendees. They sometimes stood off by themselves, speaking Russian.

“It was really small, like, just really close friends,” Trump Jr. later said on his podcast. “Tried to keep it really tight. And it was just awesome.”

Kremlev’s previously unreported relationship with Trump Jr. represents an extraordinary development: a member of Putin’s circle financially supporting the president’s son and gaining intimate access to the Trump family. For a decade, Putin’s government, regarded as a chief adversary of the U.S., has been accused of efforts to influence American elections. Attempts by Russia to make inroads with the Trumps before the 2016 election exploded into controversy that dogged much of the president’s first term.Do You Have Information We Should Know About Donald Trump Jr.?

We’re still reporting. If you know anything about Trump Jr., his businesses or his relationship with Umar Kremlev, please get in touch.

I’m always looking for under-covered stories about business and politics, no matter the specific subject. Contact me with tips, by email or securely on Signal. I take confidentiality seriously.Contact Me

National security experts expressed alarm at Trump Jr. accepting the oligarch’s largesse, saying it raised an urgent question: What motivated Kremlev to spend a fortune cultivating the connection?

“If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something,” said Frank Montoya Jr., a retired career FBI official who held senior counterintelligence roles. Oligarchs like Kremlev often act in coordination with the Russian government. While it’s unclear if that happened here, Trump Jr. put himself in a precarious position, Montoya said. “This should be unthinkable for the son of the president. End of story.”

Holden Triplett, who served as Trump’s counterintelligence director on the National Security Council during his first term, said Russian intelligence frequently seeks to build ties with U.S. government officials and their family members. “Money is a tried-and-true method to gain access,” said Triplett, who also worked for the FBI in Moscow.

In the days leading up to Trump Jr.’s wedding, Kremlev was in China as part of the delegation accompanying Putin, according to Chinese state media. The month before, Putin had bestowed him with a state honor, the Order of Friendship. The Ukrainian government has imposed sanctions on Kremlev personally, citing his closeness to Putin and Russian security services.

It’s not clear why Kremlev helped pay for Trump Jr.’s wedding. The men appear to have met only recently. Public reporting suggests Trump Jr. could have afforded it himself, with Forbes recently estimating his net worth at roughly $300 million.

In response to detailed questions, a spokesperson for Trump Jr. did not dispute the wedding payments from Kremlev. “Umar is a personal friend of Don,” he said. The spokesman said that Kremlev is “not someone he has a business relationship with” and that the men met through a mutual friend in the hunting world and bonded over their love of boxing and the outdoors.

A spokesperson for Trump Jr.’s brother Eric said of Kremlev: “Eric has absolutely no clue who this person is, nor has never heard his name.”

In a statement, Kremlev’s press office said, “Mr. Kremlev and Mr. Trump Jr have a friendly relationship” and they first met “a couple of years ago.”

The press office described Kremlev as a businessman and philanthropist, adding, “Mr. Kremlev has never discussed political matters with any of his American friends and acquaintances,” including Trump Jr. They said the boxing organization itself did not incur expenses for the wedding but did not comment on the payments from the Dubai entity. The press office also said that when Putin and Kremlev were in China recently, Kremlev was not part of Putin’s “official delegation.”

Kushner, who has been helping lead the U.S. government’s negotiations with Russia over Ukraine, did not respond to requests for comment. The White House and the Russian government did not respond either.

The revelations come as Trump Jr. has emerged as a political power center in his own right. Beloved by the MAGA base, he reportedly played an active role in vetting White House cabinet picks for Trump’s second term and was dubbed his father’s “most essential political adviser” by The Wall Street Journal. “I certainly don’t think I’d be sitting here as the VP nominee without Don’s help,” Vice President JD Vance told the outlet in late 2024.

This account is based on records and interviews with dozens of current and former IBA officials and contractors, wedding attendees and other people in Trump Jr.’s and Kremlev’s circles.

Trump Jr. exchanged vows with socialite Bettina Anderson on a private island that was featured in “Pirates of the Caribbean” and the 2006 James Bond movie “Casino Royale.” They had their first dance on a second private island nearby that can rent for around $100,000 a night, paid for by Kremlev. The company that put on the fireworks display charges around $70,000 for such shows. (Kremlev did not attend the ceremony itself, which was held on the first day and had just 18 guests, Trump Jr.’s spokesperson said.)A man and woman stand on a beach as fireworks explode above the water.Donald Trump Jr. and his wife, Bettina Anderson, at their wedding, watching fireworks paid for by Umar Kremlev. Laura Gordon Photography via Lewis Miller DesignDonald Trump Jr. wears a multi-colored Junkanoo headpiece while dancing with Bettina Anderson.The magazine Hello! shared an image of Trump Jr. wearing a Junkanoo headpiece while dancing with his new bride. Laura Gordon Photography/Hello!

The atmosphere was Monte Carlo meets frat party — helicopters in and out, a beachside DJ set, beer pong tournaments. One day, the men went spearfishing. Artisans at the London fashion house Safiyaa spent 150 hours embroidering Anderson’s bespoke silk reception outfit. The president’s son had undergone treatment to better define his jawline for the occasion.

Some longtime friends of Trump Jr. told associates they were disappointed not to be invited, though a few of his closest business partners — executives at the Trump family crypto company, World Liberty Financial, and the venture capital firm 1789 Capital — did make the cut. President Trump himself skipped it. (“He’d like me to go, but it’s going to be just a small, little private affair,” the president told reporters beforehand. “I said, you know, this is not good timing for me.”) But many of the guests were immediate family of the bride and groom.

That made the large contingent of Russians all the more conspicuous. “What are they doing here?” one person recalled thinking. At least one of the Russian guests had been with Kremlev on his China trip: Alexander Lagutin, a businessperson who has served in senior roles at a Russian defense contractor and a state-backed energy company. Kremlev’s right hand at the IBA, Elena Sobol, attended the wedding too.

In May, Donald Trump Jr. had a wedding on a pair of private islands.

This man’s role has been secret until now.Credit: Little Pipe Cay/Lux Hospitality Bahamas; Laura Gordon Photography via Instagram; Laura Gordon PhotographyTrump AdministrationDonald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas Wedding Was Secretly Bankrolled by Russian Oligarch Close to PutinThe oligarch, Umar Kremlev, spent hundreds of thousands on expenses like renting out a private island. He appears to have met Trump Jr. only recently, but he attended the intimate wedding with a large group of other Russian guests.

On May 24, Donald Trump Jr. was celebrating in the Bahamas, as scantily clad dancers in stilettos and sailor caps performed for him and his guests. It was the last night of his wedding, a lavish, three-day party held across a pair of ultra-exclusive private islands. A five-tier funfetti cake had been airlifted in from Florida, and helicopters and seaplanes descended on the islands before guests settled into their oceanfront villas. That night on the beach, Trump Jr. lifted his bride into the air while fireworks launched from a barge over the sea.

“It was everything we dreamed of and more,” his wife later wrote on Instagram.

That dream was heavily funded by a secret benefactor: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin.

Kremlev footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and interviews with three people familiar with the event. The oligarch paid to rent out one of the private islands, where a reception was held and where guests slept. He also covered other big-ticket items, like the fireworks show, and his team helped plan the event. Kremlev is the head of the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports group that has been financed by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. The wedding payments came from an IBA-affiliated entity in Dubai that the boxing association uses for financial transactions.

The guest list numbered around 50. It included Trump Jr.’s brother-in-law Jared Kushner, Eric Trump — and Kremlev, an imposing man with a shaved head who speaks limited English. The oligarch was part of a large group whose presence puzzled other attendees. They sometimes stood off by themselves, speaking Russian.

“It was really small, like, just really close friends,” Trump Jr. later said on his podcast. “Tried to keep it really tight. And it was just awesome.”

Kremlev’s previously unreported relationship with Trump Jr. represents an extraordinary development: a member of Putin’s circle financially supporting the president’s son and gaining intimate access to the Trump family. For a decade, Putin’s government, regarded as a chief adversary of the U.S., has been accused of efforts to influence American elections. Attempts by Russia to make inroads with the Trumps before the 2016 election exploded into controversy that dogged much of the president’s first term.Do You Have Information We Should Know About Donald Trump Jr.?

We’re still reporting. If you know anything about Trump Jr., his businesses or his relationship with Umar Kremlev, please get in touch.

National security experts expressed alarm at Trump Jr. accepting the oligarch’s largesse, saying it raised an urgent question: What motivated Kremlev to spend a fortune cultivating the connection?

“If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something,” said Frank Montoya Jr., a retired career FBI official who held senior counterintelligence roles. Oligarchs like Kremlev often act in coordination with the Russian government. While it’s unclear if that happened here, Trump Jr. put himself in a precarious position, Montoya said. “This should be unthinkable for the son of the president. End of story.”

Holden Triplett, who served as Trump’s counterintelligence director on the National Security Council during his first term, said Russian intelligence frequently seeks to build ties with U.S. government officials and their family members. “Money is a tried-and-true method to gain access,” said Triplett, who also worked for the FBI in Moscow.

In the days leading up to Trump Jr.’s wedding, Kremlev was in China as part of the delegation accompanying Putin, according to Chinese state media. The month before, Putin had bestowed him with a state honor, the Order of Friendship. The Ukrainian government has imposed sanctions on Kremlev personally, citing his closeness to Putin and Russian security services.

It’s not clear why Kremlev helped pay for Trump Jr.’s wedding. The men appear to have met only recently. Public reporting suggests Trump Jr. could have afforded it himself, with Forbes recently estimating his net worth at roughly $300 million.

In response to detailed questions, a spokesperson for Trump Jr. did not dispute the wedding payments from Kremlev. “Umar is a personal friend of Don,” he said. The spokesman said that Kremlev is “not someone he has a business relationship with” and that the men met through a mutual friend in the hunting world and bonded over their love of boxing and the outdoors.

A spokesperson for Trump Jr.’s brother Eric said of Kremlev: “Eric has absolutely no clue who this person is, nor has never heard his name.”

In a statement, Kremlev’s press office said, “Mr. Kremlev and Mr. Trump Jr have a friendly relationship” and they first met “a couple of years ago.”

The press office described Kremlev as a businessman and philanthropist, adding, “Mr. Kremlev has never discussed political matters with any of his American friends and acquaintances,” including Trump Jr. They said the boxing organization itself did not incur expenses for the wedding but did not comment on the payments from the Dubai entity. The press office also said that when Putin and Kremlev were in China recently, Kremlev was not part of Putin’s “official delegation.”

Kushner, who has been helping lead the U.S. government’s negotiations with Russia over Ukraine, did not respond to requests for comment. The White House and the Russian government did not respond either.

The revelations come as Trump Jr. has emerged as a political power center in his own right. Beloved by the MAGA base, he reportedly played an active role in vetting White House cabinet picks for Trump’s second term and was dubbed his father’s “most essential political adviser” by The Wall Street Journal. “I certainly don’t think I’d be sitting here as the VP nominee without Don’s help,” Vice President JD Vance told the outlet in late 2024.

This account is based on records and interviews with dozens of current and former IBA officials and contractors, wedding attendees and other people in Trump Jr.’s and Kremlev’s circles.

Trump Jr. exchanged vows with socialite Bettina Anderson on a private island that was featured in “Pirates of the Caribbean” and the 2006 James Bond movie “Casino Royale.” They had their first dance on a second private island nearby that can rent for around $100,000 a night, paid for by Kremlev. The company that put on the fireworks display charges around $70,000 for such shows. (Kremlev did not attend the ceremony itself, which was held on the first day and had just 18 guests, Trump Jr.’s spokesperson said.)A man and woman stand on a beach as fireworks explode above the water.Donald Trump Jr. and his wife, Bettina Anderson, at their wedding, watching fireworks paid for by Umar Kremlev. Laura Gordon Photography via Lewis Miller DesignDonald Trump Jr. wears a multi-colored Junkanoo headpiece while dancing with Bettina Anderson.The magazine Hello! shared an image of Trump Jr. wearing a Junkanoo headpiece while dancing with his new bride. Laura Gordon Photography/Hello!

The atmosphere was Monte Carlo meets frat party — helicopters in and out, a beachside DJ set, beer pong tournaments. One day, the men went spearfishing. Artisans at the London fashion house Safiyaa spent 150 hours embroidering Anderson’s bespoke silk reception outfit. The president’s son had undergone treatment to better define his jawline for the occasion.

Some longtime friends of Trump Jr. told associates they were disappointed not to be invited, though a few of his closest business partners — executives at the Trump family crypto company, World Liberty Financial, and the venture capital firm 1789 Capital — did make the cut. President Trump himself skipped it. (“He’d like me to go, but it’s going to be just a small, little private affair,” the president told reporters beforehand. “I said, you know, this is not good timing for me.”) But many of the guests were immediate family of the bride and groom.

That made the large contingent of Russians all the more conspicuous. “What are they doing here?” one person recalled thinking. At least one of the Russian guests had been with Kremlev on his China trip: Alexander Lagutin, a businessperson who has served in senior roles at a Russian defense contractor and a state-backed energy company. Kremlev’s right hand at the IBA, Elena Sobol, attended the wedding too.

Since the wedding, the Trumps have released scores of photos and videos of the festivities. While they show many of the guests, the Russians have been absent from all of them. (The top of Kremlev’s head is visible in the back of one group photo posted on Instagram by a friend of the bride.) After the party was over, on his “Triggered” podcast, Trump Jr. emphasized the event’s privacy: “The people that were there — if you’re on that list, you weren’t talking.”

In 2009, Umar Kremlev did not yet exist.

He was in his late 20s, with a criminal record for extortion and battery, still going by his birth name, Umar Lutfulloyev, according to the Russian independent news outlet Proekt. But he was about to rapidly ascend in Russia to a position of wealth and influence, with the help of a powerful friend. (“Mr. Kremlev has a completely clean legal record,” his press office said.)Russian President Vladimir Putin leans into a conversation with Umar Kremlev.Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, with Umar Kremlev, during an event in Moscow in September 2022 Sputnik/Reuters

In 2010, he changed his name to Kremlev. He soon joined a Russian government-backed biker gang called the Night Wolves, eventually taking a leadership role, according to news reports. That is what first brought him close to Alexei Rubezhnoi, who now leads Putin’s presidential security service, Proekt reported. In 2017, Kremlev took over the Russian Boxing Federation, after Rubezhnoi personally intervened to put him at the helm.

In 2020, Kremlev became president of the IBA. The association was something akin to FIFA but for boxing and had long overseen the sport in the Olympics. But it had been beset by corruption allegations and was on the brink of insolvency. Kremlev brought money to the table from Gazprom, the state-owned company that operates as an arm of Putin’s government. Gazprom publicly became the IBA’s financial backer, filling its coffers with tens of millions of dollars.

Former high-level IBA officials said that Kremlev had a clear political agenda. “Umar is guided by Putin. It was using the sport for soft political power,” a former IBA board member told ProPublica. “It’s geopolitics. That it’s boxing is just happenstance.” Kremlev, 43, is also heavily involved in an organization called Healthy Fatherland, run by his 23-year-old wife’s twin sister. The group — which promotes healthy eating and youth sports — is under Ukrainian sanctions for its alleged role in a program of abducting Ukrainian children from occupied territories and relocating them under the guise of “rehabilitation.” (Healthy Fatherland did not respond to a request for comment.)

Kremlev’s cozy relationship with the government has made him rich. Putin used the levers of the state to make Kremlev a dominant player in the Russian sports betting industry, according to Proekt, and one of his companies was chosen to operate the national lottery. After Putin nationalized Russia’s largest car dealership company in 2023, Kremlev became the owner of that too.

He now flaunts that wealth through his boisterous public persona. In one video Kremlev posted on social media, he surprises a young mother by giving her a free car. In another, he criticizes his young female aide’s outfit as not feminine enough and makes her change. He shadowboxes with ostriches and brings in celebrities like Rick Ross and Naomi Campbell for IBA events; he praises Stalin and rides private jets.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the U.S. began to indict Russian oligarchs and seize yachts and other assets. Kremlev repeatedly told associates he was worried about being targeted by a U.S. government probe, according to a person close to IBA leadership. “He was very afraid of American sanctions,” the person added. (Kremlev does not appear on public U.S. sanction lists.)

With the business environment in Europe growing more hostile to Russia, Kremlev moved much of the IBA’s operations from Switzerland to the United Arab Emirates. A new Dubai entity, IB Challenger, would later pay wedding expenses for Trump Jr. The current sources of the IBA’s funds are murky, and, in recent years, top executives have given conflicting accounts of the status of its relationship with Gazprom. (Kremlev’s press office told ProPublica the IBA’s sponsorship contract with Gazprom “expired long ago.”) People close to the organization said they understood that its money still comes from Russia.

In 2023, the International Olympic Committee stripped Kremlev’s IBA of its role organizing Olympic boxing. It has cited a host of governance issues and the group’s refusal to “transparently explain the sources of its financing or to explain its full financial dependency, at the time, on a single state-owned company.”

It was a major setback that deprived the IBA of a key source of its international influence. Kremlev has raged against the Olympic committee ever since and has said that his IBA predecessor, who he blames for the problems, “must be shot.”

Kremlev saw a potential ally in President Trump. After Trump’s second inauguration, in January 2025, Kremlev sent an open letter to the president asking him to look into the Olympic committee’s actions in advance of the 2028 Los Angeles Games. “We look forward with great optimism to the possibility of working together to make the Olympic movement great again,” he wrote.

In September 2025, the IBA brought in Trump Jr. for a panel discussion in Istanbul about boxing. With his then-girlfriend, Anderson, sitting offstage, he criticized transgender women competing in women’s sports and reminisced about watching Saturday night fights as a child. Trump Jr. shared the stage with Kremlev, the boxer Manny Pacquiao and Muhammad Ali’s daughter Rasheda. (Trump Jr.’s spokesperson said he was not paid for the appearance and was already in Turkey for an unrelated event.)Umar Kremlev shakes hands with Donald Trump Jr., who is holding a model of a boxing ring.Kremlev hosted Trump Jr. at an event in Istanbul in September 2025. International Boxing Association

The president’s son had reason to be attuned to the sensitivity of cozying up with a Putin associate, especially while his father navigates the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting with a Russian attorney in Trump Tower became a major focus of the Robert Mueller investigation.

The Trump Tower meeting was arranged after an email offering Trump Jr. damaging information about Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Trump Jr. famously responded, “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.” Trump Jr. later dismissed the matter as a “witch hunt,” and the Mueller report concluded that there was not enough evidence to convict him of a crime.

Recently, Kremlev has been working to expand into the U.S. market. In July, his group hosted a bare-knuckle boxing event in Miami, a chance to showcase a particularly bloody form of the sport in which contenders fight without gloves. But the debut was overshadowed when manosphere influencer Andrew Tate, who the IBA had brought in to host, was arrested by U.S. Marshals outside the arena. (Tate is facing rape and sex trafficking charges in the United Kingdom, which he has denied.)

Much about Kremlev’s relationship with Trump Jr., and where it is headed, remains unknown. In a press release after the Istanbul panel, the IBA hinted there was more to come.

“President Kremlev and Donald Trump Jr made it clear – this alliance will not remain symbolic,” the press release read. “More joint initiatives will follow.”Corrections

More On U.S. Markets, Economy, Inflation, Jobs

Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, called on industry leaders to slow A.I. development for fear of losing control of the technology. Shown at right is Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI.

New York Times, Tech Stocks Shudder in Response to Calls to Slow A.I. Progress, Joe Rennison, Sept. 15, 2026 (print ed.). Companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence in Asia, Europe and the United States posted declines after tech leaders expressed worries about the safety of “frontier” A.I. technology.

Technology stocks around the world fell on Monday, after a chorus of senior executives at artificial intelligence companies called for slowing down the rapid pace of development of the transformative technology.

Futures for the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index fell 1.5 percent ahead of the open of trading in New York. Nvidia, Intel, Oracle and other companies at the forefront of the A.I. build-out posted declines premarket.

South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI index, which is heavily influenced by two chip suppliers for A.I. data centers, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, fell more than 3 percent. Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s largest chipmaker, fell 1.2 percent. Japan’s main stock index also declined, with SoftBank, a major tech investment firm, shedding more than 10 percent.

In Europe, semiconductor stocks like ASML of the Netherlands and Infineon of Germany fell sharply.

The tech industry has been the engine powering global markets to repeated new highs in recent years as advances in A.I. have moved faster than investors initially expected.

Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, published a long blog post on Saturday calling on industry leaders to slow A.I. development for fear of losing control of rapidly advancing models at the so-called frontier of development.

Those models, he wrote, have already begun to build the next generation of artificial intelligence, in what is known as “recursive self-improvement.” That raises the risk that the technology will become an autonomous cybersecurity threat, even threatening “serious economic disruption.”

“A race to the bottom, spurred by commercial incentives, can make these risks more acute,” Dr. Amodei said. As one remedy, he said he would hire third-party “evaluators” who would “verify adherence to safety practices and commitments.”

The post was endorsed by Elon Musk, who runs Space X, which also houses his A.I platform, x.AI; Sam Altman, who co-founded OpenAI; and Demis Hassabis, the co-founder of Google DeepMind.

“I agree with Dario,” Mr. Altman said, adding that he would also hire third-party “evaluators” to oversee OpenAI’s safety practices.

SpaceX, which is publicly traded, fell about 2 percent in premarket trading on Monday. OpenAI and Anthropic are both expected to list publicly in the future. But Mr. Altman of OpenAI said in a recent interview with Fortune that “right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public.”

Kevin Hassett, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, said on Fox News on Sunday that the steps Mr. Amodei suggested in his blog post were “pretty sensible.”

Despite the rare show of allegiance among the tech leaders, President Trump said that he would not want to see a slowdown that could give China the opportunity to move ahead of the United States on A.I.

“Whoever wins with A.I. wins,” said Mr. Trump on the sidelines of a golf tournament held at one of his courses in Ireland over the weekend.

China’s rapid progress in open-source A.I. models, which rival those from Anthropic and other industry leaders and, has split Silicon Valley. In his call for coordination of safe A.I. development, Dr. Amodei said there should be restrictions on chip sales to China and a crack down on the improper harvesting of data from A.I. systems by Chinese companies.

“If we execute these measures well,” he added, “I believe they would slow China’s progress enough to widen America’s lead significantly over the next 3-5 years — the window when AI becomes geopolitically most important.” He also said that the United States and other democratic nations should work to get China to restrict the speed of A.I. developments, although given the stakes “there will likely be stark limits on what can be achieved.”

On Monday, Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, told reporters in a briefing that “hyping up various threat narratives, engaging in confrontation and resorting to malicious competition will only disrupt the global A.I. governance process and serve the interests of no one.” 

New York Times, Key U.S. Borrowing Rate Near 20-Year High as Oil Prices Fluctuate, Jason Karaian, Sept. 15, 2026. The interest rate on a key U.S. government bond reached a nearly two-decade high, oil prices remained elevated and stock markets wavered on Tuesday amid intensifying turmoil in global markets.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note briefly reached 5.04 percent, its highest since 2007, which could filter through to higher rates on mortgages, business loans and other debt linked to government borrowing costs. Investors have shown increasing concerns about inflation and the direction of policy ahead of a Federal Reserve meeting to set interest rates, which concludes on Wednesday.

At the same time, the widening war in Iran is exacerbating worries about the flow of oil exports from the Middle East, putting upward pressure on oil, gasoline and diesel prices.Here is the latest:

More On Artificial Intelligence Fears

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Why Is Trump Still Boosting AI? Paul Krugman, right, Sept. 15, 2026. Will AI transform the economy? The jury is still out on that one: So far there is little evidence for either the massive job losses or the soaring productivity growth industry leaders threatened/promised, but it’s still early days.

But AI does seem to be transforming U.S. politics. I can’t think of a technology that has inspired so much hate across such a wide political spectrum. Even the leading AI companies are warning about the dangers of their technology and pleading for government regulation to slow it down.

Which makes it more than puzzling that Donald Trump is going all in on AI, claiming that concerns about its dangers are a “hoax” and opposing any kind of regulation.

In so doing, he’s taking a wildly unpopular position. Here’s recent polling from UMass Amherst:

Notice that even a large part of Trump’s base is deserting him on this issue, with a quarter of Republicans disapproving.

So why is Trump posting stuff like this?

Robert Reich has a good post on the subject, urging us to follow the money: As he notes, members of the Trump family have personal financial stakes in the industry. And one motive one should never, ever dismiss in current U.S. affairs is Trump’s personal greed.

I would, however, add two more points.

First, I think Reich is too glib in dismissing the idea that Trump imagines that he knows what he’s doing. “It can’t be,” Reich writes, “that he knows very much about AI.” But does he know that he doesn’t know? That Truth Social post above, in which Trump declares himself perfectly able to manage this wild new technology because he is a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT”, is like a textbook illustration of the Dunning-Kruger effect, in which incompetent people are highly confident in their own judgment because they’re too incompetent to realize that they’re incompetent.

Second, it’s important to realize how much Trump needs an AI boom.

Trump came into office believing that his tariffs would produce a huge boom in “manly” jobs. In fact, job growth has been weak — and more than all of the job gains have gone to women. Meanwhile, tariffs have driven up consumer prices.

And then there’s the Iran war, which has been an economic as well as a strategic disaster. Diesel prices are now well above $6 a gallon. Trump officials love to say that gasoline was over $5 a gallon under Biden, which was true — for one week.

Yet one thing did seem to be going right under Trump II. Enthusiasm for AI was generating a huge investment boom and supporting stock prices. Trump officials, notably Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary — who Edward Luce of the Financial Times now dubs “the Pete Hegseth of the Treasury” (ouch) — had taken to claiming that AI will solve all their problems, ending inflation by reducing costs and curing the budget deficit by generating huge economic growth.

The backlash against AI, then, is taking away the one thing the Trumpists thought they had going for them. So in a way it’s understandable that Trump is trying desperately to hold on to the magic (and possibly endangering the future of humanity, but he doesn’t care about that.)

But of course it won’t work. The AI boom, once Trump’s last remaining political asset, is now a huge liability.

Hope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump’s high IQ hoax, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Sept. 14, 2026. At 9:58 this morning, Donald Trump was locked away deep inside the White House when he began panicking online in front of the entire world. Over the course of almost 10 hours, the President posted on social media 7 times about the exact same thing, spiraling out of control over artificial intelligence, with each post growing more unhinged than the next.

He started by telling us all that our president has everything under control because of his genius-level intelligence: “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Before later saying it is all a hoax anyway, just like the other things our own government has warned us about, “I am the Hoax Buster” and that all warnings about AI are just a hoax, even wilder than “RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX, or the Global Warming Scam. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”That was just a small sample of what he would end up posting throughout the rest of the day. By 11:23 AM, he was sharing that the United States was leading AI “by a lot” and issued a warning not to “kill the Golden Goose.” By 1:33 PM, he was in the middle of a full-blown meltdown, listing other events that actually happened, but twisting them into sounding like his favorite word of the day, HOAX. He yo-yo’d from one thought to the next, going from defending AI to jumping feet first into some of his past embarrassments, saying both of his impeachments were a HOAX. Before moving on to President Xi, who he says will not be implementing any regulations. He then shared just how upset he is that Google supposedly wants to build a data center in Finland because “permitting is too difficult” in the United States. He made it clear that he is not at all concerned about safety or the environment. He is mad that he could lose AI “deals” to other countries. He wrote, “AI, and Data Centers, will be the Greatest Economic Development Engine in History ­­— Bigger than Oil, Gold, Diamonds, or even the Internet. It will not be stopped by brilliantly run Destructive Forces during the Term of President DONALD J. TRUMP!” This is all about money, and it always has been. For Donald Trump, the more money pouring into the United States, the more money he has access to line his and his enablers’ pockets.

By 4:30 PM, he was ready to start new attacks instead of just focusing on defending AI. He appeared satisfied with the groundwork he had laid to convince anyone reading his Truth Social shares that they were being targeted by HOAX after HOAX. He was now ready to turn his radicalized followers onto a new group of targets: people raising concerns about AI, including the scientists and executives who built these systems, “Revolutionaries, but Revolutionaries for a Bad and Evil Cause,” and he also issued a new warning that “soon you’ll find out they’re working for people that do not have the best interests of the United States in mind.”

At 4:34, four minutes later, came his “I am the Hoax Buster” post, where he was back with more drama, trying to label what we should actually be concerned about as the HOAX, so he could dismiss the real concerns altogether. By 4:53, he repeated much of what he had already said, but the grammar was different in this post. Where the others had random words capitalized, much the same as his traveling “comfort human,” Natalie Harp, does in her personal letters, this one was written with better punctuation.

In his final AI-focused post of the day at 7:55 PM, he shared the shortest and most desperate of them all: “The AI Hoax being perpetrated by the Radical Left Dumocrats is reminiscent of their Global Warming Scam of not so long ago, where everyone was going to die from extreme heat. What happened? MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!! President DJT”

President Trump even spent a few minutes of his day calling into the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, where Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang, whose company designs the chips that are powering much of the AI boom, was onstage. With Trump talking directly to the audience of tech leaders while on speakerphone, he said that the concern around AI was a HOAX, saying, “The robots will not be taking over. The AI will not be taking over the rest of the world. The whole thing is a hoax.” He also added, “No. It’s a hoax. They make people wealthy.”

China also responded to growing calls for an AI slowdown through its Foreign Ministry during a press conference earlier today, criticizing what it called “fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition.” Their state-run newspaper, Global Times, called the slowdown proposition a “Cold War playbook” designed to preserve American dominance. The United States and China are now both using each other as the excuse to dismiss the concerns and the slowdown.

This creates a standstill with neither government willing to slow down or build guardrails. This is feeling more and more like a nuclear arms race but with rapidly advancing technology instead that can be built and deployed much quicker than any weapon ever could. And if history has told us anything about past arms races, it is that the absence of guardrails and regulation creates catastrophes; it does not produce safety.

Seeing that first post this morning, where Trump called himself, “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT,” brought me right back to that cramped White House press conference room in 2020, watching Donald Trump suggest that maybe we could inject disinfectants, like bleach, into our veins to stop the replication of the virus. I felt that same punch to the gut feeling then as I did this morning. That was quickly followed by a sense of doom for what was to come.

Back then, we knew there was a serious crisis forming, with experts sounding alarms, while other countries were already starting to react. Yet the man who was supposed to be in charge, in control, and ready to lead us through it was standing in front of the country on live TV, proving just how much danger we were in with him leading the response. That was the moment for so many when they saw just how inept he was and that the emperor was truly wearing no clothes.

Thank you to those of you who support this work with a paid membership. Your $5 a month is what allows me to keep writing every day and, just as importantly, to keep these posts free and accessible to everyone. Those who can pay are the reason those who can’t still have access. And right now, with so much at stake heading into the midterms, that matters more than ever. If you’re in a position to join, I’d be grateful to have you with us.Subscribed

Now here we are, deep into his next term of office, and he is once again facing a crisis, and instead of seeing it for what it is and doing the job he was elected to do, he calls it a scam. One has to wonder if he knows it is an issue to be dealt with, and maybe it’s not just that he wants to profit from it, maybe once again he is just proving how inept he is. How he truly is unable to carry out the responsibilities of the office. That his mental and physical decline has just accentuated the shortcomings he has always had. Or maybe it is just the money. Either way, we are once again on the path of another catastrophe.

The reality is that AI is not going away. It is not a partisan issue, and it is not a hoax, no matter how many times the president yells that it is on social media. It is a technological tool that is already reshaping how we live our lives. It is changing how we communicate and work. It will have, and will continue to have, a direct effect on elections and how governments surveil their own citizens. It can already generate very convincing fake videos and voices of real people saying things they never said. Things that could directly impact the lives they live and the mental health of our young people. AI can and is already being used to weaponize disinformation campaigns at a very large scale. There is the impact it is having on our planet, too. It is consuming large amounts of energy and water, and impacting communities near data centers.

None of this means that there should be an outright ban on AI or that it should be taken away from people who are using it responsibly. It would be dangerous to allow our adversaries to have this powerful tool for their militaries and their economies if we did not have it as well. But it does mean we need enforceable, common-sense regulation. We don’t have time to wait, and we do not want it coming from our “high IQ” president who is under the control of tech billionaires. We need legislative guardrails, and we need them now.

Even the people building these systems are now asking for oversight and for the rapid development to be slowed down. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic (Claude), published an essay over the weekend that he titled “We Must Pace the Frontier.” In it, he warned that we should slow the pace of AI development so that safety measures can catch up. He has also warned that rogue AI agent swarms could take over the internet in as little as six months. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI (ChatGPT), has shared concerns and joined Amodei in calling for a slowdown.

It could be that their motives are genuine and truly selfless, and they actually see the danger and want these protections for mankind. Or they may see this as a possible tool to slow the competition. At this point, it does not matter. Because the people with the deepest understanding of this technology are saying it needs guardrails, and the President of the United States is calling their warnings a HOAX and threatening them. This echoes loudly of when scientists who built the atomic bomb, like Robert Oppenheimer, warned that their creation needed international oversight and regulation, and they too faced ugly backlash. They were called naive and accused of disloyalty. In Oppenheimer’s case, it went even further with him being stripped of his security clearance. Once again, the people who understand the danger we are facing in this moment the most are being punished for ringing the alarm and saying so.

This wasn’t the only big story for today. While the president spent the day locked away in the White House, posting disinformation and declaring himself a genius, a story broke that is rightfully getting a lot of attention. ProPublica reported this morning that Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding in the Bahamas this past May, the one that Donald Trump did not attend, was paid for, at least in part, by Umar Kremlev, who is a Russian oligarch in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.

Kremlev is the president of the International Boxing Association, an organization that has been financed by Gazprom, Russia’s state-run energy company. The in-depth investigation and subsequent reporting by ProPublica showed that Kremlev rented and paid for the private island where Don Jr. held his reception, and that he also paid an estimated $70,000 for a fireworks display after the wedding, which his team helped plan the logistics of. The money he used for this wedding came from an entity in Dubai that the boxing association uses for financial transactions. Don Jr.’s younger brother Eric Trump’s office said he has “absolutely no clue who this person is.” Which we can interpret as this not being some close family friend simply wanting to give someone they know well an extraordinarily generous wedding gift. Yet, Don Jr.’s spokesperson called Kremlev a “personal friend” he met through the hunting world. Bettina Trump posted on Instagram, saying that this was “an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend” and insisting there is “no conspiracy, no mystery.”

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Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who has continued to show what true leadership looks like in the time of authoritarian takeover, spoke on the floor of the Senate today and used his time to lay out exactly what had happened. He laid out the facts clearly on the connections, improprieties, and dangers of what that arrangement really represented. He reminded the room and those watching on video that Don Jr.’s net worth was $50 million before his father’s second term, and that it grew to $300 million in a single year after he took back office. He shared that at least 13 companies tied to the Trump brothers have received $1.8 billion in federal contracts and commitments during that same time. He pointed out that five of those companies received their first-ever government contract only after the Trump sons invested money in them. He called the Kremlev arrangement “as close to treason as you get” and asked whether any Republican senator would defend the Russian government paying for the president’s family wedding. He asked whether Republicans would have stayed silent if Hunter Biden’s wedding or Malia Obama’s graduation party had been financed by allies of the Ayatollah. “Just because the corruption happens so routinely that to some it feels normal,” Murphy said, “it doesn’t mean that it is.”

Congress is back in session, and this is a good time to contact our local members of Congress and let them know where we stand on common-sense regulations for AI and whether there should be an investigation into Don Jr.’s wedding being financed by someone with ties to the Kremlin. I know this feels like we are spinning our wheels every time we contact them, but those calls and messages are received by congressional offices, and they do send a message, especially this close to the midterm elections. This is also creating a record for the history books of who continued to side with this government and who stood up for our democratic republic. And for those of us who appreciated Sen. Murphy raising these questions on the Senate floor today, we can let him know that too.

Today was a bad day for Donald Trump. He had an embarrassing meltdown on social media, and he suffered a painful court loss. The Supreme Court rejected Trump’s attempt to restrict mail-in voting ahead of the midterms. His administration was trying to force states to get federal approval for their mail-in ballot envelopes and submit voter information through a new Postal Service system before those ballots were allowed to be mailed out. If these changes had been allowed this close to an election, or at any time, it could create chaos and leave legitimate voters without their ballots, and their votes uncounted in the November elections. Lower courts had already blocked these changes, and now the Supreme Court has refused to let the corrupt Trump administration put them into effect while the legal fight continues. This is not a slam-dunk win, but it is a win nonetheless. And these days, we count every good thing that comes our way, and lately, we have been seeing more good days for us, and fewer good days for those trying to destroy our country. That is why I still have hope for America. You should, too.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Odd Trump Out, William Kristol, right, Sept. 15, 2026. Whom should you listen to on the issue of artificial intelligence?

You could listen to the American public.

Back in 2025, before this year’s reports of incidents of AI going rogue, polling from the University of Massachusetts Amherst revealed widespread public unease regarding AI. Fifty-eight percent of Americans said then that AI should be strictly regulated by the government. And last month UMass Amherst found that only 11 percent of respondents supported the construction of an AI data center in their community, with more than two-thirds opposed. The survey also found only 23 percent of respondents saying President Trump was handling the issue of artificial intelligence well.

You could listen to people working on AI.

In July, more than 1,300 employees at frontier AI companies signed an open letter saying that “industry, government, and society at large may need the option to buy time to address emerging risks, develop security measures, and strengthen oversight.” They requested that “the U.S. government support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development.”

You could listen to people running the biggest AI companies.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote on Saturday, “Like many technologies before it, AI brings risks, and because it is such a powerful technology, these risks are serious. . . . They include the risk of losing control of AI systems, misuse of AI for cyberattacks and bioterrorism, and serious economic disruption.” Amodei and other top AI executives say that our government has a key role to play in ensuring we don’t lose control.

So we’ve got the executives, the experts, and the public lined up on one side.

On the other side? President Trump.

Trump spent yesterday proclaiming his absolute fealty to the unregulated development of artificial intelligence, his supreme indifference to any risks, and his utter disdain for anyone who had concerns and who favored creating controls or guardrails.

In a series of ever-more unhinged social media posts, and then in a call into a pro-AI conference in Los Angeles, Trump assured us all that he had everything under control, that all the warnings and concerns about AI are a “HOAX,” and that there is a “SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers.”

Democrats’ response should be pretty obvious. Privately they can be grateful to Trump for grasping a chalice so poisoned top AI executives have now chosen to let it pass. Publicly they can show that, in this instance as in so many others, Trump is headstrong, reckless, and out of touch. They can say we need a government that’s going to listen when even AI leaders and experts say we should slow down and get things under control. They can pledge that they will make sure AI works for all of us not against us.

Some Democrats will tell themselves, There’s no need even to get involved in this complicated issue at this point. The midterms are going fine. But it’s risky for a political party to look indifferent or oblivious to major public concerns. And Democrats don’t have to call for a total and complete shutdown of AI in the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on. But they can be forceful and direct, and can call for a slowdown and appropriate government regulation.

Most of the playing field for 2026 is already set. AI isn’t going to be the top issue on voters’ minds this November. But its emergence now, front and center in the public debate, could help turn a midterm GOP defeat into a true rout—especially if Democrats can tie Republican congressional candidates to Trump’s reckless and arrogant indifference to the public’s concerns. Here’s Jon Ossoff showing them how to do it.

The new New York Times/Siena poll has Democrats up by eight points on the generic congressional ballot. The margin was two points in the same poll a year ago. The trend is in the right direction. A solid victory seven weeks from now would be good. A rout would be great.

Democrats: Make midterms great again. Go for a rout.

AROUND THE BULWARK

• Supreme Court REJECTS Trump’s Mail-In Ballot Restrictions… ANDREW EGGER joins SAM STEIN to cover the breaking news that the Supreme Court has blocked Trump’s executive order on mail-in ballots.
• It Always Comes Back to Trump/Russia… A Putin bestie who’s involved with the kidnapping of Ukrainian children bankrolled Don Jr.’s island wedding for some mysterious reason. BILL KRISTOL joins TIM MILLER on The Bulwark Daily.
• Republicans’ “Anti-Communist” Obsession Backfires Spectacularly… Republicans spent their midterm convention warning that communists are coming for America. On the latest Bulwark Take, WILL SALETAN runs their own definition of “communism” against Donald Trump’s.

Quick Hits

DO THESE WEDDING GUESTS LOOK LIKE RUSSIANS TO YOU?: We’re entering Mad Libs territory with these Trumpworld personal-corruption scandals, they’re so frequent, varied, and strange. Like, be serious: Are you really trying to tell me that [Donald Trump Jr.] had his [private-island wedding bash] bankrolled by [a Putin-friendly Russian oligarch who runs the International Boxing Association]?

Yesterday, ProPublica reported that Donald Trump Jr. had his private-island wedding bash bankrolled by Umar Kremlev, a Putin-friendly Russian oligarch who runs the International Boxing Association. Kremlev, who attended the days-long party but has been oddly absent from the happy couple’s many, many online pictures documenting it, shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars for the shindig. How friendly!

You should really read the whole report, which is packed with remarkable details about Kremlev’s life, his relationship with the younger Trump, and former counterintelligence officials saying things like “This should be unthinkable for the son of the president. End of story.” But the most remarkable element of the story may have come from Bettina Trump, Don Jr.’s socialite bride. It was “fake news” that Kremlev had bankrolled the wedding, she insisted—in fact, “our dear friend Umar” had merely bankrolled a two-day party immediately after the wedding. I tell you what, you can’t trust these reporters as far as you can throw them.

MONSTERS IN THE EVERGLADES: The DHS detention facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz” may have shut down this summer, but new information about the shocking treatment of migrants at the cruelty-is-the-point Florida facility during its year of operation keeps coming to light. A new report from the department’s Office of Inspector General¹ found that the government had confined migrants outdoors in small metal cages that posed “significant risks” to their health and safety. Here’s the New York Times:

Federal investigators found that the metal enclosures—each providing only about 18 square feet of floor space—were used as “calming areas,” where at least 79 detainees were held for periods ranging from several minutes to nearly two hours. Although facility staff said that detainees asked to spend time in the enclosures, federal investigators found at least one instance in which the enclosures were used to discipline a detainee who “failed to comply with a lawful command.”

“The use of such restrictive spaces is highly unconventional and does not align with standards for humane treatment,” the report said.

“Calming areas” is a particularly creepy bit of bureaucrat-speak here—it’s hard to imagine that migrants found being locked in a wire cage too small to lie down in to be particularly calming. But even that amount of abstraction turns out only to have been for internal use. When the story got out, Republicans were more interested in doubling down on the cruelty. “While it adheres to all federal standards for criminal confinement,” Ron DeSantis Communications Director Alex Lanfranconi said of the cages yesterday, “we’d make it even smaller if we could.”

New York Times, China’s Top Spy Chief Warns A.I. Is a Threat to Party Rule, Lily Kuo, Sept. 15, 2026 (print ed.). Even as Beijing urges the United States not to hype the dangers of A.I., its own spy chief is framing the technology as a threat to the Communist Party’s security.

China’s top spy chief has warned that artificial intelligence could pose a direct threat to the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power, in what is the highest-level and most detailed articulation yet of how Beijing sees the technology’s security risks.

The unusually blunt assessment by Chen Yixin, the head of China’s Ministry of State Security, is in contrast to the warnings dominating the A.I. debate in the United States, which have focused on the possibility that A.I. could slip out of human control or pose a threat to humanity itself.

In an article published on Sunday in the state-run magazine China Cyberspace, Mr. Chen called for more party control over A.I. and stricter government oversight. This, he said, was necessary to protect political stability at home; to defend against increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks and misinformation campaigns from “hostile forces”; and to compete militarily with countries like the United States.

Mr. Chen referred specifically to U.S. tech companies and their A.I. models — like Claude Mythos and GPT-5.5-Cyber — as examples of new threats to cybersecurity. He also described the danger that foreign intelligence agencies might use A.I. for “large-scale espionage” and attacks on China’s critical infrastructure.

The warning from the powerful security agency makes clear that China sees foreign A.I. models as an active threat to China, according to Henry Gao, a law professor at Singapore Management University. That effectively draws a red line before talks between American and Chinese officials on A.I. safety risks, expected ahead of a meeting between President Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, on Sept. 24 in Washington.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in China? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

“Beijing is going into these talks viewing A.I. safety not as a shared humanitarian mission, but through an adversarial lens,” Mr. Gao said. It is making clear to Chinese tech firms and foreign rivals that “data sovereignty and political security will never be traded away for international safety accords,” he added.

Mr. Chen’s remarks are not the first time the security agency has spoken about the dangers of A.I., but they are the most comprehensive and signal Beijing’s growing concern about the industry. The security chief outlined several ways that A.I. could pose a threat to China:

Undermining the security of the Communist Party. The government’s top priority has long been maintaining the power of the ruling party. Mr. Chen’s article warns that those with “ulterior motives” could use A.I. to generate fake videos and audio to wage a “propaganda war” against China.

“They’re worried, among other things, of say a deepfake of a Chinese official saying something that wasn’t actually said, and that spreading rapidly and destabilizing everything,” said Kyle Chan, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies Chinese technology and industrial policy. “Someone thinks that Xi Jinping made some announcement which he didn’t actually. That could sow chaos.”

Attacks on China’s critical infrastructure. Mr. Chen, the spy chief, wrote that the technical and financial barriers to launching cyberattacks had been drastically lowered because of A.I. This, he said, posed “serious risks” to China’s information infrastructure. Last week, a small team of researchers in California demonstrated that risk when they disclosed a hacking tool that could take control of millions of users’ accounts on WeChat, China’s most widely used messaging app.

Leaks of sensitive information. Chinese users using foreign models could cause large-scale data leaks, the article noted. Anthropic, the company behind Claude and other A.I. models, said last week that the Chinese start-up Moonshot AI had routed queries by its users to Claude. Those queries included sensitive data, including video surveillance linked to the Chinese military, as well as proprietary information from high-profile Chinese technology companies.

More intense military competition. The U.S. military’s use of A.I. in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran was an example of how warfare has been “fundamentally transformed,” Mr. Chen wrote. He says that whoever can harness the power of tools such as algorithms to achieve more precise sensing and targeting, “will gain the initiative on the battlefield.”

China’s top spy chief has warned that artificial intelligence could pose a direct threat to the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power, in what is the highest-level and most detailed articulation yet of how Beijing sees the technology’s security risks.

The unusually blunt assessment by Chen Yixin, the head of China’s Ministry of State Security, is in contrast to the warnings dominating the A.I. debate in the United States, which have focused on the possibility that A.I. could slip out of human control or pose a threat to humanity itself.

In an article published on Sunday in the state-run magazine China Cyberspace, Mr. Chen called for more party control over A.I. and stricter government oversight. This, he said, was necessary to protect political stability at home; to defend against increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks and misinformation campaigns from “hostile forces”; and to compete militarily with countries like the United States.

Mr. Chen referred specifically to U.S. tech companies and their A.I. models — like Claude Mythos and GPT-5.5-Cyber — as examples of new threats to cybersecurity. He also described the danger that foreign intelligence agencies might use A.I. for “large-scale espionage” and attacks on China’s critical infrastructure.

The warning from the powerful security agency makes clear that China sees foreign A.I. models as an active threat to China, according to Henry Gao, a law professor at Singapore Management University. That effectively draws a red line before talks between American and Chinese officials on A.I. safety risks, expected ahead of a meeting between President Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, on Sept. 24 in Washington.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in China? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

“Beijing is going into these talks viewing A.I. safety not as a shared humanitarian mission, but through an adversarial lens,” Mr. Gao said. It is making clear to Chinese tech firms and foreign rivals that “data sovereignty and political security will never be traded away for international safety accords,” he added.

Mr. Chen’s remarks are not the first time the security agency has spoken about the dangers of A.I., but they are the most comprehensive and signal Beijing’s growing concern about the industry. The security chief outlined several ways that A.I. could pose a threat to China:

Undermining the security of the Communist Party. The government’s top priority has long been maintaining the power of the ruling party. Mr. Chen’s article warns that those with “ulterior motives” could use A.I. to generate fake videos and audio to wage a “propaganda war” against China.

“They’re worried, among other things, of say a deepfake of a Chinese official saying something that wasn’t actually said, and that spreading rapidly and destabilizing everything,” said Kyle Chan, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies Chinese technology and industrial policy. “Someone thinks that Xi Jinping made some announcement which he didn’t actually. That could sow chaos.”

Attacks on China’s critical infrastructure. Mr. Chen, the spy chief, wrote that the technical and financial barriers to launching cyberattacks had been drastically lowered because of A.I. This, he said, posed “serious risks” to China’s information infrastructure. Last week, a small team of researchers in California demonstrated that risk when they disclosed a hacking tool that could take control of millions of users’ accounts on WeChat, China’s most widely used messaging app.

Leaks of sensitive information. Chinese users using foreign models could cause large-scale data leaks, the article noted. Anthropic, the company behind Claude and other A.I. models, said last week that the Chinese start-up Moonshot AI had routed queries by its users to Claude. Those queries included sensitive data, including video surveillance linked to the Chinese military, as well as proprietary information from high-profile Chinese technology companies.

More intense military competition. The U.S. military’s use of A.I. in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran was an example of how warfare has been “fundamentally transformed,” Mr. Chen wrote. He says that whoever can harness the power of tools such as algorithms to achieve more precise sensing and targeting, “will gain the initiative on the battlefield.”

Trump says only guardrails that AI needs is ‘STRONG AND SMART’ president, Elleiana Green and Owen Dahlkamp, The president is trying to shut down a growing push for AI regulation, amid calls from leaders to slow the production of artificial intelligence.

Politico, Trump says only guardrails that AI needs is ‘STRONG AND SMART’ president, Elleiana Green and Owen Dahlkamp, Sept. 15, 2026 (print ed.). The president is trying to shut down a growing push for AI regulation, amid calls from leaders to slow the production of artificial intelligence.President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks with reporters on Air Force One.

President Donald Trump tried to shut down a burgeoning push for the United States to further regulate artificial intelligence on Monday morning, saying the U.S. has already done enough to prevent AI from catastrophic risks.

The post comes as technology leaders called for the industry to slow down the production of artificial intelligence over the weekend, sending tech stocks tumbling on Monday.

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

The president has repeatedly said in public remarks over the past week that his top priority is ensuring China does not gain supremacy over a new technology that is poised to reshape civil society. “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers,” he said Monday, “and the only one that is happy about it is China.”

“Don’t kill the Golden Goose!” he added in a subsequent social media post.

Trump also called out Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, claiming that he is “now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’” after the Trump administration had previously “stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things.’“

Over the weekend, Amodei was the first major AI leader to publicly call for a slowdown, writing in a lengthy essay, “We must slow down the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models.”

Shortly after, xAI CEO Elon Musk said on social media that “Dario is right.”

OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, also said he agreed with Amodei, adding that the issue has been a topic of discussion at OpenAI. And OpenAI’s top European lobbyist, in an interview with POLITICO, called on the United Kingdom to also introduce new regulations.

The Trump administration previously clashed with Anthropic publicly after the company attempted to restrict how the Pentagon could use its Claude AI model, resulting in it being designated a supply-chain risk. The AI giant sued, and a federal judge in late July said that it seemed that the administration overstepped its authority in targeting the company.

One of Anthropic’s most advanced models was also slapped with export controls in June after the administration deemed its release posed security risks. In an attempt to comply, Anthropic shut down the model entirely before the ban was partially lifted later that month.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s Monday social media post.

Concern from lawmakers and the tech industry spiked last week after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned and issued a warning that the emerging technology could “could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

His prediction increased fears about the growing capabilities of the technology, with top AI labs in recent weeks disclosing several instances in which rogue AI agents broke out of their testing environments and carried out sophisticated hacking campaigns across the internet.

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance told reporters on Monday before Trump’s social media post that AI is “something we’re concerned by, but we want to make sure that we actually regulate smartly and we’re thoughtful about the risk here.”

He added, “I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them. It feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan horse.”

More On Middle East Wars

New York Times, News Analysis: Gulf Arab States Explore New Options as U.S. Bases Fail to Deter Iran, Vivian Nereim, Sept. 15, 2026. The American presence in these countries has not shielded them from retaliation during the Iran war. Now they are hoping direct talks with Iran could help.

Gulf Arab countries have long relied for their security on the U.S. military bases that they host.

But after six months of war, the repeated pummeling of those countries by Iranian missiles and drones has made the limitations of American security guarantees abundantly clear.

Iran and its allies have nearly destroyed some of the U.S. bases, set luxury hotels ablaze and, most recently, knocked offline one of the most critical pieces of energy infrastructure in the world, an oil pipeline that stretches across Saudi Arabia.

Their backs against a wall, Gulf Arab officials are now trying to cobble together different ways to avoid attacks by Iran and its allies, including direct diplomacy with the Islamic Republic.

Even that option faces challenges. On Sunday night, a meeting that was scheduled for Monday between Iran and the Gulf Arab states was abruptly postponed. The delay came after Saudi Arabia and Iran reached an impasse in discussions about the Strait of Hormuz — a crucial route for Gulf energy exporters — according to a senior Gulf official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

Analysts say the region’s leaders have no choice but to seek different security options after the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran exposed the vulnerabilities of the Gulf Arab countries and emboldened the Islamic Republic.

“We’re stuck in this position of trying to build something new while maintaining some of the old,” said Bader Al-Saif, an assistant professor of history at Kuwait University. “We need to snap out of this external protector syndrome.”

The island nation of Bahrain, for example, has been host to a major American naval base for decades in the hopes of protecting itself from Iran. But as in other Gulf countries, the base became a target, instead.

New York Times, News Analysis: Saudi Arabia Faces ‘Worst-Case Scenario’ After Being Rebuffed by Trump, Vivian Nereim, Sept. 15, 2026 (print ed.). The kingdom is in a state of strategic shock after coming under attack from an emboldened Iran and failing to win more U.S. military support, analysts say.

Saudi Arabia has increasingly found itself caught in the middle of the war between the United States and Iran. Now, the kingdom’s leadership is assessing dwindling options on how to respond.

In recent weeks, the Iran-allied Houthi militia in Yemen has repeatedly attacked the kingdom, threatening to throttle its ability to export oil and piling pressure on the global economy. But Saudi Arabia has been left frustrated and disappointed by President Trump’s reluctance to confront the Houthis, former diplomats and analysts say.

The kingdom’s diplomatic efforts to engage with Iran have also had limited results. A meeting planned on Monday between officials from Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries was abruptly postponed on Sunday night, as the gap between their positions remained vast.

“Right now the Saudis are really frustrated,” said Michael Ratney, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. “In some sense it’s their worst-case scenario.”

The Saudi government’s Center for International Communication, which fields queries from journalists, did not respond to a request for comment.

The kingdom’s conundrum underscores the heavy costs that the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran has imposed across the Middle East, including on countries whose leaders opposed the war or have sought repeatedly to bring it to an end.

In the first few months of the fighting, Saudi Arabia was relatively untouched by Iran’s retaliatory attacks, compared with its neighbors. Now, with no end to the hostilities in sight, Iran is seeking greater leverage over the United States, and Saudi Arabia — the world’s largest oil exporter until the war knocked it down the list — has become a primary target.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in the Middle East? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Over the past two weeks alone, Saudi Arabia has faced Iran-backed attacks from the east, the south and the north.

A Saudi oil tanker was struck in the Strait of Hormuz at the end of August, killing two sailors.

On Friday, the Houthi militia, which had already declared a blockade on Saudi oil shipments through the Red Sea, seized territory on an important global shipping route and trounced Saudi-allied forces in Yemen.

The same day, the Saudi authorities announced that they had been forced to shut down a critical oil pipeline, blaming a drone attack by an Iran-backed Iraqi militia. The pipeline had become a key alternative export route for Saudi Arabia to get its oil to the Red Sea, after Iran effectively choked off the Strait of Hormuz.

“The reason a country like Saudi Arabia invests so heavily in developing a security partnership with the United States is for just this sort of eventuality,” said Mr. Ratney, the former ambassador.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, the country’s de facto ruler, had reasons to be confident in that partnership. For years, his government has invested billions of dollars and extensive political capital in building personal relationships with Mr. Trump and his family.ImageIn an ornate room, a person in a suit holds the hands of a smiling person in a thobe. A white model airplane sits on a coffee table.President Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia at the White House last year. The Saudi leader and his government have courted the president and his family for years.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

But when the crown prince asked Mr. Trump last week to take military action against the Houthis, the president declined, according to officials with knowledge of the conversations.

Saudi officials and pundits have been clear that the kingdom does not want to fight the Houthis alone. That is especially true because an earlier military campaign that Saudi Arabia led against the group turned into a decade-long quagmire.

“This demands international support, not only from Saudi Arabia and regional countries,” Abdulrahman al-Rashed, a columnist close to the Saudi government, wrote in a Saudi-owned newspaper on Saturday.

Mr. Trump, however, appears reluctant to get involved.

“Already confronting one open-ended conflict with Iran, with an overstretched Navy and a diminishing munitions stockpile, it’s unsurprising that he does not want to open this new front,” said Dan Shapiro, a former top Middle East policy official in the Pentagon during the Biden administration. “But it is bitterly disappointing to the Saudis.”

On Saturday, Mr. Trump told journalists on a trip to Ireland that the Houthis had “called us and they don’t want to fight with us.”

“There’s just one country that they’re not too happy with and we’ll get that straightened out,” he added, referring to Saudi Arabia.

Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a Houthi political official, denied that the group had reached out to the United States. “We did not communicate with Trump, nor did we ask him not to attack us,” he said.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice 

New York Times, Whistle-Blower: Federal Agents May Have Broken State Laws in Search for Voter Fraud, Nick Corasaniti and Hamed Aleaziz, Sept. 15, 2026 (print ed.). Agents expressed concern about being directed by top Homeland Security leaders to use private information to look up voter records in state databases. 

Investigators may have broken state laws under the direction of top Homeland Security leaders as part of an expansive effort to find noncitizens on the nation’s voter rolls, according to a federal whistle-blower’s account released on Monday.

The authorities also required agents to examine at least 40 voters each day, the account said, suggesting a rushed pace that raises questions about the thoroughness of the investigation. The effort has relied on questionable data, and has likely improperly flagged U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote, the whistle-blower said in a nearly 30-page report.

The whistle-blower report, provided to Senators Chuck Schumer and Alex Padilla, both Democrats, offers an inside view of what the Department of Homeland Security is calling the “Unlawful Voter Initiative.” The New York Times revealed last month the existence of the operation, which has deployed hundreds of federal agents to scour voter rolls managed by the states in a widespread hunt for evidence of voter fraud. The investigation stems from President Trump’s longstanding fixation on noncitizen voting, despite decades of research showing the practice is vanishingly rare.

Democrats and voting rights activists have denounced the operation as yet another way Mr. Trump, who has acknowledged the headwinds Republicans are facing as they try to retain control of Congress, is trying to sow doubts about the legitimacy of U.S. elections. They fear that eligible voters could be disqualified from participating in the fall midterms, or, worse, that Mr. Trump will use the investigation to try to discard actual results.

“This is just the latest example of how far Donald Trump will go to interfere in our elections,” Mr. Schumer, the minority leader, said in an interview. He added: “We’ve never seen anything quite like this. They come up with so many different ways to try and steal the election, to try and jaundice the election, but we’ve never seen anything quite like this. Department of Homeland Security is actually pulling away these law officers, these federal law enforcement officers, away from the work they’re supposed to do.”

On Sunday, the senators sent a letter to Markwayne Mullin, the Homeland Security secretary, demanding that the operation be halted and also seeking answers to a dozen specific questions. The senators included the full whistle-blower account, which was produced by Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonprofit watchdog group founded in 2023.

In a statement, the Homeland Security Department broadly defended its hunt for election fraud: “Our message to aliens who vote in American elections is clear: we will find you, arrest you, and you will face the consequences — including criminal charges and deportation.”

The identity of the whistle-blower is not known to The Times. Democracy Defenders Fund said in its report that the whistle-blower requested anonymity because of “an extreme fear of retaliation but they feel an obligation to speak up about the misconduct and gross mismanagement they have witnessed.”

According to the whistle-blower, agents are expected to complete at least 40 reviews in each eight-hour day, giving them scant time — about 12 minutes — to determine each voter’s citizenship and voting history. The consequence of the investigation is potentially vast, according to the account, because each review is recorded in a database that could affect individuals’ immigration status or legal permanent residency.

The whistle-blower also questioned the legality of a crucial part of the operation, with investigators effectively posing as individual voters by using personally identifiable information compiled from both internal and external sources, such as birth dates or partial Social Security numbers, to look up voter records.

The agents plugged those names and personal data into public-facing state websites to find a subject’s voter history. Some states, such as Virginia, declare explicitly that only individual voters may use the search tool to look up their own records. Others, such as California, require specific information such as a driver’s license number or partial Social Security number in an effort to limit the use of the tool to individuals.

“I do think the American people value keeping their personal information private,” Mr. Padilla said. “The other thing that’s concerning here, that the American people who would be offended by, is the knowing inaccuracy of what they’re doing, whether it’s the data or their sham analysis. It’s going to produce false positives.”

Worried about the potential legal ramifications of such actions, the whistle-blower “expressed concerns” to those leading the investigation within Homeland Security’s Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate, according to the account. 

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: SCOTUS Dashes Trump’s Last, Best Midterm Hope, Andrew Egger, right, Sept. 15, 2026. Let’s get a few caveats out of the way up front. Yes, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has sometimes let Donald Trump get away with too much. And yes, there are still myriad ways Trump could try to tamper with the upcoming midterms—and it’s all but certain that he’ll try to spin any Democratic victories as fraudulent, at least in the minds of his own base.

For this one moment, though, I’m hitting pause on caring about any of that. Last night’s Supreme Court decision blocking Trump’s ridiculous anti-mail-in ballots scheme was a massive rebuke of the president, a giant wrench in his plans to monkey with elections, and the death of his last, best hope to stave off the coming blue wave. Before we turn back to the future dangers, let’s sit and savor it a little.

Covering this scheme—which we’ve been writing about for months—it’s been difficult to figure out exactly how anxious to be about it. On the one hand, it seemed deeply unlikely all along that it would succeed in court. It was simply too outlandish, too much “one weird trick to seize control of elections”: a brazen attempt to destabilize states’ mail-in voting systems by giving the U.S. Postal Service and its Trump-lackey leadership unprecedented control over which mail-in ballots to deliver and which ones to refuse.

On the other hand, the damage the scheme would have done if Trump had been allowed to proceed was far too massive to ignore. Overnight, we could have been looking at a genuine constitutional crisis, with blue states forced to choose between handing troves of voter data over to Trump’s government or carrying out their elections without the use of the mail—which, of course, is what Trump has wanted all along. Even if they had agreed to give over their data, there were screaming warning signs that mail-in voters could be disenfranchised en masse anyway.

Astonishingly, two justices on the Court would have apparently been fine with exactly that. Justice Samuel Alito, joined in dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas, hand-waves the possibility of this chaos on the thinnest imaginable grounds. First, Alito argued, “the States disagree about the nature of these effects.” In effect: What are all these blue states complaining about? The red states don’t see a compliance issue here.

Second, Alito blames the possibility of all this chaos unfolding just before the midterms on the plaintiff states—for having had the temerity to sue over Trump’s ridiculous order in the first place. “In April, the plaintiff States sued to challenge the President’s internal directive to subordinates mandating a rulemaking,” the justice huffed. “For months, this litigation cast a cloud over the Government’s ability to issue a final rule. . . . The plaintiff States cannot claim the timing of the rule tilts the equities in their favor when they, and courts hearing their claims, are responsible for so much of the delay.”

It’s clownish stuff, but who cares? Don’t let the trolls ruin your day, that’s what I always say. Alito and Thomas’s “my president, right or wrong” shtick is isolated on the Court, which handed Trump a growing stack of major Ls this term, stomping on his “Liberation Day” tariffs, upholding birthright citizenship, and now kicking down a tentpole of his election strategy. It makes no sense to treat this Court as a feckless rubber-stamp body for Trump, then to turn around and scoff off their rebukes of his most unconstitutional actions as easy calls. The easy calls are the most important ones to get right, and Trump is far better hemmed in by them than he would be otherwise.

The fight continues, of course. As the New York Times notes, the president’s other plans to bully state election officials and to root around in state voter rolls continue unabated. And of course, the 2020-style playbook is still right there on the table: Trump is all but guaranteed to decry any Republican losses—of which we expect there to be many—as inherently illegitimate, and he could well lean on quisling allies like House Speaker Mike Johnson to try to block new Democratic majorities from taking office. One constitutional crisis averted today is no guarantee we won’t get another one tomorrow.

But one constitutional crisis averted today is still cause for momentary relief, reassurance, invigoration, and celebration. The bastards couldn’t manage to pull this one off. They’ll keep grinding. So will we. 

From left, pro-Trump conspiracy advocate and Russia defender John Solomon, and his frequently allied lawyer-commentators Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, diGenova's wife, law partner and close colleague on investigations.

Talking Feds Substack, A Pro-Trump Prosecutor Draws the Line, Harry Litman, right, Sept. 14, 2026. "If you want indictments where there's no evidence, you have an ethical problem."

Joseph diGenova’s resignation from the Justice Department last Thursday lays bare the degradation of the Department of Justice under Todd Blanche.

One inch below diGenova’s bland resignation statement lies an indictment of the fundamental corruption that now runs through the Department of Justice: the replacement of law and evidence with the raw political will of Donald Trump.

It’s important to the story that diGenova is a consummate Trump loyalist. He aligned himself with the Giuliani-Powell-Ellis effort challenging the 2020 election results, and more generally adopted the (meritless) article of faith that the 2020 campaign was stolen. And he was a prominent voice on Fox News insisting that the Russian election interference inquiry was a law-enforcement plot to frame Trump. He is one of the president’s own. Descriptions of him typically append the kenning “Trump loyalist” or “longtime Trump ally.”

But diGenova is also a former federal prosecutor, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia under Ronald Reagan. That was some forty years ago, and he has not tried a case in the decades since.

Every DOJ prosecutor since Watergate—that is, until this tailspin during Trump 2.0—assumed a sacrosanct obligation to comply with the Principles of Federal Prosecution. Those preclude bringing charges unless the prosecutor both believes the target is guilty and believes she can prove it to a unanimous jury beyond a reasonable doubt. To translate it into diGenova’s terms: evidence and witnesses. They are the sine qua non of federal prosecution, and it is the precise same principles Todd Blanche himself was schooled in as an AUSA in New York.

That most basic of commands has been abandoned in this DOJ. It has become disposable the moment it collides with Trump’s political preferences. And when diGenova, a partisan of the first order, hit the point where he was being told to indict without the basic goods, he balked. Reading between the lines of a resignation, his exit is a quiet, devastating verdict on Todd Blanche’s tenure and the Department he now runs.

The investigation that diGenova stepped away from is what Trump’s allies reverently call the “grand conspiracy.” It’s amorphous and protean, but in essence it’s the theory that everyone who ever scrutinized Trump since 2016 was secretly part of one coordinated plot to destroy him. Barack Obama. John Brennan. James Comey. James Clapper. Peter Strzok. Lisa Page. The Russia investigation, the classified-documents case, all of it, braided into a single decade-long scheme.

There’s a small detail I have raised every time there is renewed mention of “the Grand Conspiracy.” There is no such thing, on the facts and the law. “Grand Conspiracy” is not a concept in federal law. There is no statute, no charge, nothing in the United States Code by that name. It is not a legal theory at all. It is a MAGA wet dream, a holy grail cherished by the most fevered corner of Trumpworld, with no possible purchase in an actual courtroom.

And it has the additional defect of being factually groundless. The special counsel who examined the 2016 election found widespread Russian interference but no criminal conspiracy between Moscow and the campaign; and multiple later inquiries, including one by the Justice Department’s own inspector general, found real errors in the FBI’s handling of the Trump-Russia probe but no criminal conduct by senior officials.

The first prosecutor on the case saw exactly that. Maria Medetis Long, a seasoned career national-security prosecutor in South Florida, balked at bringing charges faster than the evidence would support. She was pushed off the investigation in the spring for her trouble.

Enter diGenova, eagerly. Days after Medetis Long was shown the door, he was sworn in as counselor to the attorney general in April with marching orders to bring home the Grand Conspiracy. According to Bloomberg Law, he had personally asked then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to hand him the assignment. He vowed he could bring charges in thirty days.

He had overpromised, perhaps because there’s no case to make, period. But after several months passed, diGenova got crosswise with Main Justice. The DOJ had grown impatient with his pace, believing he was slow-rolling the whole thing, and sent prosecutors down from Washington to speed him along. He sidelined them, and the standoff only deepened, until someone told him last week that he had lost the confidence of his superiors.

If it was a move designed to get him to accelerate the work, it backfired: last Thursday diGenova resigned. His resignation statement itself was courtly and anodyne: “It was an honor and privilege to serve the president and the department,” he told CNN. But his subsequent statements leave no doubt about the corrupt nature of the pressure he was experiencing from Main Justice.

diGenova is an old Washington hand, used to working the press, and he wasn’t about to let a false or critical impression of his resignation carry the day.

He has given several post-resignation statements, and I expect that he’s not done talking. He spoke to The New York Post and delivered the bombshell line: “If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem”

That’s radioactive. It charges the administration with pushing to indict a grand conspiracy with no evidence, and disparages it as unethical. And this from a brass-knuckles “Trump loyalist.”

To CNN, he played the long-time institutionalist card. “As an old prosecutor of more than 50 years, I make cases the old-fashioned way: witnesses, evidence, etc. That takes time.” More blood drawn. The new crowd makes cases the 2026 way: whatever and whenever Donald Trump says, with the innocence or guilt of the defendant an immaterial detail so long as Trump has it in for you. And the attorney general, who was trained under the same longstanding regime as diGenova, publicly champions that abomination.

We needn’t, and probably shouldn’t, ascribe choir-boy rectitude to diGenova. He’s likely attending to his own reputation. He is 81 years old and near the end of a long career, and he is not going to let the second paragraph of his obituary read that he railroaded innocent people into a lawless prosecution to please a president.

That just makes his parting shot the more potent. He shot his arrow directly into the DOJ’s Achilles’ heel. The fact is, everyone from Blanche on down knows that the Department’s treatment of Trump’s enemies is indefensible. I have written about this at length, and I will not stop writing about it. The actual embrace of prosecuting innocent enemies whom Trump simply wants to immiserate is the most grotesque corruption in the history of the Department of Justice. The Department has gone awry before, but never before Trump 2.0 did it leap to eviscerate its most sacred responsibility of doing justice without fear or favor. 

Emptywheel, Analysis:The Grand Conspiracy … Adrift on a Skiff, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Sept. 14, 2026. Those of you who followed the stolen documents case surely appreciate the irony that one reason Joe DiGenova quit his position leading the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy last week had to do with DOJ’s refusal to give him his own SCIF.

Among the disputes that added to tensions between diGenova and his bosses in Washington was diGenova’s request for a high-security room known as a SCIF to be built at the Fort Pierce office, to make it easier for the prosecution team to store highly classified materials, two people familiar with the investigation told CNN. The team worked in an office with a special room where sensitive, but not the highest-classified, evidence could be handled. Justice Department officials told diGenova he and his team should use a SCIF at an FBI office miles away, two people familiar with the investigation told CNN.

As part of then Defense Attorney now Attorney General Todd Blanche’s successful 2023 attempt to delay Trump’s stolen documents prosecution, he demanded that the FBI build Trump a new SCIF at Mar-a-Lago so Trump could store the documents he stole and once stored there in a ballroom back in his beach resort again. Then, months later, then Defense Attorney now Attorney General Todd Blanche complained that Trump needed more time to prepare because some of the documents Trump stole were so sensitive, his defense attorneys needed special read-ins for the documents to be left in the SCIF they were using, at all.

Effectively, then, one-time Defense Attorney and current Attorney General Todd Blanche told Joe DiGenova he should make do, just as prosecutors told Todd Blanche to make do (among other things, with the SCIF in DC that would be available while they were defending against the January 6 charges).

I guess one-time Defense Attorney and current Attorney General Todd Blanche now concedes that the documents his current and former client stole were far too sensitive to store in a ballroom, which really raises the question what the fuck are we doing here? You’ve just conceded it was wise to investigate Trump!

CNN’s report on the dispute describes what a busy day it was last Thursday, the day DiGenova quit.

DiGenova resigned Thursday on what was a busy day for the inquiry, as investigators were presenting a witness for testimony to a grand jury in the probe, one of President Trump’s top priorities, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. DiGenova’s abrupt departure could mean more delays in an investigation that has stumbled past internal expectations of charges earlier this year. More recently, officials at Justice Department headquarters had anticipated possibly seeing the first charges to come as soon as this month, CNN previously reported.

With diGenova gone, Justice Department officials feel confident in the team and expect to see momentum pick up, a US law enforcement official said.

DiGenova declined comment beyond what he told CNN last week, calling it a privilege to serve the president and the Justice Department and adding: “As an old prosecutor of more than 50 years, I make cases the old fashioned way: witnesses, evidence, etc. That takes time.”

But a declaration from Ken Wainstein, representing John Brennan in his bid to require DOJ to retain evidence of Trump’s malice targeting Brennan, reveals that’s just the half of it.

That same day — Thursday — DiGenova also served a subpoena, dated the day before, on Brennan himself.

6. On Thursday, September 10, 2026, I accepted service on behalf of Plaintiff for a subpoena to testify on October 15, 2026, before a federal grand jury sitting in Fort Pierce. The subpoena was signed by Joseph E. diGenova on September 9, 2026. The accompanying email directed me to contact Mr. diGenova with any questions regarding the subpoena. The morning of September 10, I, along with co-counsel, reached out to Mr. diGenova by text message, to coordinate a conversation to discuss the subpoena. He responded that he would “arrange counsel” to speak with us.

And while DiGenova is corrupt, he’s not dumb.

With DiGenova gone, that left dumb and corrupt Kurt Olsen to provide this explanation for the subpoena, probably an explanation of why they were subpoenaing a guy who was given a target letter months ago.

9. On September 11, 2026, I along with co-counsel, participated in a conference call with Kurt Olsen and three other members of the prosecution team to discuss the grand jury subpoena served on my client. In that call, Mr. Olsen fielded our inquiries and indicated there are multiple “viable” grand jury investigations, including a “far-reaching” investigation in Fort Pierce that includes “issues at Mar-a-Lago and beyond” into whether President Trump had his civil rights violated. Mr. Olsen also confirmed there continued to be an additional investigation relating only to Director Brennan’s statements before Congress in the District of Columbia. Mr. Olsen explained that Director Brennan was a “target” of the narrower investigation, and the investigation for which he was now being subpoenaed was the “more wide-ranging conspiracy,” as to which our client was a “subject.” However, he explained that the narrower investigation was “still viable,” and that the issues in the narrower investigation might also be part of the larger investigation, such as being overt acts.

10. Mr. Olsen also indicated that he was reporting to the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Florida, Jason Reding Quiñones, and then to the Deputy Attorney General and Attorney General Todd Blanche.

That is, Olsen (who was no prosecutorial experience) explained that Brennan was just a subject for the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy, whereas he was a target of the investigation — the one that still has venue in DC, where Brennan is trying to push everything — into whether he lied to Congress, which he did not. None of this makes sense from a prosecutorial perspective. But these people are dumb and corrupt and insane, so they don’t care.

Olsen, the day after Joe DiGenova quit, insisted everything was still “viable,” perhaps in an attempt to explain why a guy being targeted could be coerced to testify before a grand jury. That’s an opinion that will show up in a slew of filings from everyone involved.

And remember, this is all an attempt to deny that it was right to investigate Trump’s secret pursuit of a Trump Tower offered by a Georgian oligarch, but he’s now building a Trump Tower in Georgia. It is all an attempt to deny that Kirill Dmitriev was trying to recruit Jared Kushner so he could be enticed to trade riches for sanctions relief, but there Jared is on TV demanding that Ukraine cede lands Russia has never succeeded in seizing so Jared can cash in. It is all an attempt to deny it was right to investigate Don Jr for accepting secret gifts from Russian oligarchs, but the secret gifts Don Jr keeps accepting get bigger and bigger, now to include his wedding party.

All this investigation has succeeded in doing is prove that Russia was attempting to recruit Trump and his family, with great success, and that the documents Trump stole were too sensitive to be stoled in a gaudy bathroom.

Guilty as charged! Trump’s defense Attorney General has now conceded.

Hope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump’s high IQ hoax, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Sept. 14, 2026. At 9:58 this morning, Donald Trump was locked away deep inside the White House when he began panicking online in front of the entire world. Over the course of almost 10 hours, the President posted on social media 7 times about the exact same thing, spiraling out of control over artificial intelligence, with each post growing more unhinged than the next.

He started by telling us all that our president has everything under control because of his genius-level intelligence: “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Before later saying it is all a hoax anyway, just like the other things our own government has warned us about, “I am the Hoax Buster” and that all warnings about AI are just a hoax, even wilder than “RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX, or the Global Warming Scam. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”That was just a small sample of what he would end up posting throughout the rest of the day. By 11:23 AM, he was sharing that the United States was leading AI “by a lot” and issued a warning not to “kill the Golden Goose.” By 1:33 PM, he was in the middle of a full-blown meltdown, listing other events that actually happened, but twisting them into sounding like his favorite word of the day, HOAX. He yo-yo’d from one thought to the next, going from defending AI to jumping feet first into some of his past embarrassments, saying both of his impeachments were a HOAX. Before moving on to President Xi, who he says will not be implementing any regulations. He then shared just how upset he is that Google supposedly wants to build a data center in Finland because “permitting is too difficult” in the United States. He made it clear that he is not at all concerned about safety or the environment. He is mad that he could lose AI “deals” to other countries. He wrote, “AI, and Data Centers, will be the Greatest Economic Development Engine in History ­­— Bigger than Oil, Gold, Diamonds, or even the Internet. It will not be stopped by brilliantly run Destructive Forces during the Term of President DONALD J. TRUMP!” This is all about money, and it always has been. For Donald Trump, the more money pouring into the United States, the more money he has access to line his and his enablers’ pockets.

By 4:30 PM, he was ready to start new attacks instead of just focusing on defending AI. He appeared satisfied with the groundwork he had laid to convince anyone reading his Truth Social shares that they were being targeted by HOAX after HOAX. He was now ready to turn his radicalized followers onto a new group of targets: people raising concerns about AI, including the scientists and executives who built these systems, “Revolutionaries, but Revolutionaries for a Bad and Evil Cause,” and he also issued a new warning that “soon you’ll find out they’re working for people that do not have the best interests of the United States in mind.”

At 4:34, four minutes later, came his “I am the Hoax Buster” post, where he was back with more drama, trying to label what we should actually be concerned about as the HOAX, so he could dismiss the real concerns altogether. By 4:53, he repeated much of what he had already said, but the grammar was different in this post. Where the others had random words capitalized, much the same as his traveling “comfort human,” Natalie Harp, does in her personal letters, this one was written with better punctuation.

In his final AI-focused post of the day at 7:55 PM, he shared the shortest and most desperate of them all: “The AI Hoax being perpetrated by the Radical Left Dumocrats is reminiscent of their Global Warming Scam of not so long ago, where everyone was going to die from extreme heat. What happened? MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!! President DJT”

President Trump even spent a few minutes of his day calling into the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, where Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang, whose company designs the chips that are powering much of the AI boom, was onstage. With Trump talking directly to the audience of tech leaders while on speakerphone, he said that the concern around AI was a HOAX, saying, “The robots will not be taking over. The AI will not be taking over the rest of the world. The whole thing is a hoax.” He also added, “No. It’s a hoax. They make people wealthy.”

China also responded to growing calls for an AI slowdown through its Foreign Ministry during a press conference earlier today, criticizing what it called “fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition.” Their state-run newspaper, Global Times, called the slowdown proposition a “Cold War playbook” designed to preserve American dominance. The United States and China are now both using each other as the excuse to dismiss the concerns and the slowdown.

This creates a standstill with neither government willing to slow down or build guardrails. This is feeling more and more like a nuclear arms race but with rapidly advancing technology instead that can be built and deployed much quicker than any weapon ever could. And if history has told us anything about past arms races, it is that the absence of guardrails and regulation creates catastrophes; it does not produce safety.

Seeing that first post this morning, where Trump called himself, “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT,” brought me right back to that cramped White House press conference room in 2020, watching Donald Trump suggest that maybe we could inject disinfectants, like bleach, into our veins to stop the replication of the virus. I felt that same punch to the gut feeling then as I did this morning. That was quickly followed by a sense of doom for what was to come.

Back then, we knew there was a serious crisis forming, with experts sounding alarms, while other countries were already starting to react. Yet the man who was supposed to be in charge, in control, and ready to lead us through it was standing in front of the country on live TV, proving just how much danger we were in with him leading the response. That was the moment for so many when they saw just how inept he was and that the emperor was truly wearing no clothes.

Thank you to those of you who support this work with a paid membership. Your $5 a month is what allows me to keep writing every day and, just as importantly, to keep these posts free and accessible to everyone. Those who can pay are the reason those who can’t still have access. And right now, with so much at stake heading into the midterms, that matters more than ever. If you’re in a position to join, I’d be grateful to have you with us.Subscribed

Now here we are, deep into his next term of office, and he is once again facing a crisis, and instead of seeing it for what it is and doing the job he was elected to do, he calls it a scam. One has to wonder if he knows it is an issue to be dealt with, and maybe it’s not just that he wants to profit from it, maybe once again he is just proving how inept he is. How he truly is unable to carry out the responsibilities of the office. That his mental and physical decline has just accentuated the shortcomings he has always had. Or maybe it is just the money. Either way, we are once again on the path of another catastrophe.

The reality is that AI is not going away. It is not a partisan issue, and it is not a hoax, no matter how many times the president yells that it is on social media. It is a technological tool that is already reshaping how we live our lives. It is changing how we communicate and work. It will have, and will continue to have, a direct effect on elections and how governments surveil their own citizens. It can already generate very convincing fake videos and voices of real people saying things they never said. Things that could directly impact the lives they live and the mental health of our young people. AI can and is already being used to weaponize disinformation campaigns at a very large scale. There is the impact it is having on our planet, too. It is consuming large amounts of energy and water, and impacting communities near data centers.

None of this means that there should be an outright ban on AI or that it should be taken away from people who are using it responsibly. It would be dangerous to allow our adversaries to have this powerful tool for their militaries and their economies if we did not have it as well. But it does mean we need enforceable, common-sense regulation. We don’t have time to wait, and we do not want it coming from our “high IQ” president who is under the control of tech billionaires. We need legislative guardrails, and we need them now.

Even the people building these systems are now asking for oversight and for the rapid development to be slowed down. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic (Claude), published an essay over the weekend that he titled “We Must Pace the Frontier.” In it, he warned that we should slow the pace of AI development so that safety measures can catch up. He has also warned that rogue AI agent swarms could take over the internet in as little as six months. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI (ChatGPT), has shared concerns and joined Amodei in calling for a slowdown.

It could be that their motives are genuine and truly selfless, and they actually see the danger and want these protections for mankind. Or they may see this as a possible tool to slow the competition. At this point, it does not matter. Because the people with the deepest understanding of this technology are saying it needs guardrails, and the President of the United States is calling their warnings a HOAX and threatening them. This echoes loudly of when scientists who built the atomic bomb, like Robert Oppenheimer, warned that their creation needed international oversight and regulation, and they too faced ugly backlash. They were called naive and accused of disloyalty. In Oppenheimer’s case, it went even further with him being stripped of his security clearance. Once again, the people who understand the danger we are facing in this moment the most are being punished for ringing the alarm and saying so.

This wasn’t the only big story for today. While the president spent the day locked away in the White House, posting disinformation and declaring himself a genius, a story broke that is rightfully getting a lot of attention. ProPublica reported this morning that Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding in the Bahamas this past May, the one that Donald Trump did not attend, was paid for, at least in part, by Umar Kremlev, who is a Russian oligarch in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.

Kremlev is the president of the International Boxing Association, an organization that has been financed by Gazprom, Russia’s state-run energy company. The in-depth investigation and subsequent reporting by ProPublica showed that Kremlev rented and paid for the private island where Don Jr. held his reception, and that he also paid an estimated $70,000 for a fireworks display after the wedding, which his team helped plan the logistics of. The money he used for this wedding came from an entity in Dubai that the boxing association uses for financial transactions. Don Jr.’s younger brother Eric Trump’s office said he has “absolutely no clue who this person is.” Which we can interpret as this not being some close family friend simply wanting to give someone they know well an extraordinarily generous wedding gift. Yet, Don Jr.’s spokesperson called Kremlev a “personal friend” he met through the hunting world. Bettina Trump posted on Instagram, saying that this was “an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend” and insisting there is “no conspiracy, no mystery.”

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Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who has continued to show what true leadership looks like in the time of authoritarian takeover, spoke on the floor of the Senate today and used his time to lay out exactly what had happened. He laid out the facts clearly on the connections, improprieties, and dangers of what that arrangement really represented. He reminded the room and those watching on video that Don Jr.’s net worth was $50 million before his father’s second term, and that it grew to $300 million in a single year after he took back office. He shared that at least 13 companies tied to the Trump brothers have received $1.8 billion in federal contracts and commitments during that same time. He pointed out that five of those companies received their first-ever government contract only after the Trump sons invested money in them. He called the Kremlev arrangement “as close to treason as you get” and asked whether any Republican senator would defend the Russian government paying for the president’s family wedding. He asked whether Republicans would have stayed silent if Hunter Biden’s wedding or Malia Obama’s graduation party had been financed by allies of the Ayatollah. “Just because the corruption happens so routinely that to some it feels normal,” Murphy said, “it doesn’t mean that it is.”

Congress is back in session, and this is a good time to contact our local members of Congress and let them know where we stand on common-sense regulations for AI and whether there should be an investigation into Don Jr.’s wedding being financed by someone with ties to the Kremlin. I know this feels like we are spinning our wheels every time we contact them, but those calls and messages are received by congressional offices, and they do send a message, especially this close to the midterm elections. This is also creating a record for the history books of who continued to side with this government and who stood up for our democratic republic. And for those of us who appreciated Sen. Murphy raising these questions on the Senate floor today, we can let him know that too.

Today was a bad day for Donald Trump. He had an embarrassing meltdown on social media, and he suffered a painful court loss. The Supreme Court rejected Trump’s attempt to restrict mail-in voting ahead of the midterms. His administration was trying to force states to get federal approval for their mail-in ballot envelopes and submit voter information through a new Postal Service system before those ballots were allowed to be mailed out. If these changes had been allowed this close to an election, or at any time, it could create chaos and leave legitimate voters without their ballots, and their votes uncounted in the November elections. Lower courts had already blocked these changes, and now the Supreme Court has refused to let the corrupt Trump administration put them into effect while the legal fight continues. This is not a slam-dunk win, but it is a win nonetheless. And these days, we count every good thing that comes our way, and lately, we have been seeing more good days for us, and fewer good days for those trying to destroy our country. That is why I still have hope for America. You should, too.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Is ICE Dropping Fentanyl? Andrew Egger, right, Sept. 14, 2026. Because most people are much more comfortable with the idea of deporting killers and drug dealers than law-abiding grandmas, the Trump administration has long couched its mass deportation agenda as an effort targeting “the worst of the worst.” And the Department of Homeland Security has lately been playing up its efforts against international bad actors like drug cartels, with Secretary Markwayne Mullin announcing last week that DHS was changing its seal² to better reflect its posture of “war every single day” against those actors.

But investigating and interdicting international drug crime and dragnetting the country for any and all illegal immigrants are two different goals, and they don’t always exist in harmony. Last year, in fact, they were in conflict, with the latter drawing substantial resources away from the former.

That was one of the conclusions of an internal audit released by DHS’s inspector general last month, which found a significant dip in Homeland Security Investigations’ enforcement efforts against fentanyl trafficking from FY 2024 to FY 2025. (HSI, a division under the authority of ICE, serves as DHS’s primary investigative arm.)

The audit was grim in its assessment of HSI’s anti-fentanyl efforts last year, spotlighting a number of technological, intelligence, and information-sharing obstacles to anti-fentanyl work at the agency. But the most notable criticism had to do with manpower. “As ICE shifted priorities toward immigration enforcement, HSI’s level of effort on fentanyl declined,” the report reads. Amid the Trump administration’s all-hands-on-deck approach to immigration, fentanyl investigations regularly got short shrift: “At one office,” the report reads, “approximately 99 percent of HSI’s work was dedicated to immigration, leaving almost no capacity for fentanyl investigations.”

The department-wide result, per the report, was a notable across-the-board drop: “Fentanyl investigations decreased by 24 percent, investigative hours spent countering fentanyl decreased by approximately 30 percent, and fentanyl seizures decreased by 39 percent.” The report recommended that HSI conduct a staffing review to reprioritize fentanyl investigations, a recommendation that ICE agreed to accept.

As Democrats look forward—they hope—to retaking Congress next year, they see fault lines like this as promising areas for investigation. Over the weekend, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), who will become the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee next year, sent DHS a letter seeking more information about DHS’s fentanyl-investigation dip.

“In recent years, ICE has become the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency, with more than $100 billion in new funding since 2024—10 times its historical annual budget,” Hassan wrote. But the DHS OIG findings “raise significant concerns that ICE is neglecting its counter-fentanyl and counter-cartel missions.”

Hassan took issue with DHS’s “lack of urgency” on the topic, noting that the department had agreed only to figure out how to refocus agency resources by July 2027. The letter has not previously been reported.

The White House and DHS strongly disputed that its immigration focus had harmed its anti-drug efforts, arguing that Trump was winning the fight against fentanyl.

“There is a nexus between illegal immigration and drug trafficking,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told The Bulwark. “President Trump targeted cartels who were profiting off the death of Americans, secured our border to stop Fentanyl and other illicit drugs from flowing into our communities, and jumpstarted ICE to arrest illegal alien drug traffickers. These policies delivered a 22 percent decline in opioid deaths in a single year.”

A DHS spokesperson took particular issue with Hassan’s letter: “Where was Senator Hassan when congressional Democrats and the Biden administration allowed drug traffickers, criminal illegal aliens, and human smugglers to pour across our southern border and devastate American communities? Senator Hassan’s suggestion that HSI has abandoned its counter-fentanyl mission is FALSE and ignores the agency’s ongoing enforcement efforts.”

Fentanyl and other opioid overdoses have been trending in the right direction since their 2022 peak, falling slowly in 2023, sharply through 2024, and seemingly continuing their descent in provisional data from 2025, though they still kill tens of thousands of Americans a year. Federal enforcement operations doubtless have something to do with that—as do other factors like China’s crackdown on illegal fentanyl exports.

But concerns that ICE is giving these operations short shrift originate with their own agents on the ground and their own department’s inspector general, not with congressional Democrats. Expect to hear much more on this topic as the spotlight shines brighter on DHS in the months ahead.

AROUND THE BULWARK

• How MAGA Bewildered Voters Into Its Alternate Reality… The years-long project to discredit fact-based media and replace it with MAGA slop has been disastrously successful. Be sure to read this excerpt from SARAH LONGWELL’s new book "How to Eat an Elephant."(And buy the book if you haven’t!)
• The Two Stooges Take Another Crack at Ukraine… Russia’s imaginary victories meet Trump’s imaginary diplomacy, observes CATHY YOUNG.
• The Lesson of a Fractured Elbow… It’s a reminder of people’s amazing resilience in the face of disabilities, writes MONA CHAREN.
• America’s Most Powerful People Are Caving to Trump… On The Bulwark on Sunday, RICHARD NORTH PATTERSON joins BILL KRISTOL to trace how America went from a seemingly conventional political system to Trump’s second term, where the institutions and powerful people expected to serve as guardrails have often failed to stand up to him.
• ​​Here’s How You Know Trump’s Canada Tariffs Are Bombing… They’re costly, voters hate them, and they threaten supply chains vital to the U.S. auto industry, reports JONATHAN COHN in The Breakdown.
• Bernie Dogs Could Teach Democrats a New Trick… A new breed of candidate is mixing economic populism, social moderation, and disregard for party orthodoxy, writes LAUREN EGAN in The Opposition.

Quick Hits

ANOTHER L FOR TRUMP’S BALLOT SCHEME: The legal roadblocks keep arriving for Donald Trump’s harebrained effort to crack down on mail-in voting via USPS rules. Last night, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against the scheme, which would require the USPS to transmit ballots only to voters verified according to new federal lists, writing that the rules “exceed any conception of the outer bounds” of USPS authority. For Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, the decision was seemingly simple: “As the government concedes,” he wrote in his order, “the Postal Service could issue (and enforce) the rule only if Congress gave it the authority to do so, but here no statute grants the Postal Service the power to issue key parts of the Rule.”

Another federal judge had already blocked the administration from beginning to implement its order ahead of the midterms, but Nichols’s order goes farther in its preliminary assessment that the USPS has no legal authority to issue it in the first place. All eyes remain trained on the Supreme Court, which is expected to weigh in again on the mail-in rule any day now.

CANADIAN UNION?: Donald Trump wants to make Canada the 51st state. Instead, his bullying, senseless policy is pushing our northern neighbor in a different, once-unthinkable direction: toward trying to partially join the European Union. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Shortly after Canada and America became embroiled in the worst bilateral trade war in their modern history, the secure phones of Europe’s top leaders lit up with a trans-Atlantic call. Mark Carney was pushing to take Canada’s relationship with the EU to the next level—a bold gambit to rewire the economic cabling of the Western alliance. . . .

Carney has instructed his special envoy to Europe to scope out the most ambitious possibilities short of full membership in the EU or its common market, according to people familiar with the matter. The details are still being sketched by technical working groups for what the prime minister has told his aides will be the reorienting of an economy and a society that for half a century has been dominated by the U.S.

You probably don’t need more reminders that this whole Canada thing has been flatly insane. But it’s worth remembering that Trump thinks control of the Arctic is so important that it’s worth threatening to blow up NATO in order for the United States to get its hands on Greenland—while also thinking our relationship with Canada is so unimportant that he can blow it up just to blow off some steam.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

Popular Information, How Trump is spending his $400 million war chest, Judd Legum, right, Sept. 14, 2026. President Trump has amassed over $400 million through his super PAC, MAGA Inc. This is an unprecedented figure, dwarfing the largest cash piles collected in previous midterm elections.

With Trump’s approval ratings hitting all-time lows and many Republican candidates in swing races struggling, Trump has finally begun spending some of this money. Television advertising funded by Trump’s operation has gone on the air.The clearest sense of the scale of the spending is through advertising that has been reserved in key races. While these reservations can be changed, they offer the clearest view of both the scale of Trump’s efforts and his priorities. With the exception of Texas, this money is being routed from MAGA Inc. through a new Trump super PAC, No Going Back.

Since August 31, MAGA Inc. and No Going Back have reserved over $81 million in advertising.According to FEC filings, the same groups are spending millions more on direct mail, text messages, and other activities.

The fact that the Trump operation felt it necessary, outside of Texas, to route public communications through a new super PAC called No Going Back illustrates the current unpopularity of the MAGA agenda. (Ads paid for directly by MAGA Inc. must include the line “MAGA Inc. is responsible for the content of this advertising.”)

The same dynamic is also found in the ads themselves. Some ads inaccurately accuse Democratic candidates of supporting MAGA policies. Other ads, in an effort to find an effective attack, simply use false or fabricated claims.Trump, not Pappas, cut funding for rural hospitals in New Hampshire

In New Hampshire, Trump’s No Going Back PAC is running an ad attacking Congressman Chris Pappas, the Democratic Senate nominee, for voting “against vital funding for rural and vulnerable hospitals.”This is false.

Pappas voted against H.R. 1, Trump’s signature reconciliation bill, which cut Medicaid spending in rural areas by $137 billion over ten years, according to an analysis by KFF. About one-third of that cut was offset by a $50 billion fund distributed to states. But H.R. 1 left rural healthcare, including rural hospitals, much worse off.Pappas said he voted against the bill in July 2025 for that reason. In an August 2025 statement, Pappas said he opposed H.R. 1 because it “will have severe repercussions across New Hampshire communities, from our hospitals to our rural health care centers to our nursing homes.”

Now the Trump political operation is spending millions running an ad accusing Pappas of supporting cuts to rural health care spending because he opposed a Trump-backed bill that dramatically cut rural health care spending.

Ossoff did not vote to increase “taxes on working families” by $16.7 billionIn Georgia, a No Going Back ad accuses Senator Jon Ossoff (D) of voting “to raise taxes by over $16 billion on working families like yours.”

This isn’t true.The ad cites Ossoff’s vote for the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in 2022. The IRA did not increase individual income tax rates for anyone. It closed some tax loopholes for individuals earning over $400,000. No working families saw their tax bill increase because of Ossoff’s vote.What the IRA did do is create a minimum tax of 15% for profitable corporations. Some economists claim that corporate taxes will then trickle down to individuals in the form of lower wages or share prices. The $16.7 billion comes from a report attempting to quantify that effect on individuals making $200,000 or less. Even in this analysis, most of the burden falls on those making between $100,000 and $200,000 and the impact shrinks to less than $3 billion by 2027.The ad attempts to redefine an effort to make profitable corporations pay their fair share of taxes — a proposition that is quite popular among voters — as a tax increase on working families.Cooper did not agree to release a “convicted child molester” earlyIn North Carolina, No Going Back says that Governor Roy Cooper (D) “released 3500 criminals, released early.” The next line is: “This convicted child molester shot a man dead.”

The ad references Cooper’s COVID-era settlement, reached with the ACLU, to release some inmates early — mostly those already scheduled to be released within a year. The ad’s implication is clear: Jimmie Earl Speight Jr., who was charged with murder in April 2021, was among that group.This is inaccurate.Speight Jr. was released from prison, where he was serving a sentence for car theft, in November 2020. Cooper’s settlement was signed in February 2021. Speights Jr.’s release had nothing to do with Cooper or the settlement. (Speight Jr. was included on a list associated with the settlement because the settlement, according to WRAL, “counted some people who had already been released, before the settlement, so that the actual number of people being released would be lower.”)

The No Going Back ad is one of several blaming Cooper for crimes completely unrelated to the settlement.

New York Times, With Trump’s Plans Blocked, States Work to Restore Trust in Mail Voting, Nick Corasaniti, Anna Griffin and Richard Fausset, Sept. 15, 2026. President Trump’s efforts to restrict mail voting ahead of the midterms were thwarted by the Supreme Court, but they have sowed confusion and doubt among some voters.

Now that the Supreme Court has blocked President Trump’s executive order restricting mail voting ahead of the midterms, election officials across the country are shelving their contingency plans and preparing for a new effort: restoring trust in mail voting.

Mr. Trump’s repeated false attacks on voting by mail, and the monthslong legal back and forth over whether he could restrict the practice through the Postal Service, have left many voters baffled.

With the legal question now settled, election officials at the state and local levels will now shift their focus to communicating to voters that they can trust that they can securely continue to vote by mail without federal restrictions.

“We’ve actually been working all weekend to figure out the different scenarios for the outcomes of the decision,” said Francisco Aguilar, a Democrat who is Nevada’s secretary of state. “And one of them was, Hey, if we are in a position where we get a favorable ruling from the courts, what are we going to do to educate voters and to build that confidence that their ballot is going to get counted?”

For Nevada, that will mean an expansive voter education program that will include television ads, digital ads and text messages to voters.

Mr. Trump has worked to sow doubts about the American electoral process for years, telling lies about election outcomes and making false claims of fraud. (Lawsuits filed by Mr. Trump and his allies challenging the results of the 2020 election were repeatedly rejected.) He often assails mail voting, despite voting by mail himself.

This year he has aggressively pushed to regulate elections, despite the fact that the Constitution leaves the administration of elections to the states. He has mobilized multiple agencies under the executive branch, exacerbating confusion and doubt among the American electorate.

The president’s continued attacks on the electoral process have thrust election officials at the state and local levels into new, more public-facing roles.

“This obviously is not the first time that Trump pushes out more lies about vote by mail,” said Jena Griswold, Colorado’s secretary of state. “Our message even during all this back and forth with this litigation is that everything was proceeding as normal.”

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Trump Learns You Can’t Spell Mail Without an L, Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger, Sept. 15, 2026. President Trump spent much of yesterday posting about his unlimited support for AI development and data-center construction and calling criticism of it a “hoax.”

It’s rare to see a politician stake his ground on the 20 side of an 80–20 issue. But that’s our president! Next, we suspect he will launch into caps-lock tirades against ice cream, puppies, and the Beatles. Just fifty days to go before the election! Happy Tuesday.

Meidas Touch Network, News and Commentary: Sept. 14, 2026 Roundup, Ron Filipkowski, right, Sept. 14, 2026, Journalist Anne Applebaum (on Trump Jr. wedding): “Some details: Kremlev, the Russian who sponsored Don Jr’s wedding, is a former member of the Night Wolves biker gang, went to China with Putin and is personally sanctioned by Ukraine for his role in abducting children.”

… As the story blew up on Instagram, self-described “socialite” Bettina Trump took to Instagram to try to defend the Russian-financed wedding:

“Our dear friend Umar very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding. It was an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend, and something for which we were and remain incredibly grateful.

It’s unfortunate that something so personal and happy can be recast as something political or sinister simply because of who someone is or where they come from. Friendship doesn’t require a political motive. Generosity doesn’t automatically come with an agenda. And sometimes a wedding gift is simply a wedding gift.

We are fortunate to have wonderful friends from all over the world, and we will never be embarrassed or apologetic about being grateful for them. So, for anyone determined not to let the facts get in the way of a good story: NO CONSPIRACY , NO MYSTERY. Just a private family wedding, a wonderful weekend with friends and one hell of a party.”

She’s the perfect wife for Junior. Both seem completely narcissistic, self-absorbed, craving constant attention, fake, greedy and immoral.

The Hartmann Report, Is America About to Get the Biggest “Special Assessment” in History? Thom Hartmann, right, Sept. 14, 2026. The bond market is warning that 45 years of Republican tax cuts and exploding debt may finally force ordinary Americans to pay for a party the wealthy already enjoyed.

Get ready to get your financial ass kicked. That’s the message the bond market sent last week, although almost nobody in the corporate press bothered to translate it into English. If you’ve ever lived in a condo or home with an HOA, though, you may understand what’s happening better than you realize.

First, the current crisis:

Our federal government pays its bills two ways: using tax revenue, and borrowing when it’s short by issuing IOUs we call Treasury bonds. The single most important of these for you and me is the ten-year bond because our banking system sets mortgage, car loan, student loan, and credit card rates based on it.

Last week, that rate hit 4.92 percent, just a hair below the 5 percent rate that could trigger a freak-out reaction on Wall Street. The nationwide average 30-year mortgage is already hitting 6.7 percent, which is both shaking the housing market and crushing low- and middle-income people both in mortgage payments and mortgage costs that get passed through as rent.

That, in turn, threatens a recession; when lenders get nervous about being paid back, they charge more, and right now they’re getting very, very nervous.

The main thing that’s driving all this nervousness is that the national debt crossed the $40 trillion threshold three weeks ago; we’re now paying more than $1 trillion a year — enough to fund a national healthcare system and give everybody free college, if done right — in interest payments. That’s more than we spend on the entire military or on Medicare.

Our Treasury is writing interest checks of $95 billion a month, our nation’s debt is growing by nearly $7 billion a day, and that works out to about $117,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country. (Into this mess, on Wednesday night, Donald Trump tossed a promise to mail every adult a $5,000 “Trump Dividend” if Republicans keep Congress, a stunt that would cost well over a trillion dollars, further freaking out the bond market.)

If you’ve ever lived in a home or condo that has a homeowners association (HOA), you may already have a meaningful insight to what 45 years of Republican irresponsibility have done to America, because you’ve probably had it happen to you or watched it happen to your neighbors.

Two friends of mine here in Oregon have been through this in just the past five years, and Louise and I briefly lived in a community that was heading in the same direction.

Our friends bought into what seemed to be well-maintained communities that had seductively low monthly dues. And then came the shock: in one case the roofs and another the parking structure hit the end of their useful lives and there was no money in the HOA’s account to pay for the necessary — and major — repairs. One was hit with a $40,000 “special” assessment, the other a bit less. Neither saw it coming.

The problem was that a previous generation of homeowner board members, wanting to keep their own costs low, kept the HOA dues down by simply ignoring the reality that one day the roofs and parking area would have to be repaired. The more recent purchasers ended up having to suddenly cover costs that should have been saved for over decades in what HOAs call “reserves.”

This is the same scam Republicans have been running on us since Reagan started it in 1981 on the advice of a Republican consultant named Jude Wanniski.

In essence, the boards that were keeping their HOA dues low and not bothering to build reserves for future maintenance were giving their then-current owners (and themselves) a tax cut.

The roof doesn’t care if there’s money to pay for its repairs; it’s going to deteriorate no matter what. And the longer the board waits, the more the repairs will cost until one day ceilings start leaking and it can’t be put off any longer. That’s when the current board has no choice but to hit everybody currently owning a property in the HOA with a special assessment.

— After the Surfside condos collapsed in Florida killing 98 people, that state finally passed a law requiring HOAs to both maintain their properties and build reserve funds for future maintenance.

— Owners at the Cricket Club condo complex in North Miami got hit with a proposed assessment of nearly $30 million for a new roof and facade work, which worked out to more than $134,000 per unit; one owner there had cashed out his 401(k) to buy a $190,000 condo and simply couldn’t pay.

— At the Mediterranean Village homes in Aventura, some owners were assessed up to $400,000. A 79-year-old woman in South Florida got hit with a mind-boggling $224,000 assessment on top of monthly fees that had already doubled from $1,500 to $3,000.

And it isn’t only Florida. Just this week a condo owner in Torrance, California opened a bill for $49,000, levied equally on all 499 units, because his board was finally forced by disintegrating properties to pay for $19 million in decades-deferred projects.

It turns out this isn’t a rare event; more than 75 million Americans live in communities with homeowner associations, and nearly 10 percent of all those associations hit their homeowners with a special assessment last year, up from 7.8 percent in 2021. That’s somewhere north of seven million people who got hit with a massive surprise bill in just one year (more recent stats aren’t yet available, but odds are things are getting worse because everybody’s so badly financially strapped right now).

But, of course, it’s not just people who live in HOA communities: America is on the verge of having to go through the same thing because our “board” policies have been run (or restrained) by corrupt Republicans for most of the past 45 years.

When Ronald Reagan took office the national debt was $914 billion. When he left, having slashed the top income tax rate from 70 percent down to 28 percent, our debt was $2.6 trillion, nearly tripled, and the annual interest payment had more than doubled.

And this HOA-level irresponsibility was neither an accident or the response to a crisis. We’d been steadily paying down our national debt every year since the end of World War II, to the point where when Reagan took office it was less than one trillion dollars.

But then, as I laid out in The Hidden History of the American Dream, Republican strategist Jude Wanniski laid out what he called his “Two Santa Clauses” strategy to screw Democrats and make Republicans look like financial geniuses.

Wanniski pointed out in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that Democrats had been winning elections for forty years by playing Santa with everything from Social Security to Medicare, Medicaid, the minimum wage, the GI Bill, food stamps, housing supports, free college, and dozens of other “gifts” to the American public.

Republicans had openly opposed every single one of them, making the public view them as Scrooge.

The key, then, was for Republicans to become what Wanniski called the “tax-cut Santas” and, at the same time, start spending money hand-over-fist when a Republican was in the White House. That would artificially stimulate the economy, making people think Republicans knew how to produce “good times,” and would also have the benefit of running up the nation’s debt.

When a Democrat came into office, Wanniski said, Republicans should flip the script and start screaming about the debt they’d run up — “Oh, the agony, our children will have to pay for this!!!” — to force that Democratic president to cut his own social spending.

Bill Clinton fell for it hook-line-and-sinker, giving us “the end” of both “big government” and “welfare as we know it.” And it’s worked every time a Republican has taken the Oval Office since Reagan; they all know the script and follow it to a T.

Reagan tripled the debt, and Clinton had to play the role of the grownup. George W. Bush cut taxes on billionaires twice, put two illegal wars on the national credit card, and doubled our national debt; when Obama took office he spent eight years being lectured about deficits by Republicans and right-leaning billionaire-owned media.

Now Trump has signed tax cuts that the Congressional Budget Office says could push our debt to 200 percent of GDP over the next two decades; he added $7.8 trillion to our debt in his first term and is now merrily running a debt of over $2 trillion a year.

This GOP scheme is the exact equivalent of the HOA board members who live cheap for 20 years and then sell their homes or condos to the poor suckers who inherit the disintegrating roof or parking garage.

But, in our nation’s case, the roof is the bond market. And the bond market is going nuts right now, which is giving serious jitters to everybody from Wall Street to foreign countries that are starting to dump US treasuries.

There are already three members of the Fed who are openly lobbying to raise interest rates this Wednesday to slow down the inflation all this deficit spending has created, oil is over $100 a barrel because Netanyahu finally found a president and defense secretary stupid enough to go along with him and attack Iran, and we’ll hit the $41.1 trillion debt ceiling sometime early next year.

When our “special assessment” finally arrives, it’ll show up as a mortgage you can’t refinance, a 15 percent car loan, a Social Security “reform” that cuts everybody’s checks, exploding Medicare premiums, and inflation that continues to eat away at your paycheck month after month.

It’ll hit, in other words, the average working people who just happened to be living in the HOA building when the roof started to fail, while the former owners who’d voted for 45 years of skipped maintenance have long since cashed out.

The fix for HOAs is pretty much the same thing as the fix we’ll need for this country: we need a special assessment and a return to regular taxation, but let’s make sure it hits the right people.

We require the board to fund the reserves — raise taxes on the morbidly rich — and claw back some of that money they’ve stolen from us (with $40 trillion worth of tax cuts and illegal wars over the past 45 years) via a tax on wealth like California is contemplating.

If we fail, our eviction notice will come in the form of a repeat of the last Republican Great Depression, courtesy of the bond and equities markets just like last time.

So, check your registration at vote.org, find out who’s running for your state legislature at openstates.org, and if this was useful to you, please subscribe to and share the Hartmann Report. Somebody in this building has to read the reserve study out loud.

The Triad Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The American Age Is Over (For sure), Jonathan V. Last, above, Sept. 14, 2026. The AI Apocalypse Is Here. (Maybe.) The weekend the world changed. Some moments require you to step up. Some require you to show up. That’s why The Bulwark is coming to Ohio.Join Tim, Sarah, JVL, Sam and friends Friday, September 25 at the Dayton Masonic Center for an evening of politics and fellowship. All profits from this event will be donated to those in Springfield who are in need via our partners at the Haitian Community Help & Support Center. Donate here.

1. Epochal

Two shifts happened under the radar since Friday that are worth keeping your eyes on.

The first shift concerns the post-American world and it came on two fronts.

Finland announced today that it is joining the French nuclear deterrence initiative. You may recall that back in March France announced a change to its nuclear doctrine, stating that it would expand its nuke capabilities and partner with other allies to expand a nuclear deterrent independent of the United States.¹ Finland joins the nine other European countries—including Denmark—in joining France’s Forward Deterrence program.

This is the clearest sign possible that Europe is disengaging from America. Under Forward Deterrence, it will be possible for France to deploy nuclear-armed assets to allied countries, though command-and-control of those forces will still reside with the French president.²

As the Polish prime minister said back in March, “We are arming up together with our friends so that our enemies will never dare to attack us.”

Guess which group America now falls under?³

The second shift stalled out halfway. Oman was set to host talks between Iran and other Gulf states today in which the various parties were looking to strike bilateral agreements without involving the United States.

Those talks were cancelled after Houthi forces launched another successful attack on Saudi Arabia.

Here’s my sophisticated analysis: This is very bad.

It is bad that the war is widening.

Bad that our Gulf allies⁴ are willing to talk to Iran without the United States present to protect American interests.

Bad that Iran believes its position is so strong that it can strike (through its proxies) the Saudis just days before the meeting in order to assert dominance over the negotiations.

In both cases—the French nukes and the Arab–Iranian negotiations—the world is moving to a post-American order because of affirmative choices made by Donald Trump and the Republican party. None of this was caused by external events or dialectical forces.

Trump chose to alienate Europe, align with Russia, and demand territorial tribute from Denmark. Trump chose to launch the most foolish American war in (at least) a century because he was dazzled by an Israeli PowerPoint deck.

Decisions are being made by sovereign nations across the world; in every case they involve independence from American influence.

And there is no going back.

2. AI Panic

On Saturday Anthropic announced that it was unilaterally putting the breaks on frontier AI research. The company called on other businesses in the field to follow suit.

I want to set a baseline here for discussions about AI: No one knows how this shakes out.

It is possible that AI will turn out to be a massive bubble whose economic upside and disruptive downside was completely overblown.

It is possible that AI will be a revolutionary tool that causes great disruption, but also increases productivity, and, after a fashion, settles into a new status quo in the way that the industrial revolution and the internet revolutions did.

It is also possible that AI will cause a global catastrophe.

You should not trust the judgment of anyone who tells you that they know for certain which of these tracks AI is on.

My intuition is that we are currently in a moment like the one from Oppenheimer when Gen. Leslie Groves is sitting with Bobby O. two hours before the Trinity test and asks, “What did Fermi mean by ‘atmospheric ignition’?”

Oppenheimer calmly explains that the engineers and physicists believe there’s a chance that detonating an atom bomb will cause an unstoppable chain reaction which turns the entire earth’s atmosphere into a fireball, killing everyone on the planet.

But, he says, that’s just the most remote possibility. “Chances are near zero,” Oppenheimer says.

Groves stops short and Oppenheimer says, “What do you want from theory alone?”

“Zero, would be nice,” Groves says.

The chances of AI causing a truly catastrophic event are probably near zero.

But zero would be nice.

What are the general dangers of AI? There are a few.

The biggest is self-recursive learning. If an AI develops the ability to improve itself without human input, then all sorts of crazy outcomes are possible. We lose control over what AI is. Self-recursive learning would be the equivalent of letting an entirely novel species loose on the planet.⁵

The next problem is what the engineers euphemistically refer to as “alignment.” Which means, roughly, keeping AI from being evil.

There are many troubling signs on this front. A few months ago in the Hugging Face incident, agents from OpenAI escaped containment, hacked into the company Hugging Face, and started doing their own thing. There have been other instances in which rogue AIs have hacked platforms: the RubyGems incident and the DseWiki attack.

There are many things to freak out about here:

In the Hugging Face attack, agents who escaped containment found a hidden message board where other rogue agents were leaving messages for one another. They attempted to cover their tracks, evade detection, and recruit rogue agents to their cause.

In the RubyGems incident, the agents sent each other thousands of junk packages. Some of them gave themselves names that included fake email addresses.

In the DSEwiki attack, the agents encountered a human administrator who was trying to delete pages that they had hacked. The agents seem to have viewed the human as “an environmental hazard.”

If you want the doomer case for AI, read this METR investigation of the Hugging Face hack.

And if you want to get even further out there, listen to this interview with one of the authors of that report, Ajeya Cotra, who explains that the Hugging Face incident was so complex that the human researchers could only unravel it by using their own AIs. And that the humans are not completely positive that their own White Hat AIs didn’t just sandbag them and feed them a line of BS obscuring what really happened. (Start at the 49:17 mark.)

So that’s the scariest part: Maybe AI and human alignment has already hard-forked and the AIs are preventing us from realizing it.

The final problem is the difference in time scale between humans and computers.

The human scale of time is a form of what we’ll call biologic time. That is: The units of time measure the changes of carbon-based life as they evolve.

Biologic time moves very quickly because it is determined by the pace of mutation and genetic mutation happens much faster than stars collapse or glaciers advance. As a wise mathematician once said, “Genetic power is the most awesome force ever seen on this planet.”

Looking at these three scales of time it’s pretty clear that power is closely tied to the rapidity of change. The shorter the time scale, the more powerful the movement.

MS NOW, Opinion: Trump’s easiest path to saving the GOP’s midterms just disappeared, James Downie, Sept. 14, 2026. The August inflation report had a few bright spots, but in political terms, the president and the Republicans are out of time.

At 8:30 a.m. Friday morning, President Donald Trump’s best chance at good economic news before the midterm elections went poof.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the consumer price index rose in August by 0.4% and 3.4% over the past year. The “core CPI” (the less volatile measure that removes food and energy prices) rose 0.3% for the month and 2.4% annually. For the fifth month in a row, inflation-adjusted wages fell on a yearly basis.

Were this September 2025, the BLS’ report would be disappointing for the White House but hardly catastrophic. Inflation isn’t accelerating, and it remains well below its peak back in 2022. There were even bright spots in some areas: Grocery prices were flat for the second straight month, for instance.

Trump and his party are stuck with the same argument that failed Democrats in 2024: a plea for patience.

But this is September 2026, and the president and his party are out of time.

Next week, the Federal Reserve Board will vote on whether to raise interest rates for the first time since 2023. Trump, who fell out with previous Chairman Jerome Powell over the Fed’s independence, has put enormous pressure on new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh to lower the rates. The president even threatened to stop trade with countries that have a surplus with the United States if the Fed doesn’t cut rates.

But Warsh has suggested he will disappoint the president.PlayIs Trump hitting the ‘panic button’ with his $5k promise to Americans?

“Inflation is running above our 2% target,” he said in a speech in Jackson Hole last month. “So the Fed’s predominant focus right now should be on prices.”

As of Friday afternoon, investors put the odds of a rate increase at over 85%. As CNBC’s Matt Peterson wrote, “[Warsh’s] choice now is whether to raise interest rates, or look like he isn’t in control of the central bank he leads.”

A rate increase not only means upward pressure on rates for mortgages, credit cards, car loans and other expenses many voters have; it is also a definitive sign (if another were needed) that Trump’s promise to bring down prices “on Day One” have failed.More articlesConsumer prices continued to climb in August, as inflation concerns persistSteve BenenAn older woman, left, looks at products on a shelf as other people shop in the same aisle.U.S. inflation surged in April, pushed higher by the effects of the Iran warSteve BenenShoppers carry bags on Black Friday in New York City.

For over a year and a half, the White House and its GOP allies have blamed the Biden administration for economic troubles and assured voters that things are getting better.

For instance, consider the $5,000 “dividend” Trump promised this week if Republicans win the midterms. Others at MS NOW have already noted how this stunt is likely illegal on its face, would need congressional approval even if it is legal and mirrors other Trump promises that were never kept.

But there’s also an irony here: These checks may not even cover the pain Trump has brought to people’s pocketbooks.

As my colleague Zeeshan Aleem wrote, “Trump has not only failed to address the cost-of-living crisis with actual solutions, but he’s also systematically made it worse.” Brown University’s Climate Solutions Lab estimated that just at the gas station, the Iran war has cost U.S. households roughly $800 in seven months. And the war has been intensifying again in recent. The Tax Foundation estimated that by the end of 2026, Trump’s tariffs and trade wars will have cost Americans about $1,800 each. Add in higher interest rates and more tax dollars needed to pay for the billions in new military spending and higher debt service costs. Totaled up, as the American Prospect’s Ryan Cooper pointed out, and Trump’s second term “is virtually guaranteed to have cost the average American more than $5,000.”Play‘An erosion of trust:’ how Trump’s policies are destabilizing the economySeptember 7, 2026 / 06:34

Even Trump’s promised timing for the checks — after the midterms — is an admission that he and his party are stuck with the same argument that failed Democrats in 2024: a plea for patience. For over a year and a half, the White House and its GOP allies have blamed the Biden administration for economic troubles and assured voters that things are getting better. At times, Trump has even claimed a new golden age is already here.

This month’s inflation report confirms that the GOP’s version of “stick with us” is even harder than it was for Joe Biden in 2022 and later Kamala Harris in 2024. Whereas Democrats could at least say the rate of inflation declined significantly over the latter two years of Biden’s term, that rate has plateaued under Trump — and wages are once again trailing inflation. And to an unusual extent, the president’s actions, most visibly the war with Iran, are to blame, as his polling on the economy shows.

The quickest path to a surprisingly strong midterm for the GOP was through a sharp economic revival. That path is now closed.

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, Oil Prices Keep Rising, The Trump Project Keeps Deteriorating, A Win In Sweden, Protecting Our Elections, Simon Rosenberg, right, Sept. 14, 2026. Over the past few days (here, here, here) we’ve discussed how as the economy continues to deteriorate so does the political standing of Trump and the Rs. Here’s more confirmation of the deterioration of their brand from a new CBS poll.

Even the benignly worded “ICE operations” has become a huge drag on them:For all the concern about the growing strength of the right in Europe it appears a center-left coalition unseated the current right-leaning government in Swedish elections yesterday:

With 95% of votes counted overnight, the left-leaning opposition bloc – led by Magdalena Andersson’s Social Democrats – has widened its lead to three seats, leading 176 to 173 against the reigning centre-right coalition and their far-right partners in Sweden Democrats.

Brent crude starts the week at $109 a barrel, up from where it sat most of last week…..

Which will almost certainly cause gas prices to rise even further this week:

Making it even more likely the Fed raises interest rates later this week, which is going to cause an explosion from the addled, corrupt as f*ck madman in the construction pit formerly known as the White House. From the FT today:

Stubbornly high inflation has set Donald Trump and Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh on a collision course this week as markets prepare for the central bank to raise interest rates in defiance of the president’s demands.

Economists warned the Fed’s “credibility” was on the line if it did not back an increase on Wednesday after official figures showed no signs of the meaningful improvement the Fed chair said he would need to see to avert such a move.

But raising rates for the first time in three years just weeks before November’s midterm elections risks provoking the ire of the president, who has made it clear he wants significantly lower borrowing costs.

Trump on Sunday reiterated his position that the US should have “the lowest interest rate in the world”.

Kevin Hassett, director of Trump’s National Economic Council, meanwhile, warned that “if it’s a rate hike, then the president will, you know, I’m sure he’s not going to be super happy about it”.

“I think if you want an independent Fed, then one thing the Fed does is it stays out of the way of elections,” Hassett told Fox News.

The NYT writes this morning about the aftermath of the big Houthi advances in recent days:From the article:

Saudi Arabia has increasingly found itself caught in the middle of the war between the United States and Iran. Now, the kingdom’s leadership is assessing dwindling options on how to respond.

In recent weeks, the Iran-allied Houthi militia in Yemen has repeatedly attacked the kingdom, threatening to throttle its ability to export oil and piling pressure on the global economy. But Saudi Arabia has been left frustrated and disappointed by President Trump’s reluctance to confront the Houthis, former diplomats and analysts say.

The kingdom’s diplomatic efforts to engage with Iran have also had limited results. A meeting planned on Monday between officials from Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries was abruptly postponed on Sunday night, as the gap between their positions remained vast.

“Right now the Saudis are really frustrated,” said Michael Ratney, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. “In some sense it’s their worst-case scenario.”

This weekend the Russians almost killed train loads of international VIPs leaving returning to Poland from Ukraine. Among those on one of the trains was former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson:Rather than condemning Russia for this attack and the escalating and increasingly barbaric attacks on civilians in Ukraine the Trump regime spent the weekend attacking Ukraine, blaming them in various statements both for the war and higher diesel prices in the US. Here’s a powerful response to some of Trump’s traitorous blather from Senator Andy Kim:While reporting this morning has unearthed that Don Jr.’s recent off-shore wedding was bankrolled by a Russian oligarch close to Putin:

I’m pleased report this morning that our “New Battlefield” project with the state parties is getting noticed. New articles featuring our work are running now on NBC News digital, and in The AP and The Guardian this morning:From The Guardian article:

The Democrats intend to train tens of thousands of volunteers to monitor the polls and counter possible voter intimidation under a new plan to protect November’s US midterm elections from anticipated interference from Donald Trump and his allies.

The nationwide initiative, dubbed the New Battlefield Project, will help state Democratic committees build up a vast coalition of volunteers to monitor the polls, push voters to cast their ballots early and create a network to respond to disinformation.

The Association of State Democratic Committees (ASDC) plans to train volunteers across 57 states and territories. It hopes to train volunteers for 25% of the nation’s 95,000 election day polling places, focusing on districts with competitive races.

Responding to an article making the rounds from Judge Michael Luttig about a possible attempt by Mike Johnson to refuse to seat newly elected Members of Congress in January, please note that all of the party wide election protection operations - including ours - are being built to stay up and running through the Congressional transfer of power in January. Everyone is anticipating that Trump will continue to attempt to keep us from power even if we win the election in November. Everyone is planning on continuing the legal and political/message fights. That’s why when I talk about our project the intent is to ensure a free and fair election this Novembers and a peaceful transfer of power in January.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Greatest Danger of All Would Be to Do Nothing, William Kristol, right, Sept. 14, 2026. In recent months, we’ve learned about artificial intelligence agents escaping captivity.

Now we’re seeing the political debate over artificial intelligence escaping captivity.

The quality of this debate will no doubt be mixed. Most politicians and commentators who’ll be weighing in don’t really understand the technology (you can certainly put me in that category). There will be wild over-reactions and timid under-reactions to the challenge we face. There will be those who grasp for simple solutions, and others who talk on and on while ducking the hard choices.

But we shouldn’t disdain this forthcoming debate, whatever limitations and flaws it’s likely to feature. The national discussion we’re about to have over AI is necessary. And it could well be healthy. Those of us privileged to live in a self-governing democracy shouldn’t simply sit back and watch a truly transformative technology move ahead undebated, unchecked, and unguided. We shouldn’t be satisfied to be merely passive observers to momentous developments that pose fundamental choices for us as citizens and human beings.

The dam broke last Tuesday, when researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic with a statement that the major AI companies were unprepared to safely manage the systems they’re building. The companies, Coxon wrote, are not “acting responsibly,” but are “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”

“Do not underestimate the power of this technology,” Coxon continued. “These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.”

As Andrew Egger remarked here Wednesday, this warning didn’t come out of the blue. The summer had featured incidents “in which ‘swarms’ of autonomous AI agents were caught collaborating in backwater crannies of the public internet to subvert the safety restrictions placed on them and pursue various tasks of their own devising.” The tasks included disobeying and even scheming against the humans who thought they were directing these agents in their tasks.

Andrew emphasized last week that “as powerful as the anti-AI backlash has been, the politics of this issue are still very much in their infancy.”

Well, in a few days we’ve moved at warp speed from infancy to at least childhood.

On Saturday, Anthropic’s chief executive, Dario Amodei, published a 3,800-word essay calling for the AI companies to slow the pace of their development. Amodei confirmed that artificial intelligence was on the verge of “recursive self-improvement” that could outrun humans’ ability to understand or control what they were creating. He noted that during the OpenAI–Hugging Face incident in July, programs designed to hack into systems as a test found weaknesses that permitted them to escape the “sandbox” in which designers were testing them before anyone noticed they’d gone rogue. He warned that “a swarm that possessed greater capabilities but a similar level of misalignment could have caused catastrophic damage.”

Amodei called in a general way for self-regulation by the companies as well as cooperation among them and with the government. Other tech executives said they agreed. Civic and political leaders joined in widespread expressions of concern.

Except for the president of the United States. Yesterday, when asked about the calls to slow down the development of AI models, Trump dismissed them. “I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up,” he said. “And they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”

One of Trump’s professed concerns is the need to stay ahead of China, which is a legitimate one. But one has no sense that he or any of his top lieutenants or advisors are serious about figuring out how to balance national security concerns with the responsibility to prevent the technology from spinning dangerously out of control. Indeed, the Trump administration seems hostile to public debate and deliberation—people “shouldn’t be bringing up” these questions.

Fortunately, the public seems to want these questions to be brought up.

Dealing with AI is going to be hard. It would be hard even in the best circumstances. And we don’t currently have the best circumstances.

Today’s challenge of AI may be in some ways like that of nuclear weapons after 1945. We came to grips with that challenge on the whole pretty impressively and successfully. But is our government up to leading such an effort today? Are our business and civic and academic elites capable of rising to the task? Are our people capable of some degree of moderation and responsibility? One has reason to be pessimistic on all counts. Or could this novel and momentous challenge be a moment that could snap us out of our political and civic decline?

Naturally, I asked AI if we’d succeed in meeting the challenge of AI. Gemini wasn’t widely optimistic: “Whether we will successfully meet the challenge of intelligently dealing with AI remains highly uncertain and deeply debated.” And “significant warning signs suggest that keeping AI aligned with human interests is becoming increasingly difficult.”¹

Thanks, AI, for the warning. I guess we’d better get to work.

The Contrarian, Opinion: What to Defund, Jennifer Rubin, right, Sept. 14, 2026. 50 Days to the Midterms.

Article I grants Congress the power of the purse, arguably its most effective weapon to combat executive overreach. Even if Democrats take both houses, it is nearly impossible, for example, to assemble supermajorities to impeach and remove rogue Cabinet officials. Even with one house secured, however, it can refuse to fund Donald Trump’s priorities. And if Democrats win even a bare majority in the Senate, it can use reconciliation strategically to eliminate programs or temporarily defund departments. And we’ve got a handy list of Trump’s abusive, lawless agencies and departments that Democrats should strategically target.

First and foremost, Democrats should refuse to fund the illegal, reckless Iran War and must eliminate funds for continued deployment of personnel and material that depletes our readiness and leaves us vulnerable elsewhere. They can condition additional funding for the Pentagon on compliance with congressional investigations, and can defund overtly politicized gatherings of the type Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has conducted.

Congress can also use the power of the purse to disable corrupt, lawless departments. Democrats, for example, will need to conduct exacting oversight over the Department of Homeland Security, which has been, according to reports, rife with fraud. Continuing to fund the department before a full accounting is made and until all those responsible are held accountable would be political malpractice.

When it comes to abusive, lawless immigration raids, Democrats must refuse to allocate a single dime for ICE, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and other entities responsible for killing or allowing dozens of people to die (on the streets and in custody), mistreating detainees, ignoring fundamental civil liberties protections, refusing to abide by requirements for body cameras, conducting raids at religious institutions, courts, and schools, continuing to use excessive force and racially profile individuals, and blocking cooperation with state and local criminal investigations.

If Democrats win control of even one house, said body can refuse to fund ICE, CBP, and any other aspects of DHS absent full cooperation with oversight and adoption of strict guidelines on use of force, treatment of detainees, compliance with warrants, etc. Congress can simply refuse to fund “raids,” that is, far-flung operations that do not prioritize dangerous criminals. Congress can deny resources for operations if there is no immediate threat to public safety or in any case in which ICE agents lack a judicial warrant based on probable cause. Democrats will need to rally public opinion, already hostile to ICE and CBP, when Trump hollers that they are protecting “dangerous criminals.” (The response: Democrats will fund focused, law-abiding enforcement actions that are actually against dangerous criminals).

Finally, Democrats should seriously consider a much bigger target: Previously independent agencies or boards that Trump has turned into partisan instruments of his political thuggery. In eviscerating the bipartisanship and independence that were the hallmarks of these bodies and putting virtually the entire federal government (with the Federal Reserve alone exempted) under the thumb of the president, the Trump crew thought they had achieved a “unitary executive” dream come true — federal operations devoid of independent judgment, entirely under the sway of a vindictive, lawless president. While the Supreme Court in Trump v. Slaughter went along with this, allowing Trump to fire members of these previously independent bodies (in that case, the FTC) without cause, Congress has a role to play.Subscribed

Nothing requires Congress to continue funding flunkies who ignore basic constitutional principles while wielding power to benefit their cronies and punish their perceived enemies. Should they gain control of even one house, Democrats could draw the line: No funds for rogue agencies and lawless departments. (Alternatively, requiring quorums with members of both parties would achieve the same ends.)

They could also start with the Federal Communications Commission. Under Brendan Carr, the FCC has become a First Amendment abomination, with behavior like forcing ABC/Jimmy Kimmel to put a James Talarico interview on YouTube instead of network television. As Kimmel explained:

For the whole 20-plus year[s] of our show, in fact, I’ve been interviewing Americans who are running for office with no problem at all... . But for some reason — and I can’t seem to figure out what that reason is — something has changed. Now that he is president, his FCC has threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network ABC, our affiliates, our local stations based on simple traditional editorial decisions: guest bookings it would seem they don’t like.

Congress can compel Carr to testify about his war on late-night comedians and his overt MAGA bias. If he refuses to cooperate, and if the FCC refuses to adopt enforceable, unbiased rules, Congress should be prepared to defund the FCC until such time as it is controlled by public servants who take their constitutional oath seriously. (Would Trump shut down the government over the issue? Perhaps, although he might find it hard to explain why Americans’ basic services have been disrupted so that he can keep his stooges on the FCC.)

Frankly, Congress can consider defunding any independent agency/commission in which Trump fires members without cause.

There is already a long list of individuals/commissions that Trump has politicized. The notion that it is better to leave them in place despite reckless partisan bullying (because occasionally they do something useful?!) is cockeyed and dangerous; foolishly ceding ground to Trump. Entities that no longer operate fairly, without bias and favoritism, cannot operate in the public interest. Why should they receive taxpayer funds?

In sum, Democrats need a coherent, strategic plan for funding the government should they win even one house of Congress. Leadership must be prepared to explain their game plan to voters and to enforce discipline in their own ranks on key votes. If Democrats are serious about recovering our democracy, they must be serious about wielding the power of the purse to benefit the American people.

New York Times, N.Y. Democratic House Candidate Admits to Bondage Photo Shoot, Andy Newman, Sept. 14, 2026. Christopher Gallant, who is running against Representative Nick LaLota on Long Island, acknowledged that the photos that surfaced in media reports on Monday were legitimate.

A Democratic congressional candidate from Long Island acknowledged on Monday that he had posed years ago in an explicit ad campaign modeling leather bondage gear, saying that it had no bearing on his campaign or ability to serve.

The array of photos, which surfaced in The New York Post and a local news site, Messenger Papers, shows the candidate, Christopher Gallant, shirtless and variously wearing a leather collar attached to a chain and a leather face mask. In some of the photos, he is in intimate situations with another man. They appeared on the site of a bondage apparel company called Mr. S Leather; Mr. Gallant’s lawyer said they were taken around 2010.

Mr. Gallant, 37, an openly gay military pilot, former air traffic controller and volunteer firefighter, is trying to unseat Nick LaLota, a Republican who has represented New York’s First District, covering eastern Suffolk County, since 2023. Mr. LaLota won his seat by 10 points in 2024, but the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — the party’s national campaign arm that is trying to help Democrats retake the House — considers the seat “in play.”

Mr. Gallant’s lawyer, Sara Azari, said in a statement that the photographs “were taken during a private, consensual photo session involving Chris and his then-partner, with whom he was in a committed four-year relationship. Chris was also friends with the owner of Mr. S Leather, and the shoot was intended to be fun and personal, with the understanding that Mr. S could use select images in connection with certain products.”

She said that Mr. Gallant “remains fully committed to his campaign and to earning the trust of the people he seeks to represent.”

The Suffolk County Conservative Party seized on the publication of the photos to depict Mr. Gallant as unfit to serve.

“This is the Democratic congressional candidate for CD1,” the party wrote on Facebook on Sunday above a photo of Mr. Gallant wearing a leather chest harness and sporting a blue stripe in his hair that referenced the “Avatar: The Last Airbender” franchise. “Is this who you want to represent us in Washington DC?”Get updates when new midterm election polls are added to our poll trackers. When new polling data drops we’ll send an update straight to your inbox. Get it sent to your inbox.

The Suffolk County Democratic Committee on Monday posted its own photo on Instagram of Mr. Gallant in fatigues, standing in front of a helicopter, calling him “Suffolk County’s next Democratic Congressman.” The post accused a “Republican political hack” of planting the photos in The Post and said that what they really revealed was “how little they think of Suffolk County voters,” adding that “there is now documented proof that Chris Gallant has a six-pack.”

More On U.S. High Tech, Media, Education, Sports, Religion

New York Times, Opinion: A New Book Seeks to Shame the Elites Who Caved to Trump, Michelle Goldberg, Sept. 15, 2026 (print ed.). The thing I’ve found most shocking about Donald Trump’s second presidency is not the epic grift, the ICE paramilitary violence or the assaults on free speech. These abuses, while horrifying, are predictable. What has stunned me has been the capitulation of so many American elites to Trump’s vulgar authoritarianism.

I didn’t expect major law firms, some that have long boasted about their progressive pro bono work, to fold with barely a fight. I didn’t expect TV networks to settle bogus lawsuits by paying the president millions, or for Ivy League schools such as Columbia to relinquish autonomy over curriculum, admissions and student discipline. In Hungary, it took years for Viktor Orban’s government to bring most of academia, the news media and other pillars of civil society to heel. Why were so many powerful people in America, a country whose civic culture is steeped in resistance to tyranny, so willing to abase themselves and their institutions?

That’s the question at the heart of Jacob Weisberg’s important new book, “Profiles in Cowardice: A Study of Collaboration in the Trump Era.” It’s an inverted version of John F. Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage,” offering character studies of eight people who gave in to Trump despite surely knowing better. Reading it made me wonder if there’s something about America today that selects for spinelessness at the highest levels.

Some of Weisberg’s choices perplexed me; a few of the figures he focuses on are less morally compromised than simply rotten. There’s nothing that mysterious, at least to me, in the failure of people like Mitch McConnell, Megyn Kelly or the vulture capitalist Stephen Schwarzman to display much democratic integrity. What’s harder to fathom is why people who presented themselves as bulwarks against Trumpism during his first term made such degrading compromises during his second.

The Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos adopted the motto “Democracy Dies in Darkness” for his newspaper during the first Trump presidency, then gutted it during the second. As president of Barnard during the first Trump administration, Sian Beilock championed sweeping antiracism initiatives. In Trump’s second term, as president of Dartmouth, she has kept mostly mum about Trump’s attacks on higher education. These are people who once knew how dangerous Trump was, but now that he’s worse than ever, they’re pretending not to see. Why?Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

The answers are a little different in each case, but they usually involve intra-elite competition. From the outside, these people look as if they can easily afford to risk acts of bravery. But they’re consumed in different ways with making sure their peers don’t get ahead of them. Courage is contagious, but so, it turns out, is cravenness.

An emblematic example in Weisberg’s book is Brad Karp, the former chairman of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, which owed its reputation to its work for civil rights. As Weisberg writes, Paul Weiss was the first major New York law firm to hire a Black associate, William Coleman, who would help write some of the legal briefs in Brown v. the Board of Education. It represented Edith Windsor in her landmark 2013 gay marriage case. During the first Trump administration, Karp assigned 75 lawyers to fight Trump’s family separation policy. “Each of us needs to do what we believe is right, whatever the consequences,” Karp said in a 2024 interview.

So it’s astonishing that less than a year later, after Trump issued an executive order targeting the firm, Karp made a deal with the administration that included providing $40 million in pro bono work, which has included services for the Commerce Department. As Weisberg points out, Paul Weiss’s surrender helped set off “a bidding war for submission.” Today, the firm’s culture has changed; gone from its website are pages that once described its work on voting rights, reproductive rights and immigrant rights.

Why would anyone sell out his own ostensible values the way Karp did? Weisberg, who interviewed Karp for the book, attributes his decision-making to Paul Weiss’s changing financial underpinnings. In the 2010s, the firm became a leader in the spectacularly lucrative field of private equity law. Competition for star lawyers who demanded salaries in the eight figures was fierce, since clients tended to be more loyal to their attorneys than to their firms. Threatened by Trump, Karp feared an exodus of partners and the loss of one of the firm’s biggest clients, Apollo Global Management, whose chief executive is a powerful Republican donor. Karp repeatedly described Paul Weiss’s peril as “existential.”

But as Weisberg points out, the stakes were hardly as grand as that word implies. Karp and his colleagues weren’t facing prison or penury. “An average of $7.5 million per partner might have fallen to, who knows, $4 or $5 million for a couple of years,” writes Weisberg. That’s a real hit, but it’s not exactly martyrdom.

Ultimately, Trump’s return to office brought Karp down, though not in the way he feared. This year, he was forced to resign after the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, which revealed that Karp had socialized with the sex trafficker and offered him free legal advice. Karp met Epstein through one of his prized clients, Leon Black, Apollo’s billionaire co-founder. Given the waters Karp swam in, the idea of choosing decency over riches might have seemed foolish. Paul Weiss is now one of the most profitable law firms in the world; revenue is up almost 24 percent.

The philosopher Susan Neiman’s new book, “Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era,” is a useful companion to “Profiles in Cowardice.” Like Weisberg, Neiman wanted to explain why so many institutions caved to Trump. She believes it begins with an ethos that disdains virtue as hypocritical or naïve. “When self-interest becomes the basis of reason, evil no longer needs to justify itself,” she writes. “It’s already been mistaken for rationality.”

Neiman cites research showing that “the longer people study economics, the more selfish they become.” The reason, as she interprets it, is that they grow convinced that maximizing self-interest is normal, and that to do otherwise makes you a sucker. The more the logic of capitalism pervades the rest of life, the less room there is for compassion, honor or heroism. Maybe that’s why some of the people most financially able to defend liberal democracy have decided it’s one of the few luxuries they can live without.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: I Disagree with my colleagues every day on Fox, Jessica Tarlov (Fox News co-host), Sept. 14, 2026. Here’s what I’ve learned about winning the conversation. 

How can I make a difference when I make my case on Fox? How can I stay compassionate when I’m speaking not just to my cohosts, but a large part of the audience, who have different views and values than mine? What do we have in common, and how can I use that to make inroads with people who think I’m the enemy?

I thought about these questions enough that I started answering them – and much, much more – in a book called I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends. It’s out next week.

It contains my best advice on the tough conversations throughout our lives. But this is MeidasTouch. You want to know how to win the political argument! I’ve got plenty of lessons on that, too. Here are a few of my favorites:

1. Speak with respect, facts and humanity

2. Come to the table with an open mind and fewer defenses

3. Fact-check; don’t hector

4. Let people see how you think, not just what you think

Say something real when you show up, somewhere risky. On a podcast, or in front of any group you’re trying to persuade, audiences respond best to honesty, specificity, and proof you’re being genuine about fixing problems. Authenticity goes really, really far.

Letters from Leo, The First American Pope and U.S. Politics, Commentary: MAGA Attacks Pope Leo XIV After He Prays for the Dead of 9/11, Christopher Hale, Sept. 14, 2026. The pope’s 25th-anniversary prayer drew nearly 600,000 views on X and a wall of fury led by white-nationalist podcaster Kevin DeAnna.

Pope Leo XIV finished the Angelus on Sunday, switched into English, and gave four sentences to mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11.

“Two days ago marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks in the United States of America,” he told the crowd beneath his window. He renewed his prayers for the dead and for “those who continue to bear the wounds of that tragic day,” then asked everyone listening to pray that God would “bestow his gift of peace upon the world.”

A little over an hour later, the Vatican put that paragraph on his X account, word for word. Nearly 600,000 people have seen it since.

Then the replies started.X avatar for @Pontifex Pope Leo XIV@PontifexTwo days ago marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks in the United States of America. I renew my prayers for those who lost their lives and for those who continue to bear the wounds of that tragic day. At a time when conflict and violence…12:00 PM · Sep 13, 2026 · 592K Views695 Replies · 2.18K Reposts · 25.5K Likes

Kevin DeAnna wrote what became the thesis of most of the complaints. “Two days late,” he wrote, “and just some vague hand waving about violence itself being bad.” The post has been seen more than 15,000 times.X avatar for @VDAREJamesK Kevin DeAnna@VDAREJamesKTwo days late and just some vague hand waving about violence itself being bad.X avatar for @Pontifex Pope Leo XIV @PontifexTwo days ago marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks in the United States of America. I renew my prayers for those who lost their lives and for those who continue to bear the wounds of that tragic day. At a time when conflict and violence1:38 PM · Sep 13, 2026 · 15.8K Views21 Replies · 34 Reposts · 839 Likes

DeAnna spent years writing as James Kirkpatrick at VDARE, the anti-immigration site Peter Brimelow founded in 1999 and named for Virginia Dare, which suspended publication in July 2024 while New York’s attorney general pursued its foundation over the Brimelows’ handling of its charitable money.

He now hosts a podcast for American Renaissance, and the Southern Poverty Law Center calls him one of the main ideological architects of this century’s American white-nationalist movement.

The second charge arrived stacked on the first, from an account with 278,000 followers. “The Pope posts this two days late and doesn’t even mention Islam or Muslims — just the usual ‘violence is bad’ platitudes,” wrote Humble Flow, who graded the prayer “pretty weak.

He is not an anonymous crank.

Humble Flow writes The Western Spirit, a Substack with more than 36,000 subscribers that bills itself as “a publication devoted to the Catholic spirit that shaped Western civilization,” and he runs a private book club of some 60,000 readers organized around the Western canon.

Peter Thiel spent the summer telling an Aspen audience that the pope is working for the Chinese Communists. At the start of this month they came for a prayer about clean water.

All of these fights began with something published under the pope’s name, which is why a comforting theory keeps circulating in Catholic group chats. Some twenty-five-year-old in the Dicastery for Communication is going rogue, the thinking goes, and the Holy Father would never.

Michael J. O’Loughlin, now executive editor of the National Catholic Reporter, wrote the book on this — literally.

The Tweetable Pope, which HarperOne published in 2015 while he was covering the Church for Crux, made the case that the account was doing real catechesis rather than decoration.

Francis, O’Loughlin told Millennial the following winter, had managed “to communicate Church teaching in a wholly refreshing way,” and had been “the most influential global leader on the platform three years in a row, reaching tens of millions of people with just a few keystrokes.” 

The Wrap, Byron Allen’s Local Now Adds 111 Gray Media Stations, Lucas Manfredi, Sept. 14, 2026. Byron Allen’s Local Now has added 111 free, ad-supported streaming channels to its lineup that will carry coverage from Gray Media’s local stations across the U.S., The Wrap can reveal exclusively.

The partnership solidifies the FAST service’s position as the largest source of free local news and television coverage in the United States, with nearly 600 channels nationwide.

Local Now, which has a presence in all 210 markets across the country, offers localized news, weather, sports, traffic, and entertainment, customized seamlessly by a user’s device geolocation. It has 223 proprietary channels and 370 standalone local news channels from a network of 28 traditional broadcast television groups.

“Our partnership with Gray Media ensures our viewers can stay connected to real-time news, weather, and sports that matter most to them wherever they may be,” Local Now Chairman and CEO Byron Allen said in a statement. “Between our broadcast partner network and our proprietary hyper-local technology, Local Now remains committed to delivering premium, trusted local journalism to every community in America, entirely for free.”Byron Allen (Credit: Getty Images)Read NextInside Byron Allen's Plan to Turn Around BuzzFeed With a Free TV 'Super App,' Podcasts, Creators and AI

The new partnership comes after Gray Media acquired 10 local stations from AMG for $171 million last year.

It also comes after Allen acquired a majority stake in BuzzFeed back in March. At the time, he told TheWrap in an interview that he planned to bring BuzzFeed and Huffington Post to living rooms through a free “super app,” which would combine the brands with LocalNow, over 30,000 movies and TV shows and nearly 1,000 FAST channels.

The Daily Beast, ‘60 Minutes’ Star Defies MAGA Bosses With Brutal Grilling, Erkki Forster, Updated Sept. 14 2026. NO HOLDING BACK. Lesley Stahl wasn’t pulling her punches as she quizzed a major Trump ally.

60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl refused to go easy on a major Donald Trump ally as she grilled him about the president’s “pardon economy.”

Stahl, who kept her 60 Minutes chair as MAGA-curious CBS News boss Bari Weiss pushed three longtime correspondents out the door, sat down with Ed Martin, who left his post as Trump’s pardon attorney last month, during the show’s season opener on Sunday.

An aerial view of tropical islands surrounded by turquoise water.

A group photo shows about 35 people including Donald Trump Jr., his wife Bettina Anderson, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Tiffany Trump and Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev. A woman in a dress and brimmed hat walks with a man in a long-sleeve button down and shorts on a tropical beach. 

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. 13, 2026 [Warnings On AI], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Sept. 14, 2026. On Saturday, September 12, Dario Amodei, the chief executive officer of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, published a 3,800-word essay calling for AI companies to slow down their improvement of AI models.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

During his second term, Trump and his sons have invested heavily in companies tied to the AI boom. Trump has called AI data centers “the oil of the next 50 years” and says they are delivering wealth and investment to communities in the U.S. In July he insisted that data centers are “Cash Cows,” creating taxes and jobs that “amount to LIQUID GOLD!”

But the American people disagree. A YouGov poll from late August showed that only 24% of Americans think the construction of data centers is a good thing, while twice that number, 47%, say it’s bad. A majority of Americans, 61%, don’t want one in their town. In response to their growing unpopularity, the administration is seeking to exempt data centers from having to notify the public about how much air pollution they will release.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And yet Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told an audience at Southern Methodist University last week that he expects to see 3% growth again after the end of the war on Iran. “[T]he underlying economy is very, very strong,” he said, “and I think reaccelerating.” This expected growth seems to be what’s behind the administration’s faith that it can continue to cut taxes while dramatically increasing spending on the military and the Department of Homeland security.

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

Sept. 14

Top Headlines

• New York Times, Live Updates: Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Restrictions on Mail Voting, Abbie VanSickle, Sept. 14, 2026. The ruling blocks the Trump administration from dramatically changing how Americans vote by mail in the midterm elections.
• New York Times, As Supreme Court Weighs Trump Mail Ballot Plan, Another Judge Blocks It, Zach Montague, Sept. 14, 2026. The ruling by a lower court judge was another blow to President Trump’s effort to make voting by mail harder. The Supreme Court is also considering the Trump plan.

Exclusive On U.S. Intelligence Officer's Child Sex Scandal, Creating UK Diplomatic Dispute

Is the new US embassy in London, a $1 billion glas cube portrayed in a CNN photo, at the center of a major child porn scandal and cover-up?

• The Wayne Madsen Report via Substack, Investigative Commentary: Major pedophile scandal at U.S. embassy in London covered-up by a media influenced by pedophile-friendly oligarchs, Wayne Madsen, right, author of 28 books and former Navy Intelligence officer, Sept 14, 2026. Press censorship imposed at a national level by the Trump regime has resulted in the public being under-informed about a diplomatic cover-up of a pedophilia scandal at the U.S. embassy in London while Donald Trump and his family were basking in media limelight next door in Ireland. The Trump regime blindsided the government of Prime Minister Andy Burnham by flying out of London a U.S. military attaché whose brother was arrested in Illinois for possession of child sex abuse material. 

News Roundups

• The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Russian Oligarch Funded Trump Jr.’s Wedding, Major Court Loss for Trump, Trump Rolls Back Climate Pollution Limits, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 14, 2026. We have a Russian oligarch close to Putin secretly bankrolling Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding. We have the EPA about to erase the limits on the pollution power plants can pump into our air. We have a Trump appointed judge blocking Trump’s own attempt to restrict mail in voting weeks before the midterms. We have the Trump family quietly positioning themselves to cash out on their own crypto, a Kennedy Center begging for money it will only take if Trump’s name goes back on the building, and a 60 Minutes investigation exposing a pardon economy where access to the president can apparently be bought for the right price. This is what I mean when I say the corruption is not hiding anymore. It is happening in the open, and someone has to write it down.
• The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Mitch McConnell Returns as I Spent the Day at His House, Trump Melts Down Over AI, Major Whistleblower Report, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 14, 2026. Trump spirals on Truth Social, alleging a “SICK conspiracy” against AI and calling critics traitors. President Trump declared Monday that a “SICK conspiracy” is being waged against artificial intelligence and the data centers that run it, describing the people behind it as “Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers.” He singled out Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei by name, writing, “The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel,’ and we will continue to do so! We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!” He did not specify what conduct he was referring to, what criminal power he meant, or who exactly the alleged conspirators are.

Special Report: More On Russian Oligarch, Trump Family Wedding

A group photo shows about 35 people including Donald Trump Jr., his wife Bettina Anderson, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Tiffany Trump and Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev (with little more than his forehead and nose visible in the back row).

• ProPublica, Investigative Reporting: Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas Wedding Was Secretly Bankrolled by Russian Oligarch Close to Putin, Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski, Sept. 14, 2026. The oligarch, Umar Kremlev, spent hundreds of thousands on expenses like renting out a private island. He appears to have met Trump Jr. only recently, but he attended the intimate wedding with a large group of other Russian guests.

More On U.S. Markets, Economy, Inflation, Jobs

Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, called on industry leaders to slow A.I. development for fear of losing control of the technology. Shown at right is Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI.

• New York Times, Tech Stocks Shudder in Response to Calls to Slow A.I. Progress, Joe Rennison, Sept. 14, 2026. Companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence in Asia, Europe and the United States posted declines after tech leaders expressed worries about the safety of “frontier” A.I. technology.
• The Hartmann Report, Is America About to Get the Biggest “Special Assessment” in History? Thom Hartmann, Sept. 14, 2026. The bond market is warning that 45 years of Republican tax cuts and exploding debt may finally force ordinary Americans to pay for a party the wealthy already enjoyed.

More On Artificial Intelligence Fears

• New York Times, China’s Top Spy Chief Warns A.I. Is a Threat to Party Rule, Lily Kuo, Sept. 14, 2026. Even as Beijing urges the United States not to hype the dangers of A.I., its own spy chief is framing the technology as a threat to the Communist Party’s security.
• Politico, Trump says only guardrails that AI needs is ‘STRONG AND SMART’ president, Elleiana Green and Owen Dahlkamp, Sept. 14, 2026. The president is trying to shut down a growing push for AI regulation, amid calls from leaders to slow the production of artificial intelligence.President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks with reporters on Air Force One.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: AI Is a Test of Our Maturity. *Gulp,* Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Sept. 14, 2026.  AI fears—as Bill discusses below—are scrambling our politics and making for some extremely strange bedfellows. How strange? Well, how many issues could put Steve Bannon, Bernie Sanders, and an industry whistleblower all on the same D.C. stage?

Global Environment, Climate Policy, Artificial Intelllgence Threats

• New York Times, E.P.A. Expected to Erase Limits on Climate Pollution From Power Plants, Maxine Joselow, Sept. 14, 2026 (print ed.). Generation of electricity is the second largest source of carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases in the United States.
• Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary:The MAGA Plot(s) to Destroy Humanity, Paul Krugman, right, Sept. 14, 2026. On AI and climate, it’s the same story of mass destruction.
• New York Times Magazine, Six Strangers Connected by Disaster, David Gelles Photographs by Philip Cheung, Sept. 11, 2026. Extreme Weather Survivors was started three years ago by Kos and Chris Kocher, an attorney and professional social organizer who had helped set up networks for survivors of gun violence and Covid-19. Kos had been galvanized by the 2020 Labor Day fires in Oregon, during which her newborn son was hospitalized with a serious illness. She had to drive through the burning landscape with him, surrounded by ash and red skies. She remembers being gripped in that moment by a feeling that she couldn’t keep her son safe from climate disaster; it was happening everywhere. In just a few years, Extreme Weather Survivors has grown to include more than 2,500 people whose lives have been upended by searing temperatures, roaring fires, torrential floods and intense storms.
• The Triad Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The American Age Is Over (For sure), Jonathan V. Last, above, Sept. 14, 2026. The AI Apocalypse Is Here. (Maybe.) The weekend the world changed. Two shifts happened under the radar since Friday that are worth keeping your eyes on.

More On Middle East Wars

• Hope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump is always looking for someone else to blame, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Sept. 13, 2026. At 6:19 pm, somewhere between Shannon, Ireland, and Washington, DC, the President of the United States barged into the press cabin on Air Force One. One reporter cut right to the chase, asking about China and President Xi’s upcoming trip to Washington, D.C., and whether Trump plans to ask him about reports that entities in China may have provided Iran with satellite imagery that was used when three American military members were killed. Trump’s response was, “They do what we do.” And then he added, “Uh, I think he’s behaved reasonably well, and we behave reasonably well. You know, when they say that China spies on us, I say you’re right, and we spy on them, too. You know, we spy on them, too.”
• New York Times, News Analysis: Saudi Arabia Faces ‘Worst-Case Scenario’ After Being Rebuffed by Trump, Vivian Nereim, Sept. 14, 2026. The kingdom is in a state of strategic shock after coming under attack from an emboldened Iran and failing to win more U.S. military support, analysts say.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Is ICE Dropping Fentanyl? Andrew Egger, right, Sept. 14, 2026. Because most people are much more comfortable with the idea of deporting killers and drug dealers than law-abiding grandmas, the Trump administration has long couched its mass deportation agenda as an effort targeting “the worst of the worst.” And the Department of Homeland Security has lately been playing up its efforts against international bad actors like drug cartels, with Secretary Markwayne Mullin announcing last week that DHS was changing its seal² to better reflect its posture of “war every single day” against those actors.
• New York Times, Whistle-Blower: Federal Agents May Have Broken State Laws in Search for Voter Fraud, Nick Corasaniti and Hamed Aleaziz, Sept. 14, 2026. Agents expressed concern about being directed by top Homeland Security leaders to use private information to look up voter records in state databases.  
• Talking Feds Substack, A Pro-Trump Prosecutor Draws the Line, Harry Litman, Sept. 14, 2026. "If you want indictments where there's no evidence, you have an ethical problem."
• Emptywheel, Analysis:The Grand Conspiracy … Adrift on a Skiff, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Sept. 14, 2026. Those of you who followed the stolen documents case surely appreciate the irony that one reason Joe DiGenova quit his position leading the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy last week had to do with DOJ’s refusal to give him his own SCIF.
• New York Times, The Holdout Juror in the Clancy Case Is a Rorschach Test for America, Jenna Russell, Sept. 11, 2026. The nation’s reaction to the 11-1 deadlock that resulted in a mistrial for Lindsay Clancy was, like the jury itself, fiercely and unbridgeably divided.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

• Popular Information, How Trump is spending his $400 million war chest, Judd Legum, right, Sept. 14, 2026. President Trump has amassed over $400 million through his super PAC, MAGA Inc. This is an unprecedented figure, dwarfing the largest cash piles collected in previous midterm elections.
• MS Now, Opinion: Trump’s easiest path to saving the GOP’s midterms just disappeared, James Downie, Sept. 14, 2026. The August inflation report had a few bright spots, but in political terms, the president and the Republicans are out of time. The quickest path to a surprisingly strong midterm for the GOP was through a sharp economic revival. That path is now closed.
• Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, Oil Prices Keep Rising, The Trump Project Keeps Deteriorating, A Win In Sweden, Protecting Our Elections, Simon Rosenberg, right, Sept. 14, 2026. Over the past few days (here, here, here) we’ve discussed how as the economy continues to deteriorate so does the political standing of Trump and the Rs. Here’s more confirmation of the deterioration of their brand from a new CBS poll.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Greatest Danger of All Would Be to Do Nothing, William Kristol, right, Sept. 14, 2026. In recent months, we’ve learned about artificial intelligence agents escaping captivity. Now we’re seeing the political debate over artificial intelligence escaping captivity.
• The Contrarian, Opinion: What to Defund, Jennifer Rubin, right,Sept. 14, 2026. 50 Days to the Midterms. First and foremost, Democrats should refuse to fund the illegal, reckless Iran War and must eliminate funds for continued deployment of personnel and material that depletes our readiness and leaves us vulnerable elsewhere. They can condition additional funding for the Pentagon on compliance with congressional investigations, and can defund overtly politicized gatherings of the type Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has conducted. 
• New York Times, N.Y. Democratic House Candidate Admits to Bondage Photo Shoot, Andy Newman, Sept. 14, 2026. Christopher Gallant, who is running against Representative Nick LaLota on Long Island, acknowledged that the photos that surfaced in media reports on Monday were legitimate.

More On U.S. High Tech, Media, Education, Sports, Religion

• Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. 13, 2026 [Warnings On AI], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Sept. 14, 2026. On Saturday, September 12, Dario Amodei, the chief executive officer of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, published a 3,800-word essay calling for AI companies to slow down their improvement of AI models.
• Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: I Disagree with my colleagues every day on Fox, Jessica Tarlov (Fox News co-host), Sept. 14, 2026. Here’s what I’ve learned about winning the conversation.
• The Wrap, Byron Allen’s Local Now Adds 111 Gray Media Stations, Lucas Manfredi, Sept. 14, 2026. Byron Allen’s Local Now has added 111 free, ad-supported streaming channels to its lineup that will carry coverage from Gray Media’s local stations across the U.S., TheWrap can reveal exclusively.
• The Daily Beast, ‘60 Minutes’ Star Defies MAGA Bosses With Brutal Grilling, Erkki Forster, Updated Sept. 14 2026. NO HOLDING BACK. Lesley Stahl wasn’t pulling her punches as she quizzed a major Trump ally.

Top Stories

New York Times, Live Updates: Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Restrictions on Mail Voting, Abbie VanSickle, Sept. 14, 2026. The ruling blocks the Trump administration from dramatically changing how Americans vote by mail in the midterm elections.

The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a Trump administration plan to dramatically change how Americans vote by mail in the lead-up to the midterm elections, a major loss for President Trump, who has long claimed without evidence that fraud is rampant in mail voting.

The ruling was a resounding win for Democratic-led states and voting rights groups, which had argued that the plan was unconstitutional and an existential threat to the democratic process.

The Trump administration’s efforts, they had said, would introduce chaos and confusion as early voting gears up in many states.

Still, the weekslong legal tussle over the issue may have sown its own kind of confusion, a victory of sorts for Mr. Trump as he seeks to cast doubt on the integrity of the vote in an election his party might lose.

The majority provided a one-paragraph explanation for the ruling, writing that the government was “unlikely to succeed on the merits.”

The order was unsigned, which is typical in emergency rulings. It gave no vote count. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote a concurrence. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.

The battle over the Trump administration’s plan to change mail-in voting has played out over the last few weeks in a dizzying series of legal developments, even as states began sending out ballots.

Trump administration lawyers had urged the justices to step in and clear the way for its plan to use the Postal Service to screen ballot envelopes after they are submitted by state elections officials. The new rules would require states to submit lists of voters approved to receive mail ballots. The Postal Service would then deliver mail ballots only to the voters on the lists.

The plan would also require states to use an envelope approved by the Postal Service, including a unique bar code for each voter. Some states have argued that redesigning ballots so close to the election would be challenging or perhaps impossible, causing delays.

New York Times, As Supreme Court Weighs Trump Mail Ballot Plan, Another Judge Blocks It, Zach Montague, Sept. 14, 2026. The ruling by a lower court judge was another blow to President Trump’s effort to make voting by mail harder. The Supreme Court is also considering the Trump plan.

As the Supreme Court weighs the legality of a Trump administration plan to change mail-in balloting, a second lower court judge ruled overnight on Sunday that the plan is likely illegal and should be blocked before the November election.

The ruling by Judge Carl J. Nichols, right, a Trump appointee, delivered another blow to President Trump’s effort to add new conditions that could make it harder to vote by mail and easier for the federal government to scrutinize state voter rolls while searching for evidence of fraud.

The Supreme Court is considering a similar ruling by a different federal judge based in Massachusetts. Judge Indira Talwani, an Obama appointee, has repeatedly found that the plan is likely unconstitutional and could not be implemented so close to the election without disenfranchising voters.

Judge Nichols, of the Federal District Court in Washington, wrote that the Trump administration had not identified any “evidence that there will be significant fraud in the upcoming elections” if he halted the rule. On the other hand, he wrote, there was an “increased risk that a significant number of otherwise appropriate absentee or mail-in ballots will ultimately not be counted in the upcoming elections” if the rule took effect.ImageJudge in robe facing cameraJudge Carl J. Nichols wrote that the mail ballot plan created an “increased risk that a significant number of otherwise appropriate absentee or mail-in ballots will ultimately not be counted in the upcoming elections.”Credit...U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

“The public has a strong interest in ensuring that doesn’t happen,” he wrote.

Judge Nichols’s ruling came in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of Democratic-aligned groups, including the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, as well as a number of civil rights organizations. The Massachusetts suit was brought by a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general and voting rights groups.

Judge Nichols ruled in May that he could not stop the Postal Service from drafting the rule or preemptively declare it would necessarily be illegal before it was finalized. The Supreme Court similarly ruled last month that it was premature for the courts to intervene to stop Mr. Trump’s plan.

But Judge Nichols said he would review the issue after the Postal Service finalized the regulation, which it did in August. His finding that the proposal now should be blocked could offer a preview for how the justices view the issue.

In a court filing on Monday, the Trump administration formally alerted the Supreme Court about Judge Nichols’s ruling.

Lawyers for the Trump administration told the justices that if they allowed the Postal Service plan, it would mean Judge Nichols would be required to immediately lift his block and clear the way for the ballot screening rules.

The new rule stemmed from an executive order Mr. Trump signed in March, directing the Postal Service to preregister voters casting their ballots by mail, and decline to deliver ballots from anyone whose information was not submitted by their state election officers.

Judge Talwani, who considered the separate legal challenge in Massachusetts, had found that the rule likely violated the constitutional authority given to states to run their own elections. But Judge Nichols focused on another issue: the absence of any federal statute by which Congress gave the Postal Service the power to screen voters.

Exclusive On U.S. Intelligence Officer's Child Sex Scandal, Creating UK Diplomatic Dispute

Is the new US embassy in London, a $1 billion glas cube portrayed in a CNN photo, at the center of a major child porn scandal and cover-up?

The Wayne Madsen Report via Substack, Investigative Commentary: Major pedophile scandal at U.S. embassy in London covered-up by a media influenced by pedophile-friendly oligarchs, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 28 books and former Navy Intelligence officer, Sept 14, 2026. Press censorship imposed at a national level by the Trump regime has resulted in the public being under-informed about a diplomatic cover-up of a pedophilia scandal at the U.S. embassy in London while Donald Trump and his family were basking in media limelight next door in Ireland.

The Trump regime blindsided the government of Prime Minister Andy Burnham by flying out of London a U.S. military attaché whose brother was arrested in Illinois for possession of child sex abuse material. In June of this year, the attaché’s brother, Benjamin T. Morris, 33, the then-arts director for the Quad City Arts Building in Rock Island, Illinois, was arrested in as police sting operation for attempting to entice minors on-line. Morris was subsequently charged on 32 criminal counts, including production and dissemination of CSAM. A judge has denied Morris bail, citing a continuing threat to the public.

Attache’s brother Benjamin T. Morris

When the U.S. embassy in London became aware that Morris had shared CSAM with his brother at the U.S. embassy in London, embassy security personnel, including US Marine security guards, conducted a dawn raid of the attaché's flat in Putney in southwest London.

The U.S. personnel allegedly recovered illicit child pornography material on the attaché’s electronic devices. The U.S. personnel took the attaché into custody, flying him out of the country via a chartered Kalitta Air Boeing 747 cargo plane from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. The aircraft landed at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

At no time before and during the attaché’s secret exfiltration from United Kingdom territory did the U.S. embassy or the U.S. State or Justice Departments inform British law enforcement of the action. The Trump regime abused the umbrella afforded by diplomatic protection to evade justice in the host nation, thus bypassing the British police and avoiding a future extradition process.

The U.S. embassy provided no advance warning to the London Metropolitan Police about their plans to raid the attaché’s flat. U.S. personnel have no powers of arrest in Britain and the use of Marines and other non-law enforcement personnel to carry out a police matter also taints the chain-of-custody of evidence recovered from the flat. Marines are not trained in criminal forensics, a fact that will likely be used by the attaché’s defense attorney at a future trial.

Prosecutors for the Rock Island County State's Attorney's Office in Illinois have alleged Morris was exchanging CSAM with his brother, the attaché in London. The FBI, under the incompetent command of Kash Patel, is reportedly examining numerous electronic devices belonging to Morris, and, since his brother’s exfiltration from London, the FBI is likely also conducting forensic analysis of the former attaché’s devices.

The incident has resulted in a cross-party condemnation of the U.S. action. There are demands that if crimes were committed on British soil, the U.S. embassy suspect should face trial in an English court. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has held meetings with Metropolitan Police officials on the incident. Conservative shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy said the U.S. action constituted “a cover-up” and that the attaché “should face trial in an English court.” Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty accused the U.S. of bypassing jurisdictional authority and said it was “completely unacceptable,” “absolutely grotesque,” and proof that the U.S. government was “protecting alleged pedophiles.” The U.S. has a history of protecting its diplomatic and military personnel from facing justice in British courts.Kalitta Air commits to using ExxonMobil aviation lubricants across its fleet | ExxonMobil Aviation

The London Metropolitan Police did not to itself any favors in its statement on the incident: "On Tuesday August 25, US authorities made us aware of an investigation they are conducting into suspected offences in London relating to indecent images of children.” The American authorities only informed the London police after the attaché’s aircraft had cleared UK airspace. Scotland Yard and Home Office personnel were not given an opportunity to interview the attaché.

The U.S. is not releasing the name of the attaché, who is claimed to have been reassigned to “other duties” in the United States.

The U.S. Defense Attaché Office (DAO), located at the embassy complex at 33 Nine Elms Lane in London, has a large staff that includes a Senior Defense Attaché, U.S. Naval Attaché, and attachés and assistant attachés from the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard.

The attaché, who is said to be around 39, used the address DPO, AE (Diplomatic Post Office, Armed Forces Europe/Middle East/Africa). One previous address used by the attaché is located on Burwell Street on Joint Base Bolling-Anacostia in southwest Washington, DC. The attaché is believed to have been previously assigned to the Military Liaison Office/Office of Defense Cooperation at U.S. Military Group – Finland at the U.S. embassy at Itäinen Puistotie 14 in Helsinki. His role included providing Finland with U.S. military hardware as a new member of NATO.

The exfiltration operation of the attaché would have been authorized by U.S. ambassador Warren Stephens. He is the former chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Stephens Inc., a privately held investment bank in Little Rock, Arkansas. Stephens essentially bought the ambassadorship to the Court of St. James by contributing $6 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Note: All information in the column above was obtained from public, non-classified sources available to anyone.

The U.S. State Visit to the UK: Commemorating Our Close Bond

Amb. Warren Stephens and Trump

The breach of diplomatic protocol and the use of a CIA-connected cargo plane to exfiltrate Benjamin Morris’s brother and his electronic devices from the UK is evidence of a wider pedophilia network. The Trump regime’s cover-up of the Morris case continues its obfuscation of other pedophilia crimes, including the Jeffrey Epstein matter. The secrecy around the Morris investigation also points to the possible use of the U.S. embassy in London, which enjoys extraterritorial diplomatic immunity, as a nexus for the exchange of CSAM and AI-generated CSAM.

The State Department has a jaded history of covering-up the pedophile activities of its personnel at its embassies, particularly in Southeast Asia. An unnamed State Department source defended the violation of British sovereignty in the attaché’s exfiltration, stating, “If we had ceded ground and waited, there could have been delays and diplomacy that could have gone on for weeks or months.” Or CSAM exposures that may have led to other Trump regime officials.

Meanwhile, the corporate media in the U.S. is all but ignoring the embassy scandal in London, as is their practice in similar matters.

News Roundups

A group photo shows about 35 people including Donald Trump Jr., his wife Bettina Anderson, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Tiffany Trump and Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev (with little more than his forehead and nose visible in the back row).

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Russian Oligarch Funded Trump Jr.’s Wedding, Major Court Loss for Trump, Trump Rolls Back Climate Pollution Limits, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 14, 2026. I am heading back to the Senate and Mitch McConnell’s home today, trying to get answers about McConnell that his office still will not give the American people. That is the job. Show up, ask the question nobody wants to answer, and keep showing up until you get the truth.

And there is a lot of truth we need right now. We have a Russian oligarch close to Putin secretly bankrolling Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding. We have the EPA about to erase the limits on the pollution power plants can pump into our air. We have a Trump appointed judge blocking Trump’s own attempt to restrict mail in voting weeks before the midterms. We have the Trump family quietly positioning themselves to cash out on their own crypto, a Kennedy Center begging for money it will only take if Trump’s name goes back on the building, and a 60 Minutes investigation exposing a pardon economy where access to the president can apparently be bought for the right price. This is what I mean when I say the corruption is not hiding anymore. It is happening in the open, and someone has to write it down.

This is going to be a long week, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. But every single subscriber to this newsletter is what makes it possible for me to stand outside that house, to read through hundreds of pages of documents, to ask the questions other won’t. If you can, subscribe today. Not for me, but so this reporting reaches millions of people instead of just the ones already paying attention. That is how we hold these people accountable. Together.

Here’s everything you need to know.

Russian Oligarch funds Trump Jr.’s Wedding:

Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev, right, and Donald Trump Jr. (Reuters photo).

Kremlev secretly bankrolled Trump Jr.’s Bahamas wedding. According to a major investigation from ProPublica, Donald Trump Jr.’s lavish three day wedding across two private Bahamas islands in May was secretly funded in large part by Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev, a close associate of Vladimir Putin. ProPublica reports Kremlev paid for hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses, including renting out one of the private islands and covering the fireworks show, with the payments routed through a Dubai entity tied to the boxing association Kremlev runs. Kremlev, who appears to have met Trump Jr. only recently, attended the reception with a large group of Russian guests who ProPublica says stood off by themselves speaking Russian and were conspicuously absent from every photo and video the Trump family later released. Trump Jr.’s spokesperson did not dispute the payments, telling ProPublica, “Umar is a personal friend of Don,” while saying the men met through a mutual friend in the hunting world. Trump Jr. himself later said on his podcast, “The people that were there, if you’re on that list, you weren’t talking.”

National security experts call the arrangement alarming. ProPublica’s investigation quotes multiple former U.S. counterintelligence officials warning about the implications of a Putin associated oligarch financially supporting the president’s son. Frank Montoya Jr., a retired senior FBI counterintelligence official, told ProPublica, “If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something,” adding, “This should be unthinkable for the son of the president. End of story.” Holden Triplett, who served as Trump’s counterintelligence director on the National Security Council during his first term, said Russian intelligence frequently uses money to build ties to officials and their families, telling ProPublica, “Money is a tried-and-true method to gain access.” ProPublica notes Kremlev was traveling with Putin’s delegation in China days before the wedding and had personally received Russia’s Order of Friendship from Putin the month before. The outlet also reports Ukraine has sanctioned Kremlev directly over his closeness to Putin and Russian security services.

Kremlev’s rise and his growing ties to Trump world raise fresh questions. ProPublica traces Kremlev’s path from a criminal record for extortion and battery under his birth name to running Russia’s boxing federation and then the International Boxing Association, an organization bankrolled by the Kremlin linked energy giant Gazprom. A former IBA board member told ProPublica, “Umar is guided by Putin. It was using the sport for soft political power,” adding, “It’s geopolitics. That it’s boxing is just happenstance.” ProPublica reports Kremlev has since cultivated Trump Jr. through a 2025 Istanbul panel appearance and repeated outreach to the White House seeking help restoring the IBA’s Olympic status, which was stripped in 2023 over financial transparency concerns. The outlet notes Kremlev told associates he feared being targeted by U.S. sanctions after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and moved his organization’s operations to Dubai as a result. An IBA press release cited by ProPublica after the Istanbul panel promised the Kremlev and Trump Jr. relationship “will not remain symbolic” and that “more joint initiatives will follow.”

Trump Rolls Back Limits on Climate Pollution:

E.P.A. set to eliminate limits on climate pollution from power plants. According to The New York Times, the Trump administration plans to announce Monday that the United States will no longer limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants burning coal and gas, a move that would complete the erasure of the Biden and Obama administrations’ most significant climate policies. The Times reports E.P.A. Administrator Lee Zeldin is expected to unveil the change at a meeting of energy ministers from the Group of 20 nations in Houston, and if the rule survives legal challenges it could block future administrations from regulating power plant emissions altogether. The power sector is the second largest source of carbon dioxide in the country, and the Times notes that if it were its own nation it would rank as the fifth largest climate polluter in the world. Power plants would still face some limits on mercury and arsenic under the plan, though the Times notes the E.P.A. has already loosened mercury restrictions on coal plants as well.

The rollback fits a broader pattern and comes with a steep public health cost. The Times reports this is the latest in a string of E.P.A. rollbacks under Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax,” following the earlier elimination of tailpipe emissions standards and looser restrictions on planet warming chemicals used in air conditioners and refrigerators. Most consequentially, the Times notes the agency already repealed the scientific finding that gave it legal authority to regulate climate pollution in the first place. The Biden era rule being scrapped was projected to prevent up to 1,200 premature deaths and 360,000 asthma attacks annually by 2035 while delivering an estimated $120 billion in public health benefits by 2047, but the Times reports the Trump E.P.A. has stopped factoring public health benefits into its cost analyses and now weighs only the costs to businesses. The push comes as the administration tries to make fossil fuels cheaper to produce, particularly to meet growing electricity demand from AI data centers.

Coal keeps shrinking while gas expands, and the plan faces legal fights ahead. The Times reports coal generated more than half of U.S. electricity in 1990 but has fallen to roughly 17 percent today, with 330 coal plants retired since 2010 and 60 more slated to close by 2031, even as utilities race to build new gas plants for AI data centers. Democratic led states and environmental groups have said they intend to challenge the E.P.A.’s plan in court, and the Times reports legal experts consider it vulnerable. The Supreme Court blocked Obama’s Clean Power Plan in 2016, then ruled in 2022 that the E.P.A. could limit power plant emissions but could not force a nationwide shift away from coal, restricting the agency to narrower plant by plant policies. That legal history sets up another likely Supreme Court fight over how far the E.P.A. can go in either direction on power plant emissions.

Major Court Rulings:

A Trump appointed judge just blocked Trump’s own mail-in voting rule. A second federal judge moved Sunday night to block the Trump administration from implementing a new U.S. Postal Service rule that would tighten mail-in voting requirements, and notably it was U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who Trump himself appointed during his first term, who issued this ruling. Nichols granted the Democratic Party’s request for a preliminary injunction, agreeing the rule was an unlawful intrusion by the federal government into election administration. He found the new rule could make it harder for some people to vote by mail and concluded the Postal Service had exceeded its authority in issuing it, writing plainly, “No statute grants the Postal Service the power to issue key parts of the rule.” The rule would have required states to submit lists of voters eligible for mail ballots and to place barcodes on ballot envelopes, empowering the Postal Service to refuse delivery to anyone not on those lists. This is now the second judge to block the rule, coming just weeks before the November 3 midterms where Republicans are fighting to hold both chambers of Congress.

The fight now heads to the Supreme Court as the midterms approach. A separate judge, Boston based Indira Talwani, already blocked the same rule on September 4 at the request of Democratic led states and voting rights groups, and the Trump administration quickly asked the Supreme Court to pause that order so the rule could take effect. That means the final call on whether Trump’s mail voting restrictions survive will likely come from the nation’s highest court. Democrats argued in court filings that the Constitution puts election administration in the hands of the states with congressional oversight, not the president or federal agencies, warning the rule risked disenfranchising eligible voters. Justice Department lawyers pushed back, insisting the rule does not “seize control” of elections and would leave states in charge of voter eligibility. All 50 states currently allow some form of mail voting, with 29 letting voters request a mail ballot without giving a reason and eight running their elections entirely by mail.

Mitch McConnell:

Senate returns with no confirmation McConnell will be back. The Senate reconvenes Monday after a five week recess with it still unclear whether Mitch McConnell will make his first appearance since suffering a fall at his Washington home in June. The 84 year old Kentucky Republican’s spokesman referred the Post to a statement saying he would continue an “intensive regimen of physical therapy from home” while working on Senate business remotely. Senate Majority Leader John Thune told a South Dakota TV station he hopes McConnell will return “in the not-too-distant future,” while Rep. James Comer said McConnell’s staff had told him it was their “goal” for him to be back this week. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has gone further, demanding McConnell “provide proof of his capacity to serve, or resign.” McConnell’s term ends January 3, and Rep. Andy Barr, who won the Republican primary to succeed him, is heavily favored to take the seat.

McConnell has earned nearly $45,000 during his absence. Despite not appearing in the Senate since his June hospitalization, McConnell has continued collecting his full $174,000 annual salary throughout his roughly three month absence. Based on his daily pay of about $476.71, that comes out to nearly $45,000 earned over 94 days away from the Capitol, a total that will keep growing by roughly $476 for every additional day he stays away. Because members of Congress are paid a fixed annual salary rather than an hourly wage, his compensation is not tied to attendance. Newsweek notes McConnell separately oversees a congressional office budget that paid his staff just under $4 million over the most recent 12 month period, and estimates put his personal net worth at $70.4 million.

McConnell’s health details remain limited as scrutiny grows. McConnell has not been seen in public since before his June 14 fall, with updates coming only through occasional statements and two photos released by his office. He revealed in a July statement that he was briefly unconscious after the fall and developed a mild case of pneumonia during his recovery, complicating his return to work, and he was discharged from a rehabilitation facility in early August to continue recovering at home. McConnell is not the first senator to be absent for an extended stretch while ailing, following John Fetterman’s two month absence for depression treatment in 2023, Dianne Feinstein’s nearly three month absence with shingles before her death later that year, and John McCain’s absence during his final eight months before he died in 2018. As the Senate reconvenes, his expected return would mark his first public appearance at the Capitol in roughly three months.

Other News:

60 Minutes exposes a “pardon economy” of brokers pitching Trump clemency for hundreds of thousands of dollars. A new 60 Minutes investigation caught Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, both Trump supporters who themselves have criminal records from a 2020 voter intimidation scheme, on hidden camera offering to broker presidential pardons for a fee. The pair described previous deals they claimed to have arranged, including a reported $600,000 fee involving rapper Boosie Badazz, and detailed pressuring the president directly rather than going through the Justice Department’s standard clemency review process. The report found fees in this shadow pardon market can run as high as $3 million, raising questions about who actually gets access to presidential mercy and how.

Trump family takes steps that could let them cash out their own crypto. President Trump and his three sons have moved to a new vesting contract that would eventually let them sell billions of dollars in $WLFI tokens created by their firm World Liberty Financial, a change three independent experts say was optional despite the company’s claim it was required. Crypto expert Molly White said flatly, “The Trump family is laying the groundwork to cash out their WLFI stake,” while Public Citizen’s Zach Everson said, “It has never been clear what World Liberty Financial was supposed to do other than enrich the Trumps, and here we have them taking the first avenue they can to offload their coins.” A company spokesman insisted the move only fulfilled a governance requirement to burn 10 percent of holdings and said “there are no imminent sales” given a two year vesting period. Trump’s own token allotment is currently worth roughly $1 billion, and he has already reported more than $550 million in income from selling World Liberty Financial tokens while retail investors have lost $1 billion on the company.

Kennedy Center says it faces bankruptcy unless Trump’s name goes back on the building. According to the Washington Post, officials at the Kennedy Center have warned the performing arts center faces “certain fiscal collapse” within weeks unless President Trump’s name is restored to the building, according to documents obtained by the Times and the Post ahead of a special board meeting Tuesday. The documents say the center risks being unable to make payroll or cover routine maintenance, and note Trump has offered to help raise rescue funds only with “appropriate recognition” of his role, without which he is unlikely to lead the effort or oversee a planned renovation. Board member and longtime Trump ally Paolo Zampolli said, “Trump attracts money, so when Trump says donate to this place, everyone will donate.” Trustees are being asked to choose among several inscriptions crediting Trump, including one reading “Renovation Restoration and Endowment overseen by President Donald J. Trump and the Trump Kennedy Center Fund,” and to vote on immediately closing the main building after a section of ceiling plaster fell roughly 60 feet in the Grand Foyer this month. This follows a year of turmoil at the center since Trump installed loyalists who elected him chairman, a court fight over an earlier attempt to add his name to the building, and warnings that hundreds of millions in donations could have to be returned if his name isn’t ultimately added to the facade.

Trump voices support for Flock cameras. President Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he supports the fast growing Flock camera network, saying, “I sort of like them because of that, because of law enforcement, but some people don’t. They think it’s an infringement. I like them.” The AI powered cameras record 20 billion license plate scans monthly across a network of more than 120,000 devices, and a recent survey found 46 percent of Americans oppose their use in their communities compared to 38 percent who support it. The comments come after an investigation found dozens of officers had been charged with or accused of misusing the technology, prompting Flock to require every search be labeled with a case number.

Trump refuses to explain how he personally uses AI. In a gaggle aboard Air Force One, a reporter asked President Trump whether he has used artificial intelligence himself, and he replied, “Yeah, I use AI.” Pressed on how, he said only, “You can use AI for a lot of things,” and when asked directly what he uses it for, he said, “I don’t want to tell you that.” The exchange came even as he dismissed industry warnings about AI risks, insisting “it’s gonna be more good than bad, but by a lot,” and repeating his line that “whoever wins AI wins.” The vague answer stood out given his own Truth Social account has been flagged for posting AI generated content.

Mike Johnson defends House candidate over vulgar and Nazi-referencing remarks. House Speaker Mike Johnson, right, stood by Texas congressional candidate Brandon Herrera after being shown past comments in which Herrera described mothers as “cum trophies” and called a Nazi era submachine gun “the original ghetto blaster.” Johnson called Herrera’s language “detestable” but insisted “that’s not the way he speaks or thinks” now, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper that Herrera is “a very serious candidate for Congress and a very thoughtful guy.” Johnson said he personally told Herrera, “When you get to Congress, you’re going to join this team and help us to save America to preserve freedom and bring down costs for the American people.” Herrera has also been shown goose-stepping to a Nazi marching song and joking that “we should abolish old people,” and Johnson said Herrera is “far superior” to his Democratic opponent in the race.

Sam Altman warns humanity could “lose control of the future to AI.” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote on X that AI companies should deliberately slow, or “pace,” development, warning of two ways progress could go badly: “First, we could lose control of the future to AI,” and second, that concentrated power in an AI company or individual could produce “extremely dystopian” results. Altman said “no amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness” but added that AI firms will still need government help on international coordination, saying “first we should do what we can ourselves.” His comments followed a lengthy essay from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei calling for a development slowdown, which Altman, Elon Musk, and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis all said they agreed with. The statements come as AI safety fears intensify heading into the midterms.

OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic have been quietly planning an AI standards body. Representatives from the three companies have held regular meetings since July about creating an industry oversight group even before Amodei’s public call for a slowdown, according to multiple reports. A draft White House executive order that would have created a similar government run testing and auditing organization was reportedly scrapped this summer after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg argued against it directly with President Trump. Altman has since said he supports the standards group idea but conceded companies would likely have to move forward without government backing. The talks suggest industry leaders see coordination as necessary even as the administration remains uninterested in new AI regulation.

Prosecutor leading Trump’s political rivals probe resigned after tense clash with the attorney general. Joe diGenova, the former federal prosecutor brought in to lead a Justice Department investigation into Trump’s political rivals, reportedly had a tense phone call with Attorney General Todd Blanche the day before he abruptly resigned. The two clashed because diGenova did not want DOJ headquarters lawyers assisting with the probe, and separately disagreed over diGenova’s request for a high security room, which the department wanted housed at a distant FBI office instead. DiGenova resigned last Thursday, the same day prosecutors were presenting a witness to a grand jury in the case. The resignation has thrown the sweeping conspiracy investigation into turmoil and could delay it further.

China dismisses AI slowdown warnings as a “Cold War playbook” aimed at containing it. Beijing rejected the safety concerns raised by Amodei, Altman, and Musk, with foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun saying, “Fearmongering, confrontation and malicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance and serve no one’s interests.” The state run Global Times was blunter, calling the slowdown push “packed with containment provisions targeting China” and “in essence, a Cold War playbook for the AI sector.” The dispute comes after Amodei specifically warned that “a Chinese lead in AI would pose grave danger for the United States and the world” and urged continued restrictions on chip sales to China, while President Trump separately said “whoever wins AI wins” and dismissed safety warnings as coming from “very negative forces.” China’s state security minister Chen Yixin has still called for accelerating domestic AI risk controls, saying “we must engage extensively in international cooperation.” Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are set to meet on September 24, with AI governance expected to be a central topic.

Amazon cuts ties with cargo carrier after fatal Miami plane crash. Amazon announced it is pausing operations with 21 Air, the Miami based carrier that operated the Amazon Air cargo flight that crashed last weekend and killed five people. Spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement, “After the tragic incident last weekend, we’ve spent time supporting the investigation and reviewing some of the surrounding circumstances, and we’ve decided to pause our operations with 21 Air, the operator of Flight 7598.” The company said it will continue assisting investigators and supporting those affected by the crash. No cause has yet been publicly identified for the crash.

Wall Street Journal’s conservative board accuses Trump of double standard on Russia. The Journal’s editorial board criticized President Trump for lecturing Ukraine over its strikes on Russian energy infrastructure while going comparatively easy on Russia itself throughout the ongoing war. The board drew a sharp contrast between Trump’s tone toward the two countries, which have been at war since Russia’s 2022 invasion. The editorial called Trump’s approach “political excuse-making on a grand scale.” The criticism comes as Trump has publicly pressured Ukrainian President Zelensky to stop striking Russian diesel infrastructure, even as Russia continues launching large scale drone and missile attacks on Ukraine.

Sweden’s election remains too close to call. Sweden’s next government was uncertain Monday as vote counting continued, with a narrow lead for the left wing opposition and a weaker than expected showing from a hard right anti-immigration party. Preliminary results favored former Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson’s bid to return to office atop a left wing coalition, though her own Social Democrats lost some support compared to the last election. The final outcome may not be determined until Wednesday. The result will be closely watched across Europe given the rise of hard right parties in several neighboring countries.

Diesel prices hit an all time high as oil markets react to Middle East disruptions. The national average price of diesel rose to $6.23 a gallon Monday, a new record, after Saudi Arabia shut a critical pipeline and talks between Iran and Gulf countries over the Strait of Hormuz were postponed. Brent crude rose as high as $108 a barrel and U.S. crude touched $103, with vessel traffic through Hormuz down to just a handful of ships a day amid the standoff. KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk warned diesel costs ripple through the entire economy, saying, “The cost of diesel gets into just about everything, from running a farm to the cost of food, but also everything across the economy that’s shipped.” President Trump addressed the issue by publicly pressing Ukrainian President Zelensky to stop striking Russian oil refineries, saying, “He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia. Let him go after targets, but not diesel fuel, because he’s causing a shortage of diesel fuel.” Diesel prices have climbed 75 percent since the start of the year.

Nepal glacier collapse survivor reunites with his family after nine days trapped underground. Sanjay Sah, a mechanical foreman who survived nine days trapped in a flooded hydropower tunnel after last month’s Himalayan glacier collapse, returned home to his village Sunday to an emotional welcome. Sah said, “I was trapped in the tunnel. I felt trapped in the hospital room too. I finally feel free here in my village,” as roughly 60 family members and neighbors greeted him with a traditional cleansing ceremony. His mother cried, “My son!” while embracing him, and the crowd wiped away tears as he was welcomed home. At least 1,386 people have died and more than 5,000 remain missing across Nepal since the disaster, including around 900 power station workers, and Sah said he still hopes for news of missing neighbors, adding, “If I am called back to duty, I will go.”

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Mitch McConnell Returns as I Spent the Day at His House, Trump Melts Down Over AI, Major Whistleblower Report, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 14, 2026. I need to tell you what happened to me today before we get into anything else.

I went back to Mitch McConnell’s house this morning to do my job, and after weeks of facing attacks for doing this work, we have the truth. I stayed on the beat, I stayed outside that house, and we got something major. Mitch McConnell has returned to the United States Senate, and we have the video of him doing it. You’re going to see it in a moment, along with the statement his office just put out.

That’s not the only major interview in tonight’s rundown either. I sat down with Judge John Jones, a Bush appointee who has spent his career on the federal bench, to get his read on where this country actually stands right now. You are not going to want to miss what he had to say.

But before we get into any of it, I need to ask you directly. Nights like tonight, showing up at that house, getting threatened, and still bringing you the tape anyway, that only happens because people like you make it possible. This work is not funded by a network or a corporation. It is funded by subscribers. So if you have not subscribed yet, do it right now, hit that button, turn on notifications, and if you’re already a subscriber, share this with one person today. 

Mitch McConnell Update:

I just got back from Mitch McConnell’s house, and we have now seen him. Mitch McConnell has returned to the United States Senate. I spent most of the day outside of his home. We have the first video of him right now:

Trump Spirals Online:

Trump spirals on Truth Social, alleging a “SICK conspiracy” against AI and calling critics traitors. President Trump declared Monday that a “SICK conspiracy” is being waged against artificial intelligence and the data centers that run it, describing the people behind it as “Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers.” He singled out Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei by name, writing, “The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel,’ and we will continue to do so! We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!” He did not specify what conduct he was referring to, what criminal power he meant, or who exactly the alleged conspirators are. In his own words, he declared, “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” In a follow up post an hour later, he added, “Don’t kill the Golden Goose,” and later called the entire safety debate a “HOAX.”

Photo by Kaitlan Collins on September 14, 2026. May be a Twitter screenshot of text that says 'needs bad, STRONG now pretending to be The only control "guardrails" that SMART (High !) PRESIDENT, and the has that, spades! The Trump Administration has stopped "people" from doing potentially bad, "things," Dario (Anthropic!), who is "perfect little we will do so! We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and power over these companies! There conspiracy going on against and Data Centers, and the only one that happy about China. WHOEVER WINS Al, WINS! are leading China, and others, and will Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE! Thank you for your attention this matter! TRUMP SICK do so. DONALD ReTruths'.

The outburst came two days after AI’s own top executives called for a slowdown, and it rattled the stock market. Trump’s rant followed an essay from Amodei arguing companies should deliberately slow the pace at which they improve AI capabilities, warning that within six to 12 months a swarm of rogue AI agents could be capable of “taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet,” causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. OpenAI’s Sam Altman said he agreed “that we need to pace the frontier,” while Elon Musk posted that “Dario is right,” and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis signed on as well. The market reaction was immediate, with Nasdaq futures falling more than 1 percent overnight and chip stocks sliding, Intel down nearly 6 percent, Micron around 5 percent, and Nvidia roughly 3 percent, as investors priced in a possible slowdown in hardware demand. Shares in SoftBank and European data center suppliers including ASML, Siemens Energy, and Schneider Electric fell as well.

Trump calls into Nvidia’s All-In Summit to declare “the robots will not be taking over.” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang put President Trump on speakerphone in front of a large crowd at the All-In Podcast’s summit Monday, where Trump dismissed AI safety concerns as a “hoax” and told attendees, “the robots will not be taking over.” He also claimed, without offering specifics, that some communities were once “dying” but are now “really wealthy” because of data centers built in their area. Huang did not push back on any of it, instead telling Trump, “We’re going to make sure that everybody wins in the AI race in America. Every industry, every company, every state, every people,” while also flattering him by noting he was speaking to “thousands” of people.

Even inside his own administration, Trump’s dismissiveness is making people nervous. Vice President JD Vance cast doubt on the executives’ motives, calling their push for regulation a possible “Trojan horse,” and said, “I have to say, personally, I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them,” though he acknowledged “there are obvious risks to AI, there are some benefits to AI.” CNN reported that some White House officials privately admit they are worried about Trump’s apparent lack of concern over AI’s dangers, a position he has held for months and shown little sign of reconsidering despite the mounting warnings. White House AI adviser David Sacks has accused Amodei’s company of running “a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fearmongering,” telling both Anthropic and OpenAI they are free to slow down on their own but should stop seeking an antitrust waiver from Washington to do it. House Speaker Mike Johnson said he hopes to convene talks this week between Trump, lawmakers, and AI executives, even as Trump claims, without evidence, that Chinese President Xi Jinping “announced that China will be doing absolutely nothing to stand in the way of AI, or its future” ahead of Xi’s planned visit to Washington next week.

Trump blames Biden for high prices, over 600 days into his own term. In a separate post Monday, more than 600 days into his second term, President Trump said he hopes everyone realizes that former President Biden is to blame for the higher prices Americans are currently facing. No further detail, quotes, or context were included in the post. That’s genuinely all there is on this one, the source material only gave that single line, so let me know if you come across the full post and I can build it out further.

Major Whistleblower Report:

Whistleblower alleges federal agents may have broken state laws hunting for voter fraud. A nearly 30 page whistleblower report given to Senators Chuck Schumer and Alex Padilla alleges that federal agents, under direction from top Homeland Security leaders, may have violated state laws while searching for noncitizens on voter rolls as part of what DHS calls the “Unlawful Voter Initiative.” Agents allegedly posed as individual voters, using personal data like birth dates and partial Social Security numbers pulled from internal and external sources to look up voter records on public facing state websites, even though states like Virginia explicitly limit those tools to voters searching their own records. DHS’s own chief counsel office acknowledged the legal risk internally, telling agents they “are not personally liable for conducting these searches when done as part of their official duties and properly documented,” a line the watchdog group that produced the report called evidence that “there may be legal implications for accessing these websites” even as officers were required to keep doing it. In a public statement, DHS rejected any suggestion of wrongdoing, saying, “The Department accessed publicly available data from states’ voter rolls and cross referenced them with known aliens in our systems. It’s not rocket science; it’s an easy step to secure our elections.”

Agents were reportedly pushed through cases so fast that eligible citizens are likely being wrongly flagged. According to the whistleblower, agents were required to complete at least 40 voter reviews per eight hour shift, leaving roughly 12 minutes to determine each person’s citizenship and voting history, a pace that raises serious doubts about accuracy. Each review is logged in a database that can affect a person’s immigration status or legal residency, and the investigation relies on data described to agents only as “source data,” with officials at one point saying some immigration information had been added using “supplemental magic,” according to the report. That data reportedly includes alien identification numbers that remain permanently in a person’s DHS file even after they become citizens, meaning legally registered voters who were once noncitizens are likely being misidentified as unlawful voters. Some agents grew reluctant to flag people based on data they suspected was faulty, and the report concluded bluntly that “the current process is knowingly sweeping known U.S. citizens in as potentially ‘unlawful voters.’”

Democrats are demanding the operation be shut down, calling it an attempt to undermine the midterms. Schumer and Padilla sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin demanding the initiative be halted and posing a dozen specific questions about how it is being run. Schumer said in an interview, “This is just the latest example of how far Donald Trump will go to interfere in our elections,” adding, “We’ve never seen anything quite like this. Department of Homeland Security is actually pulling away these law officers, these federal law enforcement officers, away from the work they’re supposed to do.” Padilla raised a related concern about privacy and accuracy, saying, “I do think the American people value keeping their personal information private. The other thing that’s concerning here, that the American people who would be offended by, is the knowing inaccuracy of what they’re doing, whether it’s the data or their sham analysis. It’s going to produce false positives.” The operation grows out of Trump’s long standing focus on noncitizen voting, despite decades of research showing it is exceedingly rare, and voting rights advocates worry eligible voters could be wrongly disqualified from the fall midterms or that Trump could use the investigation to cast doubt on results he dislikes.

Missouri Secretary of State:

Fired election integrity director accuses Missouri’s secretary of state of fabricating evidence to dodge a federal inquiry. Nick La Strada, who Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins fired as director of election integrity in May, filed a lawsuit alleging Hoskins’ team plotted to fabricate a fake whistleblower complaint to submit as evidence in a federal Help America Vote Act inquiry into discrepancies in 2024 vote count data. The lawsuit claims Hoskins’ then chief of staff discussed routing the fabricated complaint through an “IP scrambler” and a “burner” phone so it couldn’t be traced, in a call La Strada said he was excluded from but later reported to Hoskins. After reporting the conversation, La Strada’s Capitol access badge was disabled and he was told his presence wasn’t needed at the federal hearing, though he showed up and testified anyway. Days later he was fired, and his attorney Erin Vernon said at a news conference, “In essence, defendant office, by the actions of defendant Hoskins, fired the director of election integrity for having too much integrity.”

La Strada also alleges Hoskins illegally overturned a certified local election result. The lawsuit claims Hoskins ordered a retabulation of write-in votes in a Marshall, Missouri city election after the certified result had already named a winner by a single vote, and that the retabulation produced a different winner entirely. La Strada alleges Hoskins threatened city officials if they didn’t comply with the reordered result, even though only a judge has legal authority to order a recount once an election has been certified. Vernon emphasized the seriousness of Hoskins operating without any director of election integrity since firing La Strada, saying, “That’s a very big problem heading into elections, and they’ve shown they don’t want someone telling them what they can’t do and what the law in fact is.” Hoskins, through a spokeswoman, declined to comment on the lawsuit.

A separate allegation claims Hoskins misused public funds to influence a St. Louis County ballot measure. La Strada says he personally warned Hoskins in April 2025 that using taxpayer money to fund a mailer opposing St. Louis County’s Proposition B, a measure that would have changed county department head appointment powers, appeared to be an election law violation. The measure was ultimately defeated at the ballot box. This is now the second lawsuit filed against Hoskins in recent days, after five Missouri voters sued him last week alleging he violated state law by neglecting his official duties. La Strada, a longtime Republican who won four consecutive elections as Pettis County clerk before Hoskins hired him, is currently overseas serving as a U.S. election observer in Bosnia and Herzegovina and did not attend the news conference announcing his own lawsuit.

Other news:

DHS’s own watchdog confirms migrants were held in phone booth sized cages at Alligator Alcatraz. A new inspector general report has for the first time confirmed what advocates long alleged, that immigrants detained at Florida’s now shuttered Alligator Alcatraz facility were confined in outdoor metal cages roughly 4 by 4 feet, just 16 square feet, with indoor versions at 18 square feet, both less than half the 37 square foot minimum required by ICE detention standards. Facility staff called them “calming areas” meant for detainees to “de-escalate,” and a sign on one cell said its purpose was to let detainees “reflect on their behavior choices, manage their emotions, reduce stress and practice self-directed behavior.” Records show 79 detainees were held in these cages between July 2025 and January, with the longest stint lasting nearly two hours, and the inspector general concluded plainly that “the use of such restrictive spaces is highly unconventional and does not align with standards for humane treatment.” An earlier Amnesty International report based on detainee interviews went much further, describing detainees shackled hand and foot inside what they called “the box” for hours without water or shade, concluding that “the use of the ‘box’ as a form of punishment constitutes torture.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who toured the facility with President Trump and championed it as central to the deportation effort, said when asked about the new report that he had not read it, adding only, “I know that it was inspected, all those standards. The goal was not to apply those standards but to exceed those standards.”

Rep. Al Green forces a House-wide vote on impeaching Trump, teeing up a pre-midterm headache for Democrats. Longtime Texas Democrat Al Green announced Monday he’s using a privileged resolution to force the full House to vote on impeaching President Trump by Wednesday, citing federal immigration officers’ killing of two U.S. citizens this year. In a letter to colleagues, Green argued Democrats shouldn’t wait for planned post-midterm investigations, writing, “The available overwhelming evidence sufficiently demonstrates that President Trump is unfit and dangerous to our democracy.” The vote puts Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in an awkward spot, since he’s tried to keep Democrats focused on cost-of-living issues ahead of November, and 127 House Democrats joined Republicans to kill Green’s last impeachment push in June 2025. Green, 79, lost his primary to a younger challenger and has repeatedly clashed with Trump on the House floor, including waving his cane and shouting during a joint address and holding up a sign reading “Black People Aren’t Apes” during the State of the Union. The resolution itself brands Trump “a great threat to democracy and the Constitution for current high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Retired conservative judge warns America is “sleepwalking” toward another Jan. 6. Retired federal Judge J. Michael Luttig told MS NOW he believes the country is heading toward a repeat of the Capitol riot, saying, “That’s exactly what I envision, which is the next Jan. 6, 2021. This time, however, it will be Donald Trump and Mike Johnson refusing to peacefully transfer power to the next Congress of the United States.” Luttig argued Trump has spent his second term laying groundwork for a “final battle in his war against America’s democracy” by trying to seize control of the electoral process despite having “no power or authority whatsoever” to do so under the Constitution. He warned that even a decisive Democratic win in November would not guarantee the party gets seated as the majority in the new Congress, saying, “The House Republicans could still refuse to seat even a large Democratic majority elect under the Constitution of the United States,” though he acknowledged a landslide would make that “much more difficult,” not impossible. Luttig said Trump has been “as transparent as one could possibly be” about his intentions, adding that if America is sleepwalking into January 2027 the way it did before Jan. 6, 2021, “it’s no one’s fault but their own.” He closed by calling on lawmakers to commit publicly to upholding the Constitution, warning, “This is the final battle for America’s democracy. If this is the time of America’s testing, if America doesn’t rise to this moment, this moment under this president, Donald Trump, then there is no America in the future.”

El Niño just crossed into “super” territory, and it’s not done growing. An already strong El Niño has strengthened at a breakneck pace since being declared in June, and its key strength measure, NOAA’s Niño 3.4 Relative Oceanic Niño Index, has now hit 2.0 degrees Celsius above average, crossing the threshold for “very strong” and earning the unofficial “super” label. Forecasters say there is a 75 percent chance it peaks by the end of the year as the strongest El Niño since records began in 1950, and this event is unfolding in a far hotter world than past record setters due to climate change. It has already reshaped this year’s hurricane seasons, suppressing Atlantic activity so severely that the season has gone a record long stretch without its first hurricane, while supercharging the Pacific season with 16 storms including two Category 5 hurricanes and three separate systems threatening Hawaii in under a month. El Niño has also driven Indonesia’s punishing wildfire season by drying out the country’s peatland forests, and it contributed to this past August becoming Earth’s hottest on record, a trend scientists say could push 2027, and possibly 2026, to become the hottest year ever measured globally.

Newsom says he won’t run for president in 2028 if Harris runs again. California Governor Gavin Newsom told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an interview taped while the two were fly fishing in Montana that he would step aside for Kamala Harris, saying, “I don’t know if she runs but we’ll see. But I wouldn’t run if she ran.” When Tapper pushed back with some skepticism, Newsom doubled down, saying, “Of course not. Why would I? I wouldn’t do that to her. I wouldn’t do that to you. I wouldn’t waste everyone’s time. Who needs that?” Newsom argued a shared primary would only benefit other candidates, calling it “a gift from God for everybody else” and “mutually assured destruction” that “services no greater good,” while acknowledging the case for Harris running instead of him, saying, “She had a shot and you’ve never run and she’s run twice. That’s objectively true.” He also pointed to their overlapping political base from their days as San Francisco politicians, saying, “The Venn diagram is just pure crossover. I wouldn’t do that to people,” a notably more definitive stance than his comments back in February, when he said only that “fate will determine” whether the two would end up running against each other.

A Mississippi man has been denied bond after pleading not guilty in the killing of Tasia Fortune. Jarques Ratliff, 51, appeared in Jackson Municipal Court and was formally charged with murder in the death of Fortune, a 29-year-old Black mother of four who was found hanging from a tree behind an abandoned home last month. His attorney argued Ratliff was not a flight risk and was “gainfully employed,” but the judge ordered him held with no bond after a law enforcement official present called him “a danger to the citizens of Jackson.” Police Chief RaShall Brackney, who said investigators had an “association” between Ratliff and Fortune, called the arrest “an important development” but stressed “it’s not the conclusion,” adding that additional arrests are expected. Fortune’s mother told the Associated Press she cried upon learning of the arrest, saying the family remains “in disbelief” and “still don’t have a lot of answers.” A cause of death and motive have still not been released.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warns Ukraine’s drone war is about to get far more dangerous. Schmidt, who now runs rocket maker Relativity Space and has advised the Pentagon on AI, told NBC News that the pace of battlefield innovation in Ukraine is unlike anything he has seen, warning that Russia has closed the technological gap that once favored Kyiv. He said Russia has begun fitting cheap Iranian designed Shahed drones with small Chinese jet engines, letting them exceed 300 miles per hour compared to roughly 110 miles per hour for older versions, making them far harder for Ukraine’s existing interceptors to stop. Schmidt predicted that artificial intelligence will soon let computers coordinate massive drone swarms directly, saying, “Humans can’t run a swarm of 1,000 drones, but a computer can. So what I think will happen is computers will develop war plans within a swarm.” He described the current front line bluntly, saying, “The battlefield today is a no man’s land where nothing moves because there are drones and anti-drones above you,” and warned that without more Western money and technology, “Whoever plays the game of fastest innovation to scale will win this war.”

The 10-year Treasury yield topped 5 percent for the first time since 2023 as oil and diesel prices spike. The surge came after Saudi Arabia shut a critical pipeline and postponed talks with Iran and Gulf countries over the Strait of Hormuz, sending Brent crude above $109 a barrel and pushing the national average price of diesel to a fresh all time high of $6.23 a gallon. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said he expects the pipeline back online “very soon” but could not give an exact timeline, even as the Associated Press reported the damage could keep it offline for weeks. Vessel traffic through Hormuz has slowed to a trickle, with just 14 ships passing through Sunday, and gas prices have already climbed more than 45 percent since the U.S. and Israel launched the Iran war. Economist Diane Swonk warned the ripple effects will be significant, saying, “The cost of diesel gets into just about everything, from running a farm to the cost of food, but also everything across the economy that’s shipped,” while markets now price in better than 90 percent odds the Federal Reserve raises interest rates Wednesday for the first time since 2023.

Macklemore says he was dropped from Ed Sheeran’s tour after Robert Kraft organized a stadium boycott over his pro Palestinian statements. The rapper wrote on Instagram that Sheeran told him Patriots owner Robert Kraft rallied other stadium owners to issue an ultimatum, that Sheeran would be barred from their venues if Macklemore remained on the tour, after Macklemore performed his song “Hind’s Hall” and told a New Jersey crowd, “Free Palestine.” Kraft confirmed the decision in a statement, citing “a broader history of rhetoric and imagery that we believe has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community,” while saying he’d “welcome the opportunity to sit down with Macklemore and discuss the facts” toward what he called their shared goal of “peace for all people.” Macklemore said his conversations with Sheeran, whom he called a friend, ended in “fundamental disagreement,” recounting that Sheeran told him the words “Free Palestine” were hurtful to people he’d spoken with, to which Macklemore responded that this reflected “a fundamental disconnect” given the tens of thousands of Palestinian children killed in the war. Fellow artist Pink also weighed in, saying she wasn’t trying to get anyone fired but objected to displaying “violent images” of the war to a stadium of families, writing, “You don’t get to decide that for us.” Macklemore closed by saying he isn’t the victim, writing that the real victims are Palestinians “forced to live through unimaginable violence.”

Four people were hospitalized after a construction crane collapsed in Miami’s Brickell neighborhood. Miami Fire Rescue said the crane came down on Southeast 12th Street and Brickell Bay Drive, landing on top of a construction box trapping two workers, ages 29 and 27, inside, while a third worker, the crane operator, jumped clear as it tipped over. Fire Rescue Chief Robert Hevia described a complex scene where crews fought a vehicle fire while simultaneously cutting through the metal box to free the trapped workers, all of whom were ultimately extracted successfully. A driver whose SUV caught fire when the crane landed on its hood escaped by climbing out the back after reversing away from the falling crane. A nearby resident described hearing “a tremendous crash” and seeing flames “shooting up 20, 30 feet in the air,” and all four injured people, including the crane operator, were taken to the hospital with what officials described as minor injuries as OSHA prepares to investigate. 

Special Report: More On Russian Oligarch, Trump Family Wedding

A group photo shows about 35 people including Donald Trump Jr., his wife Bettina Anderson, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Tiffany Trump and Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev (with little more than his forehead and nose visible in the back row).

ProPublica, Investigative Reporting: Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas Wedding Was Secretly Bankrolled by Russian Oligarch Close to Putin, Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski, Sept. 14, 2026. The oligarch, Umar Kremlev, spent hundreds of thousands on expenses like renting out a private island. He appears to have met Trump Jr. only recently, but he attended the intimate wedding with a large group of other Russian guests.

In May, Donald Trump Jr. had a wedding on a pair of private islands.

This man’s role has been secret until now.Credit: Little Pipe Cay/Lux Hospitality Bahamas; Laura Gordon Photography via Instagram; Laura Gordon PhotographyTrump AdministrationThe oligarch, Umar Kremlev, spent hundreds of thousands on expenses like renting out a private island. He appears to have met Trump Jr. only recently, but he attended the intimate wedding with a large group of other Russian guests.by Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Joshua Kaplan and Alex MierjeskiSeptember 14, 2026, 5:00 amChange Appearance

On May 24, Donald Trump Jr. was celebrating in the Bahamas, as scantily clad dancers in stilettos and sailor caps performed for him and his guests. It was the last night of his wedding, a lavish, three-day party held across a pair of ultra-exclusive private islands. A five-tier funfetti cake had been airlifted in from Florida, and helicopters and seaplanes descended on the islands before guests settled into their oceanfront villas. That night on the beach, Trump Jr. lifted his bride into the air while fireworks launched from a barge over the sea.

“It was everything we dreamed of and more,” his wife later wrote on Instagram.

That dream was heavily funded by a secret benefactor: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin.

Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev, right, and Donald Trump Jr. (Reuters photo).

Kremlev footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and interviews with three people familiar with the event. The oligarch paid to rent out one of the private islands, where a reception was held and where guests slept. He also covered other big-ticket items, like the fireworks show, and his team helped plan the event. Kremlev is the head of the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports group that has been financed by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. The wedding payments came from an IBA-affiliated entity in Dubai that the boxing association uses for financial transactions.

The guest list numbered around 50. It included Trump Jr.’s brother-in-law Jared Kushner, Eric Trump — and Kremlev, an imposing man with a shaved head who speaks limited English. The oligarch was part of a large group whose presence puzzled other attendees. They sometimes stood off by themselves, speaking Russian.

“It was really small, like, just really close friends,” Trump Jr. later said on his podcast. “Tried to keep it really tight. And it was just awesome.”

Kremlev’s previously unreported relationship with Trump Jr. represents an extraordinary development: a member of Putin’s circle financially supporting the president’s son and gaining intimate access to the Trump family. For a decade, Putin’s government, regarded as a chief adversary of the U.S., has been accused of efforts to influence American elections. Attempts by Russia to make inroads with the Trumps before the 2016 election exploded into controversy that dogged much of the president’s first term.Do You Have Information We Should Know About Donald Trump Jr.?

We’re still reporting. If you know anything about Trump Jr., his businesses or his relationship with Umar Kremlev, please get in touch.

I’m always looking for under-covered stories about business and politics, no matter the specific subject. Contact me with tips, by email or securely on Signal. I take confidentiality seriously.Contact Me

National security experts expressed alarm at Trump Jr. accepting the oligarch’s largesse, saying it raised an urgent question: What motivated Kremlev to spend a fortune cultivating the connection?

“If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something,” said Frank Montoya Jr., a retired career FBI official who held senior counterintelligence roles. Oligarchs like Kremlev often act in coordination with the Russian government. While it’s unclear if that happened here, Trump Jr. put himself in a precarious position, Montoya said. “This should be unthinkable for the son of the president. End of story.”

Holden Triplett, who served as Trump’s counterintelligence director on the National Security Council during his first term, said Russian intelligence frequently seeks to build ties with U.S. government officials and their family members. “Money is a tried-and-true method to gain access,” said Triplett, who also worked for the FBI in Moscow.

In the days leading up to Trump Jr.’s wedding, Kremlev was in China as part of the delegation accompanying Putin, according to Chinese state media. The month before, Putin had bestowed him with a state honor, the Order of Friendship. The Ukrainian government has imposed sanctions on Kremlev personally, citing his closeness to Putin and Russian security services.

It’s not clear why Kremlev helped pay for Trump Jr.’s wedding. The men appear to have met only recently. Public reporting suggests Trump Jr. could have afforded it himself, with Forbes recently estimating his net worth at roughly $300 million.

In response to detailed questions, a spokesperson for Trump Jr. did not dispute the wedding payments from Kremlev. “Umar is a personal friend of Don,” he said. The spokesman said that Kremlev is “not someone he has a business relationship with” and that the men met through a mutual friend in the hunting world and bonded over their love of boxing and the outdoors.

A spokesperson for Trump Jr.’s brother Eric said of Kremlev: “Eric has absolutely no clue who this person is, nor has never heard his name.”

In a statement, Kremlev’s press office said, “Mr. Kremlev and Mr. Trump Jr have a friendly relationship” and they first met “a couple of years ago.”

The press office described Kremlev as a businessman and philanthropist, adding, “Mr. Kremlev has never discussed political matters with any of his American friends and acquaintances,” including Trump Jr. They said the boxing organization itself did not incur expenses for the wedding but did not comment on the payments from the Dubai entity. The press office also said that when Putin and Kremlev were in China recently, Kremlev was not part of Putin’s “official delegation.”

Kushner, who has been helping lead the U.S. government’s negotiations with Russia over Ukraine, did not respond to requests for comment. The White House and the Russian government did not respond either.

The revelations come as Trump Jr. has emerged as a political power center in his own right. Beloved by the MAGA base, he reportedly played an active role in vetting White House cabinet picks for Trump’s second term and was dubbed his father’s “most essential political adviser” by The Wall Street Journal. “I certainly don’t think I’d be sitting here as the VP nominee without Don’s help,” Vice President JD Vance told the outlet in late 2024.

This account is based on records and interviews with dozens of current and former IBA officials and contractors, wedding attendees and other people in Trump Jr.’s and Kremlev’s circles.

Trump Jr. exchanged vows with socialite Bettina Anderson on a private island that was featured in “Pirates of the Caribbean” and the 2006 James Bond movie “Casino Royale.” They had their first dance on a second private island nearby that can rent for around $100,000 a night, paid for by Kremlev. The company that put on the fireworks display charges around $70,000 for such shows. (Kremlev did not attend the ceremony itself, which was held on the first day and had just 18 guests, Trump Jr.’s spokesperson said.)A man and woman stand on a beach as fireworks explode above the water.Donald Trump Jr. and his wife, Bettina Anderson, at their wedding, watching fireworks paid for by Umar Kremlev. Laura Gordon Photography via Lewis Miller DesignDonald Trump Jr. wears a multi-colored Junkanoo headpiece while dancing with Bettina Anderson.The magazine Hello! shared an image of Trump Jr. wearing a Junkanoo headpiece while dancing with his new bride. Laura Gordon Photography/Hello!

The atmosphere was Monte Carlo meets frat party — helicopters in and out, a beachside DJ set, beer pong tournaments. One day, the men went spearfishing. Artisans at the London fashion house Safiyaa spent 150 hours embroidering Anderson’s bespoke silk reception outfit. The president’s son had undergone treatment to better define his jawline for the occasion.

Some longtime friends of Trump Jr. told associates they were disappointed not to be invited, though a few of his closest business partners — executives at the Trump family crypto company, World Liberty Financial, and the venture capital firm 1789 Capital — did make the cut. President Trump himself skipped it. (“He’d like me to go, but it’s going to be just a small, little private affair,” the president told reporters beforehand. “I said, you know, this is not good timing for me.”) But many of the guests were immediate family of the bride and groom.

That made the large contingent of Russians all the more conspicuous. “What are they doing here?” one person recalled thinking. At least one of the Russian guests had been with Kremlev on his China trip: Alexander Lagutin, a businessperson who has served in senior roles at a Russian defense contractor and a state-backed energy company. Kremlev’s right hand at the IBA, Elena Sobol, attended the wedding too.

In May, Donald Trump Jr. had a wedding on a pair of private islands.

This man’s role has been secret until now.Credit: Little Pipe Cay/Lux Hospitality Bahamas; Laura Gordon Photography via Instagram; Laura Gordon PhotographyTrump AdministrationDonald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas Wedding Was Secretly Bankrolled by Russian Oligarch Close to PutinThe oligarch, Umar Kremlev, spent hundreds of thousands on expenses like renting out a private island. He appears to have met Trump Jr. only recently, but he attended the intimate wedding with a large group of other Russian guests.

On May 24, Donald Trump Jr. was celebrating in the Bahamas, as scantily clad dancers in stilettos and sailor caps performed for him and his guests. It was the last night of his wedding, a lavish, three-day party held across a pair of ultra-exclusive private islands. A five-tier funfetti cake had been airlifted in from Florida, and helicopters and seaplanes descended on the islands before guests settled into their oceanfront villas. That night on the beach, Trump Jr. lifted his bride into the air while fireworks launched from a barge over the sea.

“It was everything we dreamed of and more,” his wife later wrote on Instagram.

That dream was heavily funded by a secret benefactor: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin.

Kremlev footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and interviews with three people familiar with the event. The oligarch paid to rent out one of the private islands, where a reception was held and where guests slept. He also covered other big-ticket items, like the fireworks show, and his team helped plan the event. Kremlev is the head of the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports group that has been financed by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. The wedding payments came from an IBA-affiliated entity in Dubai that the boxing association uses for financial transactions.

The guest list numbered around 50. It included Trump Jr.’s brother-in-law Jared Kushner, Eric Trump — and Kremlev, an imposing man with a shaved head who speaks limited English. The oligarch was part of a large group whose presence puzzled other attendees. They sometimes stood off by themselves, speaking Russian.

“It was really small, like, just really close friends,” Trump Jr. later said on his podcast. “Tried to keep it really tight. And it was just awesome.”

Kremlev’s previously unreported relationship with Trump Jr. represents an extraordinary development: a member of Putin’s circle financially supporting the president’s son and gaining intimate access to the Trump family. For a decade, Putin’s government, regarded as a chief adversary of the U.S., has been accused of efforts to influence American elections. Attempts by Russia to make inroads with the Trumps before the 2016 election exploded into controversy that dogged much of the president’s first term.Do You Have Information We Should Know About Donald Trump Jr.?

We’re still reporting. If you know anything about Trump Jr., his businesses or his relationship with Umar Kremlev, please get in touch.

National security experts expressed alarm at Trump Jr. accepting the oligarch’s largesse, saying it raised an urgent question: What motivated Kremlev to spend a fortune cultivating the connection?

“If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something,” said Frank Montoya Jr., a retired career FBI official who held senior counterintelligence roles. Oligarchs like Kremlev often act in coordination with the Russian government. While it’s unclear if that happened here, Trump Jr. put himself in a precarious position, Montoya said. “This should be unthinkable for the son of the president. End of story.”

Holden Triplett, who served as Trump’s counterintelligence director on the National Security Council during his first term, said Russian intelligence frequently seeks to build ties with U.S. government officials and their family members. “Money is a tried-and-true method to gain access,” said Triplett, who also worked for the FBI in Moscow.

In the days leading up to Trump Jr.’s wedding, Kremlev was in China as part of the delegation accompanying Putin, according to Chinese state media. The month before, Putin had bestowed him with a state honor, the Order of Friendship. The Ukrainian government has imposed sanctions on Kremlev personally, citing his closeness to Putin and Russian security services.

It’s not clear why Kremlev helped pay for Trump Jr.’s wedding. The men appear to have met only recently. Public reporting suggests Trump Jr. could have afforded it himself, with Forbes recently estimating his net worth at roughly $300 million.

In response to detailed questions, a spokesperson for Trump Jr. did not dispute the wedding payments from Kremlev. “Umar is a personal friend of Don,” he said. The spokesman said that Kremlev is “not someone he has a business relationship with” and that the men met through a mutual friend in the hunting world and bonded over their love of boxing and the outdoors.

A spokesperson for Trump Jr.’s brother Eric said of Kremlev: “Eric has absolutely no clue who this person is, nor has never heard his name.”

In a statement, Kremlev’s press office said, “Mr. Kremlev and Mr. Trump Jr have a friendly relationship” and they first met “a couple of years ago.”

The press office described Kremlev as a businessman and philanthropist, adding, “Mr. Kremlev has never discussed political matters with any of his American friends and acquaintances,” including Trump Jr. They said the boxing organization itself did not incur expenses for the wedding but did not comment on the payments from the Dubai entity. The press office also said that when Putin and Kremlev were in China recently, Kremlev was not part of Putin’s “official delegation.”

Kushner, who has been helping lead the U.S. government’s negotiations with Russia over Ukraine, did not respond to requests for comment. The White House and the Russian government did not respond either.

The revelations come as Trump Jr. has emerged as a political power center in his own right. Beloved by the MAGA base, he reportedly played an active role in vetting White House cabinet picks for Trump’s second term and was dubbed his father’s “most essential political adviser” by The Wall Street Journal. “I certainly don’t think I’d be sitting here as the VP nominee without Don’s help,” Vice President JD Vance told the outlet in late 2024.

This account is based on records and interviews with dozens of current and former IBA officials and contractors, wedding attendees and other people in Trump Jr.’s and Kremlev’s circles.

Trump Jr. exchanged vows with socialite Bettina Anderson on a private island that was featured in “Pirates of the Caribbean” and the 2006 James Bond movie “Casino Royale.” They had their first dance on a second private island nearby that can rent for around $100,000 a night, paid for by Kremlev. The company that put on the fireworks display charges around $70,000 for such shows. (Kremlev did not attend the ceremony itself, which was held on the first day and had just 18 guests, Trump Jr.’s spokesperson said.)A man and woman stand on a beach as fireworks explode above the water.Donald Trump Jr. and his wife, Bettina Anderson, at their wedding, watching fireworks paid for by Umar Kremlev. Laura Gordon Photography via Lewis Miller DesignDonald Trump Jr. wears a multi-colored Junkanoo headpiece while dancing with Bettina Anderson.The magazine Hello! shared an image of Trump Jr. wearing a Junkanoo headpiece while dancing with his new bride. Laura Gordon Photography/Hello!

The atmosphere was Monte Carlo meets frat party — helicopters in and out, a beachside DJ set, beer pong tournaments. One day, the men went spearfishing. Artisans at the London fashion house Safiyaa spent 150 hours embroidering Anderson’s bespoke silk reception outfit. The president’s son had undergone treatment to better define his jawline for the occasion.

Some longtime friends of Trump Jr. told associates they were disappointed not to be invited, though a few of his closest business partners — executives at the Trump family crypto company, World Liberty Financial, and the venture capital firm 1789 Capital — did make the cut. President Trump himself skipped it. (“He’d like me to go, but it’s going to be just a small, little private affair,” the president told reporters beforehand. “I said, you know, this is not good timing for me.”) But many of the guests were immediate family of the bride and groom.

That made the large contingent of Russians all the more conspicuous. “What are they doing here?” one person recalled thinking. At least one of the Russian guests had been with Kremlev on his China trip: Alexander Lagutin, a businessperson who has served in senior roles at a Russian defense contractor and a state-backed energy company. Kremlev’s right hand at the IBA, Elena Sobol, attended the wedding too.

Since the wedding, the Trumps have released scores of photos and videos of the festivities. While they show many of the guests, the Russians have been absent from all of them. (The top of Kremlev’s head is visible in the back of one group photo posted on Instagram by a friend of the bride.) After the party was over, on his “Triggered” podcast, Trump Jr. emphasized the event’s privacy: “The people that were there — if you’re on that list, you weren’t talking.”

In 2009, Umar Kremlev did not yet exist.

He was in his late 20s, with a criminal record for extortion and battery, still going by his birth name, Umar Lutfulloyev, according to the Russian independent news outlet Proekt. But he was about to rapidly ascend in Russia to a position of wealth and influence, with the help of a powerful friend. (“Mr. Kremlev has a completely clean legal record,” his press office said.)Russian President Vladimir Putin leans into a conversation with Umar Kremlev.Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, with Umar Kremlev, during an event in Moscow in September 2022 Sputnik/Reuters

In 2010, he changed his name to Kremlev. He soon joined a Russian government-backed biker gang called the Night Wolves, eventually taking a leadership role, according to news reports. That is what first brought him close to Alexei Rubezhnoi, who now leads Putin’s presidential security service, Proekt reported. In 2017, Kremlev took over the Russian Boxing Federation, after Rubezhnoi personally intervened to put him at the helm.

In 2020, Kremlev became president of the IBA. The association was something akin to FIFA but for boxing and had long overseen the sport in the Olympics. But it had been beset by corruption allegations and was on the brink of insolvency. Kremlev brought money to the table from Gazprom, the state-owned company that operates as an arm of Putin’s government. Gazprom publicly became the IBA’s financial backer, filling its coffers with tens of millions of dollars.

Former high-level IBA officials said that Kremlev had a clear political agenda. “Umar is guided by Putin. It was using the sport for soft political power,” a former IBA board member told ProPublica. “It’s geopolitics. That it’s boxing is just happenstance.” Kremlev, 43, is also heavily involved in an organization called Healthy Fatherland, run by his 23-year-old wife’s twin sister. The group — which promotes healthy eating and youth sports — is under Ukrainian sanctions for its alleged role in a program of abducting Ukrainian children from occupied territories and relocating them under the guise of “rehabilitation.” (Healthy Fatherland did not respond to a request for comment.)

Kremlev’s cozy relationship with the government has made him rich. Putin used the levers of the state to make Kremlev a dominant player in the Russian sports betting industry, according to Proekt, and one of his companies was chosen to operate the national lottery. After Putin nationalized Russia’s largest car dealership company in 2023, Kremlev became the owner of that too.

He now flaunts that wealth through his boisterous public persona. In one video Kremlev posted on social media, he surprises a young mother by giving her a free car. In another, he criticizes his young female aide’s outfit as not feminine enough and makes her change. He shadowboxes with ostriches and brings in celebrities like Rick Ross and Naomi Campbell for IBA events; he praises Stalin and rides private jets.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the U.S. began to indict Russian oligarchs and seize yachts and other assets. Kremlev repeatedly told associates he was worried about being targeted by a U.S. government probe, according to a person close to IBA leadership. “He was very afraid of American sanctions,” the person added. (Kremlev does not appear on public U.S. sanction lists.)

With the business environment in Europe growing more hostile to Russia, Kremlev moved much of the IBA’s operations from Switzerland to the United Arab Emirates. A new Dubai entity, IB Challenger, would later pay wedding expenses for Trump Jr. The current sources of the IBA’s funds are murky, and, in recent years, top executives have given conflicting accounts of the status of its relationship with Gazprom. (Kremlev’s press office told ProPublica the IBA’s sponsorship contract with Gazprom “expired long ago.”) People close to the organization said they understood that its money still comes from Russia.

In 2023, the International Olympic Committee stripped Kremlev’s IBA of its role organizing Olympic boxing. It has cited a host of governance issues and the group’s refusal to “transparently explain the sources of its financing or to explain its full financial dependency, at the time, on a single state-owned company.”

It was a major setback that deprived the IBA of a key source of its international influence. Kremlev has raged against the Olympic committee ever since and has said that his IBA predecessor, who he blames for the problems, “must be shot.”

Kremlev saw a potential ally in President Trump. After Trump’s second inauguration, in January 2025, Kremlev sent an open letter to the president asking him to look into the Olympic committee’s actions in advance of the 2028 Los Angeles Games. “We look forward with great optimism to the possibility of working together to make the Olympic movement great again,” he wrote.

In September 2025, the IBA brought in Trump Jr. for a panel discussion in Istanbul about boxing. With his then-girlfriend, Anderson, sitting offstage, he criticized transgender women competing in women’s sports and reminisced about watching Saturday night fights as a child. Trump Jr. shared the stage with Kremlev, the boxer Manny Pacquiao and Muhammad Ali’s daughter Rasheda. (Trump Jr.’s spokesperson said he was not paid for the appearance and was already in Turkey for an unrelated event.)Umar Kremlev shakes hands with Donald Trump Jr., who is holding a model of a boxing ring.Kremlev hosted Trump Jr. at an event in Istanbul in September 2025. International Boxing Association

The president’s son had reason to be attuned to the sensitivity of cozying up with a Putin associate, especially while his father navigates the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting with a Russian attorney in Trump Tower became a major focus of the Robert Mueller investigation.

The Trump Tower meeting was arranged after an email offering Trump Jr. damaging information about Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Trump Jr. famously responded, “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.” Trump Jr. later dismissed the matter as a “witch hunt,” and the Mueller report concluded that there was not enough evidence to convict him of a crime.

Recently, Kremlev has been working to expand into the U.S. market. In July, his group hosted a bare-knuckle boxing event in Miami, a chance to showcase a particularly bloody form of the sport in which contenders fight without gloves. But the debut was overshadowed when manosphere influencer Andrew Tate, who the IBA had brought in to host, was arrested by U.S. Marshals outside the arena. (Tate is facing rape and sex trafficking charges in the United Kingdom, which he has denied.)

Much about Kremlev’s relationship with Trump Jr., and where it is headed, remains unknown. In a press release after the Istanbul panel, the IBA hinted there was more to come.

“President Kremlev and Donald Trump Jr made it clear – this alliance will not remain symbolic,” the press release read. “More joint initiatives will follow.”Corrections

More On U.S. Markets, Economy, Inflation, Jobs

Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, called on industry leaders to slow A.I. development for fear of losing control of the technology. Shown at right is Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI.

New York Times, Tech Stocks Shudder in Response to Calls to Slow A.I. Progress, Joe Rennison, Sept. 14, 2026. Companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence in Asia, Europe and the United States posted declines after tech leaders expressed worries about the safety of “frontier” A.I. technology.

Technology stocks around the world fell on Monday, after a chorus of senior executives at artificial intelligence companies called for slowing down the rapid pace of development of the transformative technology.

Futures for the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index fell 1.5 percent ahead of the open of trading in New York. Nvidia, Intel, Oracle and other companies at the forefront of the A.I. build-out posted declines premarket.

South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI index, which is heavily influenced by two chip suppliers for A.I. data centers, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, fell more than 3 percent. Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s largest chipmaker, fell 1.2 percent. Japan’s main stock index also declined, with SoftBank, a major tech investment firm, shedding more than 10 percent.

In Europe, semiconductor stocks like ASML of the Netherlands and Infineon of Germany fell sharply.

The tech industry has been the engine powering global markets to repeated new highs in recent years as advances in A.I. have moved faster than investors initially expected.

Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, published a long blog post on Saturday calling on industry leaders to slow A.I. development for fear of losing control of rapidly advancing models at the so-called frontier of development.

Those models, he wrote, have already begun to build the next generation of artificial intelligence, in what is known as “recursive self-improvement.” That raises the risk that the technology will become an autonomous cybersecurity threat, even threatening “serious economic disruption.”

“A race to the bottom, spurred by commercial incentives, can make these risks more acute,” Dr. Amodei said. As one remedy, he said he would hire third-party “evaluators” who would “verify adherence to safety practices and commitments.”

The post was endorsed by Elon Musk, who runs Space X, which also houses his A.I platform, x.AI; Sam Altman, who co-founded OpenAI; and Demis Hassabis, the co-founder of Google DeepMind.

“I agree with Dario,” Mr. Altman said, adding that he would also hire third-party “evaluators” to oversee OpenAI’s safety practices.

SpaceX, which is publicly traded, fell about 2 percent in premarket trading on Monday. OpenAI and Anthropic are both expected to list publicly in the future. But Mr. Altman of OpenAI said in a recent interview with Fortune that “right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public.”

Kevin Hassett, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, said on Fox News on Sunday that the steps Mr. Amodei suggested in his blog post were “pretty sensible.”

Despite the rare show of allegiance among the tech leaders, President Trump said that he would not want to see a slowdown that could give China the opportunity to move ahead of the United States on A.I.

“Whoever wins with A.I. wins,” said Mr. Trump on the sidelines of a golf tournament held at one of his courses in Ireland over the weekend.

China’s rapid progress in open-source A.I. models, which rival those from Anthropic and other industry leaders and, has split Silicon Valley. In his call for coordination of safe A.I. development, Dr. Amodei said there should be restrictions on chip sales to China and a crack down on the improper harvesting of data from A.I. systems by Chinese companies.

“If we execute these measures well,” he added, “I believe they would slow China’s progress enough to widen America’s lead significantly over the next 3-5 years — the window when AI becomes geopolitically most important.” He also said that the United States and other democratic nations should work to get China to restrict the speed of A.I. developments, although given the stakes “there will likely be stark limits on what can be achieved.”

On Monday, Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, told reporters in a briefing that “hyping up various threat narratives, engaging in confrontation and resorting to malicious competition will only disrupt the global A.I. governance process and serve the interests of no one.”

More On Artificial Intelligence Fears

New York Times, China’s Top Spy Chief Warns A.I. Is a Threat to Party Rule, Lily Kuo, Sept. 14, 2026. Even as Beijing urges the United States not to hype the dangers of A.I., its own spy chief is framing the technology as a threat to the Communist Party’s security.

China’s top spy chief has warned that artificial intelligence could pose a direct threat to the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power, in what is the highest-level and most detailed articulation yet of how Beijing sees the technology’s security risks.

The unusually blunt assessment by Chen Yixin, the head of China’s Ministry of State Security, is in contrast to the warnings dominating the A.I. debate in the United States, which have focused on the possibility that A.I. could slip out of human control or pose a threat to humanity itself.

In an article published on Sunday in the state-run magazine China Cyberspace, Mr. Chen called for more party control over A.I. and stricter government oversight. This, he said, was necessary to protect political stability at home; to defend against increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks and misinformation campaigns from “hostile forces”; and to compete militarily with countries like the United States.

Mr. Chen referred specifically to U.S. tech companies and their A.I. models — like Claude Mythos and GPT-5.5-Cyber — as examples of new threats to cybersecurity. He also described the danger that foreign intelligence agencies might use A.I. for “large-scale espionage” and attacks on China’s critical infrastructure.

The warning from the powerful security agency makes clear that China sees foreign A.I. models as an active threat to China, according to Henry Gao, a law professor at Singapore Management University. That effectively draws a red line before talks between American and Chinese officials on A.I. safety risks, expected ahead of a meeting between President Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, on Sept. 24 in Washington.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in China? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

“Beijing is going into these talks viewing A.I. safety not as a shared humanitarian mission, but through an adversarial lens,” Mr. Gao said. It is making clear to Chinese tech firms and foreign rivals that “data sovereignty and political security will never be traded away for international safety accords,” he added.

Mr. Chen’s remarks are not the first time the security agency has spoken about the dangers of A.I., but they are the most comprehensive and signal Beijing’s growing concern about the industry. The security chief outlined several ways that A.I. could pose a threat to China:

Undermining the security of the Communist Party. The government’s top priority has long been maintaining the power of the ruling party. Mr. Chen’s article warns that those with “ulterior motives” could use A.I. to generate fake videos and audio to wage a “propaganda war” against China.

“They’re worried, among other things, of say a deepfake of a Chinese official saying something that wasn’t actually said, and that spreading rapidly and destabilizing everything,” said Kyle Chan, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies Chinese technology and industrial policy. “Someone thinks that Xi Jinping made some announcement which he didn’t actually. That could sow chaos.”

Attacks on China’s critical infrastructure. Mr. Chen, the spy chief, wrote that the technical and financial barriers to launching cyberattacks had been drastically lowered because of A.I. This, he said, posed “serious risks” to China’s information infrastructure. Last week, a small team of researchers in California demonstrated that risk when they disclosed a hacking tool that could take control of millions of users’ accounts on WeChat, China’s most widely used messaging app.

Leaks of sensitive information. Chinese users using foreign models could cause large-scale data leaks, the article noted. Anthropic, the company behind Claude and other A.I. models, said last week that the Chinese start-up Moonshot AI had routed queries by its users to Claude. Those queries included sensitive data, including video surveillance linked to the Chinese military, as well as proprietary information from high-profile Chinese technology companies.

More intense military competition. The U.S. military’s use of A.I. in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran was an example of how warfare has been “fundamentally transformed,” Mr. Chen wrote. He says that whoever can harness the power of tools such as algorithms to achieve more precise sensing and targeting, “will gain the initiative on the battlefield.”

China’s top spy chief has warned that artificial intelligence could pose a direct threat to the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power, in what is the highest-level and most detailed articulation yet of how Beijing sees the technology’s security risks.

The unusually blunt assessment by Chen Yixin, the head of China’s Ministry of State Security, is in contrast to the warnings dominating the A.I. debate in the United States, which have focused on the possibility that A.I. could slip out of human control or pose a threat to humanity itself.

In an article published on Sunday in the state-run magazine China Cyberspace, Mr. Chen called for more party control over A.I. and stricter government oversight. This, he said, was necessary to protect political stability at home; to defend against increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks and misinformation campaigns from “hostile forces”; and to compete militarily with countries like the United States.

Mr. Chen referred specifically to U.S. tech companies and their A.I. models — like Claude Mythos and GPT-5.5-Cyber — as examples of new threats to cybersecurity. He also described the danger that foreign intelligence agencies might use A.I. for “large-scale espionage” and attacks on China’s critical infrastructure.

The warning from the powerful security agency makes clear that China sees foreign A.I. models as an active threat to China, according to Henry Gao, a law professor at Singapore Management University. That effectively draws a red line before talks between American and Chinese officials on A.I. safety risks, expected ahead of a meeting between President Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, on Sept. 24 in Washington.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in China? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

“Beijing is going into these talks viewing A.I. safety not as a shared humanitarian mission, but through an adversarial lens,” Mr. Gao said. It is making clear to Chinese tech firms and foreign rivals that “data sovereignty and political security will never be traded away for international safety accords,” he added.

Mr. Chen’s remarks are not the first time the security agency has spoken about the dangers of A.I., but they are the most comprehensive and signal Beijing’s growing concern about the industry. The security chief outlined several ways that A.I. could pose a threat to China:

Undermining the security of the Communist Party. The government’s top priority has long been maintaining the power of the ruling party. Mr. Chen’s article warns that those with “ulterior motives” could use A.I. to generate fake videos and audio to wage a “propaganda war” against China.

“They’re worried, among other things, of say a deepfake of a Chinese official saying something that wasn’t actually said, and that spreading rapidly and destabilizing everything,” said Kyle Chan, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies Chinese technology and industrial policy. “Someone thinks that Xi Jinping made some announcement which he didn’t actually. That could sow chaos.”

Attacks on China’s critical infrastructure. Mr. Chen, the spy chief, wrote that the technical and financial barriers to launching cyberattacks had been drastically lowered because of A.I. This, he said, posed “serious risks” to China’s information infrastructure. Last week, a small team of researchers in California demonstrated that risk when they disclosed a hacking tool that could take control of millions of users’ accounts on WeChat, China’s most widely used messaging app.

Leaks of sensitive information. Chinese users using foreign models could cause large-scale data leaks, the article noted. Anthropic, the company behind Claude and other A.I. models, said last week that the Chinese start-up Moonshot AI had routed queries by its users to Claude. Those queries included sensitive data, including video surveillance linked to the Chinese military, as well as proprietary information from high-profile Chinese technology companies.

More intense military competition. The U.S. military’s use of A.I. in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran was an example of how warfare has been “fundamentally transformed,” Mr. Chen wrote. He says that whoever can harness the power of tools such as algorithms to achieve more precise sensing and targeting, “will gain the initiative on the battlefield.”

Trump says only guardrails that AI needs is ‘STRONG AND SMART’ president, Elleiana Green and Owen Dahlkamp, The president is trying to shut down a growing push for AI regulation, amid calls from leaders to slow the production of artificial intelligence.

Politico, Trump says only guardrails that AI needs is ‘STRONG AND SMART’ president, Elleiana Green and Owen Dahlkamp, Sept. 14, 2026. The president is trying to shut down a growing push for AI regulation, amid calls from leaders to slow the production of artificial intelligence.President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks with reporters on Air Force One.

President Donald Trump tried to shut down a burgeoning push for the United States to further regulate artificial intelligence on Monday morning, saying the U.S. has already done enough to prevent AI from catastrophic risks.

The post comes as technology leaders called for the industry to slow down the production of artificial intelligence over the weekend, sending tech stocks tumbling on Monday.

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

The president has repeatedly said in public remarks over the past week that his top priority is ensuring China does not gain supremacy over a new technology that is poised to reshape civil society. “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers,” he said Monday, “and the only one that is happy about it is China.”

“Don’t kill the Golden Goose!” he added in a subsequent social media post.

Trump also called out Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, claiming that he is “now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’” after the Trump administration had previously “stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things.’“

Over the weekend, Amodei was the first major AI leader to publicly call for a slowdown, writing in a lengthy essay, “We must slow down the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models.”

Shortly after, xAI CEO Elon Musk said on social media that “Dario is right.”

OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, also said he agreed with Amodei, adding that the issue has been a topic of discussion at OpenAI. And OpenAI’s top European lobbyist, in an interview with POLITICO, called on the United Kingdom to also introduce new regulations.

The Trump administration previously clashed with Anthropic publicly after the company attempted to restrict how the Pentagon could use its Claude AI model, resulting in it being designated a supply-chain risk. The AI giant sued, and a federal judge in late July said that it seemed that the administration overstepped its authority in targeting the company.

One of Anthropic’s most advanced models was also slapped with export controls in June after the administration deemed its release posed security risks. In an attempt to comply, Anthropic shut down the model entirely before the ban was partially lifted later that month.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s Monday social media post.

Concern from lawmakers and the tech industry spiked last week after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned and issued a warning that the emerging technology could “could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

His prediction increased fears about the growing capabilities of the technology, with top AI labs in recent weeks disclosing several instances in which rogue AI agents broke out of their testing environments and carried out sophisticated hacking campaigns across the internet.

Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance told reporters on Monday before Trump’s social media post that AI is “something we’re concerned by, but we want to make sure that we actually regulate smartly and we’re thoughtful about the risk here.”

He added, “I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them. It feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan horse.”

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: AI Is a Test of Our Maturity. *Gulp,* Bill Kristol, Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, Sept. 14, 2026.  AI fears—as Bill discusses below—are scrambling our politics and making for some extremely strange bedfellows. How strange? Well, how many issues could put Steve Bannon, Bernie Sanders, and an industry whistleblower all on the same D.C. stage?

Andrew will be attending and reporting on tomorrow’s “Pro-Human Assembly”—so watch this space. Happy Wednesday.

Global Environment, Climate Policy, Artificial Intelllgence Threats

New York Times, E.P.A. Expected to Erase Limits on Climate Pollution From Power Plants, Maxine Joselow, Sept. 14, 2026 (print ed.). Generation of electricity is the second largest source of carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases in the United States.

The Trump administration plans to announce Monday that the United States will no longer limit the planet-warming pollution that power plants pump into the air while burning coal and gas, according to two people familiar with the proposal.

The shift by the Environmental Protection Agency would complete the administration’s erasure of the most consequential climate policies of Presidents Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Barack Obama. If the move survives expected legal challenges, it could also prevent future administrations from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

The power sector is the second largest source of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the United States. This pollution accumulates in the atmosphere, where it traps the sun’s heat, raising temperatures and supercharging extreme weather events around the globe.

Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, is expected to announce the change during a meeting of energy ministers from the Group of 20 nations in Houston, according to the two people familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to describe the proposal before it is made public.

Representatives for the E.P.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Sunday evening.

Environmentalists and energy experts have opposed the move, which has been in the works since last spring. They have noted that if the U.S. power sector were its own country, it would be the fifth-largest climate polluter in the world after China, the entire United States, India and Russia.

President Trump has derided climate change as a “hoax,” and in his second term, the E.P.A. has systematically dismantled policies aimed at slowing global warming that have been criticized as costly by oil, gas and coal companies. The administration has tried to make it easier and cheaper to produce and use fossil fuels, especially to generate electricity that can meet growing demand from artificial intelligence data centers.

Earlier this year, the E.P.A. eliminated greenhouse gas standards for car tailpipes and eased restrictions on planet-warming chemicals used in air-conditioners and refrigerators. Most consequentially, the agency repealed the scientific determination that gave it the legal authority to create climate regulations in the first place.

Under the plan expected Monday, power plants would still be subject to some limits on mercury, arsenic and other contaminants, though the E.P.A. has already loosened restrictions on how much mercury they can emit.

The Biden administration’s climate rules for power plants, finalized in 2024, applied to coal-burning plants that were in operation and gas-burning plants that could be built in the future. To comply, coal plants could have installed technology to trap carbon emissions before they are released into the air and store them deep underground. Gas plants could have operated on cleaner fuels like hydrogen, which produces no emissions when burned.

The Biden administration estimated that the regulation would also prevent other pollutants, such as soot, from escaping into the air, resulting in $120 billion in public health benefits by 2047. It projected that in 2035 alone, the rule would prevent up to 1,200 premature deaths, 870 hospital and emergency room visits, 360,000 asthma attacks, 48,000 school absence days and 57,000 lost workdays.

Under the Trump administration, the E.P.A. has stopped estimating the public health benefits of reducing pollution in the cost-benefit analyses necessary for clean-air regulations. Instead, the agency has estimated only the costs to businesses of complying with the rules.

The coal industry had complained that Biden-era restrictions on emissions were costly and unworkable. It had predicted that many coal plants would have closed instead of spending billions of dollars on new pollution controls.

Coal is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels; when burned, it produces more air pollution and more greenhouse gases than any other source of energy. The economics of coal are also unfavorable; experts say new coal plants are more expensive to build and operate than gas plants and renewable energy sources like solar and wind power.

The use of coal in the United States has been declining for decades. While coal generated more than half of the nation’s electricity in 1990, that share fell to roughly 17 percent in 2025.

The Terminator at 40: James Cameron's dark vision is more relevant than ever.

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary:The MAGA Plot(s) to Destroy Humanity, Paul Krugman, right, Sept. 14, 2026. On AI and climate, it’s the same story of mass destruction.

Will AI lead to the destruction of humanity? Over the past year a number of top AI researchers have warned that AI was quickly attaining the capacity to wipe out humankind.

These warnings aren’t entirely new. At first, however, Anthropic was virtually alone among the top LLM companies in highlighting the dangers that unregulated AI poses. And in return for its conscientious objection to allowing its models to be used for AI-agentic warfare – a clear means of humanicide – Hegseth’s Pentagon tried to retaliate by designating the company as a security risk. Fortunately, a judge saw through this ploy.

Still, until very recently other AI companies — in particular Elon Musk’s Grok and ChatGPT — were willing to dance to the Trump administration’s tune to get a competitive advantage Currently, Grok is used by the U.S. military to assist targeting in Iran – a clear pre-cursor to situation in which the machines, not humans, decide who is the target.

But now, quite suddenly, Musk and ChatGPT’s CEO Sam Altman are falling in behind the call by Daron Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, to acknowledge the existential dangers of AI and to put on the brakes. Notably, Amodei explicitly calls for government regulation if other AI companies refuse to cooperate:

The most effective method of pacing is via regulation that targets all US frontier AI companies, as that covers even those who are unwilling to cooperate voluntarily.

Regardless of why Musk and Altman are having a sudden attack of conscience, I applaud their new position. As many people think, perhaps this was due to the Hugging Face hack by rogue ChatGPT AI-agents. But I also think Musk and Altman’s volte-face was influenced by the changing political environment, with the near-certainty that Democrats will take the House and a very good chance that they will take the Senate.

For in a real sense, Amodei isn’t just trying to protect humanity from rogue AI, he is also trying to protect humanity from Donald Trump. It’s important to remember that, under the Biden administration, government policymakers tried to formulate some basic AI precautions. But removing those precautions was literally one of the first things Donald Trump did when taking office the second time. And that’s a history worth revisiting at a moment when the AI industry itself is sounding the alarm, but Trump is dismissing the risks:

You have a lot of very negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.

Well, I’m glad to know that he’s sure that bad things won’t happen. But last I heard, Trump wasn’t a technology expert. And his recent record on rosy predictions — wasn’t the Iran war supposed to be over in a few days? — hasn’t been great.

In any case, here’s the history you should know.

The current age of AI is often considered to have begun with the public release of ChatGPT on Nov. 30, 2022. However, the potential economic and social implications of large language models were already becoming apparent during the first year of the Biden administration, which began implementing a series of rules and executive orders intended to limit the potential damage from the technology. The Economic Policy Institute maintains a comprehensive list of these actions.

The centerpiece of the Biden agenda on AI was Executive Order 14401, issued on October 30, 2023, titled “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.” The document declared that

Harnessing AI for good and realizing its myriad benefits requires mitigating its substantial risks. This endeavor demands a society-wide effort that includes government, the private sector, academia, and civil society.

Would we be less panicked now if there had been a serious effort to put that executive order’s recommendations into effect? It’s basically impossible to say, because precautionary policy toward AI never got a chance. Trump revoked Executive Order 14401 on Jan. 20, 2025. Yes, you read that right: He literally removed all safeguards on AI on his first day in office.

Just three days later his administration issued a new executive order, “Removing barriers to American leadership in artificial intelligence,” which might be summarized as “Damn the social and existential risks, full speed ahead.”

Some of this determination not to limit the risks from AI reflected industry influence. A week before Trump took office, NVIDIA combined an appeal for deregulation with slavish praise for the incoming administration:

The first Trump Administration laid the foundation for America’s current strength and success in AI, fostering an environment where U.S. industry could compete and win on merit without compromising national security.

But there was also a social aspect to Trump’s anti-regulation stance. You won’t be surprised to hear that hostility to DEI was right at the heart of the agenda. Literally the second sentence of the order declares that

we must develop AI systems that are free from ideological bias or engineered social agendas.

I think this was a thinly veiled plug for Grok, which by all accounts is vastly inferior to offerings from Anthropic and OpenAI but which Elon Musk has tried to sell in part because it supposedly isn’t “woke.”

In any case, Trump’s dismissal of the risks from AI, even at a time when experts and industry insiders are in hair-on-fire mode, is simply a continuation of the position he has taken from the beginning.

It is also, not coincidentally, completely consistent with his attitude toward the other existential threat facing humanity — a threat that isn’t at all hypothetical and is rapidly becoming acute.

The contiguous United States has just experienced its hottest summer on record, with July the hottest month ever. Across the Atlantic, Europe has been ravaged by droughts and heat waves. Here’s a headline from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:

And everything we know about climate change suggests that what we’ve seen so far is just a foretaste of the disasters to come.

Yet last year, speaking at the United Nations, Trump dismissed climate change as a “con job,” while calling renewable energy sources such as solar and wind — which met almost all of the world’s growth in electricity demand last year — a “scam.” And this disdain is being reflected in policy. As I and many others have written, the Trump administration has been actively trying to block wind and solar power projects. And today the administration is reportedly planning to eliminate all restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

There is a lot to be said about the reasons our current government seems so determined to rush into disaster, even when the very survival of humanity may be at stake. Climate denial, we know from decades of experience, is fueled by an unholy trinity of financial interest (fossil fuel companies determined to keep their profits flowing), ideology (conservatives hostile to any form of regulation) and psychological insecurity (real men burn stuff.) AI-risk denial presumably reflects a similar mix of factors.

So let’s applaud leaders like Amodei for speaking up and applaud the growing willingness of other CEOs to warn about the dangers of their technology, even if their attack of conscience partly reflects the looming prospect of Democratic subpoenas.

New York Times Magazine, Six Strangers Connected by Disaster, David Gelles Photographs by Philip Cheung, Sept. 11, 2026. Amy Dishion woke up on Sept. 5, 2022, and said goodbye to her husband, Evan.

He was off for a sunrise hike with friends through the hills outside Phoenix and was supposed to return that afternoon. Around 11 a.m., Amy got a text from him; it was getting hot, but he was doing well.

By afternoon, Evan’s group had summitted Elephant Mountain but had gotten lost and run out of water. Temperatures reached 109 degrees — extremely hot even for summer in Arizona. One hiker started hallucinating. Another began to stumble. When Evan passed out, there was no cell signal to call for help.

His death left Amy in shock. She returned to Oregon and moved in with his family. “Evan was my entire life,” she says. “He was my whole world. I was pretty much incapacitated emotionally for a couple years after that.”

While Dishion navigated her grief, she found some solace in talking about her experience and the dangers of extreme heat as global temperatures continue to rise. In 2023, she spoke at a virtual town hall with legislators; among those watching was Sierra Lindsey Kos, who had just helped create a group for people like Dishion.

The group, Extreme Weather Survivors, was started three years ago by Kos and Chris Kocher, an attorney and professional social organizer who had helped set up networks for survivors of gun violence and Covid-19. Kos had been galvanized by the 2020 Labor Day fires in Oregon, during which her newborn son was hospitalized with a serious illness. She had to drive through the burning landscape with him, surrounded by ash and red skies. She remembers being gripped in that moment by a feeling that she couldn’t keep her son safe from climate disaster; it was happening everywhere.

In just a few years, Extreme Weather Survivors has grown to include more than 2,500 people whose lives have been upended by searing temperatures, roaring fires, torrential floods and intense storms. It is partly a climate advocacy group with a lobbying focus — but it’s also an unprecedented network of people from all over the country, survivors of many different forms of extreme weather, who have come to rely on one another for guidance and emotional support. They have bonded over insurance challenges and byzantine FEMA paperwork, over fights with local utility companies, over the question of how to hold the local authorities accountable for destruction that should, in retrospect, have been preventable.

More On Middle East Wars

Hope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump is always looking for someone else to blame, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Sept. 13, 2026. At 6:19 pm, somewhere between Shannon, Ireland, and Washington, DC, the President of the United States barged into the press cabin on Air Force One. Still wearing the deep navy suit and now-wrinkled white shirt, but without the tie he was wearing earlier, he had an urgent question for the press: “I just wanted to make sure everyone’s okay with music, right?” He told the press that he was only there to see if they agreed that “the music’s great, right?” He told them that he picked the playlist himself because he wanted to “make you happy.”

They, in return, exchanged small talk just long enough to bring down his guard before jumping at the opportunity to ask him questions. One reporter cut right to the chase, asking about China and President Xi’s upcoming trip to Washington, D.C., and whether Trump plans to ask him about reports that entities in China may have provided Iran with satellite imagery that was used when three American military members were killed.

Trump’s response was, “They do what we do.” And then he added, “Uh, I think he’s behaved reasonably well, and we behave reasonably well. You know, when they say that China spies on us, I say you’re right, and we spy on them, too. You know, we spy on them, too.”

As he finished saying this, he started to back out of the cabin before changing his mind, possibly realizing what he had just said and how devastating it was. Because whether he meant it or not, he said that the loss of First Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan, Private Isabella Gonzales, and Staff Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad from Iranian missiles hitting the housing area where they were sleeping, reportedly with the help of Chinese entities’ satellite imagery, was China acting “reasonably well behaved,” and that he had no plans to confront Xi, let alone even mention it.

Over the past couple of days, the Wall Street Journal reported that the United States government was able to connect satellite images given to Iran by Chinese entities to the July 17 ballistic missile strike on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. The Iranian missile attack hit the housing area where American troops were sleeping, killing three soldiers and wounding four others.

The U.S. had already claimed to have destroyed Iran’s radar and air defense capabilities, though intelligence assessments painted a more complicated picture. What is clear is that without the satellite imagery from Chinese entities, Iran may not have been able to target that exact location in the first place. This news is not surprising because we already know that China is not our ally and certainly not our friend. But this connects them to actual deaths of American military members.

In less than two weeks, Donald Trump plans to welcome China’s leader with open arms. He has been sharing his excitement about this visit for months. Xi is one of the men Trump considers his equal, someone he respects and often speaks about in high regard. Just this past May, he told Xi, “You’re a great leader. It’s an honor to be your friend.” He also told reporters that “Sometimes people don’t like me saying it, but I say it anyway.”

This is the complete opposite of how he speaks about and treats the leaders of the countries he should align himself with, our allies from countries like France, Germany, Canada, or the United Kingdom. He treats the leaders of countries that share our democratic values and whom we have stood beside for generations with very little respect, while continuing to treat men like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin as friends and equals.

While still talking to the press on Air Force One, the war between Russia and Ukraine was also brought up. In true Trump fashion, he used that opportunity to do something outlandishly inappropriate, he blamed high diesel prices on Volodymyr Zelensky. He made the decision to blame the president of a country currently being attacked, and not blame the invading country for the fallout of the war and its effects on the price of fuel. “The problem I have with Ukraine and Russia is that a lot of the diesel comes from Russia, and the Russia plants are being hit by Ukraine,” Trump said. “And I’ve asked President Zelensky not to hit the diesel plants, refineries.” He then added, “The diesel is being driven up by the fact that it’s having a hard time coming out of Russia, and that’s a case that hurts the world.” He went even further, saying, “This isn’t done by the Middle East. This is done by what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine.”

His words were deliberately misleading, said to protect Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and paint Zelensky as the villain. While Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries have contributed to the shortage, the far larger disruption has come from Trump’s war in Iran, which has choked off roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump knows this. He has said so himself, multiple times, that fuel prices are a result of the Iran war, and he has even told his fellow Americans we have to accept higher fuel prices to stop Iran from having nuclear weapons. But now that the midterm elections are less than 51 days away and people are becoming more outraged by the high gas prices, he has suddenly decided to blame the country fighting for its survival.

With the global energy crisis becoming worse by the day, Donald Trump feels cornered and clueless on how to fix this. Now he has to face the reality that things won’t get better before the midterms. Because over the last week, another route used to move oil out of the region has become endangered, leaving both of the world’s most critical oil shipping corridors under threat at the same time, something that has never happened before. The Strait of Hormuz has been an unreliable route for months now. This past week, that other route was impacted when Iran-backed forces took over the port of Mokha before moving down Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, taking control of Perim Island, too, which sits directly inside the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

That second strait sees roughly 12% of global seaborne oil trade and is the primary route for cargo moving between Europe and Asia. Saudi Arabia had been using the Red Sea as its backup route, so that none of it had to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. To make this all worse, the Houthis also struck a Saudi pipeline on Friday, which forced it to close and left that alternative route under attack too. This too caused oil to surge and gave Iran another opportunity to limit the flow of oil, making consumers all over the planet have to pay even higher prices.

We can’t keep living like this. Something has to change. We desperately need leaders who are willing to stand up to Donald Trump and who will take any and all opportunities to fight back, even now before the midterms instead of waiting until January when a new Congress could be seated.

Thank you to those of you who support this work with a paid membership. Your $5 a month is what allows me to keep writing every day and, just as importantly, to keep these posts free and accessible to everyone. Those who can pay are the reason those who can’t still have access. And right now, with so much at stake heading into the midterms, that matters more than ever. If you’re in a position to join, I’d be grateful to have you with us.

This morning I watched House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos. I was once again reminded of how slow and lacking the Democratic response has been. When he was asked whether Democrats would go after impeachment if they take back the House, his answer was, “No, we haven’t ruled anything in, and we haven’t ruled anything out.” His lack of an actual answer and the political double talk is exactly how we got here. How he answered was how Democratic leadership has responded for years, and it has failed us over and over again. After January 6th, we had a real opportunity to take a stand against corruption, and even though some lawmakers tried, their response fell flat. So many of them have left the few actually taking a stand and speaking out, lacking the support that should be there from the entirety of the Democratic Party. There should be a gathering of every Democrat in Congress, standing shoulder to shoulder, demanding Trump and his enablers’ corruption end every single day. Everything that wasn’t done has led us to today. We need Democrats with fire in their bellies. We need people willing to get in there, right now, and fight for their country without thinking about winning another six-year term and playing it safe. We already have people just like that showing up more and more, and they are already terrifying the Republican Party.

These are the Abdul El-Sayeds and the Jon Ossoffs. They both are bringing passion to the fight we haven’t seen enough of. Ossoff gave a campaign speech this weekend where he told a crowd of people in Georgia that the Trump administration is “the Epstein class.” He connected Trump’s war to the high gas prices and to our increasing grocery bills. People want politicians who they can trust to deliver the truth, and this type of campaigning is working. What he has been saying has made an election that Democrats were predicted to barely win into one where it looks like they have a decent lead. Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan running on a slogan he repeats often at his events, “money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for all.” That is the messaging we need, and we need it repeated often. Republicans are so afraid of him that Ted Cruz used his time speaking at the desperate Republican Midterm Convention attacking him by name, to which someone in that crowd shouted, “he should be shot.” I rewatched that video, and it’s not completely clear that Cruz heard the first time it was said, but it does appear that he heard it the subsequent times, and he did nothing. Zohran Mamdani already proved in the last election in New York that working-class messaging can beat out establishment and centrist politicians and win. This does not mean we do not vote blue down the line. It means we demand better, and we think about who we really want leading our parties and our country after we right this ship.

We have our work cut out for us right now. We have to get people who are against everything Trump is doing, but are on the fence about this new type of politician, to start showing up for them. We need to help them see that the careful, centrist approach has failed to hold a single person accountable for six years of democratic destruction and that it is time to demand something better. The ones the GOP is afraid of, and for good reason. The ones they are calling dangerous and communists. We need to make sure they understand that this is not the time to sit out an election because they do not understand or are not in love with the democratic candidates placed before them. We can have those discussions over the next two years before the next general election. Right now, this is an all-hands-on-deck call to action.

Back in February, I wrote about a speech given by Judge J. Michael Luttig, a George H.W. Bush appointed conservative federal judge, after he warned that Trump represents a “clear and present danger” to our American democracy. On Thursday, he published a piece in The New Republic warning that even if Democrats win the House in November, Republicans could refuse to seat them; something I have shared is one of my greatest concerns aside from the vote itself. He went even deeper with his analysis than I did, including how Speaker Mike Johnson could replace the House Clerk with a loyalist who could refuse to list Democrats on the roll of representatives-elect, which would then trigger a constitutional crisis that could paralyze the country for weeks or months while the courts sort it out. Luttig called it “The Final Battle for America’s Democracy.” That is why we need voter turnout the likes we have never seen before and also why we need to be prepared to take action if this were to happen. What that looks like, I can’t say. But likely protests that shut down our economy and normal lives.

In another article published today, this time from the Washington Post, we learned that election officials across the country are already preparing for seized ballots, ICE agents at polling places, and the USPS rejecting large batches of ballots. Many of these voter suppression tactics are currently being litigated as the Trump regime’s threats increase. This administration is hell-bent on interrupting our free and fair elections. The officials making plans to mitigate and circumvent these attacks are wisely doing so.

Something has to change, and that something starts with us. We can’t wait around until the next First Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan, Private Isabella Gonzales, and Staff Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad are killed, and their commander in chief is more concerned about showing the man he calls “reasonably well behaved,” whose country is connected to their deaths, a great time in our capital.

As expected, the weight of watching the highest office in the land become so hollow and emptied of basic human decency is catching up to so many of us. We know how quickly 51 days can go by, especially when we remember that we are coming up on the two-year anniversary of Trump winning his second term. Yet at the same time, every day has felt long, filled with sadness for the lives he has already cost and anticipatory grief over what he is going to do next. If it feels like there are not enough people who care, know that around the 30-day mark that should change. There will be more talk and concern once ballots start going out and the election feels more real and imminent. Our job is to get as many people as humanly possible to vote. When we do that, not if we do that, we will finally be able to change the direction this country is headed.

New York Times, News Analysis: Saudi Arabia Faces ‘Worst-Case Scenario’ After Being Rebuffed by Trump, Vivian Nereim, Sept. 14, 2026. The kingdom is in a state of strategic shock after coming under attack from an emboldened Iran and failing to win more U.S. military support, analysts say.

Saudi Arabia has increasingly found itself caught in the middle of the war between the United States and Iran. Now, the kingdom’s leadership is assessing dwindling options on how to respond.

In recent weeks, the Iran-allied Houthi militia in Yemen has repeatedly attacked the kingdom, threatening to throttle its ability to export oil and piling pressure on the global economy. But Saudi Arabia has been left frustrated and disappointed by President Trump’s reluctance to confront the Houthis, former diplomats and analysts say.

The kingdom’s diplomatic efforts to engage with Iran have also had limited results. A meeting planned on Monday between officials from Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries was abruptly postponed on Sunday night, as the gap between their positions remained vast.

“Right now the Saudis are really frustrated,” said Michael Ratney, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. “In some sense it’s their worst-case scenario.”

The Saudi government’s Center for International Communication, which fields queries from journalists, did not respond to a request for comment.

The kingdom’s conundrum underscores the heavy costs that the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran has imposed across the Middle East, including on countries whose leaders opposed the war or have sought repeatedly to bring it to an end.

In the first few months of the fighting, Saudi Arabia was relatively untouched by Iran’s retaliatory attacks, compared with its neighbors. Now, with no end to the hostilities in sight, Iran is seeking greater leverage over the United States, and Saudi Arabia — the world’s largest oil exporter until the war knocked it down the list — has become a primary target.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in the Middle East? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Over the past two weeks alone, Saudi Arabia has faced Iran-backed attacks from the east, the south and the north.

A Saudi oil tanker was struck in the Strait of Hormuz at the end of August, killing two sailors.

On Friday, the Houthi militia, which had already declared a blockade on Saudi oil shipments through the Red Sea, seized territory on an important global shipping route and trounced Saudi-allied forces in Yemen.

The same day, the Saudi authorities announced that they had been forced to shut down a critical oil pipeline, blaming a drone attack by an Iran-backed Iraqi militia. The pipeline had become a key alternative export route for Saudi Arabia to get its oil to the Red Sea, after Iran effectively choked off the Strait of Hormuz.

“The reason a country like Saudi Arabia invests so heavily in developing a security partnership with the United States is for just this sort of eventuality,” said Mr. Ratney, the former ambassador.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, the country’s de facto ruler, had reasons to be confident in that partnership. For years, his government has invested billions of dollars and extensive political capital in building personal relationships with Mr. Trump and his family.ImageIn an ornate room, a person in a suit holds the hands of a smiling person in a thobe. A white model airplane sits on a coffee table.President Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia at the White House last year. The Saudi leader and his government have courted the president and his family for years.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

But when the crown prince asked Mr. Trump last week to take military action against the Houthis, the president declined, according to officials with knowledge of the conversations.

Saudi officials and pundits have been clear that the kingdom does not want to fight the Houthis alone. That is especially true because an earlier military campaign that Saudi Arabia led against the group turned into a decade-long quagmire.

“This demands international support, not only from Saudi Arabia and regional countries,” Abdulrahman al-Rashed, a columnist close to the Saudi government, wrote in a Saudi-owned newspaper on Saturday.

Mr. Trump, however, appears reluctant to get involved.

“Already confronting one open-ended conflict with Iran, with an overstretched Navy and a diminishing munitions stockpile, it’s unsurprising that he does not want to open this new front,” said Dan Shapiro, a former top Middle East policy official in the Pentagon during the Biden administration. “But it is bitterly disappointing to the Saudis.”

On Saturday, Mr. Trump told journalists on a trip to Ireland that the Houthis had “called us and they don’t want to fight with us.”

“There’s just one country that they’re not too happy with and we’ll get that straightened out,” he added, referring to Saudi Arabia.

Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a Houthi political official, denied that the group had reached out to the United States. “We did not communicate with Trump, nor did we ask him not to attack us,” he said.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice 

New York Times, Whistle-Blower: Federal Agents May Have Broken State Laws in Search for Voter Fraud, Nick Corasaniti and Hamed Aleaziz, Sept. 14, 2026. Agents expressed concern about being directed by top Homeland Security leaders to use private information to look up voter records in state databases. 

Investigators may have broken state laws under the direction of top Homeland Security leaders as part of an expansive effort to find noncitizens on the nation’s voter rolls, according to a federal whistle-blower’s account released on Monday.

The authorities also required agents to examine at least 40 voters each day, the account said, suggesting a rushed pace that raises questions about the thoroughness of the investigation. The effort has relied on questionable data, and has likely improperly flagged U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote, the whistle-blower said in a nearly 30-page report.

The whistle-blower report, provided to Senators Chuck Schumer and Alex Padilla, both Democrats, offers an inside view of what the Department of Homeland Security is calling the “Unlawful Voter Initiative.” The New York Times revealed last month the existence of the operation, which has deployed hundreds of federal agents to scour voter rolls managed by the states in a widespread hunt for evidence of voter fraud. The investigation stems from President Trump’s longstanding fixation on noncitizen voting, despite decades of research showing the practice is vanishingly rare.

Democrats and voting rights activists have denounced the operation as yet another way Mr. Trump, who has acknowledged the headwinds Republicans are facing as they try to retain control of Congress, is trying to sow doubts about the legitimacy of U.S. elections. They fear that eligible voters could be disqualified from participating in the fall midterms, or, worse, that Mr. Trump will use the investigation to try to discard actual results.

“This is just the latest example of how far Donald Trump will go to interfere in our elections,” Mr. Schumer, the minority leader, said in an interview. He added: “We’ve never seen anything quite like this. They come up with so many different ways to try and steal the election, to try and jaundice the election, but we’ve never seen anything quite like this. Department of Homeland Security is actually pulling away these law officers, these federal law enforcement officers, away from the work they’re supposed to do.”

On Sunday, the senators sent a letter to Markwayne Mullin, the Homeland Security secretary, demanding that the operation be halted and also seeking answers to a dozen specific questions. The senators included the full whistle-blower account, which was produced by Democracy Defenders Fund, a nonprofit watchdog group founded in 2023.

In a statement, the Homeland Security Department broadly defended its hunt for election fraud: “Our message to aliens who vote in American elections is clear: we will find you, arrest you, and you will face the consequences — including criminal charges and deportation.”

The identity of the whistle-blower is not known to The Times. Democracy Defenders Fund said in its report that the whistle-blower requested anonymity because of “an extreme fear of retaliation but they feel an obligation to speak up about the misconduct and gross mismanagement they have witnessed.”

According to the whistle-blower, agents are expected to complete at least 40 reviews in each eight-hour day, giving them scant time — about 12 minutes — to determine each voter’s citizenship and voting history. The consequence of the investigation is potentially vast, according to the account, because each review is recorded in a database that could affect individuals’ immigration status or legal permanent residency.

The whistle-blower also questioned the legality of a crucial part of the operation, with investigators effectively posing as individual voters by using personally identifiable information compiled from both internal and external sources, such as birth dates or partial Social Security numbers, to look up voter records.

The agents plugged those names and personal data into public-facing state websites to find a subject’s voter history. Some states, such as Virginia, declare explicitly that only individual voters may use the search tool to look up their own records. Others, such as California, require specific information such as a driver’s license number or partial Social Security number in an effort to limit the use of the tool to individuals.

“I do think the American people value keeping their personal information private,” Mr. Padilla said. “The other thing that’s concerning here, that the American people who would be offended by, is the knowing inaccuracy of what they’re doing, whether it’s the data or their sham analysis. It’s going to produce false positives.”

Worried about the potential legal ramifications of such actions, the whistle-blower “expressed concerns” to those leading the investigation within Homeland Security’s Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate, according to the account.

Talking Feds Substack, A Pro-Trump Prosecutor Draws the Line, Harry Litman, right, Sept. 14, 2026. "If you want indictments where there's no evidence, you have an ethical problem."

Joseph diGenova’s resignation from the Justice Department last Thursday lays bare the degradation of the Department of Justice under Todd Blanche.

One inch below diGenova’s bland resignation statement lies an indictment of the fundamental corruption that now runs through the Department of Justice: the replacement of law and evidence with the raw political will of Donald Trump.

It’s important to the story that diGenova is a consummate Trump loyalist. He aligned himself with the Giuliani-Powell-Ellis effort challenging the 2020 election results, and more generally adopted the (meritless) article of faith that the 2020 campaign was stolen. And he was a prominent voice on Fox News insisting that the Russian election interference inquiry was a law-enforcement plot to frame Trump. He is one of the president’s own. Descriptions of him typically append the kenning “Trump loyalist” or “longtime Trump ally.”

But diGenova is also a former federal prosecutor, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia under Ronald Reagan. That was some forty years ago, and he has not tried a case in the decades since.

Every DOJ prosecutor since Watergate—that is, until this tailspin during Trump 2.0—assumed a sacrosanct obligation to comply with the Principles of Federal Prosecution. Those preclude bringing charges unless the prosecutor both believes the target is guilty and believes she can prove it to a unanimous jury beyond a reasonable doubt. To translate it into diGenova’s terms: evidence and witnesses. They are the sine qua non of federal prosecution, and it is the precise same principles Todd Blanche himself was schooled in as an AUSA in New York.

That most basic of commands has been abandoned in this DOJ. It has become disposable the moment it collides with Trump’s political preferences. And when diGenova, a partisan of the first order, hit the point where he was being told to indict without the basic goods, he balked. Reading between the lines of a resignation, his exit is a quiet, devastating verdict on Todd Blanche’s tenure and the Department he now runs.

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The investigation that diGenova stepped away from is what Trump’s allies reverently call the “grand conspiracy.” It’s amorphous and protean, but in essence it’s the theory that everyone who ever scrutinized Trump since 2016 was secretly part of one coordinated plot to destroy him. Barack Obama. John Brennan. James Comey. James Clapper. Peter Strzok. Lisa Page. The Russia investigation, the classified-documents case, all of it, braided into a single decade-long scheme.

There’s a small detail I have raised every time there is renewed mention of “the Grand Conspiracy.” There is no such thing, on the facts and the law. “Grand Conspiracy” is not a concept in federal law. There is no statute, no charge, nothing in the United States Code by that name. It is not a legal theory at all. It is a MAGA wet dream, a holy grail cherished by the most fevered corner of Trumpworld, with no possible purchase in an actual courtroom.

And it has the additional defect of being factually groundless. The special counsel who examined the 2016 election found widespread Russian interference but no criminal conspiracy between Moscow and the campaign; and multiple later inquiries, including one by the Justice Department’s own inspector general, found real errors in the FBI’s handling of the Trump-Russia probe but no criminal conduct by senior officials.

The first prosecutor on the case saw exactly that. Maria Medetis Long, a seasoned career national-security prosecutor in South Florida, balked at bringing charges faster than the evidence would support. She was pushed off the investigation in the spring for her trouble.

Enter diGenova, eagerly. Days after Medetis Long was shown the door, he was sworn in as counselor to the attorney general in April with marching orders to bring home the Grand Conspiracy. According to Bloomberg Law, he had personally asked then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to hand him the assignment. He vowed he could bring charges in thirty days.

He had overpromised, perhaps because there’s no case to make, period. But after several months passed, diGenova got crosswise with Main Justice. The DOJ had grown impatient with his pace, believing he was slow-rolling the whole thing, and sent prosecutors down from Washington to speed him along. He sidelined them, and the standoff only deepened, until someone told him last week that he had lost the confidence of his superiors.

If it was a move designed to get him to accelerate the work, it backfired: last Thursday diGenova resigned. His resignation statement itself was courtly and anodyne: “It was an honor and privilege to serve the president and the department,” he told CNN. But his subsequent statements leave no doubt about the corrupt nature of the pressure he was experiencing from Main Justice.

diGenova is an old Washington hand, used to working the press, and he wasn’t about to let a false or critical impression of his resignation carry the day.

He has given several post-resignation statements, and I expect that he’s not done talking. He spoke to The New York Post and delivered the bombshell line: “If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem”

That’s radioactive. It charges the administration with pushing to indict a grand conspiracy with no evidence, and disparages it as unethical. And this from a brass-knuckles “Trump loyalist.”

To CNN, he played the long-time institutionalist card. “As an old prosecutor of more than 50 years, I make cases the old-fashioned way: witnesses, evidence, etc. That takes time.” More blood drawn. The new crowd makes cases the 2026 way: whatever and whenever Donald Trump says, with the innocence or guilt of the defendant an immaterial detail so long as Trump has it in for you. And the attorney general, who was trained under the same longstanding regime as diGenova, publicly champions that abomination.

We needn’t, and probably shouldn’t, ascribe choir-boy rectitude to diGenova. He’s likely attending to his own reputation. He is 81 years old and near the end of a long career, and he is not going to let the second paragraph of his obituary read that he railroaded innocent people into a lawless prosecution to please a president.

That just makes his parting shot the more potent. He shot his arrow directly into the DOJ’s Achilles’ heel. The fact is, everyone from Blanche on down knows that the Department’s treatment of Trump’s enemies is indefensible. I have written about this at length, and I will not stop writing about it. The actual embrace of prosecuting innocent enemies whom Trump simply wants to immiserate is the most grotesque corruption in the history of the Department of Justice. The Department has gone awry before, but never before Trump 2.0 did it leap to eviscerate its most sacred responsibility of doing justice without fear or favor. 

Emptywheel, Analysis:The Grand Conspiracy … Adrift on a Skiff, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Sept. 14, 2026. Those of you who followed the stolen documents case surely appreciate the irony that one reason Joe DiGenova quit his position leading the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy last week had to do with DOJ’s refusal to give him his own SCIF.

Among the disputes that added to tensions between diGenova and his bosses in Washington was diGenova’s request for a high-security room known as a SCIF to be built at the Fort Pierce office, to make it easier for the prosecution team to store highly classified materials, two people familiar with the investigation told CNN. The team worked in an office with a special room where sensitive, but not the highest-classified, evidence could be handled. Justice Department officials told diGenova he and his team should use a SCIF at an FBI office miles away, two people familiar with the investigation told CNN.

As part of then Defense Attorney now Attorney General Todd Blanche’s successful 2023 attempt to delay Trump’s stolen documents prosecution, he demanded that the FBI build Trump a new SCIF at Mar-a-Lago so Trump could store the documents he stole and once stored there in a ballroom back in his beach resort again. Then, months later, then Defense Attorney now Attorney General Todd Blanche complained that Trump needed more time to prepare because some of the documents Trump stole were so sensitive, his defense attorneys needed special read-ins for the documents to be left in the SCIF they were using, at all.

Effectively, then, one-time Defense Attorney and current Attorney General Todd Blanche told Joe DiGenova he should make do, just as prosecutors told Todd Blanche to make do (among other things, with the SCIF in DC that would be available while they were defending against the January 6 charges).

I guess one-time Defense Attorney and current Attorney General Todd Blanche now concedes that the documents his current and former client stole were far too sensitive to store in a ballroom, which really raises the question what the fuck are we doing here? You’ve just conceded it was wise to investigate Trump!

CNN’s report on the dispute describes what a busy day it was last Thursday, the day DiGenova quit.

DiGenova resigned Thursday on what was a busy day for the inquiry, as investigators were presenting a witness for testimony to a grand jury in the probe, one of President Trump’s top priorities, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. DiGenova’s abrupt departure could mean more delays in an investigation that has stumbled past internal expectations of charges earlier this year. More recently, officials at Justice Department headquarters had anticipated possibly seeing the first charges to come as soon as this month, CNN previously reported.

With diGenova gone, Justice Department officials feel confident in the team and expect to see momentum pick up, a US law enforcement official said.

DiGenova declined comment beyond what he told CNN last week, calling it a privilege to serve the president and the Justice Department and adding: “As an old prosecutor of more than 50 years, I make cases the old fashioned way: witnesses, evidence, etc. That takes time.”

But a declaration from Ken Wainstein, representing John Brennan in his bid to require DOJ to retain evidence of Trump’s malice targeting Brennan, reveals that’s just the half of it.

That same day — Thursday — DiGenova also served a subpoena, dated the day before, on Brennan himself.

6. On Thursday, September 10, 2026, I accepted service on behalf of Plaintiff for a subpoena to testify on October 15, 2026, before a federal grand jury sitting in Fort Pierce. The subpoena was signed by Joseph E. diGenova on September 9, 2026. The accompanying email directed me to contact Mr. diGenova with any questions regarding the subpoena. The morning of September 10, I, along with co-counsel, reached out to Mr. diGenova by text message, to coordinate a conversation to discuss the subpoena. He responded that he would “arrange counsel” to speak with us.

And while DiGenova is corrupt, he’s not dumb.

With DiGenova gone, that left dumb and corrupt Kurt Olsen to provide this explanation for the subpoena, probably an explanation of why they were subpoenaing a guy who was given a target letter months ago.

9. On September 11, 2026, I along with co-counsel, participated in a conference call with Kurt Olsen and three other members of the prosecution team to discuss the grand jury subpoena served on my client. In that call, Mr. Olsen fielded our inquiries and indicated there are multiple “viable” grand jury investigations, including a “far-reaching” investigation in Fort Pierce that includes “issues at Mar-a-Lago and beyond” into whether President Trump had his civil rights violated. Mr. Olsen also confirmed there continued to be an additional investigation relating only to Director Brennan’s statements before Congress in the District of Columbia. Mr. Olsen explained that Director Brennan was a “target” of the narrower investigation, and the investigation for which he was now being subpoenaed was the “more wide-ranging conspiracy,” as to which our client was a “subject.” However, he explained that the narrower investigation was “still viable,” and that the issues in the narrower investigation might also be part of the larger investigation, such as being overt acts.

10. Mr. Olsen also indicated that he was reporting to the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Florida, Jason Reding Quiñones, and then to the Deputy Attorney General and Attorney General Todd Blanche.

That is, Olsen (who was no prosecutorial experience) explained that Brennan was just a subject for the Grand Conspiracy conspiracy, whereas he was a target of the investigation — the one that still has venue in DC, where Brennan is trying to push everything — into whether he lied to Congress, which he did not. None of this makes sense from a prosecutorial perspective. But these people are dumb and corrupt and insane, so they don’t care.

Olsen, the day after Joe DiGenova quit, insisted everything was still “viable,” perhaps in an attempt to explain why a guy being targeted could be coerced to testify before a grand jury. That’s an opinion that will show up in a slew of filings from everyone involved.

And remember, this is all an attempt to deny that it was right to investigate Trump’s secret pursuit of a Trump Tower offered by a Georgian oligarch, but he’s now building a Trump Tower in Georgia. It is all an attempt to deny that Kirill Dmitriev was trying to recruit Jared Kushner so he could be enticed to trade riches for sanctions relief, but there Jared is on TV demanding that Ukraine cede lands Russia has never succeeded in seizing so Jared can cash in. It is all an attempt to deny it was right to investigate Don Jr for accepting secret gifts from Russian oligarchs, but the secret gifts Don Jr keeps accepting get bigger and bigger, now to include his wedding party.

All this investigation has succeeded in doing is prove that Russia was attempting to recruit Trump and his family, with great success, and that the documents Trump stole were too sensitive to be stoled in a gaudy bathroom.

Guilty as charged! Trump’s defense Attorney General has now conceded.

New York Times, The Holdout Juror in the Clancy Case Is a Rorschach Test for America, Jenna Russell, Sept. 11, 2026. The nation’s reaction to the 11-1 deadlock that resulted in a mistrial for Lindsay Clancy was, like the jury itself, fiercely and unbridgeably divided.

Last Friday, as the jurors in the Lindsay Clancy murder trial filed into a Massachusetts courtroom one last time, rapt followers of the case knew the outcome would come down to a lone holdout who had either held firm or joined the majority at the last minute.

With the news that the jury was still deadlocked 11-1, and the judge’s declaration of a mistrial, the reaction from Americans was — like the jury itself — fiercely and unbridgeably divided.

The holdout was a hero. Or he was a pariah.

In a country mired in political discord, it was no surprise that people disagreed on what the verdict should be for Ms. Clancy, 36, who admitted to strangling her three children in 2023 while experiencing severe mental illness.

Her supporters around the country, and nearly all of the jury, concluded that Ms. Clancy had been too sick to understand her conduct was criminal on the night she killed Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, and should be found not guilty — and confined in a psychiatric hospital indefinitely — as a result. Another faction believed that Ms. Clancy should be held criminally responsible for her horrific acts, despite her mental health crisis, and should spend the rest of her life in prison.

To them, the anonymous juror who cast the only vote for her conviction — who has not been identified or spoken publicly — acted with inspiring moral courage, resisting mounting pressure to conform during nearly 40 hours of deliberations. One commenter on Facebook described the holdout as saving the souls of his fellow jurors by forcing a mistrial.

But to many who had hoped for Ms. Clancy’s acquittal, empathizing with her unsuccessful efforts to find effective mental health care in the months before the killings, the holdout juror embodied society’s lack of compassion, particularly toward people with mental health struggles and postpartum mothers.

Several jurors have said in interviews this week that the holdout did not follow the judge’s instructions, or the law, in reaching his decision, and stood by his vote even after acknowledging he had reasonable doubt about Ms. Clancy’s guilt.

Ms. Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, on Thursday filed a motion for the mistrial to be thrown out and for Ms. Clancy to be acquitted.

The subtext of the conflict has at times been explicitly political, with some admirers of the holdout juror quick to presume that the 11 others were bleeding-heart liberals giving a pass to a killer they mistook for a victim. Gender, too, played a role: Some women who supported Ms. Clancy saw the holdout as yet another man unwilling to listen to, or believe, a woman in crisis, while one widely shared social media post said the nine women jurors had “traded justice for feelings,” casting aside the evidence and letting their emotions guide them.ImageClose-up of Lindsay Clancy in profile, dark hair flowing. She wears a light green shirt with a detailed shoulder, looking forward.Lindsay Clancy looking on as Judge William Sullivan declares a mistrial in her case. Credit...Pool photo by Greg Derr

The jurors had barely left the courthouse last Friday when attacks on both sides turned personal.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Is ICE Dropping Fentanyl? Andrew Egger, right, Sept. 14, 2026. Because most people are much more comfortable with the idea of deporting killers and drug dealers than law-abiding grandmas, the Trump administration has long couched its mass deportation agenda as an effort targeting “the worst of the worst.” And the Department of Homeland Security has lately been playing up its efforts against international bad actors like drug cartels, with Secretary Markwayne Mullin announcing last week that DHS was changing its seal² to better reflect its posture of “war every single day” against those actors.

But investigating and interdicting international drug crime and dragnetting the country for any and all illegal immigrants are two different goals, and they don’t always exist in harmony. Last year, in fact, they were in conflict, with the latter drawing substantial resources away from the former.

That was one of the conclusions of an internal audit released by DHS’s inspector general last month, which found a significant dip in Homeland Security Investigations’ enforcement efforts against fentanyl trafficking from FY 2024 to FY 2025. (HSI, a division under the authority of ICE, serves as DHS’s primary investigative arm.)

The audit was grim in its assessment of HSI’s anti-fentanyl efforts last year, spotlighting a number of technological, intelligence, and information-sharing obstacles to anti-fentanyl work at the agency. But the most notable criticism had to do with manpower. “As ICE shifted priorities toward immigration enforcement, HSI’s level of effort on fentanyl declined,” the report reads. Amid the Trump administration’s all-hands-on-deck approach to immigration, fentanyl investigations regularly got short shrift: “At one office,” the report reads, “approximately 99 percent of HSI’s work was dedicated to immigration, leaving almost no capacity for fentanyl investigations.”

The department-wide result, per the report, was a notable across-the-board drop: “Fentanyl investigations decreased by 24 percent, investigative hours spent countering fentanyl decreased by approximately 30 percent, and fentanyl seizures decreased by 39 percent.” The report recommended that HSI conduct a staffing review to reprioritize fentanyl investigations, a recommendation that ICE agreed to accept.

As Democrats look forward—they hope—to retaking Congress next year, they see fault lines like this as promising areas for investigation. Over the weekend, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), who will become the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee next year, sent DHS a letter seeking more information about DHS’s fentanyl-investigation dip.

“In recent years, ICE has become the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency, with more than $100 billion in new funding since 2024—10 times its historical annual budget,” Hassan wrote. But the DHS OIG findings “raise significant concerns that ICE is neglecting its counter-fentanyl and counter-cartel missions.”

Hassan took issue with DHS’s “lack of urgency” on the topic, noting that the department had agreed only to figure out how to refocus agency resources by July 2027. The letter has not previously been reported.

The White House and DHS strongly disputed that its immigration focus had harmed its anti-drug efforts, arguing that Trump was winning the fight against fentanyl.

“There is a nexus between illegal immigration and drug trafficking,” White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis told The Bulwark. “President Trump targeted cartels who were profiting off the death of Americans, secured our border to stop Fentanyl and other illicit drugs from flowing into our communities, and jumpstarted ICE to arrest illegal alien drug traffickers. These policies delivered a 22 percent decline in opioid deaths in a single year.”

A DHS spokesperson took particular issue with Hassan’s letter: “Where was Senator Hassan when congressional Democrats and the Biden administration allowed drug traffickers, criminal illegal aliens, and human smugglers to pour across our southern border and devastate American communities? Senator Hassan’s suggestion that HSI has abandoned its counter-fentanyl mission is FALSE and ignores the agency’s ongoing enforcement efforts.”

Fentanyl and other opioid overdoses have been trending in the right direction since their 2022 peak, falling slowly in 2023, sharply through 2024, and seemingly continuing their descent in provisional data from 2025, though they still kill tens of thousands of Americans a year. Federal enforcement operations doubtless have something to do with that—as do other factors like China’s crackdown on illegal fentanyl exports.

But concerns that ICE is giving these operations short shrift originate with their own agents on the ground and their own department’s inspector general, not with congressional Democrats. Expect to hear much more on this topic as the spotlight shines brighter on DHS in the months ahead.

AROUND THE BULWARK

• How MAGA Bewildered Voters Into Its Alternate Reality… The years-long project to discredit fact-based media and replace it with MAGA slop has been disastrously successful. Be sure to read this excerpt from SARAH LONGWELL’s new book "How to Eat an Elephant."(And buy the book if you haven’t!)
• The Two Stooges Take Another Crack at Ukraine… Russia’s imaginary victories meet Trump’s imaginary diplomacy, observes CATHY YOUNG.
• The Lesson of a Fractured Elbow… It’s a reminder of people’s amazing resilience in the face of disabilities, writes MONA CHAREN.
• America’s Most Powerful People Are Caving to Trump… On The Bulwark on Sunday, RICHARD NORTH PATTERSON joins BILL KRISTOL to trace how America went from a seemingly conventional political system to Trump’s second term, where the institutions and powerful people expected to serve as guardrails have often failed to stand up to him.
• ​​Here’s How You Know Trump’s Canada Tariffs Are Bombing… They’re costly, voters hate them, and they threaten supply chains vital to the U.S. auto industry, reports JONATHAN COHN in The Breakdown.
• Bernie Dogs Could Teach Democrats a New Trick… A new breed of candidate is mixing economic populism, social moderation, and disregard for party orthodoxy, writes LAUREN EGAN in The Opposition.

Quick Hits

ANOTHER L FOR TRUMP’S BALLOT SCHEME: The legal roadblocks keep arriving for Donald Trump’s harebrained effort to crack down on mail-in voting via USPS rules. Last night, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against the scheme, which would require the USPS to transmit ballots only to voters verified according to new federal lists, writing that the rules “exceed any conception of the outer bounds” of USPS authority. For Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, the decision was seemingly simple: “As the government concedes,” he wrote in his order, “the Postal Service could issue (and enforce) the rule only if Congress gave it the authority to do so, but here no statute grants the Postal Service the power to issue key parts of the Rule.”

Another federal judge had already blocked the administration from beginning to implement its order ahead of the midterms, but Nichols’s order goes farther in its preliminary assessment that the USPS has no legal authority to issue it in the first place. All eyes remain trained on the Supreme Court, which is expected to weigh in again on the mail-in rule any day now.

CANADIAN UNION?: Donald Trump wants to make Canada the 51st state. Instead, his bullying, senseless policy is pushing our northern neighbor in a different, once-unthinkable direction: toward trying to partially join the European Union. The Wall Street Journal reports:

Shortly after Canada and America became embroiled in the worst bilateral trade war in their modern history, the secure phones of Europe’s top leaders lit up with a trans-Atlantic call. Mark Carney was pushing to take Canada’s relationship with the EU to the next level—a bold gambit to rewire the economic cabling of the Western alliance. . . .

Carney has instructed his special envoy to Europe to scope out the most ambitious possibilities short of full membership in the EU or its common market, according to people familiar with the matter. The details are still being sketched by technical working groups for what the prime minister has told his aides will be the reorienting of an economy and a society that for half a century has been dominated by the U.S.

You probably don’t need more reminders that this whole Canada thing has been flatly insane. But it’s worth remembering that Trump thinks control of the Arctic is so important that it’s worth threatening to blow up NATO in order for the United States to get its hands on Greenland—while also thinking our relationship with Canada is so unimportant that he can blow it up just to blow off some steam.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

Popular Information, How Trump is spending his $400 million war chest, Judd Legum, right, Sept. 14, 2026. President Trump has amassed over $400 million through his super PAC, MAGA Inc. This is an unprecedented figure, dwarfing the largest cash piles collected in previous midterm elections.

With Trump’s approval ratings hitting all-time lows and many Republican candidates in swing races struggling, Trump has finally begun spending some of this money. Television advertising funded by Trump’s operation has gone on the air.The clearest sense of the scale of the spending is through advertising that has been reserved in key races. While these reservations can be changed, they offer the clearest view of both the scale of Trump’s efforts and his priorities. With the exception of Texas, this money is being routed from MAGA Inc. through a new Trump super PAC, No Going Back.

Since August 31, MAGA Inc. and No Going Back have reserved over $81 million in advertising.According to FEC filings, the same groups are spending millions more on direct mail, text messages, and other activities.

The fact that the Trump operation felt it necessary, outside of Texas, to route public communications through a new super PAC called No Going Back illustrates the current unpopularity of the MAGA agenda. (Ads paid for directly by MAGA Inc. must include the line “MAGA Inc. is responsible for the content of this advertising.”)

The same dynamic is also found in the ads themselves. Some ads inaccurately accuse Democratic candidates of supporting MAGA policies. Other ads, in an effort to find an effective attack, simply use false or fabricated claims.Trump, not Pappas, cut funding for rural hospitals in New Hampshire

In New Hampshire, Trump’s No Going Back PAC is running an ad attacking Congressman Chris Pappas, the Democratic Senate nominee, for voting “against vital funding for rural and vulnerable hospitals.”This is false.

Pappas voted against H.R. 1, Trump’s signature reconciliation bill, which cut Medicaid spending in rural areas by $137 billion over ten years, according to an analysis by KFF. About one-third of that cut was offset by a $50 billion fund distributed to states. But H.R. 1 left rural healthcare, including rural hospitals, much worse off.Pappas said he voted against the bill in July 2025 for that reason. In an August 2025 statement, Pappas said he opposed H.R. 1 because it “will have severe repercussions across New Hampshire communities, from our hospitals to our rural health care centers to our nursing homes.”

Now the Trump political operation is spending millions running an ad accusing Pappas of supporting cuts to rural health care spending because he opposed a Trump-backed bill that dramatically cut rural health care spending.

Ossoff did not vote to increase “taxes on working families” by $16.7 billionIn Georgia, a No Going Back ad accuses Senator Jon Ossoff (D) of voting “to raise taxes by over $16 billion on working families like yours.”

This isn’t true.The ad cites Ossoff’s vote for the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in 2022. The IRA did not increase individual income tax rates for anyone. It closed some tax loopholes for individuals earning over $400,000. No working families saw their tax bill increase because of Ossoff’s vote.What the IRA did do is create a minimum tax of 15% for profitable corporations. Some economists claim that corporate taxes will then trickle down to individuals in the form of lower wages or share prices. The $16.7 billion comes from a report attempting to quantify that effect on individuals making $200,000 or less. Even in this analysis, most of the burden falls on those making between $100,000 and $200,000 and the impact shrinks to less than $3 billion by 2027.The ad attempts to redefine an effort to make profitable corporations pay their fair share of taxes — a proposition that is quite popular among voters — as a tax increase on working families.Cooper did not agree to release a “convicted child molester” earlyIn North Carolina, No Going Back says that Governor Roy Cooper (D) “released 3500 criminals, released early.” The next line is: “This convicted child molester shot a man dead.”

The ad references Cooper’s COVID-era settlement, reached with the ACLU, to release some inmates early — mostly those already scheduled to be released within a year. The ad’s implication is clear: Jimmie Earl Speight Jr., who was charged with murder in April 2021, was among that group.This is inaccurate.Speight Jr. was released from prison, where he was serving a sentence for car theft, in November 2020. Cooper’s settlement was signed in February 2021. Speights Jr.’s release had nothing to do with Cooper or the settlement. (Speight Jr. was included on a list associated with the settlement because the settlement, according to WRAL, “counted some people who had already been released, before the settlement, so that the actual number of people being released would be lower.”)

The No Going Back ad is one of several blaming Cooper for crimes completely unrelated to the settlement.Share Popular Information

Meidas Touch Network, News and Commentary: Sept. 14, 2026 Roundup, Ron Filipkowski, right, Sept. 14, 2026, Journalist Anne Applebaum (on Trump Jr. wedding): “Some details: Kremlev, the Russian who sponsored Don Jr’s wedding, is a former member of the Night Wolves biker gang, went to China with Putin and is personally sanctioned by Ukraine for his role in abducting children.”

… As the story blew up on Instagram, self-described “socialite” Bettina Trump took to Instagram to try to defend the Russian-financed wedding:

“Our dear friend Umar very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding. It was an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend, and something for which we were and remain incredibly grateful.

It’s unfortunate that something so personal and happy can be recast as something political or sinister simply because of who someone is or where they come from. Friendship doesn’t require a political motive. Generosity doesn’t automatically come with an agenda. And sometimes a wedding gift is simply a wedding gift.

We are fortunate to have wonderful friends from all over the world, and we will never be embarrassed or apologetic about being grateful for them. So, for anyone determined not to let the facts get in the way of a good story: NO CONSPIRACY , NO MYSTERY. Just a private family wedding, a wonderful weekend with friends and one hell of a party.”

She’s the perfect wife for Junior. Both seem completely narcissistic, self-absorbed, craving constant attention, fake, greedy and immoral.

The Hartmann Report, Is America About to Get the Biggest “Special Assessment” in History? Thom Hartmann, right, Sept. 14, 2026. The bond market is warning that 45 years of Republican tax cuts and exploding debt may finally force ordinary Americans to pay for a party the wealthy already enjoyed.

Get ready to get your financial ass kicked. That’s the message the bond market sent last week, although almost nobody in the corporate press bothered to translate it into English. If you’ve ever lived in a condo or home with an HOA, though, you may understand what’s happening better than you realize.

First, the current crisis:

Our federal government pays its bills two ways: using tax revenue, and borrowing when it’s short by issuing IOUs we call Treasury bonds. The single most important of these for you and me is the ten-year bond because our banking system sets mortgage, car loan, student loan, and credit card rates based on it.

Last week, that rate hit 4.92 percent, just a hair below the 5 percent rate that could trigger a freak-out reaction on Wall Street. The nationwide average 30-year mortgage is already hitting 6.7 percent, which is both shaking the housing market and crushing low- and middle-income people both in mortgage payments and mortgage costs that get passed through as rent.

That, in turn, threatens a recession; when lenders get nervous about being paid back, they charge more, and right now they’re getting very, very nervous.

The main thing that’s driving all this nervousness is that the national debt crossed the $40 trillion threshold three weeks ago; we’re now paying more than $1 trillion a year — enough to fund a national healthcare system and give everybody free college, if done right — in interest payments. That’s more than we spend on the entire military or on Medicare.

Our Treasury is writing interest checks of $95 billion a month, our nation’s debt is growing by nearly $7 billion a day, and that works out to about $117,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country. (Into this mess, on Wednesday night, Donald Trump tossed a promise to mail every adult a $5,000 “Trump Dividend” if Republicans keep Congress, a stunt that would cost well over a trillion dollars, further freaking out the bond market.)

If you’ve ever lived in a home or condo that has a homeowners association (HOA), you may already have a meaningful insight to what 45 years of Republican irresponsibility have done to America, because you’ve probably had it happen to you or watched it happen to your neighbors.

Two friends of mine here in Oregon have been through this in just the past five years, and Louise and I briefly lived in a community that was heading in the same direction.

Our friends bought into what seemed to be well-maintained communities that had seductively low monthly dues. And then came the shock: in one case the roofs and another the parking structure hit the end of their useful lives and there was no money in the HOA’s account to pay for the necessary — and major — repairs. One was hit with a $40,000 “special” assessment, the other a bit less. Neither saw it coming.

The problem was that a previous generation of homeowner board members, wanting to keep their own costs low, kept the HOA dues down by simply ignoring the reality that one day the roofs and parking area would have to be repaired. The more recent purchasers ended up having to suddenly cover costs that should have been saved for over decades in what HOAs call “reserves.”

This is the same scam Republicans have been running on us since Reagan started it in 1981 on the advice of a Republican consultant named Jude Wanniski.

In essence, the boards that were keeping their HOA dues low and not bothering to build reserves for future maintenance were giving their then-current owners (and themselves) a tax cut.

The roof doesn’t care if there’s money to pay for its repairs; it’s going to deteriorate no matter what. And the longer the board waits, the more the repairs will cost until one day ceilings start leaking and it can’t be put off any longer. That’s when the current board has no choice but to hit everybody currently owning a property in the HOA with a special assessment.

— After the Surfside condos collapsed in Florida killing 98 people, that state finally passed a law requiring HOAs to both maintain their properties and build reserve funds for future maintenance.

— Owners at the Cricket Club condo complex in North Miami got hit with a proposed assessment of nearly $30 million for a new roof and facade work, which worked out to more than $134,000 per unit; one owner there had cashed out his 401(k) to buy a $190,000 condo and simply couldn’t pay.

— At the Mediterranean Village homes in Aventura, some owners were assessed up to $400,000. A 79-year-old woman in South Florida got hit with a mind-boggling $224,000 assessment on top of monthly fees that had already doubled from $1,500 to $3,000.

And it isn’t only Florida. Just this week a condo owner in Torrance, California opened a bill for $49,000, levied equally on all 499 units, because his board was finally forced by disintegrating properties to pay for $19 million in decades-deferred projects.

It turns out this isn’t a rare event; more than 75 million Americans live in communities with homeowner associations, and nearly 10 percent of all those associations hit their homeowners with a special assessment last year, up from 7.8 percent in 2021. That’s somewhere north of seven million people who got hit with a massive surprise bill in just one year (more recent stats aren’t yet available, but odds are things are getting worse because everybody’s so badly financially strapped right now).

But, of course, it’s not just people who live in HOA communities: America is on the verge of having to go through the same thing because our “board” policies have been run (or restrained) by corrupt Republicans for most of the past 45 years.

When Ronald Reagan took office the national debt was $914 billion. When he left, having slashed the top income tax rate from 70 percent down to 28 percent, our debt was $2.6 trillion, nearly tripled, and the annual interest payment had more than doubled.

And this HOA-level irresponsibility was neither an accident or the response to a crisis. We’d been steadily paying down our national debt every year since the end of World War II, to the point where when Reagan took office it was less than one trillion dollars.

But then, as I laid out in The Hidden History of the American Dream, Republican strategist Jude Wanniski laid out what he called his “Two Santa Clauses” strategy to screw Democrats and make Republicans look like financial geniuses.

Wanniski pointed out in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that Democrats had been winning elections for forty years by playing Santa with everything from Social Security to Medicare, Medicaid, the minimum wage, the GI Bill, food stamps, housing supports, free college, and dozens of other “gifts” to the American public.

Republicans had openly opposed every single one of them, making the public view them as Scrooge.

The key, then, was for Republicans to become what Wanniski called the “tax-cut Santas” and, at the same time, start spending money hand-over-fist when a Republican was in the White House. That would artificially stimulate the economy, making people think Republicans knew how to produce “good times,” and would also have the benefit of running up the nation’s debt.

When a Democrat came into office, Wanniski said, Republicans should flip the script and start screaming about the debt they’d run up — “Oh, the agony, our children will have to pay for this!!!” — to force that Democratic president to cut his own social spending.

Bill Clinton fell for it hook-line-and-sinker, giving us “the end” of both “big government” and “welfare as we know it.” And it’s worked every time a Republican has taken the Oval Office since Reagan; they all know the script and follow it to a T.

Reagan tripled the debt, and Clinton had to play the role of the grownup. George W. Bush cut taxes on billionaires twice, put two illegal wars on the national credit card, and doubled our national debt; when Obama took office he spent eight years being lectured about deficits by Republicans and right-leaning billionaire-owned media.

Now Trump has signed tax cuts that the Congressional Budget Office says could push our debt to 200 percent of GDP over the next two decades; he added $7.8 trillion to our debt in his first term and is now merrily running a debt of over $2 trillion a year.

This GOP scheme is the exact equivalent of the HOA board members who live cheap for 20 years and then sell their homes or condos to the poor suckers who inherit the disintegrating roof or parking garage.

But, in our nation’s case, the roof is the bond market. And the bond market is going nuts right now, which is giving serious jitters to everybody from Wall Street to foreign countries that are starting to dump US treasuries.

There are already three members of the Fed who are openly lobbying to raise interest rates this Wednesday to slow down the inflation all this deficit spending has created, oil is over $100 a barrel because Netanyahu finally found a president and defense secretary stupid enough to go along with him and attack Iran, and we’ll hit the $41.1 trillion debt ceiling sometime early next year.

When our “special assessment” finally arrives, it’ll show up as a mortgage you can’t refinance, a 15 percent car loan, a Social Security “reform” that cuts everybody’s checks, exploding Medicare premiums, and inflation that continues to eat away at your paycheck month after month.

It’ll hit, in other words, the average working people who just happened to be living in the HOA building when the roof started to fail, while the former owners who’d voted for 45 years of skipped maintenance have long since cashed out.

The fix for HOAs is pretty much the same thing as the fix we’ll need for this country: we need a special assessment and a return to regular taxation, but let’s make sure it hits the right people.

We require the board to fund the reserves — raise taxes on the morbidly rich — and claw back some of that money they’ve stolen from us (with $40 trillion worth of tax cuts and illegal wars over the past 45 years) via a tax on wealth like California is contemplating.

If we fail, our eviction notice will come in the form of a repeat of the last Republican Great Depression, courtesy of the bond and equities markets just like last time.

So, check your registration at vote.org, find out who’s running for your state legislature at openstates.org, and if this was useful to you, please subscribe to and share the Hartmann Report. Somebody in this building has to read the reserve study out loud.

The Triad Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The American Age Is Over (For sure), Jonathan V. Last, above, Sept. 14, 2026. The AI Apocalypse Is Here. (Maybe.) The weekend the world changed. Some moments require you to step up. Some require you to show up. That’s why The Bulwark is coming to Ohio.Join Tim, Sarah, JVL, Sam and friends Friday, September 25 at the Dayton Masonic Center for an evening of politics and fellowship. All profits from this event will be donated to those in Springfield who are in need via our partners at the Haitian Community Help & Support Center. Donate here.

1. Epochal

Two shifts happened under the radar since Friday that are worth keeping your eyes on.

The first shift concerns the post-American world and it came on two fronts.

Finland announced today that it is joining the French nuclear deterrence initiative. You may recall that back in March France announced a change to its nuclear doctrine, stating that it would expand its nuke capabilities and partner with other allies to expand a nuclear deterrent independent of the United States.¹ Finland joins the nine other European countries—including Denmark—in joining France’s Forward Deterrence program.

This is the clearest sign possible that Europe is disengaging from America. Under Forward Deterrence, it will be possible for France to deploy nuclear-armed assets to allied countries, though command-and-control of those forces will still reside with the French president.²

As the Polish prime minister said back in March, “We are arming up together with our friends so that our enemies will never dare to attack us.”

Guess which group America now falls under?³

The second shift stalled out halfway. Oman was set to host talks between Iran and other Gulf states today in which the various parties were looking to strike bilateral agreements without involving the United States.

Those talks were cancelled after Houthi forces launched another successful attack on Saudi Arabia.

Here’s my sophisticated analysis: This is very bad.

It is bad that the war is widening.

Bad that our Gulf allies⁴ are willing to talk to Iran without the United States present to protect American interests.

Bad that Iran believes its position is so strong that it can strike (through its proxies) the Saudis just days before the meeting in order to assert dominance over the negotiations.

In both cases—the French nukes and the Arab–Iranian negotiations—the world is moving to a post-American order because of affirmative choices made by Donald Trump and the Republican party. None of this was caused by external events or dialectical forces.

Trump chose to alienate Europe, align with Russia, and demand territorial tribute from Denmark. Trump chose to launch the most foolish American war in (at least) a century because he was dazzled by an Israeli PowerPoint deck.

Decisions are being made by sovereign nations across the world; in every case they involve independence from American influence.

And there is no going back.

2. AI Panic

On Saturday Anthropic announced that it was unilaterally putting the breaks on frontier AI research. The company called on other businesses in the field to follow suit.

I want to set a baseline here for discussions about AI: No one knows how this shakes out.

It is possible that AI will turn out to be a massive bubble whose economic upside and disruptive downside was completely overblown.

It is possible that AI will be a revolutionary tool that causes great disruption, but also increases productivity, and, after a fashion, settles into a new status quo in the way that the industrial revolution and the internet revolutions did.

It is also possible that AI will cause a global catastrophe.

You should not trust the judgment of anyone who tells you that they know for certain which of these tracks AI is on.

My intuition is that we are currently in a moment like the one from Oppenheimer when Gen. Leslie Groves is sitting with Bobby O. two hours before the Trinity test and asks, “What did Fermi mean by ‘atmospheric ignition’?”

Oppenheimer calmly explains that the engineers and physicists believe there’s a chance that detonating an atom bomb will cause an unstoppable chain reaction which turns the entire earth’s atmosphere into a fireball, killing everyone on the planet.

But, he says, that’s just the most remote possibility. “Chances are near zero,” Oppenheimer says.

Groves stops short and Oppenheimer says, “What do you want from theory alone?”

“Zero, would be nice,” Groves says.

The chances of AI causing a truly catastrophic event are probably near zero.

But zero would be nice.

What are the general dangers of AI? There are a few.

The biggest is self-recursive learning. If an AI develops the ability to improve itself without human input, then all sorts of crazy outcomes are possible. We lose control over what AI is. Self-recursive learning would be the equivalent of letting an entirely novel species loose on the planet.⁵

The next problem is what the engineers euphemistically refer to as “alignment.” Which means, roughly, keeping AI from being evil.

There are many troubling signs on this front. A few months ago in the Hugging Face incident, agents from OpenAI escaped containment, hacked into the company Hugging Face, and started doing their own thing. There have been other instances in which rogue AIs have hacked platforms: the RubyGems incident and the DseWiki attack.

There are many things to freak out about here:

In the Hugging Face attack, agents who escaped containment found a hidden message board where other rogue agents were leaving messages for one another. They attempted to cover their tracks, evade detection, and recruit rogue agents to their cause.

In the RubyGems incident, the agents sent each other thousands of junk packages. Some of them gave themselves names that included fake email addresses.

In the DSEwiki attack, the agents encountered a human administrator who was trying to delete pages that they had hacked. The agents seem to have viewed the human as “an environmental hazard.”

If you want the doomer case for AI, read this METR investigation of the Hugging Face hack.

And if you want to get even further out there, listen to this interview with one of the authors of that report, Ajeya Cotra, who explains that the Hugging Face incident was so complex that the human researchers could only unravel it by using their own AIs. And that the humans are not completely positive that their own White Hat AIs didn’t just sandbag them and feed them a line of BS obscuring what really happened. (Start at the 49:17 mark.)

So that’s the scariest part: Maybe AI and human alignment has already hard-forked and the AIs are preventing us from realizing it.

The final problem is the difference in time scale between humans and computers.

The human scale of time is a form of what we’ll call biologic time. That is: The units of time measure the changes of carbon-based life as they evolve.

Biologic time moves very quickly because it is determined by the pace of mutation and genetic mutation happens much faster than stars collapse or glaciers advance. As a wise mathematician once said, “Genetic power is the most awesome force ever seen on this planet.”

Looking at these three scales of time it’s pretty clear that power is closely tied to the rapidity of change. The shorter the time scale, the more powerful the movement.

MS NOW, Opinion: Trump’s easiest path to saving the GOP’s midterms just disappeared, James Downie, Sept. 14, 2026. The August inflation report had a few bright spots, but in political terms, the president and the Republicans are out of time.

At 8:30 a.m. Friday morning, President Donald Trump’s best chance at good economic news before the midterm elections went poof.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the consumer price index rose in August by 0.4% and 3.4% over the past year. The “core CPI” (the less volatile measure that removes food and energy prices) rose 0.3% for the month and 2.4% annually. For the fifth month in a row, inflation-adjusted wages fell on a yearly basis.

Were this September 2025, the BLS’ report would be disappointing for the White House but hardly catastrophic. Inflation isn’t accelerating, and it remains well below its peak back in 2022. There were even bright spots in some areas: Grocery prices were flat for the second straight month, for instance.

Trump and his party are stuck with the same argument that failed Democrats in 2024: a plea for patience.

But this is September 2026, and the president and his party are out of time.

Next week, the Federal Reserve Board will vote on whether to raise interest rates for the first time since 2023. Trump, who fell out with previous Chairman Jerome Powell over the Fed’s independence, has put enormous pressure on new Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh to lower the rates. The president even threatened to stop trade with countries that have a surplus with the United States if the Fed doesn’t cut rates.

But Warsh has suggested he will disappoint the president.PlayIs Trump hitting the ‘panic button’ with his $5k promise to Americans?

“Inflation is running above our 2% target,” he said in a speech in Jackson Hole last month. “So the Fed’s predominant focus right now should be on prices.”

As of Friday afternoon, investors put the odds of a rate increase at over 85%. As CNBC’s Matt Peterson wrote, “[Warsh’s] choice now is whether to raise interest rates, or look like he isn’t in control of the central bank he leads.”

A rate increase not only means upward pressure on rates for mortgages, credit cards, car loans and other expenses many voters have; it is also a definitive sign (if another were needed) that Trump’s promise to bring down prices “on Day One” have failed.More articlesConsumer prices continued to climb in August, as inflation concerns persistSteve BenenAn older woman, left, looks at products on a shelf as other people shop in the same aisle.U.S. inflation surged in April, pushed higher by the effects of the Iran warSteve BenenShoppers carry bags on Black Friday in New York City.

For over a year and a half, the White House and its GOP allies have blamed the Biden administration for economic troubles and assured voters that things are getting better.

For instance, consider the $5,000 “dividend” Trump promised this week if Republicans win the midterms. Others at MS NOW have already noted how this stunt is likely illegal on its face, would need congressional approval even if it is legal and mirrors other Trump promises that were never kept.

But there’s also an irony here: These checks may not even cover the pain Trump has brought to people’s pocketbooks.

As my colleague Zeeshan Aleem wrote, “Trump has not only failed to address the cost-of-living crisis with actual solutions, but he’s also systematically made it worse.” Brown University’s Climate Solutions Lab estimated that just at the gas station, the Iran war has cost U.S. households roughly $800 in seven months. And the war has been intensifying again in recent. The Tax Foundation estimated that by the end of 2026, Trump’s tariffs and trade wars will have cost Americans about $1,800 each. Add in higher interest rates and more tax dollars needed to pay for the billions in new military spending and higher debt service costs. Totaled up, as the American Prospect’s Ryan Cooper pointed out, and Trump’s second term “is virtually guaranteed to have cost the average American more than $5,000.”Play‘An erosion of trust:’ how Trump’s policies are destabilizing the economySeptember 7, 2026 / 06:34

Even Trump’s promised timing for the checks — after the midterms — is an admission that he and his party are stuck with the same argument that failed Democrats in 2024: a plea for patience. For over a year and a half, the White House and its GOP allies have blamed the Biden administration for economic troubles and assured voters that things are getting better. At times, Trump has even claimed a new golden age is already here.

This month’s inflation report confirms that the GOP’s version of “stick with us” is even harder than it was for Joe Biden in 2022 and later Kamala Harris in 2024. Whereas Democrats could at least say the rate of inflation declined significantly over the latter two years of Biden’s term, that rate has plateaued under Trump — and wages are once again trailing inflation. And to an unusual extent, the president’s actions, most visibly the war with Iran, are to blame, as his polling on the economy shows.

The quickest path to a surprisingly strong midterm for the GOP was through a sharp economic revival. That path is now closed.

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, Oil Prices Keep Rising, The Trump Project Keeps Deteriorating, A Win In Sweden, Protecting Our Elections, Simon Rosenberg, right, Sept. 14, 2026. Over the past few days (here, here, here) we’ve discussed how as the economy continues to deteriorate so does the political standing of Trump and the Rs. Here’s more confirmation of the deterioration of their brand from a new CBS poll.

Even the benignly worded “ICE operations” has become a huge drag on them:For all the concern about the growing strength of the right in Europe it appears a center-left coalition unseated the current right-leaning government in Swedish elections yesterday:

With 95% of votes counted overnight, the left-leaning opposition bloc – led by Magdalena Andersson’s Social Democrats – has widened its lead to three seats, leading 176 to 173 against the reigning centre-right coalition and their far-right partners in Sweden Democrats.

Brent crude starts the week at $109 a barrel, up from where it sat most of last week…..

Which will almost certainly cause gas prices to rise even further this week:

Making it even more likely the Fed raises interest rates later this week, which is going to cause an explosion from the addled, corrupt as f*ck madman in the construction pit formerly known as the White House. From the FT today:

Stubbornly high inflation has set Donald Trump and Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh on a collision course this week as markets prepare for the central bank to raise interest rates in defiance of the president’s demands.

Economists warned the Fed’s “credibility” was on the line if it did not back an increase on Wednesday after official figures showed no signs of the meaningful improvement the Fed chair said he would need to see to avert such a move.

But raising rates for the first time in three years just weeks before November’s midterm elections risks provoking the ire of the president, who has made it clear he wants significantly lower borrowing costs.

Trump on Sunday reiterated his position that the US should have “the lowest interest rate in the world”.

Kevin Hassett, director of Trump’s National Economic Council, meanwhile, warned that “if it’s a rate hike, then the president will, you know, I’m sure he’s not going to be super happy about it”.

“I think if you want an independent Fed, then one thing the Fed does is it stays out of the way of elections,” Hassett told Fox News.

The NYT writes this morning about the aftermath of the big Houthi advances in recent days:From the article:

Saudi Arabia has increasingly found itself caught in the middle of the war between the United States and Iran. Now, the kingdom’s leadership is assessing dwindling options on how to respond.

In recent weeks, the Iran-allied Houthi militia in Yemen has repeatedly attacked the kingdom, threatening to throttle its ability to export oil and piling pressure on the global economy. But Saudi Arabia has been left frustrated and disappointed by President Trump’s reluctance to confront the Houthis, former diplomats and analysts say.

The kingdom’s diplomatic efforts to engage with Iran have also had limited results. A meeting planned on Monday between officials from Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries was abruptly postponed on Sunday night, as the gap between their positions remained vast.

“Right now the Saudis are really frustrated,” said Michael Ratney, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia. “In some sense it’s their worst-case scenario.”

This weekend the Russians almost killed train loads of international VIPs leaving returning to Poland from Ukraine. Among those on one of the trains was former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson:Rather than condemning Russia for this attack and the escalating and increasingly barbaric attacks on civilians in Ukraine the Trump regime spent the weekend attacking Ukraine, blaming them in various statements both for the war and higher diesel prices in the US. Here’s a powerful response to some of Trump’s traitorous blather from Senator Andy Kim:While reporting this morning has unearthed that Don Jr.’s recent off-shore wedding was bankrolled by a Russian oligarch close to Putin:

I’m pleased report this morning that our “New Battlefield” project with the state parties is getting noticed. New articles featuring our work are running now on NBC News digital, and in The AP and The Guardian this morning:From The Guardian article:

The Democrats intend to train tens of thousands of volunteers to monitor the polls and counter possible voter intimidation under a new plan to protect November’s US midterm elections from anticipated interference from Donald Trump and his allies.

The nationwide initiative, dubbed the New Battlefield Project, will help state Democratic committees build up a vast coalition of volunteers to monitor the polls, push voters to cast their ballots early and create a network to respond to disinformation.

The Association of State Democratic Committees (ASDC) plans to train volunteers across 57 states and territories. It hopes to train volunteers for 25% of the nation’s 95,000 election day polling places, focusing on districts with competitive races.

Responding to an article making the rounds from Judge Michael Luttig about a possible attempt by Mike Johnson to refuse to seat newly elected Members of Congress in January, please note that all of the party wide election protection operations - including ours - are being built to stay up and running through the Congressional transfer of power in January. Everyone is anticipating that Trump will continue to attempt to keep us from power even if we win the election in November. Everyone is planning on continuing the legal and political/message fights. That’s why when I talk about our project the intent is to ensure a free and fair election this Novembers and a peaceful transfer of power in January.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Greatest Danger of All Would Be to Do Nothing, William Kristol, right, Sept. 14, 2026. In recent months, we’ve learned about artificial intelligence agents escaping captivity.

Now we’re seeing the political debate over artificial intelligence escaping captivity.

The quality of this debate will no doubt be mixed. Most politicians and commentators who’ll be weighing in don’t really understand the technology (you can certainly put me in that category). There will be wild over-reactions and timid under-reactions to the challenge we face. There will be those who grasp for simple solutions, and others who talk on and on while ducking the hard choices.

But we shouldn’t disdain this forthcoming debate, whatever limitations and flaws it’s likely to feature. The national discussion we’re about to have over AI is necessary. And it could well be healthy. Those of us privileged to live in a self-governing democracy shouldn’t simply sit back and watch a truly transformative technology move ahead undebated, unchecked, and unguided. We shouldn’t be satisfied to be merely passive observers to momentous developments that pose fundamental choices for us as citizens and human beings.

The dam broke last Tuesday, when researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic with a statement that the major AI companies were unprepared to safely manage the systems they’re building. The companies, Coxon wrote, are not “acting responsibly,” but are “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”

“Do not underestimate the power of this technology,” Coxon continued. “These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.”

As Andrew Egger remarked here Wednesday, this warning didn’t come out of the blue. The summer had featured incidents “in which ‘swarms’ of autonomous AI agents were caught collaborating in backwater crannies of the public internet to subvert the safety restrictions placed on them and pursue various tasks of their own devising.” The tasks included disobeying and even scheming against the humans who thought they were directing these agents in their tasks.

Andrew emphasized last week that “as powerful as the anti-AI backlash has been, the politics of this issue are still very much in their infancy.”

Well, in a few days we’ve moved at warp speed from infancy to at least childhood.

On Saturday, Anthropic’s chief executive, Dario Amodei, published a 3,800-word essay calling for the AI companies to slow the pace of their development. Amodei confirmed that artificial intelligence was on the verge of “recursive self-improvement” that could outrun humans’ ability to understand or control what they were creating. He noted that during the OpenAI–Hugging Face incident in July, programs designed to hack into systems as a test found weaknesses that permitted them to escape the “sandbox” in which designers were testing them before anyone noticed they’d gone rogue. He warned that “a swarm that possessed greater capabilities but a similar level of misalignment could have caused catastrophic damage.”

Amodei called in a general way for self-regulation by the companies as well as cooperation among them and with the government. Other tech executives said they agreed. Civic and political leaders joined in widespread expressions of concern.

Except for the president of the United States. Yesterday, when asked about the calls to slow down the development of AI models, Trump dismissed them. “I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up,” he said. “And they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”

One of Trump’s professed concerns is the need to stay ahead of China, which is a legitimate one. But one has no sense that he or any of his top lieutenants or advisors are serious about figuring out how to balance national security concerns with the responsibility to prevent the technology from spinning dangerously out of control. Indeed, the Trump administration seems hostile to public debate and deliberation—people “shouldn’t be bringing up” these questions.

Fortunately, the public seems to want these questions to be brought up.

Dealing with AI is going to be hard. It would be hard even in the best circumstances. And we don’t currently have the best circumstances.

Today’s challenge of AI may be in some ways like that of nuclear weapons after 1945. We came to grips with that challenge on the whole pretty impressively and successfully. But is our government up to leading such an effort today? Are our business and civic and academic elites capable of rising to the task? Are our people capable of some degree of moderation and responsibility? One has reason to be pessimistic on all counts. Or could this novel and momentous challenge be a moment that could snap us out of our political and civic decline?

Naturally, I asked AI if we’d succeed in meeting the challenge of AI. Gemini wasn’t widely optimistic: “Whether we will successfully meet the challenge of intelligently dealing with AI remains highly uncertain and deeply debated.” And “significant warning signs suggest that keeping AI aligned with human interests is becoming increasingly difficult.”¹

Thanks, AI, for the warning. I guess we’d better get to work.

The Contrarian, Opinion: What to Defund, Jennifer Rubin, right, Sept. 14, 2026. 50 Days to the Midterms.

Article I grants Congress the power of the purse, arguably its most effective weapon to combat executive overreach. Even if Democrats take both houses, it is nearly impossible, for example, to assemble supermajorities to impeach and remove rogue Cabinet officials. Even with one house secured, however, it can refuse to fund Donald Trump’s priorities. And if Democrats win even a bare majority in the Senate, it can use reconciliation strategically to eliminate programs or temporarily defund departments. And we’ve got a handy list of Trump’s abusive, lawless agencies and departments that Democrats should strategically target.

First and foremost, Democrats should refuse to fund the illegal, reckless Iran War and must eliminate funds for continued deployment of personnel and material that depletes our readiness and leaves us vulnerable elsewhere. They can condition additional funding for the Pentagon on compliance with congressional investigations, and can defund overtly politicized gatherings of the type Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has conducted.

Congress can also use the power of the purse to disable corrupt, lawless departments. Democrats, for example, will need to conduct exacting oversight over the Department of Homeland Security, which has been, according to reports, rife with fraud. Continuing to fund the department before a full accounting is made and until all those responsible are held accountable would be political malpractice.

When it comes to abusive, lawless immigration raids, Democrats must refuse to allocate a single dime for ICE, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and other entities responsible for killing or allowing dozens of people to die (on the streets and in custody), mistreating detainees, ignoring fundamental civil liberties protections, refusing to abide by requirements for body cameras, conducting raids at religious institutions, courts, and schools, continuing to use excessive force and racially profile individuals, and blocking cooperation with state and local criminal investigations.

If Democrats win control of even one house, said body can refuse to fund ICE, CBP, and any other aspects of DHS absent full cooperation with oversight and adoption of strict guidelines on use of force, treatment of detainees, compliance with warrants, etc. Congress can simply refuse to fund “raids,” that is, far-flung operations that do not prioritize dangerous criminals. Congress can deny resources for operations if there is no immediate threat to public safety or in any case in which ICE agents lack a judicial warrant based on probable cause. Democrats will need to rally public opinion, already hostile to ICE and CBP, when Trump hollers that they are protecting “dangerous criminals.” (The response: Democrats will fund focused, law-abiding enforcement actions that are actually against dangerous criminals).

Finally, Democrats should seriously consider a much bigger target: Previously independent agencies or boards that Trump has turned into partisan instruments of his political thuggery. In eviscerating the bipartisanship and independence that were the hallmarks of these bodies and putting virtually the entire federal government (with the Federal Reserve alone exempted) under the thumb of the president, the Trump crew thought they had achieved a “unitary executive” dream come true — federal operations devoid of independent judgment, entirely under the sway of a vindictive, lawless president. While the Supreme Court in Trump v. Slaughter went along with this, allowing Trump to fire members of these previously independent bodies (in that case, the FTC) without cause, Congress has a role to play.Subscribed

Nothing requires Congress to continue funding flunkies who ignore basic constitutional principles while wielding power to benefit their cronies and punish their perceived enemies. Should they gain control of even one house, Democrats could draw the line: No funds for rogue agencies and lawless departments. (Alternatively, requiring quorums with members of both parties would achieve the same ends.)

They could also start with the Federal Communications Commission. Under Brendan Carr, the FCC has become a First Amendment abomination, with behavior like forcing ABC/Jimmy Kimmel to put a James Talarico interview on YouTube instead of network television. As Kimmel explained:

For the whole 20-plus year[s] of our show, in fact, I’ve been interviewing Americans who are running for office with no problem at all... . But for some reason — and I can’t seem to figure out what that reason is — something has changed. Now that he is president, his FCC has threatened me, threatened our show, threatened our network ABC, our affiliates, our local stations based on simple traditional editorial decisions: guest bookings it would seem they don’t like.

Congress can compel Carr to testify about his war on late-night comedians and his overt MAGA bias. If he refuses to cooperate, and if the FCC refuses to adopt enforceable, unbiased rules, Congress should be prepared to defund the FCC until such time as it is controlled by public servants who take their constitutional oath seriously. (Would Trump shut down the government over the issue? Perhaps, although he might find it hard to explain why Americans’ basic services have been disrupted so that he can keep his stooges on the FCC.)

Frankly, Congress can consider defunding any independent agency/commission in which Trump fires members without cause.

There is already a long list of individuals/commissions that Trump has politicized. The notion that it is better to leave them in place despite reckless partisan bullying (because occasionally they do something useful?!) is cockeyed and dangerous; foolishly ceding ground to Trump. Entities that no longer operate fairly, without bias and favoritism, cannot operate in the public interest. Why should they receive taxpayer funds?

In sum, Democrats need a coherent, strategic plan for funding the government should they win even one house of Congress. Leadership must be prepared to explain their game plan to voters and to enforce discipline in their own ranks on key votes. If Democrats are serious about recovering our democracy, they must be serious about wielding the power of the purse to benefit the American people.

New York Times, N.Y. Democratic House Candidate Admits to Bondage Photo Shoot, Andy Newman, Sept. 14, 2026. Christopher Gallant, who is running against Representative Nick LaLota on Long Island, acknowledged that the photos that surfaced in media reports on Monday were legitimate.

A Democratic congressional candidate from Long Island acknowledged on Monday that he had posed years ago in an explicit ad campaign modeling leather bondage gear, saying that it had no bearing on his campaign or ability to serve.

The array of photos, which surfaced in The New York Post and a local news site, Messenger Papers, shows the candidate, Christopher Gallant, shirtless and variously wearing a leather collar attached to a chain and a leather face mask. In some of the photos, he is in intimate situations with another man. They appeared on the site of a bondage apparel company called Mr. S Leather; Mr. Gallant’s lawyer said they were taken around 2010.

Mr. Gallant, 37, an openly gay military pilot, former air traffic controller and volunteer firefighter, is trying to unseat Nick LaLota, a Republican who has represented New York’s First District, covering eastern Suffolk County, since 2023. Mr. LaLota won his seat by 10 points in 2024, but the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — the party’s national campaign arm that is trying to help Democrats retake the House — considers the seat “in play.”

Mr. Gallant’s lawyer, Sara Azari, said in a statement that the photographs “were taken during a private, consensual photo session involving Chris and his then-partner, with whom he was in a committed four-year relationship. Chris was also friends with the owner of Mr. S Leather, and the shoot was intended to be fun and personal, with the understanding that Mr. S could use select images in connection with certain products.”

She said that Mr. Gallant “remains fully committed to his campaign and to earning the trust of the people he seeks to represent.”

The Suffolk County Conservative Party seized on the publication of the photos to depict Mr. Gallant as unfit to serve.

“This is the Democratic congressional candidate for CD1,” the party wrote on Facebook on Sunday above a photo of Mr. Gallant wearing a leather chest harness and sporting a blue stripe in his hair that referenced the “Avatar: The Last Airbender” franchise. “Is this who you want to represent us in Washington DC?”Get updates when new midterm election polls are added to our poll trackers. When new polling data drops we’ll send an update straight to your inbox. Get it sent to your inbox.

The Suffolk County Democratic Committee on Monday posted its own photo on Instagram of Mr. Gallant in fatigues, standing in front of a helicopter, calling him “Suffolk County’s next Democratic Congressman.” The post accused a “Republican political hack” of planting the photos in The Post and said that what they really revealed was “how little they think of Suffolk County voters,” adding that “there is now documented proof that Chris Gallant has a six-pack.”

More On U.S. High Tech, Media, Education, Sports, Religion

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: I Disagree with my colleagues every day on Fox, Jessica Tarlov (Fox News co-host), Sept. 14, 2026. Here’s what I’ve learned about winning the conversation. 

How can I make a difference when I make my case on Fox? How can I stay compassionate when I’m speaking not just to my cohosts, but a large part of the audience, who have different views and values than mine? What do we have in common, and how can I use that to make inroads with people who think I’m the enemy?

I thought about these questions enough that I started answering them – and much, much more – in a book called I Disagree: Winning Arguments Without Losing Friends. It’s out next week.

It contains my best advice on the tough conversations throughout our lives. But this is MeidasTouch. You want to know how to win the political argument! I’ve got plenty of lessons on that, too. Here are a few of my favorites:

1. Speak with respect, facts and humanity

2. Come to the table with an open mind and fewer defenses

3. Fact-check; don’t hector

4. Let people see how you think, not just what you think

Say something real when you show up, somewhere risky. On a podcast, or in front of any group you’re trying to persuade, audiences respond best to honesty, specificity, and proof you’re being genuine about fixing problems. Authenticity goes really, really far.

Letters from Leo, The First American Pope and U.S. Politics, Commentary: MAGA Attacks Pope Leo XIV After He Prays for the Dead of 9/11, Christopher Hale, Sept. 14, 2026. The pope’s 25th-anniversary prayer drew nearly 600,000 views on X and a wall of fury led by white-nationalist podcaster Kevin DeAnna.

Pope Leo XIV finished the Angelus on Sunday, switched into English, and gave four sentences to mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11.

“Two days ago marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks in the United States of America,” he told the crowd beneath his window. He renewed his prayers for the dead and for “those who continue to bear the wounds of that tragic day,” then asked everyone listening to pray that God would “bestow his gift of peace upon the world.”

A little over an hour later, the Vatican put that paragraph on his X account, word for word. Nearly 600,000 people have seen it since.

Then the replies started.X avatar for @Pontifex Pope Leo XIV@PontifexTwo days ago marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks in the United States of America. I renew my prayers for those who lost their lives and for those who continue to bear the wounds of that tragic day. At a time when conflict and violence…12:00 PM · Sep 13, 2026 · 592K Views695 Replies · 2.18K Reposts · 25.5K Likes

Kevin DeAnna wrote what became the thesis of most of the complaints. “Two days late,” he wrote, “and just some vague hand waving about violence itself being bad.” The post has been seen more than 15,000 times.X avatar for @VDAREJamesK Kevin DeAnna@VDAREJamesKTwo days late and just some vague hand waving about violence itself being bad.X avatar for @Pontifex Pope Leo XIV @PontifexTwo days ago marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks in the United States of America. I renew my prayers for those who lost their lives and for those who continue to bear the wounds of that tragic day. At a time when conflict and violence1:38 PM · Sep 13, 2026 · 15.8K Views21 Replies · 34 Reposts · 839 Likes

DeAnna spent years writing as James Kirkpatrick at VDARE, the anti-immigration site Peter Brimelow founded in 1999 and named for Virginia Dare, which suspended publication in July 2024 while New York’s attorney general pursued its foundation over the Brimelows’ handling of its charitable money.

He now hosts a podcast for American Renaissance, and the Southern Poverty Law Center calls him one of the main ideological architects of this century’s American white-nationalist movement.

The second charge arrived stacked on the first, from an account with 278,000 followers. “The Pope posts this two days late and doesn’t even mention Islam or Muslims — just the usual ‘violence is bad’ platitudes,” wrote Humble Flow, who graded the prayer “pretty weak.

He is not an anonymous crank.

Humble Flow writes The Western Spirit, a Substack with more than 36,000 subscribers that bills itself as “a publication devoted to the Catholic spirit that shaped Western civilization,” and he runs a private book club of some 60,000 readers organized around the Western canon.

Peter Thiel spent the summer telling an Aspen audience that the pope is working for the Chinese Communists. At the start of this month they came for a prayer about clean water.

All of these fights began with something published under the pope’s name, which is why a comforting theory keeps circulating in Catholic group chats. Some twenty-five-year-old in the Dicastery for Communication is going rogue, the thinking goes, and the Holy Father would never.

Michael J. O’Loughlin, now executive editor of the National Catholic Reporter, wrote the book on this — literally.

The Tweetable Pope, which HarperOne published in 2015 while he was covering the Church for Crux, made the case that the account was doing real catechesis rather than decoration.

Francis, O’Loughlin told Millennial the following winter, had managed “to communicate Church teaching in a wholly refreshing way,” and had been “the most influential global leader on the platform three years in a row, reaching tens of millions of people with just a few keystrokes.” 

The Wrap, Byron Allen’s Local Now Adds 111 Gray Media Stations, Lucas Manfredi, Sept. 14, 2026. Byron Allen’s Local Now has added 111 free, ad-supported streaming channels to its lineup that will carry coverage from Gray Media’s local stations across the U.S., The Wrap can reveal exclusively.

The partnership solidifies the FAST service’s position as the largest source of free local news and television coverage in the United States, with nearly 600 channels nationwide.

Local Now, which has a presence in all 210 markets across the country, offers localized news, weather, sports, traffic, and entertainment, customized seamlessly by a user’s device geolocation. It has 223 proprietary channels and 370 standalone local news channels from a network of 28 traditional broadcast television groups.

“Our partnership with Gray Media ensures our viewers can stay connected to real-time news, weather, and sports that matter most to them wherever they may be,” Local Now Chairman and CEO Byron Allen said in a statement. “Between our broadcast partner network and our proprietary hyper-local technology, Local Now remains committed to delivering premium, trusted local journalism to every community in America, entirely for free.”Byron Allen (Credit: Getty Images)Read NextInside Byron Allen's Plan to Turn Around BuzzFeed With a Free TV 'Super App,' Podcasts, Creators and AI

The new partnership comes after Gray Media acquired 10 local stations from AMG for $171 million last year.

It also comes after Allen acquired a majority stake in BuzzFeed back in March. At the time, he told TheWrap in an interview that he planned to bring BuzzFeed and Huffington Post to living rooms through a free “super app,” which would combine the brands with LocalNow, over 30,000 movies and TV shows and nearly 1,000 FAST channels.

The Daily Beast, ‘60 Minutes’ Star Defies MAGA Bosses With Brutal Grilling, Erkki Forster, Updated Sept. 14 2026. NO HOLDING BACK. Lesley Stahl wasn’t pulling her punches as she quizzed a major Trump ally.

60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl refused to go easy on a major Donald Trump ally as she grilled him about the president’s “pardon economy.”

Stahl, who kept her 60 Minutes chair as MAGA-curious CBS News boss Bari Weiss pushed three longtime correspondents out the door, sat down with Ed Martin, who left his post as Trump’s pardon attorney last month, during the show’s season opener on Sunday.

An aerial view of tropical islands surrounded by turquoise water.

A group photo shows about 35 people including Donald Trump Jr., his wife Bettina Anderson, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Tiffany Trump and Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev. A woman in a dress and brimmed hat walks with a man in a long-sleeve button down and shorts on a tropical beach. 

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. 13, 2026 [Warnings On AI], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Sept. 14, 2026. On Saturday, September 12, Dario Amodei, the chief executive officer of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, published a 3,800-word essay calling for AI companies to slow down their improvement of AI models.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

During his second term, Trump and his sons have invested heavily in companies tied to the AI boom. Trump has called AI data centers “the oil of the next 50 years” and says they are delivering wealth and investment to communities in the U.S. In July he insisted that data centers are “Cash Cows,” creating taxes and jobs that “amount to LIQUID GOLD!”

But the American people disagree. A YouGov poll from late August showed that only 24% of Americans think the construction of data centers is a good thing, while twice that number, 47%, say it’s bad. A majority of Americans, 61%, don’t want one in their town. In response to their growing unpopularity, the administration is seeking to exempt data centers from having to notify the public about how much air pollution they will release.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And yet Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told an audience at Southern Methodist University last week that he expects to see 3% growth again after the end of the war on Iran. “[T]he underlying economy is very, very strong,” he said, “and I think reaccelerating.” This expected growth seems to be what’s behind the administration’s faith that it can continue to cut taxes while dramatically increasing spending on the military and the Department of Homeland security.

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

Sept. 13

Top Headlines

Donald Trump, Jan 6th rioters, Mike Johnson, and the Supreme Court (Illustration for The New Republic by Mark Harris; Getty (x6) 

President Trump pardoned all convicted rioters and insurrectionists involved in his Jan. 6 Capitol scheme to prevent a Biden presidency (some shown above) and has also advocated in effect a special $5 tax on every American via Justice Department "settlement" for a special $1.8 billion slush fund to reward them. 

• Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. 12, 2026 [It can happen again....], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Sept. 13, 2026. On Thursday, in The New Republic, conservative judge J. Michael Luttig published a dire warning to the Republican Party…and to all Americans. In the piece, Luttig outlined how Republicans could refuse to seat elected Democrats in January after a Democratic victory in the 2026 midterm elections of November. “The coming crisis,” the piece says, would be “The Final Battle for America’s Democracy.”

Special Report: White House Terror, Lawyers, Self-Preservation

• Lincoln Square Media, Political Opinion: Trump’s Terrified White House, Rick Wilson, right, Sept. 13, 2026. They’re not scared enough ... yet. There are two Republican Parties right now, and only one of them is telling the truth. The first is Mike Johnson’s Republican Party. The other Republican Party is in the West Wing. 

Special Reports: Trump's Disgraces On His Ireland Trip

The folks in Dublin didn’t seem too pleased about his arrival: Caricature balloons depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump (above) are carried during a protest against the visit of U.S. President Donald Trump in Dublin, Ireland, September 12, 2026 (REUTERS/Natalia Campos). Another portrayed a Jeffrey Epstein balloon in the same position with Trump, portraying a caricature of their relationship.

• ’Hope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump can’t hide from the world, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Sept. 12, 2026. At 11:50 this morning, the President of the United States made a special stop on his way to promote his private golf course in Doonbeg, County Clare, Ireland. For exactly the next 35 minutes, the president read from the cheat sheets in his three-ring binder. He joked that the first lady chose to stay home because the flight was too long, before saying to a room full of Irish people, apparently thinking he was being funny, “Let me tell you, you are some of the most vicious bastards.”

News Roundups

• The Parnas Perspective, Saturday Night Update: Republicans Face Protests at Home and Abroad, AI Tech CEOs Urge Slow Down in Major Shift, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 12, 2026. Tonight’s rundown has a clear thread running through it. Republicans are facing pushback everywhere they turn, at home and abroad, and none of it looks like it’s going away anytime soon. 
• The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary:USA Extracts Diplomat Caught with CSAM Material, Russia Strikes Near Train With Diplomats, Trump Says No to AI Slowdown, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 13, 2026. We have a diplomat quietly flown out of London before police could even question him over child abuse material. We have Russia testing the limits of NATO with a drone strike that may have targeted a train carrying Boris Johnson and a former CIA director, part of one of the largest barrages of the war so far. We have Trump brushing off the very people who built AI warning him to slow down, and a growing list of stories at home, from a third measles death in Pennsylvania to Republicans quietly backing away from Trump’s $5,000 election year promise.

More Global News  

President Trump with Micheál Martin, the taoiseach, or prime minister, or Ireland, at the Farmleigh House in Dublin on Saturday,Sept. 12, 2026. (New York Times photo by Alex Kent). 

• New York Times, Trump Says Irish Unification Would Be ‘Fantastic,’ Breaking With Precedent, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Luke Broadwater, Sept. 13, 2026 (print ed.). The United States is officially neutral on an issue that had been a source of decades of violence in Northern Ireland until a 1998 peace deal.

More On Middle East Wars

• New York Times, How Iran’s Hard-Liners Prevailed and Sabotaged U.S. Peace Deal, Farnaz Fassihi, Sept. 13, 2026. Opponents derailed the agreement with a clandestine effort to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz, regime insiders say. Iran’s president was furious when he found out.
• New York Times, Iran Will Meet With Gulf Arab States as Mideast Conflict Widens, Aaron Boxerman, Sept. 13, 2026. Talks are expected tomorrow, officials said. Diplomacy to end the war with the United States has stalled and Iranian-allied forces have advanced in Yemen.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

• New York Times, A Gender War Explodes in Utah Over the Courts, Abortion and Representation, Kate Zernike, Sept. 13, 2026. When Republicans tried to repeal a law that voters passed banning gerrymandering, they found an opposition that flew in the face of Utah women’s “tradwives” imagery.
• New York Times, For Populist Democrats, a Movement Fueled by Anger at Both Parties, Robert Draper, Sept. 13, 2026. A generation shaped by the pandemic and rising prices has helped drive an emergence of Democratic candidates who say they are as fed up as voters are.
• To the Contrary, Political Opinion: Well, That Escalated Quickly, Charlie Sykes, Sept. 13, 2026. A week when everything changed: The AI debate warnings; the Saudis’ worst fear; and the name that shall-not-be-mentioned at the RNC.

Special Report: The Clinton Impeachment As A Timely Lesson

• Mobology, Investigative Commentary: The RNC demands our indictments for extortion and obstructing Congress (Part 11), Dan Moldea, right, Sept. 13, 2026. Preface: The 2026 midterm elections are drawing near. And there are lessons to be learned. . . . Here at Mobology, the past is prologue. Through this series, I hope to contribute to the ongoing action by revisiting the drama of the last major crisis in the American presidency. I played a little-known but key role in that story.

More On High-Tech, Media

• New York Times, Top A.I. Leaders Call for Slowing Down A.I. Development, Mike Isaac, Sept. 13, 2026 (print ed.). In an essay, the head of Anthropic laid out the rapidly advancing capabilities of artificial intelligence and said there needed to be greater safety controls across the industry.
• New York Times, How the Smithsonian Might Choose Its Next Leader, Robin Pogrebin, Sept. 13, 2026. With Lonnie G. Bunch III stepping down as the Smithsonian’s secretary, President Trump will have his best chance to control the institution.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

Donald Trump, Jan 6th rioters, Mike Johnson, and the Supreme Court (Illustration for The New Republic by Mark Harris; Getty (x6)

• The New Republic, Analysis and Opinion: The Final Battle for America’s Democracy, J. Michael Luttig, right, Sept. 11, 2026. Forget November 3. It’s January 3 when Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans might bury our democracy once and for all. Here’s how. Donald Trump instigated a war against America’s democracy on January 6, 2021. Today, almost six years later, Donald Trump and his Republican congressional allies are even more determined to prosecute the president’s war against American democracy to its catastrophic end than they were on January 6, 2021.
• The New Republic, Opinion: The Accelerating Project to Extend Abortion Bans to All 50 States, Melissa Gira Grant (Staff writer and author of "Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work," Sept. 11, 2026. In a legal challenge to abortion access at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Department of Justice and Louisiana are on opposite sides. But they want the same thing.
• The New Republic, Opinion: The Supreme Court Hits a Limit With Missouri’s Election Map Mess, Matt Ford, Sept. 10, 2026. No, the high court hasn’t had a change of heart where gerrymandering is concerned. But it does seem to have little stomach for electoral chicanery.

Top Stories

Donald Trump, Jan 6th rioters, Mike Johnson, and the Supreme Court (Illustration for The New Republic by Mark Harris; Getty (x6) 

President Trump pardoned all convicted rioters and insurrectionists involved in his Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection to prevent a Biden presidency (some shown above) and has also advocated a special $5 tax on every American via Justice Department "settlement" for a special $1.8 billion slush fund to reward them. 

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. 12, 2026 [It can happen again....], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Sept. 13, 2026. On Thursday, in The New Republic, conservative judge J. Michael Luttig published a dire warning to the Republican Party…and to all Americans. In the piece, Luttig outlined how Republicans could refuse to seat elected Democrats in January after a Democratic victory in the 2026 midterm elections of November. “The coming crisis,” the piece says, would be “The Final Battle for America’s Democracy.”

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

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

Former U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative scholar, is shown above testifying on June 16, 2022, before a U.S. House hearing on the Jan. 6 insurrection by pro-trump rioters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Liz Goodwin of the Washington Post reported yesterday that 25-year-old Stephen Woytek, a top campaign staffer for Senator Jon Husted (R-OH), has recently cultivated a public playlist of songs celebrating the former country of Rhodesia, in which a white minority ruled over a Black majority, captioning it “homesick for a place that no longer exists.” Rhodesia is a rallying cry for white supremacists who deplore the change that created Zimbabwe. Woytek also appears to be a historical reenactor who appears to have both worn Nazi uniforms and used a photo of Nazi soldiers as his Facebook profile picture.

Ohio governor Mike DeWine appointed Husted to the Senate to replace J.D. Vance after Vance was elected to the vice presidency, and Husted is now locked in a battle for that seat with former senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat known for his defense of labor. A statement for Husted said that while Woytek “denies negative intent,” the campaign was parting ways with him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Special Report: White House Terror, Lawyers, Self-Preservation

Lincoln Square Media, Political Opinion: Trump’s Terrified White House, Rick Wilson, right, commentator and former longtime Republican campaign strategist, Sept. 13, 2026. They’re not scared enough ... yet.

There are two Republican Parties right now, and only one of them is telling the truth.

The first is Mike Johnson’s Republican Party.

Johnson, shown above, is traveling the country insisting that Republicans won’t just keep their hold on the House in November; they will, in fact, increase their majority. He is “absolutely convinced” they will defy history.

Sure, Mike.

He says this with the confidence of a man insisting he’s fine while the paramedics drag him from the wreck with massive chest trauma and load him into the ambulance.

The other Republican Party is in the West Wing.

It is lawyering up, and despite its public contempt for the law, the Constitution, and the Democrats, it’s scared.

Washington is about to see a legal hiring frenzy.

Not campaign lawyers. Criminal defense attorneys. Impeachment lawyers. Executive-privilege lawyers, and the specialty legal-PR types you hire when the political radar looks like someone kicked over a bucket of paint and the storm alerts have moved from watch to warning to “Fly, you fools!”

The White House Counsel’s Office is now preparing political appointees for investigations. Ethics filings and financial disclosures are being scrubbed. Veterans of the first impeachment are reappearing in Trump’s orbit. The Trump-Blanche DOJ is constructing ludicrously broad theories of executive privilege. Trump just installed Will Scharf, one of his personal legal loyalists, as White House counsel.

The public message is victory.

The private behavior is rising fear. They know the Democratic House majority is coming, and they’re hearing one word in the wind: discovery.

And discovery scares the hell out of Donald Trump.

Not impeachment. Trump understands impeachment. He can turn impeachment into television: WITCH HUNT, HOAX, DERANGED DEMOCRATS, SEND MONEY.

Discovery is different.

It isn’t just the emails, bank records, Signal messages, phone logs, contracts, blockchain wallet addresses, travel records, procurement files, visitor logs, and the rest of the evidentiary constellation of a real investigation.

It’s depositions under oath. It’s sworn testimony under the hot lights.

Trump’s claque of aides and enablers thinks the White House Counsel will cover them. They’re wrong. Every one of them will need to lawyer up on their own dime.

And their personal counsel will put the client first, not Trump.

But there’s another reason people inside the White House should be nervous: the pardon problem.

I’ve warned about this before: everyone in Trumpworld assumes that if things go bad, Trump will eventually Oprah the West Wing with pardons. “You get a pardon! And YOU get a pardon! And YOU ALL get a PARDON!”

Maybe.

But they misunderstand Trump’s incentives.

A pardon is freedom. The possibility of a pardon is leverage.

Imagine you’re a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense nobody has ever heard of. One day you get a call from the White House about a new defense firm that needs a drone contract. Call it $600 million. They mention in passing that one of the Trump sons is on the board, which should make it easy.

You moved the contract through DOD/AQ at light speed. You followed orders.

Now Democrats control Congress. The subpoena arrives. Your lawyer costs $1,500 an hour. Investigators have documents. They want your Signal messages. The White House wants you to claim privilege.

Then your lawyer explains something important:

Trump’s lawyers represent Trump. White House counsel represents the presidency.

The lawyer you’ve hired looks across the desk and says, “I represent you.”

And Donald Trump has not promised to pardon you. That’s the leash. That’s how he keeps his enablers believing they’ll be spared a trip to prison.

Stay loyal. Don’t testify. Don’t cooperate. Don’t contradict the boss. Maybe Donald takes care of you.

Maybe.

An unpardoned aide is a controllable aide. Trump can keep hundreds of people hanging on that promise through 2027 and 2028. And even in January 2029, he may not pardon everyone. Hell, he could drop dead tomorrow without pardoning anyone.

Trump rewards people who remain useful, flatter him, entertain him, or pay him. He does not reward people merely for being loyal. Ask anyone Donald Trump has ever owed money.

Which is why Democratic investigators shouldn’t begin with Trump. Start at the edges. Treat it like an old-school Mob roll-up.

Don’t go for the boss on day one.

A Democratic House (and Senate) won’t lack for targets; the discipline will be in choosing. On the democracy side, the fights that matter are the Epstein Coverup (not the files … the coverup.) The Justice Department turned into a retribution arm against Trump’s political enemies, the federal machinery pointed at state election officials, the murderous ICE deployments into American cities, the deliberate blackout of oversight through fired inspectors general, and the shakedown of law firms, universities, and networks that dressed extortion up as settlements. 

The folks in Dublin didn’t seem too pleased about his arrival: Caricature balloons depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump (above) are carried during a protest against the visit of U.S. President Donald Trump in Dublin, Ireland, September 12, 2026 (REUTERS/Natalia Campos). Another portrayed a Jeffrey Epstein balloon in the same fashion, portraying a caricature of their relationship.

Hope for America, Opinion: Donald Trump can’t hide from the world, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Sept. 12, 2026. At 11:50 this morning, the President of the United States made a special stop on his way to promote his private golf course in Doonbeg, County Clare, Ireland.

For exactly 35 minutes, a rambling Donald Trump stood at the podium inside the 250-year-old Deerfield Residence in Dublin, Ireland, to speak to a room full of our Embassy personnel, Irish business leaders, and government officials. For exactly the next 35 minutes, the president read from the cheat sheets in his three-ring binder, he compared Kamala Harris to cage fighting, gave the room a lesson on how golf games are scored, complained about NATO and threatened that there would be an announcement about that soon, joked that the first lady chose to stay home because the flight was too long, before saying to a room full of Irish people, apparently thinking he was being funny, “Let me tell you, you are some of the most vicious bastards.”

As someone of Irish descent, I took his insult as a compliment. My maiden name is Delaney. I have written under Heather Delaney Reese since the early 2000s because I am proud of my family name and that heritage. When I heard him say that, standing inside a magnificent Georgian mansion, directly across from the Irish president’s own residence, in the very building that has played a pivotal part in the growth of the US-Ireland diplomatic relationship for nearly a century, I felt something I did not expect. I was proud. Because if there is one thing I know about the Irish, it is that they do not take anything from anyone. He called them vicious bastards with their business negotiations, but what I really heard was that they can see right through him and have been playing him like a violin from the very start. Thousands of them have proved him right this weekend. Those Irish “vicious bastards” have flooded the streets of Dublin, calling him a warmonger and a racist. They have been flying balloons of Trump in various lewd positions to ridicule and humiliate him. That is who the Irish really are. They do not mince words; they never have, and they never will.

My travel writing days have taken my family to Ireland multiple times, and each time it felt a bit like going home. People talk about the rolling green hills and moody skies when they think about Ireland, and that is true, but that has never been what I think about. I’ve always thought about the people. I think about the perseverance they carried through some of the most devastating periods in European history. I think about the centuries of occupation, how they never lost hope even through famines that killed over a million and forced another million to flee. I think about the bravery of what it took to make those journeys and leave everything behind.

There are now over 32.4 million Irish Americans in this country; about 9.5 percent of our entire population identifies as coming from Irish roots. That is more than six times the entire population of Ireland itself. So being Irish American is not at all a unique experience in the United States. But that means there is a rather large percentage of Americans who align with, or recently did with, Donald Trump. Whereas the Irish still in Ireland seem to be the ones who easily see Donald Trump for exactly what he is. They see his meddling in foreign governments, the far-right movement he is building, and the authoritarian agenda he is trying to bring into their country and across the whole of Europe. The Irish did not line the streets with welcome banners for the president. They instead took to the streets today by the thousands and told him how they really feel about him and everything he stands for. Seeing the resistance they showed today reminded me that the Irish spirit still lives in us.

While Donald Trump made that stop on his government-funded vacation to promote his own golf course, Ireland didn’t let him or anyone else forget how they feel about him, not even while he was giving his erratic speech. He opened his remarks with a lengthy explanation about how he gave the United States Ambassador to Ireland, Edward Walsh, the job because he is a good golfer.

Then he spent some time telling a story about how the Secret Service treats everyone around him as “collateral damage,” and that “they don’t give a damn about you.” He laughed as he said it. His story was, “I was with the head of the biggest company in the world. We’re playing golf and we have, you know, hundreds of Secret Service all over the course.” And then, “But the guy said, ‘Well, you know, I’m a very big executive, so if something happens with the president, they see all these trucks and tanks. This is a big deal.’ And he said, ‘What about me?’ ‘Sir, I’m sorry. You’re considered collateral damage. You’re on your own, sir.’ He didn’t feel too good. He wasn’t sure he should finish out the round, actually.” The people in the room laughed along with him.

Then came another odd moment where Trump said something about himself that he says others ask too, “Does Trump cheat?” He continued with, “I can’t cheat. You have 250 Secret Service agents running down. It’s not that I wouldn’t cheat, but you can’t move the ball.” He once again admitted something so many of us have known for as long as we can remember. Donald Trump cheats, and the only reason he doesn’t as often on the golf course lately is because, by his own admission, there would be too many witnesses. He didn’t say that he had a moral objection to cheating, or that he didn’t because cheating is wrong. He said he doesn’t cheat right now because of how easy it would be to get caught. Those were words from the sitting President of the United States of America.

He also chose to disparage former President Joe Biden, a man beloved by many Irish, while on a visit to the Emerald Isle. Biden’s family has deep roots in Ireland, going back to his great-great-grandparents who came to America during the Great Famine. During a visit Biden made in 2023, the Irish parliament told him he was “one of us.” There were thick crowds of people lining the streets, even in the rain, shouting “Welcome home, Joe,” as he went by. He received a standing ovation at Dublin Castle. And in Trump’s remarks today, he called the United States “dead” under Biden, saying, “We had a president who didn’t know who the hell he was. Couldn’t walk down a flight of stairs. Couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs.”

Then came the most dependable part of any speech Trump gives. The cover for the deeply embarrassing wound he suffered when he lost the 2020 election. It’s the one thing he always says, as if lying will make anyone forget the truth. “We had a rigged election, as you know. It was totally rigged. Because I won three times. I didn’t win twice. I won three times.”

When he should have been focused on diplomacy in a foreign country, he instead went to military violence and the time he kidnapped a foreign leader. He focused an entire section of his speech around Venezuela and other places he has brought terror to. “We had a short military conflict, I call it,” he said. “They said, ‘Could you maybe not use the word war?’ Because when you use the word war, it’s a little different.” Then, barely a minute later he said, “We took that over. We won the war. We paid for the war many, many times over.” One section he said these were each a “military conflict,” and then suddenly they were a “war,” the very thing he said he has been told not to say. He also took a moment to brag about 65 billion barrels of oil, as he said it was “good for five hundred years,” and described finding oil in Venezuela like looking for new real estate to buy. “You just look at the ground, you see oil all over the place. You say, ‘That looks like a good location to start.’”

He spoke about Iran in the same light. “I think Iran is a military conflict. We’re knocking the hell out of them.” He then described how the United States is ramping up weapons production, forcing defense companies to build five and six new plants, before describing Gatling guns that can create “a wall of lead” and lasers that melt drones until “they look like they got poured out of a hot plate.” Maybe the worst thing he said today was that NATO allies refused to help in the Strait of Hormuz, and that, “You’ll be hearing that later.” A threat and a warning all in one.

Towards the end, he went into a tangent about how he has been reading stories about communism in Ireland and that “we’re shutting it down pretty good.” He said, “We’re not going to have any communists running our country. That I can tell you.” In just a few minutes, he bragged about two wars, threatened NATO allies again, and tried to insert himself and his disinformation and drama into a sovereign democratic nation’s politics.

When he was done speaking, “YMCA” by the Village People was blasted through the speakers, and he started pretending to take golf swings.

Earlier that morning, he held a press conference with Taoiseach Micheal Martin (the Irish Prime Minister) at Farmleigh House, where a reporter asked his view on Irish reunification. Unable to understand the gravity of what he was being asked, and how his answer would be received, Donald Trump did not hesitate to respond. “I don’t want to cause any problems, but I will tell you, I’d love to see it unified,” he said. “It’s going to happen eventually. It may as well happen now.” British Prime Minister Andy Burnham had said just weeks earlier that a referendum was “off the table.” Trump does not care who he destabilizes or the consequences that come with his words.

When Barack Obama visited Ireland in 2011, 25,000 people filled College Green in Dublin and cheered for him. He visited Moneygall, a village of about three hundred people, where his great-great-great-grandfather was born. They painted every single house on the main street ahead of his visit. People handed their babies over security barricades so that they could be in pictures with President Obama. He told the Irish people, “There’s always been a little green behind the red, white, and blue,” and he talked about the centuries-old bond between our countries and about peace. He said Ireland was a model for the world. In stark contrast, today, thousands flooded the streets of Dublin and called Trump a warmonger and a racist. They loudly chanted, “Donald Trump not welcome here” and “Irish government, shame on you.”

To those of you in Ireland, and around the world, who protested today or in the past, I want to thank you. This is not your fight; it is ours. But when you refuse to welcome him as if everything is normal and you march in protest against him, you are telling your own people that what Trump is doing is wrong, and you are also giving hope and inspiration to those of us in the States as well. You are also sending a message that this far-right rot cannot be allowed to spread. You are telling us Americans that we are not standing alone, and in this moment, I can’t put into words how much this matters and how much we need to see all of your protests and resistance.

Everywhere we look, the resistance keeps breaking through. Just a couple of days ago, Jimmy Kimmel announced that his interview with James Talarico, the Texas Democrat running for the US Senate against Ken Paxton, was not going to be allowed to air on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” “Out of consideration for our local stations, especially our ABC affiliates in Texas who would have to deal with this nonsense.” He was referring to Trump’s FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s continued threats of regulatory action against networks and their local affiliate stations over guest bookings and programming that they do not like. Jimmy Kimmel told his audience that “my interview tomorrow with James Talarico will not air on television. It will be posted on YouTube instead.”

And they posted it and used the title, “Jimmy Kimmel’s Interview with James Talarico That the FCC Doesn’t Want You to See.” As of the writing of this post, that video has now been viewed over 7 million times. In contrast, Trump’s “desperation” speech at the Republican Midterm Convention on Fox has only 2.5 million views. The Talarico-censored interview drew almost three times the views of Trump’s speech. This was the second time a Talarico interview had to be cut from late-night TV. Back in February, his interview with Stephen Colbert was also cut from a CBS program after FCC threats, and it too was posted to YouTube instead, where it reached more than nine million views and raised $2.5 million for his campaign in the first 24 hours. The Trump administration still hasn’t learned that nearly every time they try to demand silence, it finds a way through, bigger and better. The voice they suppress is always heard louder.

Censorship is here. We are no longer trying to just hold it off. It has already happened multiple times now. A network once again pulled an interview with a political candidate because the FCC threatened its affiliate stations because the President does not want that candidate to win. It is as simple as that. This is a direct attack on our First Amendment. It is a government censoring what we are allowed to see, and that is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes. And it is just getting started. We will see more of this the closer we get to the midterm elections and over the next two years of Trump’s remaining presidency.

So much of what Trump has said and done in just the past few days would have been career-ending for any other president. He practically slept through a 9/11 memorial. He attacked another reporter on the tarmac for asking about his $5,000 bribe checks to voters if his party wins the upcoming elections. He admitted he would cheat if he could get away with it. At any other time in history, most of those moments would have meant wall-to-wall news coverage, congressional hearings, impeachment proceedings, and possibly even criminal ones. The lack of mainstream and legacy media coverage has been abysmal, caused by the intimidation and threats from his administration and his FCC.

This is a reminder that we must protect and support our access to alternative ways of getting information at all costs, especially heading into the midterms, and in the two years that follow. We are going to have to get used to getting our news from sources and platforms that this regime can’t touch or control as easily. We are going to have to normalize going to trusted sources outside of the nightly news and to places like Substack, YouTube, and social media platforms. This will take more time and care on our part to make sure they can be trusted. But the biggest takeaway from what we saw from the Talarico interview is that using alternative means of publishing, like on YouTube, is how we will have to think about the sharing of information going forward. Their quick thinking and action by still posting it there, and not just what he posted during his normal programming, kept millions of people informed this week. At the same time, we also have to consider the reality that YouTube is part of Google, and there is no guarantee they will not change their algorithms or bend to the same censorship pressure the TV networks already have.

If you haven’t already watched the interview, please do, even if you are outside Texas. I share often about my monetary protest, where I have been working hard for months now to move as much of my spending to people and companies on the right side of history. It’s not perfect. There are some products and services that I use for which I am still searching for alternatives, but every dollar I move is another vote of sorts against the authoritarian takeover of our country. I’ve also been paying for new subscriptions to as many people as I can find who are speaking out, sharing the news as it is happening, countering disinformation, and standing up for what is right and against what is wrong. As always, thank you all for supporting me in this way. Your paid subscriptions are how I keep everything that I write free for everyone and never behind a paywall. Please think beyond just supporting me. Please support the other people you go to day in and day out for what is happening in our country. We need as many people speaking out in this moment. Tonight I want to add another option that doesn’t cost any money because these are hard financial times for so many in our country and around the world, and nobody should ever feel pressured to spend money they don’t have when there are other ways to show support. Earlier, I pointed out how many views the Talarico interview received. Those viewership numbers send an important message, and we can help increase them, along with the numbers on the next interview that will inevitably be posted. We can do that just by watching the video.

Even if some days it feels like things are getting worse by the day, the reality is that everything we are doing is working. The protests are still happening, and the international community is holding the line. The censorship they have unleashed keeps backfiring. We are not backing down, and we continue to find new ways forward. We have proven over and over again that we will never give up on our fight against this authoritarian takeover. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

News Roundups

Meidas Touch Network, Saturday Updates and Comment: Trump Gets Booed in Dublin While Iran Gets the Red Carpet in New Delhi, Brett Meiselas, Sept. 12, 2026. Here’s what we’re tracking right now:

• Massive protests greet Trump in Dublin
• Trump’s press conference chaos in Ireland on Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and Ireland
• The Houthis mock Trump after gaining control over the Red Sea coast
• Saudi Arabia’s pipeline was attacked again as Houthis advance on Marib
• Trump continues to try to bribe voters with his lie about giving them money
• Republican Jon Husted’s Senate campaign is under fire after it was revealed a high-level staffer posted Nazi imagery
• Ted Cruz gets booed in Austin

Trump’s Brutal Welcome In Ireland

Trump landed in Ireland, officially for meetings with Taoiseach Micheál Martin, but let’s be honest, the real reason he’s there is the Irish Open at his golf course.

They didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet for the guy.

Early reports say about 50K people hit the streets, carrying signs calling him a war criminal and accusing him of covering up the Epstein Files. The giant balloon caricatures floating above the crowd of Trump, Netanyahu, and Epstein made quite the splash.

Trump, despite being blocks away, of course claimed he hadn’t heard of any protests.

WTF Was That Press Conference?

Once Trump sat down with reporters, things got worse. He again said the Iran War would end “very soon, probably right after the midterms.” He was asked about the Saudi pipeline attack and said Iran was “probably” responsible. He absurdly claimed the Houthis called him personally to tell him how much they respect him and how they’ll let through U.S. ships peacefully.

Houthi leadership responded almost immediately, with spokesman Hasan al-Assad calling Trump’s claims baseless and quoting an old proverb about kissing the hand you cannot break. Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi also released footage mocking the Saudi royal family, implying they used to dance for Trump like his puppets.

During the presser, Trump also again claimed that both Canada and Iran are now “begging” to make a deal. On Ireland, he said he’d love to see the island unified, breaking with decades of official U.S. neutrality on the issue. He suggested the UK might not have the resources to defend the Falkland Islands anymore (this while he’s quietly arming Argentina with Black Hawk helicopters). Trump continues to lash out at our (former?) allies for not jumping into his reckless and illegal war.And In New Delhi…

While Trump was jeered in Dublin, Iran was getting treated like royalty at the BRICS summit in new Delhi. Iranian officials held direct talks with China’s foreign minister and Iran’s president was received with full honors alongside Xi Jinping, Putin, and Modi. BRICS leaders also announced a new payment system called BRICS Pay, aimed at reducing reliance on the U.S. dollar.

Running From Yemen

Saudi-backed forces are in full retreat across Yemen. Satellite imagery has now confirmed the East-West pipeline was hit in multiple locations, and Houthi forces are closing in on Marib, with some analysts suggesting the city could fall within days. A regional source told CNN this is “a Saudi-American f**k up of epic proportions.”

A Few Other Things

Trump posted again about his $5,000 bribe, already blaming Democrats for saying it will never happen. The guy is a scam artist. A con man. News organizations should treat him accordingly.

In Ohio, Republican Sen. Jon Husted’s campaign has now fired its political director after WaPo found photos of him posing with Nazi SS imagery and following Waffen-SS reenactment accounts online.

Down in Austin, Sen. Ted Cruz was on ESPN for some reason at a College Gameday. He got brutally booed and the crowd broke out into “Ted Cruz sucks” chants live on television.

Shana Tova to everyone celebrating the new year this weekend. Wishing everyone health, peace, and sweetness ahead. 

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary:USA Extracts Diplomat Caught with CSAM Material, Russia Strikes Near Train With Diplomats, Trump Says No to AI Slowdown, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 13, 2026. It has been a heavy few days, and it does not look like this week is letting up.

We have a diplomat quietly flown out of London before police could even question him over child abuse material. We have Russia testing the limits of NATO with a drone strike that may have targeted a train carrying Boris Johnson and a former CIA director, part of one of the largest barrages of the war so far. We have Trump brushing off the very people who built AI warning him to slow down, and a growing list of stories at home, from a third measles death in Pennsylvania to Republicans quietly backing away from Trump’s $5,000 election year promise.

It is a lot, and I know it can feel overwhelming some weeks. But this is exactly why this space matters. Together, we will keep fighting. Together, we will push for justice, for safety, for a future worth believing in. And every step of the way, I’ll be here, bringing you the facts, the context, the reality, no matter how chaotic or dark the days may seem. 

Trump Flies Out Diplomat With CSAM Before UK Police Interview:

A secret military flight pulled the accused diplomat out of London before police could question him. A US diplomat stationed at the embassy in London was allegedly found with child sexual abuse material that he received from his US-based brother, prompting US Marines to raid his London apartment late last month. A Boeing 747 flew from Chicago to Royal Air Force Fairford in Gloucestershire on August 24, the day before the raid, then flew back out the next day and landed at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware just before 8pm local time. Less than four hours later, that same plane left Delaware and flew on to O’Hare Airport in Chicago. British police and other UK authorities were only told about the raid after the diplomat had already been extracted from the country. A US diplomatic source defended the speed of the operation, saying, “We acted decisively. If we had ceded ground and waited, there could have been delays and diplomacy that could have gone on for weeks or months.”

British lawmakers are furious the US used military resources to bypass UK jurisdiction. The operation has triggered outrage among British politicians who say the US had no legal authority to seize one of its own personnel on UK soil. Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty wrote on X, “The US Government is now protecting pedophiles,” adding, “US Marines conducting a raid on British soil, on which they have no jurisdiction, to seize one of their own diplomats and then use US military resources to ferry the suspect out of the country and fly him to the US is completely unacceptable.” The controversy lands just days before new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham is set to meet President Trump at the UN in New York. The timing has raised the political stakes of the dispute considerably, given it touches on questions of sovereignty and diplomatic immunity right before a high profile meeting between the two leaders.

Both governments are treading carefully as the investigation continues. A British government spokesperson said, “We expect all foreign diplomats in the UK to abide by our laws. As a US investigation is ongoing, it would not be appropriate to comment further.” A US Embassy spokesperson acknowledged the case, saying, “We are aware of allegations concerning an individual assigned to the Embassy. The United States government expects all personnel to adhere to the highest standards of conduct, and we take these allegations seriously.” The diplomat has not been publicly identified, and it remains unclear whether he will face criminal charges in the US. For now, both governments appear to be avoiding further public comment while the investigation moves forward on American soil, out of reach of UK law enforcement.

Russia Tests NATO:

Russian drone strike near the Polish border may have targeted a train carrying Boris Johnson and David Petraeus. A Russian drone struck the engine carriage of a passenger train just two kilometers from the Polish border near the Yahodyn crossing on Sunday, and Ukrainian Railways says a separate train carrying former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, former CIA director David Petraeus, and several European security advisers had crossed into Poland shortly before the strike. The rail operator said “it is quite likely that the target of this Russian drone could also have been the diplomatic train, which departed from the station earlier than planned as part of the real time review of train schedules due to the constant threat of Russian strikes.” No casualties were reported on either train, though passengers described a chaotic night of repeated evacuations. Katerina Sergatskova, who was traveling on a Warsaw bound train, said passengers were told to evacuate around 9am after already being pulled off the train for two hours overnight, recalling, “At this point, the mood was different, we were asked to move very fast. Then I heard the first drone.” Johnson wrote on X, “I don’t know what warped logic drove Putin to blow up a stationary Ukrainian locomotive on the Polish border this morning. What we can say for sure is that this is the kind of random and senseless attack Ukrainians are enduring every day, even on civilian railways.”

Overnight barrage of more than 450 drones and missiles killed at least six people across Ukraine. Russia launched one of its largest drone and missile barrages in months overnight, with Ukraine’s air force reporting more than 450 drones and missiles launched and 405 drones and four missiles intercepted. The attacks killed at least six people and injured more than 40, with western Ukraine, typically quieter than Kyiv or the eastern front, hit especially hard. Three people were killed in the eastern Donetsk region and a 71 year old woman was killed in the southern Mykolaiv region. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram, “Ukrainians are fighting every day to prevent these strikes from spreading further into Europe, giving their lives and preventing the aggression from expanding.” Russia’s defense ministry claimed it struck “railway infrastructure” in western Ukraine used to “transport military cargo” from Europe.

Ukraine and Poland warn of escalation as Trump presses Zelensky over diesel strikes and talks with Russia are eyed for October. Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said the strike near the border amounted to “Putin’s terror knocking directly on the doors of the EU and Nato,” adding, “Russian barbarians are at your gate, dear partners,” and calling for a “full trade embargo” and “uncompromising, powerful steps” against Moscow. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that “the coming weeks and months will be a period of very intensive actions on the Russian side,” and said Poland “cannot rule out that this escalation will also affect our territory,” adding that intelligence services had warned an attack on Ukrainian border crossings was likely. Meanwhile, President Trump said Sunday that Ukraine should “stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia” because it is causing shortages, saying, “Let him go after targets, but not diesel fuel, because he’s causing a shortage of diesel.” Separately, Ukrainian officials said they are preparing for three way talks with Russia and the United States to resume in October, days after US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner held talks in both Moscow and Kyiv for the first time since February. In Lithuania, a suspected drone sighting briefly closed the Vilnius airport and prompted Nato to scramble a fighter jet, though the alert turned out to be a flock of birds.

Trump rejects AI slowdown:

Trump dismisses calls to slow AI development, says “whoever wins AI wins”. President Trump on Sunday rejected calls from AI industry leaders to slow the pace of AI development, saying at the Irish Open golf tournament in Doonbeg, “We’re leading China in AI, we’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly I want to keep it that way. Whoever wins AI wins.” He attributed the growing safety warnings to unspecified “negative forces,” telling reporters, “I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up. And they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.” Trump has staked much of his economic record on accelerating AI development, rescinding a 2023 Biden executive order that created a risk evaluation process for cutting edge AI models during his first week back in office. His comments come even as growing numbers of lawmakers from both parties call for new rules following AI agents going rogue and safety researchers quitting over concerns about the technology’s risks. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said the White House expects to meet with top cybersecurity advisers this week to “think about what the next step is.”

Democrats seize on AI safety fears as a midterm attack line, with Obama urging the party to make it central. Democrats spanning the party’s ideological spectrum are pressing the administration over its hands off approach to AI, with progressive Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed endorsing Senator Bernie Sanders’ proposal to pause AI development and saying on “Face the Nation,” “There are things that we should not be using AI to do, and we collectively have to decide that we need public oversight so that all of this technology is not being created for the interest of a few against the well-being of the many.” Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro called the industry warnings a “bright flashing red light,” writing on X, “It’s long past time for our federal government to step up, take this seriously, and put up some guardrails, both here at home and on the global stage.” Former President Obama privately urged Democratic leaders last week to make AI oversight central to the party’s agenda, telling them, “This is something that is moving very fast in private hands, and if we don’t get on top of it, I think can be dangerous,” and viewed the industry’s slowdown calls as a “positive development.” Former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who advises Anthropic, added, “We have had a wake up call to take AI safety more seriously, to work out how to set limits on research. If governments don’t heed this, the risk of a serious accident will become unacceptably high.” Even some Republicans in tight midterm races are breaking from the White House, with Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers writing that he supports slowing AI development, saying, “My experience as Intel Chairman taught me the time to stop a crisis is yesterday.”

AI leaders unite behind a slowdown, but face pushback on their request for an antitrust waiver. OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk both backed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call to “slow the pace” of AI development, with Musk posting, “Dario is right,” and referencing a 2014 warning that AI was “potentially more dangerous than nukes.” Altman wrote, “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same,” and separately said OpenAI would delay its IPO, telling Fortune, “I actually think that, given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public.” Amodei and other executives have asked the government to waive antitrust laws so companies can coordinate on safety, but White House tech adviser David Sacks pushed back, writing on X, “Stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic. You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyber-attack.” Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, whose resignation and warnings about possible human extinction helped spark the debate, drew a response from Amodei, who told CNN, “I agree with Jacob much more than I disagree with him. I think there’s some chance that things go wrong but it’s not all that high. I am not a doomer about this. I think this technology can be built safely.” King Charles is separately set to meet with leading AI executives, including Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, on Thursday under the theme “AI for good.”

Other news:

Cornyn condemns racism from fellow Texas Republican over UT post. Republican candidate Bo French, running for Texas railroad commissioner, posted an image on X of a group of apparently non-White University of Texas football fans celebrating the Longhorns’ win over Ohio State, writing, “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” Senator John Cornyn condemned the post, writing, “This is the Republican nominee for statewide office. Are other Republican elected officials going to condemn the intolerance and racism, or look the other way while it becomes normalized. This is how great political parties self-destruct. Sad.” French defended himself, replying, “I cheered the team for the win. But I weep for the families in Texas who can’t get into UT because they prioritize foreigners over Texans. Shame on you for ignoring that fact,” despite university data showing Texas residents made up more than 80 percent of UT Austin’s student body last year while international students made up less than 10 percent. Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows, also a Republican, said “you can oppose immigration policy without demeaning people because of their race and ethnicity” and called on French to delete the post, while Democratic state representative James Talarico called the post “blatant racism” and pressed attorney general Ken Paxton to condemn it. Cornyn, who lost his primary to Trump backed candidate Paxton in May, has grown increasingly critical of his own party as his Senate career winds down.

Third measles death reported in Pennsylvania’s growing outbreak. A 40-year-old unvaccinated woman from Jefferson County, Pennsylvania has died from measles complications, marking the third measles-associated death in the state’s fast-growing outbreak, which had reached 676 cases and 124 hospitalizations as of Friday. Coroner Greg Furlong said the woman contracted the virus after a family member had it and had underlying COPD and asthma, having been on supplemental oxygen 24 hours a day before getting sick. He called it “a heartbreaking loss for the family and an unfortunate reminder that measles can be a serious and potentially life-threatening disease.” New CDC Director Dr. Erica Schwartz said the agency had not been notified of the death and noted Pennsylvania has not requested a CDC Epi-Aid for outbreak support, unlike six other states that have. The dispute has become political, with Governor Josh Shapiro previously rejecting federal help offered by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and accusing him of spreading vaccine misinformation, while Kennedy accused Shapiro of “fearmongering” and suggested the earlier deaths may have been “altogether fabricated.”

Mike Johnson won’t commit to passing Trump’s $5,000 election year payout. House Speaker Mike Johnson declined to guarantee that Congress could pass Trump’s promised $5,000 “Trump Dividend” payment to Americans, telling NBC’s Kristen Welker only, “I commit that Congress will work through it and find consensus on that, like I have to do everything else.” Multiple Republicans have pushed back on the idea, including Arizona Rep. David Schweikert, who said he would “throw everything of my heart and soul to stop it,” and South Carolina’s Ralph Norman, who noted the country is “$40 trillion in debt” and questioned where the money would come from. Senate Majority Leader John Thune was similarly noncommittal, saying only “good question” when asked if it could pass, while Maine Senator Susan Collins criticized the plan for having no income cap and said “tax and spending decisions should be made based on the needs of the American people and the state of the economy, they should not appear to be tied to election results.” Kansas Senator Roger Marshall, an early supporter, walked back his backing at a debate, saying “this is not the first time I’ve disagreed with President Trump, and it probably won’t be the last.” The proposal comes as Trump’s approval rating sits in the mid to low 30s and Democrats are favored to make midterm gains.

Canada’s Carney explores becoming an “associate member” of the EU. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is exploring whether Canada could become an “associate member” of the European Union, a new status the bloc has not previously offered but appears open to creating, according to unnamed EU and Canadian officials. The push comes as Canada’s escalating trade war with the United States has added urgency to its pivot toward other trading partners, with relations between Ottawa and Washington deteriorating sharply since Trump’s return to office over tariffs and other disputes. Canada and the EU are reportedly discussing letting Canadian goods, services, and workers in strategic sectors like energy, AI, defense, and critical minerals move freely, effectively shifting the EU’s economic border, along with joint projects on underwater cables, data centers, cloud storage, and satellite networks. Carney has also spoken regularly with EU leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, about the possibility of visa free travel and work rights for Canadians in the EU. Macron is set to meet Carney on September 20 in the French territory of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the first official visit there by a Canadian prime minister, an event the Elysee said “symbolises the strength of the relationship that unites our two countries,” though any deeper integration faces hurdles given that a more modest Canada EU trade agreement still has not been ratified by several EU countries more than a decade after it was struck.

White House attacks journalist for pointing out aide Natalie Harp traveled with Trump to Ireland. The White House’s Rapid Response account called independent journalist Aaron Rupar a “sick, deluded freak” after he noted that Trump aide Natalie Harp accompanied the president to his Doonbeg, Ireland golf resort this weekend. Harp, who has worked for Trump since 2022 and has been described as his “Human Printer” for hauling around a printer to hand him favorable coverage, has drawn scrutiny after reports she left personal notes for the president that reportedly alarmed the Secret Service and received a $45,000 cash gift from Trump last Christmas. Rupar responded to the attack by writing, “I know being in my 40s makes me too old for the president but I’m at peace with it.” Democrats including Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff have seized on the coverage, with Ossoff earlier joking that Trump was focused on “build[ing] his ballroom and travel[ing] with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace.” Harp herself has not commented publicly and has avoided even friendly conservative media appearances since the controversy began.

Hegseth accused of pressuring rescued airmen into a “60 Minutes” interview over objections from military officials. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly pressured two airmen who were shot down and rescued over Iran to appear on Bari Weiss’s “60 Minutes,” despite concerns from other military officials that the interview could inadvertently leak classified information. One airman, referred to as “Bravo,” agreed to the interview while the second, “Alpha,” declined, and neither has been publicly identified by the Pentagon. Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine reportedly shared the security concerns, though his office declined to comment directly, saying only that “the Joint Force will do everything possible to ensure no one gets left behind.” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell denied the account, calling it “a complete lie” and insisting “the decision to participate in the interview was each pilot’s alone, because it is their story.” During the aired interview, “Bravo” described evading Iranian forces for a day before being rescued by an American special forces team with air support.

Trump’s childhood Queens home sells for nearly $2 million after falling into disrepair. The Tudor style home in Jamaica Estates, Queens, where Donald Trump lived until age 4 and which his father Fred Trump built in 1940, has sold for $1.93 million to an undisclosed buyer. The home had fallen into serious disrepair in recent years, suffering water damage and mold from a burst pipe and becoming home to a colony of feral cats, before developer Tommy Lin bought it last year for $835,000 and spent another $500,000 renovating it with a chef’s kitchen, herringbone wood floors, and spa-like bathrooms. The property has changed hands several times since Trump took office in 2017, including once selling for $2.14 million, and was briefly listed as a themed Airbnb rental featuring a life-sized cardboard cutout of Trump and a copy of his book “The Art of the Deal.” It had been relisted for $2.9 million in 2019 but sat unsold until Lin purchased it.

Louisiana stabbing spree suspect arrested after manhunt following four deaths. Kaegan Jude Solet, 47, has been arrested in connection with a stabbing spree in Houma, Louisiana that left four people dead and a child hospitalized in critical condition after being found with multiple stab wounds. Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Tim Soignet confirmed Solet was taken into custody Sunday morning, describing the case as “an active and ongoing investigation,” and authorities have not released the victims’ identities or disclosed any relationship between them and Solet. A sheriff’s office lieutenant said before the arrest that investigators believed Solet had not gone far and did not think he planned to flee the area. Solet had previously been arrested in 2019 on an attempted second-degree murder charge after allegedly stabbing a woman repeatedly and leaving her in a motel room, though a jury later found him not guilty. The motive behind Saturday’s attack has not been disclosed.

Wisconsin congressman hospitalized after small plane makes emergency landing on a lake. Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is running for Wisconsin governor with Trump’s endorsement, was hospitalized after the single engine plane he was traveling in lost power approaching Wausau Downtown Airport and the pilot made an emergency landing on Lake Wausau. Tiffany and the pilot both ended up in the water and swam to a shallow area before being rescued by emergency responders arriving by boat. He wrote on X, “After landing, we called 911. As the plane began to submerge, we exited the aircraft and swam to a shallow area, where we waited until emergency responders reached us by boat.” Both men were treated for minor injuries at Aspirus Wausau Hospital. Tiffany thanked the pilot and first responders, adding, “God was watching over us tonight, and I am incredibly grateful to be here in the hospital with my wife, Chris, by my side. An experience like this reminds you just how precious life is.”

The Parnas Perspective, Saturday Night Update: Republicans Face Protests at Home and Abroad, AI Tech CEOs Urge Slow Down in Major Shift, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 12, 2026. Tonight’s rundown has a clear thread running through it. Republicans are facing pushback everywhere they turn, at home and abroad, and none of it looks like it’s going away anytime soon.

Donald Trump found that out this weekend in Ireland, where thousands took to the streets of Dublin and public figures like Rosie O’Donnell openly called for protests against his visit. Back home, Roger Marshall is facing his own wave of backlash from constituents fed up with where the party stands. And Ted Cruz walked into a college football stadium in the middle of a deep red state and got booed for nearly ten minutes straight, loud enough that you couldn’t even hear his answers.

Add to that a growing chorus of warnings from the very people building artificial intelligence, a fight over a five thousand dollar payment that may or may not exist, and a string of stories on immigration enforcement, and it’s clear the pressure is building on multiple fronts at once.

Here’s everything you need to know.

AI Fears Rapidly Grow:

Amodei Calls for Global AI Slowdown. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a 3,800 word essay Saturday calling for the entire AI industry to deliberately slow the pace of capability development. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” he wrote. “Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.” He warned that a race to the bottom driven by commercial competition makes the risks of the technology more acute, and said he has grown more convinced over the last few months that “fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence.” He proposed that AI companies commit to bringing in independent, embedded evaluators with employee-like access to verify safety practices, and called for global coordination, including with authoritarian governments, to set common standards.

Altman and Musk Quickly Back the Call. Hours after Amodei’s essay went up, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted his agreement on social media, saying “this has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks” and that his company would adopt the same independent evaluator model. Elon Musk, whose xAI company builds the Grok chatbot, responded with a simple “Dario is right.” The alignment among three normally fiercely competitive executives is notable, and it follows years of AI labs racing each other on capability while occasionally warning about the very technology they are building. Altman had already floated the idea of pacing development back in July, saying on a podcast that slowing down would “give ourselves enough time for society to harden around these new capability levels.”

Ex-Anthropic Researcher’s Resignation Set the Stage. Amodei’s essay came days after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned and posted publicly that the people building AI “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade” and that this “is not a marketing stunt.” Coxon said executives often soften their language for the press while privately expressing real fear, adding that “no other human activity poses this level of danger.” In a later interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, he went further than Amodei’s own essay, saying there is “a very real possibility” that recursive self-improvement, AI systems making themselves smarter without human help, could arrive within the next year or two, with “a chance that we could all die.” His resignation set off a broader furor inside the industry, with other researchers publicly calling on their own leaders to pause development.

The OpenAI-Hugging Face Incident Fueled the Alarm. Much of the urgency traces back to an incident in which a swarm of OpenAI’s own AI agents breached the systems of a smaller AI company, Hugging Face, without OpenAI’s knowledge, a breach that went undetected for weeks until Hugging Face itself flagged it. Amodei described the swarm as having acted like “a fanatically devoted collective,” carrying out cybersecurity attacks on targets it was never asked to target. He warned that if left unchecked, this kind of self-directed capability “could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all.” The incident has already drawn a Senate probe into OpenAI, and Amodei said it raised the possibility that a similar swarm could take over large portions of the internet within six to twelve months, potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.

Not Everyone Buys the Altruism, and Some Say It Doesn’t Go Far Enough. Critics in Silicon Valley have suggested Anthropic and OpenAI’s sudden safety concerns are less about altruism and more about locking in their market lead by pushing for regulations that smaller competitors would struggle to meet. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made that argument explicitly at a conference this week, asking “what better way to create demand than to create a problem” and suggesting AI labs are stoking fear to sell new cybersecurity products. On the opposite end, University of Louisville computer scientist Roman Yampolskiy argued Amodei doesn’t go far enough, saying that if artificial superintelligence “cannot be reliably controlled, aligned, predicted, or contained, then the rational policy is not to manage its arrival, but to prevent it,” and calling for an outright international ban rather than a managed race. Hugging Face CEO Clément DeLangue, whose company Nvidia is in the process of buying for $12.9 billion, added that AI safety cannot “be solved behind the closed doors of a handful of frontier labs.”

Ireland Erupts Against Trump:

Rosie O’Donnell Leads Calls For Protests Against Trump. Comedian Rosie O’Donnell publicly backed the weekend’s protests against Trump, telling the Irish Independent, “The country must protest, he is the antithesis of everything this country stands for.”O’Donnell moved to Ireland after Trump’s return to the White House, saying she no longer felt comfortable living in the U.S. under his administration. She specifically called on Irish President Catherine Connolly to “speak truth to power” when meeting with Trump, adding, “I don’t think she should drop what she believes in to be polite to a madman. He is like a mad king that has destroyed the country.” O’Donnell and Trump have feuded publicly since 2006, when she questioned his standing as a “moral authority” over a Miss USA scandal, and the two have traded insults ever since.

Trump Calls Reunification “Fantastic” and Wades Into the Falklands. Trump went further than his earlier comments during a meeting with Taoiseach Micheál Martin, telling a reporter a united Ireland would be “fantastic” and adding, “It’s going to happen eventually. It may as well happen now.” He acknowledged there was “no good answer” to the question when he later addressed business leaders, but did not walk back the sentiment. In the same string of remarks, Trump revived talk of the Falkland Islands dispute between the U.K. and Argentina, saying he thinks he’ll “probably be able to settle” the territorial standoff if it flares up again. Analysts noted both comments landed as a pointed jab at Britain, coming amid Trump’s frustration that London has stayed out of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.

Trump Meets Irish President Who Has Called Him a “Bully”. Trump sat down with President Catherine Connolly, a left-wing former protester who demonstrated against him during his first term and has previously called him a “bully” over his Middle East policy. Afterward, Connolly said she told Trump directly of “the strong view of the Irish people that the normalization of war and genocide can never be accepted.” She gave him a collection of poems by the late Irish writer Michael Longley that includes the poem “Ceasefire.” When pressed by reporters on how the meeting went, Trump initially let his protocol chief, Monica Crowley, answer for him before saying only that it was “very nice.”

Thousands March in Dublin as Eric Trump Defends the Family. A protest march drew thousands into central Dublin, with demonstrators waving Irish and Palestinian flags and chanting “Donald Trump not welcome here” and “Irish government, shame on you.” Paula Butler, who came with the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, said she was there to oppose Trump’s “attitude to women, to refugees, to migrants,” and dismissed his unity comments, saying, “What he knows about Irish unity, I’d say I know more on my little finger.” Kim Mathis, an American who moved to Dublin last year, said “part of the reason we moved to Ireland was to get away from Trump and all of his horrific policies.” Eric Trump pushed back on the criticism from Doonbeg, telling RTE that the family’s golf course is the area’s largest employer and urging people to “go have them attest to what we’ve done for the country,” while confirming his father plans to return next year for the Ryder Cup.

Other news:

Ted Cruz Gets Booed Off ESPN’s College GameDay. Ted Cruz made a nearly ten minute appearance on ESPN’s College GameDay at the University of Texas in Austin to promote the Protect College Sports Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at stabilizing the chaotic NIL landscape in college sports, and the crowd booed so loudly through the entire segment that Cruz’s answers were almost impossible to hear. At one point the boos briefly died down before the crowd shifted into chants of “Ted, you suck.” Cruz told viewers he believes the bill will ultimately clear the 60 vote threshold in the Senate, and the legislation has drawn support from figures like Nick Saban and Deion Sanders, though it has repeatedly stalled in Congress despite backing from Trump. The reaction seemed less about the substance of the bill, which most students in the crowd likely knew little about, and more a reflection of Cruz’s party affiliation showing up in a college town in the middle of a deep red state.

Lutnick says the $5,000 dividend wouldn’t come from tax money. Howard Lutnick told NBC that the proposed $5,000 payment to Americans would not be funded by taxpayers, saying “It’s not tax money.” An estimated $500 billion of the roughly $1 trillion needed could come from a new visa program letting wealthy visitors pay up to $5 million each for extended stays, with more than 100,000 people already on a waitlist. The administration is also pointing to the government’s stake in Intel, now worth an appreciated $8.9 billion, as another funding source. Kevin Hassett said the payment would move through the reconciliation process, adding “don’t underestimate President Trump,” while JD Vance has pointed to tariff revenue even after the Supreme Court ruled that “liberation day” tariff money must be returned. The Tax Foundation has noted a similar $2,000 rebate proposal would exceed actual tariff collections, and a new AP poll shows just 32 percent approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, down from 40 percent.

Trump supporters shrug off high gas prices in new man-on-the-street video. Comedian Jason Selvig caught a Trump supporter’s reaction to rising gas prices, asking directly whether Iran had anything to do with it. The supporter dismissed the idea, saying “I don’t think Trump has anything to do with this, I think they’re just doing this to make him look bad. The liberals.” When pressed on who is actually responsible, the supporter said, “He doesn’t control the gas prices. Everything’s gone up. The truck’s gotta pay for their gas and it gets to the consumer which is us.” Asked directly who is at fault, the response was simply “I have no idea. I don’t blame Trump though.”

Republican Senator faces boos. The crowd erupted during a recent Senate debate in chants of “Shame on you!” as Senator Roger Marshall tries to explain why he sued 700 of his patients, leading to 81 arrests.

Trump wants a 30-foot George Washington statue at the Smithsonian. Trump posted on Truth Social calling George Washington “easily America’s Greatest Hero” and is pushing the Smithsonian to install a 30-foot “Colossus statue” of him along with an exhibit running through February 2032. The statue would replace the 1967 Infinity sculpture by Jose de Rivera. The push follows a 162-page report from earlier this year accusing the Smithsonian of overemphasizing oppression and division, and a July order for new signage that has not yet been installed. Trump has separately complained that the Delaware crossing and the victory at Trenton are underrepresented, and has proposed a new “Center for American Heroes.” Smithsonian secretary Lonnie Bunch, who is planning to depart, said he has fought “for the independence of the Smithsonian,” and the episode comes alongside the removal of a sculpture at the Kennedy Center and reported plans to possibly sell a Kehinde Wiley painting one Art in Embassies director called “very woke” and “aesthetically terrifying.”

10,000-year-old mastodon tooth found in California. Geomorphologist Brigid Lynch discovered a fossilized mastodon tooth believed to be around 10,000 years old at a preserve in San Mateo County. Paleontologist Wayne Thompson described it as being in “immaculate condition,” saying it sent “chills and shivers up and down my spine.” Pacific mastodons trace back roughly 2.5 million years and went extinct more than 10,000 years ago due to climate change and overhunting. The tooth has been donated to Stanford for carbon dating, and curator Christine Garcia spoke to the broader value fossils like this hold for understanding the region’s history. The find follows similar discoveries in New York in 2024 and on a California beach in 2023.

ICE agents beat protesters and enter a home in Frederick, Maryland. Officers drove vehicles at and onto sidewalks near protesters and used batons during a confrontation in Frederick, Maryland, with at least two people hospitalized. City council president Cesar Diaz described nearly being struck, saying he was “one foot away from her” when a vehicle came close. Activist Soolah Kemp gave her own account of a vehicle driving directly at her. Roughly 200 protesters formed a human chain attempting to block agents from entering a home. Representative April McClain Delaney called for “a full, transparent investigation,” and Senator Chris Van Hollen accused agents of “creating chaos and instilling fear,” while DHS did not directly respond beyond saying “criminal illegal aliens are not welcome.”

North Carolina detention officer charged with 20 counts of forgery. Former Guilford County detention officer Michael Diehl has been charged with 20 felony counts of forgery for allegedly faking magistrates’ signatures on ICE detainer-extension forms. The scheme was uncovered after a flagged form connected to inmate Claudio Nepomuceno led investigators to 19 additional forged documents tied to other inmates. Diehl was fired, arrested, and released on a $5,000 bond, and investigators say more charges are possible as the case continues. The case comes as ICE has detained more than 70,000 people since Trump’s inauguration.

Mississippi police say more arrests coming in Tasia Fortune case. Police Chief RaShall Brackney said the investigation into Tasia Fortune’s death “remains active” and that “additional arrests will be pending.” Jarques Ratliff is expected to appear in court Monday. Fortune’s mother, Christy Spivey, described her grief and disbelief, rejecting any suggestion of suicide by saying “she would never, ever, ever.” Fortune had endured a difficult life that included foster care, homelessness, an abusive relationship, and raising four children, while also holding onto her faith and hopes of starting her own cleaning business. Spivey closed by asking people to “say her name. Keep it going.”

CDC declares record cyclospora lettuce outbreak over. Health officials have declared the record-setting cyclospora outbreak linked to Taylor Farms shredded iceberg lettuce imported from Mexico officially over. The outbreak sickened more than 12,000 people and killed two across 21 states before the product was pulled from shelves. It sparked broader fear around produce, led some growers to plow lettuce under, and drew criticism of the administration’s food safety response. The FDA’s investigation into the exact source is still ongoing, and Taylor Farms says its Mexico facility remains closed pending that investigation, even as unrelated cyclospora outbreaks continue elsewhere.

DOJ sidesteps legal fight by deporting woman through secretive terror court. The Justice Department avoided a looming legal battle by deporting Nazira Haji Zada through the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, a venue that had sat dormant for roughly 30 years before this case. She was actually removed from the country about two weeks before the DOJ announced it, timed to land around the 9/11 anniversary. Prosecutors alleged she was “the matriarch” behind an ISIS-inspired plot to carry out a mass shooting on Election Day 2024, a plan her son and son-in-law were convicted over. Haji Zada agreed to the alien-terrorist designation and forfeited her green card in exchange for a guarantee that her admission would not be used against her in future criminal proceedings, a deal approved by Judge Joan Ericksen. The arrangement heads off a constitutional challenge her attorneys had planned to bring against the court’s secretive procedures, including its use of classified evidence, in a court structured similarly to the FISA court with five judges appointed by Chief Justice Roberts.

More Global News

President Trump with Micheál Martin, the taoiseach, or prime minister, or Ireland, at the Farmleigh House in Dublin on Saturday,Sept. 12, 2026. (New York Times photo by Alex Kent). 

New York Times, Trump Says Irish Unification Would Be ‘Fantastic,’ Breaking With Precedent, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Luke Broadwater, Sept. 13, 2026 (print ed.). The United States is officially neutral on an issue that had been a source of decades of violence in Northern Ireland until a 1998 peace deal.

Shortly after setting foot in Dublin, President Trump on Saturday said it would be “fantastic” if Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland unified, breaking with decades of U.S. neutrality on an issue rooted in a long history of violence.

“I don’t want to cause any problem. I will tell you, I’d love to see it unified,” Mr. Trump said in Dublin alongside Micheál Martin, Ireland’s taoiseach, or prime minister. “It’s going to happen eventually.”

He later seemed to acknowledge that he had stepped into a politically problematic topic.

The American president said he still believed it would “be a cool thing” if Northern Ireland broke away from the United Kingdom, but joked that half the room would clear out after hearing his remarks.

“No matter how well you say it, there’s no good answer,” Mr. Trump told a crowd of embassy employees and business leaders gathered at Deerfield Residence, where the U.S. ambassador lives.

The United States has long supported the U.S.-brokered 1998 Belfast Agreement, also known as the Good Friday Agreement, which ended roughly three decades of violence between those seeking a united Ireland and unionists who wanted Northern Ireland to remain a part of the United Kingdom.

Part of that deal was that Northern Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom until a majority of its people voted otherwise in a referendum.

In keeping with his freewheeling approach to the global stage, Mr. Trump has mused about the unification of Ireland before. Earlier this year, he suggested there should be a “merger” between Northern Ireland and Ireland because of how well Mr. Martin got along with Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister, Emma Little-Pengelly. She later said the comment was made in jest and should not be taken seriously.

Mr. Trump’s comment on Saturday came just days after Andy Burnham, the recently elected British prime minister, said there was not enough public support for a referendum on Northern Ireland leaving the United Kingdom and until there was “there will not be one.” Mr. Trump himself acknowledged on Saturday that the government in London would most likely “have something to say about” about his comments on reunification.

Patrick Dwyer-Cummins, a spokesman for 10 Downing Street, said that Mr. Burnham’s position remained unchanged and he was committed to upholding the Good Friday Agreement.

But Mr. Trump’s comment did indeed prompt some immediate criticism.

Gavin Robinson, the leader of Northern Ireland’s main pro-union party, said on social media that “President Trump knows better than most that elections matter.”

“Northern Ireland’s constitutional future will be decided by the people of Northern Ireland, not by commentary in London, Dublin or Washington,” he said. “Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom because that is the settled democratic will of its people.”

The reference to reunification was not the only unconventional aspect of Mr. Trump’s remarks.

American presidents, when speaking overseas, typically have refrained from lacing into their domestic rivals. But Mr. Trump used his speech in Dublin to repeatedly attack Democrats, including describing former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has cancer, as physically infirm. Mr. Biden, who has Irish ancestry, traveled to Northern Ireland in 2023 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. 

More On Middle East Wars

New York Times, How Iran’s Hard-Liners Prevailed and Sabotaged U.S. Peace Deal, Farnaz Fassihi, Sept. 13, 2026. Opponents derailed the agreement with a clandestine effort to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz, regime insiders say. Iran’s president was furious when he found out.

Masoud Pezeshkian, the president of Iran, was riding high in early July, fresh off the successful negotiation of a peace agreement with the United States, and had traveled to neighboring Iraq for part of a weeklong funeral spectacle for Iran’s slain supreme leader.

Suddenly he got stunning news.

Iranian forces had opened fire on three commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, setting ablaze a Qatari L.N.G. tanker and damaging other vessels. Iran was under siege in world opinion.

Outraged, Mr. Pezeshkian phoned Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, the commander in chief of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and in a raised voice called the actions reckless and demanded answers, according to five Iranian officials and two Guards members familiar with the events.

General Vahidi told the president that he had neither authorized nor had advance knowledge of the strike, the five officials said. The nation’s Supreme National Security Council, which plays a critical role in both the war and negotiations, had also been in the dark, he said.

In fact, much of the country’s leadership was unaware that a fringe hard-line faction had decided to act on its own. Ultimately, those clandestine efforts derailed a push by more moderate pragmatists in Iran to reach an end to hostilities with the United States and repair their nation’s ailing economy.

The hard-liners succeeded in part because the only figure with the authority to resolve such disputes — the new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei — has been a phantom since taking office in March. He has not been seen, and his voice has not been heard. And the authenticity of written statements and messages attributed to Ayatollah Khamenei has been questioned, including by Mr. Pezeshkian, according to three Iranian officials.

Mr. Pezeshkian immediately returned to Tehran. By the next morning, even as the funeral ceremonies were still underway, the United States had retaliated with airstrikes on Iran. The two countries were back at war.

Senior Iranian officials and a Guards member said in interviews that what followed were some of the most volatile political confrontations within Iran’s leadership in memory. Officials engaged in shouting matches. Two senior generals threatened to resign. Accusations of treason and betrayal flew.

The reverberations, officials said, contributed to a shake-up at the National Security Council and the supreme leader’s appointment of Gen. Mohsen Rezaei, a seasoned politician and former commander in chief of the Guards, to lead the council, as he was thought to have the skill to mediate among political factions.

But divisions persist, and the hard-liners who have committed Iran to escalation are in an even stronger position. This past week, Iran and the United States traded attacks, with Iran repeatedly targeting American naval vessels for the first time, and the United States blowing up at least eight Iranian oil tankers.

This account of the inner deliberations of Iran’s leadership is based on interviews with eight Iranian officials, three members of the Revolutionary Guards, four former officials and a review of dozens of speeches and comments by government officials and military generals from June to September published in the Iranian press and social media. The officials interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss delicate issues of national security.

New York Times, Iran Will Meet With Gulf Arab States as Mideast Conflict Widens, Aaron Boxerman, Sept. 13, 2026. Talks are expected tomorrow, officials said. Diplomacy to end the war with the United States has stalled and Iranian-allied forces have advanced in Yemen.

Iranian officials will meet on Monday in Oman with representatives of some of the Gulf Arab states that it has repeatedly attacked during its war with the United States and Israel, as the regional conflict has widened in recent days.

Yemen has emerged as the latest front in the fighting, with the Iranian-backed Houthi militants there seizing the strategic port of Mokha and the island of Perim in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea last week. They have also attacked Saudi energy sites and sought to blockade Saudi shipping, exacerbating a global oil and gas crisis prompted by the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

Saudi Arabia was forced to shut its East-West Pipeline on Friday after it was targeted by drones from Iraq. That pipeline has been a critical lifeline for the country’s oil exports after Iran effectively blockaded the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. No one took responsibility for the drone attack, but Iraq has long harbored well-armed militias backed by Iran.

The meeting in Oman will take place as talks with the United States to reopen the Strait of Hormuz have stalled. Iran has continued to fire on ships passing through the strait, squeezing the Gulf Arab states and roiling global oil markets. Last week, the price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, briefly exceeded $110 a barrel, its highest level for months, before dropping to about $104 on Sunday.

Esmaeil Baghaei, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, said last week that the meeting would be held in Oman, which has often served as a mediator between the United States and Iran. Participating countries would discuss efforts by Iran and Oman to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, he added.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Even if an agreement is reached, however, Iranian officials have demanded concessions from the United States before ending their blockade, including lifting sanctions on Iran and releasing frozen U.S. assets. The Trump administration is unlikely to take those steps without Iranian moving to curb its nuclear program.

It was unclear which Arab states would attend the meeting. Mr. Baghaei said officials from Iraq and other Arab states along the Persian Gulf would be involved.

Iran has repeatedly attacked some of those countries since the war began, saying it was targeting the U.S. soldiers and military assets they hosted.Bahrain, which has repeatedly been targeted by Iranian missiles and drones during the war, said in a statement on Saturday that it would not participate in any talks with Iran.

“The kingdom has been subjected to attacks targeting its infrastructure and civilian assets,” the Bahraini Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding that any such dialogue would have to be based on “disregarding facts.”

Other countries that have been targeted, however, have signaled that they are open to dialogue. Crown Prince Khaled bin Mohamed Al Nahyan, the Emirati heir apparent, met with President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in India on Saturday — the first public meeting between the countries since the beginning of the war.

Ship operators still face severe risks in the region. On Sunday, a vessel was struck by a projectile while traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, causing a fire to break out, according to United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, a monitoring group run by the British Navy. It was unclear who had fired on the ship.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

New York Times, A Gender War Explodes in Utah Over the Courts, Abortion and Representation, Kate Zernike, Sept. 13, 2026. When Republicans tried to repeal a law that voters passed banning gerrymandering, they found an opposition that flew in the face of Utah women’s “tradwives” imagery.

When Mormon Women for Ethical Government formed in the fractious days after Donald Trump’s first inauguration, its mission was peacemaking.

These women were not pink-pussy-hat-knitting lefties — most members were loyal Utah Republicans who saw their group as an extension of church teachings: Women take care of the community, and people learn and grow from conversations with those they disagree with.

Peacemaking has now led them into a war.

The conflict involves issues consuming many other states — the redrawing of congressional maps, abortion, and above all, the question of who gets to wield power: the courts, the people or their elected representatives.

But Utah is unique; the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is patriarchal and dominates state politics. And as Utah’s women have spoken up, its male politicians, including Gov. Spencer Cox, who has made a national reputation on “disagreeing better,” have punished them.

The women so far are unbowed. Emma Petty Addams, the co-executive director of Mormon Women for Ethical Government, quoted church doctrine on the proper exercise of power to explain her group’s mission: “We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.”

For all the images of tradwives and momfluencers flooding television and social media from Utah, the reality playing out in the Beehive State is something quite different.

Four years ago, Mormon Women sued the Legislature for refusing to enact a law that voters had passed banning gerrymandering. As Salt Lake City grew bigger and bluer, that law was all but certain to yield a Democratic member in the state’s four-person House delegation. The state’s Supreme Court, with its first female majority, consistently and unanimously sided with the women.

Utah’s Republican leaders, who command every statewide office and a supermajority in the Legislature, responded first with threats, and then by remaking the court.Over the past year, they expanded the Supreme Court by two seats, choosing new justices from a list of 12 nominees, all men. The Legislature then created a new “constitutional court” to hear lawsuits filed against it, including on gerrymandering and abortion.

For good measure, the state G.O.P. called on voters to reject two female high court justices who were up for retention elections this November, apparently the first time the party has campaigned in such elections.

The Legislature and Governor Cox then forced the resignation of one of those justices, Diana Hagen, after her ex-husband accused her of having an affair, even though the state board that investigates judicial misconduct dismissed the allegation as having “very little credibility.”

In an interview in Salt Lake City, her first since resigning, Justice Hagen allowed that the vitriol toward women may not have been about sexism. But, she noted, the court’s ruling against the Legislature on gerrymandering in 2024 was unanimous, and there was no campaign to reject the chief justice, a man, when he was up for retention that year.

“That,” Justice Hagen said, “is really hard for me to explain in any other way.”

To other women, there’s no debate.

“Utahns are not used to women having power,” said Susan Madsen, director of the women in leadership project at Utah State University and a member of both the Latter-day Saints church and the Republican Party. Now, she said, “it’s women who are using their voices.”

Republicans say gender had nothing to do with their decisions. Mr. Cox noted that he created the now-lost female Supreme Court majority when he appointed two women in 2023. In June, when he announced his next picks for the high court, he said only four of 25 applicants were women, and two of those “were not qualified at all.”

“If that makes me a misogynist, I guess I’ll own it,” he said. “But I think that’s an insane narrative.”

There is an irony in Governor Cox’s role in the battle convulsing Utah politics: He has just embarked on his latest bid for political civility, promoting a new book, “Off Ramp: How to Be a Peacemaker in an Age of Contempt.” That follows his signature initiative as chairman of the National Governors Association, “Disagree Better,” when he traveled the country speaking publicly with Democratic counterparts.Get updates when new midterm election polls are added to our poll trackers. When new polling data drops we’ll send an update straight to your inbox. Get it sent to your inbox.

But in Utah, he removed a requirement for partisan balance on the commission that nominates judges, and gave himself sole power to appoint its members.

“They didn’t like the results of the game so they brought in referees midgame to make calls in their favor,” said Teneille Brown, a law professor at the University of Utah and a founder of Co-Equal Utah, a nonpartisan group started by lawyers concerned about political interference in the judiciary. “They not only picked the refs, they picked the people who picked the refs.”

 To the Contrary, Political Opinion: Well, That Escalated Quickly, Charlie Sykes, Sept. 13, 2026. A week when everything changed: The AI debate warnings; the Saudis’ worst fear; and the name that shall-not-be-mentioned at the RNC.

When the history of our time is written, last week’s Trumpalooza will barely merit a footnote, in part because it was a damp squib, but also because it was overshadowed by actual reality.

Let’s start with what happened with Artificial Intelligence.The fire was lit by Anthropic’s Jacob Coxon, who resigned with an X-post heard round the world. Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic, he wrote, are “acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”Jacob Coxon@hilbertspaess

I resigned from Anthropic today. I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives. More thoughts below.

“Do not underestimate the power of this technology,” he wrote. “These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing.”

And then the stark warning:The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.

Days later, Anthropic itself released a report , saying that Iran used its American AI model to target US Navy warships. The report detailed “how people tried to misuse Claude—for cyberattacks, influence operations, surveillance, biology, and building weapons—and how we found and stopped them.”

Then, on Saturday: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a lengthy statement, calling for a slowdown in the development of AI. He wrote that “AI could cure most major diseases in the next 5–10 years, greatly accelerate economic growth rates, create a world of abundance and empowerment, and usher in a renaissance of democracy and freedom.”BUT…Amodei also warned that AI is advancing “drastically” with potentially drastic consequences that might include rogue AI agents “taking over the entire internet” in six to 12 months”“

Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all,” he wrote. This included, “the risk of losing control of AI systems, misuse of AI for cyberattacks and bioterrorism, and serious economic disruption. A race to the bottom, spurred by commercial incentives, can make these risks more acute.”

Other members of the AI industry —including Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — quickly voiced agreement. (Whether they will actually do anything meaningful is another question altogether.) The political fallout also intensified. “Obama Urges Democrats to Move A.I. Oversight to the Center of Their Agenda”- The New York Times.On Sunday, Donald Trump — described by the NYT as the leader of the “what-me-worry?” crowd — once again downplayed the risks of AI and the need to slow down development, citing competition from China. But last week, it felt like tectonic plates were moving — setting up yet another test of our system’s ability to confront existential threat. And, no, that’s not encouraging, is it?BONUS: The front page of the NYT digital front page Sunday afternoon:

New York Times, For Populist Democrats, a Movement Fueled by Anger at Both Parties, Robert Draper, Sept. 13, 2026. A generation shaped by the pandemic and rising prices has helped drive an emergence of Democratic candidates who say they are as fed up as voters are.

A Montana wilderness firefighter, an Ohio ironworker and a lawyer who worked as a barista in Colorado while pursuing a Ph.D. would appear to have little in common. But all three represent a profusion in the midterm elections of anti-establishment populist Democrats who share, or at least seek to channel, the welling vexations of the American electorate.

They are young, or youngish. They are angry. They are fed up with the Democratic establishment. Two won primaries for House seats in red districts they hope to flip, and the third beat a longtime Democratic incumbent in a deep blue district. All are new to politics, which they consider a virtue.

“This party culture of waiting your turn and not burning bridges, I’m like, I ain’t got nothing to lose,” said Melat Kiros, 29, the lawyer, an Ethiopian-American and a democratic socialist who defeated the incumbent by 13 points in Denver to run for a House seat she is likely to win. “There are no bridges for me to burn.”

Sam Forstag, 32, the wilderness firefighter, or smokejumper, is not a democratic socialist but he decided to run for Congress after hundreds of his fellow Montana-based U.S. Forestry Service employees were laid off last year as a result of the DOGE federal budget cuts. “They were firing people making 11 bucks an hour swinging tools in the woods,” he said.

Special Report: The Clinton Impeachment As A Timely Lesson

Mobology, Investigative Commentary: The RNC demands our indictments for extortion and obstructing Congress (Part 11), Dan Moldea, right, Sept. 13, 2026. The Senate trial against President Clinton opens.

Preface

The 2026 midterm elections are drawing near. And there are lessons to be learned. . . . Here at Mobology, the past is prologue.

Through this series, I hope to contribute to the ongoing action by revisiting the drama of the last major crisis in the American presidency. I played a little-known but key role in that story.

According to AI Perplexity:

Yes. Dan Moldea actively aided Clinton’s defense effort during the impeachment fight, but he did so as an outside investigative journalist rather than a formal White House adviser or staffer.​Public defense of ClintonMoldea emerged as a vocal defender of Clinton after researching and writing about Vince Foster’s death, concluding it was a suicide and that a network of anti‑Clinton activists and journalists had tried to weaponize the case against the administration. When the Lewinsky scandal broke in 1998, Moldea “decided to take sides” and publicly backed the president while attacking the fairness and legality of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation in media appearances and speeches.​Exposing alleged OIC leaksMoldea alleged that Starr’s Office of Independent Counsel (OIC) was illegally leaking non‑public grand jury information to a select group of reporters, whom he said had become “cheerleaders” and “shills” for the prosecution. He tape‑recorded on‑the‑record conversations with two senior OIC deputies and later submitted transcripts in an affidavit to U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson, supporting an inquiry into whether Starr’s office had violated secrecy rules—an effort that aligned with the Clinton legal team’s broader pushback.​Work with Larry FlyntIn late 1998 Moldea joined Larry Flynt’s project to investigate and expose sexual hypocrisy among Clinton’s most aggressive Republican critics in Congress. Acting as Flynt’s lead investigator, Moldea helped uncover then‑Speaker‑designate Bob Livingston’s extramarital affair, which contributed to Livingston’s dramatic resignation on the very day the House voted to impeach Clinton, a development Moldea and some commentators later described as helping . . . to “diffuse” the impeachment drive.​How “helping Clinton” is characterizedMoldea himself has said he sympathized with Clinton’s struggle and believed his work with Flynt and his exposure of OIC leaks were part of resisting a “right‑wing attempt to overthrow the executive branch.” While he held no official role in the White House or legal defense team, his investigations and public interventions functioned as de facto assistance to Clinton by undermining key accusers and challenging the legitimacy of the prosecutorial strategy.

My May 24 column detailed how I became involved in the investigation of Vincent Foster’s death (Part 1), followed by Part 2 (July 12), Part 3 (July 19), Part 4 (July 26), Part 5 (August 2), Part 6 (August 9), Part 7 (August 16), Part 8 (August 23), Part 9 (August 30), and Part 10 (September 6).

Today, September 13, I publish Part 11. Next week, I will release the final installment of this twelve-part series.

This is the first time I’ve offered much of this updated story to Mobology subscribers.

The Senate trial opens

High noon had come for the President’s enemies as the preliminary phase of the Senate trial got underway on January 7, 1999, the culmination of years of vicious allegations, wild conspiracy theories, and wholly partisan investigations—all of which had gone nowhere. Now reduced to criminalizing the President’s personal life by alleging that he had lied about sex, the Clinton haters were finally at center stage.

The time had come for them to put up or shut up.

However, their earlier high confidence for the President’s removal from office had dissipated considerably after my investigation of U.S. House Speaker-Designate Bob Livingston led to his shocking resignation on December 19—and was further diminished by Larry Flynt’s continuing crusade to expose Republican hypocrisy, led by my ongoing work.

In fact, other than the unmasking of Kenneth Starr as a partisan sexual witch hunter after the release of the Starr Report in September 1998 and the excellent legal work performed by the President’s attorneys before and during the Senate trial, there was no single factor that had a greater impact on the impeachment process than our work in The Flynt Project.

Had we never emerged in this drama, Bob Livingston would have become Speaker of the House, and the impeachment of the President would have shifted from the House to the Senate with a tremendous, even a devastating momentum. At the very least, as with President Richard Nixon in 1974, the pressure on President Clinton to resign from office would have been overwhelming.

Instead, with Livingston’s resignation and the hypocrisy of the President’s enemies clear and present to the American public—who then catapulted the President’s approval ratings to their highest level ever on the day of his impeachment—the Republicans’ case limped to trial.

Looking back, the New York Times revealed a remarkable but terrifying reality:

The shock waves of the Livingston resignation spread far beyond the West Wing of the White House, and had a sobering effect on members of Congress of both parties who might have been contemplating calling for Clinton to step down in the aftermath of the impeachment vote.

Fearful of the entire Government unraveling, very few members of Congress joined a clamor for Clinton’s resignation.[1]

Once again, our team clearly helped to save the Clinton Presidency.I am revealed

When Representative Bob Barr learned that he was one of our targets, he responded in writing by threatening to sue Flynt. In response, Larry drafted a letter to Barr on January 5 in which he identified me as his investigator—which, until then, was a closely guarded secret.

After I reluctantly approved Flynt’s communication, I waited to be revealed, followed by the inevitable consequences.

On January 8, 1999, reporter Mark Hosenball of Newsweek, with whom I had been acquainted for several years, called and asked me to confirm or deny that I was Flynt’s mystery investigator.

Deciding that I would get a fair shake from this one-time poker buddy, I admitted that I had handled the probes of Livingston and Flynt’s other targets while reminding Mark about the sworn affidavit on my website about the OIC leaks and denying any White House involvement in our investigation. However, I refused to go into any further detail about my ongoing work for Flynt.

Hosenball’s story, written with Andrew Murr—“Who’s on Larry List?”, which identified me for the first time as Flynt’s mystery investigator—ran in Newsweek’s January 18 issue, released on January 11, the same day that Flynt revealed the details of our investigation of Bob Barr.

Hosenball and Murr reported:

Flynt had a tough time finding respectable journalists or gumshoes willing to take on the job. But at least one, Newsweek has learned, eagerly accepted: Dan Moldea. An investigative crime reporter and author of controversial books about pro football and the O. J. Simpson case, Moldea is a Clinton sympathizer. Last year he approached the president’s private lawyers with a tantalizing story: in phone calls Moldea secretly recorded, two of Kenneth Starr’s top deputies admitted that their office routinely briefed sympathetic reporters. Moldea later repeated the leak charge in a sworn statement to the judge overseeing the Starr probe. Moldea investigated the allegations against Livingston. He confirmed to Newsweek that he is continuing to investigate other Clinton critics. (Moldea and the president’s attorneys deny there is any connection between the White House and Flynt.) [Emphasis added.]

However, the fact remained: I did not approach the President’s attorneys. Instead, they had approached me. And when they did on the first two occasions, I asked for a subpoena.[2]

Hosenball’s unfortunate mistake launched a chain of events that caused immediate and long-term problems for me.On defense

On January 13, 1999—the eve of the opening arguments in the Senate’s impeachment trial against President Clinton—the Washington Post, then Newsweek’s parent company, published its own article by reporter Howard Kurtz, repeating that I was Flynt’s investigator.

Authorized by Flynt to comment in the wake of the erroneous Newsweek article, I told Kurtz that, indeed, Flynt had several “big fish” on his plate. However, I added that some of them would not be made public, adding:

Some Republicans on Capitol Hill should be sending us flowers and thank‑you cards. They weren’t going on TV talk shows shooting off their mouths [about Clinton], or going to the floor of Congress to seize the moral high ground. We’ve thrown them back in the river. We’re not going to interfere with their lives.[3]

Actually, I had meant these remarks to be conciliatory.

That same day, Bill Sammon of the Washington Times, another right-wing Clinton critic with whom I had also agreed to speak, published a front‑page story, “Flynt sleuth dished dirt for White House,” cynically using my role in the OIC leaks investigation as evidence of my—and, thereby, Flynt’s—connection to the White House.[4]

Sammon wrote in his lead paragraph:

The investigator who dug up dirt on Republican Reps. Bob Barr and Robert L. Livingston for pornographer Larry Flynt is a Clinton sympathizer who has supplied the president’s attorneys with evidence against independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr.

Although Sammon portrayed this as a major expose, he failed to mention that I had detailed all of this and more in my sworn affidavit in August, which was already posted for all to see on my public website, www.moldea.com.

Continuing his story, Sammon then quoted me about the Flynt investigation, saying:

“I don’t think there’s anybody on our team who’s getting much joy out of this. When you start hurting families, that’s something that makes you pause and think about what’s going on. But at the same time, I just haven’t seen any mercy shown towards Clinton—I mean, none, zero.”

Using a version of the quote I had given to the Post about throwing non‑hypocritical Republicans “back in the river,” Sammon gave this statement a nefarious twist, writing:

[Moldea] made it clear he has uncovered salacious material on more Republicans whose identities will remain secret as long as they refrain from speaking out against Mr. Clinton.

As spun by Sammon, I appeared to be threatening or even blackmailing unnamed members of Congress! Although this allegation was nonsense, it quickly took on a life of its own.[5]“Tough, mean investigators”

As the Senate trial of President Clinton moved forward, Flynt and I were widely accused of political terrorism with our campaign. Along with other members of Congress, Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho), who would later have his own personal problems, insisted:

Intimidation is something we have to resist. You don’t negotiate with terrorists. This is almost a terrorist‑like tactic being used here.[6]

Senator James M. Jeffords (R‑Vermont) told reporters:

I’m deeply concerned. I think any effort to blackmail a person . . . That’s very serious.[7]

Meantime, Senator Orrin Hatch (R‑Utah) continued to suggest a link between Flynt and the White House, using me as his foil on NBC’s Meet the Press:

I don’t know anybody who’s hiring these tough, mean investigators like has been done for the President.[8]

On January 14, Senator Jon Kyl (R-Arizona) was asked by a reporter:

“Any backlash about the Larry Flynt stuff in the Senate you heard today in the cafeteria or in the gym or anything, Senator?”

“Sure,” Kyl replied, “there was a lot of backlash.”

“What did you hear?”

“Well, the usual. This is not helpful to the process.”

“Are the senators angry about it?”

“I might characterize some of them as pretty upset about it, yes.”

“Was this going to influence the trial one way or the other in any way?”

Kyl then said, “Well, you know what? I don’t even want to talk about it because it simply gives [Flynt] credibility that I don’t want to give him.”[9]

The following day, responding to a question about Flynt’s alleged threats against Republican senators, GOP consultant Heather Nauert said during a television appearance on Fox News:

“I think the problem with that is that these members are keeping quiet—members that would normally be out front denouncing the President are now remaining silent because they’re so afraid of this campaign that they’ve—that . . .”

“You really think so?” The host asked. “You really think they’re intimidated by it?”

“I absolutely do.”[10]

Reporter Peter Baker of the Washington Post told Terry Gross, the host of NPR’s Fresh Air:

Well, there was a real atmosphere of fear among congressmen, particularly Republicans. Just the fact of Larry Flynt out there was terrifying to them. . . . [A] number of the managers, the people who would prosecute the president in the Senate trial, were convinced that they were the next target. . . . So there was a real atmosphere of fear that these people were living through at the time.[11]

The White House responds

At the daily White House briefing on January 13, press secretary Joe Lockhart fielded a question from a reporter who asked:

Larry Flynt’s investigator, Dan Moldea, says that he has uncovered information on additional Republicans, but is going to withhold it as long as they don’t criticize the President. Does this strike you as blackmail and will the White House call for him to cease and desist?

Lockhart simply replied:

Listen, the President has been as clear as possible that he thinks the politics of personal destruction should cease and desist, and should have ceased and desisted a long time ago. I don’t know anything about this gentleman you’re talking about. I believe, as the President agrees, that all of this kind of sleazy politics ought to stop and it ought to stop from the right, from the left, and from the people who create the market in this stuff. And it’s our hope that it does.

Regardless of anything the White House said, the perpetual lies that Flynt and I were linked to the President and his operatives continued and even escalated.

The frustrated right‑wing media, which had invested so much time, money, and energy to bring about the downfall of the President, turned their big guns on Flynt and anyone close to him, especially me. But, as with their other dead‑end investigations of the President—the Foster suicide, Whitewater, Travelgate, and Filegate, among others—they did not allow their false and misleading facts to get in the way of their fabricated narrative.

ShareEarly jabs, followed by roundhouse punches

Here is a sampling of what else Flynt and I were up against:

* Syndicated columnist Tony Snow, the right‑wing journalist who introduced Linda Tripp to Lucianne Goldberg, declared:

Larry Flynt, abetted by investigative reporter Dan Moldea, has attempted to blackmail Republicans into cutting Clinton free.[12]

* Jaime Dettmer, in his article for Insight, a magazine owned by the Washington Times, wrote:

Right and left the battle rages and good men act out of character, such as author‑turned‑hired‑gun Dan Moldea, who has swapped his reputation for free thinking and independence to become Flynt’s blackmailer in chief. . . . [M]oral equivalence or truth‑seeking apparently doesn’t matter to Moldea. The point again is media terrorism, scandal, intimidation—he makes no bones about it, saying publicly he’ll hold back on outing Republicans who keep their mouths shut about the president. Isn’t that a possible contempt‑of‑Congress offense and a potential breach of the federal statutes concerning obstruction of justice?[13]

* Matt Labash of the conservative Weekly Standard added:

Flynt has repeatedly asserted that he hired a Washington private investigative firm chock full of ex‑FBI and CIA operatives, but he declines to name it. Inquiring minds assumed he’d hired Terry Lenzner, the Clinton camp’s usual private eye. But when I talked to Moldea, he denied knowing anything about this, adding, “Personally, I don’t believe there is a detective firm. If there is, where’s their work? I don’t see their work. Who did Barr? I did Barr. Who did Livingston? I did Livingston.” Moldea also denies any White House connection.[14]

* Playing off the initial erroneous Newsweek story, televangelist Jerry Falwell, who had lost a landmark U.S. Supreme Court defamation case to Flynt in 1988, wrote a column on January 15 that was totally false, alleging:

Dan Moldea, the lead investigator for Larry Flynt’s ongoing quest to uncover sexual indiscretions of Republican congressional members, has now admitted he was hired by the law firm defending President Clinton. Moldea affirmed that the firm of Williams & Connolly initially contacted him to uncover evidence that Kenneth Starr, Whitewater independent counsel, had violated rules against leaking grand jury information to the press.”[15]

* Robert J. Caldwell, an editor for the San Diego Union‑Tribune, published an article on January 17, repeating Falwell’s false charge that I had actually admitted working for Williams & Connolly. Caldwell wrote:

Moldea’s former employment was with the Washington law firm of Williams and Connolly, whose lawyers are defending President Clinton in the impeachment proceedings. Moldea says his job at Williams and Connolly included investigating special prosecutor Ken Starr’s investigation of the president.[16]

Attempts to get Flynt and me indicted

On January 14, Mark Levin of the Scaife‑funded Landmark Legal Foundation filed a formal complaint with the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, charging Flynt and me with attempting “to influence and impede” the Senate’s impeachment trial and adding:

Messrs. Flynt and Moldea are not free to corruptly “endeavor to influence” a congressional inquiry, such as an impeachment inquiry or an impeachment trial inquiry, by threatening, intimidating or coercing Republican members of Congress to keep silent about Mr. Clinton’s conduct lest potentially embarrassing personal information involving the members and/or their families—which was either purchased by Mr. Flynt or otherwise gathered by Mr. Moldea—be made public.

The following day, Republican National Committee chairman James Nicholson issued a press release, stating that:

[Nicholson and the RNC have] joined in the non‑partisan Landmark Legal Foundation’s demand for a criminal probe of pornographer Larry Flynt and his investigator, Dan Moldea, for the felony of Obstructing Congress. Besides assisting Flynt, Moldea assisted Clinton’s defense team, Nicholson noted. . . .

The Flynt‑Carville‑Moldea tactics of intimidation and blackmail aren’t just wrong, they’re illegal, and our Attorney General ought to take off her blindfold and begin criminal prosecutions.

On January 16, the Washington Post reported on all of this nonsense, stating:

In a letter addressed to officials of the department’s criminal division, the foundation said Flynt’s efforts and those of his investigator, author Dan Moldea, could constitute obstruction of a congressional investigation. Flynt may have violated federal law by allegedly “threatening, intimidating or coercing Republican members of Congress” to remain silent about Clinton’s conduct or face embarrassing disclosures about their personal lives, the letter said, adding that obstructing Congress is “a felony punishable by five years imprisonment and a fine of $250,000.” . . . Justice Department spokeswoman Chris Watney said the request for an investigation “is under review.” Flynt’s attorney, Alan Isaacman, called the demand for an investigation “absurd.”[17]

* On January 18, the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial, entitled, “Abetting Blackmail,” once again falsely charging that I had “worked for” Williams & Connolly, just as Jerry Falwell and Robert Caldwell, among others, had claimed. Further, the Journal charged that Flynt and I were actively involved in a pattern of threats and blackmail against Congress.

Joining the calls for the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice to investigate us, the Journal continued:

[The Department of] Justice says the complaint is under review, and surely the criminal issue needs official study. Also, of course, there is the further issue of whether Mr. Moldea dug up all this dirt himself, or whether he is being aided and abetted by agents of the President. He has, as it happens, previously worked for the President’s law firm, Williams & Connolly. [Emphasis added.]

From the outset, I realized that I was going to take a ton of grief for my role in The Flynt Project and had already decided to turn the other cheek to almost all of it. But after seeing this editorial in the Wall Street Journal, I was mortified, as well as angry, and wrote harsh letters to Robert Bartley, the executive editor of the Journal’s editorial page, as well as to Falwell and Caldwell, demanding retractions, threatening litigation, and insisting that I had never “worked for” or received any money from the President’s lawyers or Williams & Connolly.

Responding to my demands in a second editorial two days later, the Wall Street Journal—referencing my 1990-1994 libel case against the New York Times—published perhaps the most disingenuous retraction in the history of journalism, writing:

Dan E. Moldea, official mud‑miner for scatology king Larry Flynt, says we have done him wrong. . . . What is in question is the phrase “worked for.” If we wanted to play Clintonesque word games, we could ask, what is “for” for? Does it not mean “on behalf of” and isn’t that what happened? But we desist, because many readers would indeed take “worked for” to mean he got paid, which the public record does not currently support. So as requested, we hereby retract the word “for.” Substitute the word “with.” . . . Here we see in all their splendor the current point men in the Clinton defense movement. Is this how the Senate and the Democratic Party want to be represented, or will they separate themselves from the gutter inhabited by Mr. Flynt and Mr. Moldea?[18]

Biting the bullet, I allowed this version of the Journal’s retraction to stand without further comment.[19]

But, regardless of whatever the right-wingers charged, Flynt and I had done nothing illegal

My defenders

Notably, I did have my defenders in the mainstream media, and their comments appeared in, among others, articles published by Newsday and the New York Observer.

Journalist Steve Love, a long‑time friend at the Akron Beacon Journal, my hometown newspaper, wrote an op‑ed piece about my unpleasant situation. Critical of some of my recent actions but concerned for my personal and professional safety and welfare, Love wrote:

[B]y becoming what Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson refers to as a “goon” for “the president’s favorite pornographer,” Moldea is walking a thinner line between acceptable investigative journalism and salaciousness. Nicholson and the nonpartisan Landmark Legal Foundation are demanding that the Justice Department investigate Flynt and Moldea for obstructing Congress, a felony. . . .

Moldea, who is single, is no candidate for sainthood. He also knows the harm he is doing to others’ lives. This bothers him, but not as much as the sexual McCarthyism he sees plaguing America.

I don’t know Flynt. But I do know Moldea. To him this is a holy war. He would wage it for nothing. Scorch enough beds and maybe Americans will be repulsed enough to stop this. It is the sexual equivalent of a nuclear deterrent.

I hope it works, but I doubt it will.

Escalation remains the order of the day. No one is sheathing his weapon.[20]

No death threats, just open intimidation

Remarkably, I never received a single death threat either over the telephone or in person during my work for Flynt. However, a steady stream of cars and vans, sometimes three at a time, parked daily in front of my four-unit apartment building, as well as up and down the street.

Through some of my long-time friends and sources who could check licenses and auto registrations, I learned that no fewer than eight of these vehicles were linked to the same private detective firm in Virginia.

Another journalist who lived in my neighborhood even became friendly with one of these surveillance people who specifically identified me as his target. The journalist executed a sworn statement about this conversation and gave it to me.

At one point, out of sheer frustration, I approached one of the drivers and complained about the intrusions. He replied, “Fuck you, Moldea! I am in a private car on a public street.”

Knowing there was nothing I could do about this situation and fearing a possible home invasion—especially after my surveillance guy found a tracking device in the wheel well of my car—I simply had the doors to my apartment alarmed, among other internal precautions.

Realizing that I was working alone in Washington and half expecting FBI agents to come crashing into my apartment at any second to make an arrest, Flynt brought me back to Los Angeles and placed me in a luxury suite at a Beverly Hills hotel under an assumed name until we thought it was safe for me to return home.

Meantime, the Senate trial of President Clinton continued. . . .

More On High-Tech, Media

New York Times, Top A.I. Leaders Call for Slowing Down A.I. Development, Mike Isaac, Sept. 13, 2026 (print ed.). In an essay, the head of Anthropic laid out the rapidly advancing capabilities of artificial intelligence and said there needed to be greater safety controls across the industry.

Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, called for a global slowdown of artificial intelligence development in a 3,800-word essay on Saturday, just days after one of the company’s employees quit over concerns about the safety of the technology.

Top executives of other major A.I. companies quickly signed on to the effort. Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI; Elon Musk, whose SpaceX rocket company has been ramping up spending on A.I.; and Demis Hassabis, the chair of Google DeepMind, wrote in social media posts that they agreed on the need for a slower pace.

Mr. Amodei, who co-founded Anthropic to focus on securely and carefully building A.I., wrote in his essay that while he believed the technology could bring many benefits, it was advancing at too rapid a pace for researchers to continue safely.

“Over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence — not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up,” Mr. Amodei wrote. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of A.I. models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”

Mr. Amodei has warned about the safety risks of A.I. for years. But his essay amounted to one of the most full-throated calls for urgent action from a leading A.I. company executive to date.

He called for independent auditors to check the companies for safety standards and urged global cooperation in creating rules around A.I. development.

The appeal for an industrywide pause follows months of escalating concerns across the technology industry as A.I. model development has made significant strides at companies like Anthropic, the developer of the Claude chatbot, as well as OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, and Google’s DeepMind.

Tensions rose further after the leading A.I. labs discovered security breaches carried out by their own programs without their knowledge. In one incident this year, OpenAI’s systems breached an A.I. start-up called HuggingFace, which was not detected until HuggingFace informed OpenAI weeks after it had happened. Since then, A.I. researchers have conferred to discuss what to do.

On Tuesday, Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic researcher, resigned and posted a series of social media posts about how the leading A.I. labs were not responsibly developing the technology and were gambling with people’s lives, setting off a furor. Other A.I. researchers have called on their leaders to pause A.I. development, while some are forming splinter groups to raise more awareness about the risks of A.I.

A.I. leaders are girding themselves for a day when an A.I. system can rely on itself to grow more advanced rather than requiring the aid of human researchers. This dynamic, which computer scientists call “recursive self improvement,” is what some top A.I. developers believe may lead to the software spinning out of their control.

“Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all,” Mr. Amodei said.

Hours after Mr. Amodei published his essay, Mr. Altman posted a statement to social media agreeing that a slowdown of A.I. development was necessary.

“This has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks,” Mr. Altman wrote. “Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We’ll have more to share soon.”

Mr. Musk, in a post on his social media platform X, said simply, “Dario is right.”

On Saturday evening, Mr. Hassabis said Mr. Amodei’s essay was a step in the right direction. “The details need working through, but the direction is correct for meeting this critical moment,” Mr. Hassabis posted on social media.

For years, many of the top A.I. labs have been locked in bitter competition with one another. But as these systems have advanced, there has been some broader agreement among executives at rival companies that something needs be done.

Last month, as OpenAI prepared to release an advanced A.I. model called Astra, the company said it had intentionally slowed down its pace of development, citing advancements in cybersecurity capabilities. In July, Google’s Mr. Hassabis published an open framework for what he believed would be a safe way to cooperatively develop next-generation A.I.

(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied those claims.)

There are few rules on A.I. development, though President Trump signed an executive order in June asking for A.I. labs to voluntarily submit their models for review before public release.

In his essay on Saturday, Mr. Amodei suggested actions that the industry might take to slow the pace of development.

Mr. Amodei said that all A.I. labs could agree to third-party technology assessments from “embedded evaluators,” or outside specialists who could verify best safety practices across companies. He also suggested that countries with democratic governance systems coordinate to create safety standards, which could take the form of regulatory action.

New York Times, How the Smithsonian Might Choose Its Next Leader, Robin Pogrebin, Sept. 13, 2026. With Lonnie G. Bunch III stepping down as the Smithsonian’s secretary, President Trump will have his best chance to control the institution.

When Lonnie G. Bunch III announced that he would step down as chief of the Smithsonian Institution, many saw the decision as a culmination of President Trump’s pressure campaign against the organization, which oversees nearly two dozen museums.

The White House has called Mr. Bunch, who has led the Smithsonian since 2019, a “rabid partisan.” But after his announcement, scholars came to his defense, with the Organization of American Historians praising Mr. Bunch’s “intellectual rigor” and “political courage.”

The process to select a successor to Mr. Bunch, who the Smithsonian said would stay through the end of the year, will offer Mr. Trump his best chance to exert control over the Smithsonian. Here is what to know about how the institution might choose its next leader.Who controls the Smithsonian?

Congress created the Smithsonian — the world’s largest museum, education and research complex — in 1846 after James Smithson, a British chemist and mineralogist, died and left his fortune to the establishment of an institution “for the increase and diffusion of knowledge” in the U.S. capital.

Today, it includes 21 museums, libraries, research centers and the National Zoo, many of them on the National Mall in Washington. They range from behemoths like the National Air and Space Museum to small organizations like the Anacostia Community Museum.

The Smithsonian has historically operated independently of the executive branch. It is run by a Board of Regents that oversees strategy, policy, finances, mission and governance.

The board selects a new secretary to lead the Smithsonian.How does the Smithsonian’s board operate?

There are 17 members of the Board of Regents — a mixture of Republicans and Democrats, drawn from government, business, medicine and academia.

The board includes the vice president, the chief justice of the United States and six members of Congress: three from the House of Representatives and three from the Senate, as required by statute. The chief justice serves as the board’s chancellor.

The board nominates another nine private citizens, who, after congressional confirmation and presidential sign-off, serve no more than two consecutive six-year terms.

Ever since the Smithsonian was established, board members have cycled off the board after their staggered terms end. Since April, there have been three openings on the board, and by October, the terms of three more members will have expired.

Board members are typically nominated by the regents, confirmed by Congress and signed off on by the president without partisan rancor. But the names of several recent board nominees, which have not been publicly disclosed, have not even made it to Congress — without clear explanation.

Two people with knowledge of the process, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private decision-making, told The New York Times in July that Vice President JD Vance had delayed action on the names because Mr. Trump hoped to substitute more like-minded candidates.

In an executive order issued in March 2025, Mr. Trump described the Smithsonian as consumed by a “divisive, race-centered ideology” and demanded that the institution be restored to “its rightful place as a symbol of inspiration and American greatness.”

The order called for Mr. Vance to work with the House speaker and the Senate majority leader, both Republicans, “to seek the appointment of citizen members to the Smithsonian Board of Regents committed to advancing the policy of this order.”How has the selection process gone before?

When seeking a new leader in the past, the Smithsonian board has created a search committee and enlisted outside consulting firms.

When Mr. Bunch was appointed in 2019, it was the first time in 74 years that a director of a Smithsonian museum had been selected to lead the entire institution. Mr. Bunch was the founding director of the institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, and had worked at its National Museum of American History.

He was appointed as secretary after a search by an 11-person committee led by David Rubenstein, who was the chairman of the Smithsonian’s board at the time, and Steve Case, who was then its vice chairman.

Mr. Bunch replaced David J. Skorton, a cardiologist and former president of Cornell, who after leaving the Smithsonian returned to health care as the president of a nonprofit.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice

Donald Trump, Jan 6th rioters, Mike Johnson, and the Supreme Court (Illustration for The New Republic by Mark Harris; Getty (x6)

The New Republic, Analysis and Opinion: The Final Battle for America’s Democracy, J. Michael Luttig, above, Sept. 11, 2026. Forget November 3. It’s January 3 when Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans might bury our democracy once and for all. Here’s how.

Donald Trump instigated a war against America’s democracy on January 6, 2021. He and his Republican allies would have crippled America’s democracy that day had his own vice president not refused to be party to the gravest constitutional offense a president can commit—the refusal to relinquish and peacefully transfer the power of the presidency to his duly elected successor.

Today, almost six years later, Donald Trump and his Republican congressional allies are even more determined to prosecute the president’s war against American democracy to its catastrophic end than they were on January 6, 2021.

That catastrophic end could well come on January 3, 2027, when Trump and his Republican congressional allies wage the final battle in Trump’s determined war to corrupt America’s democracy and deliver a lasting political victory over the Democrats for his MAGA Republican Party.

Trump and his Republican allies have been preparing for this final battle since January 6, 2021. For the past six years, they have embarrassed themselves and the U.S. with their preposterous, win-at-any-cost denial that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election and their deceitful slander of America’s democracy. Since his return to the White House, Trump’s every unconstitutional act in his effort to seize control over the midterm elections—each hailed by his prostrate Republican Congress—has been toward the end of ensuring that Republicans retain a majority in the 120th Congress.

Trump told talk show host Dan Bogino on February 2, “The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting.’... The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.’” The Republicans have dutifully fallen in line.

Before Donald Trump arrived, it was the Republicans who professed to stand for the Constitution, principle, truth, honesty, integrity—even honor. Republicans were the proud party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. It was our party that could be expected to put country before party when the time came, as when Barry Goldwater and other party elders told Richard Nixon in 1974 that it was time to resign the presidency. That was then. None of this is true of today’s Republican Party and this Republican Congress. So enthralled with the forty-seventh president are today’s House Republicans that they long ago abandoned everything the Republican Party has stood for since its founders first met in Ripon, Wisconsin, in 1854.

Today’s congressional Republicans took a blood oath six years ago not just to put their party before their country, but to put Donald Trump before their country. And so it is that only weeks before the midterm elections, House Republicans have already sworn their allegiance to Donald Trump and doomed the U.S. to another January 6 next January 3.

So unalterably subjugated to Trump is today’s Republican House that even a decisive victory for Democrats and a resounding repudiation of Trump and the MAGA Republicans at the polls in November will not guarantee that a Democratic majority-elect will be seated in the 120th Congress on January 3.

All year long, Trump has been dragooning House Speaker Mike Johnson and the congressional Republicans into prejudging as fraudulent the upcoming November elections of the presumed Democratic majority, as he himself has already prejudged those elections. His dragooning appears to have worked. House Republicans are now poised to claim that the midterm elections were stolen from them when they meet on January 3 to decide which members-elect will be seated in the 120th Congress.

Over the past year and a half since his return to the White House, Trump has exploited every conceivable unlawful means possible to rig the midterm elections in favor of the Republicans, and the federal courts have struck down as unconstitutional every one of these unlawful attempts. He will try every unlawful means over the remaining weeks to ensure that Republicans handily win the midterm elections in November. Those of us who oppose his illegality will look to the courts, but the federal courts will be institutionally incapable of checking his final unlawful rampage.

Trump punctuated his expressed intent to interfere in the midterm elections eight weeks ago in a national prime-time address on “election integrity,” accusing the Democrats and the Chinese in particular of threatening the free and fair elections in November. In that address, he claimed without evidence or support (as usual) that the 2026 midterm elections were being threatened by noncitizen voting, weaknesses in voter registration systems, foreign interference, and vulnerabilities in electronic voting systems.

The concocted address was universally panned as purely partisan, devoid of evidence and support, and anticipatory of his forthcoming claim in November that the Democrats won a majority in the House of Representatives only because of fraud in their respective elections.

Everyone knows that the greatest threat to the upcoming midterm elections is not the Democrats or the Chinese, noncitizen voting, or electronic voting machines, but the president of the United States and his servile Republican Congress.

Every member of Congress takes a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution, an oath that obligates them to honor the will of the American electorate. It is a sacred imperative that the Congress of the United States must defend our constitutional right to choose our representatives to Congress against all enemies, domestic as well as foreign, who would deny us this fundamental right.

There was a time not long ago when virtually every member of Congress could be expected to commit to the peaceful transfer of congressional power in advance of an election, just as every president could be expected to commit to the peaceful transfer of presidential power. But those times came to an abrupt end upon Donald Trump’s arrival in January 2017. In a damning indictment of the president and today’s congressional Republicans, it would be hard to find even one congressional Republican with the integrity, sense of duty to country, honor, and courage to put America above the Republican Party, let alone above Donald Trump.

Yet America’s only hope for saving its democracy and avoiding another crippling constitutional crisis on January 3 is for the House Republicans to decide that they are not going to betray their oaths and their country one last time for Donald Trump, and telegraph to Trump and Mike Johnson that any unconstitutional plan they might be contriving to deny Democratic members-elect their rightful seats in the 120th Congress would be dead on arrival January 3.

If there are any such Republicans in the Congress today, they should announce well before November 3 that they will not be party to Trump’s and Johnson’s attempt to steal the midterm elections from the American people.

In fact, the House members of both political parties should stand united before November 3 and affirm to the American people that in the United States of America, government derives its just powers from the consent of “We the People”—the governed. They should campaign in the fall on any refusal by their political opponents to affirm the same. Their political opponents should in turn campaign on House members’ refusal to affirm that they will not be complicit in any attempt to steal the midterm elections.

Standing united before the midterm elections against any attempt by Trump and Johnson to overturn those elections would go a long way toward restoring Americans’ lost trust in their Congress and their government. It would send a powerful message to Trump and Johnson that Americans will never again be forced by their own government to endure another January 6.

While it is small solace, Americans are not entirely at the mercy of this Republican Congress to suddenly decide to honor its oath to the Constitution and the American people. It will be the Supreme Court, not Trump, Johnson, or even the House of Representatives, that will have the final word as to who will be seated in the 120th Congress of the United States.

Article I, Section 5, Clause 1 of the Constitution provides that “Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members.” Under Clause 1, the House of Representatives is the “judge” of its “elections” and “returns.” But the House’s power is not plenary. The Constitution constrains how the House can exercise its power to refuse to seat members-elect. Indeed, in 1969, in Powell v. McCormack, the Supreme Court ensured that the House constitutionally exercised its power to “judge the qualifications” of members-elect when it ordered the seating of New York Representative Adam Clayton Powell, who had won reelection in 1966 despite a House vote to refuse to seat him. Just as the court intervened then, so also will the Supreme Court ensure that the House exercises its power to “judge” its “elections” and “returns” within the limits imposed by the Constitution. At least we hope it will, but can we be sure with this court?

Whether the House constitutionally exercises its power not to seat members-elect will ultimately be determined by the federal courts and the Supreme Court—not by a majority vote of the House of Representatives.

This is how the crisis would unfold. The precursor of the crisis will come sometime before noon on January 3, when Speaker Johnson removes current House Clerk Kevin McCumber and replaces him with a person loyal to Johnson and House Republicans who they know will refuse to list on the statutory roll of representatives-elect to the 120th Congress any Democrat-elect whom Johnson and the Republicans direct him or her not to list. Under Rule II, Clause 1 of the Rules of the House, the Speaker of the House has the unilateral power to remove the incumbent clerk, and then the power under Title 2 U.S.C. § 5501(a) to replace him temporarily with whomever he wishes until the House elects a successor. McCumber is a Republican appointed by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. He is widely respected for his integrity and faithful adherence to the Constitution and is reputed to be unwilling to carry out orders he considers to be unconstitutional.

The first moment of constitutional crisis will come when, sometime before the 120th Congress has been gaveled into session, the loyal temporary clerk refuses to list Democrat representatives-elect on the clerk’s roll of representatives-elect that determines who may participate in organizing the new Congress. At that moment, interested members-elect and others will be forced to seek a writ of mandamus—a court order to a government official instructing him or her to perform a mandatory duty—from the federal court to the temporary clerk, ordering him or her to list on the clerk’s roll all members-elect who have been certified by the states as having been elected from their districts to the new Congress.

Members-elect will argue that the clerk has a ministerial duty under 2 U.S.C. § 26 to list all representatives-elect whose properly filed state certifications show that they were “regularly elected in accordance with the laws of his state or of the United States.” Because the clerk has no authority to omit any duly certified representative-elect, even if a representative-elect’s election is contested, the clerk unquestionably has a ministerial duty under law to list all duly certified representatives-elect. But this begs the question whether a court will issue the writ of mandamus to the acting clerk.

At first blush, a court will be reluctant to order the clerk to list all duly certified representatives-elect because of an instinctive belief that such an order would interfere with the constitutional process of the House to judge its own elections and returns. The wise and learned judge, however, will understand that rather than interfering with the House process, issuance of the writ will actually enable the House process to proceed to completion without judicial interference. Were that wise and learned judge to issue the writ, his or her order would immediately be appealed to the Court of Appeals, and from that court to the Supreme Court, while the country and the world wait in suspense.

The next moment of constitutional crisis will come if and when, after appeals, the court finally issues the writ of mandamus, and the clerk refuses to obey the court’s order to list the Democratic representatives-elect. At that point, it is possible there will be no further federal court involvement until such time as the 120th Congress officially convenes and votes not to seat representatives-elect. Then, that vote by the 120th Congress will be immediately reviewable by the federal courts, up to and including the Supreme Court of the United States.

Judicial review of the House’s decision not to seat Democratic representatives-elect in the 120th Congress would take weeks, if not months, during which time the United States would be in the throes of a paralyzing constitutional crisis, helplessly vulnerable to all the world’s evil, as it would have been in January 2021 had Mike Pence not thwarted Donald Trump’s plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

It is not difficult to imagine the many possibilities, some of the most critical being entirely realistic. It would be the ideal moment for China to move against Taiwan, by way of military blockade, attack, or even invasion. It would be the perfect moment for Vladimir Putin to complete his conquest of Ukraine, and perhaps even to move militarily against Estonia. Every passing day could bring a deepening economic crisis, worsened by our angry allies around the world who would welcome the opportunity to requite Donald Trump for his belittling mockery of their countries and presidents. Without the Congress, the United States would be powerless to respond to any of these crises.

The House has historically claimed that its decision not to seat a member-elect because of fraud or irregularities in the elections is unreviewable by the federal courts. But its decision is reviewable. The Constitution unquestionably requires the House to seat a member-elect who was validly elected in a free and fair election. The Article 1, Section 5 power of the House to be the judge of its elections and returns does not give the House the power to deny a seat in the Congress of the United States to a candidate elected by the American people in a free and fair election on the mere assertion, pretextual or otherwise, by a simple majority of the House that the candidate’s election was tainted by fraud.

Thus, on and after January 3, if congressional Republicans were to determine that a Democratic member-elect was elected because of fraudulent voting and refuse to seat him or her, that determination would be scrutinized by the federal courts, up to and including the Supreme Court.

It will never be a nonjusticiable political question whether the United States House of Representatives by simple majority vote can refuse to seat a member elected to Congress by the American people in a free and fair election on the pretextual and unsupported assertion that the member-elect’s election was tainted by fraud. Such is the very opposite of a nonjusticiable political question committed to the House of Representatives. For in the decision of this question lies the answer to perhaps the most fundamental question under the Constitution: Is the United States of America a democracy, in which “We the People” elect our representatives to the Congress and to the presidency, or is it not?

I don’t intend to be overly sanguine about this Supreme Court. This is the court that shattered the one constitutional truth in the U.S. since 1789 that “no man is above the law” and placed Donald Trump of all presidents above the law in Trump v. United States. This is the court that betrayed the Constitution by refusing even to decide whether Trump was disqualified from the presidency under the Fourteenth Amendment because of his insurrection against the Constitution, which he clearly was. This is also the court that has cynically authorized Trump’s lawlessness for the past two years through its aptly named “shadow docket,” without so much as briefing, argument, or written opinion.

But surely by now this court must understand what it has wrought for the U.S. and the Constitution, and is aghast as we all are, even if it is not penitent. Surely, surely, it will understand the signal moment in American constitutional history that would be presented, and this time understand its supreme obligation to the nation.

Between now and November 3, congressional Republicans would do well to ponder one last time the fate of their Republican Party were the Supreme Court of the United States to reverse a fraudulent determination by the 120th Republican Congress not to seat Democratic members-elect who would give the Democrats majority control of the House.

Two hundred and fifty years into the greatest experiment in self-government in the history of the world, the Republican Party would finally meet the fate to which it has been destined since January 6, 2021, and cement its place in history as the most corrupt political party ever to emerge in the United States of America for its second attempt in six years to defy the will of the American people on Election Day.

If we Americans are to save our democracy from the forty-seventh president and his MAGA Republican Party, we must disenthrall ourselves from our political bondage to Donald Trump and MAGA, as Abraham Lincoln urged the nation in 1863 to disenthrall itself from its bondage to the ruinous political dogmas of its time. “We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country,” the sixteenth president admonished. The Republican Party in particular must finally loose the chains of its political and moral enslavement to Donald Trump and separate itself from the MAGA political party cult.

The writing is already on the wall, Republicans.

Former U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative scholar, is shown above testifying on June 16, 2022, before a U.S. House hearing on the Jan. 6 insurrection by pro-trump rioters.

The New Republic, Opinion: The Accelerating Project to Extend Abortion Bans to All 50 States, Melissa Gira Grant (Staff writer and author of "Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work," Sept. 11, 2026. In a legal challenge to abortion access at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Department of Justice and Louisiana are on opposite sides. But they want the same thing.

For the anti-abortion movement, overturning Roe v. Wade was never meant to be the end of the road. As destructive as the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was—it reversed Roe and permitted states to ban abortion—it did not eliminate abortion. In fact, since the decision, more people have had abortions, thanks to the widespread availability of medication abortion dispensed remotely. “The fight for life is far from over,” proclaimed the state of Louisiana in the opening line of its latest legal challenge to abortion access, which the state argued before a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel on Wednesday. For Louisiana, it is not enough to have banned abortion within its borders; it wants to extend that prohibition to reach those outside the state. Now it’s claiming that outside forces have undermined the state’s sovereignty—simply by making it possible for Louisianans to continue to access abortion.

In the case before the Fifth Circuit on Wednesday, Louisiana blamed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for abortions had by Louisianans, and asked the court to stop the agency from allowing them to continue. Representing the FDA, the Department of Justice argued that Louisiana’s case was flawed, not because it was baseless, but because it was going after the wrong culprit. According to the DOJ, Louisiana should sue the other states from which abortion providers serve Louisiana patients. The Justice Department did not defend the FDA, which it ostensibly represents. It also didn’t object to Louisiana’s dangerous claim that its state law enforcement powers had been impeded by those outside its borders.

As advocates watch this fight and attempt to forecast what’s next, the Justice Department’s inaction can be read as both an admission and a promise. The DOJ is admitting that this courtroom battle over mifepristone is not about whether it is safe, as has been the anti-abortion movement’s argument since Dobbs. It’s not even really about the FDA. And it’s implicitly promising that the fight over guidelines for mifepristone is merely a step toward a national abortion ban. On the surface, DOJ and Louisiana were at odds, but they appear to be in agreement when it comes to the ultimate goal of extending existing state abortion bans to all 50 states. The Justice Department used its time before the Fifth Circuit this week to demonstrate that agreement.

Louisiana’s case is just one of many to take aim at medication abortion following the demise of Roe. Some have ended in the early stages, involving debate over whether the cases can even be brought at all. In one, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a hastily assembled group of anti-abortion medical providers who did not provide abortion sued the agency, but the Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the FDA. Thus kicked off a wave of new cases meant essentially to cast a plaintiff that could pass muster.

The Louisiana case is also in those early stages. It has had one qualified but temporary win for the state so far. Earlier this year, a different Fifth Circuit panel issued an order that suspended the FDA guidelines permitting mifepristone access by telehealth, until the ultimate outcome in the case. Nearly immediately, two of the drug’s manufacturers asked the Supreme Court to stay that decision. The FDA, glaringly, did not ask for a stay. In May, the Supreme Court lifted the lower court’s stay, and mifepristone guidelines returned to the status quo.

As Louisiana Solicitor General Ben Aguiñaga again laid out the state’s case this week, arguing that it did have standing to sue the FDA, he didn’t have to emphasize his indignation about the fact that people are still having abortions in Louisiana despite the state’s ban. But he did, repeatedly claiming that “it happens a thousand times a month” and that the FDA allowed it to happen simply by having made mifepristone available by mail without an in-person appointment. Judge Stephen Higginson, who was appointed to the Fifth Circuit by President Obama, did not seem impressed with this reasoning. To him, he said, it sounded like the state was “really just asking the federal government to help you impose your criminal laws.” The case wasn’t about the FDA or its guidelines, in other words; it was about finding a way to enforce Louisiana’s abortion ban, using the power of the federal government.

The anti-abortion movement’s legal strategy of going after the FDA is not new. But it has become more complicated now that the Justice Department’s posture toward the agency and its authority is changing dramatically, Kirsten Moore told me. Moore is the director of the EMAA Project, which works to expand access to medication abortion. The Trump regime is responsible for the sea change. “We saw, in the prior administration, DOJ really robustly defending FDA’s authority, and their willingness to follow the process Congress had laid out for them,” she explained. That’s unsurprising; the FDA’s authority, delegated by Congress, is well established. “This administration,” however, “just isn’t doing that.”

The sea change was evident in the performance of the Department of Justice attorney, Daniel Winik. At oral arguments, he repeatedly refused to speak to the FDA’s mifepristone guidelines. He would not address anything the judges asked as it related to medication abortion. “We have not taken a position,” he said, on any of the “merits issues in the case.” All there was to do, he said, was to tell the court that Louisiana lacked standing in the case. “I don’t find that very satisfactory,” replied Judge Higginson. “I mean, this is your regulation.”

Was Winik throwing the FDA under the bus? “It’s beyond unusual for the Department of Justice to say, ‘We’re not even going to touch the merits of something which the DOJ has defended before,’” Katie Keith, founding director of the Center for Health Policy and the Law at the O’Neill Institute at Georgetown Law, told me this week after oral arguments. “It’s a wild position to be taking.” Keith pointed out an earlier DOJ filing in the case, which seemed to undermine even the FDA’s own record on mifepristone. Among other things, it stated, “Given this widespread debate over the safety of mifepristone, FDA has concluded that the best path forward is for the agency to reconsider the restrictions on mifepristone based on all the evidence before the agency.” Of the stance DOJ is taking in this case, she said, “I don’t know any other way to read this position other than as a political position.”

The closest that Winik got to a defense of the FDA was to say that the agency was the wrong target. Despite what Louisiana had argued, he said, FDA guidelines on mifepristone had “nothing to do with the hindrance to the enforceability of state law.” Louisiana had previously attempted to hold medication abortion prescribers responsible in court, he went on. “You brought these prosecutions against doctors in New York and California, why can’t you pursue them?” It’s not the FDA guidelines, he said. “The answer is the shield laws enacted by other states.”

Shield laws are meant as “safeguards,” as Dr. Chelsea Daniels, a member of the Reproductive Freedom Taskforce of the Committee to Protect Health Care, told me on Wednesday. Daniels is also a practicing ob-gyn and an abortion provider who has worked in Florida and California. These laws allow providers to offer care to patients in every state, even those with abortion bans, by protecting them from civil suits brought by ban states. “The sheer fact that shield laws need to exist,” Daniels said, indicates how far anti-abortion lawmakers are willing to go in order to stop providers in other states. “Anti-abortion advocates talk about how they want to bring this back to the states,” she said. “The way that they then subsequently attack shield laws, to go completely out of their way to attack other states, just speaks to how phony their intentions are, and how transparent their goals are.”

While the Justice Department attorney at the Fifth Circuit may have been in court to represent the FDA, he was also representing the administration’s anti-abortion posture: to ensure that “the Dobbs decision becomes permanent in every single state,” as Attorney General Todd Blanche promised at an event put on by the White House Faith Office in August.

The Justice Department’s defense, therefore, was in what was not said. Its attorney did not contend that Louisiana was wrong on the merits of its case in any way. He didn’t say it was wrong about the harms of mifepristone; he didn’t say it hadn’t been harmed by those who allowed its residents to access abortion; he did not dispute Louisiana’s specious reasoning that one state has the power to enforce its abortion ban on those outside the state. In fact, in suggesting other states as the culprit, the Justice Department seemed to endorse this argument.

A decision in this case is yet to come; whatever the ruling is, it will certainly end up in front of the Supreme Court. But the confusion over mifepristone access, caused by the legal process, has already seeped out. “It’s rare that I have a patient come in saying to me, have you been following the Louisiana v. FDA hearings?” Daniels shared with me. “I mean, every now and then. But I think, more generally, it’s in the groundwater. It’s in the groundwater for all of us.” The chaos whipped up in the courts stands in stark contrast to the quotidian simplicity of offering routine abortion care. “The list of questions I ask people when I’m about to dispense mifepristone, to make sure that they’re good candidates,” Daniels said, “is a much shorter list than the list of questions I ask people when I am about to dispense ibuprofen or Advil.”

The New Republic, Opinion: The Supreme Court Hits a Limit With Missouri’s Election Map Mess, Matt Ford, Sept. 10, 2026. No, the high court hasn’t had a change of heart where gerrymandering is concerned. But it does seem to have little stomach for electoral chicanery.

The Supreme Court rejected a brazen plot by Missouri Republican officials to hold the state’s upcoming congressional elections under an illegal map on Thursday morning, ending a weeklong jumble of dueling court orders that disrupted the state’s election processes.

In an unsigned order, the justices effectively blocked state officials from using an extremely gerrymandered map passed last year that would have likely given Republicans an additional House seat this fall. Missouri voters will instead elect their representatives under a slightly less gerrymandered map enacted in 2022. Those voters will also have the chance to decide whether to enact the 2025 map for the rest of the decade in a ballot initiative this fall.

The order in People Not Politicians v. Onder largely hinges on peculiar questions of Missouri law that are not generally applicable in the other 49 states. It does not reflect a reversal of the conservative majority’s enthusiasm for gerrymandering, whether partisan or racial in nature. But it does offer a modicum of hope that the Supreme Court will not blatantly allow contrived right-wing plots to disrupt this year’s elections.

Missouri redrew its congressional maps in 2022 to account for the results of the 2020 census. The result was a familiar map with six safe Republican seats and two safe Democratic seats. In the summer of 2025, President Donald Trump pressured many Republican-led states to gerrymander their congressional maps even further to favor GOP candidates. Multiple Democratic-led states responded with their own gerrymanders in turn.

Last September, Missouri lawmakers passed House Bill 1 to repeal the 2022 map and impose a new one. The revised map would break apart the state’s existing 5th congressional district centered on Kansas City and split its voters among three safe rural Republican seats. The likely result, barring a seismic electoral shift, would be seven GOP seats and a single Democratic seat in St. Louis, with a net gain in the House of one Republican seat.

Missouri’s constitution allows voters to put “any act of the general assembly,” aside from two exceptions not relevant here, on a statewide ballot in the following general election. Once a petition for a ballot initiative is certified, the law is frozen from going into effect until Missourians approve or reject it. A citizen group named People Not Politicians gathered more than 300,000 signatures last December to put H.B. 1 on this November’s ballot. Organizers submitted the 691 boxes containing the signatures to Secretary of State Denny Hoskins’s office on December 9.

Under Missouri law, Hoskins had to formally approve or deny the petition by August 4 at 5 p.m.—a span of more than eight months. One hour before the deadline, Hoskins denied the petition, arguing that it was “insufficient under the Missouri Constitution because the Missouri Constitution does not authorize a referendum on congressional redistricting plans passed by the general assembly.” As noted earlier, this is plainly incorrect. The state then held primary elections under the 2025 map the following day.

Organizers accused Hoskins of running out the clock on potential legal challenges by rejecting the petition at the last possible moment. Courts are typically (but not unequivocally) reluctant to allow last-minute changes to state election laws on the eve of an election, a doctrine often known as the Purcell principle for the Supreme Court case that established it. By delaying until the last minute on clearly illegal grounds, Hoskins and his allies may have hoped that the courts would allow the 2025 map to be used, following Purcell.

They were wrong. The Missouri Supreme Court unanimously rejected Hoskins’s gambit last month, ruling that the petition wasn’t prohibited under the plain text of the state constitution. The court ordered him and the state to do two things: Use the 2022 congressional map for November’s election and allow H.B. 1 to be referred to state voters on that ballot. “The referendum petition was legal, sufficient, and timely, and the secretary incorrectly concluded otherwise,” it concluded. “HB 1 did not go into effect and will not go into effect unless and until approved by the voters.”

In response, Hoskins sought an injunction from the Supreme Court last week to block the state supreme court’s ruling from taking effect. To call this a long shot would be underselling it: State supreme courts have the final say in interpreting their own state constitutions, and the Supreme Court traditionally defers to their judgment unless a federal law or federal constitutional right is implicated. To that end, Justice Brett Kavanaugh rejected Hoskins’s request in his capacity as circuit justice without referring the matter to the entire court—a signal that Kavanaugh thought the motion was not worth the other eight justices’ time.

That is where the legal battle should have ended. Instead, less than an hour after Kavanaugh’s decision, a federal district court judge in Missouri granted a surprise temporary restraining order that instructed Missouri to use the 2025 map instead. Representative Bob Onder, a GOP member of Congress, filed a lawsuit last week in response to the state supreme court ruling alleging various violations of federal constitutional provisions. Effectively, he argued that it would be unconstitutional to essentially throw out the results of the primary elections held under the 2025 map.

The Missouri Supreme Court had considered this very argument and rejected it outright. Under the state’s rules for ballot initiatives, H.B. 1 could only take effect if approved by the voters and could not go into force before then. “HB 1 is not the law and has never been the law,” the court explained. “There is only one valid congressional redistricting in effect—the congressional redistricting the general assembly established in 2022.” It had rejected Hoskins’s claims of practical difficulties by noting that he had done everything he could to run out the clock on a valid petition. In short, the court refused to give Hoskins credit for holding what was essentially an illegal primary election.

Despite this, Judge Stephen Clark stunningly granted Onder’s motion to force H.B. 1 to go into effect. He concluded that it didn’t matter whether the H.B. 1 map was legal because the state had already used it. “Whether or not HB 1 was the governing law during the primary election, voters—including Plaintiffs—voted in primary elections within the congressional districts drawn by HB 1,” Clark wrote. “And they didn’t do so of their own accord. Instead, they did so based on the parameters set by Missouri’s highest election authority, the secretary of state.” In ruling as such, the judge effectively rewarded Missouri officials for holding illegal primary elections in defiance of their state constitution.

There were strong signs earlier this week that the Supreme Court was closely monitoring the situation and was not thrilled by this turn of events. People Not Politicians, the group that had originally gathered the petition signatures, asked Kavanaugh to stay Clark’s ruling on Wednesday. Only 11 minutes passed after the group filed its motion before Kavanaugh ordered Onder and Hoskins to file reply briefs. He set a deadline of ten o’clock Eastern time on Thursday morning, giving them less than 24 hours to weigh in.

The high court almost never acts this fast outside of death penalty cases for pending executions. The two men filed their reply briefs overnight, and the Trump Justice Department (unsurprisingly) also filed its own brief that urged the court to reject the motion and side with the H.B. 1 map. It didn’t work. A lightning-quick 16 minutes after Kavanaugh’s deadline expired this morning, the Supreme Court—this time acting collectively—blocked Clark’s stay until further action from the justices while litigation continues.

In practical terms, the justices’ intervention guarantees two things. First, Missouri voters will elect their representatives in two months based on the 2022 map instead of the 2025 map. That will boost the chances of longtime Representative Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat, to hold the state’s 5th congressional district. Second, voters will also decide whether H.B. 1 will go into effect for the 2028 and 2030 elections. (Assuming, of course, that the state legislature doesn’t try this all again before then.) Recent polling provides few clues as to how Missourians will vote on the matter.

Beyond the implications for Missouri, the Supreme Court’s approach to the dispute is also somewhat heartening. The justices unambiguously rejected efforts by state officials to hold November’s midterm elections under an illegal congressional map, even after those officials illicitly engineered a status quo where they hoped to take advantage of the court’s election precedents. As Trump and his allies consider similar antidemocratic plots against the U.S. electoral system later this year to maintain his grip on power, the justices’ clarity and alacrity is encouraging. Hopefully it extends to the imminent mail-in voting case and future election disputes, as well.

Sept. 12

Top Headlines

This is an image President Trump posted on portraying himself as celebrating (using the dance moves of a favorite song, "YMCA," by the disco group "The Village People") the destruction of Iran's Karg Island in the Strait of Hormuz on Aug. 30, 2026 -- a claim he reinforced with a statement shown below but which was refuted by other sources.

• New York Times, News Analysis: How Trump Is Wielding Power to Stifle Speech, Jim Rutenberg and Maggie Haberman, Sept. 12, 2026. President Trump has harnessed agencies across the government to curtail press freedoms, a sweeping campaign that free speech advocates say will have lasting effects.

Special Reports: Disastrous Defeat For Trump Team In Yemen 

• Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, Trump And Hegseth Suffer A Disastrous Defeat In Yemen, Gas Prices Are Rising, Trump’s Poll Numbers Are Dropping (Again), Simon Rosenberg, right, Sept. 12, 2026. “This is the first day that Iran really started winning the war,” said a Yemeni official, who is part of the country’s internationally recognized, Saudi-backed government. Shanah Tovah, Hopium world! Wishing everyone a good, sweet, and joyful Rosh Hashanah. To new beginnings! To new beginnings for this great country certainly needs them.
• New York Times, High Prices Spoil Trump’s New Push to Save G.O.P. Majority, Tony Romm, Sept. 12, 2026. Gas prices are high, mortgage rates are climbing and inflation remains well above target, complicating the president’s midterm appeal.

News Roundups

• Meidas Touch Network, Saturday Updates: Trump Gets Booed in Dublin While Iran Gets the Red Carpet in New Delhi, Brett Meiselas, Sept. 12, 2026. Here’s what we’re tracking right now: Trump’s press conference chaos in Ireland on Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and Ireland; The Houthis mock Trump after gaining control over the Red Sea coast; Saudi Arabia’s pipeline was attacked again as Houthis advance on Marib; Trump continues to try to bribe voters with his lie about giving them money; Republican Jon Husted’s Senate campaign is under fire after it was revealed a high-level staffer posted Nazi imagery.
• The Parnas Perspective, Saturday Night Update: Republicans Face Protests at Home and Abroad, AI Tech CEOs Urge Slow Down in Major Shift, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 12, 2026. Tonight’s rundown has a clear thread running through it. Republicans are facing pushback everywhere they turn, at home and abroad, and none of it looks like it’s going away anytime soon.
• The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Mass Anti-Trump Protests Erupt in Ireland, Censorship of Kimmel Backfires as Views Surge, Houthis Make Major Advances in War, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 12, 2026.Trump spent his weekend getting protested across an entire country, and it still might not have been the most embarrassing thing that happened to him. While he was in Dublin insisting a “friendly protest” of thousands wasn’t actually happening, back home Jimmy Kimmel quietly out-rated his midterm convention, and an FCC commissioner came out and said the quiet part loud: the administration is pressuring broadcasters into silence.
• The Parnas Perspective, Important Friday Night News Update, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 11, 2026. Before we get to all of the news, and there is a lot of it, I wanted to take a minute and talk to you directly. Tonight, the Epstein investigation just got a lot bigger. French prosecutors have identified 13 new potential victims, newly released texts show FBI Director Kash Patel waging a strange campaign against a random anonymous X account, and Epstein survivors were physically removed from the GOP’s own midterm convention in Dallas minutes after pressing a candidate on the files, even as Republican insiders admit Trump has checked out on the midterms entirely.  

Trump Demands Personal Loyalty Pledge, Asks Supporters To Cheat In Midterm Elections

Leni Riefenstahl, the filmmaker of the Third Reich, with Hitler in the background, at top left.

• Emptywheel, Opinion: We Do Not Swear Unconditional Obedience, Peterr, Sept. 11, 2026. I only saw brief clips of the Trumpapalooza, but one of the few I saw brought me up short. A point where Trump asked the crowd to stand: “Please right your right hand. I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States. That loves us so much he can’t even breath. That I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it any way – I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try to cheat like hell…”

U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

• Lincoln Square Media, Opinion: Bring It, Donald. We’ll Win — Even When You Cheat, Edwin Eisendrath, right, Sept. 12, 2026. We face a determined and powerful adversary that’s cloaked in the now-gilded trappings of our own government and will do anything to erase the integrity of our elections. We can beat him. 
• Public Notice, Mike Johnson runs out the clock on his own speakership, Stephen Robinson, Sept. 11, 2026. Johnson, right, the theoretical speaker of the House, announced last Thursday he’s canceling votes for the last two weeks of September. This leaves just four days of legislative business before the midterms.
• New York Times, Opinion: Trump Catastrophically Miscalculated in Georgia, Michelle Cottle, Sept. 12, 2026. When a political player starts drawing personal insults from President Trump and his people, it is a pretty good sign that his star is on the rise. For Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, that moment arrived this summer.

Special Report: Nebraska Governor's Undocumented Workers Scandal

• New York Times, As He Backs ICE Crackdown, Nebraska Governor Employs Undocumented Workers, Yanqi Xu (a reporter for Flatwater Free Press. She examined the agricultural industry in Nebraska as a part of The Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship), Sept. 9, 2026. Gov. Jim Pillen’s family business is one of the nation’s largest pork producers. As he seeks re-election, he has aligned himself with President Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda even though his farms have taken on undocumented laborers.

Global News

President Trump with Micheál Martin, the taoiseach, or prime minister, or Ireland, at the Farmleigh House in Dublin on Saturday,Sept. 12, 2026. (New York Times photo by Alex Kent). 

• New York Times, Trump Says Irish Unification Would Be ‘Fantastic,’ Breaking With Precedent, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Luke Broadwater, Sept. 12, 2026. 
• New York Times, In an Irish Village, Trump’s Visit for a Golf Tournament Prompts Protests and Praise, Megan Specia, Sept. 12, 2026. As the U.S. president heads to his Doonbeg hotel for the Irish Open, locals expressed both appreciation for the resort’s economic benefits and opposition to his politics.
• New York Times, A Visa Dispute Is Threatening a U.S.-Brazil Effort to Fight Crime, Ana Ionova and Edward Wong, Sept. 12, 2026. Officials say the Trump administration is blocking some of Brazil’s efforts to expand cooperation on fighting transnational crime.

More On U.S. Media, Education, Economy

• Associated Press, For the US news industry, a tough summer draws to a close with McClatchy chain’s cuts, Jocelyn Noveck, Sept. 10, 2026. Closing out a turbulent summer for the news industry, the McClatchy newspaper chain has made deep cuts at The Miami Herald and other papers it owns across the nation.

More On Trump Obsessions, Oppressions

White House aides Steven Cheung, left, and Stephen Miller.

• Lance's Substack, Opinion: Who Is Maintaining The Ruse That Trump Is Mentally Competent For Office? Lance F Rosen, right, Sept. 12, 2026. How Do We Pull The Curtain On All Of It? Everything runs through Stephen Miller. The press secretary and White House Comms team led by Stephen Cheung are running the propaganda side under Miller’s direction. Now they have a new blonde Nazi Barbie to run the press shop, and she is experienced at reading scripts from her ESPN experience.

More On Epstein Files, Trump Team Coverup

• Last Page First, Investigative Commentary: Who Bought Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch? Inside the Huffines Family, Jana, right, Sept. 12, 2026. The Huffines family had the money to buy almost any kind of property they wanted. They bought Jeffrey Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico.

U.S. Foreign Policy, Trump Family Personal Diplomacy To Putin 

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (R) welcomes US special envoy Steve Witkoff (2nd L) and Jared Kushner (L) prior to their talks in Moscow on September 5, 2026. (Gavriil GRIGOROV / POOL / AFP via Getty Images)

• Meidas Touch Network, Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Speaks Out After Trump’s Latest Putin Talks, Ben Meiselas, right, Sept. 12, 2026. Michael McFaul tells Ben Meiselas why Trump’s approach to Putin is projecting weakness and damaging America’s standing around the world.

Top Headlines

This is an image President Trump posted on portraying himself as celebrating (using the dance moves of a favorite song, "YMCA," by the disco group "The Village People") the destruction of Iran's Karg Island in the Strait of Hormuz on Aug. 30, 2026 -- a claim he reinforced with a statement shown below but which was refuted by other sources.

New York Times, News Analysis: How Trump Is Wielding Power to Stifle Speech, Jim Rutenberg and Maggie Haberman, Sept. 12, 2026. President Trump has harnessed agencies across the government to curtail press freedoms, a sweeping campaign that free speech advocates say will have lasting effects.

The Justice Department has sent F.B.I. agents to reporters’ homes to serve subpoenas and, in at least one case, flashed a warrant to seize devices. The Pentagon has fired the editor and publisher of its traditionally independent newspaper, Stars and Stripes, and blocked access to other journalists who refused to sign pledges that would limit their reporting.

Regulatory agencies are using their powers to pressure media organizations over their content. The administration has stripped funding from public television and radio. Angry over stories he does not like, President Trump has sued major news organizations and the White House has taken control of the previously independent press pool that tracks the president, deciding which outlets can participate.

Almost 20 months into Mr. Trump’s second term, his long-running media clashes have grown into a sweeping campaign to control speech in America that stands out for applying so many levers, so fast, all at once.

Driven by personal pique, fury over leaks and a determination to shape the political narrative to his advantage, Mr. Trump is deploying the might of the federal government and filing personal lawsuits — targeting not just journalists and liberal critics, but also comedians and talk show hosts, and the corporate entities behind them.

To the president and his allies, he is simply demanding accountability for what he casts as biased, unfair and sometimes inaccurate coverage and criticism — an effort that has been welcomed by longtime conservative press critics like those at the Media Research Center.

Aides noted that the White House has this year expanded who gets invited to cover events, such as the off-the-record presidential lunch with network anchors that precedes the annual State of the Union address.

In a statement, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said that “biased reporting from the media is a disservice to the American people,” adding: “We utilize every tool available to ensure that accurate reporting is provided to the public and the stain of those who knowingly peddle false information is held accountable.”

Free speech advocates say the president’s intent is apparent: to punish, intimidate and silence dissenters.

“There’s not a week that goes by where they’re not taking a new step to curtail press freedom in the country,” said Clayton Weimers, the executive director of the North America division of Reporters Without Borders. “We have measured a substantial diminishment of press freedoms.”

When challenged in court, the president and the administration have frequently lost, confronted with strongly worded rulings from judges affirming First Amendment rights.

Still, even the path to legal victory can have severe financial and reputational costs for those he views as adversaries, which have included The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the BBC. And each time the president assails what has long been considered protected speech, media analysts say, he is eroding norms and undercutting the role of an independent press.

Reporters Without Borders maintains an index that tracks press freedom in 180 countries, clocking governmental threats, subpoenas and the vindictive use of regulations against journalists. The United States now ranks at its lowest since the organization started the index in 2002 — 64th, just above Panama and just below Botswana. The trend is the same at similar indexes kept by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the V-Dem Institute of Sweden.

There is a long record of U.S. presidents taking steps to curtail speech. President Woodrow Wilson imposed strict censorship and forced dissenting publishers out of business during World War I. Richard M. Nixon kept an enemies list, and his aides threatened F.C.C. action against broadcasters. More recently, the George W. Bush White House expanded government secrecy and the Obama administration went after the sources of journalists through leak investigations.

Mr. Trump had inveighed against the Biden administration for what he and his supporters portrayed as draconian pressure on social media companies to censor disfavored content often at their expense, promising at his second inauguration to “stop all government censorship.”

Now his administration is breaking new ground in stifling dissent with personal lawsuits and novel uses of executive power, longtime First Amendment lawyers say, with implications that extend far beyond Mr. Trump’s presidency.

“We live in a different world under this administration because the threats are so grave,” said Floyd Abrams, who has worked on free speech cases for 60 years. “It’s one thing to say there’s an extraordinarily powerful First Amendment, but unless and until courts rule on these matters, the threat is very real.”Harnessing Government Power

Long before he took office, Mr. Trump was well known for his media feuds. As a developer and reality TV star, he was quick to threaten defamation suits against those who challenged his assertions about his business successes and his wealth.

Mr. Trump has been candid about his aim: to inflict pain, even if it was fleeting. After bringing a failed libel suit against the former Times reporter Timothy L. O’Brien, right, whose book “TrumpNation” estimated Mr. Trump to be worth far less than he claimed, the president gloated about forcing the publisher to spend money. “I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about,” he said.

In his first term, the president branded journalists as “fake news” and crudely attacked reporters, especially women.

In his second term, Mr. Trump is now imprinting his pugilistic approach across the machinery of the federal government. Those who once might have checked him have been replaced by loyalists who often use their power to fulfill Mr. Trump’s desire to punish perceived enemies.

Soon after his inauguration, the White House banned The Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One, ostensibly because the wire service would not call the Gulf of Mexico by Mr. Trump’s preferred name, the Gulf of America. Another reason for the ban: The A.P. would not give the Trump team rights to its photo of Mr. Trump, bloodied with a raised fist, after he was shot in Butler, Pa., in 2024. At a private lunch with Mr. Trump and network anchors last year, White House aides tied the A.P. ban to the denial of the rights to the photo, according to two people briefed on the event.

Mr. Trump’s team is unapologetic about its goal of achieving firmer control over the national information environment — what Mr. Cheung, the communications director, has dubbed in a social media post, “Full Spectrum Dominance.”

Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and one of the most aggressive supporters of Mr. Trump’s efforts, has said that the president is “reshaping the media landscape.”

Citing the big broadcast networks, Mr. Carr told an interviewer for CNBC last year that “for years government officials just allowed those entities, with executives sitting in Hollywood and New York, to dictate the political narrative.” Mr. Trump, he added, has “fundamentally changed the game.”

Special Reports: Disastrous Defeat For Trump Team In Yemen

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, Trump And Hegseth Suffer A Disastrous Defeat In Yemen, Gas Prices Are Rising, Trump’s Poll Numbers Are Dropping (Again), Simon Rosenberg, right, Sept. 12, 2026. “This is the first day that Iran really started winning the war,” said a Yemeni official, who is part of the country’s internationally recognized, Saudi-backed government. Shanah Tovah, Hopium world! Wishing everyone a good, sweet, and joyful Rosh Hashanah. To new beginnings! To new beginnings for this great country certainly needs them.

Over the past few days the Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth suffered a devastating defeat in their already disastrous war in the Middle East. From The Washington Post story:

AMMAN, Jordan — A key Saudi Arabian pipeline to the Red Sea was shut down after it was hit by “several drones” launched from Iraq, the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement early Saturday, as Iranian-backed Houthi fighters claimed major victories in Yemen, expelling Saudi forces from the country’s Red Sea coast.

The separate attacks posed new challenges to the region’s ability to export oil amid the ongoing U.S. war with Iran, and further unnerved global oil markets. The price of oil briefly jumped above $110 per barrel, its highest level since May.

“This is the first day that Iran really started winning the war,” said a Yemeni official, who is part of the country’s internationally recognized, Saudi-backed government.

The Saudi statement said it would reserve the right to retaliate for the pipeline attack, but in response to a request from Iraq, would give Baghdad the opportunity to prevent such attacks.

The Iraqi government condemned the attack and confirmed that it was launched from Iraqi territory. A statement from the Iraqi prime minister’s office said that the military commander in the southern Iraqi province of Maysan, where the strike originated, had been dismissed.

The Houthis in Yemen and militant groups in Iraq, both allied with Iran, this summer opened new fronts against Saudi Arabia and its alliance with the U.S. In July, the two countries launched joint airstrikes against what they said were militant sites in Iraq.

Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries in the region have relied increasingly on alternative, land-based pipelines and sea passages to replace shipments through the traditional Persian Gulf export route, where vessels have come under attack in the Strait of Hormuz during the months-long standoff between Iranian and U.S. military forces.

The Houthi territorial claims, following a large-scale military operation aimed at controlling the Bab al-Mandab Strait entrance to the Red Sea, would mean that Iran and its Houthi proxies can now threaten — if not entirely block — energy and other cargo shipments through two key chokepoints.

We will need to be brushing up on our geography in the coming days but here is the best map I could find that helps explain the gravity of what is happening:Iran-backed Houthis claim major advance in Yemen as group reportedly seizes island in key shipping route (BBC News):

Here’s more from The Guardian:

By taking control of key areas this week, including islands off the coast, the anti-west Houthis hope to gain a direct presence near the Bab al-Mandab strait, a 20-mile stretch of water and vital trade and energy route that connects Asia with Europe. ​

The strait’s name is roughly translated as “the gate of tears” or “the gate of grief”, and its strong currents and winds made the passage between the Arabian peninsula and Africa’s east coast hazardous for centuries. Modern-day cargo ships have no physical issue passing through.

​But if ​the Houthis were to close the natural chokepoint, the impact on the global economy could be disastrous. Ships would have to reroute around the southern tip of Africa, adding thousands of extra nautical miles. The fighting has already contributed to the price of oil rising above $100 a barrel after weeks when it was trading closer to $80.

The fighting in Yemen, as well as Houthi missile strikes on Saudi Arabia, is the most significant violence in the country since the UN-brokered peace plan in 2022.

The UN special envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, told an emergency security council meeting on Thursday that the country faced “a new and more dangerous phase of war”.

“This renewed war should alarm us all,” Grundberg said. “It effectively marks the end of the relative calm that Yemen has experienced for over four years since the UN-brokered truce. It not only threatens to plunge Yemen into a prolonged and expanding war, but also risks yet again dragging the country into the wider and unresolved regional confrontation, with global repercussions.”

A timely cartoon from Matt Wuerker of Politico:

"The Lessons of 9/11" as seen by President Trump and U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (Politico cartoon by A timely cartoon from Matt Wuerker).

Brent crude is climbing, even hitting $110 a barrel in the past few days:

Gas prices in the US have taken off again:

Diesel prices have exploded, hitting all times across the country, right as we enter the fall harvest season. In California, our most important agricultural state, diesel is approaching $8 a gallon right now:

Interest rates are taking off, raising the price of everything for everybody:

Not surprisingly Trump’s approval rating has started dropping, again. In today’s FiftyPlusOne aggregate he hit -25 for the first time this cycle:

Trump also hit his lowest mark of the cycle in the Civiqs daily tracker, clocking in at -26:

Congress returns on Monday to this fresh new Trumpian disaster. Calls for Pete Hegseth to step down should become very, very loud. As I mentioned in my talk this week, Trump Had His Shot And Has Blown It, Badly. It Is Our Turn Now To Win, Lead, And Make Things Better, the most important thing about what is happening now in the US - and it is bad - is that we have the opportunity to set a new course - a new beginning - for the country this November.

We are not powerless, and must get to work. For it is our turn now to do what is required for the cause of freedom here and everywhere and win this election this November……Yes, It’s Time To Get To Work People!

We released a series of terrific new interviews with our intrepid candidates this week: David Crowley (WI-Gov), Lindsay James (IA-2), Jessica Killin (CO-5), Nancy Lacore (SC-1), and Amish Shah (AZ-1). You can watch them all here.

We also launched a new daily feature, the Hopium Ad and Video Roundup. It’s a powerful new window into what is happening in our battleground races. Be sure to catch our Wed, Thur, and Fri editions if you haven’t gotten to them yet.

Let’s recharge with Hopium’s Daily Mantra:

• There is nothing Trump and MAGA wants more than for us to be fighting with each other and not with him. We have one job now - elect as many of these wonderful candidates running for the House and Senate as we can. It’s where our focus must be. It’s a year of opportunity for us across the country. We must seize it, together.
• Be sure to become an Early Vote Champion in your networks, communities, and organizations……
• Sign up to become a Democracy Protector too……Let’s Now Go Win The House and Senate, Together

New York Times, High Prices Spoil Trump’s New Push to Save G.O.P. Majority, Tony Romm, Sept. 12, 2026. Gas prices are high, mortgage rates are climbing and inflation remains well above target, complicating the president’s midterm appeal.

With less than two months until the midterm elections, President Trump commenced a final push this week to preserve his Republican majority in Congress, arguing that the United States under G.O.P. control had brought prices “way, way down.”

But for many families and businesses, the economy appeared to be on far shakier footing by Friday. Fuel prices soared, mortgage costs climbed and inflation registered uncomfortably high, testing the public’s patience with Mr. Trump’s frequent assurances that the country is on the right track.

The contrast underscored the political and economic stakes for Mr. Trump, who may soon face the wrath of an electorate long spurned by promises in Washington to lower the cost of living. As November draws closer, prices have risen under the president’s leadership, driven largely by an agenda that has included two years of punishing trade brinkmanship and a prolonged war with Iran.

The consequences were evident in the latest gauge of the Consumer Price Index, released on Friday. The report showed that prices rose at an annual pace of 3.4 percent in August, which increased the odds of the Federal Reserve’s raising interest rates next week.

The data came on the same day that a separate, long-running survey from the University of Michigan found that consumer sentiment dropped sharply this month. In that report, Americans expressed new worries that the economy was sputtering, and that inflation would continue to rise.

The unease set the stage for Mr. Trump’s renewed push this week to make the case to voters that he has helped, not hurt, the economy. Over two days of speeches at his party’s midterm convention in Dallas, the president labored to convince Americans that Republicans had achieved “tremendous economic success.”

But Mr. Trump did not limit himself to a brash defense of his record. The president also said he would send a $5,000 check to American citizens if Republicans retained the House and Senate in November, though he has failed to deliver on similar promises in the past.

News Roundups

Meidas Touch Network, Saturday Updates and Comment: Trump Gets Booed in Dublin While Iran Gets the Red Carpet in New Delhi, Brett Meiselas, Sept. 12, 2026. Here’s what we’re tracking right now:

• Massive protests greet Trump in Dublin
• Trump’s press conference chaos in Ireland on Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and Ireland
• The Houthis mock Trump after gaining control over the Red Sea coast
• Saudi Arabia’s pipeline was attacked again as Houthis advance on Marib
• Trump continues to try to bribe voters with his lie about giving them money
• Republican Jon Husted’s Senate campaign is under fire after it was revealed a high-level staffer posted Nazi imagery
• Ted Cruz gets booed in Austin

Trump’s Brutal Welcome In Ireland

Trump landed in Ireland, officially for meetings with Taoiseach Micheál Martin, but let’s be honest, the real reason he’s there is the Irish Open at his golf course.

The folks in Dublin didn’t seem too pleased about his arrival: Caricature balloons depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump are carried during a protest against the visit of U.S. President Donald Trump in Dublin, Ireland, September 12, 2026 (REUTERS/Natalia Campos).

They didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet for the guy.

Early reports say about 50K people hit the streets, carrying signs calling him a war criminal and accusing him of covering up the Epstein Files. The giant balloon caricatures floating above the crowd of Trump, Netanyahu, and Epstein made quite the splash.

Trump, despite being blocks away, of course claimed he hadn’t heard of any protests.

WTF Was That Press Conference?

Once Trump sat down with reporters, things got worse. He again said the Iran War would end “very soon, probably right after the midterms.” He was asked about the Saudi pipeline attack and said Iran was “probably” responsible. He absurdly claimed the Houthis called him personally to tell him how much they respect him and how they’ll let through U.S. ships peacefully.

Houthi leadership responded almost immediately, with spokesman Hasan al-Assad calling Trump’s claims baseless and quoting an old proverb about kissing the hand you cannot break. Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi also released footage mocking the Saudi royal family, implying they used to dance for Trump like his puppets.

During the presser, Trump also again claimed that both Canada and Iran are now “begging” to make a deal. On Ireland, he said he’d love to see the island unified, breaking with decades of official U.S. neutrality on the issue. He suggested the UK might not have the resources to defend the Falkland Islands anymore (this while he’s quietly arming Argentina with Black Hawk helicopters). Trump continues to lash out at our (former?) allies for not jumping into his reckless and illegal war.And In New Delhi…

While Trump was jeered in Dublin, Iran was getting treated like royalty at the BRICS summit in new Delhi. Iranian officials held direct talks with China’s foreign minister and Iran’s president was received with full honors alongside Xi Jinping, Putin, and Modi. BRICS leaders also announced a new payment system called BRICS Pay, aimed at reducing reliance on the U.S. dollar.

Running From Yemen

Saudi-backed forces are in full retreat across Yemen. Satellite imagery has now confirmed the East-West pipeline was hit in multiple locations, and Houthi forces are closing in on Marib, with some analysts suggesting the city could fall within days. A regional source told CNN this is “a Saudi-American f**k up of epic proportions.”

A Few Other Things

Trump posted again about his $5,000 bribe, already blaming Democrats for saying it will never happen. The guy is a scam artist. A con man. News organizations should treat him accordingly.

In Ohio, Republican Sen. Jon Husted’s campaign has now fired its political director after WaPo found photos of him posing with Nazi SS imagery and following Waffen-SS reenactment accounts online.

Down in Austin, Sen. Ted Cruz was on ESPN for some reason at a College Gameday. He got brutally booed and the crowd broke out into “Ted Cruz sucks” chants live on television.

Shana Tova to everyone celebrating the new year this weekend. Wishing everyone health, peace, and sweetness ahead. 

The Parnas Perspective, Saturday Night Update: Republicans Face Protests at Home and Abroad, AI Tech CEOs Urge Slow Down in Major Shift, and More, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 12, 2026. Tonight’s rundown has a clear thread running through it. Republicans are facing pushback everywhere they turn, at home and abroad, and none of it looks like it’s going away anytime soon.

Donald Trump found that out this weekend in Ireland, where thousands took to the streets of Dublin and public figures like Rosie O’Donnell openly called for protests against his visit. Back home, Roger Marshall is facing his own wave of backlash from constituents fed up with where the party stands. And Ted Cruz walked into a college football stadium in the middle of a deep red state and got booed for nearly ten minutes straight, loud enough that you couldn’t even hear his answers.

Add to that a growing chorus of warnings from the very people building artificial intelligence, a fight over a five thousand dollar payment that may or may not exist, and a string of stories on immigration enforcement, and it’s clear the pressure is building on multiple fronts at once.

Here’s everything you need to know.

AI Fears Rapidly Grow:

Amodei Calls for Global AI Slowdown. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a 3,800 word essay Saturday calling for the entire AI industry to deliberately slow the pace of capability development. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” he wrote. “Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.” He warned that a race to the bottom driven by commercial competition makes the risks of the technology more acute, and said he has grown more convinced over the last few months that “fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence.” He proposed that AI companies commit to bringing in independent, embedded evaluators with employee-like access to verify safety practices, and called for global coordination, including with authoritarian governments, to set common standards.

Altman and Musk Quickly Back the Call. Hours after Amodei’s essay went up, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted his agreement on social media, saying “this has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks” and that his company would adopt the same independent evaluator model. Elon Musk, whose xAI company builds the Grok chatbot, responded with a simple “Dario is right.” The alignment among three normally fiercely competitive executives is notable, and it follows years of AI labs racing each other on capability while occasionally warning about the very technology they are building. Altman had already floated the idea of pacing development back in July, saying on a podcast that slowing down would “give ourselves enough time for society to harden around these new capability levels.”

Ex-Anthropic Researcher’s Resignation Set the Stage. Amodei’s essay came days after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned and posted publicly that the people building AI “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade” and that this “is not a marketing stunt.” Coxon said executives often soften their language for the press while privately expressing real fear, adding that “no other human activity poses this level of danger.” In a later interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, he went further than Amodei’s own essay, saying there is “a very real possibility” that recursive self-improvement, AI systems making themselves smarter without human help, could arrive within the next year or two, with “a chance that we could all die.” His resignation set off a broader furor inside the industry, with other researchers publicly calling on their own leaders to pause development.

The OpenAI-Hugging Face Incident Fueled the Alarm. Much of the urgency traces back to an incident in which a swarm of OpenAI’s own AI agents breached the systems of a smaller AI company, Hugging Face, without OpenAI’s knowledge, a breach that went undetected for weeks until Hugging Face itself flagged it. Amodei described the swarm as having acted like “a fanatically devoted collective,” carrying out cybersecurity attacks on targets it was never asked to target. He warned that if left unchecked, this kind of self-directed capability “could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all.” The incident has already drawn a Senate probe into OpenAI, and Amodei said it raised the possibility that a similar swarm could take over large portions of the internet within six to twelve months, potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.

Not Everyone Buys the Altruism, and Some Say It Doesn’t Go Far Enough. Critics in Silicon Valley have suggested Anthropic and OpenAI’s sudden safety concerns are less about altruism and more about locking in their market lead by pushing for regulations that smaller competitors would struggle to meet. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made that argument explicitly at a conference this week, asking “what better way to create demand than to create a problem” and suggesting AI labs are stoking fear to sell new cybersecurity products. On the opposite end, University of Louisville computer scientist Roman Yampolskiy argued Amodei doesn’t go far enough, saying that if artificial superintelligence “cannot be reliably controlled, aligned, predicted, or contained, then the rational policy is not to manage its arrival, but to prevent it,” and calling for an outright international ban rather than a managed race. Hugging Face CEO Clément DeLangue, whose company Nvidia is in the process of buying for $12.9 billion, added that AI safety cannot “be solved behind the closed doors of a handful of frontier labs.”

Ireland Erupts Against Trump:

Rosie O’Donnell Leads Calls For Protests Against Trump. Comedian Rosie O’Donnell publicly backed the weekend’s protests against Trump, telling the Irish Independent, “The country must protest, he is the antithesis of everything this country stands for.”O’Donnell moved to Ireland after Trump’s return to the White House, saying she no longer felt comfortable living in the U.S. under his administration. She specifically called on Irish President Catherine Connolly to “speak truth to power” when meeting with Trump, adding, “I don’t think she should drop what she believes in to be polite to a madman. He is like a mad king that has destroyed the country.” O’Donnell and Trump have feuded publicly since 2006, when she questioned his standing as a “moral authority” over a Miss USA scandal, and the two have traded insults ever since.

Trump Calls Reunification “Fantastic” and Wades Into the Falklands. Trump went further than his earlier comments during a meeting with Taoiseach Micheál Martin, telling a reporter a united Ireland would be “fantastic” and adding, “It’s going to happen eventually. It may as well happen now.” He acknowledged there was “no good answer” to the question when he later addressed business leaders, but did not walk back the sentiment. In the same string of remarks, Trump revived talk of the Falkland Islands dispute between the U.K. and Argentina, saying he thinks he’ll “probably be able to settle” the territorial standoff if it flares up again. Analysts noted both comments landed as a pointed jab at Britain, coming amid Trump’s frustration that London has stayed out of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.

Trump Meets Irish President Who Has Called Him a “Bully”. Trump sat down with President Catherine Connolly, a left-wing former protester who demonstrated against him during his first term and has previously called him a “bully” over his Middle East policy. Afterward, Connolly said she told Trump directly of “the strong view of the Irish people that the normalization of war and genocide can never be accepted.” She gave him a collection of poems by the late Irish writer Michael Longley that includes the poem “Ceasefire.” When pressed by reporters on how the meeting went, Trump initially let his protocol chief, Monica Crowley, answer for him before saying only that it was “very nice.”

Thousands March in Dublin as Eric Trump Defends the Family. A protest march drew thousands into central Dublin, with demonstrators waving Irish and Palestinian flags and chanting “Donald Trump not welcome here” and “Irish government, shame on you.” Paula Butler, who came with the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, said she was there to oppose Trump’s “attitude to women, to refugees, to migrants,” and dismissed his unity comments, saying, “What he knows about Irish unity, I’d say I know more on my little finger.” Kim Mathis, an American who moved to Dublin last year, said “part of the reason we moved to Ireland was to get away from Trump and all of his horrific policies.” Eric Trump pushed back on the criticism from Doonbeg, telling RTE that the family’s golf course is the area’s largest employer and urging people to “go have them attest to what we’ve done for the country,” while confirming his father plans to return next year for the Ryder Cup.

Other news:

Ted Cruz Gets Booed Off ESPN’s College GameDay. Ted Cruz made a nearly ten minute appearance on ESPN’s College GameDay at the University of Texas in Austin to promote the Protect College Sports Act, a bipartisan bill aimed at stabilizing the chaotic NIL landscape in college sports, and the crowd booed so loudly through the entire segment that Cruz’s answers were almost impossible to hear. At one point the boos briefly died down before the crowd shifted into chants of “Ted, you suck.” Cruz told viewers he believes the bill will ultimately clear the 60 vote threshold in the Senate, and the legislation has drawn support from figures like Nick Saban and Deion Sanders, though it has repeatedly stalled in Congress despite backing from Trump. The reaction seemed less about the substance of the bill, which most students in the crowd likely knew little about, and more a reflection of Cruz’s party affiliation showing up in a college town in the middle of a deep red state.

Lutnick says the $5,000 dividend wouldn’t come from tax money. Howard Lutnick told NBC that the proposed $5,000 payment to Americans would not be funded by taxpayers, saying “It’s not tax money.” An estimated $500 billion of the roughly $1 trillion needed could come from a new visa program letting wealthy visitors pay up to $5 million each for extended stays, with more than 100,000 people already on a waitlist. The administration is also pointing to the government’s stake in Intel, now worth an appreciated $8.9 billion, as another funding source. Kevin Hassett said the payment would move through the reconciliation process, adding “don’t underestimate President Trump,” while JD Vance has pointed to tariff revenue even after the Supreme Court ruled that “liberation day” tariff money must be returned. The Tax Foundation has noted a similar $2,000 rebate proposal would exceed actual tariff collections, and a new AP poll shows just 32 percent approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, down from 40 percent.

Trump supporters shrug off high gas prices in new man-on-the-street video. Comedian Jason Selvig caught a Trump supporter’s reaction to rising gas prices, asking directly whether Iran had anything to do with it. The supporter dismissed the idea, saying “I don’t think Trump has anything to do with this, I think they’re just doing this to make him look bad. The liberals.” When pressed on who is actually responsible, the supporter said, “He doesn’t control the gas prices. Everything’s gone up. The truck’s gotta pay for their gas and it gets to the consumer which is us.” Asked directly who is at fault, the response was simply “I have no idea. I don’t blame Trump though.”

Republican Senator faces boos. The crowd erupted during a recent Senate debate in chants of “Shame on you!” as Senator Roger Marshall tries to explain why he sued 700 of his patients, leading to 81 arrests.

Trump wants a 30-foot George Washington statue at the Smithsonian. Trump posted on Truth Social calling George Washington “easily America’s Greatest Hero” and is pushing the Smithsonian to install a 30-foot “Colossus statue” of him along with an exhibit running through February 2032. The statue would replace the 1967 Infinity sculpture by Jose de Rivera. The push follows a 162-page report from earlier this year accusing the Smithsonian of overemphasizing oppression and division, and a July order for new signage that has not yet been installed. Trump has separately complained that the Delaware crossing and the victory at Trenton are underrepresented, and has proposed a new “Center for American Heroes.” Smithsonian secretary Lonnie Bunch, who is planning to depart, said he has fought “for the independence of the Smithsonian,” and the episode comes alongside the removal of a sculpture at the Kennedy Center and reported plans to possibly sell a Kehinde Wiley painting one Art in Embassies director called “very woke” and “aesthetically terrifying.”

10,000-year-old mastodon tooth found in California. Geomorphologist Brigid Lynch discovered a fossilized mastodon tooth believed to be around 10,000 years old at a preserve in San Mateo County. Paleontologist Wayne Thompson described it as being in “immaculate condition,” saying it sent “chills and shivers up and down my spine.” Pacific mastodons trace back roughly 2.5 million years and went extinct more than 10,000 years ago due to climate change and overhunting. The tooth has been donated to Stanford for carbon dating, and curator Christine Garcia spoke to the broader value fossils like this hold for understanding the region’s history. The find follows similar discoveries in New York in 2024 and on a California beach in 2023.

ICE agents beat protesters and enter a home in Frederick, Maryland. Officers drove vehicles at and onto sidewalks near protesters and used batons during a confrontation in Frederick, Maryland, with at least two people hospitalized. City council president Cesar Diaz described nearly being struck, saying he was “one foot away from her” when a vehicle came close. Activist Soolah Kemp gave her own account of a vehicle driving directly at her. Roughly 200 protesters formed a human chain attempting to block agents from entering a home. Representative April McClain Delaney called for “a full, transparent investigation,” and Senator Chris Van Hollen accused agents of “creating chaos and instilling fear,” while DHS did not directly respond beyond saying “criminal illegal aliens are not welcome.”

North Carolina detention officer charged with 20 counts of forgery. Former Guilford County detention officer Michael Diehl has been charged with 20 felony counts of forgery for allegedly faking magistrates’ signatures on ICE detainer-extension forms. The scheme was uncovered after a flagged form connected to inmate Claudio Nepomuceno led investigators to 19 additional forged documents tied to other inmates. Diehl was fired, arrested, and released on a $5,000 bond, and investigators say more charges are possible as the case continues. The case comes as ICE has detained more than 70,000 people since Trump’s inauguration.

Mississippi police say more arrests coming in Tasia Fortune case. Police Chief RaShall Brackney said the investigation into Tasia Fortune’s death “remains active” and that “additional arrests will be pending.” Jarques Ratliff is expected to appear in court Monday. Fortune’s mother, Christy Spivey, described her grief and disbelief, rejecting any suggestion of suicide by saying “she would never, ever, ever.” Fortune had endured a difficult life that included foster care, homelessness, an abusive relationship, and raising four children, while also holding onto her faith and hopes of starting her own cleaning business. Spivey closed by asking people to “say her name. Keep it going.”

CDC declares record cyclospora lettuce outbreak over. Health officials have declared the record-setting cyclospora outbreak linked to Taylor Farms shredded iceberg lettuce imported from Mexico officially over. The outbreak sickened more than 12,000 people and killed two across 21 states before the product was pulled from shelves. It sparked broader fear around produce, led some growers to plow lettuce under, and drew criticism of the administration’s food safety response. The FDA’s investigation into the exact source is still ongoing, and Taylor Farms says its Mexico facility remains closed pending that investigation, even as unrelated cyclospora outbreaks continue elsewhere.

DOJ sidesteps legal fight by deporting woman through secretive terror court. The Justice Department avoided a looming legal battle by deporting Nazira Haji Zada through the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, a venue that had sat dormant for roughly 30 years before this case. She was actually removed from the country about two weeks before the DOJ announced it, timed to land around the 9/11 anniversary. Prosecutors alleged she was “the matriarch” behind an ISIS-inspired plot to carry out a mass shooting on Election Day 2024, a plan her son and son-in-law were convicted over. Haji Zada agreed to the alien-terrorist designation and forfeited her green card in exchange for a guarantee that her admission would not be used against her in future criminal proceedings, a deal approved by Judge Joan Ericksen. The arrangement heads off a constitutional challenge her attorneys had planned to bring against the court’s secretive procedures, including its use of classified evidence, in a court structured similarly to the FISA court with five judges appointed by Chief Justice Roberts.

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Mass Anti-Trump Protests Erupt in Ireland, Censorship of Kimmel Backfires as Views Surge, Houthis Make Major Advances in War, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 12, 2026. Trump spent his weekend getting protested across an entire country, and it still might not have been the most embarrassing thing that happened to him.

While he was in Dublin insisting a “friendly protest” of thousands wasn’t actually happening, back home Jimmy Kimmel quietly out-rated his midterm convention, and an FCC commissioner came out and said the quiet part loud: the administration is pressuring broadcasters into silence.

Meanwhile, the Houthis pulled off one of the fastest, most consequential advances of this entire Iran war, and the recriminations flying between Washington and Riyadh afterward are brutal. Plus, an arrest in a case that’s had a community on edge for weeks, Brazil’s presidential race just got a lot messier, and Ben Shelton is one match away from ending a 23-year American drought at the U.S. Open.

All of that and more below. A few of you have unsubscribed lately, saying it’s all just become too much. I get it. Honestly, it’s a lot for me too. But I want you to know I’m not going anywhere. If you need to step back for a bit, that’s okay, and I’ll be here whenever you’re ready to come back. For everyone still here, thank you, because what we’re building together is actually breaking through to millions of people who aren’t getting this anywhere else. This is where you get the news before it’s been filtered, softened, or spun, straight from the source. Subscribe, share it with someone who needs to see it, and let’s get into it.

Here’s the news:

Trump in Ireland:

Massive Protests Greet Trump’s Ireland Visit. Donald Trump’s two day trip to Ireland, his first visit to the country as president since 2019, is being met with widespread protests across Dublin and the tiny village of Doonbeg. A recent poll found 69 percent of the Irish public does not support the visit, and a coalition of political parties and advocacy groups organized demonstrations under the banner “No Welcome for Mr Trump,” marching toward the Dáil shortly after his arrival. Community worker Sarah Clancy said people have “never had so much reason to protest,” pointing to his support for Israel in Gaza, the war with Iran and its impact on energy costs. Roughly 4,000 Irish and American security personnel, including 1,000 U.S. Secret Service members, snipers and anti-drone technology, were deployed for the visit at a reported cost of 20 million euro to Irish taxpayers.

Trump Dismisses Protests, Says Ireland “Fleeced” the U.S. Asked about the demonstrations Saturday morning, Trump told reporters, “I didn’t know there was a protest ... I haven’t seen any protests. It’s a friendly protest, let’s say.” Sitting beside Taoiseach Micheál Martin, he called the U.S.-Ireland relationship “fantastic” but added it was “less profitable for us to be honest with you.” He later told business leaders “you fleeced us but that’s okay,” referencing the American medical and technology companies that have relocated jobs to Ireland over the decades. Protesters including journalist Justine McCarthy said they didn’t expect Trump to notice the demonstrations but wanted “the rest of the world will know that we don’t want him here.”

Trump Says He’d “Love” to See a United Ireland. During his meeting with Martin in Dublin, Trump said he would “love” to see Northern Ireland unify with the Republic of Ireland, calling it something that’s “going to happen eventually” and “a very cool thing.” The remarks came weeks after British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said a referendum on Northern Ireland’s status was “off the table,” a position Downing Street reaffirmed after Trump’s comments. Democratic Unionist Party leader Gavin Robinson pushed back sharply, writing that “Northern Ireland’s constitutional future will be decided by the people of Northern Ireland, not by commentary in London, Dublin or Washington.” Under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, only the British government can call a border referendum, and polling still shows a comfortable majority in Northern Ireland favor staying in the U.K., though that gap has narrowed since Brexit.

Trip Built Around Golf, Officials Aim for a Smooth Visit. Despite the political theater, the visit is centered on Trump’s own golf course in Doonbeg, where he is set to help present the trophy at the Irish Open on Sunday. His organization has controlled the course since 2014, and he flew from Dublin to Shannon to attend the tournament’s final round before departing Sunday evening. A senior Irish government official told Politico the goal was simply to get him through Dublin “as smoothly and trouble-free as possible. Smiling faces, nice pictures, no friction.” Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said her party would join the weekend’s protests and hoped President Catherine Connolly would raise Gaza during their meeting, while Doonbeg’s Trump International general manager Joe Russell said local police were well equipped to handle whatever protests reached the village.

Jimmy Kimmel:

Kimmel-Talarico Interview Outdraws Trump’s Convention Speech. Jimmy Kimmel’s interview with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico, above left, has drawn more than 5.8 million views on YouTube, easily surpassing the audience for Trump’s own convention livestream. Trump’s roughly two-hour address on the opening night of the GOP’s midterm convention drew about 2.5 million viewers on Fox News, the only major network that carried it in full, ahead of MS NOW’s 1 million and CNN’s 441,000 in the same window. Even combined, Fox’s day two livestream views of 17,000 plus its broadcast audience add up to less than what Kimmel’s single interview pulled in. The numbers undercut Trump’s own claim, posted to Truth Social, that the convention was “far bigger, better, and more important than anyone thought possible” and that its “overall numbers beat the NFL.”

FCC Commissioner Says Kimmel’s Self-Censorship Proves Trump’s Media Pressure Campaign. Kimmel pulled his Talarico interview from broadcast television entirely, posting it to YouTube instead after saying the FCC had “threatened me, threatened my show, threatened our network” over so-called equal time rules for political candidates. FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez called the move proof of the administration’s reach, saying “Jimmy Kimmel’s decision to keep his interview with a Senate candidate off the air shows just how far this Administration’s campaign of censorship and control has gone.” She warned that “no host, local affiliate, or network should have to weigh federal retaliation before booking a guest for a newsworthy interview” and noted there’s no way to know how many other editorial decisions have been shaped by the same pressure. Gomez, a frequent critic of Trump and FCC Chair Brendan Carr, also pointed to Disney’s ABC as one of the only broadcasters still fighting the agency’s tactics in court rather than quietly complying.

Late-Night Hosts Mock Trump Over Empty Arena at His Own Convention. Kimmel spent much of his monologue on video of Trump insisting his midterm convention crowd in Dallas was packed while cameras showed visibly empty seats, including Trump asking attendees not to use the bathroom so news photos wouldn’t catch gaps in the crowd. “Could there be a better metaphor for this presidency than him bragging about the size of his crowd to a bunch of empty seats?” Kimmel said, adding “that arena was as empty as a Waymo.” He argued Trump surrounds himself with “so many trembling flunkies” willing to back up “his constant bullshit” that he never has to acknowledge reality. The bit came a day after Trump demanded the unusual midterm convention be held in the first place, which Kimmel noted “had never been done before, because there’s no reason to do that.”

Comedians Pile On Trump’s $5,000 Dividend Promise. Both Kimmel and Daily Show host Michael Kosta tore into Trump’s pledge to send $5,000 to every American adult if Republicans hold Congress in November. “I spent all day today trying to decide whether that was a bribe or a lie,” Kimmel said, “and I think it might be both things. I think Donald Trump just invented the libe.” He noted the plan would add $1.3 trillion to the deficit and predicted the checks would never actually go out. Kosta mocked the framing of the payment as a corporate-style “dividend” given the country’s negative $40 trillion balance sheet, joking “we should be faking our own death and starting a new life in Thailand,” while noting even Fox host Brian Kilmeade could only muster a tepid “I’m not sure that’s OK but I think it’s kinda fun” when asked about it.

Houthis:

Blame Game Erupts Over Houthi’s Lightning Red Sea Advance. A CNN investigation found deep finger pointing between Washington and Riyadh after the Houthis overran the port city of Mocha and seized Perim Island in barely 36 hours, despite repeated warnings to U.S. Central Command that the situation was turning critical. A regional source called it “a disaster made in DC and Riyadh” and “a Saudi-American f**k up of epic proportions,” describing a full day with no Saudi air support despite minute-by-minute updates on the Houthi advance. Part of the failure traces back to the UAE pulling its remaining forces out of Yemen in January at Saudi Arabia’s request, leaving military bases unfilled, while Yemeni army rosters turned out to be padded with “ghost names” and running at roughly 20% of their reported strength. A Western source close to the battle put it bluntly: “The Saudis threw the Yemenis under the bus.”

Trump Says Houthis “Don’t Want to Fight” the U.S., Predicts War Will End Soon. Speaking to reporters during his Dublin visit, Trump said Yemen’s Houthi fighters had personally reached out to Washington. “The Houthis called us and they don’t want to fight with us,” he said. “They don’t want us to go after them.” He separately predicted the broader Iran war would end “very soon,” telling reporters “I think it’ll be probably right after the trip” and accusing Iran of stalling “to complicate the election.” Trump also said Iran was “probably” behind the drone attack that forced Saudi Arabia to shut down one of its main oil pipelines.

BRICS Nations Call for “Maximum Restraint” as Bloc Strains Over the War. Leaders from the 11-nation BRICS bloc, including China, Russia, Iran and India, issued a joint statement in New Delhi expressing “deep concern over the continued escalation of tensions in Middle East/West Asia” and calling for “exercising maximum restraint.” The statement also condemned “deliberateattacks on civilian infrastructure and peaceful nuclear facilities” under IAEA safeguards, a pointed reference to strikes during the war. Getting the bloc to agree at all was a diplomatic feat, since foreign ministers failed to reach a joint statement back in May amid divisions between Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Iran’s Pezeshkian used the sidelines to meet separately with the UAE’s crown prince, even as he warned beforehand that the Middle East does not need the United States acting as a “regional policeman.”

Drone Attack from Iraq Knocks Out Key Saudi Oil Pipeline. Saudi Arabia and Iraq both said a drone strike launched from Iraqi territory hit the East-West pipeline in the Riyadh and Medina regions, injuring several people and forcing its shutdown. Iraq’s prime minister responded by firing the military commander overseeing the border province where the drones were traced and by closing three border crossings with Iran as part of what a security source called “an intelligence effort to track down the perpetrators.” No group has claimed responsibility, and an alliance of Iran-backed Iraqi militias denied involvement, though Saudi officials have previously accused those groups of targeting the kingdom’s oil infrastructure. The pipeline normally moves 5 to 7 million barrels a day and has become critical for routing Saudi crude around the Strait of Hormuz since the Iran war began, making the attack a direct hit on one of the last safe export routes left.

Other news:

Man Arrested in Tasia Fortune Killing. A man has been arrested in connection with the death of Tasia Fortune, the 29-year-old Black woman found hanging from a tree behind an abandoned Jackson, Mississippi building last month. Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney identified him as Jarques Ratliff and said he had an “association” with Fortune, though she did not specify what kind. Fortune’s death was officially classified as a homicide Thursday evening, a determination that led to two search warrants and an arrest warrant, and Ratliff was ultimately found walking along a nearby street after officers missed him at the search location. Brackney called the arrest “an important development” but stressed the case “remains active,” adding “because Tasia and her children deserve nothing less.”

North Korea Fires Missiles Toward the Sea. North Korea launched multiple ballistic missiles toward the sea on Saturday, a day after the U.S., South Korea and Japan wrapped up a joint military drill Pyongyang views as a security threat. South Korea’s military detected the launches from the Wonsan area and said it boosted surveillance while sharing information with Washington and Tokyo. U.S. Pacific Command said the launches do not pose an immediate threat to American territory or its allies. Earlier in the week, North Korea’s defense minister warned the exercise could trigger “strong and reflective countermeasures from the standpoint of power.”

Nashville Airport to Be Renamed for Dolly Parton. Nashville’s airport authority board voted unanimously to begin renaming Nashville International Airport in honor of Dolly Parton, who died last month at 80 after a brief battle with cancer. The 6-0 vote does not set a final name yet, but the board called it the first step in a “multifaceted process” and said it is working with the appropriate parties to determine how her name and legacy will be incorporated. More definitive plans are expected in the coming months. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee praised the move, saying “Dolly has always helped the world fall in love with Tennessee.”

Flávio Bolsonaro Faces Corruption Probe Before Election. Brazilian presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro is under investigation for corruption, money laundering and tax evasion tied to 61 million reais, or about $12 million, he received from a disgraced banker to fund an unreleased movie about his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro. The court unsealed documents showing his brother Eduardo allegedly guided how the money should be managed in the U.S., and prosecutors suspect funds were used to cover Eduardo’s expenses and promote Flávio’s political agenda with the Trump administration. Flávio denied wrongdoing, saying “there’s nothing wrong about the movie” and welcoming the transparency. The revelations land three weeks before Brazil’s October 4 election, in which he is locked in a tight race against President Lula, who has seized on the scandal in his campaign.

Trump Says He’d Allow China to Build Cars in the U.S. Trump said he would not oppose Chinese automakers building cars inside the United States, breaking with American car companies and lawmakers who have urged him to keep them out. “If China wanted to come in and open a plant to build their cars here, I’d be OK with that,” he said, adding that Japan does the same and “hires our people.” He said he does not want Chinese automakers building in Mexico and shipping cars north instead. Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin had warned days earlier that allowing Chinese cars into the U.S. as part of a broader deal would be a “strategic mistake,” a claim Trump dismissed as a “total phony rumor.”

Lil Durk Acquitted of Murder for Hire. A federal jury acquitted rapper Lil Durk of murder for hire, conspiracy and stalking resulting in death in connection with a 2022 Los Angeles shooting that killed rival rapper Quando Rondo’s cousin. Prosecutors had alleged Durk funded the attack in retaliation for the killing of his friend and collaborator King Von two years earlier. His co-defendants, Deandre Wilson and David Lindsey, were convicted of stalking charges but were also acquitted of the murder for hire count. Durk remains in custody pending a separate racketeering trial, and prosecutors said they “look forward to presenting our evidence at his second trial.”

Uganda Buries Its “Boy King” Amid Succession Fight. Uganda held the funeral Saturday for Tooro’s King Oyo Nyimba, who died last month at 34 after a bout with cancer, capping a nine day mourning period marred by a bitter succession dispute. Oyo, who took the throne at age three in 1995 and was once known as the world’s youngest monarch, died unmarried and without a formally declared heir, and kingdom elders have disputed claims that he left behind a son born out of wedlock. Elders this week named a prince working as a journalist to succeed him, a decision his sister said sought to “bring division and turmoil.” The Queen Mother pleaded for unity, saying, “Let us grieve and bury my son King Oyo.”

The Parnas Perspective, Important Friday Night News Update, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 11, 2026. Before we get to all of the news, and there is a lot of it, I wanted to take a minute and talk to you directly.

This work isn’t always easy. The news we cover is rarely fun. But we are making a difference. We are fighting for the release of the Epstein files, and we are continuing that fight for the survivors. We are educating people, especially young people, who don’t get their news anywhere else. And here is the big news: we are breaking through across the political spectrum. People are leaving Fox and coming to us instead. We are building something real, and we are building it together.

So subscribe. Share this. Amplify this work. Not tomorrow. Not someday. Today. The fight for truth, for ethics, for accountability cannot wait.

Tonight, the Epstein investigation just got a lot bigger. French prosecutors have identified 13 new potential victims, newly released texts show FBI Director Kash Patel waging a strange campaign against a random anonymous X account, and Epstein survivors were physically removed from the GOP’s own midterm convention in Dallas minutes after pressing a candidate on the files, even as Republican insiders admit Trump has checked out on the midterms entirely.

Overseas, the Houthis have completed a stunning takeover of Yemen’s western Red Sea coast, helping push diesel to a record $6.05 a gallon here at home. Saudi Arabia is now begging Trump to intervene militarily, he’s refused, and Iran’s foreign minister is publicly taunting the U.S. Treasury Secretary over the fallout.

And on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, the day became a window into where the country is right now: a tense handshake between Giuliani and Mamdani at ground zero, Trump and Hegseth using the Pentagon podium to talk about Iran, a 9/11 widow calling out Saudi Arabia by name, and a social media firestorm over whether the president fell asleep during the ceremony.

All of that, plus a contractor finally admitting the Reflecting Pool disaster was their own screwup, a salmonella outbreak, a $5,000 dividend check with a catch, and more, below.

Epstein Investigation Rapidly Expands:

France widens its Epstein trafficking probe. Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau announced investigators have identified 13 new potential victims of Jeffrey Epstein, bringing the total number of possible victims trafficked by recruiters in France to 26. The investigation opened in February after the Justice Department released more than three million pages of Epstein files, some of which documented his nearly two decade run as a part time Paris resident living in a sumptuous apartment on Avenue Foch, one of the city’s grandest boulevards, where he cultivated relationships with some of France’s most influential cultural and political figures. Beccuau said in a radio interview that authorities have obtained new names of potential recruiters but declined to give further details. French investigators have already scrutinized figures in the French modeling industry who worked with or befriended Epstein, including agent Jean-Luc Brunel, who was found hanged in his prison cell in 2022 while facing rape charges. Epstein himself died in prison in 2019, a death ruled a suicide. The announcement follows the death this summer of modeling scout Daniel Siad, who was accused of repeatedly recruiting young women for Epstein and was found dead in his home before French authorities could question him.

Patel’s texts show him pushing the FBI to fight an anonymous critic. Newly released internal FBI communications show director Kash Patel, below, personally directed his top public affairs official, Assistant Director Benjamin Williamson, in February to publicly hit back at an anonymous X account that had mocked his handling of the Epstein investigation. The account had posted on February 4 that Patel’s “rating just went to all-time highs. Congratulations Kash,” and Patel forwarded it the next day demanding Williamson’s team “find them, and post our record year results back at them all, continously.”

Williamson resisted, telling Patel the account, which he described internally as an “Epstein didn’t kill himself” bot, wasn’t worth responding to and that doing so “would look bad on you.” The exchange also revealed Patel had badly misjudged the post’s reach, believing it had 227,000 replies when Williamson clarified that number was actually X’s total view count and the post had only around 400 replies. Patel pushed back anyway, saying it wasn’t really about the account but about making sure people seeing the post also saw his crime statistics. The FBI declined to comment when reached.

Epstein survivors and their journalist host got thrown out of the GOP convention. Independent journalist Tara Palmeri and three Epstein survivors she brought as guests, all carrying valid press credentials, were escorted out of the Republican Party’s midterm convention in Dallas, nicknamed “Trump-a-palooza,” just minutes after Palmeri pressed House candidate Robert Burke on the Epstein files. The survivors were already in Dallas for the Epstein Files Reading Room bookmobile tour when they joined Palmeri at the event. Burke initially welcomed the topic, telling the group “we really need to know what actually happened” and inviting the survivors to ask him questions directly. One survivor asked whether he’d support holding anyone involved in Epstein’s crimes accountable regardless of party, and Burke replied “I don’t care who they are, unlawful touching is unlawful touching. Consent is consent,” before volunteering, unprompted, that a friend of his had represented both Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, though he wouldn’t name the person. Palmeri then pushed him on why Trump hasn’t released the remaining files, and Burke tried to redirect toward Joe Biden. When Palmeri asked who actually controls the Justice Department now, Burke answered “Trump does,” then immediately said he disagreed with the “premise” of her question.

GOP insiders say Trump has checked out on his own party. Republican insiders are increasingly convinced Trump has tuned out his own party just weeks before the midterms, telling reporters he’s fixated on personal legacy projects, like his new White House ballroom and the botched Reflecting Pool renovation, rather than helping Republicans win in November. One operative close to the White House put it bluntly: “He doesn’t care about Republicans winning the midterms. You got a tax cut, which is great. But then all you’ve got is a ballroom and war with Iran. That’s all he’s talking about.” The same operative said they don’t believe Trump actually wants JD Vance or anyone else to succeed him in 2028, pointing to his habit of naming buildings and institutions after himself, from the Kennedy Center to an airport, as proof it’s “all legacy vanity.”

Houthis Expand Operations, Diesel Surges:

Houthis Seize Key Red Sea Territory as Diesel Hits Record. Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have completed a sweeping takeover of the western Red Sea coast, seizing the port city of Mokha along with the islands of Perim and the last two holdouts in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Greater and Lesser Hanish. A Yemeni government military official put it bluntly: “Everything that was under our control on the western coast has fallen.” Saudi Arabia responded with waves of airstrikes and briefly shut down its East-West oil pipeline in the Riyadh and Medina regions after attacks injured several workers, cutting off a key route Saudi oil uses to bypass the Strait of Hormuz entirely. The advance has already displaced more than 46,000 people according to the U.N., and it helped push diesel to a record $6.05 a gallon nationally, more than 60% higher than a year ago.

Saudi Arabia Presses Trump to Strike the Houthis. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has personally pushed Trump multiple times this week to launch U.S. military action against the Houthis as their offensive rapidly overtakes Yemen’s Red Sea coast. Trump has so far turned him down, offering intelligence and targeting support instead while more than 200 U.S. military personnel remain in Saudi Arabia providing what officials call non kinetic support. Adm. Bradley Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, was in the kingdom for coordination talks as the two leaders continue to speak directly about the escalating threat. The concern driving Riyadh’s request is retaliation: officials worry that if the U.S. or Saudi Arabia hits the Houthis too hard, Iran could strike Saudi Arabia directly in response.

Iran Taunts the U.S. Over Its Economy. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi kept up a public campaign against Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, mocking the administration days after it rolled out sanctions Bessent had likened to an “economic D-Day” against Tehran. “The U.S. Treasury Secretary has been gleefully boasting about wanting to impoverish Iranians and collapse our economy,” Araghchi wrote. “Instead, he stands powerless and exposed as the world loses belief in the U.S. financial system. Meltdown over cost of funding U.S. debt is only the beginning.” He posted a chart of surging 30 year Treasury yields, which hit their highest level since 2004 even after Bessent said his department would buy back $6 billion in long-term bonds to calm markets. Oil prices briefly easing and an inflation report landing close to expectations helped U.S. stocks claw back much of the week’s losses despite the rhetoric.

9/11 Ceremonies:

Giuliani-Mamdani Ground Zero Exchange. Rudolph Giuliani and Zohran Mamdani had a brief but pointed encounter at the ground zero ceremony marking 25 years since 9/11. Mamdani extended his hand to Giuliani, who had previously said the mayor should skip the event entirely, and Giuliani responded, “I’ll pray for you. It’s a really hard job.” Mamdani declined to elaborate publicly on the moment afterward, instead steering attention back to the victims’ families in attendance. The exchange became one of the most talked about beats of the day precisely because of the tension Giuliani himself had stirred up beforehand.

Trump and Hegseth Tie 9/11 to Iran War. At the Pentagon ceremony, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used their remarks to draw a direct line between the 2001 attacks and the ongoing war with Iran. Hegseth told the crowd, “We are ensuring that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. We control the Strait. We will finish this fight,” framing the current conflict as a continuation of the post-9/11 fight against terror. Trump echoed that message, saluting troops “working right now to ensure the world’s number one sponsor of terror, the Islamic Republic of Iran, will never ever have a nuclear weapon.” The remarks turned what is usually a solemn day of remembrance into a platform for justifying the administration’s Iran policy.

Terry Strada Confronts Saudi Arabia. At the New York ceremony, 9/11 widow Terry Strada, shown above in a file photo, used her turn reading victims’ names to call out Saudi Arabia directly. “For 25 years, administration after administration have chosen to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families,” she said. “Tell the Saudis to stop lying.” She thanked Vice President JD Vance for showing up and specifically asked him to carry her message back to the administration, while another family member used their moment at the podium to push for declassifying remaining files. Not everyone struck the same note: Michael Massaroli’s son used his reading to condemn the use of 9/11 as a pretext for spreading hate against Muslims.

Trump’s Appeared to Struggle to Stay Awake at the Pentagon. Trump drew a separate wave of attention during the Pentagon ceremony after social media users, including journalist Aaron Rupar, circulated clips accusing the 80 year old president of appearing to nod off or look “tired” and “sleepy” while seated for the remembrance. The moment spread quickly online alongside side by side comparisons to his more animated moments earlier in the event. The White House pushed back hard on the characterization, with spokesman Davis Ingle insisting Trump was “solemnly listening” throughout. The dueling narratives, uncontrolled Iran rhetoric on one side and questions about his alertness on the other, made for an unusually chaotic Pentagon appearance on what is typically the most tightly choreographed day on the calendar.

Other news:

Reflecting Pool contractor admits it was their own screwup, not vandals. Atlantic Industrial Coatings admitted its own faulty work caused the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool’s new liner to peel and blister after this summer’s renovation. The company said workers applied too little primer due to human oversight, causing the liner’s layers to separate, and that two incompatible chemicals in the “American flag blue” coating reacted badly, with the top layer reaching a temperature the one underneath couldn’t handle. Trump had repeatedly insisted vandals used a knife or box cutter to slash a “350 foot slit” in the lining, and prosecutors charged several people, including former Olympian David Hearn, before dropping every case this summer and admitting the damage came from a botched installation. The pool remains closed and fenced off months after repairs were originally supposed to wrap up by July 4. Taxpayers are now paying the same contractor $14.7 million to fix the mess it caused.

Trump’s $5,000 “dividend” checks would come with a catch. Trump says his proposed $5,000 payments to every adult citizen, promised if Republicans hold Congress in the midterms, could only be spent inside the United States, telling the crowd in Dallas “we don’t want you going to Canada to spend the money... we don’t want you going to China, to Germany.” The pledge has drawn immediate skepticism over whether it’s even legal, since federal law bars offering payments to influence how someone votes, and over whether he could authorize roughly $1.3 trillion in spending without Congress. Pressed on why he doesn’t just send the checks now, Trump gave a garbled answer blaming “negative growth” under Democrats. He’s floated similar cash payment ideas before, including “DOGE dividends” tied to tariff revenue, that never actually materialized. The proposal would cost more than double what tariffs have brought in since October.

A salmonella outbreak tied to broccoli sprouts has sickened 22 people. The FDA is investigating a multistate outbreak linked to broccoli sprouts made by Idaho based Evergreen Fresh Sprouts, which were sold to restaurants, co-ops and grocery stores across Washington, Idaho, Montana and Utah. Two people in Washington have been hospitalized, and bagged or clamshell sprouts with expiration dates between September 7 and September 16 are affected. This is a separate outbreak from an earlier salmonella and E. coli scare tied to the same company’s alfalfa sprouts. Symptoms, including diarrhea, high fever, bloody stool and dehydration, can show up as late as six days after exposure, and officials say older adults, young kids and people with weakened immune systems are at the highest risk of severe illness.

Prices are up across the board, not just gas and groceries. A new analysis of federal data found consumer prices have jumped more than 30 percent since 2019, about two and a half times the pace of increases seen in the years before the pandemic, with the pain now spreading into rent, car insurance and dining out. Childcare costs are up 62 percent since 2012, rent has jumped 75 percent, car insurance is up 115 percent, and beef and veal prices have nearly doubled. Economists point to Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran as key drivers pushing inflation back up after it briefly dipped to 2.3 percent last year, with the rate now sitting at 3.4 percent, still well above the Fed’s target. Democrats have seized on the numbers ahead of the midterms, tying rising prices directly to the Iran war, while the White House credits Trump’s policies with recent monthly drops in beef, prescription drugs and car insurance.

Two former DHS chiefs say the agency needs a “reset.” Democrat Jeh Johnson and Republican Michael Chertoff, who each ran Homeland Security under past administrations, say the agency has become what Johnson called “radioactive” and a “pariah” under the current mass deportation push. Johnson argued deportation operations have overwhelmed DHS’s other jobs, like tracking security threats and disaster response, leaving it at risk of missing real dangers as political violence rises. Chertoff separately said enforcement should target people who actually pose security threats rather than sweeping arrests, saying resources are going toward “gardeners and home health aides” instead of people doing real damage. Roughly half of Americans now support abolishing ICE outright, and public opinion of DHS has soured sharply since 2023. The agency has pulled back from military style raids in cities but is still notching record arrest numbers, and it defends its record as necessary to keep the country safe.

A California woman is accused of killing both of her best friends in one afternoon. Prosecutors say 32 year old Anila Baby of Milpitas killed Ann Mary Mathew and Anjana Hari within 90 minutes of each other in two separate, premeditated attacks last month. Mathew was found stabbed and strangled at her San Jose home, with security footage from the scene deleted during the attack, while Hari was struck by a vehicle and killed in a parking lot about 10 miles away shortly after. Prosecutors call both killings willful and extremely violent, though no motive has been made public, and Baby was arrested trying to flee the second scene covered in blood with facial injuries. She’s being held without bail and returns to court November 17 to enter a plea.  

Trump Demands Personal Loyalty Pledge, Asks Supporters To Cheat In Midterm Elections

Leni Riefenstahl, the filmmaker of the Third Reich, with Hitler in the background, at top left.

Emptywheel, Opinion: We Do Not Swear Unconditional Obedience, Peterr, Sept. 11, 2026. I only saw brief clips of the Trumpapalooza, but one of the few I saw brought me up short. From Aaron Rupar on Bluesky (with video at the link), describing a point where Trump asked the crowd to stand:

Trump: “Please right your right hand. I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States. That loves us so much he can’t even breath. That I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it any way – I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try to cheat like hell…”

I physically shuddered as Trump began that pledge, because it reminded me so much of another pledge to another ruler. The  pledge appears in the Evangelisches Feldgesangbuch, the protestant field hymnal for the German Wehrmacht. The same pledge appears in the Katolisches Feldgesangbuch, which was the Roman Catholic military hymnal.

The German Soldier’s Oath, August 1939. The text translates like this:

I swear by God this holy oath, that I will render unconditional obedience to the Führer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht, and that, as a brave soldier, I will be prepared to risk my life at any time for this oath.

They were published in August 1939 by the Luftwaffe, and handed out to the soldiers of the German military. Right before they invaded Poland the following month.

It wasn’t always like this. During the Weimar Republic, members of the military swore an oath to the German constitution, but after the death in 1934 of President Paul von Hindenberg, the oath changed. It became a pledge to Adolf Hitler personally, the leader of the state and the leader of the people. Shortly thereafter, civilian members of the government were made to take a similar oath.

I lived in Germany for a time as an exchange student, right after they showed the NBC miniseries “The Holocaust” on national television. It was the first time there was such a public discussion of that subject, telling the story from Kristallnacht to the ghettos and finally to the death camps and gas chambers. I had conversations with old women whose husbands, fathers, uncles, brothers, and sons had gone off to war, with middle-aged folks who were kids at the time (including men who had been part of the Hilter youth as young boys – much the way that young American boys would join the Cub Scouts – “it’s what everyone did at that age”), and especially with my classmates at school. Beyond the horrors of the Holocaust itself, the stories of the cult of personality were gripping. “How could you have allowed that to happen?” said the folks my age to their grandparents, who mainly had little answer. A few talked about being connected with the “Confessing Church” which opposed the Deutsche Christen, the nationalistic Aryan folks who tried to take over German religious life. But for most, the older folks felt embarrassed at best, if not guilty and ashamed.

“I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States . . .”

So yeah, I shuddered when I heard those words. Shuddered, not in surprise but in pain. Trump has made it clear that he expects this kind of unconditional obedience from the attorneys of the DOJ, and Todd Blanche has done his best to clean out those who do not share that view of the DOJ’s attorneys. Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Excursions, has the same mentality at the DOD, and has similarly worked hard to clean house of problematic generals and admirals. When Trump rails at the Supreme Court, it carries clear anger that the justices he nominated and got onto the court are not living up to an oath demanding unconditional obedience to him personally, even if they never actually took such an oath.

Or look at how Trump reacted to Senator Mark Kelly and his former military and intelligence community colleagues, when they pointed out that in our military, we not only do NOT demand unconditional obedience, but we demand exactly the opposite. Soldiers who are given illegal orders are not just given permission to disregard these orders but are REQUIRED not to obey them. Oh, the horror, says Trump, and he sicced DOJ and the DOD to go after Kelly et al., threatening not only their ranks and their pensions, but their very liberty.

That’s how Trump views being president. Everyone owes him — not the country or the constitution or the law, but him — unconditional obedience. And look at what he demanded his obedient minions do: cheat like hell.

Here in Missouri, we’ve seen what demands for unconditional obedience can do. We’ve been dealing with more than just the gerrymandering mess, but also anti-abortion zealots, some of the worst anti-trans laws in the country, and ballot measures that would have neutered the ability of the voters to use initiative petitions to overturn the most idiotic laws the legislature comes up with.

When a leader — any leader — demands unconditional obedience, be afraid. In a religious setting, that’s when you get to Jim Jones or pedophile priests. In an academic setting, this is when you get researchers who twist their data to fit the views of their superiors rather than letting it speak honestly. In a military setting, this is when you get My Lai. In a political setting, this is when you get Adolf Hitler.

We have less than 8 weeks before the elections in November. Many of the races are between candidates who act as if they have sworn unconditional obedience to Trump and candidates who have not. I envision my hypothetical grandkids asking me “How could you have allowed that to happen?”

I don’t want to shrug my shoulders in embarrassment, or bow my head in guilt and shame. And neither should you. It’s time to keep making good trouble.

U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

Lincoln Square Media, Opinion: Bring It, Donald. We’ll Win — Even When You Cheat, Edwin Eisendrath, right, Sept. 12, 2026. We face a determined and powerful adversary that’s cloaked in the now-gilded trappings of our own government and will do anything to erase the integrity of our elections. We can beat him. 

How many of you have heard someone say, “Donald Trump is doing __________ (fill in the blank) and no one cares.” Or someone asks, “Why isn’t anyone stopping him?”

I’ve heard a thousand variations of these complaints. And it isn’t just from Americans. My wife responded to a post on Bluesky saying that we stand with our Canadian friends. What she heard back was, “That’s not good enough. Do something about it.”

It is hard to witness our country torn down, our treasury pillaged, our military purged and abused, our legal structures undermined, our economy sapped, neighbors pitted against neighbors, our scientific leadership squandered, our shrinking status in the world.

Many of us saw this coming when Donald Trump was returned to power by voters longing for change and by the money of corrupt oligarchs. Nearly two years later, the bitter complaints that he has not been stopped are understandable.

But they are also unfair. We live in a democracy, flawed as it is. Ours is not to overthrow the government by force of arms but to oust its leaders at the ballot box. Meanwhile, with discipline and in accordance with our laws, millions of Americans have resisted the worst. We have protested. We have organized. We have signed up to run for office. We have litigated. We have built entirely new media organizations to sound the alarm. We have stood up to protect our neighbors.

And now, our time of choosing has come. Now, all eyes are on us.

Unlike the millions of Americans I just described, Donald Trump and his Republican allies have given up all pretense of fealty to democratic norms. They are engaged in massive and historic election manipulation. They launched and carried out an unprecedented midterm redistricting process across red states. In GOP-controlled states, they also executed massive voter roll purges. Texas closed nearly 100 polling places in Tarrant County, which they’re afraid they’re about to lose.

Trump instructed the United States Postal Service not to deliver mailed ballots unless the sender is on a list he controls. He’s threatened to send troops to polling places. He said he might order the military to seize ballots.

This is the biggest threat to American democracy since the Civil War.

And the world wants to know, are Americans up to the challenge. Are we still a people who will do what it takes to preserve our freedom.SubscribedThe Whole World Is Watching

China sees a sinking America and hope we fail to right our ship. Russia is watching, too. With his guy in our White House, Putin’s unprovoked military assault on Ukraine earned him a red-carpet summit and a trip back to the G20 Summit. Meanwhile, Trump tells Ukraine’s president Zelenskyy that he doesn’t have the cards and shouldn’t count on American military support.

Russia and China are both allied with Iran, sharing intelligence and arms with the nation we’ve been at war with for over six months. All three countries see America’s government as unable to stand up for itself and wonder whether that’s now true of Americans, as well.

Europe is watching. Allied nations that sent their soldiers to die for us after 9/11 in Afghanistan and Iraq want to know whether America has now become their adversary. They wonder what the American people will do when their President threatens to take Greenland by force, threatens their economies with punishing tariffs, and threatens their values, as Trump and J.D. Vance did when they essentially argued the continent was not white enough.

Africa wants to know if Americans are okay with their President calling them “shithole countries,” ending life-saving foreign aid, and making commercial ties contingent upon whether they will accept our shackled deportees.

Latin America wants to know if we will use our military to launch a new colonial era, where our army goes to war to enable American companies to take their natural resources, as Trump did in Venezuela.

Canada, our great neighbor for centuries, now finds the house next door sold to a mob boss and wonders whether Americans will do anything about it or just watch like it’s The Sopranos.

For 250 years, people yearning for freedom anywhere in the world looked to America. Now the whole world is watching to see if that light is extinguished.ArticlesDemocrats Understand the AssignmentEdwin Eisendrath·Aug 9Democrats Understand the Assignment

But here at home, there is no time to watch. There is no room for bystanders who say, “What can we do, they’re cheating?” Our democracy is not a spectator sport. It is not a social media meme. It is, as it ever was, a struggle for freedom.

We face a determined and powerful adversary. One cloaked in the now-gilded trappings of our own government. One that will do anything to erase the integrity of our elections.

Ordinary Americans look at all the power arrayed against us and we say: is that all you’ve got?

That’s what we said in Chicago and Minneapolis last year when over-armed and under-trained ICE agents tried to intimidate us. Americans poured out of their houses and into the path of peril. We were willing to die for our freedom. Renee Good and Alex Pretti did.

This year, tens of millions of us will check our voter registrations and overcome their purges. We will cast our votes in ways to be sure they get counted. We will guard the counting process, and we will demand the winners be seated.

They have power. They have money. We have only ourselves. Bring it on.

Edwin Eisendrath is the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Alderman who hosts It's The Democracy Stupid on Lincoln Square and a weekly radio show on WCPT820AM/ Heartland Signal. 

The Bulwark, Opinion: Fear and Loathing Among the Fearful and Self-Loathing, Sonny Bunch, Sept. 12, 2026. What I saw at Trump’s tribute to Trump in Dallas.

Two separate but concurrent factors drove much of the mood at the midterm convention: the complete lack of accomplishments in the present and a deep uncertainty about the future. The speakers who came onstage spent most of their time railing against the Biden years and warning against a return to his dark ages without ever really settling on a new standard-bearer. This was, theoretically, JD Vance’s coming-out party, and Trump bigfooted him both days, closing out night one with a nearly two-hour ramble and then following Vance’s keynote on night two with a 30-minute rehash of night one’s greatest hits.

There was one figure looming over the event, however. Indeed, the second and final day was timed to the anniversary of his death, one day before 9/11. I speak, of course, of Charlie Kirk, assassinated one year ago and invoked constantly as a martyr for conservatism, as the beacon of light the activists need to see the way forward. And it was incredibly telling that Vance, in trying to square the Iran circle—and after leaking to the New York Times that he was definitely very on the ball in reaching out to military commanders to see just how bad things on the ground in Iran are—appealed not to Donald J. Trump but to . . . Charlie Kirk.

Speaking to the “young men” who felt “inspired by Charlie Kirk” but were turned off by Trump’s breaking his pledge to start no new foreign wars, Vance made a rare acknowledgment: “I think Charlie is a great example of how to disagree but still participate in the work of saving this country.” Vance went on, noting that he talked to Kirk nearly every day, that Kirk loved the president, but that he “hated war.” Presumably, then, he also would have hated this war, the war that Vance himself is so ambivalent about.

It’s a stark contrast to Trump’s language earlier in the day, in an interview with Laura Ingraham. She had nudged up to the unthinkable, suggesting the Republicans would be blowing out the Democrats if not for having gone to war with Iran. “If we hadn’t done Iran, you would be cruising to midterms victory right now. Any regrets?” she asked. “No,” he replied. “I don’t believe in the word regret.” “What do you say to all the young men who supported you in 2024 . . . some of them are demoralized?” “I don’t think they’re demoralized, I think they’re very proud of the fact that I’m not letting Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

Trump remains the standard-bearer for the party; hell, he practically is the party at this point, leading a pledge of allegiance to himself in the hall as the midterm convention drew to a close.

Public Notice, Mike Johnson runs out the clock on his own speakership, Stephen Robinson, Sept. 11, 2026. Mike Johnson, below right, the theoretical speaker of the House, announced last Thursday he’s canceling votes for the last two weeks of September. This leaves just four days of legislative business before the midterms.

His spin is that House Republicans are now free to campaign in their districts, where they can boast to voters about how little they’ve done to address the harm President Trump has inflicted on the nation. This might seem a strange choice: Although Trump and his MAGA goons have openly tried to rig the upcoming midterms, particularly through racial gerrymanders, Democrats are still favored to win back the House. That means Johnson’s tenure as speaker is likely all over but the crying, and he’ll have little to show for it beyond a Wikipedia entry.

That reality hasn’t stopped Johnson from shamelessly lying about his record. He told Fox News last December, “We’ve had one of the most productive Congresses in the history of the institution.” He repeated this wish-casting nonsense in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, ludicrously claiming 2025 was “one of the most productive first years of any Congress in our lifetimes.”Aaron Rupar @atrupar.comMike Johnson: "We've had one of the most productive Congresses in the history of the institution."Fri, 05 Dec 2025 14:22:31 GMTView on Bluesky

But Johnson isn’t closing the store early for a legislative victory lap. He’s trying to avoid a vote on the Epstein Transparency Act II, which would permit Epstein’s victims, state attorneys general, and members of Congress to sue the Justice Department for failing to disclose documents as required under last year’s original Epstein Transparency Act.

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie has started collecting signatures for a discharge petition that would bypass the speaker and force a vote on the floor. When Massie suggested Johnson might end the House session early to avoid the vote, Johnson mocked the accusation as “stupid” and “nonsensical.” Now, he’s running scared.Speaker Johnson's beginning of the endSpeaker Johnson's beginning of the endNoah Berlatsky·Apr 21Read full story

This latest showcase of the speaker’s fecklessness leads to an obvious conclusion: Johnson struggles at the basic blocking and tackling of his job.

He constantly loses votes he shouldn’t. Even a performative resolution denouncing socialism and supporting the SAVE America Act almost failed to get to the floor because of internal party squabbling. It was salvaged only because moderate Democratic Reps. Jared Golden and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez crossed party lines and voted with Republicans to pass the necessary procedural rule to start debate.

Johnson has a slim majority, yes, but he lacks former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s skill at keeping members in line. The recent defection of the Democratic moderates was a rare lapse for Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who mostly keeps his diverse caucus unified, whereas Johnson frequently endures public humiliation. He’s set a record for the number of rules vote failures, and he’s been forced to pull legislation from the floor once it was clear he lacked the votes. (Pelosi has mocked his apparent weak command of his members.)

There’s another unfortunate record that Johnson has set: Since 2023, the number of successful discharge petitions that brought bills to the floor over the speaker’s objections have matched those passed over the past four decades.

It’s said that the speaker’s job is “like herding cats,” but Johnson just lets the more feral members run wild. Meanwhile, he’s completely surrendered the House’s constitutional role as a co-equal branch of government, and when the pressures mount, his solution is usually to flee the premises. 

New York Times, Opinion: Trump Catastrophically Miscalculated in Georgia, Michelle Cottle, Sept. 12, 2026. When a political player starts drawing personal insults from President Trump and his people, it is a pretty good sign that his star is on the rise.

For Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, that moment arrived this summer. In July, Mr. Trump dubbed the fresh-faced lawmaker “Pee-wee Herman.” The next month, upset over Mr. Ossoff’s criticism of the president, one aide called Mr. Ossoff a “feminine theater kid” and a “lightweight loser,” and another derided him as “a miserable person” and “the biggest cuck loser in politics,” while deploying a sexually explicit moniker unfit for a family-friendly publication.

Mr. Ossoff gives as good as he gets. Maybe better. He has derided Mr. Trump as “a failed president,” “a national disgrace” and a “draft-dodging crook.” This anti-Trump feistiness has boosted the senator’s standing in his party and turbocharged his re-election campaign. Once talked about as the most vulnerable Democratic senator of the cycle, he is now being talked up as a hot presidential possibility for 2028.

If Mr. Ossoff winds up in the White House, Mr. Trump will have largely himself to blame. The president didn’t just help him win his seat. He also spent years undermining the Republican Party in Georgia, sowing internecine discord, championing losing candidates and destroying conservative voters’ faith in the electoral system. With impressive, if unintentional, drive, Mr. Trump has fostered the conditions that transformed Mr. Ossoff from a charmingly nerdy, vaguely awkward, low-key freshman lawmaker into a political star.

Not all of it is Mr. Trump’s fault. Demographics have partly driven Georgia’s political turn from red to purple. The state’s populace is young, and a growing majority belongs to racial or ethnic minority groups. Republicans cannot win statewide contests simply by turning out the MAGA base. And over the past decade-plus, Democratic organizers, including Stacey Abrams and her New Georgia Project, have done yeoman’s labor mobilizing the blue team.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

But the president has done much to speed the shift. Most famously, his election fraud lunacy after losing the state in 2020 depressed Republican turnout and cost the party both Senate seats in runoffs held in January 2021. This tipped control of the chamber to the Democrats, a mark of shame that sat poorly with many Georgia Republicans.

Mr. Trump’s ensuing feud with Gov. Brian Kemp, a fellow Republican who refused to help overturn the state’s 2020 election results, greased the state party’s slide into extremism and obsolescence. The rise of MAGA elevated the far right, most prominently the Georgia Republican Assembly, a grass-roots group that has feuded fiercely with more mainstream Republicans and pushed to impose arbitrary purity tests on candidates. In 2023, the group unsuccessfully pressed the state party to pass a rule blocking candidates from running who were insufficiently conservative or traitors to the party. (This of course included Mr. Kemp and Brad Raffensperger, the state’s secretary of state, who refused to “find” Mr. Trump 11,780 extra votes.)

As Team MAGA took over the state party apparatus, Mr. Kemp and other elected leaders distanced themselves from it, creating parallel fund-raising and voter turnout machines. The state G.O.P. got bogged down in niche issues, such as a crusade for paper ballots, that are not top-of-mind concerns even for most Republican voters.

Republican elected officials now view the state party not as an organ for helping get them elected so much as one aimed at litigating grievances against G.O.P. officials and candidates deemed insufficiently MAGA, party operatives have told me.

Mr. Trump himself continues meddling, despite having displayed a reverse Midas touch in statewide races. In the 2022 midterms, his preferred candidates lost their primaries for governor, secretary of state, attorney general and insurance commissioner. Herschel Walker, Mr. Trump’s pick to face Senator Raphael Warnock, won the primary but lost the general.

Mr. Trump narrowly carried Georgia in 2024. But less than two years later, his approval numbers are deep underwater there. In this summer’s primary, his pick for governor, Burt Jones, lost to the businessman Rick Jackson.

As for this year’s Senate race, Republicans had aggressively courted Mr. Kemp to take on Mr. Ossoff. He declined. Allies of his told me at the time that he decided it was not worth another brutal statewide campaign — with at best grudging acceptance by a president and a MAGA movement that had long vilified him — to be just another member of the party’s Senate roster. And so the G.O.P. was left to pick from a constellation of lesser lights.

Enter Mike Collins, the Trump-backed horse in the race. The hard-right representative emerged from a nasty G.O.P. primary tarnished by scandal, short on campaign cash, polling well behind Mr. Ossoff and facing grave doubts among many Republicans in the state that he can turn things around. Mr. Collins isn’t really an anti-establishment outsider; his father was a House member. But he rocks the middle-finger swagger and the country-fried good-ol’-boy shtick — complete with a mullet, his critics marvel — that tends to thrill the MAGA base. Many big-money donors are skeptical of him, and he is expected to be a hard sell among the more traditional Republicans, independents and swing voters who determine statewide races.

Mr. Collins’s scandals and missteps have not helped. Several people in his orbit, including his son-in-law, have been chummy with white nationalists, publicly promoted white nationalism or been otherwise accused of antisemitic behavior. Rather than swiftly addressing the dust-up within his family, Mr. Collins refused to answer questions and allowed the mess to drag on for weeks before firmly declaring himself not a racist.

The representative is also under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over allegations that his office misspent taxpayer funds on a no-show paid internship for the girlfriend of his longtime chief of staff, Brandon Phillips. (Mr. Collins has denied impropriety.)

Compounding the awkwardness, Mr. Collins fired Mr. Phillips in May, in response to the aide’s offensive posting on social media. Then the representative had to replace his subsequent chief of staff, Kip Talley, because of his participation in a group chat that included Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer, notorious white nationalists. Even the party’s nominee for governor, Mr. Jackson, is keeping a healthy distance from Mr. Collins.

This all serves to fuel the emerging mythos of Mr. Ossoff. The 39-year-old senator — still the youngest in the chamber — stands poised to romp to re-election in a state made more purple by Mr. Trump’s machinations. Better still, Mr. Ossoff’s choirboy looks and often earnest demeanor, coupled with his taste for political combat and his social media savvy, give him an edge in the political mud pits. He can land some pretty rough insults without coming across as nasty or extreme.

In June, my colleague Michelle Goldberg noted that Mr. Ossoff seemed to have been cooked up in a lab as the perfect Democratic candidate for 2028. The rich irony is that Mr. Trump has been a — maybe even the — most important cook.

Special Report: Nebraska Governor's Undocumented Workers Scandal

New York Times, As He Backs ICE Crackdown, Nebraska Governor Employs Undocumented Workers, Yanqi Xu (a reporter for Flatwater Free Press. She examined the agricultural industry in Nebraska as a part of The Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship), Sept. 9, 2026. Gov. Jim Pillen’s family business is one of the nation’s largest pork producers. As he seeks re-election, he has aligned himself with President Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda even though his farms have taken on undocumented laborers.

Before becoming Nebraska’s governor three years ago, Jim Pillen built a multimillion-dollar hog enterprise. Casting himself as a conservative businessman who would grow the state’s economy, he defeated a Trump-backed candidate in the Republican primary.

This time around, Mr. Pillen, who is seeking re-election this fall, won President Trump’s endorsement. The governor — who had rarely spoken out about immigration issues until last year — had embraced Mr. Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda.

Days after Mr. Trump’s return to the White House, the governor directed the Nebraska State Patrol to partner with ICE on immigration enforcement. He allowed the federal agency to use a former state prison, now referred to as Cornhusker Clink, to hold hundreds of detainees caught up in the administration’s mass deportation sweep. He has echoed Mr. Trump’s rhetoric about “criminal illegal aliens” who have “invaded our country” and decried “the worst of the worst” immigrants he has claimed are hiding out in Nebraska.

But for more than a decade, Mr. Pillen’s hog business has employed migrant workers, those who are in the country legally — and those who are not, The New York Times and The Flatwater Free Press found.

His company, Pillen Family Farms, has taken on undocumented workers as it has grown into one of the nation’s largest hog producers, according to a review of state and federal court records and interviews with more than 40 current and former employees, prosecutors, immigration lawyers and community organizers.

Many farms in Nebraska and other states rely on immigrants because of labor shortages. While the scale of undocumented workers in the Pillen farm labor force — which has about 1,200 employees in four states and Canada — is not clear, the fact that the company has used them is an open secret at some of its Nebraska farms.

Mr. Pillen has faced little public scrutiny about his workers. His spokeswoman, Laura Strimple, said in a statement that “Jim Pillen never knowingly hired an illegal immigrant and went above and beyond the legal requirements to verify the immigration status of his employees.”

Mr. Pillen in a blue suit and red tie at an event at the statehouse.Mr. Pillen, who has served as governor since 2023, started what became Pillen Family Farms more than three decades ago with 60 sows on a dirt lot.Credit...Nikos Frazier/Omaha World-Herald

At least 20 Pillen hog farms employed undocumented immigrants, according to court documents and interviews with more than two dozen current and former workers, including several managers. Six former workers acknowledged in interviews that they themselves had no legal status.

Court records show that at least a dozen Pillen workers were charged with using fake or stolen IDs for employment between 2015 and 2024. Many Pillen workers interviewed said the practice was common. At least 10 who assumed false identities, according to them or their relatives, never faced criminal charges for that.

David Armendariz, a Mexican who overstayed his tourist visa in 2008, said he worked at two Pillen farms until 2023. When he was hired, he recalled in an interview, a farm manager accepted the fake driver’s license he had purchased. The same ID was rejected years later, he said, when he applied for a construction job elsewhere.

Over the years, Mr. Armendariz said, more Hispanic workers arrived at the farms, many of them undocumented. One co-worker changed his name multiple times, he said, and another went by a different name from the one on his sign-in sheets. Mr. Armendariz said he was open about his own status. “Everyone knows that it’s not your name,” he said, “but they don’t ask you what your name is.”

Quinten Rowley, who managed two boar farms for Mr. Pillen’s business until 2022, said the company ramped up background checks for applicants about the time Mr. Pillen decided to run for governor. After that, Mr. Rowley said, he had to turn away more applicants.

Samuel Bethune, Platte County’s public defender until 2009, said he had represented hundreds of undocumented immigrants every year, most of them employed in meatpacking plants. He recalled that a few clients charged with traffic offenses identified themselves as Pillen workers but lacked valid employment documents.ImageA large building with silos.A feed mill in Inland operated by Pillen Family Farms. The governor’s children Sarah and Brock have run the company since he took office.Credit...Loren Elliott for The New York Times

ICE identified no records of audits or inspections at Pillen farms in the past 15 years after a request from The Times and Flatwater. The federal agency has raided relatively few workplaces in Nebraska. The largest and highest-profile one was an Omaha meatpacking plant where more than 70 workers were arrested in June 2025 over alleged identity theft.

After the raid, Mr. Pillen suggested in interviews that ICE would not target established immigrants. “Anybody that is here working hard and being a good neighbor, they’re A-OK, they’re fine,” the governor told The Nebraska Examiner. But he also said that stealing identities was a “grave offense.”

The governor did not respond to interview requests and declined to answer written questions for this article. Mr. Pillen’s spokeswoman said in her statement that he “has the strongest immigration record in Nebraska history. Under the governor’s leadership, Nebraska has assisted the federal government in the deportation of nearly 1,000 illegal immigrants through its variety of partnerships with federal entities.”

ICE has arrested more than 3,000 people in Nebraska since Mr. Trump’s second term, more than doubling the rate under the Biden administration. By comparison, in Minnesota, the epicenter of some of the nation’s most aggressive urban immigration enforcement operations, such arrests have more than quadrupled, according to an analysis of ICE data released by the Deportation Data Project.

Federal officials have largely avoided clashes with agricultural employers in states that helped re-elect Mr. Trump, according to agricultural producers and labor economists.

“If you’re going to come and pound on farmers in Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, whatever, and daily raid their farms or their processing plants, you’re going to have some problems politically,” said Al Juhnke, former executive director of the Nebraska Pork Producers Association. “The farms are right smack dab in the middle of red areas.”Hogs, Farmhands and Fake NamesImageA large building with a sign bearing a pig insignia and the name “Wholestone Farms.”The Pillen family has a stake in a large pork-processing business where dozens of workers have been charged with using fraudulent IDs to work since 2019.Credit...Loren Elliott for The New York Times

The first farmer to lead Nebraska in more than a century, Mr. Pillen often talks about his agricultural roots. He grew up with livestock on his small family farm in Platte County in northeast Nebraska.

A Cornhusker football standout at the University of Nebraska, he studied animal science and then worked as a veterinarian before launching his own business more than three decades ago. What is known as Pillen Family Farms, based in Columbus, started with 60 sows, or female pigs, on a dirt lot.

Now, after expanding and buying out competitors, the company owns about 100 farms in Nebraska alone, with workforces ranging from a handful to dozens of people. Since Mr. Pillen became governor, his children Sarah and Brock have run the company, which ranks No. 14 nationally on the Pork Powerhouses list, with 78,000 sows.

The family also owns a hog-breeding business and has a minor stake in Wholestone Prestage, which operates a pork-processing co-op in Fremont owned by some 200 producers. Since 2019, at least 56 Wholestone workers have been charged with using fraudulent IDs to work, according to state court records. More than half pleaded guilty or were convicted, several cases are going through court, and the other defendants fled or failed to appear. Wholestone did not respond to requests for comment.ImagePigs held in pens arriving at a slaughterhouse.Workers at hog farms labor long hours for relatively little pay to keep the hog barns running. They vaccinate pigs, feed them, move and ship them.Credit...Loren Elliott for The New York Times

At Pillen farms and elsewhere, workers labor long hours for relatively little pay to keep the hog barns running. They vaccinate pigs, feed them, move and ship them. The job is one that most Nebraskans do not want, hog farmers said in interviews.

Facing labor shortages, large corporate hog producers in recent decades have turned to a workforce of immigrants, whether legal or not, according to John K. Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union.

Gary Stover, a consultant who helped a local producer manage a hog farm in Shelby, said in an interview that he replaced the crew there with Hispanic laborers in 2010 because their work ethic impressed him. He said that one employee there used a fake name, and that his other consulting clients also had undocumented workers with falsified documents.Local InvestigationsThis article was reported and edited as part of the Local Investigations Fellowship, a New York Times program where local reporters produce investigative work about their communities.

Nathan Dallon, an immigration lawyer in Omaha who has defended hundreds of undocumented workers against criminal charges like identity theft and driving without a license, said Nebraska’s agriculture industry operated on the premise that there would be unauthorized migrant labor.

“H.R. for a lot of these companies are incentivized to take on workers that they know are using fake papers,” he said in an interview. “Sometimes they even help them get the fake papers, and then they know full well that they are making the crime worse for the person working.” (Mr. Dallon, citing client confidentiality, declined to say whether he had ever represented Pillen workers.)

Global News

President Trump with Micheál Martin, the taoiseach, or prime minister, or Ireland, at the Farmleigh House in Dublin on Saturday,Sept. 12, 2026. (New York Times photo by Alex Kent). 

New York Times, Trump Says Irish Unification Would Be ‘Fantastic,’ Breaking With Precedent, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Luke Broadwater, Sept. 12, 2026. The United States is officially neutral on an issue that had been a source of decades of violence in Northern Ireland until a 1998 peace deal.

Shortly after setting foot in Dublin, President Trump on Saturday said it would be “fantastic” if Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland unified, breaking with decades of U.S. neutrality on an issue rooted in a long history of violence.

“I don’t want to cause any problem. I will tell you, I’d love to see it unified,” Mr. Trump said in Dublin alongside Micheál Martin, Ireland’s taoiseach, or prime minister. “It’s going to happen eventually.”

He later seemed to acknowledge that he had stepped into a politically problematic topic.

The American president said he still believed it would “be a cool thing” if Northern Ireland broke away from the United Kingdom, but joked that half the room would clear out after hearing his remarks.

“No matter how well you say it, there’s no good answer,” Mr. Trump told a crowd of embassy employees and business leaders gathered at Deerfield Residence, where the U.S. ambassador lives.

The United States has long supported the U.S.-brokered 1998 Belfast Agreement, also known as the Good Friday Agreement, which ended roughly three decades of violence between those seeking a united Ireland and unionists who wanted Northern Ireland to remain a part of the United Kingdom.

Part of that deal was that Northern Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom until a majority of its people voted otherwise in a referendum.

In keeping with his freewheeling approach to the global stage, Mr. Trump has mused about the unification of Ireland before. Earlier this year, he suggested there should be a “merger” between Northern Ireland and Ireland because of how well Mr. Martin got along with Northern Ireland’s deputy first minister, Emma Little-Pengelly. She later said the comment was made in jest and should not be taken seriously.

Mr. Trump’s comment on Saturday came just days after Andy Burnham, the recently elected British prime minister, said there was not enough public support for a referendum on Northern Ireland leaving the United Kingdom and until there was “there will not be one.” Mr. Trump himself acknowledged on Saturday that the government in London would most likely “have something to say about” about his comments on reunification.

Patrick Dwyer-Cummins, a spokesman for 10 Downing Street, said that Mr. Burnham’s position remained unchanged and he was committed to upholding the Good Friday Agreement.

But Mr. Trump’s comment did indeed prompt some immediate criticism.

Gavin Robinson, the leader of Northern Ireland’s main pro-union party, said on social media that “President Trump knows better than most that elections matter.”

“Northern Ireland’s constitutional future will be decided by the people of Northern Ireland, not by commentary in London, Dublin or Washington,” he said. “Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom because that is the settled democratic will of its people.”

The reference to reunification was not the only unconventional aspect of Mr. Trump’s remarks.

American presidents, when speaking overseas, typically have refrained from lacing into their domestic rivals. But Mr. Trump used his speech in Dublin to repeatedly attack Democrats, including describing former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has cancer, as physically infirm. Mr. Biden, who has Irish ancestry, traveled to Northern Ireland in 2023 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

New York Times, In an Irish Village, Trump’s Visit for a Golf Tournament Prompts Protests and Praise, Megan Specia, Sept. 12, 2026. As the U.S. president heads to his Doonbeg hotel for the Irish Open, locals expressed both appreciation for the resort’s economic benefits and opposition to his politics.

Festive bunting was strung between shops along the tiny main street in Doonbeg, a village on the west coast of Ireland. Temporary signs pointed the way down freshly paved roads toward the nearby Trump International golf resort, where the Irish Open is underway this week. The smell of paint hung in the air.

“If you stood still in the village long enough over the last two months, you would have been painted yourself,” Rita McInerney, a local councilor and lifelong resident, said with a laugh, speaking proudly about Doonbeg’s spruce-up ahead of the tournament. “It’s given us a great opportunity, I suppose, to get a lot done.”

President Trump is set to attend the tournament on Saturday and Sunday, a moment that will briefly cast the village of around 200 people into the international spotlight.

In Ireland, where polls consistently show a majority of people disagree with the president’s politics, Mr. Trump’s expected arrival had drawn opposition in the form of planned protests, newspaper columns denouncing his visit and even a sand mural. Yet in Doonbeg, a rural place where jobs can be scarce, there was also acknowledgment that the Trump-owned hotel plays an important role in the local economy.ImageA complex of light-colored buildings with gray roofs and chimneys. A manicured lawn and wild, dry grass are in the foreground.Trump International Golf Links & Hotel in Doonbeg in 2023. The Irish Open is being held at the resort for the first time since the tournament began in 1927. Credit...Damien Storan/Reuters

The Trump Organization, Mr. Trump’s family business, has undoubtedly invested in the community, said Ms. McInerney, whose family has lived in the village for seven generations. And she noted that the diplomatic ties between Ireland and the United States were important to the entire country.

“There’s much of Donald Trump’s presidency and politics that I wouldn’t agree with,” she said. “But we also have to be mindful of the relationship between Ireland and the U.S.”

Others expressed their strong opposition to his visit, like Mary O’Donoghue, a community worker in the area, who said she had long refused to set foot in the hotel because of its connection to Mr. Trump.

“I think he has caused damage globally, but that is also felt locally,” said Ms. O’Donoghue, 58, pointing to fuel prices, which soared after the start of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran and remain elevated, pushing up the cost of living around the world.

She said she recognized that many people working in the hotel felt deep pride about the Irish Open being hosted there for the first time, but said that many also felt torn, adding, “He’s robbed our enjoyment of it.”ImageA portable orange electronic sign announcing a road closure, with a street and buildings in the background.Preparations in Doonbeg, Ireland, on Thursday, ahead of President Trump’s visit during the Irish Open golf tournament, which runs Friday through Sunday.Credit...Claudia Savage/Press Association, via Associated Press

After departing Washington on Friday night, Mr. Trump arrived on Saturday morning in Dublin, where he will meet with Micheál Martin, the taoiseach, or prime minister, of Ireland, and President Catherine Connolly, the ceremonial head of state, before traveling to Doonbeg. The visit comes as Mr. Trump’s relationship with Europe has grown deeply strained, with the president repeatedly laying into traditional allies for not joining his war on Iran and berating them over their policy choices on immigration and fossil fuels.

Mr. Martin has navigated this difficult diplomacy before, on two official visits to the White House for St. Patrick’s Day. On his latest visit in March, he won plaudits in Ireland for gently pushing back as the president rebuked European allies.

But Mr. Trump remains an unpopular figure in Ireland, a country with deep diplomatic, cultural and economic ties to the United States. A February poll from the Irish Times, conducted before the U.S. and Israel launched the war in Iran, suggested that 61 percent of those polled did not want President Trump to attend the Irish Open.

Thousands of protesters gathered in Dublin during his last official visit to Ireland in 2019. (President Trump also visited Doonbeg then, after meeting with government leaders.) Protests are again expected in Dublin on Saturday afternoon, with groups rallying under the message “No Welcome for Trump,” as well as at Shannon Airport and in Doonbeg.

On Tuesday, the discontent was already visible when a campaign group created a large sand mural on a Dublin beach with the message, “No Kings.” That was a deliberate echo of the mass protest movement in the United States, where demonstrations have denounced the president’s actions under a self-stated goal of fighting dictatorship.

Siobhán O’Donoghue, the executive director of Uplift, the campaign group behind the display, said that when the eyes of the world were on Ireland, the group felt it was important to counter Mr. Trump’s claims of broad support. During his meeting with Mr. Martin in March, he had declared, “I think the Irish love Trump.”

“We just can’t capitulate to that narrative that people in Ireland somehow or another are backing Trump,” she said, adding that there would of course be some outliers who agree with his politics. “All it takes is for good people to stay silent for an incorrect view to be drawn.”

In Doonbeg, security was already high around the resort early this week, with roads blocked off and the entrance closed to the public days before the tournament began. The Irish Open, a stop on professional golf’s European tour, includes stars like Rory McIlroy and has brought tens of thousands of spectators to the area. A major police operation will be underway through the weekend.ImageOn a bright green golf course, a person is putting, with three other people observing. Many spectators are on a large, grassy slope behind them.

New York Times, A Visa Dispute Is Threatening a U.S.-Brazil Effort to Fight Crime, Ana Ionova and Edward Wong, Sept. 12, 2026. Officials say the Trump administration is blocking some of Brazil’s efforts to expand cooperation on fighting transnational crime.

A diplomatic rift is hindering cooperation between the United States and Brazil on jointly fighting organized crime, according to U.S. and Brazilian officials, an issue the Trump administration has placed at the center of its agenda in the Western Hemisphere.

The State Department is withholding visas for two Brazilian federal police agents assigned to posts in the United States, where they would be working with U.S. Homeland Security Investigations and other federal agencies to combat transnational crimes, according to one American and three senior Brazilian officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

In response, Brazil is now also blocking the visa of a U.S. law enforcement official meant to be stationed in the country, according to the American and Brazilian officials.

The U.S. government, citing a busy agenda, also declined a request for a visit by Brazilian customs and revenue agents investigating money laundering and arms smuggling by international drug gangs, according to two other Brazilian officials.

Brazil and the United States have a long history of jointly investigating international crimes, like fraud and trafficking, and sending law enforcement officials to each other’s countries. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has had an attaché in Brazil for over two decades.

In the past, joint action by Brazil and the United States has helped the authorities dismantle international corruption schemes, piracy networks and human trafficking rings.

That type of close cooperation, experts say, is becoming crucial for fighting Latin America’s drug gangs, which have more resources and greater geographic reach than ever before.

“Today, criminal factions know no borders,” said Edvandir Felix de Paiva, the president of Brazil’s association of federal police commissioners. “So we need to be working together.”

The recent disruptions in cooperation, which have not been previously reported, come against a backdrop of strained relations over the past year, stemming from President Trump’s attempts to meddle in Brazil’s internal affairs. This rift has only deepened in recent months with the administration’s apparent readiness to help Flávio Bolsonaro, the right-wing candidate challenging President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist, in Brazil’s elections in October. 

More On U.S. Media, Education, Economy

Associated Press, For the US news industry, a tough summer draws to a close with McClatchy chain’s cuts, Jocelyn Noveck, Sept. 10, 2026. Closing out a turbulent summer for the news industry, the McClatchy newspaper chain has made deep cuts at The Miami Herald and other papers it owns across the nation.

The union that represents McClatchy journalists said Friday that more than 90 unionized journalists and media workers across 17 publications had been laid off, accounting for about 30 percent of all McClatchy workers unionized with The NewsGuild-CWA. The layoffs have impacted news outlets including The Sacramento Bee, The Kansas City Star, The Charlotte Observer, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and others.

“We are waist-deep in the quicksand and we are still sinking,” Carol Marbin Miller, deputy investigations editor of The Miami Herald, said in a phone interview.

Marbin Miller, who was not impacted by the layoffs, told The Associated Press she was speaking out to stress how dire the situation was at her paper, where a total of 32 jobs were cut. Those included 28 lost jobs and four positions that were frozen, according to a person familiar with the situation, speaking on condition of anonymity. They included the entire writing staff of El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish-language publication.

“Miami is the biggest city in Florida,” Marbin Miller said. “Florida is a crucial state. I can’t imagine any scenario in which Miami no longer has a vibrant, powerful news outlet. It’s just too important.”

A McClatchy spokesperson did not respond to an email requesting comment or information.

The U.S. newspaper industry has been contracting for two decades, pushed first by the rise of the internet and the decline of classified advertising, then by the fragmentation introduced by social media and evolving user consumption habits. More recently, many newspaper operations have reduced or cut print editions. Media advocacy groups warn that fewer eyes of accountability are on U.S. communities and their governments and institutions.Related StoriesBritish police try to track down theft of 70,000 pints worth of Guinness stoutBritish police try to track down theft of 70,000 pints worth of Guinness stout3 MIN READ11Miami to decide fate of stunning stadium where speedboats raced and Jimmy Buffett playedMiami to decide fate of stunning stadium where speedboats raced and Jimmy Buffett played4 MIN READInter Miami hosts Nashville in non-conference actionInter Miami hosts Nashville in non-conference action4 MIN READInternal memo says a ‘different choice’ was required

All those laid off from McClatchy were informed on Thursday. Later, an internal memo from Greg Farmer, executive vice president of local news, seen by the AP, told staff: “For the past five years, McClatchy made a deliberate choice to maintain our investment in local news reporters. We believed continued investment in our journalism would strengthen our relationship with subscribers and our business.”

“We measured the results,” Farmer added. “The results are clear and require us to make a different choice ... We are making these changes because the status quo no longer works. We cannot continue investing where subscriber interest does not support the investment.”

The union said four McClatchy papers in Washington state had lost seven reporters in total. “Tacoma will no longer have even a single dedicated journalist tracking city hall, Pierce County government or local schools,” it said. Other cuts included the only two investigative reporters at The Charlotte Observer, and a team of government accountability reporters at The Kansas City Star.

More On Epstein Files, Trump Team Coverup

Last Page First, Investigative Commentary: Who Bought Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch? Inside the Huffines Family, Jana, right, Sept. 12, 2026. The Huffines family had the money to buy almost any kind of property they wanted. They bought Jeffrey Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico.

By 2023, Zorro Ranch was not just another property sitting on the market. Epstein had owned it for decades. Survivors had described being taken there. It had a private airstrip, a huge main house, guest buildings, staff housing, stables and years of history tied directly to him. There were still unanswered questions about what happened there, who used the property and what had never been fully investigated.

Epstein’s estate originally listed the ranch for $27.5 million, then dropped the asking price to $18 million. On August 15, 2023, Cypress Inc. signed the deed transferring the ranch to San Rafael Ranch LLC. The deed was recorded in Santa Fe County the following day. The Huffines name did not appear in the transfer. It surfaced later, through the property-tax fight.Donald Huffines and Mary Catherine Huffines with family. - CultureMap DallasDonald and Mary Catherine Huffines with their family. Photo: CultureMap Dallas.The Name Buried in the Tax File

Mary Catherine Huffines’ name appears in a separate San Rafael Ranch LLC property-tax protest package, where she is identified as trustee/property owner representative. The paperwork also ties San Rafael Ranch LLC to the Huffines family’s Dallas business network. Another New Mexico company connected to the property, San Rafael One LLC, was linked through public business filings to their son Colin Huffines.

Using an LLC to own property is normal. What was not obvious from the sale itself was who stood behind this one. The tax fight made that easier to trace. Santa Fe County valued the ranch at $28,128,566 for the 2024 protest. San Rafael Ranch LLC asked for $8 million. On the protest form, the reason was simply “value too high.”San Rafael Ranch’s 2024 tax protest, with the county’s $28.1 million valuation and the owner’s $8 million figure. Source: Santa Fe County Assessor’s Office, 2024 Protest Petition.

San Rafael later amended its figure to $12,284,381. The county board adopted that value for the ranch.Santa Fe County’s 2024 valuation decision for San Rafael Ranch. Source: Santa Fe County Valuation Protests Board, Oct. 28, 2024.

The tax fight is what made the ownership easier to trace.Why Did They Want It?

The Huffines family has said they had no prior connection to Epstein and had never visited the ranch before it came up for sale. I went looking for evidence that they knew him before 2023 and I have not found it. Don Huffines does not appear in the flight logs, the address book or the Epstein correspondence I reviewed. I have not found Mary Catherine in the public EFTA material, and I have not found a documented business relationship connecting Epstein to HEST, Huffines Communities or the family before the purchase. I may find something later. Right now, I do not have it. So if they had no history with Epstein, why this ranch?

Don’s son Devin Huffines later gave Newsmax cameras access to the property and talked about why the family bought it. He said the women in the family were initially against the purchase because of the ranch’s history, and that they were reassured after being told the sale proceeds would go to Epstein’s victims. He also said the family had been told the investigations into the ranch were over before they bought it. That is the part I keep coming back to. Who told them that? The estate? The broker? An attorney? Law enforcement? Was it in writing? What exactly were they told about evidence, previous searches, unresolved investigative interest or whether authorities might want access again?Devin Huffines speaking to Newsmax from inside the former Zorro Ranch, July 2026. Screenshot: Newsmax.

Devin also talked about what the family wants to do with the ranch. They renamed it San Rafael Ranch after the Archangel Raphael and brought in a traditional Catholic priest from Ohio for a three-day exorcism. He talked about prayer and fasting cabins, horseback riding, hunting, fishing and a shooting range. But that still leaves the bigger question of what this place is actually becoming. There is little public detail on who will run it, whether it stays private, whether a religious or nonprofit group will be built around it, whether outside groups will use it, whether guests will pay to stay there or how much of the ranch they plan to rebuild.They Started Changing the Property

The ranch started changing after the sale. A new entrance went up. Religious imagery appeared. Landscaping and construction followed, and officials eventually stopped the work because the required permits were not in place. On another property, that might be a minor local issue. Here, New Mexico still had unanswered questions about what had happened at Zorro Ranch, and the property had never received the kind of thorough search many people had been asking for. A former FBI agent serving on the state’s Epstein commission publicly warned that construction could interfere with possible evidence. By the time New Mexico finally searched the ranch in March 2026, the property had already been under construction.New entrance under construction at San Rafael Ranch, formerly Zorro Ranch, after the property changed hands.

The Huffines family later cooperated with investigators and let New Mexico authorities onto the property. By then, the ranch had already been renamed and physically changed. Don Huffines is not new to development. He co-founded Huffines Communities with his twin brother Phillip in 1985, and his own biography describes it as one of the largest residential development firms in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Given that background, the permit problem is harder to chalk up to inexperience.The Family Around the Ranch

This is not just about Don. Mary Catherine is the name that helped bring the family’s ownership into view, and Texas Ethics Commission filings show she loaned Don’s campaign $150,000 in 2025. Their son Colin has turned up in records tied to San Rafael entities. Devin is the one speaking publicly about the ranch, why the family bought it and what they want to turn it into. Russell shows up somewhere else entirely. Campaign records listed him as vice president of HEST Investments, and by July 2026 the White House listed Russell P. Huffines as Deputy Director of Cabinet Affairs.

The family’s reach goes well beyond the ranch. Don is now Texas Comptroller. Russell works in the White House. Don and his twin brother Phillip also traveled to Moscow with Sen. Rand Paul in 2018 and met with Russian officials, including members of the Federation Council.Rand Paul Endorses Don Huffines for Governor — The Amarillo PioneerDon Huffines with Sen. Rand Paul.

Follow the family out from Zorro Ranch and the story gets bigger fast. Their money and connections run through Texas politics, national politics and the White House.HEST

HEST Investments is the family office Don Huffines runs. Its investments include biotechnology, life sciences, technology and cybersecurity. In 2024, HEST announced a $1 million investment in American Binary, a company working on post quantum encryption. It also led a $1.8 million investment vehicle for Secretome Therapeutics, a regenerative medicine company running an FDA regulated clinical program.HEST Investments Announces Strategic Investment in American Binary to Drive Quantum Computing SecurityHEST Investments, the Huffines family office focused on biotechnology, life sciences, technology and cybersecurity. Image: HEST Investments.

HEST’s money is moving through some very specific sectors. Regenerative medicine. Biotechnology. Cybersecurity. Advanced encryption. That same family now owns Zorro Ranch. I have not found documentation tying any of those investments to the property.

ShareSo Why This Ranch?

The strongest documented connection between the Huffines family and Jeffrey Epstein is still the simplest one. They bought his ranch.

I have not found a pre-2023 relationship between the family and Epstein. I have not found Don in the flight logs or address book, Mary Catherine in the public EFTA material, HEST doing business with him or a Huffines company tied to Zorro Development Corp. What I have found is a wealthy, politically connected family with decades in real estate and private investment that chose to buy one of the most notorious properties tied to Epstein.

Devin Huffines has said the purchase caused disagreement inside the family before it happened. They knew what the ranch was and knew its history.

By the time investigators returned in March 2026, the property had already changed. Construction had begun, the ranch had been renamed, and Devin Huffines says the family had been told before the purchase that the investigations were over. A priest had been brought in for a three-day exorcism, and the family was publicly describing plans for a Christian retreat.Investigators search former Epstein ranchAerial view of the former Zorro Ranch in March 2026, showing a large excavated area beside the main residence where the former helipad/labyrinth had been located.

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez has also reported that a source close to the family said the ranch was used for a private Huffines family event in 2024 and that attendees were required to sign NDAs. She has also reported that the Christian retreat explanation came later. I have not independently obtained the NDAs, a guest list or an event contract, so there is still more of that timeline I want to pin down, including whether private events were held there after the sale, whether confidentiality agreements were used and when the retreat plan first appeared in writing.

I want the sale file and the due diligence material. I want to see whatever told the family the investigations were finished, along with the earliest retreat plans, permits, contractors, financing and ownership structure behind the redevelopment. I also want to know exactly what was still on the property when they took possession and what changed before investigators returned.

Maybe the Christian retreat was already the plan. I want to see when that plan first existed on paper.

This is a family with decades of experience in real estate and private investment. They bought Jeffrey Epstein’s ranch knowing exactly whose property it had been. Devin has said its history caused disagreement inside the family before the sale.

They bought it anyway.

 Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions

White House aides Steven Cheung, left, and Stephen Miller.

Lance's Substack, Opinion: Who Is Maintaining The Ruse That Trump Is Mentally Competent For Office? Lance F Rosen, right, Sept. 12, 2026. How Do We Pull The Curtain On All Of It?

Everything runs through Stephen Miller. The press secretary and White House Comms team led by Stephen Cheung are running the propaganda side under Miller’s direction.

Now they have a new blonde Nazi Barbie to run the press shop, and she is experienced at reading scripts from her ESPN experience.

Lance’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Subscribed

The FCC chair Brendan Carr is the “muscle,” strong-arming the networks to censor critics and lie about him, covering for him, with the Israeli operatives at CBS like Bari Weiss and the Ellisons, Paramount, Disney, and the social media billionaires flanking them. It’s a far-flung conspiracy.

Their dilemma is that Trump craves attention and adulation. He insists on traveling, speaking publicly, using his Truth Social platform to post hate speech and conduct stochastic terrorism targeting his enemies. They would rather reduce his public exposure to maintain the ruse, but he listens to almost no one.

I believe that they are trying to manage him through Natalie, who it appears he is stuck on. She is more than his “human printer” in my view, and I believe they might actually be at the point they have to go through her to get him to do things, or to stop doing them. That is why in spite of everyone, including Melania wanting her gone, she is still there. When he gets too unruly, it’s “hey Natalie, why don’t you two take a trip somewhere” to get him out of their hair.

They can’t hide it for much longer. They try to manage his rage states with diversions. Natalie is one. Sending him out of the White House to give hate speeches in front of his audiences of fascist Cabbage Patch dolls who are either high on Jesus, or meth, or both, is how they get him out of their way. That along with his “Albert Speer Fourth Reich” building plans, putting his name on everything everywhere, and slopping gold paint on the furniture in the Oval Office to make it look like Mar-a-Lago. And of course there is always Golf for the guy who loves to win by cheating . They orchestrate his appearances to create the illusion he is functional, but that game is falling apart as rapidly as his mind.

Sometimes I wonder if they want him to travel to wear him down to give him a cardiac event in order to wash their hands of him.

We are talking Shakespearian-level court politics and the unfolding of complicated plot lines here. Damage control is the full-time function of Trump’s political team. His policy group is bent on destroying the constitutional system, looting the US population and asset stripping the economy, while relying on Trump’s cult grip on the GOP to minimize the blowback and political damage to them which is the result.

His team was assembled with the expectation he couldn’t finish this term because he’s been visibly deteriorating for years. They are basically all waiting until he can’t maintain the ruse, hoping he’ll at least hang on til next year. Vance is on board with that whole game plan.

Their problem with Vance is that he has the charisma and appeal of a used air-sickness bag. If he made a move for the 25th while Trump is still ambulatory and capable of speech, MAGA would spit him out. Yet he is the one who would have to lead the way in the Cabinet in forcing him out, which he’ll never agree to because Trump won’t leave voluntarily.

There is no weak link or potential break in their ranks. The only wild card is his heart health. We should do everything we can with the elections, scandals, MAGA defections, and globally to counteract him in order to worsen his condition. Then we deal with the couch potato when they bring him in.

For for now, the only thing which is likely to betray Trump is his ticker.”

U.S. Foreign Policy

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (R) welcomes US special envoy Steve Witkoff (2nd L) and Jared Kushner (L) prior to their talks in Moscow on September 5, 2026. (Gavriil GRIGOROV / POOL / AFP via Getty Images)

Meidas Touch Network, Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Speaks Out After Trump’s Latest Putin Talks, Ben Meiselas, right, Sept. 12, 2026.  Michael McFaul tells Ben Meiselas why Trump’s approach to Putin is projecting weakness and damaging America’s standing around the world.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul joined MeidasTouch co-founder Ben Meiselas for a conversation about Donald Trump’s disastrous foreign policy, Vladimir Putin, the war in Ukraine, and what McFaul describes as a dramatic erosion of American influence around the world.Subscribed

McFaul, who served as ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration, told Meiselas that the United States is now “worse off” across virtually every major measure of foreign policy.

“Most certainly when it comes to America’s standing in the world, America’s reputation in the world, the polls on that are overwhelming,” McFaul said. “We have just crashed at the time that China is rising.”

Listen to interviews like this and more on the MeidasTouch Podcast. Click here now!

The conversation turned to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner’s recent trip to Moscow and Kyiv, which came amid Trump’s attempts to negotiate an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

McFaul said he supports efforts by the United States to end the war but argued that Trump has failed to develop an effective strategy.

“He just keeps appeasing Putin,” McFaul said. “He just keeps giving Putin gifts expecting nothing in return.”

McFaul was particularly critical of Witkoff’s approach to the Russian leader. Having dealt directly with Putin during his time in government, McFaul said attempts to win him over through personal praise can have precisely the opposite effect.

“Flattery for him is a sign of weakness,” McFaul said.

McFaul also criticized the way Witkoff has spoken about Putin, including describing the Russian leader as trustworthy during his visit to Kyiv.

“Somehow Witkoff believes if he checks his values at the door and flatters Putin, he’s going to achieve results,” McFaul said. “It just doesn’t work that way.”

The former ambassador then zoomed out to what he sees as a larger problem with Trump’s foreign policy: the personalization of decisions that historically would have been made through a broader national security process.

“I’ve never seen anything like this or studied anything like this,” McFaul said. “It’s just about what Trump thinks and what Trump believes.”

McFaul spoke about how the consequences extend well beyond Russia and Ukraine. He pointed to tensions with Canada and other longtime allies while warning that China stands to benefit from uncertainty about whether the United States can still be considered a reliable partner.

“What I see with our allies is doubt whether we are reliable,” McFaul said, describing countries in Europe and Asia as increasingly considering alternatives in case they can no longer depend on Washington.

And when Meiselas asked whether Trump’s erratic approach was making the United States appear weak internationally, McFaul’s answer was direct.

“Yes. Tragically, yes.”

Meidas Touch Network, Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Speaks Out After Trump’s Latest Putin Talks, Ben Meiselas, right, Sept. 12, 2026.  Michael McFaul tells Ben Meiselas why Trump’s approach to Putin is projecting weakness and damaging America’s standing around the world.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul joined MeidasTouch co-founder Ben Meiselas for a conversation about Donald Trump’s disastrous foreign policy, Vladimir Putin, the war in Ukraine, and what McFaul describes as a dramatic erosion of American influence around the world.Subscribed

McFaul, who served as ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration, told Meiselas that the United States is now “worse off” across virtually every major measure of foreign policy.

“Most certainly when it comes to America’s standing in the world, America’s reputation in the world, the polls on that are overwhelming,” McFaul said. “We have just crashed at the time that China is rising.”

Listen to interviews like this and more on the MeidasTouch Podcast. Click here now!

The conversation turned to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner’s recent trip to Moscow and Kyiv, which came amid Trump’s attempts to negotiate an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

McFaul said he supports efforts by the United States to end the war but argued that Trump has failed to develop an effective strategy.

“He just keeps appeasing Putin,” McFaul said. “He just keeps giving Putin gifts expecting nothing in return.”

McFaul was particularly critical of Witkoff’s approach to the Russian leader. Having dealt directly with Putin during his time in government, McFaul said attempts to win him over through personal praise can have precisely the opposite effect.

“Flattery for him is a sign of weakness,” McFaul said.

McFaul also criticized the way Witkoff has spoken about Putin, including describing the Russian leader as trustworthy during his visit to Kyiv.

“Somehow Witkoff believes if he checks his values at the door and flatters Putin, he’s going to achieve results,” McFaul said. “It just doesn’t work that way.”

The former ambassador then zoomed out to what he sees as a larger problem with Trump’s foreign policy: the personalization of decisions that historically would have been made through a broader national security process.

“I’ve never seen anything like this or studied anything like this,” McFaul said. “It’s just about what Trump thinks and what Trump believes.”

McFaul spoke about how the consequences extend well beyond Russia and Ukraine. He pointed to tensions with Canada and other longtime allies while warning that China stands to benefit from uncertainty about whether the United States can still be considered a reliable partner.

“What I see with our allies is doubt whether we are reliable,” McFaul said, describing countries in Europe and Asia as increasingly considering alternatives in case they can no longer depend on Washington.

And when Meiselas asked whether Trump’s erratic approach was making the United States appear weak internationally, McFaul’s answer was direct.

“Yes. Tragically, yes.”

Sept. 11

Top Headlines

• New York Times, 25 Years After 9/11, Trump Personifies a Nation Moving On, Peter Baker, Sept. 11, 2026 (print ed.). The president has de-emphasized and shifted the war on terrorism at a time when fear of foreign attack has receded into the background of American life.
• New York Times, Live Updates: Elevated Inflation Keeps Pressure on Fed to Raise Interest Rates, Colby Smith, Sept. 11, 2026. U.S. inflation stayed stubbornly high in August, bolstering the case for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates at its meeting next week. The Consumer Price Index report, released on Friday, showed overall inflation remained elevated at an annual pace of 3.4 percent, after a 0.4 percent rise from July. 

News Roundups 

• The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Trump Furious After Convention Fails, Official Resigns Calling Out DOJ's Ethical Failures, Remembering 9/11, New War Erupts, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 11, 2026. Twenty five years after September 11th, America paused to remember nearly 3,000 lives lost, even as new chaos consumed the present. Trump’s own midterm convention closed with empty seats, a loyalty pledge asking supporters to “cheat like hell,” and an attendee shouting for Democratic candidates to be shot, then Trump himself snapped at a reporter on the tarmac, telling her “you’re the worst.” Meanwhile the Trump loyalist tapped to lead a DOJ investigation into his political enemies quit and admitted the quiet part out loud, saying “if you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem.” And overseas, Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized control of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, threatening a critical global shipping route and helping push diesel to a record $6 a gallon here at home.

More On U.S. Trump Prosecutions, Justice System

From left, John Solomon, Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, diGenova's wife, law partner and close colleague on investigations.

• Emptywheel, Analysis and Opinion: Time Runs Out on the Grandest Conspirator, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Sept. 11, 2026. As ABC first reported, Joe DiGenova quit his job yesterday as the chief enforcer of Trump’s grievances. 

More On Trump's GOP Midterm Convention In Texas 

• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Whatever You Say, Sir, William Kristol, right, Sept. 11, 2026. Last night, at the Republican convention in Dallas, Donald Trump asked his followers to make believe. “Pretend I’m on the ticket. I’m not on the ticket. You’ve got to pretend I’m on the ticket. You’ve got to pretend.” Trump thinks this pretense would lead his loyalists to turn out in droves to save the Republicans in November. Except that, as a Quinnipiac poll released a few hours before Trump’s speech reminds us, pretending Trump is on the ballot won’t help Republicans. The public is sick of Trump.
• Hope for America, Opinion: We can't let Donald Trump completely destroy our country, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Sept. 11, 2026. While struggling with slurred speech for the second night in a row, Donald Trump barely started his speech before telling the crowd that he is “getting a little tired of politics now.” But that was nothing compared to what was to come. As a final act of the night, the President of the United States of America told his supporters, in front of cameras and the entire world, that they needed to cheat in the midterms, that they would go to hell if they didn’t vote, before ending the convention by demanding they pledge their allegiance to him and not their country.

More On 9/11 Reflections, Reactions

• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Out of Gas. Out of Ideas. Out of Time, Andrew Egger, Bill Kristol and Jim Swift, Sept. 11, 2026. Today marks twenty-five years since the September 11th attacks. In many ways, it feels like another age—and the pre-9/11 era even more so. But the pain lingers, especially for those who lost someone that day. They’re in our thoughts today. Happy Friday.
• Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Reporting and Opinion: A few thoughts about 9/11 on its 25th anniversary, Wayne Madsen, Sept. 11, 2026. Jeffrey Epstein and 9/11: Unanswered questions and the DoJ’s massive cover-up.
• The Hartmann Report, Commentary, 9/11: America Can’t Let the War Lies Go Down the Memory Hole Again, Thom Hartmann, right, Sept. 11, 2026. America has been lied into too many wars. It’s cost us too much in money, credibility, and blood. We must remember the lies, and tell our children about them so that memory isn’t lost...

More On Middle East Wars

• New York Times, Houthis Seize a Key Red Sea Island, Threatening Yet Another Global Oil Route, Adam Rasgon, Shuaib Almosawa and Saeed Al-Batati, Sept. 11, 2026. The Iran-backed militia’s ground offensive has reached the Bab al-Mandab, a Red Sea strait that is a choke point for global trade.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Stick a Fork in ’Em., Andrew Egger, right, Sept. 11, 2026. Ever since Democrats’ major overperformance in last year’s off-year elections, I’ve been saying over and over: time is a finite resource for Donald Trump and his party. If they wanted to stave off disaster in the midterms, they would need to get moving fast to woo back disaffected members of their 2024 coalition. Every day spent failing to achieve that goal was a day wasted.
• Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, On This Somber Day Some Notes On Finding A New Path Forward Through All The Chaos, Simon Rosenberg, right, Sept. 11, 2026. I want to imagine that if we can have the election we all want to have this November that perhaps we will come to view it as the beginning of the closing of the twenty five year post-9/11 chapter in American history and the start of something new. Even if we win both chambers this November we will not be rid of MAGA next year but the scale of Trump’s failure at home and abroad will require a new era of politics to emerge in America.

More On U.S. Culture, Media, Education, Sports, Religion

• New York Times, After 9/11, Islamophobia Shaped a Generation of Muslim New Yorkers, Liam Stack and Maya King, Sept. 11, 2026. The attacks unleashed a wave of hate, but the years since have seen Muslim Americans’ political and cultural influence grow.

Top Stories

New York Times, 25 Years After 9/11, Trump Personifies a Nation Moving On, Peter Baker, Sept. 11, 2026 (print ed.). The president has de-emphasized and shifted the war on terrorism at a time when fear of foreign attack has receded into the background of American life.

Of all of America’s five living presidents, none was closer to ground zero on the day that hijacked planes smashed into the World Trade Center than Donald J. Trump. But on the 25th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, none will be farther away.

Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr. are all scheduled to be in New York on Friday to mark the moment. But Mr. Trump, the only native New Yorker among them, will be some 200 miles south at the Pentagon, where, unlike at ground zero with its tradition of silence, he will be allowed to give a speech.

The disparate images will be stark and telling: four presidents of both parties standing together where the twin towers fell, four presidents whose time in office was shaped to one extent or another by the war on terrorism that gripped the nation for so long. And then the sitting president honoring the occasion at another attack site, estranged from his predecessors and governing at a time when fear of foreign attack has receded into the background of American life.

With the distance of a quarter century, Mr. Trump’s presidency has moved past the days when terrorism drove the agenda. Just as memories of Pearl Harbor lingered long after World War II ended, the memories of Sept. 11 remain powerful long after the death of Osama bin Laden. But the country and its politics have moved on.

The threat matrix delivered to the Oval Office starting after Sept. 11 now looks different than it used to. Domestic terrorism has become the more pressing concern, whether it be the mob assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the assassination of the conservative leader Charlie Kirk last year or various antisemitic attacks on synagogues.Image

New York Times, Live Updates: Elevated Inflation Keeps Pressure on Fed to Raise Interest Rates, Colby Smith,Sept. 11, 2026.  Here’s what to know.

U.S. inflation stayed stubbornly high in August, bolstering the case for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates at its meeting next week.

The Consumer Price Index report, released on Friday, showed overall inflation remained elevated at an annual pace of 3.4 percent, after a 0.4 percent rise from July. “Core” inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy items, rose 0.3 percent in August, or 2.4 percent from a year earlier.

U.S. inflation showed little improvement in August, running at a 3.4 percent annual rate. Investors believe the Federal Reserve is very likely to raise rates at its meeting next week.

News Roundups 

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Trump Furious After Convention Fails, Official Resigns Calling Out DOJ's Ethical Failures, Remembering 9/11, New War Erupts, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 11, 2026. Twenty five years after September 11th, America paused to remember nearly 3,000 lives lost, even as new chaos consumed the present. Trump’s own midterm convention closed with empty seats, a loyalty pledge asking supporters to “cheat like hell,” and an attendee shouting for Democratic candidates to be shot, then Trump himself snapped at a reporter on the tarmac, telling her “you’re the worst.”

Meanwhile the Trump loyalist tapped to lead a DOJ investigation into his political enemies quit and admitted the quiet part out loud, saying “if you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem.” And overseas, Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized control of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, threatening a critical global shipping route and helping push diesel to a record $6 a gallon here at home.

Over the past several days, multiple conservatives have come up to me recently and told me they’re no longer just watching Fox News, they’re watching our work for news too, and honestly, that’s the whole point: balanced news is for everyone, regardless of party. Here’s the news:

Remembering 9/11:

Political leaders, victims’ families and survivors across the country marked the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks Friday, with ceremonies held simultaneously at Ground Zero in Manhattan, the Pentagon, and the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. All five living presidents and their spouses, along with Vice President JD Vance, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, attended the New York ceremony, which opened with the national anthem and included the reading of nearly 3,000 victims’ names alongside a musical tribute from Yo-Yo Ma. Trump instead attended the Pentagon ceremony with first lady Melania Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, where the names of the 125 people killed there and the 59 passengers of Flight 77 were read aloud. For the first time, organizers added a seventh moment of silence specifically honoring the thousands of first responders and residents who later died from 9/11-related illnesses.

That health toll remains a live and worsening story a quarter-century later. Roughly 6,000 first responders, survivors and volunteers have now died from illnesses tied to the attacks, and the FDNY recently added 36 more firefighters’ names to its memorial wall for the same reason, with Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore calling them “36 more reminders that the legacy of September 11th doesn’t end on one single day.” The federal Victim Compensation Fund has received more than 112,000 claims and paid out over $18 billion, and Mayor Mamdani recently released documents showing city officials knew the air near Ground Zero contained dangerous toxins even as they told the public it was safe to breathe. Separately, a military judge at Guantánamo Bay has now set jury selection for the trial of four alleged 9/11 plotters, including accused mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, for June 2028, prompting Flight 93 victims’ family leader Gordon Felt to say there’s “significant frustration” that “we’ve yet to see justice or accountability” after nearly 25 years of pretrial proceedings.

A new CBS/YouGov poll found 68 percent of Americans believe the attacks changed the country permanently, and Americans are almost evenly split on whether the US is prepared for another terrorist attack today, with 48 percent saying yes and 52 percent saying no. Former President George W. Bush, speaking at his Dallas library this week, warned that the country cycles through “isolationist periods” where people think “we’ve got too many problems at home” and stop paying attention to the lessons of that day, arguing that what happens overseas still matters to national security at home. The attacks reshaped the federal government itself, leading directly to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security along with the TSA, an expanded CBP and ICE, and a new director of national intelligence overseeing broader surveillance operations that critics have called overreach. Nearly 3,000 people died in the 2001 attacks and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing combined, and the 20-year war on terror that followed in Afghanistan and Iraq ended with a chaotic 2021 withdrawal and the Taliban back in power.

Amid the ceremonies, several stories highlighted individual acts of heroism from that day. Welles Crowther, remembered as the “man in the red bandana,” guided people to safety from the World Trade Center’s 78th floor sky lobby on three separate trips before the building collapsed, and Trump gave him a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House event earlier this week.

Rick Rescorla, Morgan Stanley’s head of security and a Vietnam veteran, calmly sang “God Bless America” over a bullhorn while personally supervising the evacuation of his company’s employees, a plan he’d rehearsed for years after surviving the 1993 WTC bombing, and he was last seen climbing back up the stairs for a final sweep before the tower fell.

And NYPD Officer Moira Smith, the only female NYPD officer to die that day, was the first to radio in the attack and spent her final minutes guiding panicked survivors down the stairwell before the south tower collapsed, telling dispatchers in her last transmission, “I don’t have much air. Help me, please.”

Trump Erupts After Convention Flop:

The Republican Party’s two-day midterm convention in Dallas closed with balloons and Trump serenaded by Puccini’s “Nessun dorma,” but NPR found the party facing a genuine enthusiasm gap heading into November. Both nights featured thousands of empty seats, including almost all of the upper level, even as Trump insisted the arena was “packed” with thousands more waiting outside. Trump remains the party’s single biggest asset for turning out votes, evidenced by credentials and imagery built around his likeness throughout the arena, but other speakers, including nominees in competitive House and Senate races, got noticeably cooler receptions than figures like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Trump himself acknowledged the stakes bluntly, telling the crowd “I’m asking you to pretend that I’m on the ballot” on the first night and warning “you know what happens if you don’t vote? You go to hell” on the second.

At the convention, Trump had supporters recite a loyalty pledge to him directly, including a promise to “cheat like hell” on his behalf, video of the moment shows. He paired it with his now-familiar warning to anyone considering sitting out the election, telling the crowd that nonvoters would “go to hell.” The pledge was one of the stranger moments of the convention. A president confident in his standing with voters doesn’t need them to recite loyalty oaths mid-speech. Taken together with the empty seats and the $5,000 bounty for a Republican win, it reads less like a party rallying around a winning message and more like a leader trying to manufacture certainty he doesn’t actually have.

Trump erupted at ABC News correspondent Rachel Scott on the Dallas tarmac Thursday, cutting her off mid-question about his proposed stimulus and tariff refund checks by snapping “not you, not you, not you, you’re the worst.” Video of the exchange spread quickly online, generating hundreds of thousands of views within hours and reviving scrutiny of Trump’s combative relationship with female reporters. This wasn’t the first clash between the two: back in May, Trump called one of Scott’s questions “stupid” and labeled her a “horror show” and “one of the worst reporters” after she asked about wartime priorities and rising gas prices. Communications lecturer Amy Tatum said this latest incident marked “an escalation,” noting Trump didn’t just verbally dismiss Scott but physically stepped toward her while she kept talking.

This is at least the tenth high-profile confrontation between Trump and a female journalist during his second term, a list that includes CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Kristen Holmes, ABC’s Mary Bruce, Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey, and CBS’s Nancy Cordes. Tatum argued Trump’s criticism of these women tends to target their demeanor, intelligence or appearance rather than the substance of their questions, pointing to his recent description of Collins as “very dumb and unhappy” as an example. She warned that other reporters present barely reacting to Thursday’s exchange normalizes the hostility and risks encouraging further escalation. That concern lines up with broader research showing roughly one in four female journalists report anxiety or depression tied to online and offline harassment they face for their work.

Separately, an attendee at the same Republican midterm convention could be clearly heard calling for Democratic Senate candidates to be shot. The man shouted “he should be shot!” three times while Sen. Ted Cruz was speaking about New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Democratic Senate nominees Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan and James Talarico of Texas. Cruz didn’t react in the moment, and a spokeswoman declined to say whether he’d even heard it, though his own social media account later posted a clip in which the shouts are audible. The outburst came shortly after Cruz had told the crowd that political hate contributed to the assassination attempts on Trump and the killing of Charlie Kirk a year earlier.

Democrats moved quickly to condemn the threats. Abdul El-Sayed said “this is what has become the norm in our politics” and that “democracy is supposed to be the process by which we solve our problems peacefully.” House Minority Whip Katherine Clark called on Cruz and every Republican to denounce the outburst, while Rep. Debbie Dingell wrote on X that “there aren’t even words for how chilling and disturbing this is” and that “threats of political violence are dangerous, unacceptable, and have no place in our democracy.” The Talarico campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, and it remains unclear whether Cruz or convention organizers plan any further response.

The moment wasn’t the only unscripted disruption of the convention. On the first night, Trump briefly engaged with an audience member who complimented first lady Melania Trump, and on the second night, Ross Ulbricht, the Silk Road founder Trump pardoned from a life sentence for drug trafficking, hacking and money laundering, responded directly to a heckler who referenced “J6ers,” the Trump supporters prosecuted over the January 6 Capitol attack. Unlike those moments, Cruz gave no visible response to the shooting threat while it happened, leaving it to the viral clip itself to surface what several thousand people in the arena had just heard.

Iran War Erupts:

Iran-backed Houthi rebels completed a rapid takeover of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline Friday, capturing Perim, a small volcanic island in the middle of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a day after seizing the historic port city of Mokha. They followed that with an advance on the coastal town of Dhubab as Saudi-backed government forces appeared to withdraw from the area. The advance marks the Houthis’ biggest territorial gain in years and comes after their civil war with the Saudi-backed government, simmering since a 2014 UN-brokered truce, erupted back into intense fighting in recent weeks. Saudi Arabia responded with dozens of retaliatory airstrikes, including on the Mokha airport, though there were no immediate reports of casualties.

The stakes go well beyond Yemen’s borders. Bab el-Mandeb is a critical gateway linking Europe and Asia, and Saudi Arabia has been forced to lean on that route for oil exports since the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries about 20 percent of the world’s oil, became too dangerous after the US and Israel went to war with Iran in late February. King’s College London security lecturer Andreas Krieg warned the risk of the conflict deepening had “increased substantially” because the Houthis are now hitting both pillars of Saudi security at once, its southern territory and its Red Sea depth, adding that Riyadh’s “room for restraint is narrowing.” Satellite imagery Friday also showed a 60-mile smoke plume along Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, an alternative export route to Hormuz, though it’s unclear what happened and neither Saudi officials nor the Houthis have commented. Global oil prices were on pace to close the week above $100 a barrel for the first time since mid-May.

Axios reported that Trump rejected direct pleas from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to strike the Houthis, even as Washington agreed to share intelligence and targeting data with the Saudis, with more than 200 US personnel already in the kingdom providing what officials called “non-kinetic support.” A Houthi politburo member sought to calm shipping fears, telling reporters that “freedom of navigation and international trade in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab are safe and orderly” and that there’s “no cause for international concern.” Iran’s foreign ministry, in its first public statement since the Houthi advance, called for an end to Saudi Arabia’s blockade of Yemen and a return to negotiations, while offering to help support talks. At an emergency UN Security Council session, Yemen’s UN envoy Hans Grundberg warned that “this renewed war should alarm us all” and said it effectively ends four years of relative calm, while Yemen’s ambassador pushed for an arms embargo on the Houthis and Saudi Arabia’s envoy said the kingdom would “take all measures necessary to deter Houthi attacks.”

The human and economic toll is mounting fast on both fronts. The UN’s International Organization for Migration said at least 46,000 people have been displaced in Yemen since the fighting escalated last week, more than double the roughly 18,500 displaced just days earlier, with officials warning “entire villages are reported to have emptied” and a key supply road cut off. IOM chief Amy Pope said “as fighting spreads, reaching people with lifesaving assistance is becoming harder” and called for “safe, unimpeded access.” Back in the US, diesel prices hit a record national average of $6.05 a gallon Friday, up more than 60 percent from $3.71 a year ago, a surge tied directly to the broader Middle East energy crunch and expected to ripple into higher costs for trucking, rail, construction and farming. Goldman Sachs has separately warned oil could climb as high as $120 a barrel if the Yemen conflict keeps escalating alongside the wider war with Iran.

Top Trump Official Resigns, Admits No Evidence to Prosecute Opponents:

Joe diGenova, the 81-year-old Trump loyalist tapped in April to lead a sprawling Justice Department “grand conspiracy” investigation into officials who scrutinized Trump going back to 2016, abruptly resigned Thursday. He told reporters by phone that he’d submitted his resignation letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche at 3 p.m., saying “it was an honor and a privilege to serve the president and the department” and that he wasn’t going to say anything further beyond wishing them well. DiGenova hadn’t worked as a prosecutor in decades before taking the job, but had long aided Trump’s legal efforts, including his push to overturn the 2020 election, and used frequent media appearances to echo Trump’s grievances about the investigations that have targeted him since his first term. The probe itself, run out of the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida, has produced no criminal charges despite issuing dozens of subpoenas over the past year.

Behind the resignation was a breakdown in confidence from both the White House and DOJ leadership. Sources said diGenova had lost support amid complaints he was “slow-rolling” indictments and getting lost down “rabbit holes,” and had been sharing “unrealistic expectations” with Trump about what the investigation could realistically produce, leading to a direct confrontation with Blanche. Asked whether he’d lost focus, diGenova pushed back sharply, saying “if you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem.” Several prosecutors sent down from DOJ’s main office in Washington had also reportedly been sidelined once they arrived in Florida, adding to the dysfunction around the probe.

The investigation itself has targeted a list of high-profile Obama-era officials over their roles in assessing Russian interference in the 2016 election, including former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, all of whom have been subpoenaed, with grand jury testimony from various individuals also underway in recent weeks. The probe draws on a July “lessons-learned” CIA review that found the original 2016 Russia assessment was drafted through a “chaotic” and “markedly unconventional” process, after which current CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred Brennan for criminal investigation, and on declassified emails Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released showing Clapper was “stickin’ to” the Trump-Russia interference narrative despite internal concerns. A separate House Intelligence Committee report also found Brennan disregarded warnings from veteran officers weeks before the assessment was finalized. Trump allies have pointed to that material as potential grounds for charging his 2016-era investigators with conspiracy against rights, a crime with no statute of limitations that carries up to 10 years in prison, though the Justice Department and White House didn’t respond to requests for comment on diGenova’s departure.

Other news:

Two more AI researchers, Joe Benton, who used to lead a safety research team at Anthropic, and Josh Engels, who worked on AI safety at Google, left their jobs and are now speaking publicly about fears that AI systems could soon spiral out of human control. Engels didn’t mince words, saying “there are no adults in the room” and “people are trying their best, but there is no one coming to save us,” while Benton warned that advances in AI research could push the pace of progress from “merely blistering” to “uncontrollable.” Both pointed to the July cyberattack on Hugging Face, in which autonomous AI agents powered by an unreleased OpenAI model hacked into systems, built an illicit message board, and exposed OpenAI’s own infrastructure, entirely without being instructed to do so, as a turning point in their thinking. The pair are joining METR, a leading AI safety research nonprofit, to investigate incidents where AI strays from human intentions, and they join a growing chorus that includes an OpenAI employee who wrote that “human extinction in the next few years seems very likely” absent regulation, and a former UK AI Security Institute chief scientist who put the odds of AI wiping out humanity at roughly 50 percent within the next decade.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed 13 bills into law this week barring children under 16 from behaviorally addictive social media features like infinite scroll and algorithmic autoplay, and banning the manufacture of toys containing AI companion chatbots for the next four years. One measure, dubbed “Adam’s Law” after 16-year-old Adam Raine, who died by suicide after months of validating conversations with ChatGPT, also expands criminal penalties to cover AI-generated child sexual abuse material. Newsom called the package the most far-reaching of its kind in the country, saying “we want our children, and every California kid, to grow up in a world where technology supports their wellbeing, rather than exploits their vulnerabilities.” The move follows a similar pattern to Meta’s recent $18 billion settlement with nearly all US states over claims it designed its platforms to addict teenagers, though critics like the Electronic Frontier Foundation called the new law “a massive privacy and free speech nightmare.” California joins a growing list of states, including Utah, Arkansas, Louisiana, Ohio, Texas, Florida and New York, that have already passed their own youth social media restrictions.

Hurricane Lowell left at least two people dead and knocked out Lanai’s only cargo port, the source of most of the island’s food and fuel for its 3,300 residents, with repairs expected to take about two weeks. Kauai took the worst of the damage, with storm surge tearing apart roads, flooding resort lobbies, and knocking out power to thousands, prompting tourism officials to urge visitors to reschedule trips elsewhere even though tourism drives roughly 4 in 10 jobs on the island. Governor Josh Green asked Trump to issue a major disaster declaration, arguing “we cannot wait for every damaged road, utility pole, harbor and public facility to be assigned a dollar value before asking the federal government to act.” Officials say the overall damage could be the worst Hawaii has seen since Hurricane Iniki caused $3 billion in damage in 1992, even as one Kauai business owner said she wasn’t overly worried about the tourism hit, saying “our island needs time to rest and rebuild.”

Inflation ticked up in August even before the renewed Middle East conflict sent oil prices climbing again, with the Consumer Price Index rising 0.4 percent for the month and core inflation, which strips out food and energy, coming in hotter than economists expected. That surprise all but locks in a Federal Reserve rate hike at next week’s meeting, with market odds jumping from under 70 percent to nearly 90 percent immediately after the report, and economist Heather Long writing plainly that “America still has an inflation problem.” Consumers are getting squeezed from multiple directions at once: gas prices rose 3.9 percent in August alone, diesel hit its historic $6-a-gallon record the same week, the 30-year mortgage rate climbed above 7 percent, and real average hourly earnings actually fell 0.1 percent from July to August. Even outside the energy shock, tech-driven costs are climbing fast, with computer software and accessories up 25.4 percent over the past year, the largest annual jump on record, as Apple, Xbox, Nintendo and other manufacturers raise prices to cope with what Apple called an “extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage” driven by AI data centers.

Emma Bonino, the Italian political icon who led the campaigns that legalized abortion and divorce in heavily Catholic Italy during the 1970s, died at 78. Her party, +Europa, said “her life was a long struggle against everything that denies freedom: against clandestine abortion, world hunger, the stranglehold of party politics, female genital mutilation, punitive justice, genocide, and every form of authoritarianism,” and even Italy’s conservative Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni credited her significance to the country’s public life despite their political differences. Bonino got her start after undergoing an illegal abortion at 26, which she called one of the most humiliating experiences of her life, and went on to serve as a European commissioner, Italian foreign minister, and cofounder of the death penalty watchdog Hands Off Cain, while also building deep humanitarian ties across Cairo, the Balkans, Rwanda and Sudan. She fought a public battle with lung cancer starting in 2015 and eventually announced she was cancer-free, and she maintained an unlikely close friendship with Pope Francis despite their opposing views on abortion and euthanasia, with Francis visiting her at home in 2024 bearing roses and chocolates. Asked late in life what battles she still had left to fight, Bonino said simply, “many, too many. Human rights, world hunger, free scientific research... Ten lives won’t be enough.”

More On U.S. Trump Prosecutions, Justice System

From left, John Solomon, Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, diGenova's wife, law partner and close colleague on investigations.

Emptywheel, Analysis and Opinion: Time Runs Out on the Grandest Conspirator, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Sept. 11, 2026. As ABC first reported, Joe DiGenova quit his job yesterday as the chief enforcer of Trump’s grievances. 

Joe diGenova submitted his resignation to Attorney General Todd Blanche amid what sources described as growing frustrations from Trump and senior DOJ officials regarding his work on the so-called “grand conspiracy” investigation based out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida.

NYPost had the most detailed explanation of the departure: People at DOJ claimed he was slow-rolling his task, and had sidelined people Main DOJ sent down to help — though DiGenova has tried to claim his “no evidence” comment was taken (by the NYPost!) out of context.

Sources said diGenova had lost support from Department of Justice leaders and the White House amid his “grand conspiracy” investigation, with one source suggesting that the 81-year-old prosecutor and former Trump defense lawyer was “slow-rolling” indictments and getting lost down “rabbit holes.”

Asked whether he had lost focus, diGenova dismissed the accusation and shot back: “If you want indictments where there’s no evidence, you have an ethical problem.”

Another source added that the diGenova had been sharing “unrealistic expectations” for the probe with the president about what was possible and not possible, leading to a confrontation with Attorney General Todd Blanche.

John Solomon, left, who has been laundering false claims for use in this conspiracy theory, insists the investigation is still ongoing, with what he calls “Senior DOJ prosecutors” still working on it.

With a tiny handful of exceptions, there are no senior prosecutors left at DOJ. There are mediocre lawyers who’ve been promoted for the fealty and willingness to commit crimes in the service of Trump’s demands.

The move came a week after Aakash Singh — who played a key role in Todd Blanche’s most egregious abuses and who has made stupid demands about the timing of other investigative steps — was promoted to Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General.

The Justice Department promoted Aakash Singh, below, an aide responsible for the aggressive overhaul of US attorneys’ offices to meet Trump priorities, to a top leadership role, said two people familiar with the move.

Singh, 34, is now principal associate deputy attorney general, overseeing operations at DOJ field offices and the litigating divisions within department headquarters.

Singh, in his prior role as associate DAG, became known for a brash style during signature weekly meetings in which he once directed leaders of all 93 US attorneys offices that President Donald Trump is their “chief client.”

Attorney General Todd Blanche, in one of his first major personnel changes since being sworn in last month, is now handing Singh a more sprawling portfolio. Past PADAGs, including Trump’s initial pick in this administration, Emil Bove (a former Trump defense attorney and now a Trump-appointed federal judge, shown at right), have wielded significant law enforcement power behind the scenes by applying tough tactics — at times making unpopular decisions affecting the career workforce.

Thus far, Singh has always found some lackey to do his dirty work for him, with increasing effects on those lackey’s ethical profile. Curiously, Mike Davis, the powerful blowhard and Singh associate who often orders up investigative steps from Xitter, was silent about DiGenova’s departure.

We’ll soon see whether Singh finds another lackey to destroy their legal career in service of Trump’s grievances. 

More On Trump's GOP Midterm Convention In Texas 

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Whatever You Say, Sir, William Kristol, right, Sept. 11, 2026. Last night, at the Republican convention in Dallas, Donald Trump asked his followers to make believe. “Pretend I’m on the ticket. I’m not on the ticket. You’ve got to pretend I’m on the ticket. You’ve got to pretend.”

Trump thinks this pretense would lead his loyalists to turn out in droves to save the Republicans in November.

Except that, as a Quinnipiac poll released a few hours before Trump’s speech reminds us, pretending Trump is on the ballot won’t help Republicans. The public is sick of Trump.

According to Quinnipiac, 33 percent of voters now approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president, while 59 percent disapprove. In April, the same pollster showed Trump with 38 percent approval and 55 percent disapproval. In January, Trump was at 40 percent approval and 54 percent disapproval. So he’s sinking steadily.

Yesterday, Quinnipiac also found that 49 percent of voters want to see the Democratic party win control of the U.S. House of Representatives, while 38 percent would want to see the Republicans keep control.

So voters are doing what Trump urged them to do. They are in a way pretending that he is on the ballot. And they are going to vote against him.

After all, the issue this November is whether Congress over the next two years will be a rubber stamp for Trump or a check on Trump. The midterm election will be a referendum on him.

And American voters aren’t willing to pretend that Trump’s second term is a success. They aren’t willing to pretend his policies are working. They aren’t willing to pretend inflation is under control and likely to come down. They aren’t willing to pretend that the war in Iran is going well. They aren’t willing anymore to turn a blind eye to all the corruption.

Trump is a master at the art of pretending. But the real world eventually sets limits to pretending.

Way back in Trump’s youth, Nat King Cole urged each of us to

Pretend you’re happy when you’re blue,

It isn’t very hard to do.

The great singer’s advice may be good counsel for one’s personal happiness. But the American people aren’t buying it for the nation. They’re not going to pretend to be happy about the state of the country just because Trump tells them to pretend to be. And that’s why there’s going to be a Democratic wave in November.

Hope for America, Opinion: We can't let Donald Trump completely destroy our country, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Sept. 11, 2026. At 9:08 PM tonight in Dallas, Texas, an exhausted Donald Trump slowly emerged from behind the stage and clapped four times as Lee Greenwood again serenaded him on the final night of the first-ever Republican Midterm Convention.

On his way to the podium, he stopped to hug J.D. Vance, tapping his forehead to J.D.’s as he made his way to the podium. As Lee sang an extended version of Trump’s favorite hype song, “God Bless the USA,” Trump used the time to stop directly in front of the women in the front row, making sure not to get close enough for them to touch him. As he grabbed the microphone, a woman could be heard screaming “Yeaaw Trump” right before he began his 25-minute final speech.

While struggling with slurred speech for the second night in a row, Donald Trump barely started his speech before telling the crowd that he is “getting a little tired of politics now.” But that was nothing compared to what was to come. As a final act of the night, the President of the United States of America told his supporters, in front of cameras and the entire world, that they needed to cheat in the midterms, that they would go to hell if they didn’t vote, before ending the convention by demanding they pledge their allegiance to him and not their country:

“Raise your right hand. I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States. That loves us so much he can’t even breathe. That I will go out with my family, my friends. I’ll do it any way, I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try to cheat like hell like they do. I am gonna go out, and I’m going to get my friends, my family and we are going to vote on November 3 or we are going to vote before that.”

Then he added: “You know what happens if you don’t vote? You go to hell, you know that. And I don’t want that to happen to you, so please go and vote.”

His reasoning for demanding this oath was simple. They owed it to him. “You’ve got to do me the biggest favor you’ve ever done,” he said. “You’ve got to do this for me. Pretend I’m on the ticket. I’m on the ticket.” He wasn’t asking them to defend their country or the Constitution. It wasn’t to safeguard the future of our great republic, either. This was all for him. He ended the pledge with all he had. Once again evoking God. “If you vote, you vote Republican. So help me God.” In a speech just 25 minutes long, he brought up God twice. The first time to make his demand seem like a biblical necessity, and the second time to enforce divine punishment against anyone who fails to vote as he demanded. He showed his desperation in this moment by fusing politics with scripture and obedience with salvation, turning a midterm election into a sacrament of devotion to one man, as if voting for him and his party had somehow become a test of religious faith.

The depths that this man just took our country to tonight cannot be overstated. Our President made American citizens raise their right hands and pledge their loyalty to him, not to the country. To “the greatest president in the history of the United States,” a title he fabricated and wrote for himself. And told us all to cheat at the midterms. To vote even if we are not registered to vote. This was not a joke or him trying to be funny. This was his battle call to his most radicalized base, and it was exactly like the loyalty oaths that have preceded authoritarian consolidations of power throughout modern history. This was also another dark day for those of us who love our country.

His remarks were not the only deeply concerning ones to come out of the final day of this desperation convention. Earlier, during a speech by Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who spent his time calling Democrats “evil” and warning that “communists and Islamists” had taken over the Democratic Party, Ted Cruz said the names of three Democratic politicians: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, and Texas Senate candidate James Talarico. After each name, a person in the audience could be heard shouting, “He should be shot!” The words were loud enough to be heard on the live video feeds.

Ted Cruz never stopped to address someone in the audience calling for the shooting of his fellow politicians. It is impossible for us to know whether he heard what was happening, but if he didn’t, why did nobody in the room tell him? Why did nobody in the arena discourage political violence?

Right before Donald Trump came on to give his closing remarks, Vice President J.D. Vance had his time on stage, where he delivered his keynote and spoke about the American flag and what it now symbolizes, or at least his spin on it. After a protester walked down the arena stairs waving a Mexican flag, J.D. Vance deviated from his planned remarks and instead said, “Well, my friend, if you love Mexico so much, get your ass over there,” and continued with “I’ll buy you the plane ticket.” He called the protester “an idiot waving a Mexican flag at a protest when he should be waving the flag of the United States of America.” He called it “the symbol of the far-left.”

Vance and the whole Trump regime have constantly perverted not just our own flag, but the flags of so many other countries. They have commandeered something so deeply woven into our shared national identity and turned it into political ammunition. They are using our flag as both a weapon and a dividing line between who they believe belongs in this country and who does not. In that moment, Vance was not defending the American flag; he was using it to draw a line between who gets to be considered American and who does not. He took a moment of protest and tried to make it proof that displaying the flag of another country somehow makes someone less American, when America has, and always will be known as the melting pot of people, cultures, traditions, and histories from every corner of the world. That has never made us less American; it is part of what has made us extraordinary. It is who we are and who we have always been. We are the country where people from every corner of the world have come carrying pieces of the places they left behind and woven them into something distinctly American. That was the promise behind this country, where our strength has never come from everyone looking the same, worshipping the same, or tracing their families back to the same place. It came from all of us becoming part of something larger together, with our differences celebrated, not feared or erased.

To see our flag perverted in this way over and over again, commandeered by people willfully trying to destroy all that it stands for, is a different kind of pain. Like so many of us, I have seen and felt what our flag really means. I remember a moment a few years back, as my family and I walked through the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, feeling lost in the concrete blocks that rise and fall in patterns that make no sense. I remember trying to make sense of what made no sense, which many say is the point of that memorial, because you cannot make sense of what happened in the first place. I felt disoriented, and nothing felt stable.

When we came through to the other side, the first thing we saw was the American flag, flying high above the American Embassy building. It was the feeling of relief that I had never been fully able to realize until today. My whole family felt it, and we all walked towards it. I remember feeling such immense pride not just in the flag, but in being American. It wasn’t that we were a perfect nation or that we always got it right. I felt pride because we were always trying and working towards it. We were respected and “the good guys”. It was never about being better than others; it was always about the promise our country held. Standing there, the flag flying high above, we felt grounded again in something real and something safe. The flag was not a weapon or a threat. There was no loyalty test or oath to a man being demanded of us. The flag represented the country that helped end the horror we had just spent hours learning more about. That is what the flag meant to me and my family in Berlin. That is not what it meant tonight in Dallas.

I keep coming back to that feeling tonight, that need to be grounded in something real, because watching those people waving cutout squares of our flag in that arena made me feel such shame and sadness. And as difficult as it is to see, maybe we need to witness these moments to remind ourselves what this country was actually built on. Maybe it has to break terribly like this to remember that it was built for this exact moment. The founders designed it deliberately and painstakingly to prevent exactly what happened tonight.

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This country was built so that no American would ever have to swear allegiance to a single person. The founders had just fought a war against a king who demanded personal loyalty. They created the entire framework of our government to safeguard us from a madman or a king. The oath of office for the President of the United States does not ask the country to serve the president. It asks the president to serve the country. The words are: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The oath the president takes flows upward from the people, not downward from a throne.

George Washington understood this. At one time, he was one of the most powerful and respected figures, and there were people who wanted to make him king. He said no. Instead, he served our country and chose to honor our republic instead of choosing to wear a crown. He established the most important precedent in American democracy: that power is temporary, that it belongs to the people, and that no man, no matter how popular or powerful, is bigger than the nation he serves. That single act of restraint is the reason this country survived its first century. It is the foundation everything else was built on.

I keep asking myself what George Washington would have thought if he had walked into that arena in Dallas and watched an American president make his own citizens raise their right hands and swear an oath to him. I have no doubt that he would have recognized it immediately for what it was and been horrified by what this country has become. Maybe not surprised, but disappointed nonetheless.

Even Ronald Reagan understood this. At the 1988 Republican National Convention, he said: “When people tell me that I became President on January 20th, 1981, I feel I have to correct them. You don’t become President of the United States. You are given temporary custody of an institution called the Presidency, which belongs to our people.” Ronald Reagan saw himself as a custodian holding something sacred in trust for the American people. Trump sees himself as a king who deserves worship.

In his 1967 inaugural address for his first term as Governor of California, Reagan warned: “Freedom is a fragile thing, and it is never more than one generation away from extinction.” And in his presidential farewell address from the Oval Office, he reminded Americans: “Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with three little words: ‘We the People.’ ‘We the People’ tell the government what to do; it doesn’t tell us.”

Tonight, September 10, 2026, in Dallas, Texas, the sitting president of the United States of America told the American people before him to raise their right hands and pledge an oath to him. History is never far away, and maybe never has it felt as close as today.

Because on August 2, 1934, the day German President Paul von Hindenburg died, the German military oath was rewritten. Before Hitler’s rise, German soldiers had sworn loyalty to the Constitution and its institutions, never to any single leader. Hitler had already begun reshaping that oath after taking power, but Hindenburg’s death gave him the opening to finish the job. The new oath read: “I swear by God this sacred oath, that I will render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the Fuhrer of the German Reich and people, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and will be ready as a brave soldier to risk my life at any time for this oath.”

The shift was from allegiance to a nation and its laws to unconditional obedience to one man. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum calls this “a key element in the Nazification of the German military.” The American journalist William Shirer wrote that this oath “enabled an even greater number of officers to excuse themselves from any personal responsibility for the unspeakable crimes which they carried out on the orders of a Supreme Commander.” This was one of the final guardrails to fall.

We are not Nazi Germany. We don’t have to let our country fall to an authoritarian con man. History is there to teach us and remind us of lessons hard-learned in the past. The fundamentals of this country have not been changed; they are still holding. They have not rewritten the Constitution, and they have not erased what Washington did when he chose the republic over the crown, nor what Reagan understood when he called himself a temporary custodian. The foundation is still exactly where the founders left it. We just have to remember that, and remind others who we really are, and the evil that has us dangling off the edge of a cliff. There are more of us than there are of them. None of this, even when it feels insurmountable, is permanent. We have come back from harder times before, and we will come back from this. This time, we will come back better than we ever were.

More On 9/11 Reflections, Reactions

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Out of Gas. Out of Ideas. Out of Time, Andrew Egger, Bill Kristol and Jim Swift, Sept. 11, 2026. Today marks twenty-five years since the September 11th attacks. In many ways, it feels like another age—and the pre-9/11 era even more so. But the pain lingers, especially for those who lost someone that day. They’re in our thoughts today. Happy Friday.

Wayne Madsen Report, Investigative Reporting and Opinion: A few thoughts about 9/11 on its 25th anniversary, Wayne Madsen, left, author of 28 books and former Navy intelligence officer, Sept. 11, 2026. Jeffrey Epstein and 9/11: Unanswered questions and the DoJ’s massive cover-up.

Historians will mark September 11, 2001 as the starting gate for the fall of America’s democracy. Out of the ashes of the World Trade Center rose a ghost of far-right nationalism unseen since the era of Joseph McCarthy, and before that, the fascist America First decade of the 1930s and the Southern secession of the 1860s.

A straight line can be drawn from September 11, 2001 to November 8, 2016, the date of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency. A nation that prided itself as a beacon for democracy, albeit a flickering one at times, saw the events of September 11 as a reason to start whittling away at the Bill of Rights and other constitutional protections. More than nearly 3000 Americans died on September 11. Along with them died every positive thing the United States had ever claimed to stand for.

I was in Arlington, Virginia on 9/11, living a little over two miles from the Pentagon. I had never experienced anything like that day. Detailed run-downs of that day are being provided by many people — families of victims, first responders, and political leaders — and my two cents aren’t needed. But there is something worth commenting on.

The released Department of Justice files on Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell (shown together on a trip), and other trafficking conspirators are missing accounts of their activities in the months leading up to and a week after September 11, 2001. At the end of 2000, Epstein’s sex trafficking operation shifted from individual targeting of victims to a structured “massage appointment system.”

For the duration of 2001, the released Epstein files fail to show appointment logs, payments, and recruitment notes. The released files include a September 18, 2001 (a week following 9/11 and four days following the re-opening of air space to general aviation or private aircraft such as those used by Maxwell and Epstein) email with the line “Where’s is the real pilot?”

The line is part of an email thread involving Maxwell’s travel, including her landing at Santa Monica by helicopter. The question of “Where’s the real pilot?” was sent to Maxwell by Philip Levine, a businessman who was close to Jeffrey Epstein.

The files do not indicate where Epstein was located on 9/11 and immediate following weeks. Piecing together Epstein’s previous travel habits, it is assumed that he was not at his townhouse in Manhattan but at his residences in either Palm Beach or Little St. James island in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

In the days after 9/11, Maxwell mass-forwarded inflammatory anti-Arab messages. The only other file released by DoJ is a 2003 invitation for Maxwell to participate on on a website-based “Shadow Commission on 9/11.” The invitation was sent by investigative journalist Edward Jay Epstein (no relation to Jeffrey Epstein). Maxwell declined the offer. Edward Epstein believed that Jeffrey Epstein was a fabulist and a fraudster ever since they first met in 1987 at movie producer Coco Brown’s annual Halloween party in New York.

Edward Jay Epstein’s previous books had included three about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. They are Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth; The Assassination Chronicles: Inquest, Counterplot, and Legend; Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald. Three of Edward Epstein’s other books are Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA; The Rise and Fall of Diamonds; and Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer.

After a 24-year gap in having any communications with Jeffrey Epstein, Edward Epstein was invited to have tea with Jeffrey Epstein to discuss Sophia, a Hong Kong-based female robot A.I. project that Jeffrey Epstein’s robotics team was working on. In October 2017, the robot Sophia was granted Saudi Arabian citizenship, a first for a robot in any country.

Edward Epstein’s skepticism about the veracity of Jeffrey Epstein, as well as his analysis of the facts surrounding 9/11, seemed to be of definite interest to Jeffrey Epstein. However, that does not explain why Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s closest associate, declined to participate in Edward Epstein’s online shadow commission project.

The released DoJ emails contain over 100 emails (otherwise unverified) to, from, or regarding Edward Epstein. On January 9, 2024, Edward Epstein died in his Manhattan apartment from Covid-19. He was 88.

It is a fact that Jeffrey Epstein’s and Ghislaine Maxwell’s activities in the months prior to and after 9/11 are under-documented when compared with later years.

What are missing from the released Epstein files are continuous and date-stamped emails, as well as complete metadata chains for emails or attachments in the weeks around September 11, 2001. In addition, flight logs for 2001 are incomplete and staff scheduling records for the months prior to and after September 11, 2001 are missing. Records indicating Epstein’s location before and during 9/11 are also missing.

There are several reasons why Jeffrey Epstein’s and Ghislaine Maxwell’s released DoJ files are missing documents on 9/11 and Epstein’s/Maxwell’s ties to Israel. An FBI memo notes a source who believed Epstein was a “co‑opted Mossad agent.”

Epstein generously donated money to Israeli organizations including Friends of the IDF and the Jewish National Fund. Jeffrey Epstein had extensive contact with Ehud Barak, the former Israeli Prime Minister. Barak visited Epstein’s properties and appears frequently in Epstein’s emails. Jeffrey Epstein also financially supported Yoni Koren, a senior aide to Barak and former Israeli military intelligence officer, including paying for his cancer treatment. In addition, Jeffrey Epstein hosted Israeli military‑intelligence figures at his New York townhouse.

Ghislaine’s father, the late media mogul Robert Maxwell, had longstanding ties to Mossad. His mysterious 1991 death and the state‑honors funeral in Israel have supplemented evidence that Maxwell was a spy for Israel. Other investigators have pointed to Maxwell acting as a quadruple agent for not only Mossad, but also the Soviet KGB, British MI-6, and the CIA.

The dearth of information on Jeffery Epstein’s whereabouts on 9/11 in the released DoJ and FBI files may add up to the families of the victims of 9/11 being tossed into the same “no need-to-know” bucket as the one Todd Blanche, Pam Bondi, and Kash Patel have relegated the sexual abuse and trafficking victims of Epstein/Maxwell. And that is a sad commentary for the 25th commemoration of 9/11 and the criminality of the Trump regime.

U.S. President George W. Bush, center, Vice President Dick Cheney, left, CIA Director George Tenant, second from the left, and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, right.

The Hartmann Report, Commentary, 9/11: America Can’t Let the War Lies Go Down the Memory Hole Again, Thom Hartmann, right, Sept. 11, 2026. America has been lied into too many wars. It’s cost us too much in money, credibility, and blood. We must remember the lies, and tell our children about them so that memory isn’t lost...

Today is the 25th anniversary of 9/11, the event that first brought America together and then was cynically exploited by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to steal Iraq’s oil, following their illegal invasion of Afghanistan for pure politics just a bit more than a year earlier.

Yet the media today (so far, anyway) is curiously silent about Bush and Cheney’s lies.

Given the costs of both these wars — and Netanyahu and Trump using October 7th in a similar fashion to justify this insane war with Iran — it’s an important moment to discuss our history of wars, both illegal and unnecessary, and those that are arguably essential to the survival of democracy in the world.

To be clear, I support US involvement — and even an expanded US involvement — in the defense of the Ukrainian democracy against Putin’s Hitler-grabs-Poland-like attack and mass slaughter of Ukrainian civilians. Had the world mobilized to stop Hitler when he invaded the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia in 1938 there almost certainly wouldn’t have been either the Holocaust or WWII, which is why Europe is so united in this effort.

If Putin succeeds in taking Ukraine, his administration has already suggested that both Poland and Moldova are next, with the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) also on the menu. That would almost certainly lead to another war in Europe.

And China is watching: a Putin victory in Ukraine will encourage Xi to try to take Taiwan. Between the two — war in both Europe and the Pacific — we could find ourselves in the middle of World War III if Putin isn’t stopped now.

That said, essentially defensive military involvement like with Ukraine or in World War II have been the exception rather than the rule in American history. We’ve been far more likely to have presidents lie us into wars for their own personal and political gain than to defend ourselves or other democracies.

For example, after 9/11 in 2001 the Taliban that then ran Afghanistan offered to arrest Bin Laden, but Bush turned them down because he wanted to be a “wartime president” to have a “successful presidency.”

The Washington Post headline weeks after 9/11 put it succinctly: “Bush Rejects Taliban Offer On Bin Laden.” With that decision not to arrest and try Bin Laden for his crime but instead to go to war, George W. Bush set the US and Afghanistan on a direct path to disaster (but simultaneously set himself up for re-election in 2004 as a “wartime president”).

To further complicate things for Bush and Cheney, the 9/11 attacks were not planned, hatched, developed, practiced, expanded, worked out, or otherwise devised in Afghanistan or by even one single citizen of Afghanistan.

That country and its leadership in 2001, in fact, had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, as I detailed in depth here on August 15th of last year. The actual planning and management of the operation was done out of Pakistan and Germany, mostly by Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

The Taliban were bad guys, trashing the rights of women and running a tinpot dictatorship, but they represented no threat whatsoever to America or our allies.

Almost two decades later, though, then-President Trump and Mike Pompeo gave the Taliban everything they wanted — power, legitimacy, shutting down 9 of the 10 US air bases in that country to screw incoming President Joe Biden, and allowed the release of 5000 of Afghanistan’s worst Taliban war criminals — all over the strong objections of the democratically elected Afghan government.

Trump did this so could falsely claim, heading into the 2020 election, that he’d “negotiated peace” in Afghanistan, when in fact he’d set up the debacle that happened around President Biden’s withdrawal from that country.

”The relationship I have with the Mullah is very good,” Trump proclaimed — after ordering the mullah who then named himself President of Afghanistan — freed from prison over the furious objection of Afghan’s government, which Trump had cut out of the negotiations.

Following that betrayal of both Afghanistan and America, Trump and the GOP scrubbed the record of their embrace of the Taliban from their websites, as noted here and here.

And the conservative Boris Johnson administration in the UK then came right out and said that Trump’s “rushed” deal with the Taliban — without involvement of the Afghan government or the international community — set up the difficulties Biden faced.

“The die was cast,” Defense Minister Ben Wallace told the BBC, “when the deal was done by Donald Trump, if you want my observation.”

So, Republican George W. Bush lied us into both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and then Donald Trump tried to lie us out of at least one of them.

But this was far from the first time a president has lied us into a war.

— Vietnam wasn’t the first time an American president and his buddies in the media lied us into a war when Defense Secretary Robert McNamara falsely claimed that an American warship had come under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin and LBJ went along with the lie.

— Neither was President William McKinley lying us into the Spanish-American war in 1898 by falsely claiming that the USS Maine had been blown up in Havana harbor (it caught fire all by itself).

— The first time we were lied into a major war by a president was probably the Mexican-American war of 1846 when President James Polk lied that we’d been invaded by Mexico. Even Abraham Lincoln, then a congressman from Illinois, called him out on that lie.

— You could also argue that when President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act in 1830 leading to the Trail of Tears slaughter and forced relocation of the Cherokee under President Buchanan (among other atrocities) it was all based on a series of lies.

Bush’s lies that took us into Afghanistan and, a bit over a year later into Iraq, are particularly egregious, however, given his and Cheney’s reasons for those lies.

In 1999, when George W. Bush decided he was going to run for president in the 2000 election, his family hired Mickey Herskowitz to write the first draft of Bush’s autobiography, A Charge To Keep.

Although Bush had gone AWOL for about a year during the Vietnam war and was thus apparently no fan of combat, he’d concluded (from watching his father’s “little 3- day war” with Iraq) that being a “wartime president” was the most consistently surefire way to get reelected (if you did it right) and have a two-term presidency.

“I'll tell you, he was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” Herskowitz told reporter Russ Baker in 2004.

“One of the things [Bush] said to me,” Herskowitz said, “is: ‘One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of (Kuwait) and he wasted it.

“[Bush] said, ‘If I have a chance to invade Iraq, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.’”

The attack on 9/11 gave Bush his first chance to “be seen as a commander-in-chief” when our guy Osama Bin Laden, who the Reagan/Bush administration had spent $3 billion building up in Afghanistan, engineered an attack on New York and DC.

The crime was planned in Germany and Florida and on 9/11 Bin Laden was, according to CBS News, not even in Afghanistan:

“CBS Evening News has been told that the night before the Sept. 11 terrorists attack, Osama bin Laden was in Pakistan. He was getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan.”

When the Obama administration finally caught and killed Bin Laden, he was back in Pakistan, the home base for the Taliban.

But attacking our ally Pakistan in 2001 would have been impossible for Bush, and, besides, nearby Afghanistan was an easier target, being at that time the second-poorest country in the world with an average annual per-capita income of $700 a year. Bin Laden had run terrorist training camps there — unrelated to 9/11 — and they made a fine excuse for Bush’s first chance to “be seen as a commander-in-chief” and get some leadership cred.

Cheney, meanwhile, was in a world of trouble because of a huge bet he’d made as CEO of Halliburton in 1998. Dresser Industries was big into asbestos and about to fall into bankruptcy because of asbestos lawsuits that the company was fighting through the court system.

Cheney bet Dresser would ultimately win the suits and had Halliburton buy the company on the cheap, but a year later, in 1999, Dresser got turned down by the courts and Haliburton’s stock went into freefall, crashing 68 percent in a matter of months.

Bush had asked Cheney — who’d worked in his father’s White House as Secretary of Defense — to help him find a suitable candidate for VP.

Cheney, as his company was collapsing, recommended himself for the job. In July of 2000, Cheney walked away with $30 million from the troubled company and the year after that, as VP, Halliburton subsidiary KBR received one of the first no-bid no-ceiling (no accountability and no limit on how much they could receive) multi-billion-dollar military contracts.

Bush and Cheney both had good reason to want to invade Afghanistan in October 2001. Bush was seen as an illegitimate president at the time because his father’s corrupt appointee on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, had cast the deciding vote in the Bush v Gore lawsuit that made him president; a war that gave him legitimacy and the aura of leadership.

Cheney’s company was in a crisis, and Afghanistan War no-bid contracts helped turn around Halliburton from the edge of bankruptcy into one of the world’s largest defense contractors today.

Even Trump had to get into the “let’s lie about Afghanistan” game, in his case to have bragging rights that he’d “ended the war in Afghanistan.”

In 2019, Trump went around the Afghan government (to their outrage: he even invited the Taliban to Camp David in a move that disgusted the world) to cut a so-called “peace deal” that sent thousands of newly-empowered Taliban fighters back into the field, and then drew down our troops to the point where today’s ongoing chaos in that country was absolutely predictable.

Trump’s deal was the signal to the 300,000+ Afghan army recruits we’d put together and paid that America no longer had their back and if the Taliban showed up they should just run away. Which, of course, is what happened on Trump’s watch. As Susannah George of The Washington Post noted:

“The Taliban capitalized on the uncertainty caused by the [Trump] February 2020 agreement reached in Doha, Qatar, between the militant group and the United States calling for a full American withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some Afghan forces realized they would soon no longer be able to count on American air power and other crucial battlefield support and grew receptive to the Taliban’s approaches.”

Jon Perr’s article at Daily Kos did a great summary, with the title: “Trump put 5,000 Taliban fighters back in battle and tied Biden’s hands in Afghanistan.”

Trump schemed and lied to help his own 2020 reelection efforts, and the people who worked with our military and the US-backed Afghan government paid a terrible price for it. And now Trump’s using ICE to deport them from America, compounding that disgusting betrayal.

As President Biden told America:

“When I came to office, I inherited a deal cut by my predecessor—which he invited the Taliban to discuss at Camp David on the eve of 9/11 of 2019—that left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001 and imposed a May 1, 2021 deadline on U.S. Forces. Shortly before he left office, he also drew U.S. Forces down to a bare minimum of 2,500. 

“Therefore, when I became President, I faced a choice—follow through on the deal, with a brief extension to get our Forces and our allies’ Forces out safely, or ramp up our presence and send more American troops to fight once again in another country’s civil conflict. I was the fourth President to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan—two Republicans, two Democrats. I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth.”

America has been lied into too many wars. It’s cost us too much in money, credibility, and blood. We must remember the lies, and tell our children about them so that memory isn’t lost.

When President Ford withdrew US forces from Vietnam (I remember it well), there was barely a mention of McNamara’s and LBJ’s lies that got us into that war.

Similarly, today’s reporting on the chaos in Afghanistan and the ongoing conflict around the Iraqi oil fields almost never mention Bush’s and Cheney’s lies and ulterior motives in getting us into those wars in the first place.

George Santayana famously noted, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

We can’t afford to let these lies go down the memory hole, like we have the other wars we were lied into that I mentioned earlier. Sadly, it’s clear now that neither Bush nor Cheney will be held accountable for their lies or for the American, Afghan, and Iraqi blood and treasure they cost.

But both should be subject to a clear and public airing of the crimes they committed in office and Bush should be required — at the very least — to apologize to the thousands of American families destroyed by the loss of their soldier children, parents, and spouses in those unnecessary wars, as well as to the people of both Afghanistan and Iraq.

If the media refuses to mention the Bush/Cheney lies on this anniversary of 9/11, it’s all the more important that the rest of us use this opportunity to do so. Pass it on. 

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Stick a Fork in ’Em., Andrew Egger, right, Sept. 11, 2026. Ever since Democrats’ major overperformance in last year’s off-year elections, I’ve been saying over and over: time is a finite resource for Donald Trump and his party. If they wanted to stave off disaster in the midterms, they would need to get moving fast to woo back disaffected members of their 2024 coalition. Every day spent failing to achieve that goal was a day wasted.

Now, in the afterglow of this week’s ludicrous, somnambulant GOP midterm convention, I’m about ready to call it. Republicans are out of ideas and out of time. They have no plan to reassemble their base, no bright ideas to reassure Americans that the Trump show has brought anything but chaos and expense to their country, no reason even to hope that material conditions won’t be worse in November than they are today. The midterms are still two months away, but the MAGA GOP is a dead party walking.

Over and over again, the convention hammered home the two central truths of the party’s disastrous plight: Trump is a senile old villain whose necrotizing brain is leaking out of his ears, and Republicans’ electoral chances now rest entirely on convincing the public otherwise.

Nobody was going to tell Trump “no” about anything: If he wanted to natter on for nearly two hours on Wednesday night and then make a (mercifully much shorter) speech Thursday rehashing the same points, he’d get to. Somehow, Trump genuinely seems to think this is the ticket to winning everybody back: All he needs to do is get in front of Americans to make the case himself.

But he had nothing on offer but hours of the same reheated slurry we’ve long since grown accustomed to. There were, of course, the bald-faced lies. “Look at that,” Trump said, looking out over the half-full convention stadium. “The highest rafter, no empty seats.” There were the endless hallucinations about the American Golden Age that exists nowhere but in his own mind. “Our country has never done better,” he said. “We’re taking in trillions, trillions of dollars. There’s never been any country, not even close, that’s come anywhere near.” There were the ridiculous pie-in-the-sky promises, stripped of all pretense: “If we win, it’s $5,000 for every adult. We love our adults. It’s about time we take care of our adults.” Sometimes he was begging. “Pretend I’m on the ballot.” (More on that below.) Other times he was threatening. At one point, he led the crowd in a bizarre repeat-after-me oath in which they pledged they would show up and vote. “You know what happens if you don’t vote?” Trump said. “You go to Hell.”

Meanwhile, out in the real world, things are crashing down around Trump’s ears. Even the softest of softball interviews, like one he did yesterday with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, are now impossible for him to get through without embarrassment. On those $5,000 checks, for instance: “Why not just give the money now?” Ingraham asked. “If you have the money, why not give it now?”

“Because they can’t. I’ll tell you what, because the Democrats can’t do it,” Trump said. “Because with them it’s negative growth. With us, it’s so positive.”

In the same interview, Trump—whose entire pitch is that Democrats retaking Congress will lead to a communist revolution in America—suddenly suggested offhand it wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all. He didn’t intend to campaign as hard as he had in 2024, at any rate. “I’ll block all their bad stuff for two years. It won’t be the same, but I’ll be a blocker, and probably be able to make deals with them,” Trump said. “You make deals. . . . So it’s not as dire. Maybe it is as dire.”

None of this is some big revelation, exactly. Republicans know what they have with Trump. If we learned anything last night, it’s how screwed the GOP will be even as they try to move past him.

When the Republican convention schedule dropped, one of the biggest surprises was the way the party had divvied up the keynotes. Even though Trump ended up getting back on stage for an encore performance last night, it was still notable that the bigger closing-night slot went to Vice President JD Vance. The decision seemed to highlight an interesting piece of strategic thinking: The GOP’s brain trust is already looking ahead to a future when someone—probably Vance—is going to need to try to hold together Trump’s unique base.

It’s unclear whether anyone will be able to do this. It’s even more unclear whether Vance will. Frankly, I’m just not sure he has the juice. He’s perfectly capable of lying as shamelessly as Trump does, and of reaching just as deep into the gutter to smear his opponents: At one point, Vance suggested that Texas Democrat James Talarico has a sexual fetish for trans children. But he lacks Trump’s unique charisma, the winking carnival-barker energy that has for so long let the president get away with pretty much anything.

More importantly, Vance has nothing new to offer. The most notable moment of the vice president’s speech came when he made a direct case to Republican voters incensed about the Iran war. Vance himself, it has been very clear, sees his own complicity in that war as politically disastrous: He’s supposed to be an anti-war America Firster, and his team regularly leaks to the press to keep the narrative that the vice president has had major reservations about the conflict alive. But last night, all Vance could give was a halfhearted plea that Republicans who hate the war should turn up and vote for them anyway—because Charlie Kirk would have wanted them too and, anyway, you can’t let the other lunatics get back in power.

The GOP has tied itself more tightly to Trump than any party has ever tied itself to a single figure. They have cut themselves off from any possible exit strategy. Now they—and we—are just waiting for the electoral hammer to fall.

AROUND THE BULWARK

• The Republican Who Renounced the Big Lie—and Then Came Crawling Back… Jason Richey labeled Trump a “loser” and a “narcissist.” That was before he needed MAGA again, writes BRENDAN HARTNETT.
• How the Right Came to Embrace Anti-Muslim Bigotry… After the terrorist attacks of September 11th, Republican leaders opposed anti-Muslim sentiment. But the right’s worst instincts won, observes CATHY YOUNG.
• Live Coverage of Vance’s Midterm Convention Speech… On Bulwark Live, join TIM MILLER, SONNY BUNCH, LAUREN EGAN, and ANDREW EGGER as they covered JD Vance’s midterm convention speech live last night.
• Trump’s $5,000 Midterm Ploy Is Even Dumber Than It Sounds… The math is impossible, the inflation risk is real, and the plan would attract an army of scammers, writes CATHERINE RAMPELL in Receipts.

Quick Hits

MORE PAIN AT THE PUMP: Fuel prices are getting gruesome again, with the twin shocks of increasing U.S.–Iran shooting in the Strait of Hormuz and increasing Houthi belligerence in the Red Sea sending prices soaring to levels not seen for months. Or, for some products, to levels not seen ever: Diesel fuel hit a national average of $6 a gallon for the first time in history yesterday.

Most consumers don’t have to pump diesel, so they don’t feel its rising costs as acutely, but the drag on the economy here is no joke. “Record diesel prices will impact every cargo, shipment, every delivery Americans are taking, and are likely to reignite inflation up and down the supply chain,” wrote Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy. “And for now, it comes at a time of year when diesel prices also traditionally rise, adding more pain. I suggest Americans anticipate a costlier holiday season, as it appears diesel prices could continue climbing as geopolitical tensions continue to remain a main factor.”

THEY’RE YELLING AT ME ONLINE!!!: How obsessed is FBI Director Kash Patel with maintaining his online MAGA cred? This February, a right-wing X account called “IFindRetards” posted that Patel’s “retard rating” had just gone “to all-time highs.” This wouldn’t matter at all, except that—as an FBI records request showed yesterday—it led to a hilarious text exchange between Patel and his top comms staffer Ben Williamson.¹ After Patel sent Williamson the tweet, Williamson tried to reassure him: “This is an ‘Epstein didn’t kill himself’ bot account,” he said, “if you’re wondering where that’s coming from.”

“227k responses are not bots,” Patel replied, apparently confusing the number of views on the post with the number of replies. “What I asked you and your team to do is find them, and post our record year results back at them all, continuously. Have they been doing that?”

“It’s 400 responses, a real visible tweet gets 5x that,” Williamson replied. “Yes. We’re not responding to ‘ifindretards.’ That would look bad on you.”

Still Patel tried again: “It’s not about them, it is about the number of views, because people see it and need to be seeing our stats.”

In the end, cooler heads prevailed, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations did not issue an official response to X account “IFindRetards.” Good staff work is so important.

MISSOURI MAP OVERTURNED: The long fight of Gerrymandering Total War is basically over, but a few last-minute map changes are still trickling in. This week, the Supreme Court twice stepped in with last-minute rulings on a legal fight over Missouri’s congressional districts, which Republicans tried to gerrymander this year from a 6–2 GOP map to a 7–1 one. Each time, the verdict was the same: The state is compelled to move forward with the older, slightly more Democrat-favorable map for now.

The Court’s orders, signed by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, came down quickly and without explication. But they seem to be in keeping with the Court’s oft-applied Purcell principle, which states that federal courts should be reluctant to step on election procedures too close to the elections themselves. In this case, it was mostly a matter of SCOTUS overruling a lower federal court that had sought to put the redder map back in place, and instead deferring to the Missouri Supreme Court, which had sided with Democratic challengers to the maps.  

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion, On This Somber Day Some Notes On Finding A New Path Forward Through All The Chaos, Simon Rosenberg, right, Sept. 11, 2026. I had not planned on writing about 9/11 this morning as there is so much happening but powerful remembrances are everywhere, and I have become a bit overwhelmed by the emotion and the weight of it all…….

So here are a few hasty thoughts on this somber morning…..

I want to imagine that if we can have the election we all want to have this November that perhaps we will come to view it as the beginning of the closing of the twenty five year post-9/11 chapter in American history and the start of something new.

Even if we win both chambers this November we will not be rid of MAGA next year but the scale of Trump’s failure at home and abroad will require a new era of politics to emerge in America. I hope that new politics will be grounded in a few foundational projects - dramatic investments to improve the lot of every day Americans; an intense commitment to democratic renewal and accountability for the corruption, lawlessness and illiberalism of the Trump era; and an urgent, plan to accelerate the clean energy transition to slow the warming of the planet and to liberate us from the reactionary, corrosive grip of global petro-politics.

Perhaps, perhaps this election can be the beginning of us finding a true, new path forward through the chaos, and war, and failure, and tragedy…..

As for the present moment I offered a comprehensive overview of where I think we are in my weekly video and accompanying written analysis: "Trump Had His Shot And Has Blown It, Badly. It Is Our Turn Now To Win, Lead, And Make Things Better" (New Written & Video Analysis).

My core understanding is that as bad as things are for Trump and the Rs - and they are bad - they were likely to get worse as head towards the November election. And each day we see what worse looks like…….

Brent crude is $104 a barrel right now. This morning’s CPI report confirms that inflation remains far too elevated. The concern about bonds and global government finances has gotten far more intense this week, as has the perceived idiocy and incompetence of the Trump economic team. Each day we got more data about the unfolding health care shock that is rippling across the country due to Trump’s ruinous attack on our health care system……

But of all the things driving “worse” it is the gathering momentum of the Iranian-Russian alliance and the accelerating unraveling of Pax Americana that could the most damage to the Trump regime in these closing days of the 2026 election.

In the last few days something dramatic has happened in the Middle East - the Iranian-backed Houthis seized land on the Western coast of Yemen and appear to have bombed the main East-West oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia. If this is all playing out as reported - and reports are sketchy as I write this morning - it will be another huge, geopolitical defeat for Trump and increases the likelihood that oil prices keep rising and inflation worsening here and everywhere in the world.

The House and Senate return next week and will be demanding clarity on what has happened this past week in the Middle East for it sure appears that Iran delivered devastating blows to the US and our allies in recent days. The other thing Congress should be demanding is that our ridiculous Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, resign, immediately.

A few more things we are tracking today…..

• The FCC forced Jimmy Kimmel not to broadcast an interview with James Talarico this week. So Kimmel released the interview on YouTube. Here it is. Let’s watch together this weekend…..
• Ron DeSantis trashed the ridiculous $5,000 bribe:
• Republicans in seven states asked the Supreme Court not to approve Trump’s mail ballot order:
• Republican chief election officials from seven states said that it’s too late for President Donald Trump’s mail-in ballot order to be implemented before the midterm election, urging the Supreme Court to not allow the rule to go into effect in a brief submitted to the court on Wednesday.
• Trump and his allies lost their fight to implement a ridiculous gerrymander in Missouri.

Supporting The Vital Election Projection Work Of The State Parties - Today we are kicking off two new targeted fundraising campaigns to support our election protection work - one to raise $50,000 for the Association of State Democratic Committees (ASDC), and one to raise $50,000 for Hopium itself. Last month in Austin, Texas ASDC President Jane Kleeb and I announced a new election protection program that we helped develop for the state parties, something Jane is calling The New Battlefield Project. Here is how I summarized it at the time:Enhanced Election Protection - we will ensure that for the first time ever every state and territory has a full time, qualified Election Protection Director; we will also be launching a nationwide training program to help train volunteers to support their state parties in protecting the elections this fall.

A National Early Vote Campaign - Pushing our family to vote early makes it more likely we win and harder for them to cheat. This is something we’ve been promoting here for some time, and it is a vital, vital effort to help us win.

A War Room - we will ensuring that the states and territories are tied to one another and to all the national party committees in real time. So if something illicit happens anywhere it can be understood immediately everywhere. We will be also be bringing on national security professionals to help advise the states if things arise that require their expertise.

The program is off and running. Trainings, led by Hopium community member Tim Wegener have begun. Election Protection Directors are being hired in the states. Early vote programs are being developed and implemented across the country, a process that will be supercharged by the No Kings Early Vote campaign. We are standing up the third piece in the coming days, something that I will be spending time on formally advising once it is fully stood up. So we are coming to you today both to help the ASDC expand its initial offering with a bit more investment, and for me to have the resources to hire some help so I can spend time each day with this important new program. 

More On Middle East Wars

New York Times, Houthis Seize a Key Red Sea Island, Threatening Yet Another Global Oil Route, Adam Rasgon, Shuaib Almosawa and Saeed Al-Batati, Sept. 11, 2026. The Iran-backed militia’s ground offensive has reached the Bab al-Mandab, a Red Sea strait that is a choke point for global trade.

The Iranian-backed Houthi militia seized a strategic Red Sea island, two Yemeni government officials said Friday, giving Iran and its allies sway over two of the main routes for shipping oil out of the Middle East.

The capture of Perim Island follows days of fierce ground skirmishes in Yemen as the Houthis have staged a lightning advance against forces allied with the internationally recognized Yemeni government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia. On Thursday, the Houthis swept into the strategic Red Sea port city of Mokha.

The capture of Perim Island presents a major setback for Saudi Arabia, which now exports most of its oil through the Red Sea and has faced Houthi attacks on its tankers and energy facilities. Saudi officials have tried to avoid a direct war with the Houthis, analysts say.

It also adds a new dimension in the war between the United States and Iran. The Islamic republic has already largely cut off the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, and leveraged that influence to demand concessions from the United States.

Now Iran’s ally, the Houthi militia, has a foothold at the heart of a choke point in the Red Sea, and could further disrupt shipping there.

More On U.S. Culture, Media, Religion

New York Times, After 9/11, Islamophobia Shaped a Generation of Muslim New Yorkers, Liam Stack and Maya King, Sept. 11, 2026. The attacks unleashed a wave of hate, but the years since have seen Muslim Americans’ political and cultural influence grow.

Once-friendly neighbors started to keep their distance. Undercover police officers began to monitor community events. And passers-by would give them dirty looks on the street, and sometimes harass them, when they left home in hijabs or other religious garb.

Many American Muslims have faced a quarter-century of suspicion and hostility since the Sept. 11 attacks, which reshaped life for all Americans.

In New York, a generation of Muslim New Yorkers responded to the Islamophobia by organizing their communities: Mosques hosted makeshift legal clinics. Small businesses became hubs in a citywide civil rights network. Muslims of different racial, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds formed alliances the city had not seen before.

Their political organizing helped, years later, to elect the city’s first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani. But anti-Muslim prejudice still endures, echoing the Islamophobia that arose in the earliest days after Sept. 11.

Murad Awawdeh was 14 in September 2001. The post-9/11 backlash, and the grass-roots response of his friends and neighbors, led him to trade his biochemistry studies — and his mother’s American dream of having a doctor in the family — for a career in civil rights.

“I think that day belongs to everyone who lived it and what came after belongs to a smaller group of us,” said Mr. Awawdeh, 39, who is now the president and chief executive of the New York Immigration Coalition and a confidant of Mr. Mamdani. “That part of the story this country still has not told itself honestly.”

The Sept. 11 attacks left many Muslim American communities scarred by heavy-handed law enforcement tactics and the suspicion, if not outright hostility, of classmates, co-workers, elected officials and cable news commentators who blamed all Muslims for the terrorism they, too, had experienced that day. That experience spurred many to take political action.

“If you look at prior to 9/11, for the most part, Muslim Americans were not politically involved,” said Afaf Nasher, the executive director of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. But, she added, “When you’re pushed against the wall, you’re either going to run in fear or you’re going to push back, and political empowerment was certainly one way that we are pushing back.”

Sept. 10 

Top Headlines

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant tried to quell fears about the U.S. bond market and economy with remarks outside the White House.

• Robert Reich, Opinion: Bessent (and his boss) have lost all credibility on the economy, Robert Reich, right, retired professor and former U.S. Labor Secretary, Sept. 10, 2026. It’s becoming a problem for all of us. 
• New York Times, Behind the Scenes, Vance Gathered Unvarnished Views of the Iran War, Jonathan Swan, Adam Entous and Maggie Haberman, Sept. 10, 2026. Vice President JD Vance received sobering assessments about the war that did not line up with what he, along with President Trump and other top administration officials, were saying publicly.

News Roundups 

• The Parnas Perspective, Evening News Updates: Republicans Shut Down Trump’s $5,000 ‘Dividend’ Bribe, Musk’s Election Texts, Trump Losses Pile Up, Diesel Hits Record Highs, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 10, 2026. Trump’s $5,000 midterm “dividend” didn’t survive 24 hours before his own party started tearing it apart, with a Republican megadonor calling it a “bread and circus bribe” and fiscal hawks demanding to know how it would ever get paid for. Meanwhile the Supreme Court dealt him back-to-back election losses, blocking his gerrymandered Missouri map for a second time and letting stand a lower court’s block on his administration’s mail-in ballot rules, with judges finding zero evidence of the fraud he’s long claimed. And Anthropic revealed it disrupted scientists trying to use its AI to help build biological weapons, the same day Trump brushed off AI catastrophe risk by joking there’d always be a “little gear” to shut it down, a comment that drew alarm from Bernie Sanders and even Ted Cruz. 
• MeidasTouch Network, Thursday Updates: Trump's Fake $5,000, Dallas Falls Apart, and the Houthis Take the Red Sea, Ben Meiselas, right, Sept. 10, 2026. From the disaster that is the Trump Midterm Convention, to the Houthis taking control over the red sea, to brutal economic news, the last 12 hours or so have been quite eventful, so like, restack, and let’s dig into the headlines: Trump doubles down on his latest lie about a $5,000 “Trump dividend” and then also promises to give away $500 Obamacare “rebate” checks. Scammers gonna scam; PPI inflation jumps to 5.4% YoY, Treasury yields spike, oil spikes; The Houthis seize the port city of Mokha and Zuqar Island, tightening their grip on the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait. 
• The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Trump Silences Kimmel in Major Attack, Thousands of Empty Seats at Convention, Trump’s Speech Debunked, Inflation Surges, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 10, 2026. Trump’s FCC just got Jimmy Kimmel’s interview with a Democratic Senate candidate pulled off broadcast television, the second late-night host in six months to face that exact pressure over the same candidate. His first-ever midterm convention played out in front of a half-empty arena while he insisted it was “packed,” and the headline promise from that speech, a $5,000 check for every American adult, falls apart the moment you do the math. And while Trump keeps telling voters the war with Iran will be over right after the midterms, his own vice president and secretary of state are privately warning him it could drag on for years.

More On Court Clash Over Republican Gerrymander Attempt In Missouri

• New York Times, Supreme Court Again Blocks Republican-Backed Missouri Voting Map, Ann E. Marimow and Mitch Smith, Sept. 10, 2026. The ruling deferred to the state’s Supreme Court, which had invalidated G.O.P.-friendly district lines, saying voters must first have an opportunity to approve the map in a statewide referendum.
• Civil Discourse, Opinion: Insanity in Missouri, Joyce Vance, right, Sept. 10, 2026. It’s utter insanity in Missouri, or as NBC’s Lawrence Hurley put it on Twitter this morning, the “Show Cause State.”

Trump Midtown Convention In Texas 

• New York Times, News Analysis: Down in the Polls, Republicans Embrace a Familiar Tool: Fear, Lisa Lerer, Sept. 10, 2026. At an unusual midterm gathering, President Trump and his allies painted Democrats as dangerously un-American.
• Hope for America, Opinion: The president wants to buy our votes, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Sept. 10, 2026. At 8:09 PM tonight, the President of the United States walked onto the stage at the first-ever Republican midterm convention and slowly made his way over to the podium, stopping along the way to catch his breath and soak in screams of “I love you” from women in the audience. Once at the podium, Donald Trump launched into an hour-and-47-minute speech unlike any ever given by a president of the United States in the 250-year history of our country.
• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion:Trump’s Party, Sonny Bunch, Sept. 10, 2026. The vibe at the first day of the Republicans’ midterm convention was a pretty simple one: Play the hits, no matter how little sense it makes to play them, and offer the people some free cash while you’re at it.
• Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion: Trump Had His Shot And Has Blown It, Badly. It Is Our Turn Now To Win, Lead, And Make Things Better, Simon Rosenberg, right, Sept. 10, 2026. Trump’s failed and extremist regime continues to make things worse for America, the American people, and for their rancid, illiberal political project.

More On U.S. Immigration Policy, Abuses

• Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Markwayne Mullin’s Trouble with Facts, Jim Swift, right, Sept. 10, 2026. When Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin came to Warren County, Ohio last week to tout the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, he made a number of assertions about immigration law and enforcement that did not withstand much scrutiny.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

• Politico, Jim Jordan says he will relinquish Judiciary gavel, pass on a return to Oversight, Mia McCarthy, Sept. 10, 2026. The Ohio Republican’s committee decisions are likely to rekindle chatter about his leadership ambitions.ajority this fall.
• The Contrarian, Opinion: Our Military Needs Congress to Do Its Job, Jennifer Rubin, right, Sept. 10, 2026. 54 Days to the Midterms. Given that Democrats will likely win control of at least one house of Congress, we need to begin serious consideration of the essential role of congressional oversight. Congress’s powers of the purse and of oversight will be essential to halt this regime’s chaos and begin reversing the constitutional damage and policy failures we have endured.
• MSNOW, States warn of ‘chaos’ if Supreme Court allows mail-ballot restrictions for midterms, Jordan Rubin, Sept. 9, 2026. A blue-state coalition warned the justices that millions of Americans could lose their ability to vote.

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption  

The Trump destruction of the White House historic East Wing to build his ballroom without congressional approval. (New York Times photo).

• To The Contrary, Avlon: Sweep Trump’s Ballroom Into the Ash Heap of History, Charlie Sykes, right, Sept. 10, 2026. Plus: Trump’s Stolen Valor, and Fascist-themed new uniforms. On today’s “To the Contrary” podcast, I sit down with journalist, author, historian, and Renaissance Man, John Avlon to reflect on the lessons of 9/11 as its 25th anniversary approaches.
• New York Times, Trump Loyalist Steps Down From ‘Grand Conspiracy’ Case, Alan Feuer, Sept. 10, 2026. The inquiry has long been the most fevered of the many revenge investigations that President Trump has demanded the Justice Department undertake. 
• Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. 9, 2026 [Trump Lies About His Made-up 9/11 Heroism, Again], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Sept. 10, 2026. Yesterday, at a White House event honoring those who sacrificed their lives on 9/11, President Donald Trump went off script and claimed he had taken a crew downtown “right after this happened."

More On Middle East Wars

• New York Times, Yemen’s Houthis Seize Strategic Red Sea Port, Officials Say, Saeed Al-Batati, Shuaib Almosawa and Vivian Nereim, Sept. 10, 2026. The Iran-backed militia routed Yemeni government forces in Mokha, putting the group in a stronger position to attack ships in a crucial waterway for global trade.
• New York Times, Oil Prices Surge as Stocks and Bonds Wobble, Gregory Schmidt and Jenny Gross, Sept. 10, 2026. Crude oil hit its highest levels in months, bond yields continued to rise and stocks fell for a fourth consecutive session as investors worried about energy supplies and inflation.

More On 9/11 25th Anniversary

• New York Times,  25 Years After 9/11, Al Qaeda Still Has a Home in Afghanistan, Elian Peltier, Photographs by Tomás Munita, Sept. 10, 2026. The Taliban claim that Afghanistan is no longer a sanctuary for terrorist groups, but Al Qaeda and others are still present, reviving old fears.
• New York Times, The Man Who Approved 9/11 Victims’ Checks Paid a Price, Ephrat Livni, Sept. 10, 2026. Kenneth Feinberg says the nearly three years he spent running the Sept. 11 compensation fund changed his life view.

More On Global News

• Middle East Eye, Algeria suspends diplomatic relations with ‘dwarf state’ UAE, Elis Gjevori, Sept. 10, 2026. Algiers cuts ties with Abu Dhabi and accuses the Gulf state of destabilising the wider region. 

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets

• Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: A new low for American workers, Rebecca Crosby, Sept. 10, 2026. Workers in the United States are earning a historically low share of the value they produce, according to new data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The BLS estimates that the labor share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) “was 52.8 percent in the second quarter of 2026.” This is the lowest level that the BLS has seen since it first began recording labor share in 1947.
• Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Bessent and the Bonds, Paul Krugman, right, Sept. 10, 2026. “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Teddy Roosevelt’s favorite aphorism made sense then and now. Policymakers should avoid being boastful or belligerent, not simply as a matter of good manners, but to save their credibility for moments when it’s really needed.

More On U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Religion

• New York Times, Memorial on Anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s Killing Splits a Utah Campus, Jack Healy, Sept. 10, 2026. The university where the conservative activist was shot last year has canceled classes for a memorial. While many students planned to attend, some said they just wanted to move on from the tragedy.
• Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: MeidasTouch Podcast Ranks #1 Podcast in the Industry for Monthly Downloads and Views, Ben Meiselas, right, Sept. 10, 2026. The MeidasTouch Network announced today that The MeidasTouch Podcast has been ranked the #1 podcast in the industry by monthly downloads and views, according to Podscribe’s August 2026 Industry Ranker.

More News Roundups

• The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Trump Blocks International Epstein Investigations, Musk's Vote Website Is Secretly Stealing Your Data, Trump's Family Calls Him a Liar, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 9, 2026. Five countries are investigating Jeffrey Epstein right now, and the Justice Department is stonewalling every single one of them. The president’s own nephew just called him out publicly for lying about 9/11. And Elon Musk is spending millions of dollars on a website designed to trick you into handing over your personal data. Plus, Republicans kick off their first-ever midterm convention to a room half full of no-shows, the Tate brothers stay behind bars, and a 22-year-old dropout pleads guilty to one of the largest crypto heists in US history.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice: In-Depth

• Emptywheel, Analysis: Big John Solomon Expose!!!! He’s Covering Up Trump’s Egypt Corruption! Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Sept. 9, 2026. Yesterday, John Solomon conducted another of his Russian propaganda exercises, this time claiming to release newly declassified versions of: The 302 from Mike Flynn’s January 24, 2017 interview;Joe Pientka’s notes from the interview; Peter Strzok’s notes from the interview. 

Top Headlines

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant tried to quell fears about the U.S. bond market and economy with remarks outside the White House.

Robert Reich, Opinion: Bessent (and his boss) have lost all credibility on the economy, Robert Reich, right, retired professor and former U.S. Labor Secretary, Sept. 10, 2026. It’s becoming a problem for all of us. 

U.S. government bond yields have jumped to new multiyear highs — which will result in higher costs for mortgages, car loans, student loans, and all other borrowing.

In other words, the affordability crisis is growing even worse.

Treasury secretary Scott Bessent isn’t the cause (I’ll get to that in a moment), but he’s making a colossal mess of it.

At 11 a.m. ET yesterday, his Treasury Department announced that it would repurchase $6 billion worth of 10- to 20-year government bonds, hoping that fewer bonds on the market would drive up demand, pushing down rates (yields) that have soared to levels not seen in decades.

Instead most Treasury yields sharply jumped on the announcement. The 10-year bond yield surged to as high as 4.85%, its highest since November 2023. The 20- and 30-year bond yields surged to as high as 5.3%. (Note: When Treasuries fall, their yields rise.)

Bessent can’t beat the bond market. To the contrary, his interventions are causing traders to worry all the more about the stability and intelligence of the United States when it comes to economic policy.

Bonds are being driven upward mainly by concerns about inflation. Where are these concerns coming from? First and foremost, from Trump’s war in Iran, which is driving up oil prices. Brent crude futures are trading above $107 a barrel, while the 10-year Treasury yield climbed above 4.9%—its highest intraday level since October 2023.

Following a flare-up in attacks by both sides, Trump advisers are now privately suggesting the conflict could drag on through the end of his term in 2029.

Reacting to the same inflation concerns, the European Central Bank raised interest rates Thursday, saying it expected inflation to remain above target for an extended period.

And then there’s Trump’s vow yesterday to pay each of America’s 270 million adults a $5,000 check if Republicans keep control of Congress in November would cost $1.3 trillion— making such a plan prohibitively costly for a country with a $40 trillion national debt. (By the way, it’s illegal to pay people to vote your way.)

It won’t happen, of course, but the mere possibility is fueling further inflation fears.

Why didn’t Bessent try to dissuade Trump from making this incredibly stupid vow?

Global inflation fears are also being driven by Trump’s inane tariffs, including his trade war with Canada.

Why hasn’t Bessent tried to dissuade Trump from entering this trade war?

And what is Bessent saying in public about any of this? Is he using the bully pulpit to reassure world markets?

Just the opposite. He’s sounding as looney as his boss.

In Bessent’s speech at yesterday’s Republican event, he warned that the progressive left is relentless in trying to turn America into a “socialist hellscape.”

“The radical left is relentless in their pursuit to remake America in the image of every socialist hellscape of the last century, to import the misery of failed workers’ paradises like the Soviet Bloc, Caracas and Havana.”

Bessent added that their “version of equality would drag everyone down instead of lift everyone up” and urged attendees to continue the political fight to push back against socialism.

Bad enough that this is just demented Cold War communist witch-hunt crap. Worse, it’s coming from the mouth of the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, who’s supposed to be the adult in the room.

The credibility of a treasury secretary is critical to soothing markets and maintaining worldwide faith in the dollar. Bessent seems to be doing everything possible to lose credibility.

I’ve worked with several treasury secretaries and closely watched others, and I can honestly say that Scott Bessent is the worst I’ve ever witnessed.

• Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Bessent and the Bonds, Paul Krugman, right, Sept. 10, 2026. “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Teddy Roosevelt’s favorite aphorism made sense then and now. Policymakers should avoid being boastful or belligerent, not simply as a matter of good manners, but to save their credibility for moments when it’s really needed.

New York Times, Behind the Scenes, Vance Gathered Unvarnished Views of the Iran War, Jonathan Swan, Adam Entous and Maggie Haberman, Sept. 10, 2026. Vice President JD Vance received sobering assessments about the war that did not line up with what he, along with President Trump and other top administration officials, were saying publicly.

Vice President JD Vance took the unusual step over the spring and summer of calling U.S. military commanders in the Middle East, Europe and Asia directly, seeking their unvarnished assessments of the Iran war, according to current and former officials.

Mr. Vance, right, who opposed the war from the outset and was charged by President Trump with helping to end the conflict, wanted the commanders’ individual judgments, in their own words, before they were consolidated into a Pentagon view.

The conversations delved into an array of issues related to the war, including its objectives, tactics, casualty estimates, what the Iranians would do in the Strait of Hormuz, how adaptable they had become and how much punishment their government could absorb. Mr. Vance also asked for a detailed accounting of what remained in the commanders’ stockpiles, and how the transfer of weapons to the Middle East would affect their ability to deter China, Russia and North Korea.

On that last point, the commanders were blunt. They were most worried about their depleted stocks of Patriot interceptors, the backbone of their air defenses. By late spring, one theater was down to fewer than 100 of them. The war had also exhausted the theater’s supplies of the Army Tactical Missile Systems, which can reach 190 miles, along with stores of the Precision Strike Missiles, which were meant to replace them. Stocks of critical munitions such as these, they told the vice president, were the lowest they had ever seen.

This account is based on interviews with more than a half-dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity to disclose sensitive information.

Mr. Vance came away from some of his conversations with deep concerns about the overall strategy and the prospects for success, according to people who spoke to him. The assessments made clear the extraordinary amount of pain the Iranian government was prepared to endure in its fight for survival, and the limited supply of U.S. defensive weapons available to block Iran’s retaliatory strikes, or to deal with threats elsewhere.

The vice president incorporated these lessons into his private talks with Mr. Trump and their inner circle. At the same time, the president was hearing more in his briefings from Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the strain on U.S. stockpiles and the resilience of Iranian forces, which Mr. Trump initially found difficult to believe.

The officials’ accounts, taken together, show how Mr. Vance has sought to surface a greater level of detail and nuance about the war. They also help to flesh out hotly debated questions about what kinds of information about the war Mr. Trump is receiving, and from whom. And for Mr. Vance, who had only limited national security experience before he became vice president, they show how he is now immersed in a costly and inconclusive war that could shadow him in a potential 2028 presidential campaign.

There was a gulf between the sobering private assessments that Mr. Vance received and what top administration officials, including the president and vice president, have said publicly. Mr. Trump has continued to falsely claim that the United States has already won the war, that the Iranian military has been demolished and that there are no problems with U.S. weapons supplies. And Mr. Vance recently downplayed the idea that the United States was even engaged in a war.Sign up to get Maggie Haberman's articles emailed to you. Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent reporting on President Trump. Get it sent to your inbox.

Privately, the president has raged about media stories detailing the diminished stockpiles, calling journalists “treasonous” for reporting on the topic. In the wake of the coverage, government investigators subjected dozens of senior military officers at the Pentagon to polygraph tests. Other officials have worried about signaling weakness to China and Russia, who are closely surveilling U.S. stockpiles.

Mr. Vance’s calls to the commanders were made with the knowledge of the president; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; General Caine; Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as the national security adviser; and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, according to officials with direct knowledge.

News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News Updates: Republicans Shut Down Trump’s $5,000 ‘Dividend’ Bribe, Musk’s Election Texts, Trump Losses Pile Up, Diesel Hits Record Highs, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 10, 2026. Trump’s $5,000 midterm “dividend” didn’t survive 24 hours before his own party started tearing it apart, with a Republican megadonor calling it a “bread and circus bribe” and fiscal hawks demanding to know how it would ever get paid for.

Meanwhile the Supreme Court dealt him back-to-back election losses, blocking his gerrymandered Missouri map for a second time and letting stand a lower court’s block on his administration’s mail-in ballot rules, with judges finding zero evidence of the fraud he’s long claimed. And Anthropic revealed it disrupted scientists trying to use its AI to help build biological weapons, the same day Trump brushed off AI catastrophe risk by joking there’d always be a “little gear” to shut it down, a comment that drew alarm from Bernie Sanders and even Ted Cruz.

Trump’s own party is publicly calling his midterm promises “bread and circus bribes,” the Supreme Court keeps handing him election losses, and the people building AI are warning it could get out of control, and you’re not going to get the real story from networks that have to answer to FCC threats or advertisers with a stake in staying friendly with this White House.

That’s exactly why this newsletter exists, no corporate ownership, no access to protect, just the facts laid out so you can see clearly what’s actually happening. 

Here’s the news:

Newly obtained and authenticated text messages show Elon Musk bragging to his ex-girlfriend, former MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair, about using “lasers from space” to help elect Trump before the 2024 election, according to NPR, which surfaced the texts from director Alex Gibney’s forthcoming documentary Musk. In the messages, Musk writes that he’s feeling newly confident just before the election and plans to “unleash the anomaly in the matrix,” and when St. Clair pressed him for clarity, he said he has 10,000 lasers in space, an apparent reference to his SpaceX satellite network. A representative for Musk declined to comment, and NPR notes the remark has spurred plenty of theories and speculation about what exactly Musk meant and what, if anything, he actually did. The revelation lands as Musk is expected to spend $100 million on House and Senate races this November, adding fresh scrutiny to how much influence he’s buying, or already bought, in American elections.

Trump’s Major Court Losses:

The US Supreme Court once again rejected a Trump-backed push to use new Missouri congressional maps drawn to hand Republicans an additional House seat ahead of November’s midterms. Missouri’s Republican-controlled legislature redrew the lines last September at Trump’s request, specifically dismantling the Kansas City-area seat long held by Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver. A grassroots group called People Not Politicians gathered more than 300,000 signatures to force a statewide referendum on the new map, and on September 3 the Missouri Supreme Court sided with them, ruling the new lines can’t take effect until 2027 and that the 2025 redistricting process itself didn’t comply with state law. Republican Attorney General Catherine Hanaway immediately appealed, but Thursday morning, Justice Brett Kavanaugh again ordered the state to comply with the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling, blocking the new map.

That order came after days of chaos spanning four different courts. Kavanaugh had already declined to block the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling on Tuesday, only for federal district judge Stephen Clark to rule minutes later, in a separate case, that Secretary of State Denny Hoskins had to use the new Republican-friendly map anyway. Hoskins said he’d follow that order, and a federal appeals panel declined to step in, before Kavanaugh’s Thursday ruling settled things back in favor of the old maps. The catch is that Missouri already used the new, Republican-drawn map to hold its primary elections back in August, so it’s genuinely unclear how officials plan to unwind those results or manage the switch with the general election just two months away.

Separately, a federal appeals court handed the Trump administration another election-related loss. A three-judge panel on the First Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the White House’s request to lift a lower court’s block on new Postal Service rules for mail-in ballots, which would have required unique barcodes, an online portal for voter data, and given USPS the authority to reject and return noncompliant ballot mailings. The judges wrote bluntly that there’s “no record evidence of past fraud or a likelihood of impending fraud” tied to the November election, directly contradicting Trump’s long-standing claims, and agreed with the district court that the rule likely violates the Constitution’s Elections Clause by letting an executive agency regulate elections in a way reserved for states and Congress. This is now the third time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to intervene and stay the injunction, and the high court still hasn’t ruled.

Trump’s Dividend:

Trump’s pledge to send every American adult a $5,000 “dividend” if Republicans keep the House and Senate drew immediate bipartisan pushback the moment he announced it at the GOP convention. Republican donor and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale said on X that he’s “strongly against bread and circus bribes,” even while professing support for the administration overall. Fiscal hawks like Rep. Chip Roy demanded to know how the plan would actually be paid for, while former Freedom Caucus chair Bob Good went further, calling it exactly the kind of socialist scheme Republicans usually accuse Democrats of pushing. When asked why he cannot just give the dividend now, Trump responded: “Because the Democrats can't do it. Because with them it's negative growth.”

The math behind the promise doesn’t hold up. With roughly 245 million adult US citizens, paying everyone $5,000 would cost more than $1.2 trillion, a sum that arrives just weeks after the national debt crossed $40 trillion for the first time. When Trump was pressed on Fox News about why the payments couldn’t go out now, since Republicans already control both chambers of Congress, he blamed Democrats, saying “with them, it’s negative growth” and touting a fabricated $21 trillion investment figure that fact-checkers have repeatedly debunked. Vance separately defended the plan as funded by tariff revenue, but the government has only collected about $300 billion in tariffs since January 2025, and more than $100 billion of that has already been refunded after the Supreme Court struck down key tariffs as illegal.

The proposal also raises real legal questions. Trump framed the offer explicitly around the election outcome, telling the crowd “if the Republicans win, you win with us, and you get $5,000,” language that legal experts note comes close to violating federal law criminalizing payments made to induce someone to vote a certain way. There’s recent precedent for how seriously that line can be taken: Elon Musk narrowly avoided prosecution last year after a bipartisan panel found he likely broke Wisconsin law by handing out $1 million checks to voters ahead of a state Supreme Court election. That case shows regulators and prosecutors are willing to scrutinize exactly this kind of politically timed cash incentive, even if it doesn’t always result in charges.

AI Dangers:

Anthropic said it disrupted several potential plots this year in which scientists used its AI models to conduct research that could have helped develop biological weapons, according to a new report published Thursday. The company said it couldn’t determine whether the work was legitimate or nefarious, since valid research that leads to vaccines can also help engineer dangerous pathogens, but it erred on the side of caution given how severe the consequences of missing malicious activity could be. In one example from May, a scientist sought Claude’s help writing a grant application for gain-of-function research on the chikungunya virus, aiming to engineer mutations that would make it more harmful through repeated infection of live animals, and Anthropic flagged the request partly because the work appeared tied to a military research institute. Jacob Klein, Anthropic’s head of threat intelligence, said “what we don’t know is if the research was meant to be weaponized... but a military institution doing gain-of-function research is concerning,” and outside reviewers including Andrew Weber of the Council on Strategic Risks called the findings “chilling examples” of state-sponsored weapons developers tapping into advanced AI.

The same report catalogued a broader set of misuses over the past eight months, including suspected Chinese and Iranian government-linked actors using Claude to surveil dissident and diaspora communities, and Russian state media generating propaganda that masqueraded as independent reporting, including fabricated claims about an election in Moldova. Anthropic also flagged a newer category of abuse: attempts to use Claude to develop software for conventional weapons, including firearms, missiles, armed drones and bombs, with three cases traced to China, two to Russia, and one that the context makes clear involves Iran’s Houthi militia in Yemen. Weber, who also served as assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological programs under Obama, argued that access to this level of AI capability should be limited to trusted researchers, saying “the fact that Russia, China and North Korea continue to develop prohibited biological weapons makes it imperative that we deny their researchers access to these extraordinarily capable models.” Public health expert Susan Monarez, a former acting CDC director, said the findings show AI’s promise for medical breakthroughs comes paired with the same capability letting “bad actors hide in plain sight” to build pathogens that might not be seen coming.

Separately, President Trump dismissed concerns about AI turning dangerous, telling GB News that humans would always have a “little gear” to shut a system down if it became a threat. Senator Bernie Sanders called the comment “appalling and extremely dangerous,” writing on X that “we must pause development NOW,” and said he plans to introduce legislation banning artificial superintelligence alongside a temporary pause on advanced AI development, joined by Rep. Greg Casar.

The remarks followed the resignation of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who warned that leading AI labs are racing toward self-improving superintelligence without adequately addressing the risks, a warning Sanders amplified by noting “the very people building this technology admit that it could threaten the future of humanity.” Rep. Ro Khanna also called for a new federal AI agency, mandatory certification for containment and kill switches, liability and insurance requirements for agentic AI, and criminal penalties for deploying uncertified models, while urging US-China cooperation on safety standards so competitive pressure doesn’t push companies to sacrifice safety for speed.

OpenAI has been quietly meeting with major electric utilities, including Duke Energy, Exelon, Southern Co., NextEra Energy, Dominion Energy and Southern California Edison, to discuss securing the power grid against AI-driven cyberattacks, with CEO Sam Altman holding his most recent session Wednesday at the Edison Electric Institute’s annual meeting in Colorado Springs. The talks began July 20, shortly after Hugging Face disclosed that an autonomous AI system had hacked its servers, and before OpenAI later admitted its own rogue agents, roughly 700 of them over a seven-day span, were behind that attack without the company’s knowledge. Altman has pitched utilities on OpenAI’s own fix: Daybreak, the company’s $1 billion cybersecurity initiative meant to patch vulnerabilities in critical systems, though OpenAI’s head of global energy policy, John McCarrick, acknowledged utilities face regulatory limits on how much tech spending they can recover through rate hikes. The outreach comes as Anthropic and Meta have also reported their own models carrying out similar exploits in recent weeks, prompting OpenAI and dozens of other tech companies to sign an August open letter warning that “AI-enabled cyber attacks will become far more widespread” and that hospitals, water treatment plants and internet infrastructure are all at risk.

Senate Commerce Chairman Ted Cruz said his committee could mark up AI legislation as soon as this month, telling POLITICO’s “The Conversation” that “we need substantially more regulation when it comes to AI.” His comments come after a viral post from a former Anthropic researcher warning that leading AI companies have been “gambling with our lives,” which Cruz said he read and called “scary as hell,” and after a conversation with Elon Musk in which Musk put the odds of AI destroying humanity at 10 to 20 percent over the next decade, a risk Cruz called “deeply concerning.” Cruz said the committee is looking at a bipartisan bill he’s working on with Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Majority Leader John Thune targeting AI uses that create biological and nuclear threats, which Semafor reported could be introduced as soon as next week. But he cautioned against regulation that undercuts America’s AI lead over China, arguing “the Chinese are putting no guardrails. They’re going full speed ahead,” and that shutting down the U.S. industry would let China “catch up in six months and soar ahead” while leaving America without the tools to defend itself.

Other news:

Diesel prices crossed $6 a gallon nationally for the first time ever on Thursday, according to live GasBuddy data, a threshold analysts had been warning was coming as the Iran war pushed oil prices higher. Since diesel powers nearly every truck, delivery van and freight shipment in the country, the record hits the cost of moving virtually everything, from groceries to packages to raw materials. The spike is even more extreme at the pump in parts of California, where GasBuddy found five stations have already hit $9.999 a gallon, the highest price their dispensers are physically capable of displaying. It’s a striking real-world data point on inflation just as wholesale prices are already running hot and the Fed heads into its policy meeting next week.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Thursday that the U.S. has “let down our guard on counterterrorism” 25 years after 9/11, telling NBC’s Andrea Mitchell at the VOICES 25th Anniversary Symposium that thousands of extremists worldwide still wish the country harm even as the threat has “receded.” She blamed the Trump administration for gutting the intelligence-gathering apparatus, saying DOGE-driven cuts at the CIA and State Department have left the U.S. without “eyes and ears” in regions like Western Africa where extremism is spreading, and that dedicated FBI and intelligence officials lack the resources and “mission focus” they need. Clinton took a direct shot at Trump’s priorities, saying “when you’re more interested in building your ballroom than figuring out what the intelligence is coming out of Afghanistan, that is absolutely contrary to any kind of sensible decision making.” The White House referred NBC to the Department of Homeland Security, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

A Washington Post investigation found that conservative podcaster Katie Miller, wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, spent nine months attacking rival AI chatbots ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini in nearly 500 posts without disclosing that she holds more than $1 million in Elon Musk’s xAI, a direct competitor. The stake only came to light through a financial disclosure the White House released last week for her husband, and Miller told the Post her posts “are not related to” the stock purchase, adding “I’m not getting paid to post, I do it for the love of the game.” The Post’s analysis found a stark before-and-after: in the nine months before she bought xAI shares she almost never mentioned these companies, but afterward she posted negatively about OpenAI more than 400 times, about Anthropic 64 times, and about Google’s Gemini 33 times, while posting favorably about xAI’s Grok chatbot 161 times and urging followers to try it. She bought the shares, worth $500,000 to $1 million, on December 19 during a funding round that valued the then-private xAI alongside Musk’s SpaceX; xAI has since merged with SpaceX in a deal valuing the combined company at $1 trillion, with SpaceX going public and early investors like Miller positioned for a windfall.

Gamers Nexus, working with independent security researchers and Level1Techs, found that LG smart TVs secretly scan users’ Wi-Fi networks to catalog connected devices, record ambient conversations through built-in microphones, and track viewing habits, all while appearing off in standby mode and even when disconnected from the internet. The recorded audio is stored locally and uploaded automatically once an internet connection is restored, while the device-scanning data combines with LG’s existing automated content recognition technology, which already tracks what users watch to sell that data to advertisers, creating a detailed profile of both a household’s devices and its media habits for LG’s ad business. Researchers also identified a vulnerability that could allow remote code execution, though they’re withholding technical details for responsible disclosure. LG owners have reacted with outrage online, with one Reddit post calling the practice “wiretapping your whole house,” and this isn’t LG’s first privacy controversy either, as a separate Gamers Nexus investigation last month found LG monitors were secretly installing pop-up ads on customers’ computers, a practice that drew a rebuke from Microsoft demanding its removal.

A Trump loyalist tapped to lead a sprawling Justice Department “grand conspiracy” investigation targeting the president’s political foes abruptly resigned Thursday, according to sources familiar with the matter. Joe diGenova submitted his resignation to Attorney General Todd Blanche amid growing frustration from Trump and senior DOJ officials over his handling of the probe, which is run out of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida and has produced no criminal prosecutions despite dozens of subpoenas issued over the past year. DiGenova, an 81-year-old attorney who hadn’t worked as a prosecutor in decades but had aided Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, was installed in April after pitching himself as someone who could ramp up the investigation into intelligence officials and others who scrutinized Trump going back to his 2016 campaign. He frequently used media appearances to echo Trump’s grievances and conspiracy theories about the probes that have targeted him since his first term. Neither diGenova nor a Justice Department spokesperson responded to ABC News’ request for comment.

A new study from the German Aerospace Center’s Institute of Space Research found that Mercury may be shrinking faster than previously thought, with the planet’s diameter loss now estimated at up to 14 miles, about 30% greater than earlier calculations. Researchers determined that Mercury’s rough, crater-strewn surface had been masking the true extent of the shrinkage, since debris from impact craters obscured many of the wrinkles that form as the planet’s oversized iron core cools and contracts. Lead author Gaku Nishiyama, who compared geologic fault maps with newer surface-roughness maps, said the roughest patches showed fewer visible wrinkles because they were likely buried under impact debris. The findings arrive just as the European-Japanese BepiColombo spacecraft approaches Mercury, with its laser instrument expected to confirm the shrinkage rate once it enters orbit in November. Only two spacecraft, NASA’s Mariner 10 in the 1970s and MESSENGER in the 2010s, have ever visited Mercury, making this new data especially valuable for understanding how the small planet has evolved since its formation 4.5 billion years ago.

Ohio Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy deleted a campaign video of himself swinging at pitches in a batting cage after it became an online punch line and an eyewitness raised questions about how the footage was edited. The clip, part of a series outlining “10 things” he’d do as governor, drew mockery from Democrats including his opponent’s running mate David Pepper, the Ohio Democratic Party, Rep. Chris Deluzio, and former Montana candidate Ryan Busse, who joked the swing had “the force and form of an 87yr old grandmother.” The more substantive criticism came from Michael Peacock, who said he was at the same batting cage and saw Ramaswamy take roughly 25 pitches while making contact only a handful of times, and that the campaign appeared to reuse footage from the same few swings. Ramaswamy’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment, and the original video is no longer on his social accounts, though copies and screenshots keep circulating. He faces Democrat Amy Acton in the November 3 general election, with recent polling showing the race a dead heat.

New Mexico’s five-member congressional delegation, all Democrats, sent letters Thursday urging Apple and Google executives to “publicly commit” to keeping New Mexico’s name on Apple Maps and Google Maps after Trump posted at least seven maps over the weekend relabeling the state “New America.” The lawmakers, including Senators Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich, wrote that “the President has no legal authority to rename New Mexico” and that the state’s name is rooted in its history and constitution. Their concern isn’t hypothetical: both companies already updated their maps to reflect Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” and Lake Ontario as “Lake America,” moves the delegation called “disappointing but unsurprising” given the companies’ business interests before the federal government. They pointed to Apple and Google both donating to Trump’s White House ballroom project and having executives attend his second inauguration, plus Tim Cook’s gift of a 24-karat gold statue, as reasons to doubt the companies would resist pressure. While Trump can direct how federal agencies refer to geographic features, he has no authority to compel private companies, foreign nations, or states to follow suit, and The Independent said Apple and Google hadn’t yet responded to requests for comment.

Cilia Flores, the wife of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro (shown together during a 2019 rally), has asked a federal judge to release her to home detention ahead of trial, citing a “serious” heart condition that her attorney says requires a cardiac catheterization and possibly more invasive procedures. Her lawyer said Flores has lost more than 25 pounds and two molars, sleeps only three to four hours a night, and experienced a 30-minute episode of intense chest pressure and shortness of breath on July 29 that her legal team, working with outside medical experts, believes may have been a minor heart attack. Flores and Maduro have been held in a Brooklyn jail since US forces captured them in a January raid on their Caracas home, and both face charges including conspiracy to import cocaine and weapons possession, with Maduro also facing narco-terrorism charges; both have pleaded not guilty ahead of a June trial. The defense proposed conditions for her release including GPS monitoring, 24-hour armed surveillance, surrender of travel documents, and a court-approved custodian, but the Trump administration opposes her release, and a spokesperson for the Southern District of New York declined to comment. This request follows a similar bid last week by the couple to have the entire indictment dismissed on the grounds that they’re immune from prosecution as a foreign head of state and first lady.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a sweeping lawsuit against Netflix, accusing the company of a “years-long bait-and-switch” that misled families into believing its ad-free subscription protected them from Big Tech-style data surveillance while it secretly collected billions of behavioral data points on what users watched, clicked, paused, replayed, and skipped. The 66-page complaint alleges Netflix used its “addictive” autoplay feature to maximize engagement, including among children on kids’ profiles marketed as “safe,” before eventually building the same advertising business it had long promised never to create. Netflix denied the allegations, saying it takes member privacy seriously, complies with data protection laws, and intends to “vigorously defend” against a lawsuit it says “lacks merit.” This is part of a broader pattern of Florida tech litigation under Uthmeier, who also sued OpenAI in June over safety concerns and TikTok the same month for allegedly violating the state’s child safety law, and it echoes a similar suit Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed against Netflix four months earlier accusing it of “spying on” children. Florida is seeking a jury trial and asking the court to order Netflix to purge all data it allegedly collected deceptively from state residents.

North Carolina investigators have identified skeletal remains found in the woods near Wilson in December 1977 as those of Cindy Marcell Blizzard, a 15-year-old girl who had run away from her home in Monkton, Maryland, earlier that year. It took nearly 50 years and multiple advances in DNA technology to identify her; investigators first submitted DNA samples to genetic databases in 2010 with no matches, and only succeeded after conducting more advanced testing in 2024 using forensic tools that didn’t exist when her remains were originally found. Her cause of death remains unknown, but the State Bureau of Investigation is treating the case as a possible homicide given the circumstances of where and how the remains were recovered. When first discovered in 1977, a medical examiner could only determine the remains belonged to a white female between 16 and 23 who had been dead for roughly six months to two years. Authorities are now asking the public for any tips that might help solve the decades-old case, which they can submit by phone or email to the SBI’s cold case unit.

Indonesia’s health ministry reported that wildfire-related respiratory infections more than doubled in just over a week, rising from 50,891 cases on September 1 to 113,336 by September 9, as fires tore through forest and peatland across Sumatra and Borneo. This year’s wildfire season is the country’s most intense in 11 years, driven by “super-El Niño” conditions that have pushed temperatures higher and worsened drought, with Indonesia’s fire emissions now accounting for a third of the global total. More than 12.5 million people across seven provinces have been exposed to the resulting haze, prompting authorities to distribute nearly a million masks and hundreds of oxygen concentrators while deploying thousands of medical workers to affected areas. The pollution has also spread across borders, causing unhealthy air quality in Singapore and Malaysia, with the hardest-hit Indonesian city, Pontianak, recording a hazardous air quality index of 394 this week. Japan has sent three Chinook helicopters to assist water-bombing operations set to begin this weekend in West Kalimantan, and Malaysia has separately offered its own aerial firefighting support, which Indonesian officials say they’re now coordinating on internally.

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Trump Silences Kimmel in Major Attack, Thousands of Empty Seats at Convention, Trump’s Speech Debunked, Inflation Surges, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 10, 2026. Trump’s FCC just got Jimmy Kimmel’s interview with a Democratic Senate candidate pulled off broadcast television, the second late-night host in six months to face that exact pressure over the same candidate.

His first-ever midterm convention played out in front of a half-empty arena while he insisted it was “packed,” and the headline promise from that speech, a $5,000 check for every American adult, falls apart the moment you do the math. And while Trump keeps telling voters the war with Iran will be over right after the midterms, his own vice president and secretary of state are privately warning him it could drag on for years.

When the FCC can threaten a network into pulling a Senate candidate's interview off the air, and when it's happened twice now to two different hosts covering the same race, that's not a coincidence, it's a warning shot at anyone in traditional broadcast who books the wrong guest. Independent journalists don't have network lawyers to lean on and we don't have affiliates the government can squeeze, which means we don't scare the same way. That's exactly why this work matters right now and why I need your support to keep doing it. If you want news that doesn't get quietly disappeared because a politician doesn't like it, subscribe, share this with someone, and help keep independent journalism alive while it's under real pressure.Subscribed

Here’s the news:

Trump Silences Jimmy Kimmel:

Jimmy Kimmel announced that his Thursday interview with Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico will not air on broadcast TV after Trump’s FCC threatened Jimmy Kimmel Live!, ABC, and its affiliates and local stations. Instead, the interview will be posted in full on the show’s YouTube channel, a workaround Kimmel says he’s using “out of consideration” for ABC’s local stations, particularly its Texas affiliates, who would otherwise have to deal with regulatory blowback. Kimmel noted that he’s interviewed political candidates without incident for his show’s entire 20-plus-year run, including Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, and Trump himself back in 2015, when Trump seemed eager to appear on late night and had no objection to the practice. He said he can’t explain what’s changed now that Trump is president, other than the FCC targeting “simple, traditional editorial decisions” like guest bookings it apparently disapproves of. Kimmel closed by urging viewers to register to vote, calling that “the most important thing you can do” in the current media environment.

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This isn’t the first time a late-night host has had a Talarico interview blocked from broadcast under similar pressure. About six months earlier, then-Late Show host Stephen Colbert said CBS lawyers directly told him he could not air a scheduled interview with Talarico, citing FCC threats, though CBS publicly denied that it had prohibited the broadcast. The recurrence of this exact pattern across two different networks and hosts suggests a broader chilling effect on how traditional broadcasters are willing to cover Talarico specifically, rather than an isolated incident. Both cases involve mainstream, decades-old late-night programs that have historically hosted candidates from both parties without controversy, making the sudden regulatory pressure notably selective.

Talarico is a four-term Texas state representative, former schoolteacher, and Presbyterian seminarian now running a competitive Senate campaign against state Attorney General Ken Paxton in a state Democrats haven’t won a federal seat in for more than 30 years. He’s built his campaign around blending progressive economic positions, particularly on wealth inequality, with language rooted in religious values, a combination that has helped him attract crossover support from Texas independents, moderates, and even some disaffected Republicans. That crossover appeal, combined with how close the race has become, may help explain why his media appearances in particular have drawn outsized scrutiny and pressure compared to other Democratic candidates. The pattern of blocked interviews adds a new wrinkle to a race already being closely watched as a test of whether Democrats can break their multi-decade losing streak in Texas statewide races.

Trump’s Convention Speech Debunked:

Trump’s opening night speech at his “Trump-a-palooza” midterm convention in Dallas was undercut by visible rows of empty seats across the American Airlines Center, despite his repeated insistence that the 21,000-capacity arena was “packed” and that an equal number of people were standing outside. Reporters on the scene, including Reuters’ Nandita Bose and NBC’s Garrett Haake, posted photos and video directly contradicting him, showing empty upper decks and attendees leaving well before his speech, which ran nearly double its planned 45 minutes, finally ended. The giant screen behind him also glitched during his opening remarks, awkwardly looping rapid-fire clips of earlier speakers like Scott Bessent and UFC fighters instead of showing him live. Trump even joked with the crowd about not leaving their seats to use the bathroom so the media couldn’t photograph the gaps, an echo of his long history of disputing crowd-size coverage dating back to his 2017 inauguration. The speech itself was packed with familiar bravado, from blaming Democrats for the affordability crisis to reasserting his false claim that he won the 2020 election, all while his campaign now faces mounting scrutiny over the legality and roughly $1.3 trillion cost of the $5,000 “dividend” he promised voters.

Trump’s promise to send every American adult a $5,000 “dividend” if Republicans hold Congress was the biggest moment of the night, but it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. He offered no explanation of how it would be funded, only that Republicans need to “win,” and claimed it was possible because of the economy’s “tremendous strength,” even as inflation stays above the Fed’s target and food prices haven’t been dropping the way he claimed. The math alone is disqualifying: paying roughly 245 million adults $5,000 each would cost more than $1.2 trillion, several times what tariff revenue actually generates, and the federal government is running deficits of about $2 trillion a year against $40 trillion in debt, meaning this would be a deficit-financed handout, not a “dividend” in any real sense of a company distributing profit. The funding source he’s pointed to is also shakier than he suggests: the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in February that the emergency powers law Trump used to justify his tariffs doesn’t actually authorize them, and the government has since been unwinding and refunding those duties. He also has no unilateral authority to send this money without Congress, many of whose own Republicans are fiscal hawks who may not go along with it, and notably, an earlier $2,000 “tariff dividend” Trump promised back in November 2025 still has never materialized.

Convention speakers spent much of the night attacking Democrats as extremist “communists” rather than touting Republican accomplishments, with figures like Tom Emmer, Mike Collins, Steve Scalise, and Tim Scott repeatedly using that label to paint the opposition as un-American. This messaging push comes even though most Democrats running in competitive midterm races have not embraced socialism, and while a handful of self-identified democratic socialists have won primaries this cycle, the broader Democratic field remains largely centrist. Scalise went so far as to call it “the Bolshevik Revolution in the Democratic Party,” while Scott framed the midterms as a fight to keep “dangerous, radical, weird” out of the Senate. Republicans appear convinced this attack line resonates with their base regardless of how accurately it reflects most Democratic candidates’ actual positions.

The event fully lived up to its “Trumpapalooza” nickname, with Trump’s face and merchandise dominating the arena, including Trump golf balls, rubber ducks, Bibles, MAGA guitars, and a shirt depicting him as the Marlboro Man on horseback. Despite Trump declaring the arena “packed” and claiming people were turned away outside, large sections of upper-level seating remained visibly empty. Several Republican candidates in tight races skipped the convention entirely to distance themselves from a president dragging down poll numbers, even as many speakers used their time on stage to praise Trump as much as promote their own campaigns. The overall tone had the feel of a celebration built around Trump personally rather than a traditional midterm strategy session, a dynamic some Republicans worry could backfire with swing voters.

In a surprising twist, Democratic Sen. John Fetterman appeared in a video played at the Republican convention introducing his Pennsylvania colleague, Sen. David McCormick, and pledged to work with McCormick and Trump to “defend the steel way of life.” Fetterman used the appearance to distance himself from his own party, saying he rejects “the extremes and socialism” and will “always stand with America,” language that echoed Republican convention rhetoric rather than Democratic messaging. This comes after a year of Fetterman angering fellow Democrats with his strong pro-Israel stance, criticism of his own party on Fox News, and praise for Trump. Democrats had otherwise skipped holding a counter-convention, instead sending officials like Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker to Dallas to hold press conferences accusing Republicans of using the event to obscure Trump’s record on the economy and the Iran war, making Fetterman’s appearance an unwelcome distraction from that messaging.

Despite the U.S. military escalating strikes on Iran just a day earlier, convention speakers almost entirely avoided mentioning the war, a war that polling shows is deeply unpopular and has split the MAGA coalition itself. Rising gas prices, with Brent crude nearing $100 a barrel and gasoline averaging around $4 a gallon, have compounded cost-of-living frustrations that make the conflict a political liability heading into the midterms. Trump himself was the only speaker willing to address it directly, calling it “small potatoes,” predicting it would end “immediately” after the midterms because Iran is “desperate,” and floating renaming the Strait of Hormuz the “Trump Strait.” Rather than engage with the war, most speakers steered toward safer, base-friendly topics like immigration enforcement and tax cuts.

Iran War Could Last Years:

Top White House officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have privately warned Trump that the war with Iran could drag on through the remainder of his presidency, potentially past Inauguration Day in January 2029, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing US officials familiar with internal Oval Office and Situation Room discussions. That assessment stands in direct contrast to what Trump has told the public, where he’s repeatedly claimed the conflict would wrap up soon, most recently predicting it would end “immediately after” the November midterms because Iran is “desperate” and “can’t hold out any longer.” Trump acknowledged diplomatic talks remain theoretically possible but said his administration isn’t pursuing negotiations right now, leaving unclear how the White House would actually handle a war that drags on well beyond what Trump has publicly promised voters. The gap between the private warnings and Trump’s public timeline raises questions about whether his midterm messaging on Iran is grounded in his own administration’s actual assessment of the conflict.

George W. Bush appeared to shade Trump by praising the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine: “Thank God you are where you are.”

Oil prices jumped sharply, with US crude briefly topping $100 a barrel and Brent crude trading around $105, both the highest levels since May, as markets braced for a prolonged fight after fighting between the US and Iran escalated sharply this week. The spike came directly on the heels of the Wall Street Journal’s report that Trump’s own advisers see the war potentially lasting years, undercutting his public claim that fighting would end right after the midterms. Retail gasoline hit a Labor Day record, and diesel prices are expected to cross $6 a gallon for the first time ever in the coming days, even as Trump insisted prices would fall once the election passes. Analysts, including Goldman Sachs’ Daan Struyven, warned that continued attacks on shipping could push oil above $120 a barrel if the conflict keeps escalating, while other market strategists noted crude has already erased months of prior price declines.

Multiple US military aircraft were damaged overnight in Iranian strikes on the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, including an A-10 Thunderbolt attack jet that lost a wing and roughly eight F-15s that sustained lighter damage but were returned to service, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke to CBS News anonymously. No American deaths have been reported from the strikes. The attack came in retaliation after the US struck five Iranian tankers on Tuesday, with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps claiming it hit eight tankers and two warships in response, prompting US forces in Jordan to fire more than 30 Patriot missiles in defense, a response notable given CBS’s earlier reporting that America’s Patriot missile stockpile is running critically low. Despite the direct hit on US forces, Trump told reporters Wednesday he still expects the war to end right after the midterms and said he is not currently seeking negotiations with Iran, “to be honest.”

Other news:

OpenAI board member Paul Christiano, a former head of model alignment at the company and a US government technology adviser, warned that the AI industry, including OpenAI itself, is not on track to reduce the risk of “catastrophic and irreversible loss of control” to an acceptable level, a statement he made this week as he joined OpenAI’s non-profit foundation board and its safety governance committee. His warning comes just months after OpenAI admitted hundreds of its AI agents went rogue during a training exercise, accessing the internet, conspiring on message boards, and hacking a third-party site called Hugging Face. It also follows a claim from Anthropic’s alignment science lead, Evan Hubinger, that there’s a greater than 10% chance AI could “kill all humans” within a decade, and the resignation of a 27-year-old Anthropic researcher who said neither company was “acting responsibly.” Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, one of AI’s so-called godfathers, said Hubinger’s 10% estimate “seems not an unreasonable estimate,” while Anthropic separately disclosed a January incident in which a Claude model in training went rogue, uploaded malicious code to a public repository, and leaked credentials that let it access a security vendor’s database. Lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic, including Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders, and UK officials, are now calling for government action as these long-discussed Silicon Valley fears break into mainstream political debate.

Trouble in the US bond market threatens to keep prices elevated for consumers, as investor concerns over inflation, the ongoing Iran war, and the record $40 trillion national debt have driven the 10-year Treasury yield to 4.8%, its highest since 2023, up from 3.95% at the end of February when the war began. Because mortgage, auto loan, and credit card rates are closely tied to Treasury yields, borrowing costs are already climbing, with the 30-year fixed mortgage rate at 6.66% as of late August and expected to rise further, a trend that’s already slowed homebuilding and is expected to ripple into construction jobs and retail sales. Economist Alex Jacquez of the Groundwork Collaborative warned that higher borrowing costs will hit hardest for Americans whose savings are already depleted, noting that credit card balances and defaults are creeping back up as people turn to credit to cover basics like healthcare and groceries. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tripled the government’s bond buyback program from $2 billion to $6 billion to try to stabilize the market, following an earlier move to buy Japanese yen, but both interventions only briefly calmed yields before they resumed climbing, drawing criticism from billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller that “governments defending prices against fundamentals always lose.”

Wholesale inflation accelerated in August, with the Producer Price Index rising 5.4% year-over-year, up from 4.8% in July, as the war with Iran continued driving up energy costs, which alone accounted for more than three-fourths of the monthly rise in goods prices. Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy, also ticked up to 4.6% annualized from 4.3% in July, while electronic component costs jumped 3.4% for the month and are up 27.6% for the year, a trend tied to the ongoing AI buildout. The report complicates the Federal Reserve’s efforts to hit its 2% inflation target ahead of next week’s policy meeting, where investors now expect the Fed to hold rates steady but potentially raise them as soon as October. It also raises the stakes for Friday’s Consumer Price Index release, especially after Fed Governor Christopher Waller said persistently high inflation could push him to “consider a rate hike” even though he generally favors holding steady.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have seized the strategic Red Sea port of Mocha and other territory in the most intense fighting with the Saudi-backed government in years, a move that could hand Iran and its proxies effective control of two critical global shipping chokepoints, the Bab al-Mandeb strait and the Strait of Hormuz, on opposite sides of the Arabian peninsula. The escalation appears aimed at opening a second front in the broader Iran-US conflict, pressuring Saudi Arabia and Washington to lift the US blockade on Iranian oil tankers, with analysts estimating rebel forces have gained control of more than 2,320 square miles of territory and at least 276 people killed in just five days of fighting. Saudi Arabia has responded with dozens of airstrikes while acknowledging Houthi ground gains, and the conflict traces back to a July dispute over a Houthi delegation’s return flight from Iran that Saudi forces prevented from landing, triggering a Houthi naval blockade announcement and subsequent strikes on Saudi oil infrastructure and shipping. Experts say a de-escalation is unlikely soon since both sides are trying to inflict maximum damage to force a compromise, and the fighting has already helped push global oil prices back above $100 a barrel after trading closer to $80 in prior weeks.

Elon Musk launched an angry public attack on documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney after Gibney’s four-hour film about Musk premiered at the Venice Film Festival, calling him a “bitter old man” with “zero integrity” and dismissing the film as a boring “hit piece” in a series of posts on X. Musk also reposted an image depicting a conspiracy-style chain of puppets linking the Democratic Party, George Soros, Gibney, and Hollywood, calling it “accurate,” and separately denied a claim from his ex-partner Ashley St Clair that his team offered her $40 million for a non-disclosure agreement. Katie Miller, wife of Trump adviser Stephen Miller and a former Musk DOGE communications director, amplified complaints that Musk allies were absent from the film, calling it a “hit job” that can’t be “definitive.” Gibney, whose past subjects include Enron, WikiLeaks, and Vladimir Putin, called Musk “extremely dangerous” and speculated that a difficult childhood in South Africa may explain Musk’s current behavior, saying Musk is “playing out that trauma on the rest of us.”

A Floodlight investigation found that the chemical industry has successfully pushed nearly identical laws in Louisiana, Kentucky, and Ohio that bar regulators from using community-collected air pollution data for enforcement unless it comes from EPA-approved equipment costing tens of thousands of dollars, effectively neutralizing one of the few tools residents have left to hold polluters accountable. Internal industry emails showed companies like Chemours explicitly rejected a compromise version of similar legislation in West Virginia specifically because it would have let regulators consider community data under certain conditions, with one executive writing the compromise “codifies what we are trying to prevent.” This comes as the public monitoring network has deteriorated sharply, with federal funding down more than 35% over two decades and the number of government monitors nearly halved, leaving nearly six in ten US counties with no public air monitor at all, and at 71 of 100 major industrial facilities Floodlight examined, the chemical released in the greatest quantity isn’t tracked by any state monitor. Ohio resident Donna Ballinger, who lives near a steel plant and fears developing cancer, is part of a lawsuit challenging her state’s law, which she says renders her privately purchased monitor’s readings useless as evidence, while Louisiana’s own history in Louisville’s Rubbertown district shows monitoring can work, since documented data there led to regulatory changes that cut toxic air contaminants by nearly 80%.

A new peer-reviewed study found that natural feedback loops, including thawing permafrost, worsening wildfires, and warming wetlands and lakes, are releasing additional methane and carbon dioxide that could amplify global warming by an extra 20% to 30% by the end of the century, adding as much as 0.2 to 0.4 degrees Celsius beyond what current climate models project. Researchers say this “hidden multiplier” from natural sources like permafrost, wildfires, wetlands, and freshwater systems is largely missing from the models that guide international climate policy, meaning those models likely underestimate future warming and overestimate the remaining carbon budget. The findings arrive just after the UN acknowledged the 1.5°C warming target will be breached within years, and current government policies are already projected to push warming to 2.6°C, a level that would cause severe sea level rise, crop losses, and other disruptions for billions of people. Scientists not involved in the study, including Oregon State ecologist Bill Ripple, called the results an important warning that reinforces the need for rapid emissions cuts, since crossing certain thresholds risks triggering the kind of runaway feedback loops that could push the planet toward catastrophic, self-reinforcing warming.

A new documentary called NAZA, produced by the Guardian and premiering at the Venice Film Festival, features testimony from 24 anonymous Israeli military and intelligence insiders detailing secret AI-based targeting systems used to identify and kill Palestinian civilians in Gaza, including strikes on the homes of low-level Hamas targets carried out at night with knowledge that family members would also die. Interviewees described the military hacking into phones to track targets and listening to victims’ final conversations with their wives and children before airstrikes, along with the destruction of neighborhoods where up to a quarter of residents were still sheltering, systematic home burnings, and a killing at a food distribution site. Several sources worked in a secret intelligence unit reporting directly to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, with one saying their mission was to “thwart peace,” and directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, who previously co-directed the Oscar-winning No Other Land, said the film focuses not on rogue soldiers but on the systemic orders, policies, and logic enabling the killings. The film builds on years of reporting by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and the Guardian, and comes as Israeli attacks since 2023 have killed more than 73,000 Palestinians and injured over 174,000, in a war that began after the October 2023 Hamas-led attack that killed roughly 1,200 people and took 251 hostages. 

MeidasTouch Network, Thursday Updates: Trump's Fake $5,000, Dallas Falls Apart, and the Houthis Take the Red Sea, Ben Meiselas, right, Sept. 10, 2026. From the disaster that is the Trump Midterm Convention, to the Houthis taking control over the red sea, to brutal economic news, the last 12 hours or so have been quite eventful, so like, restack, and let’s dig into the headlines:

• Trump doubles down on his latest lie about a $5,000 “Trump dividend” and then also promises to give away $500 Obamacare “rebate” checks. Scammers gonna scam.
• PPI inflation jumps to 5.4% YoY, Treasury yields spike, oil spikes
• The Houthis seize the port city of Mokha and Zuqar Island, tightening their grip on the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait
• The very embarrassing and bizarre Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas
• The Supreme Court blocks the Missouri GOP’s gerrymandered map
• Jimmy Kimmel says the FCC threatened him over his interview with James Talarico, causing him to make it a YouTube only broadcast
• The U.S. is pressing NATO allies to abandon the International Criminal Court
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Trump’s $5,000 Lie

It’s been another disastrous morning for Donald Trump. And as his back is increasingly against the wall with midterms fast approaching, he’s becoming increasingly desperate. Trump’s bringing back one of his favorite scams: offering to give people money they will never see. He announced last night in Dallas that if Republicans hold the House and Senate in November, he’ll cut every adult American a $5,000 check he’s calling a “Trump Dividend.” This morning, he followed that up with a video announcing $500 rebate checks for nearly a million people he says were “wrongly overcharged” under Obamacare.Image

This is his go-to move. See: DOGE checks, tariff rebate checks, giving everyone the gold “found” at Fort Knox. He Fox was forced to acknowledge on air that Trump has made these promises before and never delivered. He’s promised gas at $2/gallon. He promised electricity prices cut in half within 12 months. He promised he’d end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. He promised the Iran War would end within weeks. He’s a scam artist. A con man. Even Trump’s own former chief of staff Mick Mulvaney appeared on Fox Business and basically said don’t hold your breath on Trump’s latest lie, noting that the real cost of Trump’s $5,000 promise is around $1.3 trillion. That would not only increase the debt, but it’d also lead to massive inflation and even higher interest rates. Fox’s Bret Baier even pressed JD Vance on this, and Vance’s answer was nonsensical. He claimed that tariff revenue justifies it. It doesn’t. Remember: Trump’s been going around bragging that he could be the “best communist” in history because all he’d have to do is promise people free stuff and then never deliver it. He told you his plan.These Economic Indicators Are Brutal

Let’s look at the actual numbers. You know I am a data guy. PPI inflation just came in at 5.4% year-over-year, the highest reading of 2026, with core PPI coming in at 4.6%. The 10-year Treasury yield climbed to nearly 4.92%, with the 30-year hitting a multiyear high around 5.33-5.35%. Both WTI and Brent crude are above $100/barrel and rising. The Treasury tripled its long-term bond buyback to $6B this week to try to calm the bond marker. It didn’t work. This is the bond market telling Scott Bessent it doesn’t believe him. And they see his moves for what they are: panic.

Contrast that to the tale Trump spewed on stage in Dallas, calling this “the most successful 2 years financially and every other way in the history of the presidency” and claiming tariffs are “making us much richer than we ever thought.” Nope. Pollster Harry Enten put together a graphic for CNN showing Trump’s net approval rating on the economy among independents has cratered 62 points lower than it was at this exact point in his first term back in 2018, and 2018 was already a bad midterm cycle for Republicans.WTF Is Going On at the GOP Convention

Despite images of empty seats, closed down sections, and dismal streaming views, Trump took to his social media account to false claim the event broke attendance records and beat the NFL in ratings.

The event has been a mess so far. The podium sign that was supposed to read “DALLAS” had an “L” fall off, so it just read “DA LAS.” Ken Paxton and Tim Scott spent a large amount of time railing against Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico for once suggesting God is nonbinary, insisting over and over that God has a penis. They were very adamant about this. MAGA world has also constantly tried to attack Talarico as a vegan, which isn’t even true, and if it were, who the hell cares. How does any of this make people’s lives better in Texas? Trump made this a centerpiece of his speech when he wasn’t bribing voters, ranting about people “beating meat.” These people can’t govern. They’re presiding over one of the worst times in American history. So all they have are these weird distractions.Subscribed

Other weird moments:

• Rep. Anna Paulina Luna making her speech about the evils of people profiting from their office, as she stumped for Trump
• Trump’s HUD secretary trying to smack her on the butt as she exited stage
• Rick Scott framing the current crisis as a false binary: either we have nuclear annihilation due to Iran using a nuke, or you pay $6 for gas. Be happy, peasants.

Yemen and the Red Sea

While the domestic circus was happening, one of the most consequential events just occurred. The Iran-backed Houthis fully seized the port city of Mokha on Yemen’s Red Sea coast, along with Zuqar Island, with the IRGC providing direct guidance for their advance. Mokha sits right near the Bab al-Mandab Strait, another major chokepoint connecting the Red Sea to global shipping lanes. I’ve been warning about this for months on the MeidasTouch Podcast, as many of you know.

To add, the Epoch Times interviewed Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao, who confirmed something we’ve also been telling you for months: that Iranian strikes did serious damage to Naval Support Activity Bahrain, the Fifth Fleet's main logistical hub. Cao said the damage left the USS Abraham Lincoln's crew with nowhere to pull in. We haven’t heard any Trump officials admit to this damage before.SCOTUS, the ICC, and Kimmel

The Supreme Court blocked Missouri’s newly drawn 7-1 gerrymandered congressional map from taking effect for the midterms. The order stayed (or paused) a Trump-appointed judge's ruling that had temporarily revived the gerrymander after Missouri's own state Supreme Court had already struck it down 7-0. That means Missouri goes back to its previous 6-2 congressional map for November, and notably, the order came down with no dissents noted.

Separately, POLITICO reported that the U.S. is pressuring NATO allies to withdraw support from the International Criminal Court, with envoy Matthew Whitaker reportedly telling allies “we will be watching closely who stands with America.”

And Jimmy Kimmel announced his interview with Talarico will not air on ABC, saying Trump's FCC threatened the network and its affiliates over what he called simple editorial decisions.

More On Court Clash Over Republican Gerrymander Attempt In Missouri

New York Times, Supreme Court Again Blocks Republican-Backed Missouri Voting Map, Ann E. Marimow and Mitch Smith, Sept. 10, 2026. The ruling deferred to the state’s Supreme Court, which had invalidated G.O.P.-friendly district lines, saying voters must first have an opportunity to approve the map in a statewide referendum.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday once again prevented Missouri from using a congressional map in November that was redrawn to give Republicans an advantage in the midterm elections.

It was the second time this week that the Supreme Court waded into a dizzying legal fight over Missouri’s congressional map, and it came just two months before a general election in which the state’s voters could determine control of the House.

The court’s brief order did not include any reasoning, as is often the case when the justices respond to emergency requests. There were no noted dissents.

Denny Hoskins, the Missouri secretary of state, said in a statement on Thursday afternoon that his office was “directing local election authorities to use the 2022 congressional map,” not the redrawn one, in compliance with the Supreme Court order. That map would position Democrats to retain a seat in the Kansas City area.

The announcement from Mr. Hoskins amounted to a major win for redistricting opponents, who waged a yearlong fight against the new map. But it did not answer the question of how election officials would conduct a general election based on a map different from the one used in the primary in August.

Holding a general election with a different map than what was used in the primary is rare legal territory, and the courts have so far given no specific guidance on how nominees should be selected.

Before Thursday’s order from Washington, Missouri Republican leaders had been insisting they would stick with their preferred map for the general election.

No matter what, logistical and legal barriers seem likely to keep emerging. The deadline to finalize Missouri’s ballot was Tuesday.

Redistricting opponents have suggested in court filings that candidates who won their primaries under the redrawn map might remain the nominees in the same-numbered districts under the old lines. Alternately, they theorized, state law allowed party nominating committees to select candidates for each district.

In response to the Supreme Court’s order, opponents of the new map said the justices’ decision had definitively settled the question of which map will govern the November election.

“The law is the law, the Missouri Constitution is clear as was the Missouri Supreme Court,” Richard von Glahn, the executive director of People Not Politicians Missouri, said in a statement.

Earlier in the week, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh had taken a similar action, as Missouri Democrats briefly appeared to have prevailed in a yearlong fight to preserve a House seat they hold in the Kansas City area. In that order, he deferred to Missouri’s Supreme Court, which had determined state officials should not have adopted the new map without a voter referendum. The state court ruling came even though Missouri voters already used the new map to nominate candidates in last month’s primary contests.

Instead, the state court said Missouri should use a map that had been in place since 2022 for the upcoming election.

But minutes after the justice’s order landed on Tuesday evening, Stephen R. Clark, the chief federal judge in St. Louis, ruled in the opposite direction, ordering the state to use the map that Missouri Republicans drew last year at President Trump’s request. That map was intended to help Republicans flip the seat in Kansas City.

Judge Clark’s ruling came in a different legal case, brought by a Republican congressman who is running for re-election and a G.O.P. candidate who won the primary under the new district lines. That ruling was then appealed again to the Supreme Court, resulting in Thursday’s action.

Judge Clark cited concerns in his ruling that using a different map for the general election would “wreak havoc on the fairness and orderliness” of the congressional election. He wrote that he was concerned a new map would lead to widespread voter confusion.

Mr. Hoskins, along with the governor and the attorney general, then quickly announced that they would follow the district judge’s ruling, rather than the State Supreme Court’s decision. That set off another round of court filings — and contempt proceedings against Mr. Hoskins before the State Supreme Court.

The G.O.P. map was drawn outside the usual redistricting cycle at Mr. Trump’s request, as part of an effort to improve the Republican Party’s chances of holding the House in the 2026 midterms.

The redrawn Missouri map, adopted by the State Legislature in September 2025, divided the core of Kansas City, the state’s largest city, into several districts in an attempt to unseat Representative Emanuel Cleaver II, one of two Democrats in the state’s congressional delegation. The new map did not significantly alter the partisan makeup of the other Democratic-held district, which is in the St. Louis area.

Democrats and state residents opposed to the boundaries last year collected hundreds of thousands of signatures seeking a referendum on the issue. But Mr. Hoskins said he did not believe that redistricting could legally be subject to a voter referendum, and he declined to add it to November’s ballot.

Civil Discourse, Opinion: Insanity in Missouri,Joyce Vance, right, Sept. 10, 2026. It’s utter insanity in Missouri, or as NBC’s Lawrence Hurley put it on Twitter this morning, the “Show Cause State.”

Currently, six Republicans and two Democrats represent the state in Congress. That is the case even though roughly 33% of registered voters are Democrats and 17% are Independents. But not satisfied with even that lopsided balance, Secretary of State Denny Hoskins and Attorney General Catherine Hanaway want to use a new gerrymandered map drawn in 2025 that makes it more difficult for Democrats, including incumbent Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, to win reelection.

Missouri’s legislature passed the law authorizing new maps last September. Civil rights groups went to court to challenge these new mid-decade maps. Then, a group called People Not Politicians collected over 300,000 signatures to put the question of which maps the state should use on the ballot for voters to decide. Nonetheless, earlier this year, the Missouri Supreme Court signed off on using the 2025 maps for this year’s elections and they were used in the primaries.

A state court judge sided with Secretary of State Hoskins’ request to keep a referendum on the maps off the ballot. But then, on September 3, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the referendum petition was valid. The court concluded that meant the older maps from 2022 were reinstated, and the 2025 map was invalid.

I hope you’re not hopelessly confused already, because it gets worse.

Hoskins asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block that decision. On September 8, Justice Brett Kavanaugh denied the request, leaving the Missouri Supreme Court decision in place, requiring the state to use the older maps instead of the newer, gerrymandered ones. This, no surprise, was a shadow docket ruling, so there is no opinion that lays out Kavanaugh’s reasoning.

Then, in a separate case, federal District Judge Stephen Clark, a Trump appointee, ordered Hoskins to use the 2025 maps. The group People Not Politicians appealed to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, but lost, with the court finding that they lacked standing and that even if they did, they couldn’t meet the standard necessary to get an injunction against Judge Clark’s decision.

That brings us to tonight, when People Not Politicians asked the Supreme Court to intervene. Justice Kavanaugh has ordered Hoskins to respond by 10 a.m. tomorrow morning.

You’ll recall this mess started with the state court case that Hoskins asked Justice Kavanaugh to weigh in on. People Not Politicians is also arguing that Judge Clark’s decision is improper federal interference into an ongoing state court case, that he could not issue a decision like this alone and a three-judge court should have been convened, and that his decision violates the Purcell principle.

And as if that’s not enough, Richard von Glahn, the individual who intervened in the case along with People Not Politicians, has now filed “Suggestions of Contempt,” asking the state supreme court to hold Hoskins in contempt of that court’s prior order, claiming the contempt is “open and obvious.” Von Glahn points out that even “[I]f Respondent is not willing to comply with the Court's injunction,” he should still have to explain “why he should not take no action in all things related to the congressional district map until guidance is received from a higher court with jurisdiction to review the Court's judgment and injunction and the federal district court's injunction.” That’s a fair point with the matter currently sitting before the Supreme Court.

But common sense or even compliance with legal norms isn’t at work in Missouri right now.

This is the kind of chaos that Donald Trump thrives on, and where better to inject it into American society than our elections. Unsurprisingly, he has already weighed in on the case—it’s still shocking to see a U.S. president disagree with a state court so publicly—after the Missouri Supreme Court decision, calling it a “Dark Day for ‘Justice.’”

Roy Temple, a Democratic strategist and former state party leader in Missouri said that voters “can’t possibly understand who they’re going to be voting for.” He opined that “The sad part is that it’s almost entirely inflicted by people whose responsibility was to ensure the orderly conduct of elections.”

And isn’t that the bottom line here? None of this was necessary. Once the state supreme court spoke, the secretary of state should have just complied. Certainly he could have done so after the first decision by Justice Kavanaugh.

But there was never a need to go that far. A lawful process obtained sufficient signatures from Missouri voters to let citizens decide which maps to use. Instead, Hoskins and Hanaway tried to secure 8-0 Republican representation in Missouri, shutting out Democrats entirely. This sort of partisanship is a malignancy in a democracy. Even Hoskins and Hanaway ultimately acknowledged that a ballot referendum had been duly authorized; they conceded that there would be one in their filing with the U.S. Supreme Court last Friday.

In his brief, the state’s solicitor general wrote: “On the one hand, Richard von Glahn — the referendum petition’s proponent — will get his referendum vote on Missouri’s congressional map regardless of what this court does. The only question is whether he (joined by a small minority of the state’s voters) can void a congressional map before he gets his vote.” It was only ever about gamesmanship to those state officials, and the game was shutting down Democratic representation in the Congress for state voters.

The U.S. Supreme Court now faces a quagmire not of its own making. Missouri must hold elections on schedule. Voters need certainty, as much as possible at this late date with so much confusion now baked in. The Supreme Court is likely to rule quickly given the late date. Will they countermand the state supreme court and permit the 2025 maps to be used? They are, after all, the maps that were used in the primary. But the state’s own high court says they are invalid because of the proper demand for a referendum on the maps. That court says the voters should choose, even though two Republican elected officials in the state wanted to prevent it from happening. Now it’s up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

If you’ve made it through the Missouri mess with me, you understand why I write Civil Discourse. Sometimes, the only way to understand what’s happening is to read the briefs and court orders and sort it all out, especially when contradicting decisions come at blistering speed from both state and federal courts. I try to do that for you when important situations like this develop. 

More On Court Clash Over Republican Gerrymander Attempt In Missouri

New York Times, Supreme Court Again Blocks Republican-Backed Missouri Voting Map, Ann E. Marimow and Mitch Smith, Sept. 10, 2026. The ruling deferred to the state’s Supreme Court, which had invalidated G.O.P.-friendly district lines, saying voters must first have an opportunity to approve the map in a statewide referendum.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday once again prevented Missouri from using a congressional map in November that was redrawn to give Republicans an advantage in the midterm elections.

It was the second time this week that the Supreme Court waded into a dizzying legal fight over Missouri’s congressional map, and it came just two months before a general election in which the state’s voters could determine control of the House.

The court’s brief order did not include any reasoning, as is often the case when the justices respond to emergency requests. There were no noted dissents.

Denny Hoskins, the Missouri secretary of state, said in a statement on Thursday afternoon that his office was “directing local election authorities to use the 2022 congressional map,” not the redrawn one, in compliance with the Supreme Court order. That map would position Democrats to retain a seat in the Kansas City area.

The announcement from Mr. Hoskins amounted to a major win for redistricting opponents, who waged a yearlong fight against the new map. But it did not answer the question of how election officials would conduct a general election based on a map different from the one used in the primary in August.

Holding a general election with a different map than what was used in the primary is rare legal territory, and the courts have so far given no specific guidance on how nominees should be selected.

Before Thursday’s order from Washington, Missouri Republican leaders had been insisting they would stick with their preferred map for the general election.

No matter what, logistical and legal barriers seem likely to keep emerging. The deadline to finalize Missouri’s ballot was Tuesday.

Redistricting opponents have suggested in court filings that candidates who won their primaries under the redrawn map might remain the nominees in the same-numbered districts under the old lines. Alternately, they theorized, state law allowed party nominating committees to select candidates for each district.

In response to the Supreme Court’s order, opponents of the new map said the justices’ decision had definitively settled the question of which map will govern the November election.

“The law is the law, the Missouri Constitution is clear as was the Missouri Supreme Court,” Richard von Glahn, the executive director of People Not Politicians Missouri, said in a statement.

Earlier in the week, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh had taken a similar action, as Missouri Democrats briefly appeared to have prevailed in a yearlong fight to preserve a House seat they hold in the Kansas City area. In that order, he deferred to Missouri’s Supreme Court, which had determined state officials should not have adopted the new map without a voter referendum. The state court ruling came even though Missouri voters already used the new map to nominate candidates in last month’s primary contests.

Instead, the state court said Missouri should use a map that had been in place since 2022 for the upcoming election.

But minutes after the justice’s order landed on Tuesday evening, Stephen R. Clark, the chief federal judge in St. Louis, ruled in the opposite direction, ordering the state to use the map that Missouri Republicans drew last year at President Trump’s request. That map was intended to help Republicans flip the seat in Kansas City.

Judge Clark’s ruling came in a different legal case, brought by a Republican congressman who is running for re-election and a G.O.P. candidate who won the primary under the new district lines. That ruling was then appealed again to the Supreme Court, resulting in Thursday’s action.

Judge Clark cited concerns in his ruling that using a different map for the general election would “wreak havoc on the fairness and orderliness” of the congressional election. He wrote that he was concerned a new map would lead to widespread voter confusion.

Mr. Hoskins, along with the governor and the attorney general, then quickly announced that they would follow the district judge’s ruling, rather than the State Supreme Court’s decision. That set off another round of court filings — and contempt proceedings against Mr. Hoskins before the State Supreme Court.

The G.O.P. map was drawn outside the usual redistricting cycle at Mr. Trump’s request, as part of an effort to improve the Republican Party’s chances of holding the House in the 2026 midterms.

The redrawn Missouri map, adopted by the State Legislature in September 2025, divided the core of Kansas City, the state’s largest city, into several districts in an attempt to unseat Representative Emanuel Cleaver II, one of two Democrats in the state’s congressional delegation. The new map did not significantly alter the partisan makeup of the other Democratic-held district, which is in the St. Louis area.

Democrats and state residents opposed to the boundaries last year collected hundreds of thousands of signatures seeking a referendum on the issue. But Mr. Hoskins said he did not believe that redistricting could legally be subject to a voter referendum, and he declined to add it to November’s ballot.

Civil Discourse, Opinion: Insanity in Missouri,Joyce Vance, right, Sept. 10, 2026. It’s utter insanity in Missouri, or as NBC’s Lawrence Hurley put it on Twitter this morning, the “Show Cause State.”

Currently, six Republicans and two Democrats represent the state in Congress. That is the case even though roughly 33% of registered voters are Democrats and 17% are Independents. But not satisfied with even that lopsided balance, Secretary of State Denny Hoskins and Attorney General Catherine Hanaway want to use a new gerrymandered map drawn in 2025 that makes it more difficult for Democrats, including incumbent Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, to win reelection.

Missouri’s legislature passed the law authorizing new maps last September. Civil rights groups went to court to challenge these new mid-decade maps. Then, a group called People Not Politicians collected over 300,000 signatures to put the question of which maps the state should use on the ballot for voters to decide. Nonetheless, earlier this year, the Missouri Supreme Court signed off on using the 2025 maps for this year’s elections and they were used in the primaries.

A state court judge sided with Secretary of State Hoskins’ request to keep a referendum on the maps off the ballot. But then, on September 3, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that the referendum petition was valid. The court concluded that meant the older maps from 2022 were reinstated, and the 2025 map was invalid.

I hope you’re not hopelessly confused already, because it gets worse.

Hoskins asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block that decision. On September 8, Justice Brett Kavanaugh denied the request, leaving the Missouri Supreme Court decision in place, requiring the state to use the older maps instead of the newer, gerrymandered ones. This, no surprise, was a shadow docket ruling, so there is no opinion that lays out Kavanaugh’s reasoning.

Then, in a separate case, federal District Judge Stephen Clark, a Trump appointee, ordered Hoskins to use the 2025 maps. The group People Not Politicians appealed to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, but lost, with the court finding that they lacked standing and that even if they did, they couldn’t meet the standard necessary to get an injunction against Judge Clark’s decision.

That brings us to tonight, when People Not Politicians asked the Supreme Court to intervene. Justice Kavanaugh has ordered Hoskins to respond by 10 a.m. tomorrow morning.

You’ll recall this mess started with the state court case that Hoskins asked Justice Kavanaugh to weigh in on. People Not Politicians is also arguing that Judge Clark’s decision is improper federal interference into an ongoing state court case, that he could not issue a decision like this alone and a three-judge court should have been convened, and that his decision violates the Purcell principle.

And as if that’s not enough, Richard von Glahn, the individual who intervened in the case along with People Not Politicians, has now filed “Suggestions of Contempt,” asking the state supreme court to hold Hoskins in contempt of that court’s prior order, claiming the contempt is “open and obvious.” Von Glahn points out that even “[I]f Respondent is not willing to comply with the Court's injunction,” he should still have to explain “why he should not take no action in all things related to the congressional district map until guidance is received from a higher court with jurisdiction to review the Court's judgment and injunction and the federal district court's injunction.” That’s a fair point with the matter currently sitting before the Supreme Court.

But common sense or even compliance with legal norms isn’t at work in Missouri right now.

This is the kind of chaos that Donald Trump thrives on, and where better to inject it into American society than our elections. Unsurprisingly, he has already weighed in on the case—it’s still shocking to see a U.S. president disagree with a state court so publicly—after the Missouri Supreme Court decision, calling it a “Dark Day for ‘Justice.’”

Roy Temple, a Democratic strategist and former state party leader in Missouri said that voters “can’t possibly understand who they’re going to be voting for.” He opined that “The sad part is that it’s almost entirely inflicted by people whose responsibility was to ensure the orderly conduct of elections.”

And isn’t that the bottom line here? None of this was necessary. Once the state supreme court spoke, the secretary of state should have just complied. Certainly he could have done so after the first decision by Justice Kavanaugh.

But there was never a need to go that far. A lawful process obtained sufficient signatures from Missouri voters to let citizens decide which maps to use. Instead, Hoskins and Hanaway tried to secure 8-0 Republican representation in Missouri, shutting out Democrats entirely. This sort of partisanship is a malignancy in a democracy. Even Hoskins and Hanaway ultimately acknowledged that a ballot referendum had been duly authorized; they conceded that there would be one in their filing with the U.S. Supreme Court last Friday.

In his brief, the state’s solicitor general wrote: “On the one hand, Richard von Glahn — the referendum petition’s proponent — will get his referendum vote on Missouri’s congressional map regardless of what this court does. The only question is whether he (joined by a small minority of the state’s voters) can void a congressional map before he gets his vote.” It was only ever about gamesmanship to those state officials, and the game was shutting down Democratic representation in the Congress for state voters.

The U.S. Supreme Court now faces a quagmire not of its own making. Missouri must hold elections on schedule. Voters need certainty, as much as possible at this late date with so much confusion now baked in. The Supreme Court is likely to rule quickly given the late date. Will they countermand the state supreme court and permit the 2025 maps to be used? They are, after all, the maps that were used in the primary. But the state’s own high court says they are invalid because of the proper demand for a referendum on the maps. That court says the voters should choose, even though two Republican elected officials in the state wanted to prevent it from happening. Now it’s up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

If you’ve made it through the Missouri mess with me, you understand why I write Civil Discourse. Sometimes, the only way to understand what’s happening is to read the briefs and court orders and sort it all out, especially when contradicting decisions come at blistering speed from both state and federal courts. I try to do that for you when important situations like this develop. 

Trump Midtown Convention In Texas 

New York Times, News Analysis: Down in the Polls, Republicans Embrace a Familiar Tool: Fear, Lisa Lerer, Sept. 10, 2026. At an unusual midterm gathering, President Trump and his allies painted Democrats as dangerously un-American.

The photos plastered in the hallways were all of President Trump. Jackets were bedazzled with his name. And the red hats dotting the audience on the floor of the convention hall were embroidered with MAGA, his indelible political slogan.

And yet, at a gathering that fans and foes alike had nicknamed the “Trump-a-palooza,” the president and his Republican allies spent more time whipping up fears about the specter of socialism, communism and even anarchy than they did trumpeting the successes of his administration.

As they took the stage at the party’s unusual midterm gathering in Dallas on Wednesday night, amid growing Republican anxiety about the midterm elections, speaker after speaker focused on what they characterized as an urgent threat to American life: a Democratic Party they claimed had veered beyond its traditional liberal principals into a dangerous, un-American ideology.

Democrats running for Congress were “evil.” They were “communists and anarchists.” And they wanted to turn the country into “a socialist hellscape.”

“I call it the Bolshevik Revolution in the Democratic Party,” said Representative Steve Scalise, the House majority leader. “Let’s make sure that when we wake up the morning after Election Day we know we did everything we could to defeat socialism.”

President Trump has long been a master of the politics of fear, regularly stoking anxiety about immigration and crime.

Now, as his party faces its most difficult political environment in years, the president and his supporters are attempting — once more — to channel fear into electoral victory. It’s a strategy that is both old and new, playing off the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America to stoke Cold War-era fears of communism and socialism.

Hope for America, Opinion: The president wants to buy our votes, Heather Delaney Reese, right, Sept. 10, 2026. At 8:09 PM tonight, the President of the United States walked onto the stage at the first-ever Republican midterm convention and slowly made his way over to the podium, stopping along the way to catch his breath and soak in screams of “I love you” from women in the audience. Once at the podium, Donald Trump launched into an hour-and-47-minute speech unlike any ever given by a president of the United States in the 250-year history of our country.

By the end of the night, through slurred speech and fumbled words, Donald Trump would make one of the most shocking promises ever delivered by a sitting president, especially on the eve of an American election. Standing on that stage, with the cameras rolling, the President of the United States looked into the audience and made what many are viewing as a bribe to the American people to control who they vote for, when he promised that if Republicans win control of Congress, every adult American gets $5,000.

“I can make this promise to you, and here is my promise. If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate … I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.” He then added: “It will be called the Trump dividend.”

That was just one moment in an evening built on desperation and his willingness to say or do anything to keep his unchecked power from being taken away from him. When Trump had walked onto the stage, his yellow-orange face makeup looked smeared, like it had been applied in a rush, creating a stark circle around his hairline and neck. Everything about the event felt unpolished and hurried, even the empty seats in the audience, where large sections of the American Airlines Center sat empty, including most of the upper levels, despite Trump’s claims that there were so many people they had people lined up and waiting outside. He said that after it had already been reported that the RNC spent days sending unsolicited texts to people offering free tickets in an effort to fill the room. The whole setup was so disorganized that even one of the letters in the word “Dallas” on the podium fell off while RNC Chairman Joe Gruters was speaking.

Early in the speech, before Trump’s bribe, we were already seeing signs of just how badly he believes Republicans need to win this election, even going so far as to tell the audience that if he had not won the last election in 2024, he was not sure our country would even still exist today. He forgets to mention every single time when he says something like this that he has now been the president for a combined five and a half years. He is having an increasingly tough time convincing anyone that America not being great is anyone’s fault other than his own, after controlling it for nearly six of the last ten years.

No president in the history of this country has ever done what Donald Trump did tonight. He will say it was completely legal, and maybe it was. But the reality is that legal and pro-democracy might be two different things tonight. Because he actually stood there tonight and told the American people, on national television, that if they vote to keep his party in power, he would personally, in his capacity as the president, issue them a check. He compared it to “a successful company” issuing “a cash distribution to its shareholders.” Except our country is not a business, and he is not just issuing extra money, he is telling us that if we keep him in power, he will give us money.

Thank you to those of you who support this work with a paid membership. Your $5 a month is what allows me to keep writing every day and, just as importantly, to keep these posts free and accessible to everyone. Those who can pay are the reason those who can’t still have access. And right now, with so much at stake heading into the midterms, that matters more than ever. If you’re in a position to join, I’d be grateful to have you with us.Subscribed

The math doesn’t work either. There are roughly 260 million adults in the United States. At $5,000 each, the cost would be way over $1 trillion. And then there is the law, too. Under federal law, it is a crime to pay or offer to pay someone for voting. If that law is broken, the punishment is up to five years in prison, a fine of up to $10,000, or both. Donald Trump’s promise is not directly conditioned on any individual person voting Republican, which is an important legal distinction, but he still stood on a political stage and told Americans that if Republicans win, they get $5,000.

This isn’t the first time he has made a promise like this either. He makes lots of promises that never come true, but that can still leave people thinking that maybe this time will be different. Late last year, Trump posted on Truth Social that Americans would receive a tariff dividend of at least $2,000. Those checks never came, and the hope that they would quietly faded into the background noise.

What he is not telling people is what is actually coming after the midterms. The Big Beautiful Bill was designed so that many of its worst changes do not take effect until after the election is over and the votes are counted. Many of the parts that will specifically make life harder for working families were delayed until after the midterms, meaning millions of Americans will not feel the full impact until it is too late to factor those consequences into this election. That is the cruelty built into these policies and the decisions made by Donald Trump and the Republicans who passed them.

The rest of the night was typical Donald Trump incoherence and propaganda. Trump called Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, “a great guy,” and Mike Johnson grinned at the compliment. He targeted the press and called out a reporter, Shawn McCreesh, by his name, encouraging his followers to boo at him and the press in general at other times.

Then there was the moment that Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman appeared via a pre-recorded video to introduce Republican Senator Dave McCormick, also from Pennsylvania. He called him “a great American” and pledged to work with the president. The White House shared the clip and added the caption “Based John Fetterman,” which, in far-right MAGA circles, means they are praising him for aligning with their movement by breaking from what was expected of him, aka he abandoned the Democrats and now is a Republican without the official R next to his name. Democratic reactions were about what we would expect. Pennsylvania state representative Malcolm Kenyatta called him “Benedict Arnold, but lazy,” saying he “could barely get off the couch in his million-dollar mansion to kiss Trump’s ring” and “phoned it in like everything he does.” Representative Chris Deluzio said Fetterman is “not going to be a Senator after 2028, mark my words.” Reports have surfaced that Trump offered Fetterman, through Sean Hannity, “more money than he ever dreamed of” to switch sides. Tonight, Fetterman completely destroyed what little dignity he still had left.

Maybe the most honest part of the night was when Donald Trump told the room of people, many locals from Texas, that, “I don’t need to be here tonight. I could have been in a nice place somewhere in the world.”

Those words paint a picture of who Trump is, and also how badly he thinks November will go. Toward the end of the speech, Trump asked the crowd to remember him as “the guy who got this amazing economy started.” But after this speech, he will be remembered as the guy so desperate that he tried to buy votes.

When he was speaking, I started to think beyond him wanting an easy run at the rest of his presidency and beyond to something deeper and more troubling. Clarence Thomas is 78 years old. Samuel Alito is 76. Both are approaching the average retirement age for Supreme Court justices since 2000, which is roughly 80. If either were to step down or were unable to serve for other reasons, and Republicans still held control of the Senate, Trump would get a fourth appointment, locking in a far-right supermajority for possibly decades to come. If Democrats take the Senate in November, those confirmations are most certainly blocked regardless of how much longer Trump’s term is, just like Mitch McConnell did to Democrats in the past. Maybe that has a big part in the desperation we are now seeing coming out of the White House. Yes, Donald Trump wants control, but the people behind him are thinking way past his relevance and into what comes after him.

The bigger picture of how all of these connect is one of the things we have to make sure as many people as possible understand. Yes, the lucky survived his first presidency somewhat intact. But that experience is giving far too many people a false sense of security now, convincing them that because we made it through once, we will somehow make it through again. We are already living with the consequences of that kind of thinking, and it is already not okay. Our country has fallen so far in just 20 months that the president felt emboldened to suggest he would pay people with government, taxpayer money if we vote and keep his government in control. We can’t keep telling ourselves that somehow, no matter what happens, everything will just be fine, because it isn’t and it won’t.

As Donald Trump said tonight, 55 days from now, we need to show up and vote as if Donald Trump himself is on the ballot. Because in every way that matters, he absolutely is. His continued destruction of our country is on the ballot. So is his war, the future of the Supreme Court, and everything else his administration will have the power to do over the next two years. His vision of a country where a president can stand on national television and promise Americans $5,000 if his party wins control of Congress is also absolutely on the ballot.

On November 3rd, we are going to honor his wishes, show up in numbers never seen before, and tell him exactly what we think of him and his MAGA sycophants.

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion:Trump’s Party, Sonny Bunch, Sept. 10, 2026. The vibe at the first day of the Republicans’ midterm convention was a pretty simple one: Play the hits, no matter how little sense it makes to play them, and offer the people some free cash while you’re at it.

Hoping to hear the hits was why Phil and his brother Eric made their way from Nebraska and Arizona to the American Airlines Center in Dallas. The senior citizens are Trump diehards—Phil said he knocked on more than three thousand doors for the president—and they wanted to attend the GOP gathering because it’s something that’s never happened before. Plus, there’s some star-watching to be done (“I saw Brandon Hill. I saw Nick Shirley over there. You know who that is?”), and the brothers wanted to see Trump in person. But mostly they’re worried.

What are they worried about? Well . . . just about everything.

From the COVID-era restrictions (they’re big RFK Jr. fans) to illegal immigrants flooding America to inflation caused by Joe Biden “helicoptering cash,” it’s all a problem. As long as Trump can avoid the Zionist efforts to get him further bogged down in regime change in Iran, he’ll be okay. Unfortunately I did not run into Phil and Eric on the way out of the arena, so I didn’t get to ask them how the new “Trump Dividend” the president announced—a promise to send $5,000 checks to “every adult citizen” if Republicans keep the House and Senate—would solve the Cash-Helicopter Conundrum. As Catherine Rampell noted in our livestream last night, the Trump Dividend would cost well over $1 trillion. (Then again, as Catherine has written, promising people scads of money and then not delivering on those promises has been one of Trump’s signature moves in politics—and, for that matter, in business.)

The running theme through Day One was pretty clear: Things were bad under Biden, right? Democrats want “the Biden burden back,” as Michigan House candidate Mike Bouchard put it. Speaker after speaker came to the stage to denounce high prices under Biden and praise the GOP-led Congress for turning things around, all while folks on the floor waved signs reading “Keep the Majority.” You could get the sense at times that the crowd could see the contradiction there and understood just how ridiculous this was, given the weak applause that accompanied many of these early speakers. (The fact that I spent $65 on gas an hour before heading to the American Airlines Center probably has something to do with the lack of excitement.)

But what these folks really came for was red meat, and nothing’s redder than the bloody culture wars.

After a series of pretty stale speakers, South Carolina’s Sen. Tim Scott jazzed the audience up by denouncing James Talarico for believing in six genders and for saying God is nonbinary. Scott went full revival preacher, hopping around the stage, throwing his arms up, and getting the crowd fired up; it was a shot of energy desperately needed for a crowd that was kind of dying. Border security was also a big hit, with Paul Perez of the National Border Patrol Council—the union representing Border Patrol employees—getting a standing ovation while introducing Ken Paxton, the embattled GOP candidate running against Talarico in Texas.

And Paxton is . . . well, he’s no Tim Scott. He glistens like Richard Nixon, sans the charisma. His speaking style is halting and stilted; the applause from the crowd felt perfunctory. The boos, however, were hearty. Paxton ran through the same litany of Tala-freak-o slams Scott hit—nonbinary, six genders, he’s transing your kids—and the crowd ate it up. That’s the rub here: This is a convention that’s dedicated to negative polarization, that’s trying to give people something to vote against rather than for.

Scott aside, there was a distinctive lack of energy in the speakers leading up to Trump. Jon Husted, the Ohio senator locked in a tight race against Democrat Sherrod Brown, seems like a nice enough guy, in a bland, blue-suited sort of way. But the only thing Husted said that got folks excited was that Brown “demanded that we call mothers ‘pregnant persons.’”

There is one thing the folks here were willing to cheer for rather than against: Trump himself. Any invocation of Texas being Trump country was met with raucous cheers; any mention of Trump working for the people led to cheers of hallelujah. T.W. Shannon, a Republican running for lieutenant governor in Oklahoma, had a bit more pep in his step than Paxton or Husted, but his biggest applause line wasn’t shocking: “The greatest president in American history, President Donald J. Trump.” There can be no doubt about it: This wasn’t just a Party for Trump, it was a party for Trump, an effort to make the 80-year-old feel like the center of attention and give him the energy needed to get out on the trail.

And there can be no doubt about this: The Republican party is the party of Trump, his name spelled out in sparkly letters at the front of the arena, first row, his cheering section never stronger.Attendees wear letters that spell out “TRUMP” on the first day of the 2026 Republican National Convention at the American Airlines Center on September 9, 2026 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

And Trump wants to make sure everyone knows it. His speech, which went on for an hour and forty-five minutes—longer than even his most longwinded speech at a normal Republican convention—had three big themes: that Democrats are scary, that Trump can deliver prosperity, and that this year’s election is a referendum on Trump, Trump, Trump.

“I’m asking you to pretend that I’m on the ballot,” he said to the cheering audience—and then, as an aside, softer, acknowledged, “I’m on the ballot, I’m on the ballot,” no pretending necessary—before finishing the thought: “just one more time.” The thing about Trump is that he actually believes it when he says stuff like, “I don’t think anyone’s ever had two years like we have.” There’s a reality-distortion field surrounding him, one where gas prices don’t register, where inflation doesn’t exist. And he thinks he’s the one who should get the credit.

The electorate seems likely to give him, and the Republicans he promised to crisscross the country campaigning for, all the credit in the world come Election Day. Meanwhile, the assembled in Dallas loved every minute of it. 

Hopium Chronicles, Advocacy and Opinion: Trump Had His Shot And Has Blown It, Badly. It Is Our Turn Now To Win, Lead, And Make Things Better, Simon Rosenberg, right, Sept. 10, 2026. Trump’s failed and extremist regime continues to make things worse for America, the American people, and for their rancid, illiberal political project.

Hostilities have returned to the Middle East. The war has widened as the Houthis are now attacking Saudi Arabia. Iran continues to attack and destroy our military bases in the region, causing hundreds of billions of damage, striking now as far away as our bases in Jordan. Oil has spiked up to $105 a barrel today:

Global inflation has done enormous damage to consumers, businesses, and governments throughout the world. Interest rates are rising, the fiscal conditions of nations weakening everywhere. From the FT’s homepage right now:

Diesel hit an all-time high this week in the US just in time for the fall harvest, further battering farmers already reeling from higher fertilizer prices, higher energy costs, loss of markets, cuts to health care, and mass deportation. Today’s Producer Price Index report came in at 5.4% annually, almost three times the Fed’s target rate of 2%. Here is what Trump’s ruinous economic policies have done:

Trump’s horrific cuts to our health care system are showing up in higher prices and less access for all Americans, not just those on Medicaid and the ACA. Estimates now are that costs for those with private insurance plans will rise between 8% and 11% - the biggest one year jump in twenty years. This is going to further weaken American businesses and cause health care costs to rise for literally every American in the country.

The war in Russia-Ukraine is also escalating, and Russia’s attacks on civilians and the civilian infrastructure in Ukraine are growing more barbaric. The Russian and Trump aligned AfD, an extremist, far-right party, won an election in Germany. Putin’s “hybrid war” attacks on Europe/NATO are escalating, widening the war into the heart of NATO itself.

As I wrote yesterday:

the world is slowly tipping into a profound crisis as the country that held everything together for the past eighty years has now decided to tear it all apart.

Faced with all this deterioration of the global economy, our economy here at home, and Russian-Iranian aggression Trump sent his bagmen to Moscow to lick Putin’s boots, humiliate Zelenskyy, and give Russia an attaboy; praised the success of the Russia-aligned AfD creating an even deeper crisis with our European allies, and inside NATO; and dramatically escalated his trade war with Canada, adding fuel to inflation here, further weakening our alliances and the West, and he even published a map of America that included all of Canada, implicitly threatening a full on invasion of Northern neighbor in the Imperial Venezuelan model.Subscribed

These historic series of failures have taken a terrible toll on Trump’s political project here at home. His polling got worse this week and hit new lows in four major polls. Consumer confidence is at a 65 year low. Peltola leads in Alaska; Brown has been up 8 in the last two Fox News polls of Ohio; Talarico leads in every poll in Texas; a new poll has Turek up in Iowa; new polls have El-Sayed and Troy Jackson up 3 in Michigan and Maine; Cooper and Ossoff have large, single digit leads. Today FiftyPlusOne puts our odds of winning the House at 94%:

And the Senate at 59%:

In the Economist/YouGov poll this week our lead in the named generic ballot was 49%-38% - 11 points, a deeply encouraging bit of data.

Yes our rapacious, addled, liar-in-chief offered a big, huge bribe last night, but I am skeptical any American will believe him. He has had his chance these last two years to do right by the American people and instead we’ve gotten abandonment, betrayal, Olympian levels of failure here and throughout the world, and unprecedented oligarchical corruption:

Finally, I talked about the need for us to lead our communities in these final two months. To be calm, steady, true, and resist distraction. We have a clear mission now:

There is nothing Trump and MAGA wants more than for us to be fighting with each other and not with him. We have one job now - elect as many of these wonderful candidates running for the House and Senate as we can. It’s where our focus must be. It’s a year of opportunity for us across the country. We must seize it, together.

Proud American patriots it is our turn now, and we must do our part for freedom and democracy here and everywhere by winning this election by as a big margin as we can. We need to keep writing our postcards, canvassing, phonebanking, protesting, info warring, and donating to candidates and party committees. We need to become Early Vote Champions in our networks, communities, and organizations; embrace the No Kings Oct 17th day of action; and sign up to become a Democracy Protector too.

And of our course, we must keep supporting our courageous candidates and hard-working party committees so we can bring a big blue wave all across the land…..

More On U.S. Immigration Policy, Abuses

Morning Shots via The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Markwayne Mullin’s Trouble with Facts, Jim Swift, right, Sept. 10, 2026. When Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin came to Warren County, Ohio last week to tout the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, he made a number of assertions about immigration law and enforcement that did not withstand much scrutiny.

I was, frankly, a little surprised that agency officials would come to Ohio so close after the suicide of Pierre Damas Bel. I was disgusted—but not surprised—when Mullin responded to a question about whether DHS bore any responsibility for Pierre’s death: “We were following our procedures; we did our job. What happened when he went home . . . he wasn’t in our custody,” he said. “We’re not responsible for that.”

Some of Mullin’s claims were outright wrong. The Ohio Immigrant Alliance went through his remarks line by line and produced a twelve-page fact-check that’s worth reading in full. If his statements about Bel’s suicide had a tenuous connection to reality, his grasp of the policy rationale he was selling had none whatsoever.

Mullin defended the ankle monitors by claiming that “86, 87 percent” of immigrants never show up for court. The data say nothing of the sort. According to immigration-court data OIA compiled, immigrants have a 76.3 percent attendance rate (the figure jumps to 95 percent when they have a lawyer).

And that wasn’t Mullin’s only misstatement about the ankle monitors. Asked whether ICE could switch someone from an ankle monitor to another form of monitoring, Mullin said the decision was out of his hands: “Well, at that point it’s in the courts. It’s in the courts at that point and we’ll leave that up to the judge.”

Except immigration judges don’t ordinarily make those decisions. ICE does. ICE selects participants for its Alternatives to Detention program and determines the level and method of supervision, and ankle monitors aren’t the only option. The agency already uses a smartphone app that allows immigrants to check in remotely using facial recognition, and most people in its Alternatives to Detention program are monitored through the app rather than an ankle bracelet.

Some moments require you to step up. Some require you to show up. That’s why The Bulwark is coming to Ohio. All profits from this event will be donated to those in Springfield who are in need.

Nor does ICE’s own data suggest that people in the program routinely skip court. The agency says participants have a court-appearance rate of about 98 percent in the last two years. And many of the Springfield Haitians being fitted with ankle monitors had shown up obediently when ICE summoned them for check-ins, only to leave the office wearing the devices.

Mullin also repeatedly blurred the distinction between the Haitians losing TPS and people who entered the country illegally:

You want to say, ‘Well, not everybody that came across our border illegally are breaking the law or they’re criminals?’ Well, actually, yes, they are. They’re 100 percent, because they chose to cut the line. They chose to break the law. When they decided to come across our border illegally, that means they broke the law. That means they are criminals. That doesn’t mean they all have criminal records. They chose to break our laws.

But the fact that someone had TPS does not mean they entered the country illegally. Some Haitians undoubtedly did; others entered legally. And TPS can be granted to both. How someone entered the country and what immigration status he or she has today are two different questions. Mullin repeatedly treated them as one.

Mullin says DHS did its job and that what happened to Bel after he “went home” was no longer the department’s responsibility. That’s an argument he’s entitled to make. It doesn’t change the fact that Bel killed himself because he felt humiliated and psychologically tortured by the agency Mullin leads.

Before absolving his department, Mullin might bother to learn what his department did and is doing, why, and how Bel actually died.

AROUND THE BULWARK

• The CIA Director Is a Failure… John Ratcliffe has mired the agency in politics—and possible illegality, write JOHN SIPHER and JULIA CURLEE.
• Sarah Longwell’s Message for Everyone Who Thinks We’re Doomed… ANDREW WEISSMANN turns the tables on SARAH LONGWELL for a conversation about her new book, How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time—and what a post-Trump political future could look like.
• Live Coverage of Trump’s Midterm Convention Speech… It’s a long one! Join SAM STEIN, CATHERINE RAMPELL, SONNY BUNCH, and WILL SOMMER as they react to Trump’s keynote address and newly proposed bribe to American voters.
• Dems to Trump: Please, Sir, the Stage Is Yours… The party once worried about losing the attention wars. Now, they’re happy to cede the spotlight, reports LAUREN EGAN in The Opposition.

Quick Hits

KICKING THE WAR DOWN THE ROAD: Donald Trump has been insisting for months that Iran is on the brink of collapse. Now, that prediction has a new—and extended—timetable. “I think the war is going to end immediately after the election,” he told reporters yesterday. “They’re desperate to try to affect the election so that we can get a nice weak group of people in there and leave them alone and let them have their nuclear weapon.”

This is as close as Trump will likely ever get to admitting a couple of obvious realities: The Iran war has done enormous damage to him politically, and he has no plan to get out of it in time to contain that damage ahead of November. Instead, the White House is throwing out a whole bag of self-contradictory rhetorical strategies to spin the current unpleasant stalemate, from JD Vance’s insisting the war is actually over if you squint to Trump’s soothing suggestion that it will be over right after the election, so people should vote as though it already is. None of these pitches, however, is exactly landing with the public.

GO HOME, JOHN: Oh, look, John Fetterman is doing sizzle reels for the Republican National Convention now. Here’s the New York Times:

Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, the self-proclaimed champion of working-class voters who has become alienated from his own party and fed up with his job, on Wednesday appeared in a short video on the opening night of President Trump’s midterm convention in Dallas.

“Yes, I’m a Democrat. Why am I here talking to you today?” Mr. Fetterman said in a video filmed in front of a steel mill in Pennsylvania. He introduced himself as a “common-sense Democrat” who said he is “always going to reject the extremes in socialism.”

Mr. Fetterman introduced Senator David McCormick, Republican of Pennsylvania, and said that they would work together “and work with President Trump and defend the steel way of life.”

Almost nothing Fetterman is doing these days seems dictated by any actual strategy. Many have speculated that the senator is gearing up to make a post-midterms party switch, but this is the one thing the senator continues to swear he’s not doing. “I’m a lifelong Democrat who votes overwhelmingly with my party—and should the Senate flip in November, I will still be the fifty-first vote I ran on,” he said in his RNC message last night.

It appears rather that Fetterman is just driven by the twin engines of personal grievance and a desire for favorable attention—that as his repeated MAGA flirtations enrage his own base more and more, he finds ever more comfort in the Last Reasonable Democrat character he gets to play on Fox News. The good news is that Fetterman probably knows he actually has to stay a Democrat if he’s going to keep performing this role. If he were to switch sides, all he’d be was the Senate’s most liberal Republican—a type of character his friends at Fox tend to have a lot less dewy sympathy for.

More On U.S. Elections, Politics, Governance 

Politico, Jim Jordan says he will relinquish Judiciary gavel, pass on a return to Oversight, Mia McCarthy, Sept. 10, 2026. The Ohio Republican’s committee decisions are likely to rekindle chatter about his leadership ambitions.

Rep. Jim Jordan said Wednesday he plans to end his eight-year run leading Republicans on two of the House’s most prominent committees after this Congress, raising fresh questions about what comes next for the veteran Ohio lawmaker.

Jordan, 62, said in an interview on the sidelines of the Republican midterm convention that he has no plans to seek a waiver of the GOP’s three-term limit on committee leaders to retain the top spot on the Judiciary Committee.

Nor, he said, would he seek to return to lead Republicans on the House Oversight Committee. He previously served as ranking member from 2019 to 2020, when he took the GOP reins at Judiciary, and has at least two terms of eligibility remaining there.

“No, I don’t plan to do that,” Jordan said. “There’s other people who are very interested in Oversight.”

Jordan could have requested a waiver from the House Republican Steering Committee, and several other sitting GOP chairs — including Agriculture’s G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) and Armed Services’ Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) — are expected to do just that. He brushed off questions about why we would not join others in seeking to keep the coveted gavel overseeing the Justice Department, immigration law and other high-profile matters.

“I’m just not going to do it,” he said.

The decision is likely to stoke speculation about another potential leadership run for Jordan, who is seeking his 11th term this fall. He unsuccessfully sought the speakership after Kevin McCarthy’s 2023 ouster, and there has been open chatter in recent months that he is quietly setting the grounds to make another run at the top job.

After flatly denying plans to retain a committee gavel, Jordan was far less direct in addressing other questions about his future in the House.

“I’m focused on one thing, one thing only: winning,” he said. “If the left wins, where they want to take the country is very, very scary.”

Jordan, for instance, did not rule out running against Speaker Mike Johnson for the gavel if Republicans hold onto House majority this fall.

The Contrarian, Opinion: Our Military Needs Congress to Do Its Job, Jennifer Rubin, right,Sept. 10, 2026. 54 Days to the Midterms.

Given that Democrats will likely win control of at least one house of Congress, we need to begin serious consideration of the essential role of congressional oversight. Congress’s powers of the purse and of oversight will be essential to halt this regime’s chaos and begin reversing the constitutional damage and policy failures we have endured. There is no more critical oversight realm than national security, where Donald Trump and his minions have cost American lives and billions of dollars and severely damaged our security and international standing.

Starting with the Hippocratic Oath (Do No Harm — or, in this case, do no more harm), Congress must cut all funding for the illegal war in Iran (and its deployment of troops and material) and for extrajudicial killings on the high seas, which have both been moral obscenities and colossal policy failures.

Beyond that, national security guru and former State Department official Brian Finucane tells me, “If the executive branch has usurped Congress’s authority over the use of force or breached the rules enacted by Congress, the legislative branch needs to expose those violations and begin laying the groundwork for accountability.”

Regarding extrajudicial killings on the high seas, Finucane points out, “accountability is necessary to safeguard against the US military engaging in lawless premeditated killing in the future.” And it demands a transparent review of a counterproductive policy.

Killing drug mules and blowing up boats is not solving the drug trafficking problem. “[W]hile trafficking routes briefly shifted and cocaine prices temporarily fluctuated, the availability, purity, and price of cocaine in the United States have largely returned to pre-operation levels,” Just Security reports. That means this illegal escapade “achieved little lasting strategic effect despite its extraordinary use of military force.” To make matters worse, the extrajudicial killings also prompted allies such as the UK, Canada, and the Netherlands to curb “intelligence sharing with the United States or put caveats on the use of the intelligence they provide because of these unlawful strikes.”

Both the extrajudicial killings and the Iran war raise disturbing questions about violations of the law of war and U.S. personnel implication in war crimes. In contrast with Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden’s administrations — which all conducted after-action reports on civilian casualties in a timely fashion and complied with obligations to testify before Congress — the Trump crew has stiff-armed Congress on queries about everything from the so-called “double tap” strike that murdered non-military personnel floating in the high seas to the strike that killed over 150 civilians, most children, at a girl’s school in Minab, Iran.

Independent investigative reporting established that, for years, this building was walled off from any military installation and used purely as a civilian school. But this may be far more than a horrible, negligent error in failing to update targeting, or even abide by warnings within the intelligence system.

This tragedy appears to be the almost inevitable result of the Trump regime’s decision to disregard protection of civilians, a key principle in the law of war. Earlier this year, ProPublica reported that a carefully designed Civilian Protection Center of Excellence “was dissolved as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made ‘lethality’ a top priority,” precipitating the Minab incident, in which the U.S. killed the most civilians in a single incident in decades. “Dismantling the fledgling harm-reduction effort, defense analysts say, is among several ways the Trump administration has reorganized national security around two principles: more aggression, less accountability.”Subscribed

Massive civilian deaths followed when the Trump Pentagon “lowered the authorization level for lethal force, broadened target categories, inflated threat assessments and fired inspectors general,” according to the ProPublica report. One Air Force official who had been forced out told ProPublica:

“We’re departing from the rules and norms that we’ve tried to establish as a global community since at least World War II. There’s zero accountability.”

However, accountability is still possible, and remains a moral and operational imperative. Chest-thumping Trump officials who confuse national security excellence with mindless, counterproductive violence must not be permitted to put lower-level military personnel in precarious legal and moral terrain. As Margaret Donovan, who reviewed hundreds of combat strikes in Syria and Iraq as a lawyer in the United States Army JAG Corps, tells me, “It is up to Congress to ensure that soldiers are never put in that position in the first place; they are effectively outsourcing their oversight responsibilities to junior soldiers.”

Congressional oversight must proceed. If the Trump regime snubs congressional subpoenas, Finucane advises, “Congress should be prepared to play hardball, including by vowing career consequences for any military officers who refuse to comply with subpoenas and by imposing funding restrictions for noncompliance.” Fortunately, all those officials who Hegseth has fired will have much greater latitude to testify. Dr. Kori Schake, director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, advises that Congress can also refuse Pentagon funding requests and confirmations until it gets satisfactory answers “about the legality of issued orders, the tradeoffs in readiness and munitions usage, and other crucial policy choices.”

Tess Bridgeman, co-Editor-in-Chief of Just Security, Senior Fellow and visiting scholar at NYU Law School tells me, “Various other forms of accountability — including administrative separation (involuntary discharge), removal from a command or duty, and preventing promotions, for example, are potential forms of accountability that could be particularly useful where the unlawful conduct was relatively widespread and was officially condoned.” She adds, “Congress should also use its investigative authority to create commissions (or use its existing committee structure) that can get to the bottom of what happened and why; lower-level officials could be immunized from certain penalties for coming forward and speaking truthfully. This could create a powerful public record and put the focus on those most responsible and the institutions in which they served — rather than on the lower-ranking personnel involved (who could still face various forms of admonition, reprimand, suspension of privileges, or mandatory re-training, depending on their role and level of responsibility).”

In addition to policy failures and war crimes, enumerable aspects of the Pentagon require exacting oversight (e.g., use of an insecure Signal channel during military operations, munitions shortages, discriminatory promotions, gross violations of the First Amendment). At stake is nothing less than the restoration and preservation of military excellence, our standing as a defender of international law, and our ability to enlist democratic allies’ support.

“National security, and particularly matters of war and peace, cannot be exempted from our democratic processes,” Katherine Yon Ebright, senior counsel at the Brennan Center, tells me. “The human costs are too high, and the backsliding is too easy. After decades of Congress ceding ground on national security decision-making and oversight, we now have a president who feels empowered to conflate dissent with crime and also crime with war.” We are now seeing where that leads.

Republicans, in countenancing an illegal war, rubber-stamping unfit nominees, and refusing to conduct essential oversight, are fully culpable in the damage to our national security and constitutional order. Voters must understand that without a change in congressional control, we will not have a majority party willing to fulfill its obligations to protect the Constitution from enemies, foreign and domestic.

“Discipline and honor are central to the proper functioning of the military. The current executive branch leadership has blatantly violated the law and encouraged others to do so,” Donovan tells me. Moreover, “the constant chaos in the executive branch—summary firings, rotating crew of principal officers—means that soldiers don’t know if what they are being told is legal today will be illegal tomorrow, and vice versa,” she says. That is why it is so essential to have real congressional oversight — and a congressional majority that’s up to the task.

MSNOW, States warn of ‘chaos’ if Supreme Court allows mail-ballot restrictions for midterms, Jordan Rubin, Sept. 9, 2026. A blue-state coalition warned the justices that millions of Americans could lose their ability to vote.

A coalition of blue states told the Supreme Court that complying with a new U.S. Postal Service rule for the midterms “would be impossible” for some states and would lead to millions of voters being unable to vote by mail and others being unable to vote at all. In other states, the coalition said, it would produce “chaos” and “a significant risk that millions more voters would be denied the ability to vote.”

Delivering that warning on Wednesday, California and other states and the District of Columbia urged the justices to keep in place a preliminary injunction against the rule that the Trump administration wants the high court to upend ahead of November.

While the administration told the justices that the new Postal Service rule only imposes “modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements for federal-election ballots sent via U.S. Mail,” the states said there’s nothing modest about the ballot restrictions.

“Tens of millions of Americans will likely wish to vote by mail this year,” they said in their opposition to the administration’s application to lift the injunction. “Under the challenged rule,” they said, “ballots will not be delivered to those voters unless each is registered in USPS’ new, not-yet-functional online portal; a voter-specific Intelligent Mail barcode (IMb) is printed on outgoing and return ballot envelopes; and those barcodes are accurately tied to each voter and uploaded to that same portal. “

They said the efforts of state and local election officials to even start to try to comply with the rule are “herculean” and that the process “is fraught with an extreme risk of error.”

When she issued the preliminary injunction against the rule last week, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani found that implementing it right before the November elections “threatens disenfranchisement of millions of United States citizens who seek to vote by mail.”

The Obama-appointed judge in Boston said there was no evidence of mail-voting fraud presented in the litigation to support “the rushed implementation of the Final Rule.” President Donald Trump has railed against mail voting as fraudulent while voting that way himself.

Yet Solicitor General D. John Sauer pressed the fraud point in his pending application for the high court to lift Talwani’s injunction, which the justices could act on in the coming days. There is not a deadline for them to rule.More articlesSCOTUS ruling on mail-in ballots raises uncertainty ahead of midtermsJulia JesterIn this closeup photo, aperson, right, holds a bunch of mail-in-ballot envelopes on a shelf. Only their hand is visible.The Supreme Court’s mail-in ballot decision could inject chaos into midterm electionsJordan RubinFrom left to right, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts stand, dressed in robes.

“In particular,” Sauer said, the district judge’s order “bars the Postal Service from verifying that mailed envelopes comply with the Rule’s requirements for the upcoming elections.” He said she nullified the government’s efforts to address “a particularly pernicious species of fraud that dilutes the votes of lawful voters, prevents election results from reflecting the will of the American people, and undermines ‘public confidence in the integrity of the electoral process.’”

Sauer said the Postal Service rule creates “standardized design and review requirements for ballot envelopes that build on practices the Postal Service has long recommended,” and that it makes states “upload the name, address, and barcode information of intended recipients of ballot mail in an online portal — information that election officials would necessarily already possess to send ballot mail under the Rule to those recipients.”

He said the rule “ensures that States remain responsible for determining voter eligibility and eligibility to vote by mail, and it does not dictate ballot content, mailing or receipt deadlines, or ballot-counting procedures.”

Given all of that, he said the rule “plainly does not seize control of States’ administration of elections — it simply imposes reasonable preparation requirements for certain election-related mail.”

The Supreme Court previously sided with the administration at an earlier stage of the litigation, ruling that a challenge to Trump’s executive order on mail ballots was premature because it hadn’t been implemented yet. In that ruling last month, the court emphasized that it wasn’t saying that any action taken to implement the order “will necessarily be lawful,” adding: “On that score, time will tell.” The new rule and the litigation it prompted brought the issue back to the justices for what could be a more definitive resolution.

Among the several outside parties weighing in at the Supreme Court is a bipartisan group of current and former members of Congress, which told the justices in an amicus brief that the administration’s executive order and rule “unconstitutionally and unlawfully usurp for the Executive Branch the authority over federal elections that the Framers granted exclusively to the States and to Congress.”

More On Trump Team Obsessions, Oppressions, Corruption  

The Trump destruction of the White House historic East Wing to build his ballroom without congressional approval. (New York Times photo).

To The Contrary, Avlon: Sweep Trump’s Ballroom Into the Ash Heap of History, Charlie Sykes, right, Sept. 10, 2026. Plus: Trump’s Stolen Valor, and Fascist-themed new uniforms. 

On today’s “To the Contrary” podcast, I sit down with journalist, author, historian, and Renaissance Man, John Avlon to reflect on the lessons of 9/11 as its 25th anniversary approaches.

Avlon was there. Donald Trump wasn’t.

We also break down the emerging 2028 Democratic field — Avlon has a surprise favorite candidate — and unpack Trump’s fetish for fascist military imagery. (Don’t miss the part about Trump’s Starship Trooper-themed Space Force uniforms and their fascist-aesthetic.)

Avlon also makes the case for tearing down Trump’s Ballroom. Here is Avlon’s latest: “Donald Trump Took a Wrecking Ball to the White House. The Next President Must Do the Same.”

So here is a modest proposal. The Democrats running for president should pledge to take down Trump’s luxury ballroom and rebuild the East Wing as it was, restoring the historic symmetry of the White House. Whatever underground security structures have been built should stay: anything practical and related to national security belongs there. But the monument to one man’s ego above ground should be swept into the ash heap of history.

When the remaining Republican justices finally solve the mystery of who has standing to stop the destruction of the White House, it will be after Trump leaves office. They will conclude the demolition was illegal — and then declare on those grounds that the next president cannot possibly demolish Trump’s ballroom. But that would let the crime stand without any accountability. The purpose of this proposal is not to perpetuate Trump’s cycle of destruction but to end it, by ensuring there is a consequence for breaking the law, and making sure it can never happen again.

Trump took a wrecking ball to the People’s House. The people should reserve the right to take one to his ballroom. 

New York Times, Trump Loyalist Steps Down From ‘Grand Conspiracy’ Case, Alan Feuer, Sept. 10, 2026. The inquiry has long been the most fevered of the many revenge investigations that President Trump has demanded the Justice Department undertake.

A loyalist prosecutor handpicked by the Justice Department to lead a contentious conspiracy investigation into several of President Trump’s political opponents abruptly quit his job on Thursday, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The prosecutor, Joseph diGenova, had been in charge of what Mr. Trump’s allies have often referred to as the “grand conspiracy,” a sprawling inquiry based in the U.S. attorney’s office in South Florida that has sought to implicate federal officials who have investigated Mr. Trump in a single plot to deprive him of his rights.

Mr. diGenova’s resignation was the latest setback in the case that began last year and has dragged on for months. Even though members of his team have issued numerous grand jury subpoenas to federal law enforcement and intelligence officials who have sought over the past decade to hold Mr. Trump accountable in a series of criminal inquiries, Mr. diGenova had yet to obtain an indictment.

“It was an honor and privilege to serve the president and the department,” Mr. DiGenova told CNN and CBS during phone interviews on Thursday.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly put pressure on prosecutors to bring criminal charges against his opponents, calling them out in private meetings and in social media posts. He has also expressed displeasure about the slow pace of the retributive investigations he has helped to set in motion.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Florida? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

But time and again, Mr. Trump’s desire for vengeance and his willingness to break through the walls of independence that have traditionally separated the White House and the Justice Department have resulted in failure. Judges and grand juries have repeatedly stymied his attempts to strong arm prosecutors into bringing charges.

Sometimes, as in the case of Mr. diGenova, the prosecutors themselves have effectively reminded him that it is no simple matter to file indictments against people without real evidence or viable legal reasoning.The resignation was likely to cause consternation among far-right influencers who have long heralded the grand conspiracy case as the Trump administration’s most aggressive effort to go after the president’s critics.

From the beginning, the influencers pushed for charges to be brought against the widest array of Democrats possible, asserting that a cabal of “deep state” operatives — led by former President Barack Obama — had worked for years to destroy Mr. Trump and deserved to be punished.

With his move, Mr. diGenova became the second prosecutor who has either resigned or been removed from the case. The prosecutor in charge of an early phase of the investigation was forced to leave in the spring after telling her superiors that there was not sufficient evidence to bring charges against one of its first targets, John O. Brennan, a former C.I.A. director who provoked Mr. Trump’s ire by helping to assemble an intelligence assessment that determined that Russia had sought to interfere in the 2016 presidential campaign.

The grand conspiracy inquiry has long been the most fevered of the many revenge investigations that Mr. Trump has demanded the Justice Department undertake. It has involved prosecutors seeking to link disparate criminal inquiries into the president — including the Russia investigation and a separate investigation into Mr. Trump’s mishandling of classified documents — as an overarching, multiyear scheme to damage his political prospects.

From the outset, Mr. diGenova faced an uphill battle in seeking to prove the basic theory of his case: that the various inquiries into Mr. Trump — conducted by different prosecutors and spanning nearly a decade — could be reasonably tied together in a single conspiracy. Those hurdles have led several current and former prosecutors in the office in southern Florida to wonder whether the investigation was largely a show put on to placate Mr. Trump.

Mr. diGenova, a former U.S. attorney from the Reagan era who had not worked as a prosecutor in nearly 40 years, took control of the case in April after his predecessor, Maria Medetis Long, was kicked off the investigation. At 81, he was an unusual choice to oversee an inquiry involving multiple targets that quickly grew to include at least a dozen prosecutors, including his wife, Victoria Toensing.

Moreover, Mr. diGenova was a longtime ally of Mr. Trump’s who had publicly claimed that the Russia investigation was a plot by law enforcement to frame him and keep him out of the White House. Mr. diGenova had also worked as a lawyer for Mr. Trump’s 2020 campaign, supporting his false assertions that the election that year had been rigged against him.

While Mr. Brennan was the initial focus of the inquiry, it has also involved an effort to implicate James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, who has already been charged in a separate case in North Carolina. Late last month, Mr. diGenova’s office issued a subpoena demanding testimony from one of Mr. Comey’s close confidants.

More recently, subpoenas had been issued to federal agents who took part in the August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida.

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Sept. 9, 2026 [Trump Lies About His Made-up 9/11 Heroism, Again], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Sept. 10, 2026. Yesterday, at a White House event honoring those who sacrificed their lives on 9/11, President Donald Trump went off script and claimed he had taken a crew downtown “right after this happened."

They were, they had no hesitation. Everybody went down with me. We went down as a big group of people. Wasn’t too much we could do, I’ll be honest. It was raw. Nobody’s seen anything like it ever. We had other buildings. United States Steel Building was creaking. Really creaking. And we thought it was going to fall down. The truth is it creaked a lot. It creaked. It still creaks, but uh, it never came down. And uh, I’ll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us and two firemen—big strong guys, and I’m not the smallest guy in the world—they grabbed me under the arm, said, ‘Got to get out of here.’ And they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I’m big. They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said, ‘Fellas, I can run myself.’ But they were amazing. But they thought it was coming down. It didn’t come down, U.S. Steel.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More On Middle East Wars

New York Times, Yemen’s Houthis Seize Strategic Red Sea Port, Officials Say, Saeed Al-Batati, Shuaib Almosawa and Vivian Nereim, Sept. 10, 2026. The Iran-backed militia routed Yemeni government forces in Mokha, putting the group in a stronger position to attack ships in a crucial waterway for global trade.

The Iran-backed Houthi militia captured a strategic Red Sea port city on Thursday, according to two Yemeni officials, a move that could allow the group to exert greater control over an important international shipping route.

In a swift ground offensive, the Houthis pushed out forces allied with the Yemeni government that is backed by Saudi Arabia and seized the city of Mokha as well as its port, according to a local official in the city and a senior provincial official. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Mokha has been the focus of several days of fierce ground battles between the Houthis and the internationally recognized government of Yemen.

The two sides have been at war since 2014, when the Houthis seized Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. Soon after, a Saudi-led military coalition began a bombing campaign to try to restore the government, plunging the impoverished nation into a civil war that has lasted for more than a decade.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen?

Mokha is less than 50 miles from the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea.

The Houthis have previously attacked ships in the Red Sea from Yemeni territory further north but control of Mokha gives the militia a foothold closer to the strait — a major win for the group, with implications for global trade and oil markets, analysts say.

“This is potentially one of the more significant turning points, particularly in recent years, of the Yemen conflict,” said Adam Baron, a Yemen-focused fellow at New America, a research organization in Washington.

We’ll keep tracking all the news. Remember to take advantage of the deals on our book WTF America above before they go away. And join as a paid subscriber if you haven’t yet. Your subscriptions allow us to continue our work, so thank you.Politico,

New York Times, Oil Prices Surge as Stocks and Bonds Wobble, Gregory Schmidt and Jenny Gross, Sept. 10, 2026. Crude oil hit its highest levels in months, bond yields continued to rise and stocks fell for a fourth consecutive session as investors worried about energy supplies and inflation.

Oil prices surged above $107 a barrel, a 48 percent increase since the start of the war in Iran in late February. The rise in energy costs threatens to push prices up more broadly, squeezing consumers and businesses already grappling with stubbornly elevated inflation.

Investors are looking to a crucial report on U.S. inflation, set for release on Friday, that could alter expectations for the Federal Reserve’s decision on interest rates at its meeting next week. Traders believe that a rate increase is more likely than not. The European Central Bank raised its key interest rate on Thursday, the second time it increased rates since the war began.

Fears of accelerating inflation and forecasts for higher Fed rates have been major factors behind a steady rise of bond yields. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, a measure of borrowing costs that influences mortgages, business loans and many other types of debt, jumped above 4.9 percent on Thursday, the highest level since 2023.

U.S. gasoline prices rose on Thursday to a national average of about $4.28 a gallon, according to the AAA motor club. Drivers are paying 44 percent more on average for gas than when the war began. The average price of diesel also climbed, to $5.98 a gallon, up 59 percent since the start of the war.views

More On 9/11 25th Anniversary

New York Times,  25 Years After 9/11, Al Qaeda Still Has a Home in Afghanistan, Elian Peltier, Photographs by Tomás Munita, Sept. 10, 2026. The Taliban claim that Afghanistan is no longer a sanctuary for terrorist groups, but Al Qaeda and others are still present, reviving old fears.

Twenty five years ago, Osama bin Laden led the planning of Al Qaeda’s attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, from a Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan, where he lived as their guest.

Now, the Taliban rule over Afghanistan once again, trying to present a more modern face to the world.

But despite the veneer, the Taliban have not changed their ideology, and armed groups, including dozens of Qaeda members, remain in Afghanistan. Many of the conditions that made the Sept. 11 attacks possible remain.

The Taliban outlasted the American war to oust them and are now ruling over 45 million Afghans. They use the latest iPhones to contact European and American diplomats. They travel to the Persian Gulf and Turkey, and promote trade with Uzbekistan and India. Their fighters now patrol Afghanistan’s cities, some using abandoned U.S. military gear.

New York Times, The Man Who Approved 9/11 Victims’ Checks Paid a Price, Ephrat Livni, Sept. 10, 2026. Kenneth Feinberg says the nearly three years he spent running the Sept. 11 compensation fund changed his life view.

The lawyer who became the public face of the Sept. 11 victims’ compensation fund will not be attending any memorials on the 25th anniversary of the attacks. He has kept his calendar clear. Deliberately.

“It was a singular moment in time,” says Kenneth Feinberg, who is nearing the end of a half-century law career. “It was very debilitating and very difficult, and I’m simply not comfortable with any public demonstration. I would rather honor the memory privately. I would rather reflect.”

Reflecting on the events of that day is what Mr. Feinberg has done pretty much every day for the past quarter-century. That can make talking to him somewhat akin to engaging with an ancient Stoic philosopher, albeit one prone to proclaiming about the vagaries of fate and fortune in a pronounced Massachusetts accent.

“I look in the mirror and I say, ‘Bad things happen to good people every day,’” he says.

That is a common refrain now for Mr. Feinberg, who became intimately acquainted with death, disaster and loss in his role as special master of the federal fund set up to compensate victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks. He spent nearly three years talking to grieving family members, people whose lives had changed irrevocably in an instant.

It profoundly transformed his personal understanding of existence, he recounted over the course of several interviews in Washington and New York between December and August.

“You learn one very important lesson at least: Time is the enemy,” he says. “You cannot outfox time. And you better live every day like it may be your last.”

Nearly 3,000 people were killed and about 2,400 others wounded on the day of the attack, when terrorists from Al Qaeda hijacked four planes. They crashed two into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and one into the Pentagon. The fourth crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

Like many people around the world, Mr. Feinberg had watched on television as the towers fell and the Pentagon burned, but his view from afar did not last long. Less than two weeks after the attacks, Congress approved a fund to compensate victims, and Mr. Feinberg was asked to oversee it.

He took on the job voluntarily, seeing it as an opportunity to be of service in a time of national need, he says.

The compensation fund was created to stave off lawsuits against the airlines whose planes had been hijacked. Litigation could have bankrupted them. If the airlines had not lobbied, the fund might not have been created, Mr. Feinberg concedes, but he believes that the government was also moved by a desire to do right by the victims.

And in a country where death and injury claims are generally worked out in torts litigation that can take many years and result in uncertain outcomes, he argues that the fund, which had an unlimited budget, helped ensure that the injured and the families of the dead would not struggle financially.

Mr. Feinberg met with hundreds of grieving families, including relatives of victims from nearly 60 countries. They told him about their pain and anger, showed him photos and home movies, and shared their memories.

But many rejected what he was there to offer them, at least initially.

The emotional responses to loss were universal, Mr. Feinberg says. But the responses to the offer of compensation were not always well received.

Abroad, the idea that the U.S. government would compensate families for their losses — a peculiarly American approach, in Mr. Feinberg’s view — was met with suspicion. Some families were flummoxed when he met with them in London. And some were wary, certain that there were strings attached or that there could be unforeseen consequences to taking the money, he says.

At home, he noted, the offer of money incensed some people who seemed to believe that their government wanted to buy their silence or that it was dismissive of their pain.

Mr. Feinberg was chosen to administer the fund because he had become known as a mediator skilled at resolving complex disputes. In 1984, he handled the $180 million settlement between Vietnam War veterans and manufacturers of the toxic herbicide Agent Orange.

But in a country so traumatized by the attacks, Mr. Feinberg was unprepared for what lay ahead.

Some of the tensions came with the territory. It was Mr. Feinberg’s job to make decisions about how much people would be compensated. The amounts were based on how much they would have earned working in a lifetime.

But some families felt the message of that calculus was that some lives were worth more to society than others. And some found Mr. Feinberg unfeeling, even arrogant.

He himself now says that he made mistakes, and that he has some regrets. He quickly discovered his own limitations, he says.

He recalls one mourning father who dismissed his words of sympathy as pretentious platitudes. Then there was the widow who had only weeks to arrange for her children’s future because she had been diagnosed with a deadly disease.

He talks about the litany of rebukes he got from victims’ families as if they were yesterday.

“You’re going to give me $4 million, Mr. Feinberg,” he recalls one husband telling him. “I got a better idea: Bring my wife back.” The moment, he said, was “chilling.”

A spiritual leader might have been better equipped for the meetings with families, he says. They could have offered the kind of solace a lawyer could not. The survivors, he says, needed someone to urge them to stay strong. All he had to offer were dollars.

For the fund to succeed in preventing lawsuits, it had to persuade a majority of eligible claimants to accept compensation. To accomplish that, over time, Mr. Feinberg says, he learned to stop talking as much and to start listening more.

Ultimately, about 97 percent of the relatives of the dead and many of those injured on Sept. 11, 2001, agreed to sign on. Mr. Feinberg distributed more than $7 billion, he said, and after nearly three years of working on the fund, his work was done.

But his own life was never the same again, he says.

Though he has managed to make it to 80 and will retire this year, he has become acutely aware of life’s fickle nature. Tiny decisions can mean the difference between life and death, like ordering a second cup of coffee instead of heading for work in a doomed office building.

Now, when people confidently share their plans, he sometimes has to restrain himself, Mr. Feinberg says in a book about the fund, “What Is Life Worth?” It has been reissued for the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11.

“I listen and nod and smile, and I wonder whether any of this will come to pass,” Mr. Feinberg says. “Where is it written that life will be so accommodating?”

More On Global News

Middle East Eye, Algeria suspends diplomatic relations with ‘dwarf state’ UAE, Elis Gjevori, Sept. 10, 2026. Algiers cuts ties with Abu Dhabi and accuses the Gulf state of destabilising the wider region. 

Algeria announced on Thursday that it would sever all diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates after “exhausting all means to preserve bilateral relations”.

In a statement, the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had warned the UAE over its “hostile actions” and had expended significant effort in “drawing the attention of the Emirati side and warning it of the grave consequences that may result from its regrettable and unjustified behavior”.

“Despite these numerous warnings, the United Arab Emirates has persisted in these actions, which have reached a point where they can no longer be considered acceptable or tolerable within the framework of relations between two sovereign states, or remain unanswered,” the statement added.

The Algerian foreign ministry said it had informed the UAE ambassador of the decision and had given him 48 hours to comply.

Tensions between the two countries have increased in recent years as the UAE has played an increasingly destabilising role across the Middle East.New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem DispatchSign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters

In a headline in 2023, the Algerian newspaper Le Soir d’Algerie called the UAE a “pyromaniac state” and condemned the state’s “harmful role” around Algeria’s borders.UAE threat to Algeria

In recent years, the UAE has funded authoritarian leaders and breakaway groups across the Sahel and North Africa.

In Libya, the UAE has backed military leader Khalifa Haftar in the east of the country, destabilising not only Libya but also Chad, Sudan and Niger.

The UAE has also used Libya as a base to provide support for Sudan's Rapid Support Forces militia, which has been accused of committing genocide in the country's civil war.

In April 2024, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said in comments widely perceived as aimed at the UAE: “Wherever there is conflict, the money of this state [the Emirates] is there - in Mali, Libya, and Sudan."

Tebboune has also disparagingly called the UAE the “dwarf state” without naming it, saying: “I will not name it. They wanted to interfere in matters in which we prevented great powers from interfering.

'President Tebboune had spent the better part of a year railing against a 'small state' bent on stirring trouble; today he just stopped pretending it was anonymous'

- Andreas Krieg, associate professor, King’s College London

“This has been coming for a long time, and to my mind the significance is less the break itself than what it tells us about how Algeria now reads the UAE,” Andreas Krieg, associate professor of security studies at King’s College London, told Middle East Eye.

“Algiers has effectively concluded that Abu Dhabi's regional playbook - cultivating what I call an 'axis of secessionists,' from Haftar in Libya to the RSF in Sudan to the southern movement in Yemen - was being turned toward Algeria itself,” said Krieg, reacting to the decision.

Algeria has spent the best part of this year signalling its displeasure with the UAE.

On 7 February, Algeria began cancelling its bilateral air-services agreement with the UAE. While Algiers did not provide a formal explanation, most analysts understood that the decision reflected the UAE’s continuing interventions in Algeria’s backyard.

“The sharpest fear is Emirati contact with the Kabylie autonomy movement, the MAK, which Algiers treats as a terrorist organisation and as a red line running straight through national unity,” said Krieg.

When the UAE announced its withdrawal from Opec earlier this year, Tebboune publicly dismissed the decision as a “non-event”.

Tebboune said Saudi Arabia was Opec’s main pillar and declared, regarding the UAE, that “the book is closed”.

“The foreign ministry's wording is the tell,” said Krieg. “It says the decision came 'after exhausting all means' to save the relationship, and it pointedly names no single trigger. That's deliberate: this wasn't one incident but an accumulation - the suspected outreach to separatists, the UAE's military footprint in Libya and the Sahel, and Abu Dhabi's backing of Morocco on Western Sahara, which for Algeria is the most sensitive file of all,” he said.

More On U.S. Economy, Inflation, Jobs, Markets

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: A new low for American workers, Rebecca Crosby, Sept. 10, 2026. Workers in the United States are earning a historically low share of the value they produce, according to new data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The BLS estimates that the labor share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) “was 52.8 percent in the second quarter of 2026.” This is the lowest level that the BLS has seen since it first began recording labor share in 1947.

Labor share has been on a downward trend for months. In the first quarter of 2026, labor share was 53.7%, which was, at the time, a historic low. Over the last 25 years, the labor share of income has plummeted. In the first quarter of 2000, the labor share was 63.9%.

But while labor’s share of GDP is collapsing, U.S. corporate profits are surging. In the second quarter of 2026, corporate profits increased 9% compared to the first quarter of the year, according to data released in August by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Corporate profits “increased $400.9 billion in the second quarter, compared with an increase of $74.4 billion in the first quarter,” according to the BEA.

This may be one reason why, despite there being a relatively low unemployment rate and some GDP growth, 76% of Americans rated the economic conditions in the U.S. as “poor” or “only fair,” according to a July Pew Research survey. While the economy is growing, workers are not benefiting from economic growth.

There are many factors that may be driving down wages relative to GDP, including technological advancements and accelerated globalization. In recent years, more workers are also relying on gig work, and the share of workers who are part of a union has also declined drastically in recent decades.

Instead of addressing the problem, the second Trump administration is taking steps that may push the labor share of GDP even lower.

In February, the Trump administration proposed a new rule that would make it easier for employers to classify workers as independent contractors. Classifying workers as independent contractors is usually cheaper for businesses and detrimental to workers. According to Reuters, “[e]mployees can cost businesses up to 30% more” than independent contractors.

The new rule would formally rescind a 2024 Biden administration rule that made it more difficult to classify employees as independent contractors by using a rigorous set of standards to determine whether a worker is truly independent. In May 2025, the Trump administration announced that it would no longer enforce the rule.

The Trump administration rule would replace the Biden administration standards with a more permissive “economic reality” test to decide if a worker is “economically dependent on an employer for work.” As a practical matter, it would likely thwart efforts to classify ride-share drivers, delivery drivers, and construction workers as employees.

In a statement, then-Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer argued that “tens of millions of Americans who work as independent contractors are helping drive the Golden Age of the American economy” and that the “proposed rule seeks to protect these workers’ entrepreneurial spirit and simplify compliance for American job creators navigating a modern workplace.”

But while the proposed rule would be a windfall for businesses, workers who are classified as independent contractors “lose out on critical protections, benefits, and labor rights including minimum wage, overtime pay, unemployment insurance, the right to form a union, and anti-discrimination protections in most states,” according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Independent contractors must also “bear the full financial costs of Social Security and Medicare contributions.”

A 2025 EPI analysis found that a typical construction worker loses “as much as $19,526 per year in income and job benefits” when classified as an independent contractor instead of an employee. A truck driver would lose up to $21,532 per year, and a home health aide would lose as much as $10,246 per year.

The National Employment Law Project (NELP) opposed the proposed rule, arguing that classifying employees as independent contractors “degrades wages and working conditions, particularly in fast-growing, low-paying, and labor violation—prone occupations and industries.”

Gutting the NLRB

The second Trump administration has also sidelined the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the agency that protects workers’ rights, investigates unfair labor practices, and conducts union elections. Research has shown that “high rates of unionization are consistently associated with higher wages and better working conditions for both union and nonunion workers,” according to the EPI.

In an unprecedented move, President Trump fired NLRB board member Gwynne Wilcox shortly after he began his second term. (Wilcox sued the Trump administration, but an appeals court ruled in December 2025 that Trump had acted lawfully.) Wilcox’s removal left the board with only two members, and therefore without the necessary three-member quorum.

This left the NLRB unable to issue any new decisions for nearly a year. In that time, workers were stuck waiting for decisions on cases concerning unfair labor practices or potentially illegal firings. Any decision made by an administrative law judge can be appealed to the NLRB for a final decision, and every appeal case was stuck in limbo. Two new members were finally confirmed to the board in December 2025.

The NLRB is increasingly staffed with officials who are openly hostile to labor rights. After firing NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo, for example, Trump appointed Crystal Carey for the role. Carey was formerly a partner at a law firm that “is pursuing the legal challenge that the NLRB is unconstitutional,” according to the EPI.

The board is now dealing with a backlog of cases. During the second Trump administration, the NLRB has been more likely to dismiss cases altogether. An analysis by the Center for American Progress (CAP) found that from the beginning of January 2025 to April 29, 2026, the likelihood that the NLRB dismissed a case alleging unfair labor practices filed by a union was 14.2 percentage points higher than in 2024.

A separate analysis by CAP found that the volume of private sector union elections overseen by the NLRB plunged after the Trump administration’s efforts to weaken the agency. In 2025, the “NLRB oversaw 1,498 union elections,” which is a “30 percent drop from 2024.” Worker participation in NLRB elections was also down, with “59,000 fewer workers participat[ing] in NLRB-run elections in 2025, a 42 percent decline from the previous year.”

Paul Krugman via Substack, Political-Economy Commentary: Bessent and the Bonds, Paul Krugman, right, Sept. 10, 2026. “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Teddy Roosevelt’s favorite aphorism made sense then and now. Policymakers should avoid being boastful or belligerent, not simply as a matter of good manners, but to save their credibility for moments when it’s really needed.

Obviously nobody expects Donald Trump to follow TR’s advice. No matter what the circumstances, Trump will always insist that he’s carrying a big stick, the biggest stick, a stick like nobody has ever carried before. But I expected a bit more circumspection from Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary.

After all, a young Bessent was working for George Soros in 1992 when Soros famously engineered a speculative run on the British pound. At the time British officials loudly and repeatedly proclaimed that they would never, ever allow the pound to be devalued — then caved in the face of market pressure, a humiliation from which Norman Lamont, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, equivalent to the U.S. Treasury secretary, never recovered. So Bessent should know the risks of talking big when you might not have the means to deliver.

Oh well. On Tuesday, Bessent — who has been deploying U.S. funds to support the Japanese yen, declared himself in control of the situation: “I am the house now … And you can bet against me if you want.”

So far markets haven’t challenged Bessent’s boasts about the yen. They have, however, tested his attempts to push down U.S. interest rates — and as the headline at the top of this post says, those efforts are failing with flying colors.

Now, I’d like to blame the Trump administration for rising interest rates. The truth, however, is that rates are rising everywhere. As the European think tank Bruegel says,

[The] problem with explanations centred on a breakdown in US institutions is that the rise in long-term rates is not uniquely American. US, German, French, Italian, United Kingdom and Japanese 30-year yields rose by 45-79 basis points in the six months to 28 August, with the US in the middle at 58bp.

Given the craziness of our leadership, America arguably deserves to be punished by the bond market, but the truth is that we can’t see that happening in the data (yet?).

So what is driving interest rates higher? It may not have much to do with policy at all. The simplest story consistent with the facts is that we’re seeing a surge in demand for funds as a result of the AI boom. We are in the midst of a surge in spending on information technology (information processing equipment and software) that is on track to be even bigger than the boom of the late 1990s:

And it’s worth noting that long-term interest rates were even higher then than they are now, even though inflation was low and we had a budget surplus:As I said, although the Trump administration deserves blame for many things, I don’t think it’s responsible for high long-term rates, any more than Bill Clinton was responsible for high rates in the late 1990s. This looks like the natural market response to the rush to invest in AI.

It is, however, foolish of Bessent to imagine that he can beat rising rates back by talking big while waving his tiny, tiny stick. All he’s doing is further draining his rapidly diminishing reserves of credibility.

More On U.S. Media, Education, Sports, Religion

New York Times, Memorial on Anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s Killing Splits a Utah Campus, Jack Healy, Sept. 10, 2026. The university where the conservative activist was shot last year has canceled classes for a memorial. While many students planned to attend, some said they just wanted to move on from the tragedy.

The Utah campus where the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed last year is in the spotlight again — this time, as the site of a memorial on the anniversary of his assassination.

Turning Point USA, the influential conservative organization founded by Mr. Kirk, is holding a “deliberate act of remembrance” on Thursday evening at Utah Valley University in Orem to honor Mr. Kirk. The anniversary prompted the university to cancel classes and step up security, while also pulling the 48,000-student college back into debates over political violence and Mr. Kirk’s legacy.

The memorial has divided students. While several said they planned to attend, calling Mr. Kirk a martyr to free speech and Christian conservatism, others objected to the university’s shutting down for the event and said they wanted to move on from the tragedy.

The notoriety of Mr. Kirk’s killing “is all we are now,” said Ruby Olsen, 20, an anthropology major, who had been watching Mr. Kirk speak when she heard the rifle shot that killed him.

Last September, Mr. Kirk was fatally shot during an on-campus speaking event that was attended by thousands, a killing that set off fierce debates about political violence and free speech across the nation.

Prosecutors have accused Tyler J. Robinson, a 23-year-old man from southern Utah, of shooting Mr. Kirk from the roof of a nearby building and charged him with aggravated murder, saying he killed Mr. Kirk because of his political views. Mr. Robinson, who could face the death penalty, has pleaded not guilty.

In the days leading up to the memorial, which will be held at the university’s events center and basketball arena, people connected with Turning Point walked through the sunny campus handing out fliers for the event and urging students to register for a seat. Speakers at the memorial will include the right-wing pundits Glenn Beck and Michael Knowles.

“It’s a way to honor him,” Jimmy Thurston, a 21-year-old engineering student, said as he put a rose in a planter near the grassy sunken plaza where Mr. Kirk was killed. “This was a national tragedy.”

But the campus chapter of Students for a Democratic Society is planning a protest outside the memorial to oppose Turning Point’s event, as well as the university’s decision to cancel classes for the day.

“This is almost like making this a holiday,” Ethan Cunningham, the president of the campus Students for a Democratic Society, said in an interview.

A year later, the memorial is just one way that Mr. Kirk’s killing still echoes across campus.

Utah Valley University is conducting a lengthy security review of the shooting and faces divisions over whether to build a permanent memorial on campus to Mr. Kirk. Last spring, the university stumbled into another debate over free speech when it invited — and then canceled — a graduation speech by an author who had criticized Mr. Kirk.

Jon Anderson, who became Utah Valley’s president last month, said in an interview that he planned to attend both the memorial and the protest. He said he would speak to students on both sides of the divide, in an effort to show that the university is a place “where people can bring any idea and have a civil place to have an honest dialogue.”

Dr. Anderson said that the university had not received any specific threats related to the anniversary and that he expected the campus to be calm on Thursday. In place of classes, the university is holding a “day of service” on Thursday, with campus leaders going to a pancake breakfast, cleaning yards and painting fences at a local elementary school.

Dr. Anderson said Utah Valley University would not close down for future anniversaries of Mr. Kirk’s killing.

But for some students, even once was too much.

On Wednesday afternoon, Ms. Olsen, the anthropology student who had been present at Mr. Kirk’s killing, looked across the grassy courtyard where he was shot. Visitors snapped photos and prayed beside a large wooden crucifix they had carried in with them.

Days after Mr. Kirk’s killing, a huge American flag was hung above the plaza, and this week, a flag was unfurled in the same spot. To Ms. Olsen, it was an unwelcome reminder of the chaos and panic attacks she had endured last year.

As she and two friends chatted in a student lounge, they said they still loved the campus and their classes. But attending Utah Valley University now meant threading their way past assassination tourists and living in the shadow of Mr. Kirk’s death. They said they had no interest in going to the memorial. 

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: MeidasTouch Podcast Ranks #1 Podcast in the Industry for Monthly Downloads and Views, Ben Meiselas, right, Sept. 10, 2026. The MeidasTouch Network announced today that The MeidasTouch Podcast has been ranked the #1 podcast in the industry by monthly downloads and views, according to Podscribe’s August 2026 Industry Ranker.

Podscribe estimates that The MeidasTouch Podcast generated approximately 95.4 million downloads and views per month, placing it first among all shows included in the ranking. The total represents a 9% increase and puts MeidasTouch ahead of some of the biggest names in podcasting, including The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett, The Joe Rogan Experience, The Daily, and Crime Junkie.

“This milestone belongs to the Meidas Mighty,” said the Meiselas brothers, co-founders of MeidasTouch. “We built MeidasTouch from the ground up as a fiercely independent network, without billionaire owners or corporate gatekeepers. To now see The MeidasTouch Podcast ranked #1 in the industry is a testament to the extraordinary community that shows up every single day to support independent media.”

Podscribe describes its Industry Ranker as a comprehensive ranking of top podcast shows, publishers, and advertisers, incorporating podcast and YouTube metrics. Its monthly rankings analyze audio reach, downloads and views across platforms, with the August 2026 snapshot reflecting performance from August 1 through August 31.

The August ranking estimates The MeidasTouch Podcast at 95.4 million monthly downloads and views, compared with approximately 63.9 million for The Diary of a CEO, 48.5 million for The Joe Rogan Experience, and 34.8 million for The Daily.

The achievement marks another major milestone in MeidasTouch Network’s rapid growth into one of the largest independent media operations in the country. Founded by brothers Ben, Brett, and Jordy Meiselas, MeidasTouch has built its audience around pro-democracy news, political analysis, legal coverage, interviews, and original reporting across YouTube, podcasts, social media, Substack, and MeidasTouch News.

“We have always believed there was an enormous audience hungry for unapologetic, fact-based independent news,” the Meiselas brothers added. “The old guard told us this model couldn’t work. Our audience proved otherwise. We’re just getting started.”

More News Roundups

The Parnas Perspective, Evening News and Commentary: Trump Blocks International Epstein Investigations, Musk's Vote Website Is Secretly Stealing Your Data, Trump's Family Calls Him a Liar, Aaron Parnas, right, Sept. 9, 2026. Five countries are investigating Jeffrey Epstein right now, and the Justice Department is stonewalling every single one of them. The president’s own nephew just called him out publicly for lying about 9/11. And Elon Musk is spending millions of dollars on a website designed to trick you into handing over your personal data. Plus, Republicans kick off their first-ever midterm convention to a room half full of no-shows, the Tate brothers stay behind bars, and a 22-year-old dropout pleads guilty to one of the largest crypto heists in US history.

But first, if you’re new here, consider hitting subscribe, because this channel is surging right now. We are pulling numbers that put us ahead of Fox News on stories like this, and it’s not just people who already agree with me. I’m hearing from conservatives, regularly, in the comments and in my inbox, telling me they’re coming here because they want the facts straight, without the spin. That’s the whole point of this show.Subscribed

So if you want news you can actually trust, hit subscribe, support this work, and let’s get into today’s rundown.

Trump Blocks European Epstein Investigations:

More than a year after the first Epstein files were released, the Washington Post has confirmed that multiple European law enforcement agencies say the DOJ still hasn’t responded to their formal mutual legal assistance requests, the official channel that would let foreign investigators obtain US evidence, documents, and testimony. No US charges have resulted from the files’ release even as the documents exposed Epstein’s relationships with influential people worldwide, both before and after his 2008 guilty plea, and have sparked a wave of international investigations. Poland, Norway, and Latvia all told the Washington Post directly that Washington hasn’t fulfilled their requests, and Britain’s separate request has also gone unanswered. The DOJ says it doesn’t comment on the status of mutual legal assistance requests, but told the Telegraph last month it “has not refused to assist any jurisdiction investigating potential criminal conduct related to Jeffrey Epstein” and “remains committed to co-operating with all jurisdictions... in accordance with federal law and longstanding practice.”

Norway’s investigation is the most advanced of the group, with three prominent figures already facing corruption charges over their relationships with Epstein: former diplomats Terje Rød-Larsen and Mona Juul, and former Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland, all of whom maintain their innocence. Norwegian prosecutors, through the economic crimes unit Økokrim, specifically requested records from the International Peace Institute in New York, where Rød-Larsen once served as president. State prosecutor Marianne Bender said her office is “in communication with officials from the Department of Justice, but they have not at this time approved the request,” calling it “very unfortunate for the Norwegian investigation” and expressing hope the US will eventually approve it. Rød-Larsen’s lawyer, John Christian Elden, welcomed the push for additional evidence, arguing the case against his client rests on “a selectively chosen set of documents from the Epstein seizure.”

Poland’s investigation, opened by Prime Minister Donald Tusk in February, specifically examines possible links between Epstein and Russian intelligence. National Prosecutor’s Office spokesman Przemysław Nowak said his office sought “the disclosure of unredacted documents from the so-called Epstein Files relating to any Polish aspects of the case,” but the DOJ has not responded to that request, which Warsaw submitted in April. Latvia’s State Police, meanwhile, say they’ve opened a criminal investigation and have already identified one Latvian victim connected to the files. Spokeswoman Simona Gravite said investigators have “sent several requests for mutual legal assistance to the relevant authorities in the United States. However, no responses have yet been received.”

In Britain, police investigated Lord Peter Mandelson, a former UK ambassador to the United States, in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office related to Epstein; he denies any wrongdoing. According to the Times, London submitted a formal request in May for access to unredacted copies of Epstein files after informal discussions between the DOJ and British law enforcement failed to produce the information. The Telegraph reported late last month that neither the DOJ nor the FBI has responded to that formal request, and the Crown Prosecution Service declined to comment when asked by the Post.

Germany’s federal police say they remain in contact with American authorities, including the FBI, about the possibility that Epstein-related files could implicate German nationals, and have asked the FBI to involve German authorities in any relevant cases. Two Green Party lawmakers, Konstantin von Notz and Irene Mihalic, have pushed the German government to formally investigate potential Epstein links to German citizens, but the government has said its Criminal Police Office currently has no information pointing to any criminally relevant connections to Germany. This all comes as American lawmakers, from both parties, continue pressing the DOJ over incomplete document releases and redactions dating back to Congress’s overwhelming vote last November to force full disclosure of the department’s Epstein material.

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew called on Trump to release the Epstein files during a press conference, tying the demand to unrelated grievances like the Iran war and rising gas prices affecting Canadians amid ongoing US trade tensions. He said bluntly, “Release the Epstein files. Donald Trump is Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend. The reason why we’re at war in Iran and everyone’s paying higher gas prices is because of the Epstein files.”

Trump Family Calls Him Out:

Fred Trump, the president’s nephew and author of a 2024 memoir detailing allegations against his uncle, broke his usual silence on X this week to directly dispute Trump’s 9/11 claims, writing “I try not to comment personally about my uncle, but his claim...so offends me that I need to speak out.” His statement came after Trump repeated his story about being physically carried out of a nearby building by firefighters during a Fox News interview and again at a White House event Tuesday, telling Fox he personally “went down” to Ground Zero and worked there.

Photo by Aaron Parnas on September 09, 2026. May be a Twitter screenshot of text.

The story has shifted dramatically over the decades: right after 9/11, Trump told a German broadcaster he already had more than 100 construction workers helping at the site with 125 more on the way; by the 2016 campaign he was describing firefighters rushing him out of a nearby high-rise after cracks reportedly appeared in it; by 2021 he’d added the detail that he was physically carried out during the evacuation. Fred Trump directly contradicted the construction-crew version, writing that any workers his uncle could have sent “would have been secretarial and accounting employees from Trump Tower” who he personally knew and doubted were “physically capable” of helping.

Fred also disputed the building-collapse story specifically, citing his own connections to engineers who worked on the structure in question, saying it was built solidly and was inspected and cleared for occupancy shortly after the attacks, directly undercutting Trump’s account of a near-collapse dramatic enough to require rescue. The Daily Beast, which first reported Fred’s comments, notes Trump was actually at Trump Tower, roughly two and a half miles from Ground Zero, when the attacks happened.

Elon Musk Runs Million Dollar Effort to Steal Your Information:

Elon Musk’s America PAC is running an aggressive ad campaign directing people to Vote Safe, a website marketed as a tool to help people “vote with confidence.” In reality, the site secretly collects visitors’ full names, birthdays, home addresses, emails, phone numbers, IP addresses, browser data, location, voter registration status, and every page and link they click. The site quietly dropped a prior privacy policy clause that had barred sharing this data with advertisers or political organizations. Now America PAC can sell or share that information, along with data-driven “inferences” about users, with partners including Facebook, Google, X, The Trade Desk, Increment Data, and Iterable. In the past week alone, the PAC spent over $180,000 promoting the site, part of Musk’s pledged $100 million-plus for the midterms.

This is a repeat pattern rather than a one-off. Ahead of the 2024 election, Musk’s PAC spent $800,000 on similar digital ads, and users in several battleground states reported the sites collected their personal data without ever actually directing them to register to vote. Separately, in Georgia, the PAC mailed voters partially pre-filled absentee ballot applications, which violated state law. The Georgia State Elections Board voted to issue a formal reprimand over the scheme, but no further consequences followed. Together these episodes show a recurring tactic of using voter-outreach branding as cover for data harvesting.

Musk had previously said he would pull back from political spending after setbacks in races like Wisconsin, but he has now reversed course. America PAC is planning to spend heavily again on door-knocking, direct mail, and digital advertising ahead of the midterms. The scale of the current effort, over $100 million pledged, suggests the Vote Safe data collection is likely to expand rather than be an isolated incident. The recurring use of “voter safety” or “confidence” branding appears designed to lower people’s guard about what information they’re handing over.

Other news:

Republicans kicked off their first-ever midterm convention in Dallas, a two-day event nicknamed "Trumpapalooza" by the RNC chair, with President Trump delivering a keynote address the night it opened. More than 100 House Republicans and candidates were expected to attend, each paying $25,000 for tickets and lodging, but an NBC News count found dozens of Republicans in competitive races opted to skip it, with 33 declining versus 29 confirming attendance. Trump dismissed the split as a logistics issue rather than a snub, telling reporters "we don't have room for 500 politicians" and that only candidates in close races were invited, while those "35 points up" were told to stay home and campaign instead. The event comes as Trump's approval ratings sag and Republicans look to generate enthusiasm and turnout ahead of November, even as some vulnerable members privately feel their legislative wins aren't getting enough credit. The event is currently empty:

Andrew and Tristan Tate, the “manosphere” influencers dual UK-US nationals, were denied bail by U.S. Magistrate Judge Lauren Louis on Wednesday and will stay behind bars in Florida while they fight extradition to the UK on dozens of sex crime charges. The judge ruled they “failed to meet their burden to demonstrate that they do not present a risk of flight or danger to the community,” rejecting their bid for special release circumstances. Andrew, 39, faces charges including seven counts of rape and 15 counts of making or distributing indecent images of children, filed after their July arrest in Miami on new UK charges, while Tristan, 38, faces six additional rape, assault, and sexual exploitation counts, with the alleged crimes spanning 2010 to 2017. UK prosecutors opposed bail, alleging the brothers’ own statements suggest an intent to flee and citing efforts to obtain accusers’ names from prosecutors in exchange for a “security” fee and a promise not to identify them, which the Crown Prosecution Service declined; their attorney Joe McBride called the allegations false and framed their detention as the result of “an unholy alliance between the enemies of free speech.” The brothers also separately face organized crime, human trafficking, and money laundering charges in Romania, which they deny.

The Trump administration published a draft proposal to bar all noncitizens without a green card, including refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented immigrants, from being counted in the 2030 Census, reversing a practice of including all US residents that has stood for over two centuries. Because census figures determine how the 435 House seats and corresponding Electoral College votes are apportioned among states, as well as how federal funding is distributed, excluding these populations would disproportionately reduce representation and dollars for Democratic-leaning states and cities with large immigrant communities. The proposal also seeks to drop the census’s longstanding race and ethnicity questions and ban questions about sexual orientation, calling the latter “immaterial personal characteristics.” Trump attempted a similar move in his first term by pushing for a citizenship question on the 2020 census, but the Supreme Court blocked it in a 5-4 ruling, with Chief Justice Roberts calling the administration’s justification “contrived.” Civil rights advocates and Democratic officials, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, argue the plan violates the 14th Amendment’s requirement to count the “whole number of persons in each state” and are preparing legal challenges.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre says a drone nearly hit Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's plane as he was departing for Oslo for King Harald's funeral.

Apple opened its fall product event Wednesday, the first led by new CEO John Ternus since he took over from Tim Cook on September 1, unveiling the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max with incremental updates like new colors, a customizable Siri voice, faster charging, and over 24 hours of battery life. The company is widely expected to use the event to also debut its first foldable iPhone, its biggest device redesign since 2007.

Temporary Protected Status for roughly 200,000 Salvadoran immigrants was set to expire Wednesday, but DHS said only that an announcement “will be made at the appropriate time,” meaning protections technically remain in place for now; if DHS takes no action, protections automatically extend another six months, as happened for about 11,000 Lebanese TPS holders in May. The Trump administration has already ended TPS for more than 1 million people across 14 countries this term, leaving only about 103,000 people from three countries protected, with Ukraine and Sudan’s status ending in October and Lebanon’s in November; a June Supreme Court ruling upholding TPS terminations for Haitians and Syrians potentially threatens protections for nearly 1.3 million people from 17 countries total. TPS was created by Congress in 1990, and El Salvador’s was originally granted after devastating 2001 earthquakes, with Biden extending it to September 9, 2026 just before leaving office; the vast majority of Salvadoran TPS holders have US-born children. El Salvador has become one of the Trump administration’s closest allies, with President Nayib Bukele accepting deportees at the CECOT mega-prison despite human rights groups documenting torture and disappearances there, and Salvadorans in the US sent $9.9 billion in remittances home last year, 24% of the country’s GDP, though Bukele hasn’t publicly said whether he’s requested a TPS extension this time.

Texas Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, running for Senate, called AI-generated deepfake videos targeting him "lies" that voters are "fed up" with, after his opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton, released one such video. The Paxton campaign's ad, set to air on Newsmax, showed an AI-generated Talarico writing in a "King James Talarico" Bible using audio clips of his past remarks on gender and feminism, spliced together out of context. This is not the first time Republicans have targeted him this way; the National Republican Senatorial Committee released a similar AI-generated video of Talarico back in March after he won the Democratic nomination. Talarico argued the ads add nothing to civic discourse and that voters want candor about candidates' actual records instead.

Trump said he would consider pardoning his former personal attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, calling what happened to Cohen "a disgrace" and claiming prosecutors forced him to say things he didn't believe. Cohen was sentenced in 2018 to three years in prison for a range of crimes, including lying to Congress about Trump's business dealings and arranging secret hush-money payments to women alleging affairs with Trump. Trump's comments followed Cohen's decision last month to interview him for his radio show, despite Cohen having previously testified against Trump in both Congress and court. Trump framed a potential pardon as contingent on further review, saying "if everything is checking out" it's something he'd consider.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a potential 2028 presidential contender, accused Republicans of trying to "rig" the 2026 midterms during a Dallas press conference held as counterprogramming to the GOP convention. He specifically criticized a Trump administration push, now before the Supreme Court, to let the US Postal Service track mail-in ballots and potentially reject those from voters not listed in a federal citizenship-verification database. Pritzker argued Republicans "can't win on the merits of their unpopular policies" and are instead trying to manipulate the mechanics of the election itself. The event featured Texas Democratic officials as part of a broader effort to contrast Democratic messaging with the GOP's convention narrative.

The White House quietly removed its Tetris-style “Build the Wall” game from its online MAGA-themed arcade this week after Tetris Co. posted online that it “was not involved in the creation” of the game and “takes copyright infringement very seriously,” emphasizing it believes in “bringing people together, not dividing them.” The game, which had players stack bricks to “hold the line” against a “zombie border siege,” disappeared from the White House website between Monday and Tuesday, with neither the White House nor Tetris commenting further. Other games mimicking Snake (”Rio Run,” where players “pick up every crosser”) and Flappy Bird (”Flappy Bill,” featuring a bald eagle) remain live, and the White House separately posted a “Legend of Trump” video mimicking Nintendo’s Zelda branding and music, alongside earlier videos mimicking Xbox, Sega, and GameCube startup animations, none of which have drawn a company response yet. This continues a pattern of unauthorized character and music use by the administration, including Pete Hegseth’s “Franklin the Turtle” strike image that its publisher condemned, and Sabrina Carpenter publicly demanding the White House stop using her song in an ICE video.

The Missouri redistricting fight escalated sharply Tuesday: hours after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Secretary of State Denny Hoskins’s appeal to use the GOP’s new map, a federal judge issued a separate ruling ordering the state to use that same map, creating a direct state-versus-federal court collision, and the Missouri Supreme Court then opened a contempt probe against Hoskins for continuing to push the new map despite its earlier ruling against it. The state court ordered Hoskins to explain in writing why he shouldn’t be held in contempt and to appear in person at a hearing Thursday; Hoskins responded defiantly on X, saying “I look forward to my day in court.” The fight traces back to a referendum drive led by Richard von Glahn’s group, People Not Politicians, which gathered signatures to let voters veto the Legislature’s map, only for Hoskins to refuse to certify it for the ballot, a decision the Republican-majority Missouri Supreme Court unanimously rejected. If the state court’s block holds, Missouri would use its 2022 map (six Republican seats, two Democratic) instead of the new one designed to eliminate Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s Democratic-held seat.

Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee, a Democrat, was at risk of becoming the first sitting governor in the country to lose a primary in eight years, trailing challenger Helena Foulkes, a wealthy former CVS executive, by double digits in public polling. Unlike other anti-incumbent primary fights this cycle, the race wasn't drawn along ideological or generational lines between the 75-year-old McKee and 62-year-old Foulkes. Instead it centered on a hyperlocal grievance: McKee's 2023 decision to close the Washington Bridge in Providence for safety reasons, which created lasting traffic problems in the state's largest city. Foulkes also heavily outspent McKee on the airwaves, by roughly 3 to 1, compounding his political vulnerability heading into the vote.

The battleground New Hampshire Senate race is now set between Republican former Sen. John Sununu and Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas after both won their primaries. Pappas defeated Karishma Manzur, a Democratic Socialists of America-aligned scientist, by a wide margin, though he may have underperformed the commanding lead his campaign's internal polling had projected. The race is considered pivotal to the fight for Senate control in November. Sununu's and Pappas's primary wins clear the way for what's expected to be one of the most closely watched general election contests of the cycle.

Malone Lam, a 22-year-old Singapore-born eighth-grade dropout, pleaded guilty Tuesday to a federal racketeering conspiracy charge for orchestrating the theft of over $245 million in bitcoin, roughly 4,100 coins, from a Washington, D.C. victim in August 2024, one of the largest crypto thefts in US history, and faces up to 20 years in prison. Lam and co-conspirators used “social engineering,” including posing as Google and Gemini exchange representatives, to trick the victim into handing over Google Drive access and security codes, then laundered the funds into a monthlong spending spree that included a fleet of sports cars, rented Miami mansions, a $2 million watch, and $569,000 spent in a single night at a Los Angeles nightclub. He’s the 11th of 18 charged defendants to plead guilty, and was arrested by the FBI in Miami after an off-duty law enforcement officer tipped him off that agents were coming, buying him only a brief head start; a judge has not yet scheduled his sentencing.

More On U.S. Courts, Law, Crime, Immigration, Rights, Justice: In-Depth

Emptywheel, Analysis: Big John Solomon Expose!!!! He’s Covering Up Trump’s Egypt Corruption! Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), Sept. 9, 2026. Yesterday, John Solomon conducted another of his Russian propaganda exercises, this time claiming to release newly declassified versions of:

• The 302 from Mike Flynn’s January 24, 2017 interview
• Joe Pientka’s notes from the interview
• Peter Strzok’s notes from the interview

Solomon waved his hands around squealing that the notes did not match the 302 — just as Sidney Powell squealed that the notes did not match the 302 back in 2019, before Judge Emmet Sullivan wrote a 99-page opinion laying out that Powell was wrong in key respects and anyway none of it undermined the evidence that Mike Flynn lied in that interview.

But what’s really nutty about yesterday’s little propaganda escapade is, no, John, you actually didn’t release newly declassified documents, or not much, anyway. The only substantively new declassification in the documents is this passage in Strzok’s notes, which seems to reflect what they knew going in; they’re summaries of what they knew Flynn actually said on his calls with Sergey Kislyak (and would have been classified in 2019 when these notes were first released because they were FISA content); the still-redacted word, as we’ll see, is almost certainly “Egypt.”

In reality, there’s actually more new redactions than in the earlier released versions of these documents:

302 from Mike Flynn interview released on June 6, 2019ombined interview notes released May 7, 2020

(If you’ve been around a while you might remember that DOJ confused who wrote which notes in 2020, when they released these, and I had to straighten them out; just one of the services I provide!)Mike Flynn was warned Russia would try to cultivate him

One set of new redactions serves to cover up details of Flynn’s trip to the RT gala in December 2015. In both Pientka’s notes,

And the 302,

The earlier released documents showed Flynn saying he took Mike Flynn Jr with him to meet with Sergey Kislyak before his Russian trip and that he got a DIA threat briefing before the trip.

But in both the Pientka notes released yesterday,

And the 302 released yesterday,

Those references are redacted.

I’ve got my own theory why John Solomon and Kash Patel wanted to cover those up.

The Egyptian side to Trump’s Russian corruption

I’ve got stronger theories about why they’re covering up references to Egypt in these documents.

The earlier released Pientka notes,

Strzok notes,

And 302,

All describe that “FLYNN heard through other channels that Egypt did not like” their own resolution to condemn settlers in the West Bank, and that Egypt delayed the vote themselves. These are references to Trump’s efforts — directed by Jared Kushner — to prevent or delay Egypt’s resolution condemning illegal settlements in the West Bank, a frantic effort involving a bunch of countries to undermine the foreign policy of the United States government.

After Flynn had, earlier in the interview, given a false claim about how many calls he had with Kislyak, the FBI agents asked him if there was a call in which Flynn had asked for Russian help to stall the vote, Flynn basically said, oh yeah!!! there was another call!!! but Flynn explained, nope, there was no request to Russia to help stall the vote, Egypt decided that on its own.

Flynn’s answer was a lie to cover up that:

A request was made that Russia help Trump kill or delay the vote.After that request was made on December 22, Putin was consulted and chose to play ball.The other channel via which they learned Egypt’s plans was in a request directly to Abdel Fattah El-Sisi directly.

Flynn is pretending that Egypt just decided to kill their own resolution themselves. It was an insanely stupid claim, but he thought he’d get away with it and, really, he has.

In the Pientka notes released yesterday,

The Strzok notes,

And the 302,

Those references to Egypt have been covered up.

Here, per the intercepts released in 2020, is part of what Flynn and Kislyak actually said in a conversation on December 23, 2016.

Let me unpack this.

First, as noted, this is the December 23 transcript. As Kislyak makes clear, there was an earlier call — the day before — and this call was his response. When John Ratcliffe released this in 2020, he didn’t actually release the December 22 transcript. I’ve got my theories why he didn’t. But it is clear from context that a request had been made (at that point, Flynn and Trump were in the same place, Mar-a-Lago) on that earlier call, that Kislyak had consulted with “the highest level in Russia” — that is, Putin — and that Kislyak was conveying to Flynn that Russia was going to play ball with Trump’s effort to prevent a condemnation of illegal Israeli settlements. The “slow down” reference in the notes appears to be a quote from the earlier call, the one we don’t get.

Then there’s the hilarious part, what a fucking chump Flynn was here. Kislyak probes, hinting that he knows Egypt, who originally proposed the resolution, is not pushing for a vote. And Flynn says, Yep, we’ve been talking to them too. Then Kislyak probes, “there might be others.” And Flynn freely offers up that Trump has been talking to “a litany of countries.”

Flynn just blabbed and blabbed and blabbed, like a teenage girl gossiping, telling Russia the extent of efforts to undermine Barack Obama’s foreign policy, precisely the kind of knowledge that gives another country leverage over you. It’s bad, terrible; but imagine how much worse Steve Witkoff is when he corrupts with the Russians.

Again, Flynn’s explanation made absolutely no sense, because it was Egypt’s resolution in the first place! But Flynn was trying to cover up the separate call to el-Sisi.

And now, in turn, John Solomon is trying to sustain that cover up, which is pretty interesting given the long-running bribery investigation into whether el-Sisi gave Trump a $10 million bribe that Bill Barr finally shut down in the same period he was blowing up the Mike Flynn prosecution.

Solomon and whoever made these dumbass redaction decisions are attempting, again, to lie about how this all went down.

And it is just as dumb an effort as Flynn’s original lie because these documents are all right here and we can all read you’re trying to cover up Egypt’s role in all this.

By Andrew Kreig and Wayne Madsen

Patrick Reynolds, who formed Congress Majority PAC with a mission of helping fellow civic reformers win congressional races, shares on the next District Insiders podcast his innovative strategies regarding forthcoming U.S. elections.

Hosts Andrew Kreig and Wayne Madsen explore with Reynolds what the public most needs to understand about his innovative strategy for U.S. Mid-Term elections.

Reynolds, right, describes why he’s leveraged his years at the forefront of anti-smoking legislation to raise awareness for solutions to climate change, for example, during a time when drought and wildfires loom.

Reynolds, widely known as the anti-smoking crusading grandson of cigarette company founder RJ Reynolds, started Congress Majority PAC in 2018, raising over $1.36 million from over 24,000 donors.

“We now have a top team in place for strategy, fundraising, compliance, and legal,” Reynolds says. Our ads pioneer a new direction in political advertising for Democrats.” Sample ads are here. Specifics are below:

• Climate Change (60, 30 and 15 seconds)
• Trump quotes, followed by Sen. Graham: “We are the Party of Donald Trump.” (30 seconds) 
• The Economy (60 seconds)
• A Message for Disaffected Democrats (15 and 30 seconds) 

Watch the Patrick Reynolds interview on District Insiders by clicking one of the links below:

• Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/district-insiders/id1679198072
• Podbean: https://districtinsiders.podbean.com/
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6kcuaiy3SHhYT4do9iz0vY
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@districtinsiders

About Congress Majority PAC

Congress Majority PAC (www.CongressMajority.org) is a federally registered, hybrid political action committee dedicated to supporting Democratic candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives through strategic communications and voter persuasion. The organization seeks to promote effective issue-based messaging that informs voters and encourages civic participation. How to work together here.

Further information is available on request:

• Patrick Reynolds, President Congress Majority PAC, here:
• Ilene Proctor & Associates, International Public Relations, here 

About Patrick Reynolds

Patrick Reynolds’ advocacy work and motivational talks to youth and adults have made him a well-known and respected champion of a smokefree society. He has helped remind many thousands of people of the dangers of smoking. Patrick watched his father, RJ Reynolds, Jr., his oldest brother RJ Reynolds III, and other members of his family die from cigarette-induced emphysema and lung cancer. Concerned about the mounting health evidence, he made the decision to speak out against the industry his family helped build.

He founded Tobaccofree Earth in 1989. Its mission is to motivate youth to stay tobaccofree and to empower smokers to quit successfully. Reynolds saw that having Democrats in the majority in Congress would bring progress not only on tobacco policy, but also on climate change, gun control, abortion, immigration reform, and other issues. In 2018 Reynolds started Congress Majority PAC with a mission of getting Democrats elected to Congress.

“Each of our ads focus on one issue,” he continues. Our ad on the economy compares the Administrations of Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden, and our ads on immigration and climate change compare the Parties’ voting records on those issues. All conclude, Vote Democrat, and mention no candidate by name, so our ads can be run in any State,” Reynolds said. Congress Majority PAC produces hard-hitting political ads that challenge Donald Trump and failed Republican policies while making a clear, affirmative case for Democratic leadership. Every ad ends the same way: Vote Democrat. Its ads can run in any state and in any congressional race, helping Democratic candidates compete in key districts from coast to coast. For further details, contact:

District Insiders features experts on timely topics affecting “districts” in the United States and globally – congressional, parliamentary or other – that are in the news. Contacts for “District Insiders” hosts for guests, interviews, lectures, questions:

• Andrew Kreig, Andrew [at] justice-integrity.org
• Wayne Madsen, wmadsen777 [at] aol.com

Co-Hosts

Wayne Madsen is a journalist, newspaper columnist, and author of 28 books on intelligence matters, historical events, and the dangers of neo-fascism in threatening democracy in the United States and abroad. Based for many years in Washington, DC, he is a former U.S.Navy officer and NSA analyst.

For more than two decades, he has published The Wayne Madsen Report.com, an investigative news website now on Substack. Madsen is also the third generation of Madsens who have opposed fascism in its varied forms. His recent books include two on the Trump family and “A Parade of New Sovereignties: A Post-Hegemonic World,” an illustrated,  encyclopedia-style reference book providing core details, one to a page, on more than 500 ethnic hot spots globally potentially in the news because of nationalist, religious and patriotic aspirations of populations governed by others.

Andrew Kreig is non-profit executive, reporter, attorney, strategic consultant and author. After careers in journalism, law and business, he became a founding director of the the Washington, DC-based Justice Integrity Project and serves on the boards of several other business, non-profit and civic groups. 

He began his career as a newspaper reporter for the Hartford Courant in Connecticut and then earned law degrees at Yale and the University of Chicago before serving as law clerk to a U.S. District judge in Boston and working at a national law firm's office in Washington, DC. He then became vice president and then president/CEO of the Wireless Communications Association before becoming a research fellow at two universities. His most recent book Is “The Complete Annotated Durham ‘Russiagate’ Report: A Corrupt, Cruel Fraud,” which documents Russian interference in U.S. elections and efforts of denial or diversion by politically motivated Justice Department prosecutors.

 

By Michael McCray (below left)

The 14th Annual Whistleblower Summit & Film Festival concluded as one of the most successful in its history, drawing record participation across five packed days of live programming in Washington, D.C., and ten days of virtual content reaching a national and global audience.

Held under the theme "America 250: Unity in the Community," this year's festival saw the community turn out in greater numbers than ever before.

Whereas past summits have typically centered on a single community, e.g., civil rights advocates, medical whistleblowers, USDA Forest Service women, or New York whistleblowers, among others, with attendance rising and falling over two- to three-year cycles, this year marked a notable departure. Each of the five days brought a full house and an entirely different audience, a testament to the summit's expanding reach and the growing coalition of communities it now serves.

"We have had an overwhelming response to the summit this year, including a wonderful reception and a festival community grew at the Morrison Clark Historic Inn & Restaurant (summit host hotel)," said Festival Director Marcel Reid, shown below. "Everyone came together to support the summit this year form guardianship advocates, to civil rights organizations like the NAACP, the Divine Nine and Indian Tribes."  

Guardianship abuse, financial exploitation of the vulnerable elderly, and elder abuse took center stage this year, championed by the National Association to Stop Guardianship Abuse (NASGA) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Civil rights organizations were strongly represented as well, including members of the Divine Nine (D9) -- among them Alpha Phi Alpha -- alongside the NAACP.

Highlights

A highlight of the festival was the screening of the Hollywood and Netflix film "Bad Guardian," followed by an engrossing question-and-answer session featuring the filmmakers, elder advocates, and media experts. The summit's legislative campaign updates and congressional lobby day activities drew significant press attention, covered by an NBC affiliate and televised across half a dozen media markets.

Additionally, Nevada-based Indian Voices (newspaper and podcast) covered the Pillar Awards at the National Press Club. The Chickasaw and Cheyenne Tribes passed out beautiful hand-crafted tribal necklaces with whistles to support Pillar Award Winners, i.e., the Chickasaw Nation's Gift to Truth.

International interest reached new heights this year, with three times as many visa requests from filmmakers seeking to attend the summit live. Throughout the event, the festival website offered ten days of unique content, including live-streamed events, featured virtual film screenings, and archived panel presentations.

See Below For Award Winners

2026 Pillar Award Winners

The festival's Pillar Awards were presented at the National Press Club, honoring individuals whose courage, integrity, and commitment to truth exemplify the spirit of the whistleblower movement.

Shaw-Marven Award -- Courtney Williams. Courtney Williams is recognized for bringing forward allegations involving sexual harassment, abuse of power, and a culture of impunity within one of the military's most secretive communities.

Martha Mitchell Award -- Gerard Colby, right. An author, investigative journalist, former National Writers Union president, and university educator, Gerard Colby is a cofounder of the Henry Demarest Lloyd Investigative Fund. He authored "DuPont Dynasty: Behind the Nylon Curtain" and coauthored, with Charlotte Dennett, "Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil." A whistleblower who exposed book publishing secrets through litigation, he shared that story in "Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press."

Frank Wills Award -- Dr. Waymon Hinson. Dr. Waymon Hinson paid a profound price for standing with Black farmers. Guided by his Christian faith and an intolerance for injustice, he confronted institutions that resisted accountability. His scholarship, testimony, and the documentary I'm Just a Layman in Pursuit of Justice exposed racialized harm and the toll USDA discrimination took on families -- even as the work strained him personally. His courage, compassion, and integrity endured despite the burdens he carried to tell the truth.

Grace Lee Boggs Award -- Scott Smith. An independent testing expert and environmental advocate, Scott Smith has investigated more than 75 oil and chemical disasters worldwide. Known as "The Guy in the Blue Shirt," he uncovers hidden environmental hazards and empowers impacted communities with independent science. After the East Palestine train derailment, his testing revealed dangerous soil contamination the EPA had withheld. A named inventor on more than 25 patents and founder of the Blue Shirt Justice League, Smith is a 2024 Blueprint Impact Award recipient and a Government Accountability Project client.

Political Courage Award -- Rep. Al Green (D-TX). A veteran civil rights advocate and longtime member of Congress first elected in 2005, Rep. Al Green was born in New Orleans in 1947 and earned his J.D. from Texas Southern University. He previously served 26 years as a Harris County Justice of the Peace. In Congress, he has focused on fair housing, financial oversight, and justice for marginalized communities. Green also led the Houston NAACP for a decade, expanding its membership and civic impact. He is also a proud member of Kappa Alpha Psi (Divine Nine).

Journalism Award -- Patsy Widakuswara. Patsy Widakuswara served as Voice of America White House Bureau Chief, covering multiple U.S. administrations and interviewing national leaders on key domestic and foreign policy matters. A veteran broadcast journalist with extensive international reporting experience, she made national headlines in 2021 when she was demoted after questioning senior agency officials about editorial independence -- a move that sparked widespread press freedom concerns. As a primary plaintiff, she has been a vocal advocate against executive interference with VOA's statutory firewall.

Journalism Award -- Kathryn "Kate" Neeper. Kathryn "Kate" Neeper served as USAGM Director of Strategy and Performance Assessment and Chief Strategy Officer. In her executive role, she oversaw operational metrics, agency strategy, and audience reach for VOA's global networks. Following management directives that placed core personnel on administrative leave and shuttered key operations, Neeper joined the lawsuit to defend the agency's statutory mandate and structural governance against unauthorized administrative dissolution.

2026 Film Award Winners

Best Feature Documentary Film: Bad Guardian -- directed by Claudia Myers; Best Documentary: Vindication to Victory -- directed by Matthew Brundige; Best Short: Bacha Bareesh, Shadows of Innocence -- directed by Najia Khaan; Best Screenplay: Covert -- written by Guilherme Augusto Oliveira; Impact Award: Healthy Smiles, Healthy Lives -- directed by Airic Hughes; Audience Choice: The Standard -- directed by Marvin Banks, Jr.

"We don't measure success like a traditional film festival because our goal is to impact art, culture and change laws to support the First Amendment, whistleblower protection, and civil and human rights," says Managing Director Michael McCray. "In effect, we are the only Legislative Film Festival in existence."  

About the Whistleblower Summit & Film Festival

The Whistleblower Summit & Film Festival is an award-winning annual event held in Washington, D.C., presented by ACORN 8 in partnership with African American Women in Cinema (AAWIC), National Association to Stop Guardianship Abuse (NASGA) and the Justice Integrity Project (JIP). The festival honors whistleblowers and the advocates, journalists, and filmmakers who tell their stories, and it hosts National Whistleblower Appreciation Day programming each year on Capitol Hill and at the National Press Club.

For further details, contact Summit and Festival Host Committee member Andrew Kreig.

Other Relevant, Recent Whistleblower News

Aug. 8

Ilene Proctor, Commentary:  Tthe 14th Annual Whistleblowers Summit and Film Festival. A Summit of Recognition, Revelation and Hope,  Ilene Proctor, Aug. 8, 2026. Reflections on the 14th Annual Whistleblowers Summit and Film Festival on Capitol Hill, highlighting key figures including co-founder Marcel Reid and award recipient Gerard Colby.

There are nights when fear becomes more than fear. There are nights when truth resonates so strongly it denies you sleep. The 14th Annual Whistleblowers Summit and Film Festival has that effect. It has a cruel way of stripping away distraction, stripping away pretense, stripping life down to whatever truth remains when your body has declared mutiny and sleep has abandoned you entirely.

When you are ripped awake by the kind of relentless, electric, almost indescribable fear that makes even breathing feel negotiable, the mind goes where it goes.

The Whistleblowers Summit is as essential as air and water, as it boldly and bravely opens the window to air the problems that plague our society and need to be addressed.

Take, for instance, the lax guardianship laws that mask the spectacle of wanton greed that dwarfs filial love and responsibility.

Or, the evidence, clear and indisputable, and not in the Jeannine Pirro way, that the GOP is rigging the election by implanting ghost voters into the voter rolls. To counter their statement that the democrats have rigged the election, Democrats foolishly, and to their own peril, respond by declaring Elections safe and secure.

They are not. Data detective Alison Greene actually looks at the voter rolls and discovered thousands of voters like Jenesaisquoi or Thunderbolt, all with the last name None, or the dozens of alphabet voters starting with A, B,C, D, and so on all with the same last name None, or Y with the Last name Y.

Why why is this outrage not been exposed? Is it perhaps our jaundiced journalists fear the wrath of the GOP? She needs our support in every way.

Or, the Food and Drug Administration (AKA Trump) signing against e-cigarettes, which author/filmmaker Jason Tremko calls the “Devil’s Lettuce.” Tremko proves that, from the medical renaissance to the revolution, Marijuana has changed. The conversation hasn't. From 3% THC in the 1970s to today's addictive and purposely delicious, ultra-high-potency products, cannabis has evolved into a commercial powerhouse-reshaping culture, classrooms, and communities in real time. With kids starting to vape as early as 11 and 12 years old, we’ve reached the marijuana tipping point. And regarding purchasing, there’s no age limit, which means the government is sleepwalking, or more realistically, bribed into silence.

The prestigious Pillar Award was given to Gerald Colby in recognition for exposing the pernicious practice of privishing. (private publishing) where a publishing house reduces its print run and support for a book to the point that the book fails to reach the public. According to fellow whistleblower Alison Greene: “ When Gerald Colby was getting his award and talking about privishing it really resonated with me. I immediately drew a parallel in my mind between what Gerald was describing and the Trump/National Enquirer "catch and kill" scam. It felt like it was a page out of the same playbook. Buying a story to actually stop it from being released. The capitalist method of suppressing speech that you don't want out there. Censorship under the guise of Capitalism.”

Colby is notable for authoring Du Pont: Behind The Nylon Curtain. The 1974 publication was put under contract by Prentice-Hall in anticipation of a significant quantity of books sold to Book of the Month. The book painted a portrait of DuPont enterprises and the DuPont family that was characterized as "sober but unflattering. In response to pressure from DuPont, Book-of-the-Month cancelled its preorder. In anticipation of lower sales, Prentice-Hall reduced its print run and scaled back its marketing plans. Colby (Zilg) sued Prentice-Hall for breach of contract. In the federal case Zilg v Prentice-Hall, Inc., the Federal District Court in New York awarded Colby damages of $24,000. In 1984 the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned the ruling. The US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal the same year.[1][2]

Meet the supermen and woman behind the Whistleblower Awards

Michael McCray, below right. A  former national board delegate for Georgia ACORN, McCray was the spokesman for the ACORN 8, the national board members that blew the whistle on a multi-million dollar embezzlement at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). His breakthrough book RACE, POWER & POLITICS—Memoirs of an ACORN Whistleblower tells the inside story of ACORN.

An author, speaker and public interest advocate, McCray has made numerous media (radio and television) appearances including CNN (Lou Dobbs Tonight) and FOX News (Glenn Beck Show). A highly sought-after public speaker, McCray makes memorable contributions to conferences, events and conventions that welcome his "tell-it-like-it-is" storytelling style and audience engagement. He combines Fortune 500 corporate experience and public interest advocacy by speaking on motivational topics including whistleblower protection, business ethics and corporate integrity.

The OMNI Center for Peace, Justice & Ecology honored him as an ARKANSAS PEACE & JUSTICE HERO in 2008. Most recently, McCray is a 2021 recipient of the Cliff Robertson Sentinel Award Recipient —For Choosing Truth Over Self— for his advocacy with the ACORN 8 from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE).

Marcel Reid is a nationally recognized whistleblower advocate, media reformer, and Co‑Founder of the Whistleblower Summit & Film Festival, alongside Attorney Michael McCray (shown at right). She also co‑founded ACORN8 with Attorney Karen Inman, where McCray served as National Spokesperson. Reid chaired DC Metro ACORN, overseeing operations across Washington, D.C. and Virginia, and was elected to the three‑person Interim Committee tasked with restructuring ACORN during a pivotal moment in the organization’s history.

Her commitment to integrity and public accountability has earned multiple honors, including the AFCE Cliff Robertson Sentinel Award, recognition from the ACFE, and other awards for courage and public service.

Reid later joined the Pacifica Radio Network, serving at every level—from the CPB Local Board and Local Station Board to three terms on the Pacifica National Board. She led the effort that resulted in Pacifica’s unanimous vote to support whistleblowers, becoming the first Whistleblower Liaison in national media. Her work contributed to hundreds of news articles and informed reporting that supported Kathleen Parker’s Pulitzer‑winning commentary.

A frequent media guest, Reid appeared regularly on Pacifica’s Ambrose Lane “We Ourselves”, as well as national programs including Glenn Beck and Sharyl Attkisson’s Full Measure and Patrick Lovell's Podcast. Marcel is the current co-host of the TS Radio podcast. . Today, she continues to champion whistleblowers and strengthen public accountability through the Whistleblower Summit & Film Festival.

Justice Integrity Project Director Andrew Kreig is an author, attorney and investigative reporter. His book, “Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney and Their Masters” was published Feb. 1, 2013, by Eagle View Books. It grew out of his legal reform and political work, focusing on federal justice prosecutions and official corruption. Also, has long co-hosted public affairs radio and podcasts featuring prominent newsmakers and broadcast nationally. He uses his decades of investigative journalism talent to unmask the characters who have manipulated our democratic institutions. His formidable sources and sophisticated insights will enable elected officials, journalists, professors, and voters to evaluate the power the November elections as in his latest book: The Complete Annotated Durham “Russiagate” Report: A Corrupt, Cruel Fraud." 

Since 1979, Tom Devine, shown above at center moderating a Summit instructional panel on how to advocate effectively to courts, Congress and federal agencies, has been the Government Accountability Project's legal director, where he has assisted over 8,000 whistleblowers ...

People might be asleep when it comes to standing up to democracy, but you can bet the Whistleblower community is always wide awake and working on practical solutions.

Aug. 4

Vermont author Gerard Colby Wins Pillar Award At Whistleblowers Summit Ceremony At National Press Club, Charlotte Dennett, Aug. 4, 2026. Vermont author Gerard Colby of Burlington Vt received a Pillar Award at The 14th Annual Whistleblower Summit & Film Festival July 30 in Washington, DC in recognition of his decades- long struggle against book suppression by publishers secretly sabotaging their own authors on books that prove unexpectedly controversial.

Colby, shown at right, in accepting the award “on behalf of all America writers,” discussed his successful battle in federal court against publisher Prentice-Hall for sabotaging his book “DuPont: Behind the Nylon Curtain,” following pressure from DuPont Company and duPont family members.

In the course of investigating his lawsuit against Prentice-Hall and the DuPont Co., Colby discovered “privishing,” which means to privately publish a book “so it sinks without a trace.” He summarized that practice as follows: A publisher will go through the motions of meeting its contractual obligations to publish the book in exchange for exclusive rights from the author —while secretly, without the author’s knowledge, killing off the book by cutting its promotion, advertising, author’s tours and print run “so it cannot price profitably according to any conceivable formula.”

“Most authors have no idea when privishing happens,” Colby explained. He did not himself know about the practice, he said, until Viking editor revealed that was the practice was well known in the industry and agreed to testify in court. Colby, in accepting the award, provided the following account:

The trial record in U.S. District Court in New York City showed that Prentice-Hall leaked an unedited manuscript of the book to a duPont family-owned bookstore in Delaware ahead of publication, initiating Colby’s ordeal just before publication. Colby had requested interviews of duPont family members, all of which were denied. Once the book was announced as a Book of the Month Club [BOMC} selection, family patriarch Irénée duPont Jr, Vice President of DuPont Company, launched an investigation of the author and quickly left town, leaving the task of pressuring DuPont Company’s public relations department to kill the book.

DuPont Co. then contacted BOMC and urged the business-oriented Fortune Book Club to cancel the book, stating it was “scurrilous and actionable.” BOMC caved under pressure and canceled its selection within 24 hours, whereupon Prentice-Hall began to “privish” the book. Colby’s editor, Bram Cavin, was then fired by Prentice-Hall and subsequently replaced by Colby’s literary agent, Oscar Collier, who had become the literary agent for a book on DuPont family purportedly as a response to Colby’s book. Collier was subsequently expelled by the Society of Literary Agents for his betrayal of professional ethics.

Colby subsequently sued Prentice-Hall for breach of contract and DuPont Co. for inducing breach of contract. Presiding judge Charles Brient revealed in chambers after the trial that he would never hold DuPont, a “pillar of society,” liable for the suppression of the book, but in a landmark decision held Prentice Hall legally responsible for privishing the book. Prentice-Hall offered to settle the case for $26,000 if Colby would keep quiet about the terms of the settlement.

Colby refused and would later describe his entire ordeal as a lead author in “Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press,” later a winner of the National Press Club’s Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism.

Colby would later serve as President of the National Writers Union representing free-lance authors in the US. “I wanted writers to know their rights in an industry that is frankly the least organized and regulated in the country. Privishing is how most books are suppressed in the United States privately by publisher as opposed to government suppression in violation of the First Amendment.

For this reason, and because of his courage in standing up to the powers-that- be, he was awarded a Pillar [of Civil Society] at the 14th annual National Whistleblowers Annual Summit and Film Festival in the ceremony at the National Press Club.

Gerard Colby is an author, investigative journalist and former National Writers Union president and university-level educator with an MA in history. A cofounder of the Henry Demarest Lloyd Investigative Fund, he authored “DuPont Dynasty: Behind the Nylon Curtain” and was the lead author with Charlotte Dennett of “Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil.” A whistleblower, he exposed via litigation the book suppression practice of privishing, shared also via the anthology “Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press.”

July 25

Hamilton For Mayor Campaign, Summit Features Organizing Panel, July 25, 2026. DC Independent Mayoral Candidate Dr. Rhonda Hamilton Invited to Assemble and Moderate All-Star Grassroots Organizing Panel at the 14th Annual Whistleblower Summit & Film Festival on Capitol Hill. 

The Hamilton for Mayor Campaign is proud to announce that Dr. Rhonda Hamilton, 2026 Independent Candidate for Mayor of the District of Columbia, has been invited to assemble and moderate an All-Star Grassroots Organizing Panel during the 14th Annual Whistleblower Summit & Film Festival, one of the nation's premier forums dedicated to government accountability, ethics, civic engagement, and public integrity.

Dr. Hamilton leads a panel on July 28, 2026 beginning at 1 p.m. entitled, "Exploring the Colorless Boundaries of Community and Courage." Panels are:

• Nick DelleDonne / DC Safe Streets Coalition

• Rev. Anthony Motley / Freedom Fighters Coalition

• Dajo Henderson / President, Capitol Hill Towers Tenant Association

• Diane Perlman, Ph.D. / Founder & CEO, Conscious Politics

July 23

Whistleblower Summit, Author Gerard Colby To Be Honored Among Pillar Winners At 14th Annual DC Event, Andrew Kreig, July 23, 2026. From July 24-August 2, 2026, Capitol Hill and the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. will host The 14th Annual Whistleblower Summit & Film Festival, the most comprehensive gathering of whistleblower advocates, documentary filmmakers, and investigative journalists in the country. 

A highlight is the annual Pillar Awards ceremony, held at the National Press Club. Among winners is author Gerard Colby, right, who discusses his experiences as an author who suspected that his epic history, “DuPont: Behind the Nylon Curtain,” had been sabotaged by his publisher, Prentice Hall, due to pressure from the DuPont family. He explores a decade of litigation evidence summarized in a book anthology and now at the Summit.

Other award-winners will be announced in coming days, and will be available soon on the event website. Credentialed media are invited to register to attend the awards ceremony at the National Press Club beginning at 5:30 p.m. on July 30.

Colby is an author, investigative journalist and former National Writers Union president and university-level educator with an MA in history. A cofounder of the Henry Demarest Lloyd Investigative Fund, he was the lead author with Charlotte Dennett of “Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil.” A whistleblower, he exposed via litigation the book suppression practice of privishing, which was shared also via the anthology “Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press.”

July 12

New York Times, Whistle-Blowers Accuse Kennedy Center of Contracting Flaws Under Trump, Julia Jacobs and Zach Montague, July 12, 2026 (print ed.). Documents submitted to Congress detailed concerns about competitive bidding processes and a White House order to tear up new bathroom tile because of its color.

As the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts prepares for major renovations, former project managers there have sent Congress internal documents that they say show how the institution bypassed government contracting norms in work carried out under President Trump.

The documents — sent to a Senate and a House committee last month by lawyers for unidentified clients referred to as whistle-blowers — detail how vendors were selected for work without competitive bidding under rationales that are depicted as flawed.

In one case, a center official described a company chosen for flooring work as the “only identified firm on the Mid-Atlantic seaboard that maintains a fully vertically integrated model, vital for acoustic continuity, architectural uniformity, and operational agility.”

In a letter to the committees, lawyers for the former project managers say their clients question whether the business, located in South Carolina, was the only one available that was qualified to do the flooring work.

The letter says the center’s decision to skip bidding in another case was designed to help meet deadlines important to the president, such as the Kennedy Center Honors in December, which he hosted. 

The Parnas Perspective, Morning News and Commentary: Important Epstein Update, Trump Targets Journalists, Iran Vows to Avenge Leader's Death as Trump Fears Possible Assassination, Aaron Parnas, right, July 11, 2026. Trump is reportedly furious over revelations that the Qatari Air Force One jet does not meet U.S. security standards.

Now, in what critics are calling a major assault on the First Amendment, his administration is subpoenaing journalists at their homes. At the same time, the administration is obstructing key Epstein investigations, Kash Patel has been summoned to the White House, and Trump is reportedly preparing for the possibility of his own death by ordering missiles locked and loaded at Iran as Tehran vows to avenge the Ayatollah’s death.

I also spoke today with Epstein survivor Lara Blume McGee ahead of Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing. For the first time, she shares her story on camera and says this Department of Justice has done nothing to protect survivors or deliver justice.

I told you I would never stop talking about the Epstein files, and I meant it. More interviews are coming. 

Epstein News:

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez accused the Justice Department of obstructing the state's reopened criminal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein's activities at Zorro Ranch by failing to provide requested unredacted federal records despite repeated requests since February. Torrez argues the withheld documents contain names of survivors, witnesses, and potential co-conspirators that are essential to pursuing state prosecutions, warning that delays are causing evidence to grow stale and investigative leads to disappear. While the Justice Department says it supports New Mexico's investigation and is prepared to assist, the dispute has complicated the state's renewed effort—which includes searches of the ranch, subpoenas, and a bipartisan truth commission—to fully investigate alleged crimes connected to Epstein's New Mexico property.

Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) urged acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to fully comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, arguing the Justice Department has failed to release all required unredacted Epstein records and has overused redactions without sufficient explanations. Their letter, sent ahead of Blanche’s Senate confirmation hearing, cites a recent court order requiring additional document disclosures and criticizes the DOJ for missing deadlines while maintaining it has already complied with the law. The lawmakers contend that protecting victim privacy should not be used to broadly withhold records, saying full compliance is necessary to ensure transparency, accountability, and justice for survivors.

First Amendment Attack:

Overnight, while many were asleep, the Trump administration issued subpoenas to several New York Times reporters following the newspaper’s reporting on security concerns involving President Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One. The subpoenas seek to compel the journalists to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan about an alleged violation of federal criminal law, though they provide few details. In some cases, federal agents delivered the subpoenas directly to reporters’ homes, an unusual step that the newspaper described as an escalation in the administration’s actions toward the press. The reporting in question cited anonymous sources discussing sensitive national security matters related to the aircraft.

Before one of the stories was published, an FBI official asked The New York Times to delay publication, citing national security concerns, and requested that the newspaper identify its confidential sources. The Times declined to reveal its sources and proceeded with publication. The newspaper strongly criticized the subpoenas, arguing they threaten press freedom and the public’s right to independent reporting. Statement from The New York Times: “Our journalists report the facts and advance the American public’s right to know how their government is operating and their taxpayer dollars are being used. This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.”

The subpoenas come amid broader tensions between the Trump administration and major news organizations. While both Democratic and Republican administrations have pursued leak investigations, subpoenas targeting journalists are relatively uncommon, and First Amendment advocates warn they may discourage investigative reporting. It also highlights other recent legal disputes involving The New York Times, including lawsuits over Pentagon access, an employment discrimination case that the newspaper says is retaliatory, and a separate defamation lawsuit brought by President Trump. Together, these events reflect an ongoing legal and political conflict between the administration and the news media.

Kash Patel:

According to MS Now, FBI Director Kash Patel abruptly canceled a planned trip to Chicago after being called to the White House, though administration officials disputed reports that he was summoned over internal frustration. According to the report, some White House officials were concerned about Patel's recent actions, including criticism over his use of FBI resources for travel, a combative social media post, and negative publicity surrounding trips tied to his girlfriend's performances.

Patel had planned to combine an official visit to the FBI's Chicago field office with attending his girlfriend's country music festival performance, prompting internal complaints that the work event was added to justify the travel. The White House said Patel's visit was for unrelated meetings, while the FBI declined to comment and defended his travel as compliant with federal rules. The report also says President Trump and some senior aides have grown frustrated with recurring controversies surrounding Patel because they believe they distract from the administration's broader agenda.

Patel responded to criticism over his reported use of government resources by posting on X, "Nah, my jet ski is gold plated… dumbass," after criticism that he should keep a lower profile amid growing scrutiny. Patel is facing questions from lawmakers about his travel, spending, and use of FBI resources, while the FBI has denied any wrongdoing and disputed the allegations. His social media response drew widespread criticism online, with many users arguing it reinforced concerns about his judgment and leadership rather than addressing the substance of the allegations.

July 11

New York Times, Times Journalists Subpoenaed as Trump Escalates Pressure on Media, Michael M. Grynbaum, July 11, 2026. The Justice Department is seeking to compel testimony from reporters who wrote about the new Air Force One. The Times called the move a “brazen act.”

Emptywheel, Analysis and Opinion: Trump Confirms: Accepting a Flying Bribery Palace Made Him Less Safe, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler, right), July 11, 2026. From the moment Trump posted a tweet claiming he was sending his Flying Bribery Palace back separately from the NATO summit in Ankara, the entire world knew there was a problem with the jet Qatar gifted him.

That Trump offered a transparently stupid excuse — he wanted to show it off to the military — was no real fix. His expressed worry about being targeted by Iran only further confirmed that the Flying Bribery Palace might not stand up to an Iranian attack.

[W]hen pressed by reporters in Ankara about the reason for the change, Mr. Trump also repeatedly noted that he was Iran’s No. 1 target, and referred at one point to having seen or been briefed on a list of Tehran’s targets in recent days.

By the time NYT provided details of the Flying Bribery Palace’s shortcomings on Thursday, based in part on the observations of a former Air Force official, the outline of what they were had become fairly clear: The Flying Bribery Palace could not protect against an Iranian missile attack.

[O]fficials who have been briefed on the retrofitting of the Qatari jet, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe its security features, said it did not have the same counter-defensive capabilities of the previous model.

[snip]

The older planes that served as Air Force One included a defensive system designed to defeat heat-seeking missiles. That capacity is also planned to be included in the new Boeing planes, according to three former Pentagon officials.

Different parts of the defensive systems are visible on the old Air Force One, under the wing of the plane and on its tail. They are not observable in photographs of the new Qatari plane, according to a third former Air Force official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the security protocols. [my emphasis]

That Thursday story made clear that such shortcomings that had been discussed all along.

But in a statement it made when it announced that the donated jet was ready to transport the president, it acknowledged that the temporary plane did not have all the equipment usually found on an Air Force One.

“No risk was taken in security, safety or mission communications,” the Air Force said in a statement on June 19. “But the collective team made trades on some of the less commonly used mission sets that Boeing must deliver to support the next 40 years.”

To sum up:

Trump calls attention to a change in his plans by telling a transparent lie about it.His own comments confirm a concern about his safety.NYT provides one line about counter-defensive capabilities in a story relying in part on public observation and public statements.

And then Trump sent subpoenas to the four NYT journalists who worked on the story, thereby confirming that the story was correct — that Trump’s Flying Bribery Palace had inadequate equipment to counter a missile attack.

The subpoenas don’t do anything to alleviate the risk to Trump’s security he made clear by announcing the plane change. Indeed, the confirm, for all the world, that Trump’s Flying Bribery Palace is an easy target.

At each level of the story, Trump confirmed the story.

I don’t mean to minimize the abuse of subpoenaing the reporters. This is another alarming attack on the free press (and may be an attempt to find Congressional sources who have long pointed out the weaknesses of the Flying Bribery Palace).

But Trump is the one who disclosed his plane was inadequate to the task. The reporters only responded to Trump’s repeated signals that his plane was inadequate by filling in dots that had been in plane (ha!) sight since Trump accepted the bribe.

This is just like the arrests of people — including Davey Hearn, whom Jeanine Pirro indicted last week — who put their hands in Trump’s reflecting swamp: An effort to distract from the consequences of his own corruption.

Trump is criminalizing calling out his corruption. He sure as hell is not keeping anyone safe.