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The New Detroit-Windsor Bridge Can’t Repair the Damage Trump Has Done - 2025-09-20T10:00:00Z

For several summers, fumes from Canadian forest fires have polluted skies over both Canada and the northern United States, the smoke dimming the seasonal sunlight and fouling the air shared between two neighboring nations.

Another odor, this one metaphoric, also has descended upon the river cities of Detroit, Michigan, United States of America and Windsor, Ontario, Canada—municipalities similar in geography to Minneapolis–St. Paul or Oakland–San Francisco. The smell is the stench of the tariff and trade war of President Donald Trump against Canada.

Last spring—and again this summer—Trump launched large tariffs and petty insults at an allied nation and its leaders. He threatened an Anschluss to make Canada the fifty-first united state and to appoint the retired hockey star Wayne Gretzky as its governor. Ironic for this region was the timing of Trump’s attack: It came as the Gordie Howe International Bridge was being completed across the Detroit River between Detroit and Windsor to boost both commerce and social harmony between the two countries at their busiest land border crossing.

The Howe Bridge was officially scheduled to open this month, but elected officials now suggest early 2026 is more likely. The bridge honors a hockey hero from the prairie province of Saskatchewan who played right wing (just the hockey kind) for the Detroit Red Wings for 25 years (and for seven more seasons on other U.S.-based teams), from 1946 through 1980. Howe died in 2016. Much like Gretzky, Howe dominated his era. They called him “Mr. Hockey,” and he set a netful of records that Gretzky later broke. And one other thing about Howe: He personified the mutual benefits of immigrant labor and free trade between two nations whose cultures greatly overlap on a Venn diagram.

Under Trump, those Can-Am bonds have frayed. Among those fretting is Drew Dilkens, the mayor of Windsor, which has an unemployment rate of more than 10 per cent. Many of his 229,660 residents depend on the United States economically. He calls the new bridge “monumental” and said its opening—whenever it happens—should be a joyful celebration, something now hard to fathom.

“It’s the type of event that you’d expect a prime minister and a president to meet in the middle [of the bridge], shake hands, and celebrate the relationship,” Dilkens said in a recent interview at Windsor City Hall, the river visible from the window. “Hopefully, our trade relationship normalizes and stabilizes.”

The combined metropolitan area of the Detroit and Windsor region includes 5.7 million people, On the U.S. side, 645,705 live in Detroit proper, among 4.3 million citizens of southeastern Michigan. Ford and Stellantis, which have their world and U.S. headquarters, respectively, in greater Detroit, run big plants in Windsor. But mutual ties go beyond shipping automobile parts and finished cars between the Motor City and its Canadian cousin. The mayor said 6,000 daily commuters—mostly engineers and medical workers—cross the U.S. border for jobs but live on the Canadian side. Beyond that, citing military alliances with the U.S. on D-Day in World War II and, more recently, in Middle East wars, Dilkens said of Canada: “We’re not a goddamn neutral country. We are an ally and a friend. And we are there with you. And we’ve got to figure this out. Because it’s gone to a dark place, and it never had to.”

In August, Trump raised tariff rates from 25 percent to 35 percent on Canadian goods not covered by other tariffs (like those on steel and aluminum) or by the United States–Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. In his first term, Trump often crowed that the USMCA was a personal diplomatic triumph that replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement. But since then, he’s often said that Canada “has been ripping us off.”

The Howe Bridge (owned and paid for by Canada’s federal government) will compete with the 95-year-old, privately owned Ambassador Bridge, about two miles upriver. Further upriver, a tunnel runs under the river from downtown Detroit to downtown Windsor, but it cannot accommodate big trucks. The new, silver suspension bridge will be approximately 1.5 miles long and a half-mile high at its peak. It will have three motor lanes each way and space for both cyclists and pedestrians.

The cost is between $6 billion and $7 billion (Canadian), “and maybe more,” the mayor said. (A Canadian dollar is worth about 72 U.S. cents.) Canada will collect tolls in both directions (the amount hasn’t been set yet). On it, truckers will be able to drive directly between the American interstate highway system (I-75, which runs from Miami to Detroit) and the major Canadian 401 highway toward London, Ontario, and Toronto without lengthy traffic-light delays and volume jams on surface streets on the west side of Windsor. Although the span is complete and the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority spent the summer officially touting a September opening, Mayor Dilkens predicted, “I’m hearing rumors it may be spring” due to unfinished work on the customs and immigration sites on the land of both sides of the bridge.

Hearing the same rumors is U.S. Representative Shri Thanedar, whose Michigan 13th district ends at the Detroit River and includes the Howe bridge off-ramp. (In a geographic quirk, Detroit is actually north of Windsor.) Thanedar said the “sign-off” has not yet been completed from the construction company to the immigration officials of both nations.

“We are at least six months away, if not more,” Thanedar said in an August telephone interview. And he said he worried about more than just the timeline of the bridge opening. “I am greatly concerned about the tariffs and what that’s going to do to our bilateral relations,” he said. “Trump, in a short period of time, has managed to offend a lot of countries. One (Canada) is a neighboring, friendly country,” the congressman said, adding that the U.S. should not be “insulting our allies.”

Echoing this was David Cohen, the former U.S. ambassador to Canada, who told CNN: “We’ve hurt the Canadians. And it takes more to be able to build back a relationship when you’ve undercut the underpinnings of the relationship.”

Trump has justified his treatment of Canada with the accusation that undocumented immigrants and the drug fentanyl both cross illegally into the U.S. from Canada. Both Thanedar and Dilkens reject that assertion. “There may have been some of it,” Thanedar said, “but not on a grand scale.” Dilkens was more emphatic, saying that less than 1 percent of fentanyl seized by U.S. authorities last year came from Canada. As for immigration, the mayor added with a chuckle: “You could have a nitwit brain and understand ... the issue was from the Southern border into the U.S., not from the northern border into the U.S. We know it’s all nonsense, but it’s really hard to battle the guy who has the biggest microphone on the planet.”

Trump started the verbal war with Canada shortly after the 2024 election. He invited Prime Minister Trudeau to dine with him at Mar-a-Lago on November 29. Trump said then that Canada should be the fifty-first state and that Trudeau should be its governor. (Later, Trump switched to Gretzky.) “I look forward to seeing the governor again soon so that we may continue our in depth talks on tariffs and trade,” Trump posted on social media.

To this, Trudeau responded: “Even though you are a very smart guy, this is a very dumb thing to do. We two friends fighting is exactly what our opponents around the world want to see.” He added that Trump wanted “a total collapse of the Canadian economy because that will make it easier to annex us.” He added: “That is never going to happen. We will never be the 51st state.”

After that, Trump refused to return Trudeau’s phone calls. He’s turned a similar cold shoulder to the new prime minister, Mark Carney. When Carney visited the White House in May, Trump said—in his presence—that “we want to make our own cars. We don’t really want cars from Canada. We put tariffs on cars from Canada. At a certain point, it won’t make economic sense for Canada to build their cars.”

Things softened a bit in late August when the prime minister announced that he’d talked to Trump by phone and that Canada would cut back some retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. Trump later said, “We want to be very good to Canada.” At the same time, though, August saw the end of regular bus service between Detroit and Windsor. And Neil Young attacked Trump, although not by name, in a song called “Big Crime.” The 79-year-old dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada sang lines like “No more great again” and “Don’t want soldiers on our streets.”

Amid all this, there suddenly appeared many flags of the red maple leaf on a white background. Canadian hockey fans booed the American national anthem. Ontario native Mike Myers made the instantly viral “Elbows Up” commercial with Carney. Many felt menaced. Dilkens said he flashed back in his patriotic mind to the War of 1812, with gunboats on the Detroit River as the U.S. battled the British Empire, which then controlled what was called Upper Canada. In that war, England captured the American fort at Detroit. A few blocks from the Windsor mayor’s office is a city museum that proudly displays from that war the Tecumseh flag, a red banner with a Union Jack in the upper left corner. Tecumseh was an Indian chief allied with Great Britain.

The ambiguity of relations between the two nations continued in the nineteenth century when the Detroit-Windsor border became a convenient water crossing on the Underground Railroad, a human-trafficking system (the good kind) by which African Americans escaped human slavery, which then was legal in some United States.

Decades later, before a bridge or a tunnel, when commerce in alcohol was illegal in the United States, in the 1920s, the Detroit River became a convenient route for booze boats skipping from Canada over the water, which is, on average, 2,000 feet wide and 36 feet deep. In winter during Prohibition, cars and even trucks would cross the frozen surface.

Sometimes, the ice broke. The 1987 book The Ambassador Bridge, by Philip Mason, records one such discovery during the building of that crossing, which opened in 1929. It was a truck under the surface in 25 feet of water, according to the Wayne State University scholar. It had fallen through the ice with two hundred cases of contraband liquor. Also in the Roaring Twenties, the Detroit hockey team, originally called the Cougars, was founded—and played its first home games in Windsor.

During the Vietnam War, draft resisters crossed the border into Canada here and elsewhere to avoid American military service. In that same era, Canada and Detroit cross-pollinated musically both over the air and on the ground for the baby boom. A powerful Windsor radio station—CKLW, 800-AM—blasted Detroit’s Motown hits with its 50,000 watts to at least a dozen states and four provinces.

In Detroit’s small music clubs, talented Canadian performers like Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and Gordon Lightfoot grew popular in the early stages of their careers. Young’s father, Toronto hockey writer Scott Young, appeared on Hockey Night in Canada. Detroit hockey fans watched it faithfully on Windsor TV because few Wings games were televised and they had to settle for the dreaded Toronto Maple Leafs. Hockey always linked Detroit and Windsor like a bridge.

And when the U.S. defeated the Soviet Union in Olympic hockey on a Friday afternoon in the 1980 Winter Games, en route to an epic gold medal, the American network ABC showed the upset of the USSR only on videotape delay that evening to manipulate its prime-time ratings. In so doing, the “American” Broadcasting Company cynically sacrificed a live event that was, arguably, the single most important American sports-news story of the era. However, a Canadian network, CTV, showed it live, and some households in Michigan watched it that way. That’s what friends are for.

Howe scored 801 NHL goals (and 975 overall, counting his later career in the short-lived World Hockey Association) by creating space for himself as a feared fistfighter (who rarely had to fight). He also created room with his elbows. The rallying cry of “Elbows Up!” used by Myers and others earlier this year drew directly from Howe-style hockey. In a 10-second TV news promo in heavy rotation on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the term is heard in a call-and-response chant at a protest rally. Amid 12 camera cuts, the viewer sees: a sign that says “Forever Neighbours Never Neighbors” (with the u in the Canadian-British spelling in red and the American spelling in red, white and blue); a sign at a demonstration warning, “1812-1814. Do we have to show you again?” and another sign that shows an upside-down American flag next to the message, “Up with elbows, Down with fascism.”

In the spring, amid Trump’s economic saber-rattling, Canadian and American demonstrators rallied against Trump and for unity from both sides of the river, facing each other shore to shore, downtown Detroit to downtown Windsor, waving maple leaf flags and signs (a few fastened to hockey sticks). Some sang “O Canada.”

Among them was Elaine Weeks, an author and political activist whose father, Bert Weeks, served as mayor of Windsor from 1975 to 1982. Her father’s name adorns one of several riverside parks with impressive views of the river and the Detroit skyline. Elaine Weeks helped organize another protest on July 5. When a big blowup of a Trump photograph was posted under a large Canadian flag on the riverfront, Weeks and others pelted it with tomatoes (grown in Ontario) and TimBits, which are pastry pieces from the Tim Hortons donut shop.

Sitting on her Windsor front porch on a humid summer afternoon, Weeks fondly recalled her regular visits to Detroit. “I miss the Mexican food and going to the games and to the concerts and shopping at Trader Joe’s,” she said. “I can’t go across now. I would be taken at the border and never be seen again.” When asked if she may have been exaggerating the danger a wee bit, Weeks said Canadians recently have been questioned about their political views by U.S. border guards and that vacationing Canadians in Florida have been denied service in restaurants for wearing clothing showing the maple leaf.

Weeks and her husband, Chris Edwards, own the company Walkerville Publishing, and they specialize in books about the relationships between Detroit and Windsor. The brand echoes their east side neighborhood, Walkerville. It comes from the nearby Hiram Walker whiskey distillery, a riverfront landmark, which, when the wind is right, sends clouds of sweet fumes into the air across the water into Detroit’s east side. This fall, Walkerville Publishing will issue a new hardcover called A River Runs Between Us. Their website features a quote from President John F. Kennedy regarding Canada: “Geography has made us neighbors,” it says. “History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners.”

Another elected leader of that era was Pierre Trudeau, Justin’s father, who also served as Canada’s prime minister. In a 1969 visit to Washington, Trudeau famously said of the United States: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”

Those fond of symbolic metaphors might note that the elephant has now gone fully rogue; it is unfriendly and ill-tempered and loose from its cage, breaking and trampling everything in sight. Built to last at least a century, the Howe Bridge might support the weight of the rampaging beast, but it may leave cracks that only time can repair.

Trump Just Effectively Ended the H-1B Visa Program - 2025-09-19T21:46:04Z

President Donald Trump will reportedly seek to increase the cost of an H-1B temporary visa by nearly 1,000 percent via a forthcoming proclamation. The program applies to foreign workers with bachelor’s degrees and job offers from U.S. employers in certain specialty occupations.

As soon as Friday, Bloomberg reports, Trump is planning on signing a proclamation barring entry under H-1B without a $100,000 payment. It is a marked increase from the $995 in fees currently required of H-1B applicants (a $215 registration fee, along with $780 for employer petition).

Economics journalist Catherine Rampell of MSNBC described the move as consistent with other Trump administration decisions poised to compromise “America’s role as a global leader in science and innovation,” including gutting the civil service, canceling research grants, and expelling international students.

“These are visas for skilled workers—doctors, scientists, and engineers,” wrote Representative Pramila Jayapal, a progressive Democrat, on X. “This move will hurt US innovation and exacerbate an already serious shortage of medical professionals. In what world does this make sense?”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an American Immigration Council fellow, observed that the move would exacerbate an ongoing shortage of doctors in the U.S.: “Every year, hundreds of doctors get H-1B visas to help fill those gaps,” he noted. “If hospitals had to pay an additional $100,000 fee, it’s possible they would simply give up and not even try to fill positions.”

Reichlin-Melnick also pointed out that the action is “likely to be struck down in court,” given that the U.S. government lacks “statutory authority to impose fees designed to limit the use of a visa.” Sam Peak of the Economic Innovation Group too predicted that the administration will “get sued and lose” over the move, given that the Department of Homeland Security “has a biannual fee schedule where they can change fees after notice and comment.”

Trump Just Revoked Deportation Protections From Thousands of Refugees - 2025-09-19T21:16:10Z

President Trump is taking deportation protections away from Syrian immigrants in the midst of a resurgence of militant groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Around 6,000 Syrians are currently living and working in America under Temporary Protected Status. Now they will be forced to return to a country that the United Nations described as “fragile,” and rife with “sectarian tension” just one month ago.

The U.N. reported that Syria still “remained in a volatile and precarious phase” six months after the fall of President Bashar Al Assad in December 2024. “Member States warned of growing risks posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Al-Qaeda, who continue to view the country as a strategic base for external operations.… The interim Government of the Syrian Arab Republic, led by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), faced multiple security challenges, including asserting control over territory and diverse armed factions/fighters, as well as controlling foreign terrorist fighters, and countering ISIL resurgence.”

This does not sound like a stable, amicable situation to abruptly force Syrians to go back to. These people came here as civil war refugees under President Obama, and now they’re being forced back into a situation that has similarly devolved into factional violence.

Former Citizenship and Immigration policy head Amanda Baran told The New York Times that the Trump administration’s revoking of Syrian TPS while the country deals with an internal power struggle is “gutting for the thousands of Syrians here with T.P.S. and the communities in which they live.”

“Conditions in Syria remain dangerous and unstable, clearly warranting an extension under the law,” she continued. “This administration’s disregard for the expertise of human rights experts is having real, dire consequences on the lives of everyday people as demonstrated by this reckless decision.”

But the Trump administration sees it much differently.

“This is what restoring sanity to America’s immigration system looks like,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary for public affairs at Homeland Security. “Conditions in Syria no longer prevent their nationals from returning home. Syria has been a hotbed of terrorism and extremism for nearly two decades, and it is contrary to our national interest to allow Syrians to remain in our country. T.P.S. is meant to be temporary.”

Syrians will have 60 days to gather their lives and leave the country, or face arrest and forced deportation.

The Trump administration has also spitefully moved to revoke the TPS status of people from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Cameroon.

I’m a Congressional Candidate. I Was Assaulted by ICE. - 2025-09-19T19:54:35Z

On Friday, Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old Democratic U.S. House candidate in Illinois’s 9th congressional district, was thrown forcefully to the ground by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent at a protest outside an ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois. The incident garnered widespread attention after Abughazaleh shared the footage online.

Abughazaleh, a New Republic contributor, was among a crowd demonstrating outside the facility, which is being used in a controversial immigration enforcement operation underway in Illinois. Ostensibly a “processing facility” intended to hold detainees for no more than 12 hours at a time, the center has reportedly held detainees “for days or even weeks,” Abughazaleh said in a recent YouTube video. Protesters have gathered weekly outside the facility and on Friday were reportedly met with severe force: They were tackled, detained, tear-gassed, and pepper-sprayed by ICE agents, who were masked and clad in tactical gear.

Speaking with TNR hours after the protest, Abughazaleh described the abuses she witnessed and experienced earlier in the day.

This is what it looks like when ICE violates our First Amendment rights. pic.twitter.com/EneI3BAkPF

— Kat Abughazaleh (@KatAbughazaleh) September 19, 2025

Could you walk me through the sequence of events this morning that led to the moments you shared online?

For the past three weeks, I’ve been attending protests at the Broadview ICE facility. There’s been a vigil there for almost two decades at this point, but they started ramping up after three protesters were arrested four weeks ago.

Three weeks ago, we went, and it was very peaceful. We ended up actually getting a car to turn around. Last week, when we went, ICE assaulted a lot of us. We went early because they changed their deportation time to around 6 a.m. ICE threw me to the ground then and assaulted other protesters, as well. That was the same day as the Franklin Park murder, and someone else was shot with pepper balls then.

And then today, my friend and I woke up at 3 a.m. and went to the facility. We got there and were sitting on public property. ICE agents told us to essentially go away: “Your First Amendment rights are on the sidewalk.” Around 6 a.m., they started bringing out a van, and we were in the way, so an ICE agent once again picked me up and threw me to the ground—they love throwing me. The video that people saw was after that. But during that first altercation, they took one of the protesters inside the facility—that’s the first time this has ever happened. We don’t know what happened to that person—we still don’t know where they are.

What happened in the video that has been going around social media for most of the day?

The second altercation was when a car came out of the facility. I went to go aid another protester—once again, on public property. This is all on streets of the town of Broadview. That is when that video happened, when the officer picked me up and threw me on the ground.

And then around 8:30, 9 a.m., we saw that the protester that was arrested was being put in chains and brought into a van. And so I and about 40, maybe even 50, other people that stayed were arm-in-arm to block this car because someone was detained just for exercising their right to protest. ICE tried to run us over, like, plain and simple. A guy fell to the ground, and they kept driving. We got him up, thank God. They kept driving to the point that my friend was on the hood of the car. They started shooting us with pepper balls, and then they deployed tear gas.

The van drove away, and we don’t know where that protester is. In the chaos, they took two other people in. A little bit before that, they actually tried to take another protester, and I and two other guys—it was literally like tug-of-war—ended up keeping him out of the facility.

What have you made of the response to the video of you being thrown to the ground?

I mean, frankly, I’m shocked that people are shocked about this. They did similar [things] last week. This was the most aggressive action they’ve taken. But once last week, twice today, ICE has picked me up and thrown me on the ground.

Honestly, it doesn’t compare to what our neighbors who are trapped inside the Broadview processing facility are going through. They’re committing crimes against humanity there. This is a processing facility, so people are not supposed to be held for more than 12 hours at a time, but they are being held for days or even weeks. They are not given beds. They sleep on the concrete. They are not given hygienic products. They are not given hot meals. And these aren’t criminals. There are literally pregnant women and grandmothers in there. Last week when we saw them being loaded into a van, they were wearing the same clothes that they were detained in.

This is what ICE is. And we need to recognize that. It’s unfortunate that, just because I’m a congressional candidate, this is more newsworthy than if it would have happened to another protester. This shouldn’t be happening to anyone. And we don’t even know what is happening to the protesters who were kidnapped. We don’t know what is happening to our neighbors who were kidnapped and are being detained there. This is what Trump’s America looks like.

You tweeted, “This is what it looks like when ICE violates our First Amendment rights.” Could you expand on that?

The right wants to eliminate free speech. They want to eliminate the First Amendment. They only want people to express speech that they specifically allow. There is no type of capitulation that will satisfy them except complete and utter submission, which is why solidarity is so important. It’s why having companies like ABC cowering to Trump, or universities cowering to Trump, why that does so much harm to all of us.

And ICE is being able to operate with impunity. They are able to operate outside of the law. I don’t know who any of the men who have shoved me, pushed me, picked me up, shot pepper balls at my body—I don’t know who any of them are. They don’t have badge numbers. They don’t have names. They don’t have identification. They’re wearing masks. They’re wearing sunglasses at night. They’re wearing hats. They’re complete ghosts. For all I know, they’re just some guy that was like, “Today I want to work at the ICE facility and rough up some 110-pound girl.”

And that means that they can do whatever they want. This is the secret police. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it. And that means that they can designate anything a crime. They can designate protesting as a crime. They can say that speech is a crime. They can just assign any idea, ideology, condition, or act to you, and say, “Well, I saw it happen, so that’s what the truth is. And I can do whatever I want to this citizen, to this civilian, to this person who did nothing wrong, because I’m an ICE officer and I’m above the law.”

What would you like to see from your fellow Democrats?

We need Democrats to put up an aggressive response to ICE. This facility in Illinois needs to be shut down, but these facilities across the country need to be shut down. We need more representatives like [New York City Comptroller] Brad Lander to be standing up for our communities. We need elected representatives at all levels of government to be demanding these facilities have any sort of transparency and abide by our own laws. And it is not controversial or tearing us apart to insist that basic humanity, basic decency, is not only respected but expected in our country.

Here’s What Trump’s Offering People Who Help Fund His New Ballroom - 2025-09-19T19:24:14Z

If you donate to President Donald Trump’s vanity construction project, then you, too, could have the privilege of leaving a physical stain on American history: In exchange for contributions, donors may be able to have their names etched into the stone of the new White House ballroom.

The ballroom, which will cost roughly $250 million, will be paid for by private donors and the president himself, Trump has said. White House officials have said that nearly $200 million has already been pledged.

So far, Google, tobacco company R.J. Reynolds, government cybersecurity contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, data analysis and surveillance company Palantir, and weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin have all donated, with Lockheed Martin donating more than $10 million to the project.

Some officials from donor companies say that their decision to contribute was made out of a desire to show support for Trump while still backing a nonpartisan cause, as the ballroom will outlive the president’s term, according to CBS. Of course, their pledge agreements call the project “The Donald J. Trump Ballroom at the White House.” But that could mean anything!

Indeed, donations to the ballroom may well be even more meaningful to the president than these corporations realized, as its development has proven a balm to Trump while he mourns the death of ally Charlie Kirk. In times of trouble, some people look to family; others look to faith. Trump looks to construction.

Even Ted Cruz Recognizes Jimmy Kimmel’s Suspension Is Dangerous - 2025-09-19T19:17:02Z

Is it a scene “right out” of Goodfellas, or is it just another day under the Trump administration?

That’s the question that Texas Senator Ted Cruz is asking, after he likened Brendan Carr to a “mafioso” over the FCC chairman’s recent threats to punish TV networks that refused to expunge Jimmy Kimmel from the air.

“I hate what Jimmy Kimmel said, I am thrilled that he was fired,” Cruz said on his podcast. “But let me tell you: If the government gets in the business of saying, ‘We don’t like what you, the media, have said; we’re going to ban you from the airwaves if you don’t say what we like’—that will end up bad for conservatives.”

The Texas Republican further condemned Carr’s actions as “dangerous as hell,” comparing the Trump administration’s slippery attraction to government-enforced censorship to the heinous power of the One Ring from Lord of the Rings. Opening the door to that at the federal level would not bode well when Democrats return to power, Cruz said.

“They will silence us,” Cruz continued. “They will use this power, and they will use it ruthlessly.”

But unlike some other conservatives who have chastised the Trump administration’s flagrant First Amendment overstep, Cruz actually wields a unique ability to hold Carr accountable: In addition to his other responsibilities, Cruz serves as the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has oversight authority over the FCC.

At a Politico event earlier this week—before the Kimmel fiasco—Cruz said that the First Amendment “absolutely protects hate speech,” even if it does not shield people from the “consequences” of their speech by their employers.

Kimmel’s late-night show was suspended indefinitely after he made supposedly controversial comments during his Monday night monologue about the political affiliation of Charlie Kirk’s suspected assassin. (Kimmel condemned Kirk’s death as a “senseless murder” but ruffled powerful feathers when he said that MAGA was rushing to claim that Tyler Robinson was “anything other than one of them”—which is technically true.)

On Wednesday, Carr suggested to YouTuber Benny Johnson that the FCC would open an investigation into anyone still platforming the comedian. Sinclair and Nexstar—two of the country’s biggest broadcasters—said they would no longer air Kimmel’s show. The timing was unmistakable: Nexstar, notably, is currently seeking FCC approval for a $6.2 billion deal to buy Tegna, an acquisition that would make Nexstar the biggest owner of local stations in the country.

Does Trump Actually Know the Status of His TikTok Deal With China? - 2025-09-19T18:40:28Z

President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social Friday boasting that China had approved a deal that would allow TikTok to keep operating in the United States under new ownership—but Chinese President Xi Jinping seems to think otherwise.

After the presidents spoke over the phone, Trump posted that they had “made progress on many very important issues,” including “the approval of the TikTok Deal.”

But the first official readout of the call, from an agency in Beijing, made no mention of the deal, according to Politico.

Instead, Xi reiterated China’s long-standing position that negotiations over the app will continue.

“China’s position on the TikTok issue is clear,” the readout said. “The Chinese government respects the wishes of companies and welcomes them to conduct commercial negotiations based on market rules and reach solutions that comply with Chinese laws.… China hopes that the U.S. will provide an open, fair, and non-discriminatory business environment for Chinese companies to invest in the U.S.”

TikTok’s future in the U.S. has been up in the air for months. Trump has repeatedly pushed back enforcement of a law that requires the platform to either be controlled by a U.S. company or banned. The most recent postponement was Tuesday, when Trump delayed the deadline again until mid-December.

Lawmakers purportedly passed the ban to address national security concerns, and to prevent China from collecting Americans’ data. But ever since the 2024 election, Trump’s become partial to the platform—not for its viral dances or indecipherable Gen Alpha memes, but because he thinks it helped get him elected.

Trump Is Coming For Liberal Nonprofits Next - 2025-09-19T18:03:19Z

Liberal-left nonprofits are, understandably, on edge as the Trump administration appears poised to treat the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk as a pretext for cracking down on liberal and progressive organizations.

In the immediate wake of the shooting, President Trump baselessly pinned the violence on the “radical left,” vowing to hunt down organizations that he claims “support” violence or “go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.” Earlier this week, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller similarly promised to pursue “an organized strategy to go after left-leaning organizations” that supposedly promote violence.

Attorney and commentator Norm Eisen—who runs one such group, Democracy Defenders Action—has circulated a draft open letter, titled “An Open Letter Opposing Threats by the Administration Against Nonprofits & Charities,” among allies, reported Gabe Kaminsky, of the conservative digital publication The Free Press, on Friday.

The statement, which begins by condemning Kirk’s murder, goes on to say:

It is un-American and wrong to use this act of violence as a pretext for weaponizing the government to threaten nonprofit and charitable organizations, other perceived adversaries, or any class of people. They did not commit this murder, and the vast powers of the government should not be abused to threaten their constitutionally-protected free speech and other rights.

Attacks on nonprofits threaten to impede “essential work,” the draft letter continues, including “working with faith communities, caring for vulnerable populations, upholding the Constitution, [and] defending the rule of law.” Urging the government to de-escalate, it concludes: “This moment of tragedy does not call for exploiting a horrific act to further deepen our divides and make us less safe. It calls for unity—unity against violence and unity of purpose as Americans.”

Vladimir Putin Is Pushing Trump Toward a Massive Confrontation - 2025-09-19T17:33:50Z

Vladimir Putin is once again calling Europe’s bluff. 

Three Russian fighter jets entered Estonian airspace on Friday in a significant display of aggression that will test NATO’s cohesiveness and President Trump’s patience. 

“Highly concerning reports of Russian violation of Estonian airspace. This incident, like other recent Russian violations of NATO countries’ airspace, once again illustrates the seriousness of the Russian threat to European security and the fact that our and NATO’s readiness is constantly being tested,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson wrote Friday on X. “The Swedish Air Force maintains a standing quick reaction alert to handle incidents such as this. As a NATO member, Sweden stands in solidarity with our allies and contributes to security in our region.” 

Estonia is the third NATO member to have its airspace intruded upon by either jet or drone in just a few days. 

“Russia has already violated Estonia’s airspace four times this year, which in itself is unacceptable. But today’s incursion, involving three fighter aircraft entering our airspace, is unprecedentedly brazen,” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna told CNN. ““Russia’s increasingly extensive testing of boundaries and growing aggressiveness must be met with a swift increase in political and economic pressure.” 

It’s unclear whether that pressure will be enough to make the Kremlin back down, as it certainly hasn’t up to this point. Russia has enough cash and weaponry stockpiled to weather any sanction the EU may throw their way. The X factor here will once again be Trump and his attention span. For what it’s worth, Trump has spoken more negatively about Putin in recent days, telling the media Thursday that the Russian president had “let [him] down” in reaching peace talks.   

Judge Shreds Trump’s NYT Lawsuit for Lacking “Legitimate Legal Claims” - 2025-09-19T16:54:56Z

A federal judge struck President Donald Trump’s complaint against The New York Times Friday, dismissing the suit as just angry ramblings.

According to the clearly frustrated Judge Steven Merryday, the 85-page complaint filed by Trump’s legal team was, essentially, a pile of garbage.

“A complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective—not a protected platform to rage against an adversary,” the judge wrote. “A complaint is not a megaphone for public relations or a podium for a passionate oration at a political rally or the functional equivalent of the Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner.”

Merryday’s striking of Trump’s complaint isn’t a commentary on the suit’s merits; rather, Merryday’s decision is a statement that long-winded gripes, repetitive and superfluous praises of the president, and an extensive list of Trump’s properties and media appearances have no place in a legal complaint. In 85 pages, only two counts of defamation are alleged.

Trump has 28 days to submit a new complaint—one that is no more than 40 pages long and a “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.”

Trump’s suit against the Times claims that the paper and its reporters defamed him during the 2024 election, resulting in “enormous” economic losses and damaging his “professional and occupational interests.”

In response, a Times spokesperson said that the lawsuit is meritless and “lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting.”

“The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics,” the spokesperson said.

Trump’s NATO Ambassador Takes Unhinged Stance on “Russian Threat” - 2025-09-19T16:31:20Z

The Trump administration’s messaging on Russia’s recent incursions is loud and clear: It’s just not a big deal.

Speaking with Fox Business Friday, America’s NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker claimed that Russia’s threat was “a little overstated” and that the superpower was actually weaker than American and European media had portrayed.

“They have not had a lot of success. And to your point, Ukraine has actually taken back territory. And, you know, to me that points to a weakness in Russia,” Whitaker said. “As their economy continues to falter, I think their continuation of this war is going to be difficult.”

But European leaders do not feel the same way—particularly as Russia has escalated its position. Last week, Russian drones were spotted in Polish airspace, forcing the NATO ally to shut down four of its airports as it scrambled to fire up its defense systems against the incursion. Poland’s leadership invoked Article 4 of the NATO Treaty the following day, calling the ​​situation the “closest” that Poland had come to armed conflict “since the Second World War.”

Rather than de-escalate the brewing situation in Eastern Europe, Russia followed up the incursion by threatening Finland, another NATO ally. And on Friday, three Russian fighter jets flew into Estonian airspace.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s soft touch on Russia has been noted by both the Kremlin and America’s Western allies. Speaking inches away from Trump during a press conference in England Thursday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer insisted that the U.S. leader needed to “put extra pressure” on Russian President Vladimir Putin, underscoring that it’s only when the United States forces the Russian dictator’s hand that Moscow has “actually shown any inclination to move.”

Trump told reporters that he believed resolving the Ukraine-Russia conflict would be easy because of his “relationship” with Putin, but that the Russian leader had instead let him down. He also scolded European leaders for waylaying sanctions against Russia as they continue to consume the country’s oil, bolstering Russia’s economy in the process.

But overall, the U.S. president has little to show for the profound international recognition he’s offered the Kremlin over the last few months. Against the advice of world leaders, Trump invited Putin to Alaska in August—tasking U.S. soldiers to literally roll out the red carpet for the Russian dictator. It was the first time that Putin had stepped foot on U.S. soil in more than a decade.

Still, Russia has not agreed to peace terms in its ongoing war against Ukraine. The superpower has instead insisted on receiving “international legal recognition” of its 2014 annexation of Crimea, an internationally recognized portion of Ukraine, along with four regions it has claimed in the three years since it first invaded Ukraine.

Whitaker, however, is still holding out hope that his boss will make the best call.

“President Trump is going to continue to find the leverage and to find the conditions where he can bring both sides and mediate a resolution,” Whitaker told Fox Business.

NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker: "I think the Russian threat sometimes is a little overstated."pic.twitter.com/sFEMIDzv2D

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) September 19, 2025

Trump Firing Top Prosecutor for Failing to Invent Fake Crimes by Foes - 2025-09-19T16:29:10Z

President Donald Trump is set to fire a top federal prosecutor for committing a serious dereliction of duty, ABC News reports. What exactly is this prosecutor’s offense, you ask? Did he fail to follow Justice Department protocol? Blow an easy prosecution? Botch the handling of evidence?

Nope. Trump is set to remove Erik Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, for being faithful to facts, evidence, and guidelines governing good prosecutorial conduct, rather than fully corrupting his office to target Trump’s enemies.

That’s not a rhetorical cheap shot. It’s what Trump is actually doing, per ABC:

President Donald Trump is expected to fire the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after his office was unable to find incriminating evidence of mortgage fraud against New York Attorney General Letitia James, according to sources.

Federal prosecutors in Virginia had uncovered no clear evidence to prove that James had knowingly committed mortgage fraud when she purchased a home in the state in 2023, ABC News first reported earlier this week, but Trump officials pushed U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert to nevertheless bring criminal charges against her, according to sources.

That sounds buffoonish, but it also represents grave misconduct on Trump’s part. The president’s accomplice in this scheme—William Pulte, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency—has been highlighting so-called “mortgage fraud” by Trump’s leading enemies, and using that as a pretext to refer them to DOJ for prosecution.

These foes have included California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, and James. Yet the scheme is falling apart everywhere. The allegations of mortgage fraud—which involve the designation of multiple residences as primary ones—don’t indicate serious transgressions. Trump officials and even Pulte’s relatives have done similar. And with both Schiff and Cook, exculpatory evidence has emerged.

Now, in James’s case, U.S. Attorney Siebert has failed to find evidence of criminality despite investigating for five months. Investigators sought to show that James had knowingly falsified documents to secure favorable mortgage terms.

Instead, they found that one document that might have been incriminating had limited significance, and every other relevant document was accurate. Yet Trump officials are pressuring Siebert to bring charges anyway.

Trump hates James, of course, because she successfully brought a massive civil fraud case against him, resulting in a fine of hundreds of millions of dollars. Though an appeals court tossed the fine, the verdict stands, and Trump has sought retribution for years.

Now Trump is set to fire that top prosecutor precisely because he apparently will not cook the facts to make the original allegation against James stand:

Sources familiar with the matter said that the administration now plans to install a U.S. attorney who would more aggressively investigate James.

Translation: Trump will replace him with someone who will pliably bring prosecutions against Trump’s enemies when the facts don’t warrant it. As Jon Favreau put it: “The president is firing prosecutors who won’t help him get revenge on his political enemies by making up fake crimes.”

There’s a deeper absurdity about this whole affair that’s worth highlighting. At the core of Trump’s whole tit-for-tat retribution project is the aim of entirely erasing the very idea of legitimate guilt and innocence.

Yes, Trump does assert that James is guilty of crimes and that he is innocent of them. And so do his propagandists. “She is guilty of multiple significant serial criminal violations,” Stephen Miller seethed recently, calling James “corrupt” and “shameless.” (One imagines that as the facts refused to cooperate, Miller was on the phone shrieking wildly that Siebert had better bring a prosecution or else.)

But ultimately, what Trump and Miller are actually doing is trying to establish the ethos that all prosecutions are just a power struggle, that the only guilt-versus-innocence metric that has any force is established by who wins elections (by any means necessary) and, by extension, who gets to prosecute whom.

The James affair reveals this starkly. James’s office actually did the work of building a case against Trump, and mostly succeeded, securing a verdict (if not a penalty) that stands. Trump and Miller thought they could simply command the prosecution of James in response and automatically get it. Now that the facts aren’t playing along, they’re simply looking for a new prosecutor who will bring a case against her regardless.

All this is grist for the bigger idea that Trump is a politically weak and ineffectual president who’s simultaneously consolidating autocratic power in areas where he has more flexibility to do so. As Jonathan Bernstein notes, Trump’s record in lower courts is terrible, which is part of a larger dynamic in which he constantly loses on many fronts where he faces real opposition. Indeed, there’s a kind of split screen here: Trump can appear “strong” by ordering troops into cities and blowing up little boats in the Caribbean Sea, and his sycophants can boast about it to puff him up further:

Vance on Trump's strikes on boats: "I wouldn't go fishing right now in that area of the world." pic.twitter.com/YdXmvCkV2B

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 17, 2025

But that’s enabled by the murkiness of the law around limited unilateral military strikes and Congress willingly ceding presidents warmaking authorities for decades. Similarly, Trump can force news organizations to deliver him the scalps of comedians when corrupt lackeys like FCC Chair Brendan Carr can leverage legal uncertainties around the licensing process to do so. As consequential as these things are, they represent what you might call “easier” autocratic paths for Trump.

Yet the James affair shows that on other fronts, Trump is running into deep institutional resistance and the sheer unwillingness of many key actors to wholly abandon the rule of law on his behalf. Yes, Trump may replace the prosecutor, but then he’ll have to get this sham past many layers of courts and a jury. It’s unlikely to happen. And this Supreme Court could always find a way to let Trump remove Cook, but that will likely prove temporary. Thus far, this whole “mortgage fraud” scam is utterly failing to advance his broader authoritarian project. And there’s no reason to think that will change anytime soon.

Senate Republicans Push Through Motion to Honor Charlie Kirk - 2025-09-19T16:15:22Z

The Senate has passed a “National Day of Remembrance” resolution to honor conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk after he was killed last week.

Introduced by Senator Rick Scott, the resolution praises Kirk as a “courageous American patriot” who sought to “elevate truth, foster understanding, and strengthen the Republic.”

It calls Kirk’s killing “a sobering reminder of the growing threat posed by political extremism and hatred in our society.” It does not mention the things Kirk said that were divisive, racist, and promoted the intense polarization to which Republicans credit his killing.

Since this is just a simple resolution passed by unanimous consent, it is not enshrined law and didn’t require a full Senate vote.

In June, the House passed a resolution to condemn the killing of Minnesota state lawmaker Melissa Hortman, but it did not create a national day of mourning in her honor.

Kirk’s day of remembrance will take place on his birthday, October 14.

In a twist of fate, that date also marks the birthday of another slain American father, one whom Kirk called a “scumbag,” and whose murder at the hands of police Kirk falsely suggested was really a drug overdose: George Floyd.

Majority of Republican Voters Now Think Country is Going Wrong Way - 2025-09-19T15:35:42Z

The majority of Republican voters now feel that the country is going in the wrong direction, a huge spike in negativity from the 29 percent who were saying that in June, according to a new poll of over 1,000 Americans from the Associated Press.

This spike in pessimism on the right is in some part linked to the killing of Charlie Kirk and the discourse around political violence that followed. And while polls aren’t everything, numbers like these in the midst of Trump’s second term may spell trouble for the party going into the midterms, as its base’s feelings might indicate that the GOP has overplayed its hand on issues like immigration, the economy, and free speech.

“I’ve spent a lot of time worrying about the worsening political discourse and, now, the disturbing assassinations,” 42-year-old Texas Republican Chris Bahr told the AP. “If you’d have talked to me two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have brought it up as a main concern but more of a gnawing feeling.… It’s something I’ve been thinking about. But now it’s violence, while before it was just this sense of animosity and division.”

The outlook is even worse for GOPers under 45, as 61 percent of them think this country is backsliding—a 30 percent increase since this June. And they have plenty of reasons to be. The cost of living is still high, inflation is not down, and the prices on everyday goods are likely to go up too. And nearly 75 percent of Republican women think they’ve lost their way, compared to 56 percent of Republican men. The conditions for a ballot box rebuke of the current GOP are fomenting.

“It’s like, you think you’re heading in the right direction with your career and your job, but everything around you is going up in price. It seems like you can’t catch a break,” 42-year-old truck driver Mustafa Robinson told AP. “But we are also supposed to be united as a country and coming together. And we are not. I’m so perplexed how we’re not on the same page about anything, so bad that these people are being shot.”

Overall, only about 25 percent of Americans think we’re headed in the right direction, whatever that may be to them. This is down from 40 percent just two months ago. The poll can be seen here.

House Kicks Off Chaotic Battle After Passing Spending Bill - 2025-09-19T15:33:20Z

The Republican-controlled House has passed another stopgap bill to keep the government chugging along until late November.

The final tally Friday morning was 217–212, with just one Democrat—Maine Representative Jared Golden—voting alongside all but two Republicans to pass it. Conservative Representatives Tim Burchett and Victoria Spartz sided with the rest of the Democrats in voting against the continuing resolution.

The measure now advances to the Senate, where Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has already promised to defeat it. In its stead, Democratic leadership in the upper chamber have proposed a separate funding plan—though that is also expected to be rejected on the Senate floor late Friday.

The House bill extends the current level of federal funding without making any changes to federal policy. It will keep the government up and running until November 21, which will likely cause another kerfuffle on the eve of Congress’s Thanksgiving recess.

The Democratic Senate bill, meanwhile, would initiate a series of policy changes, including extending Obamacare subsidies and nixing the “big, beautiful” bill’s Medicaid cuts. That plan would fund the government through October 31.

House Speaker Mike Johnson addressed Schumer shortly after the vote, informing the New York politico that the ball was now in his court.

“I hope he does the right thing,” Johnson told reporters. “I hope he does not choose to shut the government down and inflict pain, unnecessarily, on the American people. I hope that they will vote on this clean, short-term CR, so that we can continue the work to get our appropriations done.”

If Schumer’s recent actions are anything to go by, the senator is unlikely to force his caucus into a shutdown showdown. Months ago, when the party was unified in its opposition to Trump’s landmark legislation, Schumer argued that a government shutdown would have “consequences for America that are much, much worse” than the president’s $880 billion cut to social programs.

A shutdown would give the Trump administration “carte blanche to destroy vital government services at a significantly faster rate than they can right now,” Schumer said at the time. “Under a shutdown, the Trump administration would have full authority to deem whole agencies programs and personnel nonessential, furloughing staff with no promise they would ever be rehired.”

Remember This Week—It’s the Week America Became a Different Place - 2025-09-19T15:15:35Z

The suspension of Jimmy Kimmel was about the 2,786th objectionable thing this second Trump administration has done. Many of its attacks on the American way of life have been utterly horrific—some have been direct assaults on the rule of law, others have sent completely innocent human beings to detention camps. So why does an action taken against a late-night host stand out?

It’s a frontal attack on the one element of our social contract that nearly everyone, from left to right, agrees on and values more than anything: freedom of speech. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787 decided against including a Bill of Rights, confident that everyone would understand that the federal government would exercise only the powers enumerated in the document itself. But many critics, mostly those known as the anti-Federalists, insisted that that wasn’t enough. They said: Add a list of specifically enumerated rights, or we’re not ratifying.

And so, James Madison, who had been a strong opponent of such a list in 1787, turned around and, as a member of the first U.S. Congress representing the fifth district of Virginia, drew up the list the critics demanded. His original list included 17 rights. Congress passed 12, and the states ratified 10.

There was never any question as to which right would be enumerated first. The First Amendment concerns both religion and speech, but over the centuries, freedom of worship has grown less contested, and it has been the cause of free speech rights for which people have fought and gone to prison. Historically, most attempts to suppress speech have come from those in power trying to silence various forms of protest or dissent (hence, from the right, generally speaking). Recent years have seen the emergence of a small but vocal anti–free speech left, whose presence is mostly limited to social media and college campuses, and which is about to make Bari Weiss a very rich woman.

But the vast majority of us agree: Free speech is inviolate and applies to all of us, even those with noxious views. A poll last year found that 63 percent of Americans considered free speech “very important.” It was second only to inflation and ahead of crime, health care, immigration, and seven other issues. Not bad for an abstract idea.

But abstract ideas last only as long as those who have power—political and financial power—agree that they should last. James Madison couldn’t have contemplated Donald Trump. And he never would have imagined Perry Sook and Chris Ripley.

Wait, who are Perry Sook and Chris Ripley, you ask? They are the men, Sook in particular, who made this Kimmel cancellation, this direct attack against free speech, happen. Their names don’t appear in many news stories. More people need to know who they are.

Sook is the CEO of Nexstar Media Group. He started the company in the 1990s with one local television station, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Today, Nexstar owns 197 stations. It also operates NewsNation, the cable news channel trying to compete with Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. NewsNation is where disgraced CNN anchor Chris Cuomo landed, and its “talent” is somewhat ideologically mixed. But Sook, 66, has dropped broad hints in past interviews about his own leanings. Last November, he expressed the hope that “fact-based journalism will come back into vogue, as well as eliminating the level of activist journalism out there.” You might think that by “activist journalism,” he means, you know, the cable news network that paid a $787 million settlement to a private company to avoid being forced to admit that it told lies about the 2020 election. But you’d be wrong. On Wednesday, he showed us what and who he means by “activist journalism”: Jimmy Kimmel, over one comment that right-wing social media went to town on.

Chris Ripley is the CEO of the Sinclair Broadcast Group. Sinclair is better known than Nexstar. It vaulted to public prominence after that chilling 2018 video went viral of dozens of local Sinclair anchors reading from the same Orwellian script about “fake news.” Sinclair is more avowedly right-wing than Nexstar. But they both passionately share and are pursuing one central right-wing goal: the end of media regulation in the United States. Under FCC rules, no single owner can reach more than 39 percent of households.

These kinds of regulations go back to the 1920s, when radio first hit the scene, and they were designed to make sure that Americans heard a range of voices. No one on either end of the political spectrum challenged them for decades. In the late 1960s, a Pennsylvania right-wing radio preacher (why is it always people like this?) went on air to smear a local journalist who had attacked Barry Goldwater. The matter went up to the Supreme Court, which held—unanimously, left to right—that the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine was consistent with the First Amendment: That is, the court said, yes, the exposure to opposing viewpoints was an essential part of democracy.

Traditional news and speech values, imperfect though they were, held for about six decades. Then merger mania hit in the 1980s, and we began to understand that media companies were companies—were interested in profit more than civic ideas such as truth and free speech. At the same time, the Reagan administration started going after the Fairness Doctrine. Later came Rupert Murdoch and Fox. Then came merger after merger after merger. Sad to say, it was Barack Obama’s FCC, under Chair Julius Genachowski, that finally killed off the Fairness Doctrine officially, but it had been long since functionally dead anyway.

Right now, Sook awaits FCC approval of a merger that will allow Nexstar to be in more than 39 percent of American homes. And Sinclair wants to grow and grow. And that is what happened Wednesday night. Sook announced that his 32 ABC stations would not broadcast Kimmel’s show. Sinclair, with its 30 ABC affiliates, made a similar announcement shortly thereafter. And ABC—or really, Disney—caved.

Even so, this might not have been quite the crisis it is with someone else in the White House. Under President Kamala Harris, for example, would Sook and Nexstar even be petitioning a Democratic FCC for this merger? Probably not. The current Democratic commissioner, Anna Gomez, has clearly stated her opposition (to TNR’s Greg Sargent, among others) to what Chairman Brendan Carr did in threatening ABC and Kimmel. Recent Democratic FCC Chairs Jessica Rosenworcel (Biden) and Tom Wheeler (Obama) have been strong voices for media diversity. It seems to me a safe bet that under President Harris, none of this would be happening.

But she is not in the White House. Donald Trump is. And a right-wing hero was just assassinated. Trump and his movement will use Charlie Kirk’s murder to justify any number of unconstitutional and illegal actions. And it filters down from them. Clemson University has fired five faculty and administrators. Teachers are losing their jobs over their social media posts about Kirk. And it sure isn’t Trump firing them. He has created an atmosphere of fear that many, many others on down the right-wing food chain, from Sook and Ripley to local school administrators, will zealously enforce.

And that’s why this week is different. It pitted a near-universally cherished American value against a combination of corporate power and authoritarian contempt for that value—and the value was smashed to pieces.

If you’re terrified of where all this may end, you are right to be. Stephen Colbert is gone; Kimmel, possibly gone for good (I hope not). CBS is becoming conservative. Skydance, the company handing CBS to Bari Weiss, may be about to take over CNN. The Washington Post is cracking up. The New York Times faces another one of Trump’s $15 billion lawsuits. In this next year or two, we may well be counting on the Times to do what CBS and ABC have refused to do and fight this battle to the bitter end.

The text of the First Amendment was edited down from Madison’s original language. His first-draft passage on speech and the press said: “The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable.”

I wish that language had remained—it’s clearer and more emphatic, especially that “inviolable” part. It might have stiffened the backs of the people we’re going to be counting on to preserve free speech in this country and made it harder for right-wing federal judges to chip away at these rights. It would not, alas, make any difference to tyrants, and as of Wednesday night, it’s clearer than it ever was before that tyranny is where we’re headed.

The FBI Is Coming for Trans People - 2025-09-19T14:31:24Z

The FBI is rearing up to target transgender people, according to a new report by independent national security journalist Ken Klippenstein.

Discussions are reportedly underway in the Trump administration to designate transgender people as “violent extremists” in the wake of last week’s shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Authorities say the roommate and apparent romantic partner of Tyler Robinson, the alleged gunman, is “transitioning from male to female.” Notably, Robinson’s partner had no prior knowledge of the attack and “has been very cooperative with authorities,” according to Utah Governor Spencer Cox. There “is not a solid understanding” as to whether Robinson’s relationship was connected to his alleged actions, a federal official told NBC.

And yet the attack is, per Klippenstein, being used to justify plans to go after trans individuals by labeling them “nihilistic violent extremists.” Klippenstein reports that “the new classification, sources say, gives Trump officials political (and media) cover.”

“They are cynically targeting trans people because the shooter’s lover was trans,” said a senior intelligence official, one of two national security personnel to tell Klippenstein of the FBI’s plan. “The administration has convinced itself that the Charlie Kirk murder exposes some dark conspiracy.”

Klippenstein’s report offers yet another example of the Trump administration and broader MAGA right seizing on Kirk’s death as a flimsy pretext to crack down on purported undesirables.

Trump Must Be Furious That Revenge on Letitia James Isn’t Working Out - 2025-09-19T14:30:14Z

Donald Trump’s quest to dig up more dirt on New York Attorney General Letiita James has not gone according to plan—and now the man put in charge of the operation could be on the outs.

Trump is reportedly considering axing the attorney tasked with finding evidence that James committed mortgage fraud. Erik Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, has already been informed that the president intends to fire him, reported ABC News Thursday night. Siebert’s last day on the job is expected to be Friday.

Federal prosecutors were unable to find incriminating evidence that James had knowingly committed fraud when she purchased a home in Virginia in 2023. But the lack of proof apparently didn’t matter to the Trump administration, which had ordered Siebert to bring criminal charges against her.

While Trump only nominated Siebert for the job in May, the decision to give him the boot a few short months later “could throw into crisis one of the most prominent U.S. attorney’s offices, which handles a bulk of the country’s espionage and terrorism cases, and heighten concerns about Trump’s alleged use of the DOJ to target his political adversaries,” according to ABC News.

Trump administration officials intend to replace Siebert with someone who they believe will be even harder on James, sources familiar with the matter told ABC.

New York’s top cop has become one of the president’s chief legal adversaries since she bested him in his bank fraud case in 2024. Trump’s revenge began to take form in April, when his administration launched an investigation into James’s personal finances, accusing her of lying on her bank statements in order to obtain better mortgage rates.

At the time, Trump referred to James as a “totally corrupt politician,” a “wacky crook,” and accused James—the first woman of color to hold statewide office in New York—of being “racist.”

James has since been a star of Trump’s political retribution tour, as she has repeatedly promised to hold him to account, regardless of his presidential status. Since Trump returned to the White House in January, James has filed 32 lawsuits against his administration. They range from legal rejections of Trump’s tariffs to fighting his “big, beautiful bill’s” attempt to strip Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood clinics.

Trump Already Has His Next Target After Jimmy Kimmel Suspension - 2025-09-19T13:31:41Z

Despite the apparent illegality of forcing Jimmy Kimmel out of late night, the Trump administration is moving full steam ahead on its media hit list.

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr violated the First Amendment and one of Donald Trump’s executive orders Wednesday when he threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of the networks still airing the late-night comedian. Kimmel supposedly made controversial comments about the political affiliation of Charlie Kirk’s suspected assassin. (Kimmel said that MAGA was rushing to claim that Tyler Robinson was “anything other than one of them”—which is technically true.)

The successive blocks to fall involved Nexstar, one of the largest owners of ABC stations in the country, pulling the plug on Jimmy Kimmel Live! mere hours after Carr’s comments. In the background of the whiplash decision, Nexstar is in the midst of a multibillion-dollar acquisition that requires the FCC’s approval—a nearly identical series of events to the ones that led to Stephen Colbert’s cancellation by Paramount in July.

Public backlash against Carr’s decision was not a deterrent. In an appearance on Scott Jennings’s radio show Thursday, Carr suggested that the popular daytime talk show The View could be the next target of the Trump administration. He questioned whether it should be considered a ​“​bona fide news show” and therefore if it was subject to the “equal time” broadcast rule, which requires news broadcasters to literally dole out equal time to both political parties.

“I would assume you can make the argument that The View is a bona fide news show, but I’m not so sure about that,” Carr said. “And I think it’s worthwhile to have the FCC look into whether The View and some of these other programs that you have still qualify as bona fide news programs, and therefore exempt from the equal opportunity regime that Congress has put in place.”

What exactly makes The View worthy of being the next focus of the Trump administration’s censorship campaign is not clear, though the president has a long and nasty history with one of the show’s most famous co-hosts, Rosie O’Donnell. The current hosts include Alyssa Farah Griffin, who served as spokeswoman for the Department of Defense during Trump’s first term. She and many of her co-hosts are outspoken Trump critics.

Transcript: Trump’s Crazed Rants Reveal Dark Truth about Kimmel Ouster - 2025-09-19T10:53:30Z

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the September 19 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Editor’s note: After we recorded this episode, Trump unleashed yet another rant confirming the corrupt aim lying behind his ouster of Jimmy Kimmel.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent. 

As you’ve probably heard, ABC suspended comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show under pressure from the Trump administration. The ostensible reason for this is that Kimmel supposedly spread disinformation about Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin. But then President Trump offered his own comments on what happened, and somehow Trump made the whole thing look even more corrupt and even more like a flagrant abuse of power. Trump confirmed openly that this whole thing is really all about how the networks cover him. There’s lots to discuss here. How Trump is increasingly emboldened to consolidate authoritarian power right out in the open, why his willing accomplices are essential to his whole project, and what Democrats can do to fight back. So we’re talking about all of it with Jennifer Rubin, editor in chief of The Contrarian, who has a new piece taking stock of Trump’s effort to move us toward a police state. Jen, good to have you on. 

Jennifer Rubin: It’s great to be here, Greg. 

Sargent: So ABC suspended Kimmel’s show after Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, went on a right-wing podcast and essentially threatened retribution. He threatened to revoke the licenses of affiliates of ABC and urged ABC and Disney to take action on Kimmel. This was supposedly because Kimmel had suggested Kirk’s assassin was MAGA, which may not be right. Jen, even if Kimmel was wrong on that narrow fact, this is still speech. Your reaction to what we just saw?

Rubin: Exactly. Fox News lies every day, deliberately, continually, and no one takes them off the air. Unless they defame someone, which Kimmel clearly didn’t do, they are legally protected. Apparently, Pam Bondi, as we heard the other day, doesn’t understand that, quote, “hate speech is constitutionally protected.” We have a deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who thinks that demonstrations and other First Amendment activity can be the subject of a RICO suit. These people resist being labeled as fascists, but what else do you call this? This is what fascists do. They oppress and repress opponents’ speech, and in particular, the reflective desire to silence comedians is really a bit too on the nose. 

Dictators, of course, hate comedians who mock them and who show them to be fools. And so Trump striking out because of what a comedian said in a very innocuous way is just par for the course. But you know what? He says it out loud. They’re not hiding it. People should and must sue. We have not only seen this with ABC, but of course we’ve seen this in a prior ABC episode, when in essence they coughed up $15 million to Donald Trump because he had filed a bogus lawsuit against them. The same with CBS with an even more bogus lawsuit. So unfortunately, these big media empires have brought some of this on themselves by appeasing Trump. When you appease a dictator, you get more extortion. And they didn’t draw the line then. And you wonder when they’re gonna draw the line now. 

Sargent: Well, Trump really is very explicit about all this now. On Air Force One, he was asked about the situation and here’s what he said: 

“When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do. If you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative one in years or something. When you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that.”

Jen, note that last line, They’re not allowed to do that. Actually, yes, they are allowed to do that because of the First Amendment. Anyway, they don’t even hit Trump all the time. If anything, they’re way too kind to him, but Trump says it straight out, Criticize Trump and your broadcast licenses are at risk. 

Rubin: And that is sort of a lawyer’s dream if you’re gonna sue the FCC or you’re gonna sue Trump or you’re gonna sue ABC, because they’re just saying, you can’t criticize me. That is what the First Amendment is all about. And if they criticized him one hundred percent of the time, or in Trump’s verbiage, one thousand percent of the time, isn’t that what he says? Then it would still be protected speech. So these people, I don’t know whether he is so ignorant he actually believes this, or whether he knows what the First Amendment does, and he is showing that he is above it, that he is beyond restriction by the Constitution. But I have to think at some point, even Americans who consider themselves conservative, who voted for him? No, the president of the United States is not allowed to take a comedian off the air because he’s ridiculing him. That’s common sense. And you wonder if this would finally rouse the average person when they can’t hear the comic they like because Donald Trump has a thin skin. 

Sargent: Yeah. Well, listen, I want to underscore what you said there, which is the explicit nature of it. I think there’s a very decent chance that Trump actually does know that they absolutely are allowed to quote unquote “hit Trump,” as he put it, which is another way of saying criticize the president, criticize the most powerful person in the world, you know, hold the powerful to account. They are allowed to do that. But I do think, to your point, that Trump is essentially declaring the power to flout the First Amendment. And to flout the law and to flout the Constitution. It’s a feature of what he’s doing, not a bug. 

Rubin: And I think you have to, if you’re a Democrat, take this head on. You have to force Republicans, bring a resolution to the floor of the House or the Senate, force Republicans to vote on this. Are you an enabler of fascism? Of authoritarian repression? Do you believe in the First Amendment or don’t you? And let them take a vote. I think this is a game that they have played for far too long, saying, He doesn’t mean it. He just talks. I didn’t hear it. No, not only does he mean it, he did it. And these people, if their oath of office means anything, it’s to denounce this and prevent this from happening. 

Sargent: I really like the idea of forcing votes. I do think Chuck Schumer should really attempt to do this. He should try to force votes on the Senate floor on the question of whether it’s OK for the FCC chair to pressure media companies in response to criticism of Trump because Trump himself said that’s what it’s actually about. So they should force votes on this. 

Rubin: Absolutely. And the Senate allows more flexibility for the minority. It’s very hard to do it on the House, unless you have a discharge petition, to get anything to the floor if you’re in the minority. But the Senate doesn’t operate that way. And at the very time, by the way, that Republicans need Democratic votes to keep the government open, add that to the list. They must affirm that the First Amendment applies, that the president and the FCC chairman are violating the First Amendment when they force critics to shut up. Let them put that on the list of to-dos that Republicans either have to accept or not. And let them say, No we don’t believe in the First Amendment. That’s fine. Let the voters know. At least we’re clear. 

Sargent: Democrats need to engage this much more forcefully. We have a piece on this up at TNR.com. Check that out. I think Democrats should, when they’re on ABC News, they should call out ABC, right there on ABC and say, viewers of this network should know that this network just caved to pressure from an autocrat. 

Rubin: And what are the ABC News people going to do? Is George Stephanopoulos, who was front and center in that bogus lawsuit, going to say anything about this? What about Jonathan Karl, who was told that he was uttering hate speech and he could be shut up? What are these people going to do? Do they have any dignity? Do they have any spine? Come on, people. 

Sargent: Yes, I think in fact, Democrats could challenge some of these personalities and reporters and journalists really directly. They could say, You know, George, your network just kowtowed to a wannabe dictator. You can’t possibly be OK with that, can you? 

Rubin: Exactly. And I think it has to come from all corners of our democracy. You know, the Democrats, capital D, have had a hard time breaking out of the realm of people who are heavily engaged in the news because democracy and some of these fights seem esoteric. And if you’re trying to pay the bills and get your kids to school and work two shifts, it does not break through. But when you hear through a friend or through Facebook, Donald Trump forced Jimmy Kimmel off the air, everyone understands that, everyone gets that that’s not right and that’s totalitarian conduct. 

Sargent: Well, yes, and and by the way, we we’re sort of mired in these huge debates about why can’t Democrats get penetration into the culture in the way that Donald Trump can, and that’s a real legitimate problem. One of Trump’s secrets is the penetration he gets in the culture because of his background and all that. But here’s an opportunity for Democrats to get penetration in the culture. A lot of people who know who Jimmy Kimmel is and watch, you know, comedy on TV maybe aren’t all that engaged in politics. But if they heard that the president of the United States and the Republican Party, with the complicity of the GOP, is knocking these people off the air in order to punish them for criticizing him, I think they might wake up a little bit.

Rubin: Absolutely. And if CBS wants to recover its spine and if NBC wants to retain its spine, they should have Jimmy Kimmel on their evening shows so long as he is off the air. And I think the American people have a right to listen to whoever they want to listen to, and comedians have a right to say whatever they want to say. And you know what? There should be a price to be paid by ABC and others who keep capitulating. Our former colleague Karen Attiah was fired by The Washington Post for really some innocuous Bluesky postings that described the racism that she sees. She is an opinion writer. She writes opinions about race. And for saying this and for quoting or rather paraphrasing Kirk’s words right back to them, she was fired. That is disgraceful behavior. That is why you and I, and a whole slew of other people left The Washington Post. They are a sorry excuse for a newspaper so long as they are capitulating to this, really, you can only describe it as this McCarthyist atmosphere. 

Sargent: The firing of Karen was absolutely ridiculous. She even lamented the assassination. 

Rubin: Yes. And even if she hadn’t, even if she had just quoted Charlie Kirk’s own words. Is that now the standard that newspaper people really cannot speak the truth? And if they speak the truth, they are fired? Well, at least we know. And I for one, Greg, sadly, yes, I canceled my subscription to The Washington Post this week. And it pained me. I had held out, but I cannot support that. 

Sargent: Well, Jen, to your point, I’m afraid it actually is true that you can get fired for speaking the truth. That is the standard that Trump is setting for big news organizations right now, right before our eyes. 

Rubin: Absolutely. And if other organizations don’t think it applies to them, they are whistling past the graveyard of the First Amendment. I will give The New York Times credit. They were sued this week for $15 billion or some made-up number. Why not make it $15 trillion? And you know what? Their coverage markedly got tougher on Trump, and that’s the response that has to follow. You hit us, we are going to be even more aggressive, even more dedicated to the truth. We are going to pull no punches, and that has to be the responsibility and the response of every media outlet 

Sargent: Absolutely. So, clearly we’re seeing Trump get much more emboldened in his open consolidation of authoritarian power. He’s been threatening this vast crackdown on the liberal left, including their organizations in response to Kirk’s assassination. He’s explicitly threatening to use the state for this crackdown. He says it right out in the open. Now listen to this exchange between Trump and Fox’s Martha McCallum. 

Martha McCallum (voiceover): Do you believe that there is a vast terrorist movement in the United States that people need to be aware of? And is it responsible for Charlie Kirk’s killing, for the attempts on your life, for these CEOs that we saw in New York City? Is there something people need to understand? 

President Trump (voiceover) You never know, and we’ll find out maybe. But in the meantime, we’re going to do a big thing with respect to antifa. It’s a sick group. I mean, very, very sick group. 

Sargent: Well, there it is again, right out in the open. He doesn’t want to agree that the broad left is behind the assassination of Kirk in quite the way McCallum said it. And that’s because it’s absurd, there’s no organized, violent, left in this country that is remotely like what Trump, JD Vance, and others have been describing. Yet he says, we’re going to find out. Translation, we’re going to use the state to unleash domestic persecution that rivals some of the worst episodes in U.S. history. Where do you think this is going, Jen? 

Rubin: This is classic Trump. I’m just asking questions. I’m just looking. Well, why doesn’t he look at right-wing organizations because we know statistically that more political killings have occurred from right-wing figures than left-wing figures. And you know how we know it? Until this week, it was up on the website of the Department of Justice. They took it down because the only way they can pursue this nonsensical crusade against their opponents is to pretend facts aren’t facts. So the notion that you can simply go after your political enemies, root around, subpoena them, punish them, sic the IRS—this is totalitarianism writ large. This is what the Constitution is about. And no president, I would include Richard Nixon in this, has ever gone this far. He makes Richard Nixon really look like a boy scout. 

And the notion that the other branches of government can remain silent or can continue to enable him is really breathtaking. And Congress has been comatose, Republicans have no spine. And I have to say, I also hold the Supreme Court responsible. Once they told him that there is no criminal liability for essentially anything he does, in the Trump brain, that confirmed his view of the presidency, which is:  I can do whatever I want. Now, it doesn’t mean that, it just means you can’t be criminally prosecuted, but he’s not gonna be hung up on little details like that. The Supreme Court told him he was above the law, and now he believes it and he is showing us what he believes. And every time the Supreme Court with its little shadow docket reverses a lower court decision that is holding him to account, that is enforcing the Constitution, they contribute to his overreach and to his aspirations of dictatorship. So these two branches I hold responsible as much as Trump himself. 

Sargent: It all does go back to what the Supreme Court did in the run-up to 2024, which was extraordinarily enabling. Jen, where do you think this is all going? I think maybe while it’s really true that a bunch of these news organizations are handing big tribute payments and extortion payments over to Trump, and doing things like delivering the scalp of a comedian or whatever and, you know, capitulating to him here and there. The American media is a vast and varied institution, which really does have a lot of power. I think in the end, he can only get so far in controlling it. And I take some solace from that. And at the same time, though, I think the crackdowns on NGOs that [are] coming now, the the use of DOJ to go after various activist groups and advocacy groups that are part of the whole kind of constellation in D.C. of the liberal left. That strikes me as potentially having a serious chilling effect and maybe producing some really lawless shit. What’s your general sense of those two strands? How bad are they going to get? 

Rubin: My fear is that we are already seeing the chilling of speech. ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel off the air because they were afraid of taking the hit. And you know that other organizations, not all of them, are looking over their shoulder. And even subconsciously, they begin to pull their punches. They begin to obey in advance, as Tim Snyder says. Look at The Washington Post. First, it was killing a endorsement. Then it was putting the kibosh on an Ann Telnaes cartoon, and now it’s firing an opinion columnist for saying something that is essentially true. Once you habituate media organizations to cowardness, that’s what you get. Now, you said something really important, which was, we have a vast media organization, and this is why you and I have fled to the so-called independent media. We aren’t beholden to giant corporations. They can’t hold the license of our company above us. We don’t have licenses. They cannot shut us all up. So I think what this means is that the absolute responsibility, the obligation that we all feel, that you feel, that I feel, that other outlets that operate outside these big corporations feel has never been more important. 

We have to put their feet to the fire. And that’s Trump as well as these big media organizations. And you know, the American people do too. They can use their dollars. They can not only get out and protest and have their voices heard. They don’t have to go on Disney cruises. They don’t have to subscribe to Disney Plus. They have choices, and Americans have to show that they care enough about a free society to protect it. Now you raised the other issue of the NGOs. And I think this is extraordinarily dangerous. And I think you are going to see a slew of IRS investigations, of oppressive subpoenas, of hearings. People are going to be dragooned. And then when they refuse to answer, they’re going to be cited for contempt. 

If this sounds familiar, it should, because this was McCarthyism. This was criminalizing speech and association. None of these groups that he is planning to investigate have anything to do with any sort of violence. These are advocacy groups that advocate everything from saving the planet to feeding poor children, to maintaining our First Amendment. And even going after them is a flashing red sign that we are in deep trouble. So this is where the NATO approach has to come into play. And that means all organizations have to band together, all universities have to band together, all political figures who are worth their salt have to band together. Because if they stick together, they can fend this off. And they have to go to the courts again and again and again to expose this for what it is. 

Sargent: Just to wrap this up, you had a very good piece just today that pointed out that autocrats for all their outward expressions of strength and power and domination are often weak and brittle. And that’s the paradox of this moment. Trump is extraordinarily weak politically. He’s a failing president on every front. And he is at the same time consolidating all this autocratic power. How do you see that tension ultimately resolving itself? 

Rubin: You see it in every authoritarian state. Because authoritarians suppress dissent, they want no transparency, they want no debate, they deplore facts. Bad stuff happens all the time. They don’t catch errors, they don’t catch mistakes. They do dumb things because no one stops them from doing it. So they are constantly at odds with reality, with public opinion. They make mistakes. Look at DOGE. We’re gonna hire the bird flu people; no, we’re going to fire the bird flu people; no, we’re going to hire the bird flu people back. Over and over again, we saw this, whether it’s in making stupid policy decisions, whether it’s in his frenetic tariff policy, they are often very flighty, very capricious, very indiscriminate. And that on one hand makes them very weak. It also makes the destructive power very great. When you have a tyrant who, you can’t even predict which way he’s going, that can be really terrifying. When you can, as Bill Pulte is doing, go after people for quote, “mortgage fraud,” when they haven’t done what he said they did, then every American can be gotten by this guy. The facts will not support and will not defend you. So I think these are perilous, perilous times. And I hope and I pray and I deeply believe that the American people are ahead of the politicians, that they get this. We see it in the polls. We see it in the enormous turnout for protests events. We’re seeing it in special elections this year. I think we’re going to see it in November in Virginia and in New Jersey, which have both gubernatorial and other statewide races, as well as state legislative races. I think they will have their voices heard. And as we know, Greg, politicians are followers. And once they get a sense that they are going down the tubes if they keep this up, I think you’re going to see some fracturing on the Republicans’ side. 

Sargent: Jennifer Rubin, I think the people are gonna rise up and put a stop to this as well. It just might take years. That’s the problem. Jen, it’s so good to talk to you. I’m so glad to see The Contrarian’s doing so well. 

Rubin: Thank you, Greg. I miss working with you every day, but I feel like out here in independent media land, we all work together. We’re all on Team Democracy and you guys at TNR are just killing it every day. So love you guys. 

Sargent: Absolutely. It’s the NATO approach, as you said. Thanks, Jen. 

Rubin: My pleasure.

Transcript: Kimmel Suspension Is Another Shameless Media Capitulation - 2025-09-19T10:31:44Z

 The following is a lightly edited transcript of the September 18 episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch this interview here. 

Perry Bacon: I’m Perry Bacon and this is the Right Now Show, which is a twice-weekly show about politics and government here sponsored by The New Republic. I’m going to be joined by Kathy Roberts Ford, professor of journalism at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. And what we’re talking about today is Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension that happened last night. And also there was a  lawsuit Trump filed against The New York Times, and we’re going to generally focus on what I’m describing as Trump’s war on the media, because I think that’s what’s happening. So professor, thanks for joining me. 

Kathy Roberts Ford: Oh, it’s great to see you again, Perry. 

Bacon: So Jimmy Kimmel is a comedian, and he’s not even as focused on the news as Jon Stewart was, you know, back in the Daily Show era. So, I’m really concerned about this, and I think I’m right to be. So explain to people why the series of events that resulted in Jimmy Kimmel being suspended is so concerning. 

Ford: So what appears to have happened is Jimmy Kimmel has been suspended, his show has been suspended by ABC, and definitely we’re sad. So, you know, it’s a little unclear, the degree of this suspension. And it, this happened after his monologue in which he mentioned the murder of Charlie Kirk. And in talking about that murder, my understanding is that he said something to the effect of, he was opining or talking about the political ideology of the killer and suggesting that maybe the killer’s political ideology was more MAGA-oriented than it was anything else. And, you know, we know that the facts on the ground are still very much at play regarding the political ideology  of the killer, but both Trump and the FCC chairman put pressure on ABC to get rid of The Jimmy Kimmel Show. And you know, the FCC chairman has this incredible power to yank a network’s license. And so this is a real chilling [of] free expression. By the way. The First Amendment forbids the use of regulatory threats and pressure to silence critics and to silence political discussion. And so this is very, very concerning. 

Bacon: We should mention the role of like, Nexstar here. Do you understand that pretty well? 

Ford: Why don’t you talk about Nexstar? 

Bacon: So I guess, uh, part of what’s going on is like, it appears that there was an affiliate, there was a group of affiliates who said, first we are going to take off Jimmy Kimmel’s show, inspired by the FCC chairman sort of hinting you should do this. The affiliate said, we’re gonna move, and Nexstar owns lots of affiliate stations, ABC affiliates. But Nexstar is trying to get a merger done, which requires the FCC’s approval. ’Cause I think part of the—what’s happened throughout the year is like—these  regulatory approvals seem to be a great way to sort of force media compliance. We will not approve your merger unless you do what we want. Seems to be a little bit of the story at CBS too.

Ford: That that’s exactly right, and that’s what happened, as we understand it, with the Stephen Colbert show, I mean Stephen Colbert criticized CBS’s settlement with, if I’m remembering correctly, CBS settled over the 60 minutes interview for 16 million [dollars]. I think Trump was suing for something like 10 billion. This was also a moment when Paramount, which owns CBS, was seeking a merger with Skydance. It’s at that very moment. And so it seems as though these mergers by the parent companies of news media institutions are being politicized in order to pressure the parent companies into doing the bidding of government officials. 

Bacon: You said the First Amendment is violated by [this], and I think, I mean the literal words of the First Amendment are we have freedom of press and religion and so on. So when you said that, what you meant is the precedent has been that the FCC ... or what do you mean when you said the First Amendment bars this? 

Ford: Alright, so you know that the—Hi!

Bacon: Anna Marie Cox has joined us as well, and we’re talking about Jimmy Kimmel. So go ahead, professor. 

Ford: So, you know, the plain text of the First Amendment, Congress shall make new law, abridging freedom of speech or the press, the part that we’re concerned about here. It seems straightforward, but it’s really, it’s been elaborated on over the centuries by court precedent. And so it’s not so plain what it means, but one thing that it’s been interpreted to mean over time by the Supreme Court and as recently as 2024, in a case called NRA v. Vullo, is that government regulators cannot pressure banks and insurers, institutions like this, to get them to speak in a particular way or to punish certain kinds of speech, or to not be committed to certain groups that have ... they can’t compel speech. And so, you know, the First Amendment forbids that. The First Amendment, I shouldn’t say forbids, but when we think about the defamation cases that are being used prolifically by President Trump, the First Amendment gives robust protection to errors made by the press or any of us, right, in our public speech. That’s a famous New York Times case called New York Times v. Sullivan. And it’s called the “actual malice standard.” We can talk more about that later, but I think that’s a kind of answer to your question. 

Bacon: OK, so Kimmel. So if the FCC chairman had called the head of ABC and said, Jimmy Kimmel’s show must end, that would be one thing. What appears to be happening is a little bit more tricky, only because it appears what happened is the FCC chairman hinted that maybe the affiliates should maybe cancel the show …

Ford: That’s exactly right. 

Bacon: and then they did. So it’s a little, so I assume this is not ... 

Ford: It’s pressure. It’s not perfect. It’s not, you know, this is not a case, number one. Number two, these are pressure tactics that are being used … and I would not say that these were in the spirit of democracy. 

Bacon: Ana, let me start at the beginning here and just ask, OK, so Jimmy Kimmel is not a journalist. Jimmy Kimmel does not break news. Jimmy Kimmel’s show is not even as political as say, The Daily Show was a couple decades ago. I’m still really concerned about this, and what happened. Ana, talk about your feelings about this, your general reaction to what happened. This feels really like a moment to me of sorts. 

Ana Marie Cox: I think it is a moment. We have seen just how quickly the entertainment industry, the media industry more broadly, is willing to obey in advance, surrender in advance. I think that the most concerning thing in some ways is this wasn’t an official political action. I think this has shown how fearful these enormous industries that have tons of power, or we think of them as having power, are; [that they are] willing to knuckle under; that they’re willing to knuckle under because they want to grow their power, right? And it’s an interesting tension to me that they think that this is going to satisfy. I think that what we learn in [authoritarian] institutions is that sometimes, like these places, these centers of apparent power mistake the knuckling under as a way to cooperate, or at least that’s been the historical pattern, right? I mean, in this era of global media networks and in how they really do rely on government to—they work in almost partnership, right? In a way that maybe we haven’t seen before, or that’s what they’re aiming at. 

Bacon: Let me prompt you a little bit, to ask the question: That’s just like, so you said it’s not government action. This is a little bit different. Jeff Bezos voluntarily, in some ways, got rid of his Opinion section. This is a little bit different in that there was, the FCC chairman was a little bit more actively engaged. 

Cox: Right? But they could have fought it. That’s the thing I mean about surrender in advance. Obey in advance, I see that there’s not even like a tension there. Right? 

Bacon: Right. 

Cox: There wasn’t even like a sense of like, Screw off, right? Like, We are gonna do this—which is something that, in the past, some media entities or at least individual folks have maybe made noise about. To me this was just the threat of government intervention and wasn’t even sort of like, We’re doing this, but, I don’t know, even some kind of admission that this is restrictive. And I think that’s because—this is the scary thing—it’s because they don’t care. They are willing to sacrifice all of this in order to gain whatever little bit more power, or a lot more power, I mean, I worry about the working in concert between these things. I worry that this is a sign that we’re going to see cooperation. 

And I think that the Bezos move shows that—and I worry so much; I could actually get emotional about this, which is the future of—of Perrys in our industry, right? I was actually like, I have a—it’s funny because I’ve been planning on this conversation, I’m going to see my dad for the first time in a long time. I’ll be honest, he’s a regular MSNBC viewer. He loves MSNBC. He’s always like, You should have a show in MSNBC. Yeah, and I should, but I kind of want to point out to him, in a way, Dad, you’re missing the crumbling here. OK. Like, you’re missing that all these other—I love him so much, but—the ways that the centers of what we think of as liberal discourse, we—I don’t know how we alert people anymore, right? That we are under threat. The New Republic is under threat. These places where you’re getting little bits of dissent, we are being, I don’t don’t know how else to put it—

Bacon: Let me come back to that in a second. I want to, I do want to come back to that. Let me ask: Did you, I can’t, and ABC’s not quite, nobody’s quite saying what Jimmy Kimmel said. I went through and looked at the comments, and I’m a little bit confused by which one.... He speculates about the killer in a way that is probably not, we should all stop doing that, in a certain way. But I don’t know that, I mean, it’s not, it was not a firing offense. But do we think that’s the issue is, he suggested the killer was conservative? Is that the, that we think the crux of this is?

Cox: That’s what I’ve, I guess what I’ve seen. I mean, I think also, didn’t he mock Trump for like, switching the subject when he was asked about Charlie Kirk and he went to like, look at the trucks. 

Bacon: He definitely did, but I’m not sure what the offense taken is.… The thing I wanted to come back to—Ana mentioned smaller outlets. Let’s talk about the big outlets first, though. Trump forced or coerced or weakened debate, as you said. Disney and CBS already reached, you know, agreements in these defamation suits with him. The Wall Street Journal and the Times are now facing these defamation suits. These are very big institutions that sort of define the American media in a certain way. So, professor, to start with you, how worried should we be that he’s suing the biggest news organizations in the country, the ones that still at this point deliver a lot of the breaking news and investigations in the country. 

Ford: I think it’s worrisome. I think it’s a tactic to silence the press and intimidate the press into some type of pulling back on a kind of robust, uninhibited debate, public debate, and in their coverage of the administration. That’s the goal. The truth of the matter is that in all these defamation lawsuits that we’ve seen, experts say time and time again that these suits—that he’s unlikely to win, right? Very, very unlikely to win. And the reason is because the First Amendment provides robust protection for the press, for all of us, to make errors when we are speaking about matters that involve public officials and public figures. This was set in the New York Times v. Sullivan case in 1964. 

It came out of, interestingly, a Civil Rights Era case, in which white elites in the South sued The New York Times for errors in a in a civil rights ad, saying We’ve been defamed, we’ve been defamed. It was hard to defame them, of course, for what they were doing as white supremacists. And yet they were trying to use libel law as a tool to silence the press. And the Supreme Court at that time said, No, you know, if the First Amendment means anything, it means that we have to allow some degree of error in public speech, particularly about people who are public officials. And that went on then to include public figures down the road in further cases. But it’s just such an important principle. So the actual malice standard says you are protected; these institutions are protected for errors, even if they’re defamatory, if these errors are made without knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth. And most professional journalists, journalists and news institutions, don’t go recklessly around making errors, right? And they don’t have reckless disregard for the truth. That’s not true of all news institutions or of all people. But it does tend to be true. And so what we know is that the Supreme Court very recently has turned down an opportunity to revisit the actual malice standard in a case. We think it’s very, very robust protection still. And so, my expectation and hope, profound hope, is that The New York Times is going to see this through. And I hope Murdoch for The Wall Street Journal sees it through. 

Ownership matters here. Ownership matters, right? When you’ve got a Paramount that has all these other business interests owning a news institution, they’re going to make deals [and] they have made deals, in order to protect their other interests. Same thing with Bezos. Same thing with the Walt Disney Company, right? I’m hoping The New York Times is going to hold the line for us all. 

Bacon: And, somebody like me who’s somewhat critical of some of the mainstream legacy media at times, we, you agree that it’s bad to see them facing these kind of lawsuits still, obviously. 

Ford: Yes. Yeah. I mean, I can be critical too. I want The New York Times to create a democracy desk. I want them to have a vertical where they begin covering in this highly framed way democratic erosion in the United States, and the TikTok rising of authoritarianism. I want them to do that. I think other institutions are doing it, but news institutions are doing it better, but we need the agenda-setting institution to do it. That said, it is a very important institution. They do a lot of really important investigative reporting with their incredible resources that other institutions just don’t have the resources to do. I’m sorry, I want to pitch over to my colleague here. 

Cox: I worry, in some ways, I worry that the pursuit of profit leads to the smoothing out of news coverage, but not in an overt way, right? Because I don’t think anyone at the Times is like, we have to—or The Washington Post—like, what actually happened in The Washington Post is the scary thing, right? Because there wasn’t a decision to go from bipartisan coverage … at least an acknowledgment that there are critical frames for what’s happening in government—and to just outright be like, Nope, that is not what we’re gonna do. We are just going to forthrightly stop criticism of this administration. And I agree that it’s these huge organizations that own newspapers that feel like the real threat. But part of me is like, that just happens more and more these days. 

It’s very hard for independent institutions, and I don’t know if we’re going to call the Times independent, but you’re right, it’s not part of a global conglomerate at this point, with lots of different like fingers in every pie, but they still need to function in this regulatory environment. And to me it’s the culture of lack of dissent, and also the move toward the view—what has become the dominant way for large institutions to cover politics—which is the view from nowhere, right? The classic James Fallows conception of the myth of objectivity, which the Times is probably tied up in, in a way that is more frustrating to me personally than almost any other institution because I kind of love the Times, I really do. I grew up in Texas and Nebraska, and getting the Sunday Times as special delivery was such a treat for me as a teenager. That and The New Yorker were the epitome of real journalism, and they taught me to care about politics in a big way. And so to see them do this performance of concern about the agenda that’s actually being set by the right, and it filters in, I think, beyond the Op-ed section: Their coverage of trans issues has just been terrible, and it’s outside the Op-ed section even, right? They still do all this great journalism. But they’ve adopted this view that they must take this authoritarianism seriously. They’re not going to have a democracy desk. They’re just not, they’re not gonna do it. And I mean, we can hope that this suit radicalizes them. I feel like that might be the best outcome. 

Bacon: Kimmel is suspended temporarily, maybe permanently. Colbert is off too. Talk about, it’s not 1993, where Jay Leno and, you know, Letterman have these huge audiences. Is the silencing of the late-night host important? Ana, I’ll start with you about that. 

Cox: That’s a really good question because on the one hand, I feel like I’m not concerned about Jimmy. 

Bacon: He’s going to be fine economically, I agree. 

Cox: He’s going to be fine. Stephen Colbert is going to be fine. And those of us that enjoy them are also going to be able to continue to enjoy them. In some ways, I worry about his trickle-down effect. Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel both created spaces with their shows that were feeders: The writers that worked on those shows, the guests that they had on those shows; they created a space where you can see good-natured criticism. Not just good-natured—hilarious criticism. Satire is really important, and it sets a model for: This is also a way we can criticize power. 

And if we look at Colbert and Kimmel, they also did a lot of action. Like one of the things that really moved me about Jimmy Kimmel—not my favorite late-night show, to be honest—was how he did the casting call for actors that needed just like one or two parts to get their Screen and Actors Guild health insurance, right? What a wonderful mechanic of solidarity.... We could talk more about Disney’s cultural output. Because it’s a little like, I know you can’t say that just because they put on Andor they are anti-fascist. But Jimmy Kimmel had Diego Luna as a guest host, and Diego Luna’s monologue every night was like, “Screw ICE.” And he talked very passionately about it. And to see that on television from an actor, you know, having that platform, seems—I’m not going to say it’s important, but it normalizes criticism. 

Bacon: OK. Right. 

Cox: It makes it seem like that’s an accepted part of the conversation, that we can do that. And I think in some ways just to say, That’s not normal, that’s not an accepted way to even have a casual conversation, is really chilling.  

Ford: I would agree. I just want to say one quick thing. The silencing of anyone, anyone especially, is a terrible thing in a democracy, period. Full stop. And yet the silencing of our comedians, who are often some of our greatest truth tellers, it’s especially—[it] sends a very strong signal across the body politic, and it’s very dangerous. 

Bacon: So let me ask a final question. I want two questions. I’ll start with Kathy on this one: Talk about the historic analogies. Because you wrote this book, you co-authored a book about journalism in the Jim Crow era. How about the historical analogies and also the comparative ones between: How do these tactics that Trump is doing—are they similar to what other authoritarians do? So talk about the sort of historical and then the comparative analogies here. 

Ford: Yeah. So, I wrote a book, Journalism and Jim Crow, in which—I co-edited and contributed significantly to this book. And what we documented is the role of white newspaper editors and journalists in actively building white supremacist political economies. I mean, it wasn’t just through storytelling, although that was really important, but they were active. They collaborated with political and business elites to do this. And so what we found is, in the Jim Crow South, you know, in building the Jim Crow South, these newspapers helped entrench one-party rule. They used these kinds of selective punishment of critics and they used silencing of critics through all kinds of means. And that was a very powerful tool. Not only that the leaders were involved in this work, but that their newspapers then normalized all of it, or whitewashed all of it and covered up all kinds of things along the way. And we didn’t have a lot of pushback, except for the Black press. 

Now, what I would say is, you know, this kind of the way in which those papers normalized and used falsehoods to entrench one-party rule and these kind of subnational authoritarian regimes. We don’t want to follow that path today. We don’t want to have any kind of news media ecosystem that is participating in any kind of thing like that. But what’s happening now, as we’ve seen in our country, is what has happened in Hungary and Turkey, which is using regulatory threats and using lawsuits as a way to capture the media, the news media, and to capture some space in the information ecosystem. And, you know, we should be all very, very concerned. 

Bacon: Ana, you mentioned at the beginning, or you mentioned a few minutes ago about smaller outlets, and I’m thinking about that myself. If The New York Times has a big legal team or has a lot of money, has a lot of issues of memory, I think they have a legal team. The Post in theory is backed by a billionaire. So I am concerned, and I’ll ask you this personally: Are you worried about the outlets you write for, that they might, [like] Gawker they might, be sued out of existence? How real do you feel about that?

Cox: I think about it when I have to pay my mortgage every month. I mean, these are the institutions, these are the places that I have worked at—I mean, I’ve also written for all the big places, but it’s been harder to find work from there. One of the things I’ve pointed out to my MSNBC dad is, Don’t you notice that there are fewer contributors, that there are just fewer voices on that network? And I think that’s something you’re seeing everywhere. Unfortunately with the smaller and smaller outlets, one issue is we’re just not prepared to be able to take on the work that a place like the Times can do, right? We can do really important stuff, and we can help push the conversation, but where do you go for the really important big investigations? I love ProPublica. I think that’s an interesting model, but it has public support, right? That is, I think, the future. 

I was just writing about this; in some ways we need anti-capitalist models of production in order to continue to do the work that we have to do. We need cooperatives, we need some kind of nonprofit funding. We need to have the resources to continue be the voice for criticism and dissent and information. Like, I love 404 Media. I love Defector. Those are the places that we have to support, if people are listening. I can’t tell people to unsubscribe from the Times because I still think we really need it, but if you are interested in the future of journalism and sustaining the kind of really powerful alternatives that can speak back to places like the Times and criticize—I think one of the roles that we can play, you and I personally can play, is to articulate the criticisms of these larger places. And if support can come from larger bases, from people who can like spare—something I tell people all the time: The New Republic subscription is not ... it’s a bargain. 

And I just go ahead and say it, if you are enjoying this conversation and you are thinking about unsubscribing from the Times, maybe do that, sure, but add eight bucks a month, you know. We need this base to continue to push back. And hold those institutions responsible. And indeed, in addition to holding the government, holding larger power responsible—because who is the Times going to hear from? Journalists read other journalists—I think that we are a really important voice. And again, I think that to articulate the problems, just to go back to the conversation that we had last week about not necessarily being persuaders but being a voice that gets people to think about, Oh yeah, you know what? Like that view from nowhere issue at the Times, that is kind of weird. That is something that I wish that they would do differently, you know? So I don’t know if that’s a coherent answer, but for some reason, you always ask me on before I’ve had my first cup of coffee. So— 

Bacon: And with that, this is a great conversation. Any final thoughts? I’ll let you—any final thoughts you have? I want to conclude any final thoughts. 

Cox: Buy her book, I’m pointing. That sounds like a really good way of thinking about what’s happening now; that’s such a wonderful historical example. Her book about Jim Crow, I forgot the name. Kathy’s book about Jim Crow. 

Ford: Journalism and Jim Crow. 

Cox: I’m sorry, I forgot; we’re moving fast. Yeah. But I’m going to get it. And it sounds like a really, really good model for what, unfortunately, is happening now. And subscribe to The New Republic. 

Bacon: All right. On that note, thank you all for joining me. Great conversation. Good to see you. 

Cox: Bye-bye. 

Ford: Great to see you.

Maurene Comey’s Case Will Tell Us: Does Impartial Justice Still Exist? - 2025-09-19T10:00:00Z

Keep an eye on Maurene Comey’s case for unlawful firing by the Department of Justice. If she wins, it’s at least a temporary victory for the continued existence of the rule of law in this country. If she loses, it’s the end of justice without fear or favor in this country.

Pam Bondi and company have hollowed out the Department of Justice to serve President Trump’s personal interests. News outlets describe mass resignations and firings, with some reports citing more than 70 percent attrition in the Civil Rights Division. The impact remains largely hidden but will certainly be profound. These firings come in many shapes and sizes, including employees who chose to leave or were accused (often with no credible basis) of improper conduct.

The lawsuit filed last week by Comey, the former assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, or SDNY, is a crucial test of whether the Trump administration truly has the power to strip the DOJ of its reputation for apolitical justice.

That is because Comey’s service was exemplary. The department did not offer an argument of improper conduct on her part, and its case for discharge is particularly weak and tawdry. It is a pristine test of Trump’s and Bondi’s determination to ruin what the department has always stood for.

Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, is a prosecutor’s prosecutor—widely respected among her peers. She was a star in the SDNY, the crown jewel of the Justice Department, where she handled marquee criminal cases, including Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Sean Combs. There is no colorable argument that she is anything but exemplary, as reflected in her performance reviews.

She is also the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, who sits high on Trump’s list of revenge targets. His “offenses” amount to telling the truth about Trump’s improper attempts to influence him. (Remember Trump’s grandstanding threat: “He’d better hope there are not tapes”?)

Most recently, Trump accused Jim Comey of trying to assassinate him based on a cryptic message containing the numbers 86 and 47 (Trump is the forty-seventh president, and 86 is slang for “all out”), which he referred to Bondi to investigate. Comey said he had no idea what Trump was talking about.

Maurene Comey entered broader public attention in the Epstein-Maxwell case, when the administration tried to deflect calls for Epstein file disclosures by pointing instead to grand jury materials from her prosecutions—though it was obvious that those materials never contained Epstein’s files.

Shortly after this episode, in July of this year, Comey received the following notice from the Department: “You are being terminated pursuant to Article II of the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the United States.”

That’s it. No explanation. No criticism. No cause. No due process. At most, some assertion that all of Comey’s career protections, and the norms protecting prosecutorial independence, are unconstitutional under Article II because the president has a right to fire whomever he pleases for whatever reason he pleases.

Those protections, and the norms that reinforce them, were near inviolate before 2025. As a former U.S. attorney, I—and any of my colleagues—could tell you that even trying to fire a career AUSA like Comey entailed a bureaucratic ordeal and multiple obstacles.

Many lawsuits challenging Trump’s purges of federal employees get bogged down in details—job classifications, mixed records, plausible rationales for termination. Not here. Maurene Comey is the textbook career prosecutor with statutory and constitutional protections against this kind of summary dismissal. The government can’t point to cause. It can’t argue she was an at-will political hire. And it can’t identify a single action of hers that wasn’t by the book—and often, her behavior was exemplary. Indeed, the widespread assumption—and the department’s cryptic dismissal notice does nothing to dispel it—is that Comey was targeted solely because she is the daughter of Trump’s nemesis.

Comey was ousted because Trump detests her father, and because the Trump-aligned outrage machine—most colorfully, Laura Loomer—demanded her head. His reprisal campaign here extends beyond the immediate antagonist to his family. Even by the standards of despotic bosses, that is an asinine, and dangerous, basis for firing.

In that sense, Comey is the perfect test case. Her firing strips the issue to its essence: Can the president cashier career prosecutors for irrational—even chaotic—reasons, simply because he feels like it?

The answer to that question would not have been in doubt a year ago. The law is long established. The Civil Service Reform Act, and related due process protections, bars arbitrary, politically motivated firings of career employees. AUSAs, while their own category of “career excepted-service employees,” are covered. And due process principles require that any firing be for cause, with notice and an opportunity to respond. By those metrics, Comey’s case is a slam dunk.

But Trump has repeatedly asserted power to ravage the federal workforce, and the Supreme Court, especially of late, has more often than not backed him up. Other cases over the last nine months have also produced unpleasant surprises in shadow docket rulings.

Moreover, there is a real possibility that courts recognize the violations and award damages but stop short of reinstatement—the only result that would truly vindicate Comey and protect the public interest in an independent DOJ. Some courts of appeals have already suggested that even if the firing was illegal, they lack authority to order the executive branch to put people back to work.

Comey’s lawsuit thus has outsize importance. It is, in a sense, the test case about apolitical and impartial justice, and everything those values represent. If Comey loses—or if the courts refuse reinstatement—it would sound the death knell for the fragile ideal that federal prosecutors can operate free of political pressure and free from serving a political master.

The stakes go well beyond Comey’s professional standing. What hangs in the balance is whether Americans can have confidence that the awesome power of the federal government will be exercised according to law rather than personal will or, worse, spite. A loss for Comey would signal to every prosecutor, and to every citizen who depends on impartial justice, that the department has become an arm of presidential will rather than an agent of principled justice.

What Place Does Concentration Camp Art Have in Holocaust History? - 2025-09-19T10:00:00Z

Enter most any bookstore in America, and you’ll find them, their covers gleaming with motifs of barbed wire, electric fences, and menacing birds. Perhaps a person will be standing on a railroad tie, facing a building where the tracks ominously end. At least a few of the books will bear a familiar title: The [Blank] of Auschwitz.

Over the last decade, a multitude of mega-bestselling works of Holocaust literature have emerged. These books—mostly novels based loosely on true accounts—mimic one another, with emotionally accessible narratives of love and hope that often end on a perplexingly heartening note. Loathed by scholars and largely disregarded by mainstream book reviews, many of these titles have nonetheless gone on to sell hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of copies. Their runaway success, some scholars fear, has begun to warp the popular sense of this history, reshaping the camps as settings for redemption arcs rather than suffering and murder.

The title and cover of The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz: A Story of Survival, by noted British biographer Anne Sebba, may be a play for that market. Thankfully, Sebba mostly does not stoop to it. She recounts the story of an orchestra made up of nearly 50 women and girls from 11 countries, which was led primarily by the violinist Alma Rosé, Gustav Mahler’s niece. In spare, almost plain prose, Sebba follows the orchestra from its earliest days in 1943, when a notorious head female guard, Maria Mandl, took inspiration from the camp’s male orchestra and decided to start a women’s equivalent.

For its members, playing in the orchestra was a lifeline. Mandl arranged instruments and practice space. She issued them extra food and clothing and ensured access to slightly better medical resources. Yet the circumstances were acutely sadistic: The orchestra’s prime purpose was to play cheerful marches while the SS drove prisoners to slave labor details, or to perform concerts for guards and occasionally visiting Nazi dignitaries.

Sebba’s rendering of the musicians’ horrific situation is judicious. She approaches her subject with the sobriety it deserves and rarely indulges in cliché. Yet for all her restraint and good intent, her book propagates a frustrating distortion of the history.

For decades, scholars like Guido Fackler have studied music in the Nazi camps, demonstrating that orchestras that were set up and closely controlled by the SS were commonplace. Fackler’s research shows that in some camps—Auschwitz among them—the SS forced orchestras or ensembles to play during punishments or executions. At Birkenau, they compelled a camp orchestra to play for inmates during the so-called “selection,” the idea being to quell their fears of impending death. The survivor Erika Rothschild remembered hearing Polish, Czech, or Hungarian melodies, chosen to match the nationality of the transports.

But Fackler would quickly add that this represents just one element of the history. And while Sebba presents a sound retelling of what he and other scholars have revealed, her focus on the orchestra obscures a rich, permeating, and far more varied history of music during this time, namely that which sprang up from the prisoners themselves beyond the perverse auspices of the SS. The risk of her framing is that it erroneously places the orchestras—another tool of abuse in the Nazi arsenal—at the center of the story.

Sebba is not alone. The orchestras have already been the subject of several books—most recently in a new translation of Szymon Laks’s excellent memoir about his time as the conductor of the Auschwitz men’s orchestra—and in the popular media. In fact, there has been a boom in coverage of music in the Nazi camps in recent years, starting with a 2019 60 Minutes segment about music-making in the Nazi camps that featured Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the last living member of the women’s orchestra, about whom Sebba also writes at length in her book. Pieces in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Le Monde, The Guardian, and The New York Times soon followed, to name just a few. Several TV programs (the latest, in February from the BBC, also centered around Lasker-Wallfisch) have covered the orchestras. With little exception, the coverage replicates the focus on SS-sanctioned music.

To the small yet stalwart group of musicologists who have meticulously studied this topic for decades, the abundance of attention has felt cautiously gratifying. Yet it is also vexing. A few years ago, I wrote a book about Aleksander Kulisiewicz, a prisoner musician at Sachsenhausen who, after the war, created one of the most important archives on art and music in the Nazi camps, which is now housed in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. While reporting the book, I worked closely with a number of leading musicologists. One of them was Swarthmore’s Barbara Milewski. For her, the surge in interest given to the orchestras has been crucial in revealing the perfidy of Germans using culture for evil. But she bristles at the narrowness of the focus. “This is only part of the story of ‘music in the camps,’” she told me, “and certainly not the most compelling from a humanistic standpoint.”

By contrast, in many survivor memoirs, music emerges as a ubiquitous part of camp life—for better and for worse. Survivors recount the immense pain it caused them when the SS would force prisoners to sing on command: often cheerful German folk tunes, sometimes late into the night. The intent was to frighten, humiliate, and degrade the prisoners. The singing itself was physically draining—another form of SS persecution.

Sebba tells us about the torment music caused members of the orchestra—and those forced to listen to it. On marches back to the camp at the end of a day’s work, prisoners—often laden with corpses—had to listen to jaunty melodies. “We hated those musicians,” one former inmate recalls in the book. “We couldn’t keep our clogs on. It was 20 below zero … death was magnified by the orchestra.” Hélène Wiernik, a violinist in the orchestra who was just 16 upon her arrival, gave up her beloved instrument after the war ended. “She was too weak, too damaged physically,” Sebba writes. “She said she simply did not have the endurance to continue playing.”

Yet at times, her book can fall into the trap of seeing music as inherently uplifting. Many of her chapter titles, for example—“I felt sun on my face,” “She gave us hope and courage,” “The orchestra means life”—are tonally at odds with what the research in the book says. In this she also has company—The Washington Post, for instance, wrote that prisoners found “comfort, dignity and sometimes a lifeline” in music, while The New York Times described music as a “buoy” in the camps.

In reality, inmates turned to music—when they weren’t forced to do so—for myriad reasons. Uplift was just one. Some found in music entertainment, a solution to intellectual boredom, a means of escape. At every major Nazi camp, deportees of all backgrounds, many with no formal training, created and performed music. There were choirs, ensembles, troupes, duos, and individual singers performing in their blocks—and sometimes even “touring” from block to block—largely beyond the knowledge of the guards. Buchenwald had a jazz big band, Falkensee was home to a “gypsy orchestra.” Soviet POWs gathered to perform at Flossenbürg. Sachsenhausen alone had a harmonica troupe, a secret Jewish choir, and a string quartet that performed contraband scores by Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, and Dvořák at the camp mortuary.

Prisoners often created parodies of existing tunes, in which they processed what was taking place around them, commented on it, documented it; they slung broadsides, ridiculed Hitler, and expressed their fear of Germany’s domination of Europe. After the British evacuation at Dunkirk, for instance, Kulisiewicz composed anxious lyrics about the Wehrmacht’s seemingly unstoppable advance. After their defeat at Stalingrad, he wrote jubilant lyrics of celebration.

Why center the orchestras when they were set up and controlled by the SS and used for sadistic purposes? In that focus, hundreds of fascinating people are overlooked. One is Krystyna Żywulska, a poet of such capability that her verses were passed around orally in Auschwitz. When they reached one so-called prominent prisoner, the woman was so moved that she arranged for Żywulska an indoor work assignment, likely saving her life. Another is Rosebery d’Arguto, a Polish-Jewish conductor who gained prominence in 1930s Berlin for his choral directing and composing. A few months after the Germans deported him to Sachsenhausen in October 1939, he formed a secret four-part choir composed of about 25 Jewish prisoners. The choir rehearsed and performed compositions d’Arguto arranged at immense risk to itself and its audience. When the SS discovered it in the fall of 1942, they soon deported d’Arguto to Dachau and most of his singers to Auschwitz.

Scholars tend to grumble about their work being popularized or misinterpreted; nuance is always lost in the process, and perhaps this is inevitable with music in the Nazi camps too. Yet in so much coverage, and even in Sebba’s book, there is also an implicit disbelief that art would and could exist in a place as ghastly as a Nazi camp. Was there truly space to create amid such suffering?

But there are endless examples of art being made in the most distressing of times, from the trench poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon in World War I to artists in Gaza making art amid—and sometimes with—the rubble of their city. The German-Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon painted hundreds of remarkable gouaches while in hiding from the Gestapo in southern France, before ultimately being arrested, five months pregnant, in 1943 and murdered at Auschwitz not long after.

These examples remind us that artistic expression is always a part of the human condition. In the case of the Nazi camps, focusing on uplift, framing music as miraculous—especially in the case of the orchestras—flattens a multidimensional story that is far more interesting in all its complexity, contradiction, and variety.

Trump’s Argument for Firing Lisa Cook Lies in Tatters - 2025-09-19T10:00:00Z

Even if Cook’s acts reflect gross negligence, the President expressly determined that her lack of care in making important financial representations provides sufficient cause for her removal because it “calls into question [her] competence and trustworthiness as a financial regulator.”

—Request to Supreme Court for an administrative stay overturning district and appellate court rulings that bar President Donald Trump from firing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, September 18

President Donald Trump’s insistence, at this late hour, that he fired Fed Governor Lisa Cook for cause constitutes a refusal so extreme to acknowledge mounting contrary evidence that you could almost call it heroic. The Supreme Court would be nuts to take up this case.

Let’s review what we’ve learned since Trump fired Cook on the grounds that she engaged in “deceitful and potentially criminal conduct” by claiming two residences (in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Atlanta).

Yes, claiming two primary residences on a mortgage application is often illegal. It is also so common that no fewer than four members of Trump’s Cabinet—that’s one-quarter—have done the very same thing. They are: Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer; Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy; Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin; and, we learned just this week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. And don’t let’s forget Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles. If “lack of care in making important financial representations … calls into question” one’s “competence and trustworthiness as a financial regulator,” why does Bessent still have a job? Because the reason cited for Cook’s firing is transparently phony.

There’s no reason to think Chavez-DeRemer, Duffy, Zeldin, Bessent, or Wiles did anything illegal or notably unethical when they claimed multiple residences as “primary.” (It probably occurred in the course of initialing a stack of documents at closing prepared by a lender, mortgage broker, or real estate attorney; in Bessent’s case, through a lawyer acting as proxy.) But there’s even less reason to think Cook did.

In theory, claiming two residences as “primary” can deceive the lender into giving the second-home buyer a lower interest rate. (Banks consider owner-occupied homes a safer investment.) But in fact, the lender often knows already that it’s a vacation home.

In Bessent’s case, loans for the two homes (in Bedford, New York, and Provincetown, Massachusetts) were made on the same day in 2007, and by the same lender, Bank of America, so it’s hard to see how anybody could have been deceived. In Wiles’s case, two homes, both designated on mortgage applications as primary, were purchased 15 months apart in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. But the second home was a primary residence not for herself but for her daughter, Caroline.

Chavez-DeRemer, Duffy, and Zeldin all ended up with two primary residences because political engagement has a way of complicating your life. Chavez-DeRemer moved to Oregon to run for Congress, while Duffy and Zeldin moved to Washington, D.C., to work in the Trump administration. The case of California Senator Adam Schiff, who as a House member led the first Trump impeachment, resembles that of Duffy and Zeldin, but of course only Schiff is being investigated by the Justice Department. There’s absolutely no reason to think any of these people, Schiff included, committed mortgage fraud.

Any suggestion of fraud is even less appropriate in Cook’s case. Last week, Reuters reported that a loan estimate for Cook’s second home in Atlanta showed that Cook declared it to be a “vacation home,” which by definition is not a primary residence. The document from the lending institution, Bank-Fund Staff Federal Credit Union, said: “Property Use: Vacation Home.” For good measure, Cook also declared the Atlanta home to be a “2nd home” on a federal document she signed in 2021 in order to obtain a security clearance.

Oddly, none of this information turns up in the two judges’ decisions against Trump in the Cook case. The Reuters story showing three Trump Cabinet members did the same as Cook predated District Court Judge Jia M. Cobb’s injunction blocking Cook’s removal. But Cobb didn’t use it. She concluded that “for cause” didn’t cover anything Cobb may have done before she assumed office. The Reuters story about Cook telling her lender the Atlanta mortgage was for a second home appeared before the appellate decision, but that too got left out. Like Cobb’s ruling, the D.C. Circuit argued that “for cause” applied only to actions taken while in office. The two decisions also noted the absence of due process. Cook could have gunned down 14 schoolchildren before she became Fed governor and the lower courts wouldn’t have cared.

Still, these new revelations show that, if these legal proceedings ever get around to examining Trump’s stated basis for Cook’s firing on its own terms, it won’t go well for Trump. Trump isn’t embarrassed that his rationale for firing Cook lies in tatters, so, as usual, we must be embarrassed for him.

I haven’t even mentioned Letitia James, the New York attorney general who last year won a $355 million civil fraud case against Trump. ABC News reported this week that Ed Martin, director of the Justice Department’s (ill-disguised) Weaponization Group, and Bill Pulte, director of the Federal Housing Finance Authority, are exerting heavy pressure on prosecutors to nail James for claiming, in mortgage documents, homes in Brooklyn and Virginia as primary residences. Way back in April, Pulte referred James’s case to the Justice Department.

It was evident from the start that this case was a dog. About the Virginia property, James had emailed her mortgage broker, “This property WILL NOT be my primary residence,” and on another form, when asked whether it was her primary residence, James checked “NO.” How do you get an indictment out of that? You don’t, and Justice Department prosecutors in Virginia’s Eastern District who’ve wasted the past five months investigating the case know it, according to CNN and ABC News. But their inaction prompted Pulte (according to ABC News) to urge Trump to fire their boss, U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert, and there’s every reason to believe that vindictive, brainless prick will do so.

Pulte is the instigator of the mortgage-fraud witch hunt, having referred Schiff, James, and Cook to the Justice Department in order to ingratiate himself with Trump. I suggested last week that it was unlikely Pulte dug up his rival Bessent’s mortgage history to share with Trump, but that was before we knew any such history existed. Now it seems more plausible that this explains why Bessent told Pulte, “I’m gonna punch you in your fucking face.” Everybody, it seems, wants to punch Pulte in his fucking face. Schiff’s attorney, Preet Bharara, suggested in a letter to the Justice Department last spring that it investigate “Mr. Pulte’s role in this sordid effort,” and while that seems unlikely at the moment, Pulte’s got “fall guy” written all over him.

Indeed, the only tangible punishment Pulte’s mortgage fraud inquisition has thus far inflicted is against his own father and stepmother. In digging up examples of people who, like Cook, claimed two primary residences in mortgage documents, Reuters identified Mark and Julie Pulte. But in their case, the offense was much more serious because, according to Reuters, they did it not on mortgage documents but on tax forms by claiming homestead deductions in both Bloomfield Township, Michigan, and Boca Raton, Florida. “It’s not something that either state generally lets you get away with,” Lisa Bender, a real estate agent who’s worked in both jurisdictions, told Reuters. Bender was right. Reuters reported this week that Bloomfield Township just socked Mark and Julie for back taxes. Now maybe they want to punch Pulte in his fucking face too.

Jimmy Kimmel’s New Best Friend Is the Supreme Court - 2025-09-19T10:00:00Z

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel, whose late-night show on ABC was “indefinitely suspended” on Wednesday after threats by the Trump administration over his comments on the Charlie Kirk assassination, may yet return to the public airwaves as Disney wrestles with the fallout from his removal. If he does not, the First Amendment is on his side.

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled as recently as last year that government officials could not coerce third parties to retaliate against constitutionally protected speech without violating the First Amendment. And while the high court’s conservative reputation is well earned, especially over the last year, there is good reason to believe that it would side with Kimmel on free speech grounds.

The saga began earlier this week when Kimmel commented upon the murder of Charlie Kirk, a prominent conservative influencer. A gunman shot and killed Kirk with a hunting rifle while he spoke at a campus event at Utah Valley University last week; police arrested a suspect a few days later after he allegedly confessed to the killing to his family. Footage of his shooting, including extremely graphic clips recorded at close range, circulated widely on social media.

Grief and fear follow naturally in the wake of a public figure’s killing. Conservative media figures and the Trump administration also responded with seething anger. The White House blamed Kirk’s death on liberal and left-wing Americans and political groups, even though local prosecutors have found no evidence to suggest the gunman was acting in concert with anyone else. Right-wing influencers have mounted campaigns to identify and “cancel” people who criticized or refused to mourn Kirk on social media after his death.

Kimmel’s initial comments about Kirk’s death were neither criticism of him nor celebration of his death. “Instead of the angry finger-pointing, can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human?” he posted on Instagram on the day of the shooting. “On behalf of my family, we send love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents, and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.”

In his Monday night opening monologue, Kimmel echoed some of those themes while criticizing conservatives for exploiting Kirk’s death. “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” he told the audience. “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”

Those comments drew a negative response from some conservative figures, who claimed that Kimmel had falsely identified the alleged shooter as a pro-Trump conservative. Kimmel’s comments during the monologue could also be read as noting that the alleged shooter came from a conservative pro-Trump family.

None of those reactions, however, were as important as the hostile response from Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. In a podcast interview with right-wing commentator Benny Johnson, Carr threatened to issue fines and revoke stations’ broadcast licenses if they continued to carry Kimmel’s show.

“There’s actions that we can take on licensed broadcasters,” Carr said. “And frankly, it’s really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney to say, ‘Listen, we are going to preempt, we aren’t going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out. Because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibility of fines or license revocations from the FCC if we continue to run content with a pattern of news distortion.’

“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” Carr continued. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” That amounted to an unambiguous threat against Kimmel to use the power of the federal government to punish a comedian for his political remarks.

How can the FCC do that? One of the agency’s duties is to approve broadcast licenses for television networks. Most media companies do not require a license to release their products: Book, newspaper, and magazine publishers don’t have to get them, nor do film studios or internet companies. Television and radio stations are different because they are distributed by radio frequencies, which are an inherently finite resource.

Two broadcasters cannot share the same wavelength. As a result, the federal government regulates radio spectrum use to maximize its benefit and prevent chaos. In exchange for a license, federal law requires stations to operate for “public interest, convenience, or necessity.” The FCC also has the power to levy fines against broadcasters if they violate certain obscenity standards; the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show and Howard Stern’s perennial clashes with the agency in the 1990s and 2000s are probably the best-known examples.

Fines and revocations aren’t the only tool that Carr can use to make life difficult for television broadcasters. Nexstar, which operates nearly three dozen ABC affiliate stations, said on Wednesday that it would preempt Kimmel’s show “for the foreseeable future” because of his “offensive and insensitive comments.” Andrew Alford, the president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, even said that the move was “in the public interest,” echoing the FCC standard.

Nexstar is particularly vulnerable to pressure from the FCC right now because it is seeking the agency’s approval for a $6.2 billion merger with Tegna, which also owns local affiliate broadcasters. The Trump administration has already used merger approval to reshape media companies in its own image. While CBS’s parent company sought approval earlier this year, the company reached a $16 million settlement with Trump to end a bogus lawsuit against 60 Minutes and announced this summer that Stephen Colbert’s late-night show would conclude its decade-long run. Trump celebrated Colbert’s ouster on social media after it was announced and added “Kimmel next!”

It is important to explain exactly what the problem is here. If ABC fired Kimmel because it wanted to do something different in the 11 p.m. hour on weeknights, or because it didn’t think Kimmel was particularly funny, or because Kimmel took the last slice of pizza in the Disney cafeteria, it would not be a First Amendment issue. (Kimmel’s contract might provide him with some protections against dismissal, but that would be his problem in those scenarios, not the country’s.)

If ABC’s affiliate stations—the local television networks owned by other companies that carry ABC programming—merely found Kimmel’s comments repugnant and declined to broadcast future episodes in protest of them, that would also not be a First Amendment issue. Boycotting has been a proud American tradition since the colonists refused to buy British tea. More importantly, in the context of a dispute between private companies, the First Amendment simply does not apply. Sinclair, a conservative media outlet that owns the most affiliate stations in the country, also preempted Kimmel’s show and demanded that he apologize to Kirk’s family and make a donation to Turning Point USA.

Even if Carr had merely joined in a chorus of criticism of Kimmel’s remarks, that would not necessarily be a First Amendment issue. Trump himself has made social media posts for years where he criticizes entertainment figures and late-night comedians. Those posts may have been beneath the dignity that his office used to hold, but they were not First Amendment problems by any stretch of the imagination.

Carr crossed the line by unambiguously threatening to use the FCC’s powers to punish ABC, its local affiliates, and Kimmel for his political speech. You don’t even really have to take my word for it—you can just listen to the man himself. “Should the government censor speech it doesn’t like?” he wrote on Twitter in 2019. “Of course not. The FCC doesn’t have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the ‘public interest.’” Local affiliate networks still followed his lead soon thereafter.

Institutions bend the knee to the Trump administration’s coercive tactics for multiple reasons. Sometimes they agree with the White House and the pressure campaign gives them an excuse to use with other stakeholders. Sometimes they do it out of genuine fear of reprisal. Some do it because they think they won’t prevail if they bring a lawsuit, given the Supreme Court’s current ideological balance. The last one is especially true in cases involving diversity, equity, and inclusion measures, for example, since the conservative majority is particularly hostile to them.

It would be a mistake to extend that last presumption to the First Amendment. As I noted last month, the Roberts court has many sins, but weakening free speech protections has not historically been one of them. The court has consistently held the post-1960s line on maintaining First Amendment protections for even the most repulsive figures and beliefs. In 2011, the court even sided with Westboro Baptist Church when it brought a First Amendment challenge to a law that prohibited protests at military funerals.

“Speech is powerful,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court in Snyder v. Phelps. “It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here—inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

A more recent case, National Rifle Association v. Vullo, is even more apropos for Kirk’s situation because it involved coercive efforts by government regulators to stifle political expression. The case arose from then–New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s widely publicized campaign against the NRA. Cuomo leveraged New York’s status as a financial capital and his control over the state’s insurance regulator to pressure insurers to cut ties with the NRA’s Carry Guard insurance program.

The NRA responded by suing the state for violating its First Amendment rights, arguing that Cuomo’s authoritarian tactics infringed upon its constitutional right to political advocacy. In a 9–0 decision last May, the Supreme Court agreed. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the court, noted that the court’s precedents had been clear on the matter for at least the last 60 years. “Today, the Court reaffirms what it said then: Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors,” Sotomayor wrote for the court in Vullo.

ABC, Nexstar, and the affiliates cannot violate the First Amendment because they are private companies, of course. Nor did the FCC directly penalize or remove Kimmel on Wednesday. By coercing broadcasters to remove him from the airwaves, however, Carr clearly violated the First Amendment—and, along the way, broke his oath to uphold the Constitution as a public official.

Kimmel’s case may not result in litigation. ABC’s brief statement only said that it was “indefinitely suspending” him, not canceling his show altogether, which leaves open the possibility that he could return to the airwaves soon. (The growing backlash to its decision to take him off the air may make “indefinite” shorter than it sounds.) Kimmel, for his part, has not publicly commented on his future since last night’s announcement. If this incident does mark the end of his ABC career, he might have a new one as a First Amendment plaintiff.

Trump’s Terrifying, Self-Serving Rebrand of Political Violence - 2025-09-19T10:00:00Z

A report on the prevalence of “militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism” in the United States has disappeared from the Justice Department website. The deletion, which was spotted by an extremism scholar, who shared an archived copy, was reported by 404 Media on Tuesday. Apparently published in 2024, the 13-page report was a fairly noncontroversial review of two decades of research on extremism, research that was funded by the National Institute of Justice (the research arm of the Department of Justice). “We don’t know why the study about far-right extremist violence was removed,” 404 Media noted, though it was apparently accessible on the DOJ website until September 12—two days after the killing of a prominent right-wing figure who had the ear of the White House: Charlie Kirk.

In light of past research on far-right violence, the report offered few surprises. “The number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism,” researchers found. Far-right attacks are both more numerous and more lethal: Since 1990, “far-right extremists” have claimed more than 520 lives, whereas over the same time period “far-left extremists” were responsible for 42 “ideologically motivated attacks,” killing 78. Among the issues the far right have used to justify their acts of violence, the report said, were “long-standing ideological grievances related to immigration,” as well as “narratives surrounding electoral fraud.”

It was no doubt inconvenient for the current administration for two of the claims Trump most often deploys to legitimize his hold on power—that immigrants are flooding into the country and voting illegally—were named by a DOJ-funded study as two of the more common narratives that far-right actors use to legitimize their violence. (When asked why this report was removed, a media affairs manager with the Department of Justice responded to The New Republic, “No comment, thanks.”)

But the Trump administration is not just flirting with far-right violence, not merely quietly removing studies that track its rise; it is creating political space in which it can flourish. Such violence, in Trump’s eyes, no longer seems like such a threat to the federal government because it is now more openly aligned with the government. On Fox last Friday, the president said, “I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime.... They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in.’” They share his concerns, in other words, and are thus justified in what they do. “The radicals on the left are the problem,” the president concluded. The threat political violence poses is measured by whatever Trump thinks is threatening to him.

To be clear, the right’s minimization and denial of such violence, even as it has unfolded, has precedent. Not long after President Obama’s first election, a Department of Homeland Security analyst noticed an escalation in terrorist threats made by the far right. The analyst, Daryl Johnson, had previously worked for Army Counterintelligence, monitoring domestic threats against the military, and at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, where he investigated neo-Nazis, militias, and white supremacists. At DHS, he continued that work, authoring a report for law enforcement called “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.”

The report was prescient: Within weeks of its release, on June 10, 2009, a white supremacist shot and killed a security guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and on June 1, Dr. George Tiller was assassinated by an anti-abortion extremist and supporter of the Montana Freemen, a far-right anti-government group, who preached that the group was sovereign and not subject to the laws of the federal government. But in the meantime, the report had been repudiated by DHS.

Why? Because the right had made the report politically toxic. Conservative media outlets framed its findings as an attack on the right. “There is not one instance they can cite as evidence where any of these right-wing groups have done anything,” Rush Limbaugh complained at the time. “You have a report from Janet Napolitano and Barack Obama, Department of Homeland Security portraying standard, ordinary, everyday conservatives as posing a bigger threat to this country than Al Qaeda terrorists or genuine enemies of this country like Kim Jong Il.” It didn’t matter that there was ample evidence or that there would be more. Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano tried to dispel the wave of disinformation, saying in a statement, “We are on the lookout for criminal and terrorist activity, but we do not—nor will we ever—monitor ideology or political beliefs.” She apologized to veterans for the report. It didn’t matter. Within a year, not only had the report been retracted, Daryl Johnson said the team at DHS that had produced the report with him had been dismantled.

“I’ve thought about this a lot,” Johnson said in an interview, about a decade later. “What if our politicians and our police chiefs took my ’09 report seriously, and it wasn’t politicized, and people started implementing programs and devoting money and resources to this problem, where would we be 10 years removed from it now? I firmly believe that these groups would be on their heels.” Instead, he said, “I think we’ve reached the point of no return.… And now, it doesn’t matter whether Donald Trump is re-elected or whether a Democrat comes into power. The far right is going to be here.” That was in 2020.

It’s easy to paint the current administration’s attempts to suppress research meant to help us better understand and respond to political violence from the right, while also vastly overstating the threat of political violence from the left and threatening unlawful crackdowns, as projection or hypocrisy. But something else—something more dangerous—is driving the Trump’s administration’s moves to blame the left for all political violence.

Under Trump, we are watching an effort by those in power to redefine political violence in such a way that the right can never be culpable, in which the right is always the victim and the hero. When Trump erased the criminal convictions of around 1,500 people engaged in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, it was as if to say, any act committed by these “hostages” and “patriots” cannot be a crime because it was in support of him. Likewise, to dare punish such a patriot is itself “violence.” What we are at risk of right now is an administration that succeeds in persuading even more of these supporters that anything their political enemies do is violence—and that anything they do is just politics.

Trump’s Crazed New Rants Make Jimmy Kimmel Mess Look Even More Corrupt - 2025-09-19T09:00:00Z

What Does Fox News Host Harris Faulkner Know About Integrity? - 2025-09-18T22:06:07Z

Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner on Thursday seemingly defended the censorship of anti-Trump talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel: “We want an open market for speech,” she said. “But speech comes with more than responsibility, more than accountability. It comes with the expectation that we’ll have integrity when we use our speech.”

A glaring issue with Faulkner’s statement is that her standard, “integrity,” is in the eye of the beholder. And it’s particularly rich given that the Fox host’s own statements—and those of guests on her shows—don’t exactly use speech in such righteous ways, as Media Matters has thoroughly documented.

Earlier this month, for example, Faulkner suggested that people rightly questioning the legality of President Trump’s September 2 attack on a Venezuelan boat (which the president claims was “drug-carrying”) are “working against America and for the drug cartels.” In April, she asked a guest whether former President Barack Obama and “others in his political camp” are antisemitic for supporting Harvard University amid the Trump administration’s incursions. In February, she defended deporting pregnant women and children.

In November 2024, Faulkner proposed that Representative Rashida Tlaib is a “terrorist.” (“If you support terrorists, aren’t you a terrorist?” she asked rhetorically, equating the Palestinian American congresswoman’s pro-Palestinian advocacy with support for Hamas.) In January 2024, she accused Alejandro Mayorkas, Joe Biden’s homeland security secretary, of treason.

Guests on Faulkner’s shows—to say nothing of other Fox hosts and guests—also say plenty of noxious things, such as that drag queens reading to children normalize pedophilia, that Biden’s border policies “poison[ed] the bloodline in this country,” and that the woman at the center of Trump’s hush-money trial (and ultimately, felony conviction) was a “liar” and a “whore.”

Trump Promises That Drug Prices Are About to Go Down “1,000 Percent” - 2025-09-18T22:01:33Z

Our math whiz commander in chief is once again promising to lower drug prices by 1,000 percent in the next year and a half—something that is virtually impossible.

“Now the drug companies agree that I’m right, and the countries … if they don’t agree, I’ll use tariffs to get them to agree. You understand?” Trump said in an interview on Fox News.

“We’re gonna be reducing drug costs over the next year, year and a half, by—not fifty or sixty percent—by a thousand percent. Because if you think, a $10 pill going so.… It’ll be raised up from $10 to $20 because it’s the world versus us,” Trump rambled. “So it’ll go from $10 to $20, from $10 to $50 or $60 for them. Which is bearable. And it’ll go from $10 to $20 for us.”

Trump: "We're gonna reducing drug costs over the next year and a half by 1,000 percent." pic.twitter.com/jX5eg3QEQY

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 18, 2025

Incredibly, the interviewer did not request any immediate clarification.

This is not the first time Trump has tried to sell this particular strain of snake oil. Last month, Trump also claimed to have already cut drug costs by 1,000 percent. In reality, he hasn’t moved prices at all and has only sent a slurry of strongly worded letters to pharmaceutical companies demanding that they just lower their costs for Americans. And his tariff option, like most recklessly levied tariffs, might just raise the costs of prescription drugs even more.

“I find it really difficult to translate those numbers into some actual estimates that patients would see at the pharmacy counter,” Johns Hopkins University health policy professor Mariana Socal told the Associated Press last month, adding that Trump’s numbers were “really hard to follow.”

A month later, and they still aren’t making any sense.

Trump: Saying Mean Things About Me Is “Not Allowed” - 2025-09-18T20:18:32Z

Donald Trump is apparently intent on punishing media figures deemed guilty of lèse-majesté against him. The day after Jimmy Kimmel was censored at the behest of the Federal Communications Commission, the president told reporters that networks are “not allowed” to excessively bash him.

“When you have a network, and you have evening shows, and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do—if you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative one in years, or something.… When you go back and take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that,” Trump said Thursday aboard Air Force One.

On Wednesday, ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! after Nexstar Media Group and Sinclair Broadcast Group dropped the show. The affair was set in motion by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who threatened media companies that platform Kimmel after the comedian displayed the “sickest conduct possible,” Carr said. (In reality, Kimmel delivered a monologue in which he mocked Trump’s and MAGA’s ridiculous behavior in the wake of the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.)

Trump warned of the move against Kimmel back in July. “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next,” he wrote on Truth Social after CBS announced the cancellation of anti-Trump comedian Stephen Colbert’s late-night show (which many saw as a capitulation to the president). After Kimmel’s ouster Wednesday, Trump similarly called his next shots, urging NBC to suspend the shows of Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers.

Democratic-Led States Unveil Plan to Avoid RFK Jr.’s Anti-Vax Nonsense - 2025-09-18T19:26:19Z

A coalition of states is planning to release its own vaccine recommendations following Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine takeover of the nation’s health institutions.

New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island have formed the Northeast Public Health Collaborative. New York City, which has the country’s largest municipal health department that is independent from the state, has also joined the group.

The group released its first round of Covid-19 vaccine recommendations Monday, advising that infants and toddlers between the ages of 6 months and 23 months, as well as adults over 19 years old, “should be vaccinated.” Healthy children between the ages of 2 and 18 do not need to be vaccinated but may receive the vaccine, according to the group.

While the group’s recommendations are in line with guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and the American Academy of Family Physicians, they vary vastly from those of the federal government.

Last month, the Food and Drug Administration approved updated Covid-19 shots for people aged 65 or above only, requiring younger adults and children to prove one high-risk health condition, such as asthma or obesity, in order to qualify for the jab.

“The Trump Administration walked away from its responsibility to protect public health,” wrote New York Governor Kathy Hochul on X Thursday. “Through the Northeast Public Health Collaborative, we’re making sure New Yorkers get the facts and access they need to stay protected.”

New York, New Jersey, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Rhode Island have all expanded access to Covid-19 vaccines, ordering that pharmacies must administer the shot in alignment with recommendations from trusted national medical societies.

California, Oregon, and Washington state have also formed their own West Coast Health Alliance to deliver independent vaccine recommendations.

Kennedy, who has spent much of his time in office promoting unproven medicine and fearmongering about vaccine side effects, has overseen a total upheaval of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Just days before an upcoming meeting to discuss Covid-19 vaccinations for the fall, Kennedy added five new members to the panel, including some vaccine skeptics who had criticized vaccine mandates or downplayed the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic. Kennedy had previously added eight new members in June, after dismissing the original 17.

Susan Monarez, the former CDC director, testified before Congress Wednesday that Kennedy had asked her “to commit, in advance, to approving every” recommendation by the CDC’s ACIP, “regardless of scientific evidence.”

The Pentagon Is Considering a Bonkers New Military Recruiting Tactic - 2025-09-18T19:09:08Z

Top U.S. military leaders are considering a new recruitment strategy that would leverage Charlie Kirk’s legacy and memory to draw more of America’s youth into the armed services.

The Pentagon would frame the drive as a “national call to service,” according to U.S. officials who spoke with NBC News. Possible slogans for the recruitment effort include “Charlie has awakened a generation of warriors.”

The enlistment strategy could potentially involve Turning Point USA, Kirk’s political organization, morphing it into recruitment centers. “That could include inviting recruiters to be present at events or advertising for the military at the chapters,” NBC reported that two defense officials explained.

There are some 900 official college chapters and around 1,200 high school chapters of Turning Point USA across the nation, but the conservative advocacy nonprofit received more than 54,000 inquiries for new campus chapters in the 48 hours after Kirk’s assassination, according to TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet.

The undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, Anthony Tata, is the brains behind the initiative, sources told NBC News.

It was not immediately clear what the timeline for the drive would be, or if it will even come to fruition. Some dissent has already permeated among some Pentagon leaders, who are reportedly concerned about the P.R. nightmare that could ensue if it’s perceived the U.S. military is attempting to “capitalize on Kirk’s death,” officials told the news network.

Kirk was shot dead last week during an event at Utah Valley University. He was immediately martyred by the ideological right, which has since celebrated the 31-year-old firebrand as a pivotal figure in the MAGA movement.

A college dropout, Kirk had become one of the most prominent conservative activists in the country, attracting droves of young people to the Republican cause by meeting and debating them on college campuses. He was one of the few conservative personalities outside the Trump administration to maintain regular contact with the president, and was credited with playing a critical role in reelecting Donald Trump in 2024.

Mike Pence Is as Spineless as Ever - 2025-09-18T17:50:50Z

At The Atlantic Festival on Thursday, the former Vice President co-signed the firing of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, while also identifying the exact reason it is unjust: because the Trump administration forced ABC to do it. 

“We ought ever to be vigilant, to ensure the right of every American to express their views without government interference or censorship,” Pence told The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta. “The First Amendment, though, does not protect entertainers who say crass or thoughtless things, as Jimmy Kimmel did in the wake of a national tragedy.”  

Kimmel poked fun at Trump’s admittedly strange change of subject when asked about how Charlie Kirk’s death affected him, and pointed out that the right was doing an all-out media blitz to convince the public that the shooter was a left-wing terrorist from a radical movement with little information out. 

.@Mike_Pence tells @TimAlberta that he respects ABC’s right to suspend Jimmy Kimmel, but “I would have preferred that the chairman of the FCC had not weighed in.”

Watch more: https://t.co/2lau8am8Do #TAF25 pic.twitter.com/jgLFlx56cd

— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) September 18, 2025

Pence continued, getting so close to getting it right while still missing it completely. 

“Private employers have every right to dismiss employees, whether they’re a television talk show host or otherwise, if they violate the standards of that company. Now, I would have preferred that the chairman of the FCC  had not weighed in. But I respect the right of the networks to make the decision.” Pence went on to call Kimmel “callous” and “thoughtless” for his comments. 

The part Pence conveniently wedged between his very monotone outrage over Kimmel’s speech is what the issue is. This isn’t simply a disgruntled employer firing an employee for mouthing off; this is the Trump administration putting pressure on a network to fire someone for saying things they don’t like. From Mahmoud Khalil  to Rümeysa Öztürk to Kimmel, conservatives are being willfully obtuse about what speech crackdowns are really about. 

Trump Wants to Send American Troops Back to Afghanistan - 2025-09-18T17:35:23Z

President Donald Trump on Thursday announced plans to station U.S. troops back in Afghanistan. The president, who campaigned on minimizing U.S. involvement in foreign entanglements, said he is in talks with the Taliban to regain control of Bagram air base.

The announcement came as Trump criticized the Biden administration’s 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, which ended America’s longest war, during a press conference. Trump, arguing that he would have pulled out while retaining Bagram, described his efforts “to get it back,” without providing much detail.

“That could be a little breaking news,” Trump said. “We’re trying to get it back, because they need things from us. We want that base back.”

The president suggested that the Afghan air base, originally constructed by the Soviet Union in the 1950s, would serve a strategic purpose for Washington against China.

Without evidence, Trump alleged that “it’s an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons.” In recent months, he has repeatedly mused about the air base—claiming falsely that it is occupied or “controlled” by Beijing, and baselessly asserting its close proximity to Chinese nuclear weapons plants.

Trump’s Ouster of Jimmy Kimmel Is Much Worse Than You Think It Is - 2025-09-18T17:33:56Z

The startling decision by ABC to pull comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show under pressure from President Trump requires a real response from Democrats. It has to go well beyond expressions of outrage and defenses of the First Amendment—though those are critical—and spell out potential future consequences, political and possibly even legal, for those participating in this escalating lawlessness.

The bare facts about this situation already demonstrate that this is a breathtaking abuse of power. Critically, it turns on the willingness of accomplices to bend or break the law to assist in Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power, in this case Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr. Which might provide an opening for Democrats.

Carr is not doing much to hide the corrupt nature of what just happened. The MAGA right has been furious with Kimmel for allegedly mischaracterizing Charlie Kirk’s killer as one of them. Though the shooter’s motives remain murky, that may indeed prove false.

But it’s still speech. And on Wednesday, Carr went on a far-right podcast to directly threaten ABC with retaliation for Kimmel’s offense. Carr flatly declared that if “these companies”—meaning ABC and its parent, Disney—don’t “take action on Kimmel” for spreading misinformation about Kirk’s killing, there will be “additional work for the FCC ahead.” Carr added that this could mean pulling the licenses of ABC broadcast affiliates.

That’s appalling by itself. But Carr went even further, in some revealing comments to Fox News’s Sean Hannity on Wednesday night. In that appearance, Carr claimed that mainstream media outlets conspired to stop Trump’s 2024 election with their coverage of things like Joe Biden’s age and Russia’s efforts to help Trump win in 2016.

Carr was lying, of course. But then he added this:

Trump punched back. And when he did so, he was standing up for the American people that simply don’t trust those outlets anymore. We at the FCC are going to enforce the public interest obligation. There’s broadcasters out there that don’t like it—they can turn their license in to the FCC.

Carr continued that these media outlets had run a “narrow partisan circus” during 2024, and added: “Whatever the public interest means, it’s not that.”

This is simply extraordinary. The invocation of the “public interest” is a reference to the fact that by law, the FCC licenses network affiliates to operate on behalf of the public interest. And so Carr here is going further than in his original rationale, i.e., that the FCC could pull licenses in the “public interest” due to Kimmel’s supposed spreading of misinformation about Kirk.

Rather, Carr basically said to Hannity that broadcasters are operating contrary to the “public interest,” and thus could see licenses revoked, if they cover Trump in ways that Carr decrees are overly critical of him and thus illegitimate.

All of this constitutes a major abuse of power. The problem is that in authorizing the FCC to license network affiliates, the law doesn’t clearly define what “public interest” means. Carr is exploiting this by defining “public interest” in an absurd and dangerous way.

To be as clear as possible about this: Carr himself essentially told Hannity straight out that he reserves the right to declare coverage inimical to the public interest—and thus subject to FCC retaliation via the revocation of licenses—if he declares it by fiat to be overly hostile to Trump.

“That makes it even more egregious and more clear,” First Amendment lawyer Ken White tells me. White notes that to win a First Amendment case here, it would be necessary to show that Carr threatened private actors—in this case, Disney and ABC—to coerce them to censor Kimmel.

“There’s a clear, obvious violation here,” White says. “Kimmel could sue Carr and other government actors to get an order telling them to stop it, though it’s doubtful they’d obey.”

“This is an unprecedented abuse of the FCC’s power,” adds Caitlin Vogus, senior adviser of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “The ‘public interest’ standard was never meant to be used as a cudgel for the government to pressure broadcasters into only saying what the president wants them to say.”

Carr’s threats may be unlawful in addition to violating the First Amendment, says Anna Gomez, who is the only Democratic-appointed commissioner on the three-member FCC. Gomez notes that federal law also bars the FCC from censoring broadcasters.

“What the administration is doing violates the First Amendment and the Communications Act,” Gomez tells me, noting that the government is “using the public interest standard to go after anything it doesn’t like.”

“This administration is increasingly using the weight of government to suppress lawful expression,” Gomez said, decrying Trump’s “campaign of censorship and control” to “silence dissent.”

There may be another dimension to Carr’s abuse of power, as well. Recall that media conglomerate Nexstar, which runs many ABC affiliates, first announced that it will yank Kimmel, boosting the pressure on ABC. But Nexstar’s move came after Carr suggested that “individual licensed stations” must “step up” and take action against Kimmel.

Nexstar is seeking FCC approval for a merger with megabroadcaster Tegna. So the question is: Did Nexstar understand Carr to be saying that the merger could depend on it agreeing to pull Kimmel from its stations?

“I believe there was strong pressure against [Nexstar’s] broadcasters to preempt Kimmel,” FCC Commissioner Gomez tells me.

Is it legal for the FCC chair to threaten to pull the licenses of broadcasters unless they refrain from Trump coverage that he arbitrarily declares illegitimate? Is it legal for the FCC chair to apparently hint that Nexstar won’t get its merger approved unless it yanks someone whose speech Trump dislikes?

Those experts all told me that Carr may be keeping his public commentary about all this just vague enough to avoid direct lawbreaking. But Democrats should do all they can to find out whether Carr is breaking the law in addition to violating the Constitution. They can scour every corner of the relevant statutes. And they can declare clearly that if and when they retake congressional power, they will scrutinize every crevice of Carr’s decision-making with subpoena power to assemble a clear picture of the deliberations and private communications behind his public threats.

Meanwhile, Democrats who go on ABC News might try to inform the network’s audience that it capitulated to Trump’s autocratic abuses of power, and that it isn’t serving the public well by doing so. They might even directly and publicly ask ABC News journalists if they’re comfortable with this outcome, which they surely are not.

Democrats need to let it be known that any and all Trump accomplices who carry out corrupt or illegal actions on his behalf will face accountability later. It’s the only language these authoritarian thugs will ever understand.

Trump Begs Supreme Court to Let Him Corruptly Fire Lisa Cook - 2025-09-18T17:07:43Z

President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to give him permission to fire whomever he wants—as long as he can come up with a reason.

The Trump administration went running to the Supreme Court Thursday to back up its efforts to oust Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled 2–1 Monday along ideological lines to block Cook’s removal, saying that she was likely to succeed in her statutory claim that she’d been fired without “cause,” as well as her procedural claim that she did not receive due process prior to her removal.

Trump’s attorney John D. Sauer submitted a request to stay the preliminary injunction Thursday, arguing that Cook was not entitled to due process and that Trump has a sweeping discretion to fire whomever he wanted as long as he claimed it was related to their job.

“The Federal Reserve Act’s broad ‘for cause’ provision rules out removal for no reason at all, or for policy disagreement,” Sauer wrote. “But so long as the President identifies a cause, the determination of ‘some cause relating to the conduct, ability, fitness, or competence of the officer’ is within the President’s unreviewable discretion,” Sauer wrote.

“The President’s strong concerns about the appearance of mortgage fraud, based on facially contradictory representations made to obtain mortgages by someone whose job is to set interest rates that affect Americans’ mortgages, satisfies any conception of cause,” Sauer continued.

(One might wonder if the same strong concerns would also apply to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who also made contradictory mortgage pledges, in his role shaping domestic and international economic policy.)

A federal district court had previously ruled that Trump couldn’t fire Cook over unproven allegations of mortgage fraud from Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte—who’s made similar accusations against a number of the president’s enemies—because it had nothing to do with her actual job. “For cause” typically refers to serious misconduct, or a neglect of duty.

Since Trump hit the campaign trail, the Supreme Court has been located securely in the president’s pocket, granting him “immunity” and then green-lighting move after move of his sweeping agenda when he resumed office. Despite the rulings of lower courts, it’s entirely possible this trend will continue.

The Most Ridiculous Part About Jimmy Kimmel’s Suspension - 2025-09-18T16:42:24Z

The Federal Communications Commission’s involvement in canceling Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show not only appears to have violated the First Amendment, but it also defied one of Donald Trump’s own executive orders.

Jimmy Kimmel Live! was put on indefinite hiatus Wednesday by Nexstar, one of the largest owners of ABC stations in the country, over supposedly controversial comments that Kimmel made about the political affiliation of Charlie Kirk’s suspected assassin. (Kimmel said that MAGA was rushing to claim that Tyler Robinson was “anything other than one of them”—which is technically true.)

The network, which is in the midst of a multibillion-dollar acquisition that requires the FCC’s approval, yanked Kimmel hours after the federal agency’s leader, Brendan Carr, publicly threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of anyone still platforming the comedian.

But beyond the flagrant infringement by the government on Kimmel’s freedom of speech, the irony of Carr’s command is that it also breached the Trump administration’s own policies.

One of the first executive orders that Trump signed when he returned to office in January promised to ensure that “no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent” would engage or facilitate “any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.”

It also swore that “no taxpayer resources” would be used to similarly restrict a citizen’s First Amendment right to free speech.

The discrepancy should sic Attorney General Pam Bondi on Carr, as the order instructed should happen for any potential free speech infringements that the Trump administration deemed had occurred during the prior presidential administration.

Regardless, Nexstar’s decision was widely celebrated by conservatives. Trump wrote on Truth Social that Nexstar’s decision to unplug Kimmel was “great news for America,” while Carr commented to The Hollywood Reporter that the broadcast network was “doing the right thing.” Both suggested that more of America’s major television companies should follow suit.

Trump Just Made It Very Clear Why Jimmy Kimmel Was Taken Off the Air - 2025-09-18T16:30:07Z

President Trump took some time out of his press conference with British Prime Minister Kier Starmer to throw more dirt on Jimmy Kimmel’s name and mislead the public about why he was actually fired Wednesday night. 

“We saw the dismissal of a very well-known chat show host in America last night, Mr. Kimmel,” a British journalist asked Trump. 

“Well, Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else, and he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk,” Trump replied. “And Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person; he had very bad ratings. And they should’ve fired him a long time ago. So y’know, you can call that free speech or not. He was fired for lack of talent.” 

Trump: Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings and he said a horrible thing about a gentleman known as Charlie Kirk. Free speech or not, he was fired for lack of talent. pic.twitter.com/3vBucaH6F3

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 18, 2025

It seems clear at this point that Kimmel was fired because he dared to poke fun at Trump’s very flippant reaction to a question about Kirk’s death. Kimmel didn’t say anything that horrible, other than quoting Trump directly and noting that the administration was pushing Kirk’s shooter as a leftist terrorist without proper evidence.

The president and his administration, having already been trending toward McCarthyism for months, had their feelings hurt, and made FCC head Brendan Carr threaten to revoke the broadcasting licenses of ABC if it didn’t properly reprimand Kimmel.  

Not a big fan of Jimmy Kimmel, but if you think his show should be canceled for this, you’re a hack and a total fraud who should never pretend to care about free speech pic.twitter.com/FSiktbva6y

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) September 17, 2025

Trump trying to convince people that Kimmel mostly got fired because he was a bad host is facetious at best. 

Does Trump Know the Difference Between Armenia and Albania? - 2025-09-18T16:23:58Z

For at least the third time, President Donald Trump on Thursday mistook the country of Armenia for Albania, falsely claiming he’d brought an end to an Azerbaijan-Albania conflict that never took place. The gaffe came during a press conference in England, where the president touted his purported record as a peacemaker.

Attempting to mention a peace declaration he arranged, laying the groundwork to end a decades-long conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Trump said: “To think that we settled … uh … Azerbaijan and Albania, as an example.” (Beyond the country mix-up, the president botched the pronunciation of Azerbaijan, saying something like “Aber … baijan” instead.)

Trump: We settled Azerbaijan and Albania. The prime ministers were in my office. pic.twitter.com/Ugpg2q2TvL

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 18, 2025

The 79-year-old president made an identical flub in an August 19 appearance on a conservative radio show. “You saw the Aber … baijan,” Trump told the host (his mispronunciation so egregious that the show’s transcript registered it as “Arab or Bhaijaan”). “That was a big one going on for 34, 35 years with, uh, Albania. Think of that.”

In a Fox News appearance last week, he again boasted about brokering peace between “Azerbaijan and Albania.”

“It was going on for years,” the president said Thursday of the ongoing conflict. “It was never going to be settled. If you remember, the prime minister and the presidents, they were there for many years. They said—when they were in my office, we settled. And they started off at both sides of the Oval Office. So far away. I didn’t know you could be so far away. And as we were together for an hour, they kept getting closer, closer. And by the time we finished, we all hugged each other.”

Trump Torched by Judge He Appointed for Secretly Deporting Children - 2025-09-18T15:46:32Z

A Trump-appointed federal judge on Thursday shredded the administration’s flimsy excuse for trying to secretly deport children over Labor Day weekend. 

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly wrote that the government’s claim that it had yanked children out of their beds to hastily reunite them with their parents in Guatemala had “crumbled like a house of cards.”

“There is no evidence before the Court that the parents of these children sought their return,” Kelly wrote in a 43-page filing. “To the contrary, the Guatemalan Attorney General reports that officials could not even track down parents for most of the children whom Defendants found eligible for their ‘reunification’ plan. And none of those that were located had asked for their children to come back to Guatemala.”

The judge excoriated the Trump administration’s defense for the children’s expedited removal, saying the government had “come up short on both the law and facts,” and “misstate[d] the legal standard” in trying to undermine the commonality requirement for a class-action lawsuit. 

“In any event, the record here is barren of evidence that any child in the proposed class wants to return to Guatemala, even if their parents can be found. All the evidence suggests the opposite: Plaintiffs have offered over 30 declarations from Guatemalan children who object to being sent back,” Kelly wrote. 

Earlier this month, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller claimed that a judge who’d initially blocked the children’s deportation was “effectively kidnapping these migrant children and refusing to let them return home to their parents in their home country.”

Kelly also slammed the Trump administration’s claim that it would not deport children deemed ineligible for removal, “given the possibility that Defendants may alter their criteria and then act in a way that would prevent judicial review, the risk of irremediable harm.”

“They cite no statute, regulation, or even policy statement requiring them. That means there is no legal roadblock preventing Defendants from changing the criteria (or how they interpret them) tomorrow, placing a currently non-eligible child onto the eligibility list, and hustling that child out of the country as they tried to do over Labor Day weekend,” Kelly wrote.  

He added that the government’s conduct plainly suggested the administration was “not applying their criteria accurately, consistently, or in ways that reflect good faith,” because it had attempted to rush the children out in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend, leaving little opportunity for legal intervention.

Kimmel’s Suspension Is Another Shameless Media Capitulation to Trump - 2025-09-18T15:38:37Z

Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension by ABC is another example of both media capitulation to President Trump and the administration’s war on the press, say Kathy Roberts Ford, a journalism professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and TNR contributor Ana Marie Cox. In the latest edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon, the two explain why Kimmel’s suspension is so alarming. They connect it to Trump’s lawsuits against The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times as well as his administration’s use of regulatory authority to pressure media companies. They emphasize that media organizations owned by large corporations with other businesses are particularly unwilling to defend journalistic principles. Cox also expresses worries about small outlets being targeted by the Trump administration. You can watch this video here.

Keir Starmer Essentially Begs Trump to Be Tougher on Putin - 2025-09-18T15:31:23Z

America’s allies have resorted to practically begging Donald Trump to be harder on Russia.

During a joint press conference Thursday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer pushed back against the U.S. president’s interpretation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, making plain how a strengthened American resolve could nip Russia’s recent incursions.

Trump first complained that Russian President Vladimir Putin “has let me down.”

“I mean he’s killing many people and he’s losing more people than he’s killing,” Trump said. “Frankly, Russian soldiers are being killed at a higher rate than the Ukrainian soldiers.

“But yeah, he’s let me down. It’s death. You know, it doesn’t affect the United States, we have—other than unless you end up in a world war over this thing, you could—this was a thing that would have never happened had I been president. And it didn’t happen for four years, most people agree, it didn’t happen. Nor was it close to happening,” Trump continued.

“I spoke to President Putin about Ukraine, it was the apple of his eye. I’ve said that many times, but he would have never done what he did, except that he didn’t respect the leadership of the United States,” Trump said.

“He, look—it doesn’t so much affect you, though you are a lot closer to the scene than we are,” Trump said, turning toward Starmer.

But Starmer couldn’t let the situation slip, instead spelling out—inches away from Trump—exactly why American opposition to Russia is so critical.

“We have to put extra pressure on Putin,” Starmer said, not facing the U.S. president. “It’s only when the president has put pressure on Putin that he’s actually shown any inclination to move.”

Starmer emphasized that Russia has only grown more bold in its invasion of Ukraine, referring to an incident in August when the Kyiv building hosting the British Council’s office was badly damaged by Russian bombs.

Trump has little to show for the profound international recognition he’s offered the Kremlin over the last few months. Against the advice of world leaders, Trump invited Putin to Alaska in August—tasking U.S. soldiers to literally roll out the red carpet for the Russian dictator. It was the first time that Putin had stepped foot on U.S. soil in more than a decade.

Still, Russia has not agreed to peace terms in its ongoing war against Ukraine. The superpower has instead insisted on receiving “international legal recognition” of its 2014 annexation of Crimea, an internationally recognized portion of Ukraine, along with four regions it has claimed in the three years since it first invaded Ukraine.

And Trump has continued to play it soft with the Kremlin. The U.S. leader offered a remarkably blasé comment regarding the breach of Russian drones into Polish airspace earlier this month, writing on Truth Social: “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!” Trump further suggested that the attack—which forced the Eastern European nation to shut down four of its airports as it scrambled to fire up its defense systems—“could have been a mistake.”

Russia took note of the absent pushback. Rather than de-escalate the situation, Russia decided to stoke more fear, tossing threats at Finland if it dared to oppose their power.

The FCC’s Censorship of Jimmy Kimmel Is Insanely Corrupt - 2025-09-18T15:07:58Z

The censorship of Jimmy Kimmel was evidently a sacrifice at the altar of corporate interests.

ABC’s Wednesday decision to suspend Jimmy Kimmel Live! came after decisions to pull the show from Nexstar Media Group and then Sinclair Broadcast Group, which own many ABC affiliate stations across the country. Earlier Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s censorial Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr had threatened broadcasters for platforming Kimmel, due to the host’s recent monologue about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. 

While Kimmel’s jokes focused on Trump’s and MAGA’s response to the killing, rather than the violence itself, Carr called it the “sickest conduct possible.” Nexstar and Sinclair followed suit, explaining their decision as a response to the purportedly “insensitive” and “problematic” comments. (Going beyond yanking the show, Sinclair also demanded that Kimmel apologize and donate to Kirk’s family and organization, and committed to broadcasting an hour-long tribute to Kirk during the show’s time slot.)

It is no coincidence that Nexstar is seeking to merge with another major media company, Tegna—a decision that requires not only FCC approval but also a change in regulations that limit companies’ reach. According to Poynter, the merger would expand Nexstar’s reach to 80 percent of TV households in the country, whereas the FCC currently has a 39 percent cap.  And Sinclair has pending business before the administration too—according to CNN media analyst Brian Stelter—and also proposed merging with Tegna, as The Wall Street Journal reported, following the announcement of Nexstar’s deal.

“So we know that two major TV station owners, both of which need to curry favor with the Trump administration, were the ones that most loudly and vocally condemned Kimmel and said they were going to not air the show tonight and in the coming nights,” Stelter said on Wednesday evening. “It’s an Occam’s razor situation. It’s exactly what it looks like.”

Sean Hannity Gets Amnesia About Jimmy Kimmel Suspension - 2025-09-18T14:57:11Z

Fox News host Sean Hannity claimed that he couldn’t find a “single prominent conservative voice” pushing to knock Jimmy Kimmel off the air—but in July, President Donald Trump suggested that Kimmel would be “next” to be canceled.

“The left already—starting with humpty-dumpty CNN, Pritzker, Newsom—predictably claiming, ‘This is a conservative censorship. The MAGA crowd, Donald Trump got Jimmy Kimmel.’ That is false,” Hannity whined Wednesday night. “I can’t find a single prominent conservative voice in the country that even remotely wanted or hoped or was pushing to get Jimmy Kimmel taken off the air.”

But in July, after CBS announced that The Late Show With Stephen Colbert would be canceled, Trump celebrated the win against a vocal critic by listing who else he’d like to see taken off the air.

“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings,” Trump wrote on Truth Social at the time. “I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.”

It appears that Hannity is playing defense for the blatant act of political overreach from the Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, who publicly pressured Nexstar Media Group, the broadcast company that owns ABC, to punish Kimmel for his speech. Nexstar is currently seeking FCC approval for a $6.2 billion deal to buy Tegna, an acquisition that would make Nexstar the biggest owner of local stations in the country.

During his show Monday, Kimmel said that MAGA had spent the weekend “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” In fact, Republicans started doing that the same day Kirk was shot, casting blame on the left and the transgender community before the shooter was even identified.

Kimmel’s remark about MAGA comments wasn’t even a matter of opinion, it was a well-documented fact.

Nancy Mace Loses It at Fellow GOP After Ilhan Omar Censure Fails - 2025-09-18T14:41:38Z

Despite Representative Nancy Mace’s best efforts, her Democratic colleague Ilhan Omar will get to speak her mind another day.

Four Republicans joined the Democratic caucus Wednesday night to quash Mace’s measure, sending the South Carolinian into a tizzy over the foiled plan and the diminished support inside her own party. Those conservatives were Representatives Mike Flood, Tom McClintock, Jeff Hurd, and Cory Mills, all of whom Mace put on full blast after the vote.

“They voted to shield a woman who mocked the cold-blooded assassination of Charlie Kirk … a woman who belittled his grieving family,” Mace posted in the wake of the failed vote. “They showed us exactly who they are. Never forget it.”

Over the last week, Mace has advocated for stripping Omar of her committee assignments and censuring her, and has publicly suggested that Omar should be deported back to Somalia for having allegedly “smeared Charlie Kirk and implied he was to blame for his own murder” during an interview with Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan.

Disjointed clips from that interview were similarly picked up and recirculated by far-right personalities, who claimed that Omar had said Kirk deserved to die. But that wasn’t accurate.

“No one said he deserved to die. Ilhan Omar said the exact opposite to me,” Hasan wrote on X. “She condemned his killing. And she said her heart goes out to Kirk’s widow.”

Omar also pushed back against Mace, arguing that she never made the comments that Mace was attempting to silence her for.

“Her [resolution] does not contain a single quote from me because she couldn’t find any,” Omar said. “Unlike her, I have routinely condemned political violence, no matter the political ideology. This is all an attempt to push a false story so she can fundraise and boost her run for Governor.”

FCC Chair Takes Victory Lap After Muzzling Kimmel - 2025-09-18T14:41:18Z

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr—who just a few years ago was waxing poetic about how political satire is the “oldest and most important form of free speech”—is now using The Office GIFs to celebrate taking away Jimmy Kimmel’s freedom of speech.

Carr appeared on conservative commentator Benny Johnson’s podcast and floated punishing Kimmel for making remarks about Trump’s reaction to Charlie Kirk’s killing. While ABC was not initially going to rebuke Kimmel, as his statements were pretty run of the mill, threats from Carr and the Trump administration regarding pulling their broadcast licenses made them cave. Late that night they suspended Kimmel indefinitely.

Carr, who wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC, has been jubilant in the days since Kimmel’s muzzling. Wednesday night he went on Hannity for a victory lap.

“Late-night shows, something’s gone seriously awry there. They went from going for applause, for laugh lines, to applause lines. They went from being court jesters that would make fun of everybody in power to being court clerics and enforcing a very narrow political ideology,” Carr told Hannity. “There’s more work to go, but I’m very glad to see that America’s broadcasters are standing up to serve the interests of the community and we don’t just have progressive foie gras coming out from New York and Hollywood.

Kimmel is no cleric. And Carr is rich for acting as if his firing was the product of some local, grassroots campaign when it’s extremely clear that this was a result of direct pressure on ABC from the federal government.

The backlash to Carr’s spineless hypocrisy has been swift, as receipt after receipt of him defending the same principles he is now attacking is circulating widely.

“Should the government censor speech it doesn’t like? Of course not,” he said in 2019. “The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of ‘public interest.’”

“From Internet memes to late-night comedians, from cartoons to the plays and poems as old as organized government itself—Political Satire circumvents traditional gatekeepers & helps hold those in power accountable,” he said the very next year. “Not surprising that it’s long been targeted for censorship.”

Trump Celebrates Censorship by Mocking Jimmy Kimmel - 2025-09-18T13:42:03Z

The plug has been pulled on another Trump-critical late-night host, and the president is over the moon.

“Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED,” Donald Trump posted to Truth Social Wednesday. “Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done.”

“Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible,” he continued, referring to Stephen Colbert, who had his show on CBS canceled in July.

Jimmy Kimmel Live! was put on indefinite hiatus Wednesday by Nexstar, one of the largest owners of ABC stations in the country. Nexstar said it “strongly” objected “to recent comments made by Mr. Kimmel concerning the killing of Charlie Kirk,” according to a statement.

Kimmel was excoriated by Republicans after he suggested earlier this week that Kirk’s suspected killer, Tyler Robinson, was a MAGA conservative.

“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said during a monologue.

But emerging details have painted a more complicated picture of the 22-year-old Utahn, who according to his friends was relatively apolitical.

The move to deplatform Kimmel immediately followed a threat from Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, who condemned Kimmel’s language as the “sickest conduct possible.”

“[This] appears to be an action by Jimmy Kimmel to play into the narrative that this was somehow a MAGA or Republican-motivated person,” Carr told YouTuber Benny Johnson. “What people don’t understand is that the broadcasters … have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest. When we see stuff like this, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Carr was celebrating the decision hours later. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the FCC chair thanked Nexstar for “doing the right thing” and implored other broadcasters to “follow Nexstar’s lead.”

Trump was, apparently, in a similar headspace. On Truth Social, the president made it clear that his ideal version of a late-night lineup involves nixing two other NBC hosts who have been hard on his administration. Addressing the network directly, Trump urged NBC to fire two of its stars: Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers.

“That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC,” Trump wrote. “Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT.”

But Nexstar’s opposition to Kimmel’s monologue might not be entirely moralistic. The massive broadcast network is currently seeking FCC approval for a $6.2 billion deal to buy Tegna, an acquisition that would make Nexstar the biggest owner of local stations in the country.

The pattern is remarkably similar to the circumstances surrounding Colbert’s ended contract. Colbert’s show—the most popular show in its time slot—was canceled three days after the comedian claimed that Paramount’s $16 million settlement with Trump over his groundless lawsuit targeting Kamala Harris’s 60 Minutes interview looked like a “big, fat bribe.” Days after the cancellation was announced, the FCC approved Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance.

Trump Gives Antifa Confusing New Designation - 2025-09-18T13:34:43Z

President Donald Trump announced that he would designate antifa as a domestic terrorist organization—but not only do anti-fascists not commit nearly as much political violence as the far right, they’re not even an organization. Oh yeah, and Trump’s move is illegal.

“I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday night. “I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices.”

But antifa, which is short for “anti-fascist,” is a movement, not a group. The so-called organization lacks a central structure and is instead a loose network of individuals and groups who act separately under the banner of opposing facism.

In May 2020, Trump announced that he would designate antifa as a terrorist organization, and Attorney General Bill Barr warned he would treat violence from group members as domestic terrorism. But in September 2020, FBI Director Chris Wray told Congress that antifa was an ideology, not a group or organization, earning him an earful from Trump.

Crucially, the president lacks the legal authority to designate antifa as a terrorist organization. Congress previously granted the secretary of state the power to designate foreign groups as foreign terrorist organizations, but has granted no such power to the executive branch to designate domestic groups.

During Trump’s first term, Mary McCord, a former senior official at the Department of Justice, told Al Jazeera there was no procedure for “designating domestic organisations as terrorist organisations,” and Trump’s efforts raised “significant First Amendment concerns.”

It’s worth noting that while counterprotesters acting under the antifa banner have sometimes turned violent, the actual rate of political violence motivated by left-wing ideologies is dwarfed by right-wing violence. Between 1975 and September 2025, individuals motivated by right-wing ideologies such white supremacy, involuntary celibacy, and anti-abortion beliefs committed 391 murders, according to the Cato Institute. Comparatively, people motivated by left-wing ideologies were responsible for 65 deaths.

It seems Trump’s latest effort is a reactionary move following the death of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, which elicited condemnations of left-wing violence before the shooter’s identity was even known. Earlier this week, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said that the administration planned to “channel all of the anger that we have over the organised campaign that led to this assassination, to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks.”

As of yet, there is no evidence to suggest that Kirk’s death was linked to the network known as antifa or that his assassin was motivated by a radical left-wing ideology.

Transcript: Kash Patel Self-Destructs Under Harsh Dem Epstein Grilling - 2025-09-18T11:35:01Z

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the September 18 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

FBI Director Kash Patel testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, and he fell apart under tough questioning from Democrats. His implosion wrecks what’s left of the scam that President Trump has been pushing on the Jeffrey Epstein files. In particular, Patel filibustered when asked questions about whether Trump’s name is in the files. He seemed to accidentally reveal that he does know how many times Trump’s name appears in them. And he agreed to open an investigation into whether Trump’s birthday note to Epstein is a forgery, as Trump claimed, which seems particularly ill advised. Patel really gave away the game here. How much longer can MAGA keep the lid on this scandal, and why are MAGA figures going along with this after spending years demanding transparency on it? We’re pondering these questions today with Nicole Hemmer, a historian who has written numerous books about the right and its media apparatus. Nicole, nice to have you back on.

Nicole Hemmer: Great to be back with you, Greg.

Greg Sargent: So MAGA spent years demanding to know what’s in the files collected during the criminal investigation into Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring. And then when Trump put his people in charge of the Justice Department and they saw the files, they clammed right up. So with that in mind, listen to this exchange between Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell and Kash Patel.

Eric Swalwell (voiceover): Did you ever tell the attorney general that Donald Trump’s name is in the Epstein files?

Kash Patel (voiceover): The attorney general and I have had numerous discussions about the entirety of the Epstein files and the reviews conducted by our teams.

Eric Swalwell: Did you tell the attorney general that Donald Trump’s name is in the Epstein files?

Kash Patel: And we have released where President Trump’s …

Eric Swalwell: It’s a simple question. Did you tell the attorney general that the president’s name is in the Epstein files?

Kash Patel: During many conversations that the attorney general and I have had on the matter of Epstein, we have reviewed, in ...

Eric Swalwell: The question is simple. Did you tell the attorney general that Donald Trump’s name is in the files. Yes or no?

Kash Patel: Why don’t you try spelling it out? Use the alphabet.

Eric Swalwell: Yes or no? No?

Kash Patel: A, B, C, D, E, F?

Eric Swalwell: It sounds like you don’t want to tell us. Did you tell the attorney general that Donald Trump’s name was in the Epstein files?

Kash Patel: Why don’t you try serving your constituency by focusing on reducing violent crime in this country?

Greg Sargent: So Patel would not answer when repeatedly asked whether he told the attorney general that Trump’s name is in the files. Nicole, clearly if the answer to that question were no, Patel, who was under oath, would have said so. Your reaction to this?

Hemmer: Well, he would have said so. And instead, not only did he do the kind of evasion I think we’re used to in confirmation trials and in Senate and House hearings where somebody just clearly will not answer the question, but he also then pivots and starts to make it about crime in California. And it’s such a transparent attempt to change the subject so that he doesn’t have to answer the question in this way that, I mean, Kash Patel is becoming this figure who is not very deft, is not very media savvy despite his podcasting background. And I think we saw that on display today.

Sargent: Well, Fox News had this unbelievable report about how Patel’s really on thin ice with Trump allies leaking stuff. When they start to leak from the inside about the FBI director being in trouble, he’s really in trouble. You know how this works. Is that right, Nicole?

Hemmer: That’s right. Both he and Attorney General Pam Bondi are in some trouble right now, both because of their mishandling of the Epstein case. You’ll remember Bondi was the one who had issued all of those folders to conservative influencers at the beginning of the second Trump administration and has otherwise not handled it particularly savvily. But both of them also seem to have fumbled some aspects of the Charlie Kirk investigation, and that one-two punch has really left conservatives asking why are these two people in charge? They’re not good at their jobs. They may be loyal to Trump, but they’re not doing a very good job of defending him. And that’s why I think you’re seeing so many leaks from inside the administration saying Patel’s days are numbered.

Sargent: And it’s interesting because Patel is really kind of one of MAGA’s own in a way that Pam Bondi isn’t quite, but we can get into that. The exchanges got even better. Congressmen Swalwell grilled Patel on the number of times Trump is in the Epstein files, and Patel said he didn’t know. Then this happened.

Eric Swalwell (voiceover): It sounds like if you don’t know the number, it could at least be a thousand times.

Kash Patel (voiceover): It’s not. It’s not.

Eric Swalwell: Is it at least 500 times?

Kash Patel: No.

Eric Swalwell: Is it at least 100 times?

Kash Patel: No.

Eric Swalwell: Then what’s the number?

Kash Patel: I don’t know the number, but it’s not that.

Eric Swalwell: Do you think it might be your job to know the number?

Kash Patel: My job is to provide for the safety and security of this country. My job is not to engage in political innuendo.

Sargent: So here Patel clearly doesn’t want to answer. He’s very ticked as he says no to each specific number. But here again, he accidentally admits Trump’s name is in the files, at least somewhat extensively. Nicole, what do you make of that?

Hemmer: It’s such an obvious trap that Swalwell is laying for him. Patel indicates at first that he has no idea if there’s any information about Trump in the files and then gives a very decisive and conclusive answer about, “I know it’s definitely not a thousand. I know it’s definitely not 500. I know it’s definitely not 100.” And now you’ve narrowed it down so much that you must have a rough idea how many times it appears in there. And that’s the sort of trap Swalwell caught him in. He clearly has some knowledge on both of his answers to Swalwell, [which] make it clear that he is familiar enough with these files to know that Trump is mentioned in them and likely knows at least roughly how many times he’s mentioned.

Sargent: Yeah, it’s a good point. In fact, Patel was being very decisive in saying no to each number. The actual number, or at least something close to it, of times Trump appears in the files is very much at the top of Patel’s mind. And you can see that in this exchange.

Hemmer: And there’s real righteous indignation there too. It’s like as soon as Swalwell says a thousand, Patel is just like, No, just like the idea that it was a thousand is unfathomable, that it’s 500 is unfathomable, that it’s 100 is unfathomable, and then suddenly you’re in the realm of the fathomable. And that’s where his both reflexive defense of Trump and his decisiveness with those earlier answers just doesn’t work as a convincing answer.

Sargent: It sure doesn’t. And here’s where this all breaks down for me. The MAGA ecosystem spent literally years demanding to know what’s in the Epstein files, and they screamed again for years that an elite cover-up was happening, that the deep state was behind it, yet here on video is Kash Patel, who is the FBI director, visibly covering up what he knows about what’s in them in real time. How can MAGA possibly overlook this?

Hemmer: Well, the truth is that they’re not entirely overlooking it. This is a new schism in the MAGA movement, and it has become one of those testing points for loyalty and fealty to Trump. So this is something that … Charlie Kirk, before his death, had become very adamant that Trump had no relationship to Epstein. Patel and Bondi have been demonstrating their loyalty by providing cover for Trump. And there are other members and people in the MAGA world who are going along with this. But then there are other parts of MAGA who are furious that they’re not able to see the Epstein files because they really have believed for years that this is part of a global pedophile ring, as you’ve mentioned, that the elites across America—across the world—have been involved in, and they want answers. They’ve been promised answers, and they’re not getting them. And so there is a division between: Do you want the Epstein files, or do you want to show your loyalty to Trump? And that’s where the dividing line is right now.

Sargent: Well, you know, it occurs to me that what MAGA said all along about the Epstein files is in some perverse sense actually turning out to be true. They are getting covered up by elites. That’s what’s happening right in front of our eyes. Now we know what’s happening, and we know that Donald Trump’s in them. There are some MAGA figures who do seem to still want to know. But a lot of the really prominent MAGA influencers flipped on a dime when Donald Trump put out a tweet essentially saying, Guys, game over. We’re not talking about this anymore. They all stopped talking about it, or at least many of them did. I have not seen quite as glaring an example of them shilling for Trump as this one.

Hemmer: What I find so fascinating about it too, Greg, is that the problem for them is, if you see even what we’ve seen so far from the Epstein files: Take the birthday book that was released over the past week or so that has all of these letters and drawings from high-profile people—including Donald Trump, including Bill Clinton, who are celebrating their ties to Epstein and also in a way sort of winkingly acknowledging his connections to young women, his pedophilia—and they don’t seem to care about it. And so here is a case where you actually do have elites who are seeing themselves as above the law, who see themselves in this rarefied world where it doesn’t matter if they hang out with pedophiles because they’re special. And that should be reinforcing of MAGA politics, but the problem is they turn Donald Trump into the avatar of their movement and he is implicated in the Epstein files. And there’s such a cognitive dissonance there that I think for many of them, they just can’t square it.

Sargent: It’s an actual deep state cover-up.

Hemmer: It’s an actual deep state cover-up, and it is an actual example of elite corruption. This is the kind of thing that populist movements arise in response to. And if MAGA is a genuine populist movement, then it should be leading the way on this.

Sargent: You would think. Well, here’s some more audio. This exchange is about the lewd drawing that Trump apparently contributed to Epstein’s birthday book, which had all that cryptic, suggestive language in it from Trump apparently. We just learned the other day that the drawing is real. It came out of Epstein’s estate, and it has what looks exactly like Trump’s signature on it. Now here’s Congressman Jared Moskowitz grilling Patel about this.

Jared Moskowitz (voiceover): The president has, you’ve seen the picture of the woman’s body with the writing and the president’s signature. The president says that’s not his. President says it’s not his. The Republican colleagues say it’s not his. The administration say it’s not his. Will you be opening up an investigation into the Epstein estate for putting out a fake document with the president’s signature linking him to the world’s largest pedophile ring? Will you be opening that investigation into that?

Kash Patel (voiceover): On what basis?

Jared Moskowitz: On what basis? They literally put out a fake document, according to the president, with a fake signature. It’s a forgery of the president of the United States’ signature. That’s the basis.

Kash Patel: Sure, I’ll do it.

Jared Moskowitz: OK. I look forward to that investigation.

Sargent: So there you have it, Nicole.

Hemmer: It’s it’s fascinating because Patel commits himself to this investigation, which he is clearly not going to undertake. It’s like that hot dog meme—like Who did this? When you’re the one who obviously is responsible for it. This is a pledge that he is making in the moment to try to get himself out of a no-win situation for him. Like he can’t honestly answer the question. He’s under oath and doesn’t want to be prosecuted later for perjury. So he makes this pledge. But, (a) I don’t think that there’s going to be any meaningful investigation into the reality of Donald Trump’s signature. I think they know it’s real. But also who knows if Patel is going to be in that position long enough to even launch an investigation.

Sargent: Well, that’s a good point. Maybe he knows he’s not going to be around to make good on his pledge. Well, yeah, and also I think we should probably underscore how absurd the whole forgery story really is. I’m hardly the first person to point this out, but for Trump’s signature to have been forged, this would have had to have been done by somebody who was able to get the book from the Epstein estate or maybe by somebody who was at the Epstein estate. This would have had to have been done many, many years ago because the birthday book goes back to 2003 or something. It’s simply implausible on its face. And now that Patel has sort of pledged himself to investigating this, he’s really put a trap out there for himself and Trump, a booby trap, as it were, that he can’t avoid stepping on later. Either he admits that the thing is real or he doesn’t follow through with the investigation.

Hemmer: Right. And it creates a context for follow-up questions from members of Congress and from journalists, right? If listeners haven’t seen this clip yet either, there was real back and forth about: You’re the head of the FBI. If the Epstein estate has all of these other files, and the DOJ and FBI have all of these files, why don’t you just release them, or why don’t you subpoena them and get them from the estate? And in both instances, Patel acted like he had no power at all. He in fact said that the DOJ couldn’t release its files because they were prevented to by a court order. But in fact, that’s a misleading answer. They certainly could release more of the files if they wanted to.

Sargent: Absolutely. Well, in your great book, Messengers of the Right, which was a history of right-wing media in modern times, I guess, you kind of chronicled how important conspiracy theories and lying [are] to this whole information ecosystem. I think we’re seeing something on other orders of magnitude here. Tell me if I’m wrong about that. And, you know, how do you place this in this broader context? Have there been times kind of over the decades when the right’s conspiracy theorizing and lying just runs so smack into reality that something actually shifts and they end up either dropping something entirely or admitting to it? And how do you see this playing out? How does this compare to those previous episodes?

Hemmer: Conspiracy theories have certainly had a long history on the right. They’re pretty popular in American politics more generally, but they have been a key part of the right’s ideology over the past hundred years or so. And this is things like the John Birch Society and conspiracy theories about fluoride in the water, which are coming home to roost these days as states begin to take fluoride out of the water. So they can be long-living like that.

Or even during the Clinton administration in the 1990s, there were all sorts of conspiracy theories about the Clintons, including one that one of their close friends, Vince Foster, who had committed suicide in a real tragic moment, had actually been killed by the Clintons. And this is one of those conspiracy theories that not only found legs in conservative media but, through conservative media, then made its way into the Kenneth Starr investigation, the special counsel investigation to Clinton. I think it was Brett Kavanaugh who was the one who was in charge of investigating that part of the Clinton administration. There was a member of Congress who went into his backyard and shot a melon to show that it wasn’t possible that Vince Foster could have shot himself. There was this real theater around it. And the conspiracy theory, even though it was continuously debunked, it helped to make the Clintons seem icky, right?Evil in this way that, you know, the conspiracy theory itself—even though people don’t talk a lot about Vince Foster these days—even when it was 2008 and Hillary Clinton was running, or 2016 and Hillary Clinton was running, that conspiracy theory continued to dog her. It had real legs in right-wing circles. So actually it’s not that these conspiracy theories have tended to blow up in conservative spaces, but they’ve actually been put to pretty effective political use.

I think what’s different about this one is this has been a pretty, extensive deep conspiracy theory on the right. Not that Epstein was a pedophile. Epstein was a pedophile and running a pedophile ring, from everything that we know. But this idea that the Democratic Party is run by pedophiles and that QAnon is based on these pedophile conspiracies. There are these conspiracies that have been really [energizing] the right in really important ways. And now the problem is their main champion is caught up in the conspiracy theory. And so you either have to create a very ornate extra conspiracy to explain why that is—and QAnon is one of those that helps—or you have to accept that he is one of the evil people who you are fighting against. And again, that’s difficult for the right to do.

Sargent: Yeah, just to close this out. The way the right-wing ecosystem and its info world has always operated is that they just sort of create this low-level din that never ever abates. And little by little, it sort of seeps into the mainstream discourse in some form or other. The specifics aren’t even that important. It’s the noise level that’s important, right? The right-wing media ecosystem is all about creating just a sense that something is amiss, that something is awry, that the people in power are hiding dark secrets. And as you say, they have been effective at that. They were really good at just sort of tainting high-level liberals and Democrats with that sort of, I guess, aura or odor, that malodor or whatever you want to call it. And here, though, it just really has broken down because it started as exactly that: an effort to create a miasma of scandal around elite liberals and Democrats, but now it is Trump that’s right at the center of it.

Hemmer: Yes, it’s one of those Frankenstein monster stories, right? You create the monster, and then you can’t control it after. And that’s certainly what the right is experiencing in this case. And what’s going to be fascinating to see is not only how they navigate this for the rest of the Trump administration. And I actually do think that right-wing noise machine that is responsible for creating that miasma is going to try to kick up enough dust to protect Trump throughout his presidency. But in some future when Trump is no longer president, there’s every chance that he then gets consumed by that miasma, and they say, See, we really can’t trust anyone. And it feeds into that broader project of nihilism and that broader project of You can’t trust anyone. You can’t trust any institution. You can only trust us, the right wing that’s talking to you.

Sargent: Right. And so how does this play out within the kind of timeframe of the Trump presidency, though? Can they actually keep a lid on it all through the Trump years or not?

Hemmer: They’re proving very ineffective at keeping a lid on it. I was really struck by this over the past week or so, because when Charlie Kirk was assassinated, suddenly the Epstein story was no longer on the front page and it seemed unlikely to be reappearing anytime soon. And yet, you have these hearings in the House that suddenly bring it back into the news. You just had the U.K. ambassador to the U.S. forced to resign because his deep connections with Epstein have just been revealed in a series of emails. And so Donald Trump heading over to the U.K. for the state visit this week is facing an environment in which a picture of Trump and Epstein is being projected onto Windsor Castle. Like, he can’t escape Epstein because so many people want to understand this story and want to understand his role in it. And it has become one of those stories that—as much as the Trump noise machine, the Trump ability to throw so much stuff out there so you can’t focus on any one thing—they’ve tried that with the Epstein story, and it just doesn’t seem to work. It’s a story that keeps coming up, and even though they try to whack-a-mole it back down, they’re just not successful in getting people’s attention off of the story.

Sargent: Such a critical point. There’s just too much curiosity out there, both among elite institutions, journalists, and so forth, but also among the American people at this point. Nicole Hemmer, it’s always such a great pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for coming on.

Hemmer: Thanks for having me back. Good to speak to you, Greg.

I​t’s Time to Broaden Our Definition of Political Violence - 2025-09-18T10:00:00Z

Democratic politicians and pundits have rightly been quick to condemn not just Charlie Kirk’s brutal murder but a “horrifying wave of political violence in America,” as the New York Times editorial board put it. Ezra Klein began his elegy for the way Kirk practiced politics by stating that the “foundation of a free society is the ability to participate in politics without fear of violence.” Worrying trends in the other direction, the editorial board and Klein both suggested, are evidenced not only by Kirk’s shooting but by a drumbeat of disturbing incidents: the assassination of Democratic Minnesota state legislator Melissa Hortman and her husband in June; a blaze that ignited the home of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro on the first night of Passover; the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on the campaign trail; and the right’s raid on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, intended to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

As The Economist acknowledged, assessing what constitutes political violence is “inherently subjective: analysts must determine which forms of violence count as political and assign ideological labels to attackers or victims.” In recent days, the working definition of political violence that’s emerged across op-ed pages is somewhat narrow: physical assaults on relatively well-known political figures. But what else counts? School shooters often publish rambling manifestos that espouse political motives beforehand. Can violence be considered political if its victims aren’t, or if its authors’ politics are incoherent? What about when federal agents manhandle a U.S. senator—say, California’s Alex Padilla—for trying to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a press conference?

At the 2025 Eradicate Global Hate Summit on Tuesday, Shapiro spoke about the dangers of escalating political violence, which he defined as “people using violence to try to settle political differences.” The governor—who ordered flags across his state flown at half-mast in honor of Kirk—chastised Trump for attempting to “cherry-pick” the instances of political violence he wants to condemn. “Doing so only further divides us and makes it harder to heal,” he said. “There are some who hear that selective condemnation and take it as permission to commit more violence, so long as it suits their narrative or only targets the other side.” Shapiro took explicit aim at the White House’s attempts to use “the long arm of government to silence people, businesses, and nonprofits and restrict their right to free speech.”

Shapiro alluded to the right’s efforts to capitalize on Kirk’s death in order to silence dissent and get revenge on what Vice President JD Vance this week alleged to be a “network” of nongovernmental organizations “that foments, facilitates, and engages in violence.” Just after Kirk was shot, Trump similarly, instinctively, blamed his killing on the “radical left,” promising to “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.”

However you define political violence, though, the right is responsible for much more of it in the United States than the left. One study by the Anti-Defamation League (hardly a left-wing organization!) found that all “domestic extremist-related killings” in the U.S. in 2022 were committed by right-wing extremists, the vast majority of them (84 percent) white supremacists.

While condemning Republicans’ opportunistic crackdown on free speech, Shapiro opted for a unifying tone. “Violence in all forms is unacceptable—and political violence is particularly dangerous,” Shapiro continued. “Giving violence a pass, justifying it, or looking the other way only deepens the divide,” he went on. “Let me be clear: Violence is never OK, regardless of the motivation. Violence is never the answer. And we can’t let violence be used as a pretext for more violence. We must reject the rhetoric of vengeance, and instead focus on the work of healing.”

Shapiro’s case is compelling. Even those of us weary of sanitizing Kirk’s despicable views—and ignoring the right’s affinity for political violence—should recognize how troubling his death is. The hateful things Kirk said could never justify his assassination; that assassination, in turn, doesn’t justify either violent retribution or an end to free expression.

Yet Shapiro’s own record on free speech is murky. Late last month, The Chronicle of Higher Education revealed that Shapiro used an archaic, little-used statute allotting Pennsylvania’s governor a nonvoting observer seat on the University of Pennsylvania’s Board of Trustees. Shapiro’s appointed representative to the board, Robb Fox, “pushed the university to ban Penn Students Against the Occupation of Palestine, its main pro-Palestinian student group.” After months of back-channel dialogue between Shapiro’s office, Fox, and the Penn Israel Public Affairs Committee (an on-campus pro-Israel group), Penn did just that, revoking the organization’s status as a registered student group and banning it from campus.

A staunch defender of Israel, Shapiro has staked out what is, by now, a conventional position among mainstream Democrats: cracking down on pro-Palestine protests, decrying hunger in Gaza, demanding the U.S. furnish more aid, and calling on Hamas to return Israeli hostages. He’s criticized Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership and the Israeli government’s denial of reports about widespread hunger in Gaza, but remained largely silent as to why at least half a million people are trapped in a famine under total Israeli siege there. “These children in Gaza need to be fed, the violence needs to come to an end, the hostages need to come home, and this war needs to be over,” Shapiro said when asked about Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza City this week. He also said Netanyahu was “taking Israel down a very dark and dangerous path.” In a subsequent interview with Forward, Shapiro reiterated these positions. “The roots of my faith and support of Israel were formed decades ago,” Shapiro added. “I don’t waffle or waver because of what the polling said.” Just 38 percent of Americans overall—and 8 percent of Democrats—now approve of the military action Israel has taken in Gaza, per a Gallup poll released in July.

Israel’s assault on Gaza has by now left more than 65,000 dead since the fall of 2023, most of them women and children. A wide swath of Israeli government officials, politicians, and military leaders—not just Netanyahu—have been explicit about their intent to destroy Gaza as revenge for Hamas’s attacks on October 7, 2023, which killed an estimated 1,200 Israeli soldiers and civilians. Nissim Vaturi, deputy speaker of the Israeli Parliament, posted that day on social media that Israel’s task must be “erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth.” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared this past May that Gaza would be “totally destroyed” in six months.

Violence and famine aren’t tragic forces of nature washing over Gaza, leaving apolitical humanitarian crises in their wake. This is a a genocide. An independent inquiry set up by the U.N. Human Rights Council concluded that Israel has “committed four genocidal acts” in the course of its war on Palestinians, including “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” Some 70 percent of structures there—hospitals, homes, and schools—have been destroyed. Famine conditions continue to spread throughout Gaza, and more than 2,500 people have been killed attempting to access the minuscule amount of aid that Israel allows to enter.

Is this violence political? In the parlance of the U.S. commentariat this last week, “political violence” would seem to target people who already enjoy “the ability to participate in politics without fear of violence,” as Klein put it. Palestinians are second-class citizens across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, living under conditions widely described as apartheid, without freedom of movement, opinion, expression, or assembly. Protesters in the West Bank are regularly assaulted and killed by extremist settlers who terrorize and demolish Palestinians’ homes as IDF soldiers stand watch. U.S. citizens ostensibly entitled to the rights of a free society stateside—such as Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022, and Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi in 2024—have been killed by Israeli forces while attending those demonstrations. As they do with the mountains of dead in Gaza, U.S. officials mostly looked the other way and continued to furnish their killers’ organizations with hundreds of billions in U.S. military aid.

Troubling as it is to imagine shocking events like Kirk’s murder becoming more commonplace in the United States, perhaps the more profound danger is that the government will keep limiting the bounds of who’s entitled to participate in politics at all. The Trump administration hasn’t been shy about its project to strip ever greater numbers of people of what political theorist Hannah Arendt called the “right to have rights”: from alleged gang members and hardened criminals who have no legal status to pro-Palestinian activists who do, like Mahmoud Khalil, as well as day-laborers snatched off the street and shipped to foreign gulags, and trans people.

The point here isn’t to call out Shapiro and other Democrats’ hypocrisy simply for the sake of it. The moral clarity they’ve shown with regard to the evils of political violence and the importance of free speech is admirable. We can’t let violence be used as a pretext for more violence, and should reject the rhetoric of vengeance. As the right seeks to deprive its enemies of the rights to a free society, it’s more dangerous than ever to apply those principles selectively.

How “Antisemitism” Became a Weapon of the Right - 2025-09-18T10:00:00Z

Not long after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, assault on Israel and the start of that country’s brutal and ongoing war of retaliation, students at Columbia University—as well as many other colleges—set up an encampment to protest against Israel’s bombardment of Palestinian civilians. Both Columbia’s administration and New York City’s elites panicked. A group of billionaires began lobbying the mayor to get rid of the encampment. So did many outside commentators, who insisted that the students involved were antisemites, though many of them were Jews. Before long, the city’s riot squads had stormed the campus, and the school locked its gates against its own students. By that point, “the community of learning I knew and loved had vanished,” writes Mark Mazower, an eminent historian of twentieth-century Europe who has taught at Columbia for decades, in his new book, On Antisemitism: A Word in History.

As the school year limped on, Mazower found himself struggling to understand what had happened. But “if one thing was clear to me,” he writes, “it was that the lines dividing antisemitism from opposition to Israeli policies and criticism of Zionism had become hopelessly blurred.” And dangerously so: On Antisemitism begins by establishing that “antisemitism” is both a powerful word—a “word weapon,” as Mazower puts it—and a troublingly ill-defined one. It was coined by a German in 1879, entered the common vocabulary during World War II, and is now used to describe anything from calls to boycott Israeli hummus to white-supremacist demagogues who tell their followers that “the Jews” are conspiring to replace them. Clearly, it is incoherent to lump wholesale racial hatred in with a targeted protest technique, and incoherence of this sort is exactly what intellectual history—the genre to which On Antisemitism belongs—is built to address. If most history chases what happened, intellectual history chases the ideas that made it happen; if the former helps explain why we live how we live, the latter addresses why we think what we think and feel what we feel. At a moment when many people’s thoughts and feelings about antisemitism are intense without necessarily being intelligible to others, and when accusations of antisemitism are tremendously forceful, Mazower’s book makes an immense contribution. In tracing the evolving meaning of “antisemitism,” he demonstrates persuasively how we might turn it from a weapon back into a word.

It helps that Mazower, as a scholar of nationalism, is used to negotiating the risk that his research and arguments may turn into what the legendary English historian Eric Hobsbawm called “a politically or ideologically explosive intervention” in the present. From the beginning, he’s clear that On Antisemitism, though it isn’t strictly about nationalism, will deal at length with Israeli nationalist—that is, Zionist—ideology. It has to. The intellectual arc Mazower traces is the transformation of antisemitism’s meaning from persecution of Jews on ethnic or religious grounds to any criticism of anything Jews do, even if the Jews in question are the government and defense forces of the state of Israel. That transformation is intertwined with the historical evolution of Zionism, and Mazower does not think that it’s good for the Jews.

Growing up, I understood antisemitism as a form of discrimination that nearly killed my great-grandparents. My grandparents faced it in serious ways, my parents in smaller ones, and I, an American Jew born in 1991, hardly ever encountered it at all. When I did, the experiences were minor, almost laughable. But during Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza, when I was in my early twenties, I repeatedly found myself in conversations where my interlocutor referred to Israel as “you” or “you guys,” as if I were directly involved in its choices and campaigns. I thought this was antisemitic. I still do. Over the course of that invasion, though, I came to understand that my concept of antisemitism wasn’t universal. It seemed to be the inverse of what some others believed. According not only to the acquaintances I thought were antisemitic, but to a good number of the Jews around me and to the Israeli government itself, my Jewishness meant I was automatically associated with Israel. My ethnicity roped me into its nationalist program, even though I had no desire to live there and was politically opposed to Zionism. In fact, that opposition, which frequently manifested as critique of Israel, was, according to the Zionists around me, itself antisemitic. I’d thought I was an American Jew, but apparently, I was an Israeli antisemite.

All of this was immensely confusing in 2014. In the last two years, it’s gotten much, much worse. Mazower writes in his introduction to On Antisemitism, “Anyone who takes antisemitism seriously as an ongoing problem must surely therefore be dismayed by the confusion that exists around the term, not to mention the overuse that threatens to strip it of meaning.” In part, this is a rhetorical strategy for creating consensus, since many readers who do consider criticism of Israel antisemitic also take antisemitism seriously as an issue. It’s a clear way to assert the full stakes of his work, which Americans are now seeing in real time. Since returning to the presidency, Donald Trump has harassed and tried to defund universities—starting, not coincidentally, with Columbia—on the spurious grounds that they foster antisemitism. His Department of Homeland Security has illegally detained foreign students for supporting Palestinian rights. Powerful Democrats, meanwhile, have smeared New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani with groundless claims that he’s an antisemite. It doesn’t help “Jews or anyone else,” Mazower writes, “when the ongoing struggle against discrimination and prejudice is used opportunistically to try to destroy the autonomy of universities, political freedoms, and liberty of thought itself.” In short, if we don’t agree on what antisemitism is, we—no matter who we are—risk having it used against us.

Mazower has devoted his career to studying Europe, and On Antisemitism, like antisemitism itself, begins there. At the start of chapter one, he quotes an anonymous French journalist who, in 1881, reported that in Germany an “anti-Jewish party formed … and was called the antisemitic party.” In Mazower’s estimation, this is the beginning of antisemitism proper: that is, as an ideology that names itself and that manifests not only through “attitudes, symbols, or stereotypes, but with political actions, theories, organizations, and outcomes.” Already, this is a useful distinction in two ways. First, it is a reminder that an antisemitic individual’s presence in a movement or institution does not make that movement or institution antisemitic. Second, it underscores a truth I know from experience: Hearing somebody express an antisemitic attitude may unsettle me or make me unhappy, but unless that person decides to harm me physically or has the power to turn their ideas into policy, their attitude cannot limit my life.

On Antisemitism covers antisemitism in all of pre–World War II Europe, but it’s especially interested in what Mazower calls “the German lands”—Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In those territories, the nineteenth century was a time of intense nationalism, often of nation-founding. As new countries were established, the question of whether their resident Jews should receive full citizenship loomed large. Enlightenment values of equality and liberalism said yes; ingrained bias and antisemitic politics both said no. In Germany, the government tried to split the difference with a gradual, assimilationist approach, launching educational reforms designed to create a “new kind of Jew” who, while not actively worshipping, would be indistinguishable from a Christian. Reform and Conservative Judaism date back to this historical moment. As far as the history of antisemitism goes, so does the distinction between discrimination against Jews on religious grounds and discrimination on ethnic ones. By the end of the nineteenth century, many German Jews had “cease[d] to differ from their Christian fellow-citizens except in the matter of private faith.” Forty years later, their fellow-citizens exterminated them anyway.

Not all Jews in the German lands were enthusiastic about the assimilationist program. In the view of the very religious, it was a greater threat to their way of life than the overt discrimination to which they were accustomed. Among early Zionists, meanwhile, it was a project that could not mitigate Christians’ hatred of Jews—not that they necessarily wanted it to. Mazower situates Zionism, which emerged as an organized nationalist movement at the very tail of the nineteenth century, among other European nationalisms of the time. Like them, it “thought about the future with and through history. It saw the Jews not merely as those who shared a common faith but as a national unit, a People who had been plunged into exile.” But unlike its fellow nationalisms, Zionism had to reckon with a linguistically and geographically scattered flock. It did so, Mazower argues, by claiming that “miraculous combination of a positive and negative force had kept [the Jews] together through their many centuries of wandering and misery: The positive force was the promise of Israel’s return to Zion; the negative was antisemitism.”

In this analysis, Jews needed to be hated in order to remain Jewish. Accordingly, Zionists refused to believe that non-Jews would ever accept them—a view that trickled even into my highly assimilated twenty-first-century childhood. Among early Zionists, Mazower writes, there was debate over whether antisemitism was “merely another form of national animosity” or something “unique and timeless,” even biblical. Some suggested that it was God’s way of balancing the scales for his chosen people. A group of early Israeli historians, called the Jerusalem School, attached themselves to this vision, which became dominant. (More than dominant, really: It’s an apparent influence on the Jerusalem School historian Benzion Netanyahu’s son Benjamin, the current prime minister of Israel.) Mazower has no patience for it. With uncharacteristic sharpness, he writes that history, “as a secular discipline that seeks to explain events by reference to human action, is fundamentally incompatible with a theological worldview.”

Mazower’s scholarly objection to this semimystical vision of antisemitism isn’t the only one in On Antisemitism. He writes that left-wing and liberal Jews in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries worried that not only was hatred of Jews not timeless, it was a phenomenon that the creation of a Jewish state was likely to manufacture. Mazower quotes Jews from Poland to England expressing fears that the Zionist project would both create antisemitism in the Arab world and give non-Jews in every country but Israel grounds to treat Jews as aliens. When the Balfour Declaration was signed in 1917, expressing British support for a Jewish state in Palestine, the Anglo-Jewish economist J.H. Levy worried that “one thing which Zionism seems likely to attain is the manufacture of a logical basis for antisemitism.” Mazower argues that it did precisely that.

But first, of course, there was World War II. Mazower has written several books dealing, in full or part, with the Holocaust, and in On Antisemitism, he focuses on its colossal redistribution of both world Jewry and the world’s ideas about Jews. Before the war, most Jews lived in Europe. After, the surviving ones flocked to the United States and to the land that, in 1948, became Israel. In the United States, Mazower argues, stark nineteenth-century ideas about race were largely good for Jews, who were generally classified as white. (Contemporary American fascists have fixated on this classification, which they reject, but since their ideology contains but is not limited to antisemitism, it would seem to fall outside On Antisemitism’s remit.) Antisemitism rose in the twentieth century along with other reactionary fears about modernity, but after World War II, it was associated with Nazism and started to wane. At the same time, American Jewish organizations began to fight antisemitism by commissioning and disseminating research into the cause of racism of all forms. It was a strategy that both worked well in and of itself and led to significant left-wing Jewish involvement in civil rights coalitions through the 1960s. Jewish leftists in the United States also tended, after World War II, to be anti-Zionists. Because they saw antisemitism as a version of racism, they didn’t see how it could “be solved by turning another people—the Palestinian Arabs—into a homeless minority in turn.” Additionally, they disliked the idea that the United States wasn’t the right place for Jews, which they feared would give rise to a new American antisemitism. (They weren’t quite wrong, in that American Christians’ support for Israel often comes with the implication that Jews are better off there.) But the first problem they identified turned out to be the bigger one.

Here, Mazower turns to Jew-hatred in the Arab world, which he argues emerged largely from the transformation of Palestine into Israel. Sometimes, the fury this unleashed transmuted into what he calls “conspiratorial antisemitism,” as it did in the United States—The Protocols of the Elders of Zion gained traction in both parts of the world as their Jewish populations grew. But more often, it was rooted in anti-colonial anger or hostility over land. Mazower does not consider those sentiments antisemitic, even if they have turned some people who feel them into antisemites. Interestingly, he demonstrates that David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding prime minister, did not understand Arab hatred of Israel as inherently antisemitic either. Mazower quotes Ben-Gurion telling a colleague in 1956, “If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel…. There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see only one thing: we have come here and stolen their country.”

And yet in public, Ben-Gurion cast Israel’s Arab enemies as the new Nazis, their dislike of Jews as a new form of the unique and timeless hatred that had dogged the Jewish people for all time. He did not distinguish between different forms of Arab objection to Israel’s existence or policy; nor did he distinguish between different Arab and Muslim nations’ objections. Mazower doesn’t either, since his main interest is tracking the transformation of Ben-Gurion’s rhetoric into an official stance taken by the Israeli state. By the mid-’70s, Israel was describing all its opponents as antisemites and all public opposition to its behavior as antisemitism.

Mazower presents this stance as, to some degree, a defensive one. Even as Israeli leaders called Arab leaders such as Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser the heirs to Hitler, Arab nationalists “traced a connection between Nazi racism and Zionism [and] consistently argued that Palestine should not be asked to pay the price for Nazi anti-Jewish persecution.” In 1975, the year after the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Yasser Arafat first addressed the U.N. General Assembly, that body adopted a resolution describing Zionism as racism and analogizing it to South African apartheid. In Mazower’s estimation, “racism” and “apartheid” are words as weaponized as “antisemitism”; by insisting its opponents were antisemites, then, Israel was fighting fire with fire.

It was also cynically recruiting American Jews to its cause. In the ’70s, antisemitism was no longer the force it had once been in the United States, and the institutions designed to counter it, rather than happily declaring their obsolescence, became increasingly interested and invested in the idea that criticism of Israel was what they called “the new antisemitism.” They continued to promote the idea that American Jews were continual victims of discrimination and even hate crimes, though data did not support this vision. The state of Israel, however, did. Mazower argues that Israeli politicians who sought to expand their population—and, crucially, to attract young, educated immigrants who were not traumatized by World War II or Soviet antisemitism—insisted that Jews could only live in true peace and freedom if they made Aliyah.

In the ’70s, Holocaust remembrance became a greater priority in both the United States and Israel. American Jews began to attach their identity increasingly to it, as well as to the state of Israel. Relatedly, they expressed an increasing sense of vulnerability, instability, and unease, although Mazower notes that, objectively, their conditions had never been better. In fact, they had become more successful and influential than any of the country’s other minority groups. By the end of the twentieth century, American Jews were the most powerful ones in the world and, likely, also in world history. Still, many of them were convinced that the United States was not a safe home for Jews.

As this idea gained traction, Israel began to argue more and more overtly that it was the only true defender of Jewish life. In 2018, it passed a Basic Law declaring itself the official nation-state of all Jews. Mazower describes this law, to which many Israelis objected strenuously, as “almost designed to encourage a confusion between Israel and Jews in general.” It seemed designed to replace “the traditional diaspora paradigm of antisemitism—understood as prejudice or bigotry against Jews as an ethnicity—with one [in which] an attack on Israel was by definition antisemitic because it implied criticism of ‘the Jewish people.’”

Mazower does not believe in this new paradigm. All the many threads in On Antisemitism come together to demonstrate why. Almost since antisemitism appeared as a political concept, Zionists have used it to argue that Jews can only flourish in a Jewish state. Once established, that state has invoked antisemitism not only to make the same claim, but also to shut down opposition and, at times, diplomacy. It has repeatedly manipulated Holocaust remembrance to serve its cause and to diminish the validity of Palestine’s. On this front, Israel is not alone. Germany is paranoically supportive of Israel as a result of Holocaust-memory rhetoric. The United States, Mazower writes, treats the Holocaust as “a guarantee of America’s commitment to Israel.” And the most commonly used definition of antisemitism today, one that many nations have adopted and that Mazower objects to strenuously, was generated by the intergovernmental International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2016.

According to the IHRA, antisemitism is a “certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred.” This unclear definition comes with several examples, including the claim that it may be antisemitic to call the state of Israel racist. What this has to do with Holocaust memory is not specified. It is more broadly baffling, as Mazower points out, to “exempt [Israel] from normal free speech concerns,” given that “many other countries today are also decried as racist in their very origin.” It would seem, in fact, that treating Israel differently in this regard is applying a double standard to it—but that’s something else the IHRA says may be antisemitic. All these mays, Mazower writes, are all too easy to exploit. They have “become very useful to politicians who wish to use the issue of antisemitism to clobber dissent and assail civil liberties. For them, its flaws, confusions, and internal contradictions […] are in fact helpful, offering them cover to pursue their larger goals.”

On Antisemitism is the precise opposite of the IHRA definition. It is rigorous and lucid, and, like any good work of history, it absolutely bristles with primary sources. Even when Mazower’s writing is explicitly opinionated, he always shows the reader precisely what documents or events he’s basing his opinion on. In a book that deals so intensely with the manipulation of ideas and emotions, this transparency is an intense relief. Mazower knocks away decades of obfuscation of what antisemitism actually is to demonstrate, at the very least, what it is not: a unique prejudice, unchanging no matter its context, that affects all Jews equally while rendering the state of Israel above international law and immune to critique or protest. Perhaps that idea, elementary though it may seem, is where a good-faith conversation can start.

What If the Next Democratic President Governs Like Trump? - 2025-09-18T10:00:00Z

President Donald Trump’s first nine months in office have fundamentally changed how the executive branch—and the federal government as a whole—operates. The Wilsonian and Rooseveltian model of federal regulatory agencies staffed by experts and nonpartisan civil servants who act in the public interest as defined by Congress is in shambles.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the secretary of health and human services, has stocked the federal vaccine advisory committee with anti-vaccine activists and spread medical misinformation. Lee Zeldin, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is rescinding the scientific findings that allow federal officials to regulate carbon emissions and fight climate change. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects Americans from financial frauds and scams, is essentially moribund.

Even agencies that were supposed to be insulated from day-to-day political pressure are under siege. Trump, with the Supreme Court’s blessing, has ousted Democratic appointees on the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Trade Commission, and other independent agencies despite congressional protections against their removal. He is currently seeking to oust a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors on pretextual grounds, potentially giving him indirect control over the basic levers of American monetary policy.

Amidst this deregulatory campaign, the White House is still bending civil society and the private sector to its will. Trump used threats to cut off federal funding to coerce universities into supporting his ideological goals. He coerced companies like Nippon Steel and NVIDIA into giving the federal government a direct role in their inner workings. And he used the Federal Communications Commission’s regulatory power to harass mainstream media organizations into ideological compliance.

This onslaught is a devastating turn of events for Americans who believe in good governance and the public interest. The reverberations—and the damage—will be felt for decades. At the same time, the Trump administration’s aggressive use of executive power provides a new road map for progressive policymaking whenever it happens that Democrats retake the White House.

This article, for clarity’s sake, rests on a few assumptions. It is January 20, 2029, and a generic Democratic president has just taken the oath of office. They are joined by the exact majorities that Trump had in 2024: 220 seats in the House and 53 seats in the Senate. The Supreme Court remains unchanged with six conservative justices and three liberal justices—a likely prospect, given who would select the replacements of the court’s eldest members.

This allows us to assume that the next Democratic president will face a similar playing field. This includes a highly deferential legislative branch—one that will confirm all (or almost all) of their nominees, prevent government shutdowns through regular funding measures, and decline to use certain congressional powers to reverse executive actions—and a federal judiciary that is highly deferential to executive power. (Or at least this particular executive’s power.)

The most important thing the next Democratic president can do is simply turn the lights back on. Reversing Trump’s executive orders and regulatory changes would be the new administration’s number-one priority. Staffing agencies with political appointees who actually believe in their agencies’ missions will also help. Such changes happen to a certain extent with every partisan change in a presidential administration, but it will be particularly dramatic in the post-Trump era.

At the same time, much of the damage will not be easily reversible. Top Trump officials like Russell Vought, the director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, and Elon Musk, the former head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, prioritized large-scale reductions in the federal civil service almost immediately after Trump took office. The apparent goal was to reduce state capacity—the government’s basic ability to do things—by eliminating institutional knowledge and manpower in key regulatory agencies. It would take many years for the next administration to rebuild that workforce, which was precisely the Trump administration’s goal.

There is a thin silver lining to this. Perhaps the most pressing decision for the next Democratic president will be what to do with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the agency better known as ICE. During Trump’s first term in office, Democratic officials and activists debated at length over whether the party should support ICE’s abolition. Some Democratic officials thought it was a step too far, while others contended that the agency’s alleged civil-liberties abuses had justified its dissolution.

That debate effectively ended after the agency undertook armed, masked enforcement campaigns in major American cities, all the while displaying nakedly authoritarian tactics in an effort to intimidate the population. Trump has also eased matters for Democrats by showing how easy it is to dismantle a federal agency through executive orders. This would save lawmakers from casting a politically volatile vote to disband the agency through legislation. The Trump administration has used a variety of tools to achieve these goals.

For the Department of Education, for example, Trump officials announced a “reduction of force”—the federal government’s term for downsizing, also know as a RIF—in March that would eliminate roughly half of the workforce. The Supreme Court refused to block the White House’s plan even though the plaintiffs alleged it would severely compromise the agency’s congressional assigned functions. By refusing to stay the order while litigation took place, the court’s conservative majority effectively decided the practical outcome by forcing the plaintiffs out of work while the lawsuit continued.

A federal judge lamented in a recent lawsuit over the mass dismissal of probationary employees that even though the administration’s actions were illegal, the Supreme Court’s refusal to block them during litigation meant that they were impossible to reverse. “The terminated probationary employees have moved on with their lives and found new jobs,” Justice William Alsup explained in a ruling earlier this week. “Many would no longer be willing or able to return to their posts.”

In some ways, dismantling ICE would be even easier than most federal agencies. For one thing, most of its current workforce is only temporarily assigned there. As of September, at least 33,000 federal agents currently assigned to ICE have been detailed, transferred, or otherwise reassigned there from other federal agencies. The Cato Institute found that roughly 20 percent of FBI agents, about 50 percent of ATF agents, and more than two-thirds of DEA agents have been reassigned to immigration enforcement and removal operations.

The greatest share of these employees came from Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE sub-agency that typically investigates important crimes such as human trafficking and child-exploitation crimes. At the moment, 87 percent of HSI’s agents now work for Enforcement and Removal Operations, the other major ICE subcomponent. Restoring those agents to their original workforces would significantly reduce ICE’s headcount from the outset and allow them to perform their originally intended duties in law enforcement.

In the omnibus spending bill that Congress passed earlier this summer, ICE is also set to receive more than $100 billion in funding over the next four years, most of which will go to facilities and border-wall construction, and hire an additional 10,000 agents. The next Democratic president could significantly reduce headcounts through a reduction in force, perhaps by firing every agent hired since 2024. The Trump administration’s decision to drastically reduce hiring standards for incoming ICE agents would more than justify such a sweeping action.

What should be done with what’s left of ICE? The next Democratic president has a few options. One would be to reverse the flow of agent transfers. Instead of mass firings, the remaining ICE agents could be reassigned to other federal law-enforcement agencies to help pursue other administration priorities, like fighting white-collar crime, policing tax evasion by wealthy Americans, and enforcing civil-rights laws. Alternatively, the president could merge what’s left with another existing DHS subcomponent and erase ICE’s legacy altogether, similar to what the Trump administration did to the U.S. Agency for International Development.

It’s worth noting that dismantling ICE is an exception, not the rule, for how the next Democratic president will govern. There is a fundamental asymmetry in how progressive and conservative politics interact with the executive branch. DOGE’s war on the civil service stemmed from right-wing hostility to what they described as the “administrative state” and a zeal for deregulatory efforts on behalf of their wealthy benefactors. Liberal and progressive political goals, on the other hand, generally rely on a robust professional civil service.

Other tools abound. Trump has adopted some novel interpretations of two federal laws to achieve significant economic-policy victories. They offer promising opportunities for progressives as well. One is the Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era law that generally gives presidents certain powers to bolster key industrial sectors on national-security grounds. While it is most well-known today for its role in COVID-19 production, President Joe Biden invoked the law on multiple occasions to accelerate green-energy construction projects.

Trump, true to form, has apparently used it even more aggressively in some cases. Politico reported last month that the administration has taken an unannounced majority stake in MP Minerals, a mining company that focuses on rare-earth minerals. While the president cannot nationalize private companies through executive order under the 1952 Youngstown precedent, Trump’s move could open the door to greater government involvement in how mineral and energy companies are operated.

Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act is even more tantalizing. For most of its history, the 1977 law was used to regulate trade relations with hostile countries or during international economic crises, such as the OPEC oil embargo against Western powers in the 1970s. Its unusually broad language gives presidents broad authority to forbid and regulate foreign trade and transactions.

There is ongoing litigation over Trump’s use of the law to levy billions of dollars in tariffs on imports from most of the United States’s top trading partners. But much of the law’s language would be unaffected by a Supreme Court defeat there if it occurs. Justice Brett Kavanaugh argued in a recent concurring opinion that the court’s usual statutory-interpretation mechanisms—including ones that have vexed progressive policymaking, like the major-questions doctrine—don’t apply in national-security matters.

One thing a new Democratic president could use IEEPA to do is clean up the cryptocurrency industry. Cryptocurrencies have shown virtually no practical commercial uses since their emergence in the 2010s. Instead, they have largely become a vehicle for either pump-and-dump investment schemes or as an exchange mechanism for untraceable scams, frauds, and money-laundering enterprises. Crypto’s decentralized nature makes it difficult to regulate and target by design, but the next administration could resume the Biden administration’s efforts to punish illicit crypto exchanges and, more importantly, restrict U.S. financial institutions from interacting with them.

If the Supreme Court ultimately upholds Trump’s IEEPA tariffs, that would further broaden a Democratic president’s power to use the law to pressure industries and other countries. By declaring a national emergency over climate change, for example, a new administration could prohibit U.S. banks and firms from investing in fossil-fuel extraction projects in foreign countries. It is much harder for the executive branch to easily stop domestic fossil-fuel production by itself, thanks to congressional constraints, but targeting foreign investments would be on much more stable footing.

Trump has also set important precedents on foreign investments into the United States. When Nippon Steel purchased U.S. Steel for $14.9 billion earlier this year, for example, the Trump administration even leveraged its approval power over foreign-investment deals to secure a “golden share” in the Japanese steel company. That share gives the executive branch veto power over changes in U.S. Steel’s name, headquarters, workforce size, and future purchasers. The next Democratic president could use similar tactics to potentially secure things like higher wages and collective-bargaining agreements when foreign capital tries to acquire U.S. businesses and assets.

Finally, a Democratic president could wind down contracts with companies and executives that do not reflect the nation’s core values. One of the first quandaries that the next administration will face when taking office is Elon Musk. The South African-born billionaire’s business empire received an estimated $7 billion in federal funds through various contracts and subsidies. Some of them, like tax rebates for electric cars, are beyond the president’s ability to control. Others are not.

The Trump administration began a wholesale review of government contracting agreements shortly after taking office and instructed federal agencies to review and end contracts with Harvard University whenever possible. Given Musk’s vocal support for far-right causes and his history of racist and antisemitic remarks, a future Democratic president could wind down federal contracts with SpaceX and Starlink whenever feasible and bar his companies from future contracting services. Similar grounds could be applied to Palantir and other companies associated with German-born venture capitalist Peter Thiel.

With Musk in particular, a future Democratic president could potentially make the case that his personal involvement with these companies also poses a national-security risk. Musk’s top-secret security clearance, a prerequisite for some of his company’s most important contracts, could be revoked over alleged episodes of illegal drug use—which is typically grounds for denial for most clearance applicants—as well as his unusual contacts with hostile foreign governments like Russia and China. It is particularly troubling that such an influential government contractor’s companies are economically beholden to Beijing.

Musk’s companies also have a persistent history of anti-labor practices, especially when it comes to union organizing. Past presidents may have tried informal or bully-pulpit measures to support Tesla’s unionization, or left it up to the National Labor Relations Board. The next Democratic president could use IEEPA to restrict or block key Chinese transactions for Tesla’s production lines, for example, unless it recognizes a collective-bargaining unit and reaches a contract with them. Trump used similar mechanisms to pressure chipmaker NVIDIA into giving the U.S. government a cut of its profits from chip sales in China in exchange for loosening export restrictions.

The Republican Party was once wedded to a free-market orthodoxy that counseled against government interventions in the private industry space. Trump has demolished the party’s internal consensus on laissez-faire capitalism in favor of a more personalist, top-down model. He has also broken new legal and constitutional ground for how Democratic presidents can pressure, cajole, and perhaps even coerce American industry into carrying out progressive policy goals.

All of this assumes, of course, that the Supreme Court would grant a future Democratic president the same leeway and discretion that they have given Donald Trump. The justices now routinely refuse to stay the government’s actions during litigation when balancing the equities, implicitly arguing that the administration’s ability to carry out its policy goals is paramount. As long as that understanding holds, and the court does not constrain Trump’s innovations, so to speak, in policymaking, then progressives may gain a newfound appreciation for the court’s deference to democratic governance when they return to power—as long as the justices treat both sides equally.

Trump’s Epstein Spin Implodes as Kash Patel Buckles Under Dem Grilling - 2025-09-18T09:00:00Z

As the Jeffrey Epstein scandal has worsened, President Trump’s story has been that it’s all Democratic “hoax” and that his signature on that lewd drawing in Epstein’s birthday book is a “forgery.” But at a congressional hearing Wednesday, FBI Director Kash Patel faltered under intense questioning from Democrats. Patel filibustered when asked whether Trump’s name is in the Epstein files. He seemed to accidentally reveal that he does know how many times Trump’s name appears. And he agreed to investigate whether Trump’s birthday note to Epstein is indeed forged, which seems ill advised. Patel badly undermined Trump’s whole stance. So how much longer can Trumpworld keep the lid on this? We talked to Nicole Hemmer, a historian who has written excellent books about the right and its media apparatus. She explains the schism Epstein has opened inside MAGA, how Patel exposed Trump’s position as untenable, and how it all fits into the last half-century of right-wing deceptions and conspiracy theories. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.

The Jimmy Kimmel Suspension: A Huge Step Down the Authoritarian Road - 2025-09-18T02:56:24Z

The suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, at the urging of the Trump appointee running the Federal Communications Commission, and the president’s $15 billion lawsuit against The New York Times this week make it even clearer that free and independent media are under dire threat from this administration. Silencing critical reporting and commentary is a common tactic of authoritarians—and Trump and the Republican Party are leaning into this strategy even harder now.

ABC announced late Wednesday that it is suspending Kimmel indefinitely. In his shows on Monday and Tuesday night, the late-night host correctly noted that conservatives are trying to use the killing of Charlie Kirk for political gain. On Wednesday, FCC chairman Brendan Carr, in an appearance on conservative Benny Johnson’s podcast, suggested that he might punish ABC for Kimmel’s remarks and suggested that local ABC channels refuse to air Kimmel’s show. Nexstar, a company that owns TV stations across the country and is seeking FCC approval of a merger, then announced its ABC affiliates would not air Kimmel’s program.

The Nexstar decision and the likelihood of other conservative-led boycotts and potential attacks from the Trump administration seem to have led ABC to cave and, literally within minutes of Nexstar’s announcement, boot Kimmel.

But this is not an isolated incident. Far from it. In December, Disney, which owns ABC News, opted to settle a defamation suit against Trump by donating $15 million to his presidential library. As the FCC was considering whether to approve a merger between Skydance and Paramount, the company that owns CBS News, longtime executives at CBS News resigned, facing pressure to cover Trump more favorably. In July, the network reached a $16 million settlement with the president over his lawsuit objecting to CBS coverage of the 2024 campaign. Trump backers are now being appointed to key roles at CBS.

He didn’t stop there. Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal in July, criticizing its coverage of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. On Tuesday, he filed a $15 billion suit against The New York Times, frustrated with the paper’s 2024 reporting on him.

ABC, CBS, the Journal and the Times are some of the largest and most prestigious journalism organizations in the country. A president going after them all amounts to declaring war on the free press. And it’s not just journalists. Stephen Colbert, host of the late-night show on CBS, had his show canceled a few months ago. The network said it was a financial decision, but Colbert was a harsh critic of Trump. Now, with Kimmel also off the air at least temporarily, it’s hard to ignore the potential that comedians who slam the president nightly won’t be on the air for long.

And it’s not just Trump alone. Congressional Republicans joined in stripping funding from public media across the country. Elon Musk is suing the liberal group Media Matters, which closely scrutinizes conservatives. Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, perhaps trying to curry favor with Trump, pushed out many of the paper’s left-leaning columnists, with Karen Attiah being fired last week over her social media posts about Kirk.

This is all very scary. The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, NPR, and other outlets are still doing a lot of great investigative journalism that paints Trump in a bad light. The New York Times does great investigative work too, like Monday’s scorcher on the Trumps and United Arab Emirates and multibillion-dollar crypto/AI chip deals, and it has some very anti-Trump columnists, such as the excellent Jamelle Bouie. But Trump, with his combination of regulatory power and lawsuits, is almost certainly making these big news outlets a bit more gun-shy about criticizing him. And I worry even more, potentially, about smaller outlets like this one and other valuable liberal magazines and websites that perhaps can’t spend millions of dollars to defend themselves from Trump’s lawsuits.

“How, then, can we tell whether America has crossed the line into authoritarianism? We propose a simple metric: the cost of opposing the government. In democracies, citizens are not punished for peacefully opposing those in power.” So wrote political scientists Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way, and Daniel Ziblatt earlier this year in a New York Times op-ed.

“Under authoritarianism, by contrast, opposition comes with a price,” they added. “Media outlets may be hit with frivolous defamation suits or adverse regulatory rulings, businesses may face tax audits or be denied critical contracts or licenses, universities and other civic institutions may lose essential funding or tax-exempt status, and journalists, activists and other critics may be harassed, threatened or physically attacked by government supporters.”

Those scholars argued that the United States has slipped into “competitive authoritarianism”—the political science term for nations that have elections but are no longer full-fledged democracies. Whether or not you agree that America is no longer fully democratic, the trend lines are headed in a wrong and frightening direction. We still have a First Amendment that technically protects the freedom of the press. But what authoritarians abroad have done is wear down organizations with lawsuits and regulations, and then, eventually, these outlets give up and sell themselves to allies of the regime. Negative coverage is not outright banned, but it doesn’t have to be: Negative coverage disappears anyway. That’s where it appears things are headed in the United States too.

I have my gripes about “legacy” media such as The New York Times, which has been far too slow to recognize the radicalism of today’s Republican Party. But we desperately need a robust defense of free and independent media that criticizes the government. Trump is now a threat to all journalism, from left-wing Substacks to The Wall Street Journal, which has a very conservative editorial page but more honest news coverage. Democracy dies without a free press. We can’t let Trump kill our press and therefore our democracy. Jimmy Kimmel is the newest victim of Trump’s silencing of critics, but sadly, it’s almost certain that he won’t be the last.

Transcript: How Cities Are Fighting Back Against Trump - 2025-09-18T02:17:31Z

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the September 17 episode of 
Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch this interview here. 

Perry Bacon:  Good morning, everybody. I’m Perry Bacon. I’m the host of the New Republic show Right Now. 

I’m honored to be joined by Justin Bibb. He’s the mayor of Cleveland. He’s also the head of the Democratic Mayors Association. So Justin, well, thanks for being here. 

Mayor Justin Bibb: Great to be with you. 

Perry Bacon: Mr. Mayor, let me start by asking just, in a broad way, what’s it been like to be a mayor these last seven months? I’m guessing not as easy as the previous seven months, but talk about that just in your Cleveland experience. 

Mayor Justin Bibb: Yeah, I didn’t know how good I had it under former President Joe Biden. It has certainly been a chaotic seven months under the Trump-Vance administration. But despite the chaos, despite the uncertainty, despite the instability, we are still delivering here in Cleveland, and my democratic colleagues across the country are still delivering. And we’re standing in the gap right now. We’re standing in the gap to continue to make dramatic strides, making sure we reduce violent crime and keep our city safe and secure. We’re standing in the gap to make sure our residents still get affordable housing or get food from our local food banks, as we see these immoral cuts to SNAP benefits. We’re standing in the gap to make sure residents have the ability to make sure their kids have good quality schools to go to, as we see these cuts in the Department of Education. And so one of the things I love about being a mayor is that there are no excuses. I can hem and haw all day about the fact that we don’t have a good partner in the federal government right now, but at the end of the day, we still have to deliver. And we’re doing the best we can to deliver in these chaotic times. 

Perry Bacon: Let me ask because I, I’ll be honest, I read a lot of news about Chicago and Boston and Los Angeles. I have to confess, I don’t know what’s actually happening in Cleveland day to day. I mean, are you getting this kind of aggressive …  I don’t think the National Guard is there as far as I know, but are you getting the sort of negative impacts other cities are getting from the sort of militarized intervention [that other cities are facing]?

Mayor Bibb: Yeah. And, you know, just this week, Congressman Max Miller, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Times calling for the National Guard to come to Cleveland and, and listen. I have a lot of respect for Congressman Miller. He’s been very supportive of my vision as mayor, and I’ve said consistently I’ll work with anybody, Democrat, Republican, or independent who shares my vision to move Cleveland forward. But this is an area where I disagree with the congressman. We don’t need the National Guard in Cleveland, and, Perry, let me tell you this. I’ve seen firsthand in my three years as mayor what it’s like to work with the federal government to reduce violent crime and keep my city safe. Just two weeks ago, we did a special operation with the U.S. Marshals and got over one hundred and thirty violent criminals off the street. When Steve Dettelbach was running the ATF, we launched the first-ever crime gun intelligence center in Cleveland, and we got thousands of illegal guns off our streets and solved a historic rate of homicides in our city. We got huge federal funding to invest in violence interruption programs [that] work with gang members, work in the streets and hot spots to quell gang violence, to keep our city safe. So I know what it’s like to have a strong federal partnership around public safety, but the National Guard ain’t the solution. We need more money to hire more police. We need more money to get illegal guns off our streets. We need more money to invest in the FBI to stop gang violence and stop other issues of human trafficking in our city. That’s where the federal government can be supportive right now in America’s cities, not with deploying the National Guard. 

Perry Bacon: Just to be clear, the National Guard is not there right now, and there’s ICE there in some ways, but not the way, you know … 

Mayor Bibb: Well, we have had ICE raids across northeast Ohio. But I’ll also say this.  I’m a Democratic mayor in a red state, and I’ve worked very closely with Governor Mike DeWine on many issues around public safety and criminal justice reform. And the governor and I just talked last week that he does not intend to send the National Guard into Cleveland without my express approval because he believes in home rule. He believes in federalism, and I’m really glad that I have my governor’s support on this important issue. 

Perry Bacon: Let’s talk nationally a little bit, and you mentioned crime earlier, and I know, you know, I live in Louisville. I talked to mayors in other places too. Each mayor says we have a great crime-fighting plan, but I wanna emphasize it looks like it might be worth [it]. I know you all want to say individually, your work is important, and I wanna emphasize that, but it looks like crime has gone down nationwide, and that’s a great thing that we should celebrate. It may be the credit to the group of you all, not just like—it may not be that Justin Bibb or Michelle Wu or Brandon Johnson have solved crime, but the country is doing something different collectively, the mayors are—is that the right way to think about this? 

Mayor Bibb: Well, when you look at a majority of cities across the country. Over 80 percent are run by Democratic mayors. A large share of America’s GDP comes from cities led  by Democratic mayors, and there are some consistent themes that you’re seeing across large cities and medium-size cities, that we’re doing to address public safety: from, you know, big cities like Boston that you talked about with Mayor Wu to what we’ve done in Cleveland to what Mayor Dickens is doing in Atlanta. And here are the common themes, Perry. Number one, we’ve invested in paying our officers more. I’m the son of a cop. I know firsthand the sacrifice that it takes to wear that badge, to put that uniform on every day, and in my city we boosted police pay by over 34 percent, working with our police and the police union to get the job done. The second thing that we’ve done that other cities have done as well, is we’re investing in more technology while also making sure we protect civil liberties. But technology has played a very large role in solving more homicide cases, to tracking where these illegal guns are coming from that are being deployed on our streets. 

And the other thing I would say is we need a serious-on-safety conversation about addressing the root causes of violent crime. Right? You know, poverty is a major driver of that. Health care instability is a major driver of that. Housing affordability is a major driver of that. And we are trying to address the root causes of crime, as well. So it’s not just about being law and order and tough on crime, that’s only one part of the solution. But we as mayors, and especially as Democratic mayors, are really looking at an all of government approach, meeting folks where they are to keep our city safe and secure. And I think that’s why we’re seeing these dramatic reductions across big cities across the country right now. 

Perry Bacon: Talk about these National Guard deployments. I find them very scary when I, you know, there’s talk that City X has low crime, maybe they should send the National Guard to City Z. I don’t want the National Guard in Louisville either. So I just wanna be clear, like I don’t love the idea. Send ’em, send ’em to some other place. I think the National Guard should not come to the city unless the mayor wants it to. Do you agree with me about that? Just generally? 

Mayor Bibb: Absolutely. I know that when we had some major protests and riots in Cleveland after the tragic murder of George Floyd, we had to bring the National Guard in to help quell some of the civil unrest and help quell some of the anger that we saw in our city. But, you know, this moment does not call for the National Guard. I want the National Guard to be deployed when we see flooding in American cities. I want the National Guard to be deployed when we see wildfires or other natural disasters. And the unique thing about this is that the National Guard is not trained to do constitutionally appropriate policing. It’s a very scary line when we are going to try to militarize the National Guard in cities for someone’s own political agenda. And so the message from America’s mayors is this: Work with mayors, let us scale what’s working in cities. Let’s fund what’s working in cities. But the National Guard is not the solution. 

Perry Bacon: So when he says crime is high, so I need to bring the National Guard in, what do you think this is actually about? 

Mayor Bibb: It’s a lazy argument, and it’s a strategy to weaponize the executive branch for someone’s political agenda. It’s a distraction to fuel more chaos in our country and more chaos in our cities. And don’t get me wrong, we still have a lot more work to do to keep people confident that cities, especially cities led by Democratic mayors, are ones that are effective, accountable, safe, and secure. And that’s the work. One homicide is too many. One shooting is too many. But deploying the National Guard is not gonna solve or address our homicide issue. You know what will? Making sure we have comprehensive policy solutions around the housing affordability crisis so folks can have dignity and a safe place to live. You know what will? More funding to support mental health and behavioral health programs at the local level. You know what will? Not deconstructing our social safety net, so folks aren’t stealing to put money on the table, on the table so they can have something to eat at night. We need to get serious about what are the drivers of violent crime and work with Democrats, Republicans, and independents across the aisle to actually be serious about solving these problems. 

Perry Bacon: One thing I don’t fully understand, like a lot of my friends say, they’re targeting cities run by Black mayors: Chicago, Baltimore, and D.C. That’s true. I can’t quite tell because to your guys’ credit, there’s a lot of cities that have Black mayors, and that’s a good thing. You know, I think if that person’s the best person they want, that’s a good thing. And he doesn’t seem to like Michelle Wu very much either. So, gimme your sense. Is this a racial thing or not? What’s your sense of it? 

Mayor Bibb: I certainly think that there is a racial element to sow more division in our society. And in my opinion, as a mayor, I don’t believe public safety should be a partisan issue. It’s a basic part of the social contract that exists in this country. And so, I welcome a very commonsense, pragmatic conversation about how we address America’s public safety crisis. Has my party made some mistakes, in terms of how we’ve talked about this issue? Absolutely. But I would tell you this, mayors across this country, especially Democratic mayors across this country, are waking up every single day, every single day, focused on keeping their cities safe and secure, and what we need is a partner in the White House and federal partners in D.C. who are serious on working with America’s mayors to address this issue. 

Perry Bacon: And I think that’s a great note to end on, Mr. Mayor … actually one more question, which is like, I’m proud of our cities. I think, as you know, our cities have created a lot of GDP. Our cities create a lot of innovation. Our cities are some of the most diverse places. … Can you talk about why cities themselves are an important part of America? 

Mayor Bibb: Well, especially in this political climate right now, where there’s so much hate, so much vitriol. Americans can’t seem to talk to one another about how we come together and solve our most vexing problems. I think the last hope to save this democracy, to preserve the visions and the aims of our Constitution as we celebrate the signing of our Constitution today is American cities. We are on the front lines every single day trying to make this experiment of our country real, or trying to make sure that the next generation has a better shot at achieving their God-given potential, their version of the American dream. And so if we want to save this country, we’re gonna do it one city at a time. And I think America’s mayors can certainly lead the way in this moment, now more than ever. 

Perry Bacon: Thank you, Mayor Bibb. Thanks for joining us. I appreciate it. 

Mayor Bibb: Thanks for having me. 

Trump’s One Weird Trick to Wreck the Economy - 2025-09-17T21:10:18Z

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday described a “curious balance” in the labor market, in which both supply and demand have sunk “sharply,” thanks to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and potentially his tariffs.

Asked whether tariffs have created the weakened U.S. job market, Powell said that is “certainly possible.” But while trade policy “may” be affecting the labor market, Powell said, “the change in immigration” is the primary reason “employment is doing what it’s doing.” The change, of course, being Trump’s disruptive mass deportation campaign, which has dramatically decreased the supply of workers.

Amid this decrease in supply, Powell added, “demand for workers has also come down quite sharply,” leading to a “curious balance,” he said, repeating a term he used in a speech last month. “Typically when we say things are in balance that sounds good,” he added. “But in this case, the balance is because both supply and demand have come down quite sharply.”

The situation Powell described, some observers noted, resembles stagflation—the dreaded combination of stagnant economic growth, rising prices, and high unemployment. “‘Curious balance’ … Say the S word Jay,” tweeted Kevin Green, a markets correspondent at the Schwab Network, alongside a crying-laughing emoji.

Soldiers Are Being Disciplined for Charlie Kirk Social Media Posts - 2025-09-17T21:04:14Z

At least eight members of the military have been punished for comments made in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death, and dozens more have been doxed and reported.

Task and Purpose reports that at least five Army officers and one Air Force sergeant have been suspended, one Marine was fired from his recruitment job for posting a meme of Kirk captioned, “Another racist man popped,” and one Army reserve major is under investigation.

“The Department of War maintains a zero-tolerance policy for military personnel or DOW civilians who celebrate or mock the assassination of Charlie Kirk,” the Pentagon posted from its rapid response account last Friday on X.

Even so, it won’t be as simple to just fire soldiers for posting things that don’t align with the current administration’s politics as the Pentagon is making it out to be.

“People who join the military have less First Amendment rights than those who don’t, but they still have robust First Amendment rights,” former military colonel, judge, and prosecutor Don Christensen told CNN. He went on to note that nothing says, “Pete Hegseth doesn’t like what you’re saying so I’m going to prosecute you.”

“You can’t just say out of the blue, ‘If you say something on social media about Charlie Kirk that Pete Hegseth doesn’t like, that’s a crime,’” Christensen continued.

While that may be true, it’s likely that the Pentagon’s gag order has already had the desired chilling effect.

How Cities Are Fighting Back Against Trump’s Authoritarianism - 2025-09-17T20:41:52Z

President Trump should not be deploying the National Guard to cities without the permission of their mayors, says Justin Bibb, the mayor of Cleveland and the current president of the Democratic Mayors Association. In the latest edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon, Bibb sharply criticized the Trump administration’s urban policies. He touted declining crime rates in cities across the country, including Cleveland, arguing that data shows cities don’t need federal interference. You can watch this interview here.

Republicans Cut Off Democrat Trying to Introduce Motion on Epstein - 2025-09-17T20:06:26Z

House Republicans wouldn’t even let their Democratic colleague finish reading a motion to subpoena Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Wednesday for information about alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.

During Kash Patel’s House Judiciary Committee hearing earlier, the FBI director repeatedly deferred Representative Mary Gay Scanlon’s questions about $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions, which major banks had flagged to the government related to Epstein and his alleged collaborators, to the Treasury Department.

After the hearing, Scanlon attempted to introduce a motion to subpoena Bessent to produce the suspicious activity reports—but her Republican colleague Tom McClintock wouldn’t even let her get the words out.

Scanlon said she was seeking reports “in the possession of the Treasury Department identifying the roughly $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions—”

“Uh, Mr. Chairman?” McClintock interjected.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan then recognized McClintock, who made a motion to table Scanlon’s request. Jordan replied that the motion was “not debatable.”

“I didn’t finish,” Scanlon said.

“She hadn’t completed the motion,” said Representative Jamie Raskin. “It’s improper to cut it off before it’s completed, Mr. Chairman.”

Jordan said she could finish her last sentence.

“OK, so we’re asking them to identify the roughly $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions related to the sex trafficking crimes of Epstein, Maxwell, and their co-conspirators—” Scanlon continued, before being interrupted by McClintock yet again.

This time, Jordan moved straight to vote on McClintock’s motion to table, and Republicans promptly squashed her attempt to call Bessent in.

Scanlon wrote on X that her Republican colleagues had “voted for continuing the cover-up.”

McClintock also moved to table Representative Jasmine Crockett’s motion to subpoena the head of the Bureau of Prisons to produce records relating to Maxwell’s transfer, and Representative Eric Swalwell’s motion to subpoena deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino for witness interviews.

JD Vance Makes Crass Joke About (Potentially Illegal) Boat Strikes - 2025-09-17T19:40:54Z

The Trump administration is taking its recent assault on alleged drug boats from Venezuela very seriously—not.

Recalling a recent conversation he had with War Department Secretary Pete Hegseth about the unprovoked air strikes in the Caribbean, Vice President JD Vance joked Wednesday that he “wouldn’t go fishing right now in that part of the world.”

So far this month, the United States has destroyed two small Venezuelan boats traversing international waters, which Trump administration officials deemed—without an investigation or interdiction—were smuggling drugs.

The first attack killed 11 people on September 2, while a second attack on September 15 killed an additional three individuals, according to Donald Trump.

Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, said that the Trump administration had violated U.S. and international laws by striking the boats. He condemned the attacks as a “heinous crime” and also suggested that the strikes were an attempt to goad Venezuela into a “major war.”

In a rare interview, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil told CNN last week that the nation is not looking for a military confrontation with the U.S.

“We are not betting on conflict, nor do we want conflict,” Gil told the network.

Another incident late last week, in which the U.S. military “illegally and hostilely” detained another boat off the coast of a Venezuelan island, further intensified relations between the two countries.

In a statement, Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry said that the U.S. was “looking for an incident to justify escalating war in the Caribbean, with the aim of regime change” in Venezuela. It further demanded that the U.S. “immediately cease these actions that endanger security and peace in the Caribbean.”

But the White House is apparently not looking to deescalate the situation. Instead, Trump and Vance have openly boasted about the unconstitutional killings. On Monday, Trump publicized that the second attack was on his orders, while promising to continue the “hunt,” and Vance has claimed that the needless deaths were the “highest and best use of our military.”

When a political commentator noted that killing citizens of another country without due process is a war crime, Vance simply retorted, “I don’t give a shit what you call it.”

Some Republicans back at home, meanwhile, have not been impressed by the aggressive international display. In an interview last week, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul told Fox News that he felt compelled to address the attacks, underscoring that not every ship sailing in the Caribbean is smuggling drugs.

“The reason we board them before we blow the crap out of them is some of them don’t have drugs,” Paul said.

Paul additionally lamented that the Trump administration was involving itself in affairs thousands of miles off U.S. coastlines, and expending federal resources on the lowest echelons of the global drug trade.

Nancy Mace Launches Racist Attack on Ilhan Omar for Made-Up Quotes - 2025-09-17T18:44:24Z

Representative Nancy Mace’s crusade against Representative Ilhan Omar has dredged up an old, Islamaphobic rumor.

The pair were going back and forth on X Wednesday, ahead of a scheduled floor debate over Omar’s potential censure, and Mace referred to the Minnesota lawmaker as “Somalia Ilhan Omar.”

“Is your ridiculous censure about me being born in Somalia? Because that’s just as crazy as you are,” wrote Omar.

But then Mace reached for the top shelf to offend her colleague.

“Who knows, maybe it’ll be about you marrying your brother next!” Mace responded. “Tune in!”

MAGA conservatives have rumbled for years—without evidence—that Omar married her brother to bring him into the United States. The conspiracy first emerged during Omar’s 2016 campaign for the Minnesota state legislature, in a since-deleted post on the conservative blog Power Line, where an anonymous source was quoted as saying that Omar’s ex-husband, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, was related to her by blood.

Omar has vehemently and repeatedly denied the unfounded allegations, which have been disproven by her marriage certificate. At the time, Omar described the insinuation that she had married her brother to be “absurd and offensive.”

But that hasn’t stopped Mace from digging the details back up. Over the last week, Mace has advocated stripping Omar of her committee assignments and censuring her, and has publicly suggested that Omar should be deported back to Somalia for having allegedly “smeared Charlie Kirk and implied he was to blame for his own murder” during an interview with Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan.

Clips from that interview were similarly picked up by far-right personalities, who claimed that Omar had said Kirk deserved to die. But that’s not accurate.

“No one said he deserved to die. Ilhan Omar said the exact opposite to me,” Hasan wrote on X. “She condemned his killing. And she said her heart goes out to Kirk’s widow.”

Omar also pushed back against Mace, arguing that she never made the comments that Mace was attempting to silence her for.

“Her [resolution] does not contain a single quote from me because she couldn’t find any,” Omar said. “Unlike her, I have routinely condemned political violence, no matter the political ideology. This is all an attempt to push a false story so she can fundraise and boost her run for Governor.”

Even other Republicans didn’t appear to galvanize behind Mace’s cause, apparently wiping their hands of the South Carolinian’s vendetta.

“It just seems like every week or so we want to censure somebody for something,” Texas Representative Troy Nehls told Fox News’s Chad Pergram on Tuesday. “A lot of people say a lot of stupid stuff around here.”

Ironically, Mace’s mudslinging comes just days after she insisted that she never bad-mouthed her Democratic colleagues.

Donald Trump Has Made at Least One Thing Cheaper - 2025-09-17T18:36:50Z

The Trump administration has finally managed to make something significantly cheaper for Americans: cocaine.

The Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump has been committing so much manpower to fight dual wars on fentanyl and immigration that he’s opened up a new and fruitful hole in the drug trafficking ecosystem, which Mexican cocaine trafficker Nemesio “Mencho” Oseguera and his Jalisco cartel have filled with record amounts of cocaine in the United States—and at a new low cost.

Record levels of cocaine production in Colombia are driven by the fentanyl crackdown near the border and a significant surge in usage here in the U.S. Now prices for the powder have fallen to $60–$75 per gram, a 25 percent decrease, according to researcher Morgan Godvin. “The price of pure cocaine has plummeted,” he told the Journal.

The 2016 arrest of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum’s more recent crackdown on his cartel, the Sinaloans, handicapped Mexico’s top fentanyl trafficking cartel. Trump’s overzealous deportation campaign has also pulled officers away from two main fentanyl checkpoints along the southern border.

The U.S. has placed a $15 million bounty on Oseguera.

This news comes as the Trump administration conducted drone strikes on what it claims were two speedboats carrying cocaine and fentanyl from Venezuela in the Caribbean. Trump has made multiple threats of military intervention against cartels, even positing bombing Mexican soil.

Oseguera reportedly transports his product via speedboat, from Colombia and Ecuador to Mexico. As the economy continues to struggle, Americans everywhere can now powder their noses for cheap thanks to Trump.

Why is Bill Cassidy So Afraid of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? - 2025-09-17T18:21:04Z

Bill Cassidy, the moderate Republican senator who helms the Senate Health Committee, gave a feeble reaction to the committee’s Wednesday hearing with fired CDC Director Susan Monarez.

As a physician, Cassidy’s pro-vaccination stance has put him at odds with President Trump’s anti-vax health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Cassidy voted to confirm in February. At a September 4 hearing, for instance, the Louisiana senator questioned how Kennedy could reconcile being staunchly anti-vaccine while heaping praise on his boss’s 2020–21 initiative to develop and distribute Covid-19 vaccines. Kennedy’s answers laid bare his cravenness.

But Cassidy had his own low moment Wednesday. Seemingly keeping his own political future in mind, he remained reticent after Monarez’s testimony.

As he seeks reelection in 2026, Cassidy faces a competitive GOP primary. He is already on the president’s bad side—due to his past criticism of and impeachment vote against Trump—and his chances would worsen if Trump were to publicly oppose him. Before the hearing, a Republican source close to the White House told CNN, “The White House is watching” and that Cassidy could “seal his own fate” with the hearing—“if he hasn’t already”—if it was perceived as too anti-Kennedy.

Perhaps that accounts for Cassidy’s tight-lipped response to the hearing—during which Monarez revealed that RFK Jr. told her to either fire CDC scientists and rubber-stamp recommendations by his overhauled vaccine advisory committee, or resign.

After the damning testimony, CNN congressional correspondent Manu Raju reported on X that he could only eke out the following answer from Cassidy on Monarez’s claims: “I’ll let her speak for herself.” Pressed further on his feelings about the hearing, the senator replied, “What do you think?” before disappearing behind closing elevator doors.

MTG Embraces Charlie Kirk’s True Legacy When Discussing TPUSA Future - 2025-09-17T16:55:42Z

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said Wednesday that she doesn’t want Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA to be taken over by Jews.

Using a final message from the late right-wing activist, Greene hit back at Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s claim that Kirk had been an ally of Israel, delivering an antisemitic plea to keep his conservative youth organization in the control of Christians.

“Do not allow a foreign country, foreign agents, and another religion to tell you about Charlie Kirk. And I hope a foreign country and foreign agents and another religion does not take over Christian Patriotic Turning Point USA,” she wrote on X.

Kirk’s message showed that he had offered her an appearance at America Fest 2025 to debate about AIPAC. “Not with me,” he wrote. “No pressure. Well do whatever you want.”

Greene appeared to be claiming that his openness to debate about Israel meant that he wouldn’t be interested in his organization falling into the hands of Jewish people. She also pointed to Tucker Carlson’s claim that Kirk was appalled by Netanyahu’s catastrophic military campaign in Gaza, and Candace Owens’s claim that Kirk had started having “rational thoughts about Israel” before his death, causing a rift with other conservatives.

Greene reminded her followers that Kirk was a “Christian movement leader, a giant in American history,” and a “Christian martyr for Jesus Christ.” There has been widespread speculation that Kirk’s wife, Erika, will take over for her husband as CEO of Turning Point USA.

Last week, the Israeli prime minister appeared on American media to assure its audience Israel had absolutely nothing to do with Charlie Kirk’s death but that some anonymous cabal of Muslims and leftists was behind it.

Former CDC Head: RFK Jr. Is Bringing Back Preventable Diseases - 2025-09-17T16:15:01Z

Dr. Susan Monarez, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head who was ousted by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., thinks that his upheaval of the CDC will lead to the return of diseases America hasn’t seen in decades, including polio.

“What is your concern? What are the long-term implications for the well-being of our kids and the future of our country if faith in vaccine science is undermined?” Senator Bernie Sanders asked Monarez, who was testifying before the Senate about Kennedy Jr.’s time at HHS.

Sen. Sanders: “What are the long-term implications for the well-being of our kids and the future of our country if faith in vaccine science is undermined?”

Dr. Monarez: “I believe preventable diseases will return. And I believe that we will have our children harmed for things… pic.twitter.com/D2Z3CBZma0

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) September 17, 2025

“I believe preventable diseases will return,” Monarez responded. “And I believe that we will have our children harmed for things that we know they do not need to be harmed by. Polio, measles, diphtheria, whooping cough. I worry about the ramifications for those children, in illness and in death. I worry about our school systems. I worry about our medical institutions having to take care of sick kids that could have been prevented by effective and safe vaccines. I worry about the future of trust in public health.”

This is an absolutely damning response from a former CDC head who said she was pushed out of a job that used to value science and research for reasons that were likely completely political. It’s hard to see Monarez’s firing by Kennedy as purely coincidental, as her extensive research background in immunology and microbiology directly contradicts Kennedy’s pseudoscientific MAHA agenda.

“Would you agree with me in suggesting that the overwhelming body of scientific and medical thought believes that vaccines have been a major public health advance for the people of this world?” Sanders followed up.

“I absolutely agree with that,” Monarez replied.

This Is Why Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Fired the CDC Director - 2025-09-17T16:04:13Z

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave Susan Monarez two worrisome ultimatums before she was fired as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Monarez told a Senate committee Wednesday.

On the morning of August 25, Monarez said, Kennedy “demanded two things” of the then director “that were inconsistent with my oath of office and the ethics required of a public official.”

One was “to commit, in advance, to approving every” recommendation by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, “regardless of scientific evidence.” The ACIP, responsible for providing national vaccine guidance, has undergone an upheaval under Kennedy—who has fired all of its members and appointed new ones, including vaccine skeptics, in their place.

Kennedy’s other directive, Monarez said, was “to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy without cause.”

“He said if I was unwilling to do both, I should resign,” Monarez said. When she resisted, Kennedy told her that “he had already spoken with the White House several times about having me removed.”

Monarez’s story Wednesday aligns with the account of former acting CDC Director Richard Besser—a confidant of the former director—who last month said she’d been asked to do “two things she would never do”: “one in terms of firing her leadership” as well as “to rubber-stamp [vaccine] recommendations that flew in the face of science.” It also matches Monarez’s recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, in which she wrote she was “told to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric” on August 25.

Kennedy, for his part, offered his own version of events in a congressional hearing earlier this month. Straining credulity, the health secretary claimed that he directed Monarez to resign because he asked her, “Are you a trustworthy person?” to which she replied, “No.” He has denied Monarez’s claim that she was asked to blindly approve ACIP recommendations, but does not dispute that he told her to fire scientists.

Senior Dem Accuses Kash Patel of Being Part of Epstein “Cover-Up” - 2025-09-17T16:01:16Z

FBI Director Kash Patel was accused Wednesday of being part of a cover-up for alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

New York Representative Dan Goldman tried to get into the weeds with Patel over the FBI director’s refusal to release names of Epstein’s associates that were involved in his alleged sex trafficking of minors.

“You are hiding the Epstein files, Mr. Patel! You are part of the cover-up,” Goldman claimed.

“Any allegations that I am a part of a cover-up to protect child sexual trafficking and victims of human trafficking and sexual crimes is patently and categorically false,” Patel responded.

During a contentious questioning, Goldman accused Patel of withholding additional information that wasn’t subject to court orders about Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking, and preventing the release of grand jury testimony that had been unsealed as part of discovery in a case against Ghislaine Maxwell.  

In August, a judge refused the government’s request to unseal grand jury testimony used in Maxwell’s case, ruling it would remain sealed to protect grand jury secrecy, and because it would “not reveal new information of any consequence.” But Goldman insisted that there were witness testimonies not included in the judge’s order. 

Judges weighing the Trump administration’s requests have said that its renewed effort to unseal grand jury testimony, which included a few dozen pages of hearsay that was nothing compared to what the government already had, was simply an effort to confuse the public, according to Politico. 

U.S. District Judge Richard Berman wrote in August that the Trump administration retained the power to release the records and that its files weren’t subject to the kind of secrecy afforded to grand jury material.

Patel denied that any testimony had been unsealed in Maxwell’s case, and claimed that there were other protective orders, and “limited” search warrants that prevented the release of additional information. He said that the “overwhelming majority” of the videos and photographs reviewed by the government were “pornographic material that was downloaded from the internet,” and would never be released.

Patel then doubled down on his outrageous claim that the government had absolutely no evidence that Epstein had trafficked girls and women to anyone else (despite a trove of survivor testimony to the contrary). Patel also admitted he had not personally reviewed the Epstein files in full. 

Goldman reminded Patel that he had “total control to release” information on others Epstein trafficked to, and asked why he wouldn’t release a list of names. Patel replied that he would not release child porn. 

“I’m not asking about that! Fine. I’m asking about all the other files!” Goldman demanded. 

“What other videos? Tell me? Tell me? Tell me!” Patel pressed, claiming that to his knowledge, there was no evidence Epstein trafficked to others. 

“That’s all we got,” the FBI director said.

Goldman battered Patel for not releasing witness testimonies, claiming that they were not subject to the court order and could be released with victims’ names redacted.

“Sir, do you know how court orders work? Do you know how protective orders work?” Patel asked. 

“Actually, Mr. Patel, I was a prosecutor—a real prosecutor for 10 years, so I know exactly how a court order works,” Goldman snapped. 

“Oh, so I was a fake one?” asked Patel, who had served as a national security prosecutor for roughly four years under the Obama administration.

Goldman pressed Patel to release witness statements that were not protected as part of grand jury testimony or were no longer under a protective order. He also asked Patel why he hadn’t gone to the court asking to unseal the witness testimony. 

Patel said that the DOJ had requested that the court unseal grand jury records before the judge had said no, but Goldman insisted there was other witness testimony.

After being told his time was up, Goldman accused Patel of playing defense for those involved in Epstein’s alleged crimes.

This story has been updated.

Kash Patel’s Big Mouth Just Got Him in Trouble on Epstein Files - 2025-09-17T15:29:50Z

FBI Director Kash Patel has failed to follow through on his own promises regarding the Epstein files.

Months before Patel’s name was floated to run the bureau, Patel had told podcaster Benny Johnson that he believed the documents were being shielded from public view because of “who’s on that list.” During his confirmation hearing, the 45-year-old swore there would be “no stone left unturned” in the quest to make the Epstein files completely transparent.

But it all came to a head during a heated House Oversight Hearing Wednesday, when members of the lower chamber forced the bureau chief to confront the incongruencies between his prior stances and his recent lagging actions.

“This spring, you ordered hundreds of agents to pore over all of the Epstein files but not to look for more clues about the money network, or the network of human traffickers,” said Representative Jamie Raskin. “You pulled these agents from their regular counterterrorism or drug trafficking duties to work around the clock—some of them sleeping at their desks—to conduct a frantic search to make sure Donald Trump’s name and image were flagged and redacted wherever they appeared.”

Raskin then highlighted a July memo from the bureau, in which Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi determined “no further disclosure” regarding the Epstein files and the FBI’s investigation “would be necessary or appropriate.”

“In a few short months, how did you go from being a crusader for accountability and transparency with the Epstein files to being part of the conspiracy and cover-up?” Raskin continued. “The answer is simple. You said it yourself: because of who is on that list.”

Raskin to Patel: "In a few short months, how did you go from being a crusader for accountability and transparency with the Epstein files to being part of the conspiracy and coverup? The answer is simple. You said it yourself -- because of who is on that list." pic.twitter.com/pPKRP7BHzy

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 17, 2025

Patel’s apparent disinterest in catching child predators has extended far beyond his back-and-forths in Congress. Instead, there appears to be a top-down transformation at the agency influenced by Patel’s personal ideology: Just about every agent on the FBI’s Baltimore domestic terrorism squad was directed to refocus their attention on detaining immigrants, forcing agents to pause investigations into violent child predators and pedophilia networks, MSNBC reported Tuesday.

While Patel is grilled on Capitol Hill, another fire appears to be growing against him in the inner echelons of the Trump administration. Patel’s clumsy handling of the manhunt for Charlie Kirk’s killer left the White House thoroughly unimpressed, with insiders reportedly on the lookout for Patel’s replacement.

Trump DOJ Lackey Wants to Hit Protesters With RICO Charges - 2025-09-17T15:03:07Z

Former Trump impeachment lead counsel and current Representative Daniel Goldman aimed some sharp remarks at Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as his Justice Department seeks to hit CodePink with a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) charge for yelling at President Trump while he was at dinner last week.

Trump called for the protestors to be jailed on Monday via RICO. On Tuesday Blanche told CNN he was happy to oblige.

“RICO is available to all kinds of organizations committing crimes and committing wrongful acts, not just organized crime, or ISIS, or terrorist organizations, and so it depends,” Blanche said Tuesday on CNN when asked to justify treating CodePink like the mob or a terrorist group. “It is again, sheer happenstance, that individuals show up at a restaurant where the president is trying to enjoy dinner in Washington, D.C. and accost him with vile words and vile anger … does it mean that it’s completely random that they showed up? Maybe. But to the extent that it’s part of an organized effort to inflict harm and terror and damage to the United States, there’s potential investigations there.”

Deputy AG Blanche: RICO is available to all kinds of organizations committing crimes and committing wrongful acts… So is it sheer happenstance that individuals show up at a restaurant where the president is trying to enjoy dinner and accost him with vile words?

Collins: They… pic.twitter.com/T5gom2HLm4

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 17, 2025

Goldman rebuked Blanche’s comments online.

“I charged RICO cases. Yelling at the President is not a racketeering act and cannot be the basis for a criminal charge. @DAGToddBlanche knows better,” Goldman wrote Wednesday morning on X. “He is corrupting the DOJ with ridiculous comments like this.”

This all comes as the Trump administration moves to crack down on free speech as part of a mass disinformation campaign in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s killing. But to use RICO charges to achieve that is an extreme overreach at best.

Republican Who Stood up to Trump Announces He’s Running for Governor - 2025-09-17T14:51:33Z

Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has thrown his hat in the ring for governor.

Raffensperger garnered national attention in 2021 when he refused to “find” Donald Trump enough votes to throw Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results. Five years on, Raffensperger’s candidacy will prove a political litmus test for conservative appetites in the South, and whether or not they’re willing to veer away from MAGA’s clutches.

“I’m a conservative Republican, and I’m prepared to make the tough decisions. I follow the law and the Constitution, and I’ll always do the right thing for Georgia no matter what,” Raffensperger said in an announcement video.

Raffensperger will join an already crowded Republican primary for Georgia’s top position. His challengers include Georgia Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones—a Trump loyalist who has already received the president’s endorsement—and state Attorney General Chris Carr, who has similarly embraced the president’s politics in an effort to curry favor with his supporters.

But no one else on the ticket will likely draw MAGA eyes like Raffensperger, who half a decade later is still mired in the political turmoil of standing up to the movement’s figurehead.

In campaign videos, Raffensperger frames himself as a tough-on-liberals Republican who fought “and won” against the likes of former state Representative Stacey Abrams and former President Joe Biden, upholding traditional party ideals such as lowering taxes while focusing on the production of “good paying jobs.”

Raffensperger didn’t shy away from participating in the conservative culture war, either. In the same video, the secretary of state promised to deliver a “bold conservative agenda” as Georgia’s next governor. That plan, though vague, partly focused on putting parents “in charge” of their kids’ education, as well as banning transgender surgery for minors.

Brad Raffensperger launches campaign for Governor of GA 🚨 pic.twitter.com/K5ZQS2dgFJ

— Georgia Democrat (@GADemocrat_) September 17, 2025

How seriously Georgia is affected by transgender surgeries is unclear, though a study by UCLA found that just 3.3 percent of American youths across the country identify as transgender or gender nonconforming.

Raffensperger is now the second gubernatorial hopeful to have openly defied Trump. Georgia’s former Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan announced Wednesday that he is running for governor—as a newly minted Democrat.

ICE Just Destroyed U.S. Relations With South Korea - 2025-09-17T14:45:16Z

The immigration raid on the Hyundai plant in Georgia earlier this month, which saw more than 300 South Korean workers detained and, last week, flown back to Seoul, has proven to be an enduring, self-inflicted disaster by the Trump administration.

Reports of the harrowing conditions the workers experienced continue to emerge, as South Korea this week announced its intention to investigate human rights violations. “One by one, we were cuffed at the wrists, then chained at the waist and shackled at the ankles. Then we were put on the bus. I couldn’t understand why we were being treated this way,” one worker told the BBC for a Tuesday story.

The worker said the detention center was “very cold. We weren’t even given blankets for 2 days. I was wearing a short sleeve T-shirt, so I put my arms inside my clothes and wrapped myself in a towel to try to stay warm at night,” he said. “The worst part was the water. It smelt like sewage. We drank as little as possible.”

Meanwhile, the raid seems poised to inflict significant economic harm on the U.S. and the Peach State. Construction on the raided facility is reportedly paused until 2026. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has warned that South Korean firms “will be very hesitant to make direct investments in the United States” in light of the incident—and indeed, several have already suspended U.S. projects.

President Trump, evidently feeling the heat, took to Truth Social on Sunday: “I don’t want to frighten off or disincentivize Investment into America by outside Countries or Companies,” he wrote. “We welcome them, we welcome their employees, and we are willing to proudly say we will learn from them.”

Much of the blame for the incident and its fallout belongs to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, according to a Tuesday report in Forbes. Charles Kuck, an immigration lawyer representing several of the workers (who he says were in the U.S. on business visas and though a visa waiver program) told the publication that the arrests were “entirely driven” by Miller’s quota of 3,000 immigration arrests per day.

“ICE agents screwed up by arresting people who did not abuse the visa, were eligible to engage in the type of work for which they were admitted, but ICE considered it a successful operation because they met Miller’s quota,” Kuck said.

Trump Targets Letitia James With Dangerous Escalation in Tactics - 2025-09-17T14:31:44Z

President Donald Trump is mounting a pressure campaign to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James for mortgage fraud, without providing any evidence to support the charges against her, ABC News reported Wednesday.

After five months of digging, investigators have yet to produce a shred of evidence that James falsified bank documents to secure favorable terms on a mortgage for her Virginia home, multiple sources briefed on the probe told ABC News.

Still, Trump has directed top officials at the Justice Department to aggressively pursue an investigation against James. Two Trump stooges, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte and Ed Martin, the head of the DOJ’s Working Weaponization Group, have urged U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Erik Siebert to seek an indictment against James.

When federal prosecutors declined, Pulte encouraged Trump to fire Siebert and have him replaced with someone who would do his bidding, sources told ABC News.

Pulte and Martin have staked their claim that James committed mortgage fraud on a single document claiming that the home she purchased in 2023 would be her primary residence. But investigators haven’t been able to prove she knowingly lied, or that the document was even considered by loan officers. Lawyers that drafted the document said the error was the result of a template that wasn’t corrected, sources said. Every other document submitted for the mortgage accurately stated she would not reside at the home.

Pulte has also lobbed similar claims of mortgage fraud at other Trump opponents, such as Democratic Senator Adam Schiff and Federal Reserve Chair Lisa Cook—which have already begun to fall apart.

Since Trump entered office, the administration has set off on a campaign of retribution against James. Months after the probe into her residences started in April, the DOJ launched an investigation into whether she violated Trump’s constitutional rights in taking legal action against him in a winning bank fraud case, costing him $454 million for his family’s business practices.

Trump Official Says He Didn’t Check if Ghislaine Maxwell Is “Credible” - 2025-09-17T13:39:24Z

The Trump administration wasn’t even trying to determine if Ghislaine Maxwell’s testimony could be deemed credible.

In a CNN interview Tuesday night, in which he urged Americans to hear out the convicted sex offender’s side of the story, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that the point of his August interviews with Maxwell was to “give her an opportunity to speak,” which he claimed no one had done before.

“She had been in prison for many many years, and she had offered to speak on many many occasions, and she was never given that opportunity,” Blanche told CNN, referring to Jeffrey Epstein’s media-savvy criminal associate and girlfriend.

Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 for playing an active role in Epstein’s crimes, identifying and grooming vulnerable young women while normalizing their abuse at the hands of her millionaire boyfriend. She was deposed in the 2016 defamation lawsuit against Epstein brought by one of his most vocal victims, Virginia Giuffre, and refused to testify in her own criminal trial in 2021. She is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence.

“So what I did is I gave her that opportunity to speak,” Blanche—Trump’s former personal attorney—continued. “Whether her answers were credible or truthful, there’s a lot of information out there about Mr. Epstein, about her, and whether what she said is completely wrong or completely right or a little of both—that’s the reason why we released the transcript.

“It’s really up to the American people to determine what they believe [whether] her answers were credible or whether they found her not credible,” Blanche said, again referring to an individual who refused to testify on multiple occasions and was already found guilty by a jury of her peers for sex-trafficking children.

Despite already having the Epstein files on hand, Blanche interviewed Maxwell again last month regarding details of Epstein’s potential associates, in an apparent attempt to satiate the president’s restless base.

The information exchange resulted in a very convenient transfer for Maxwell—one of the worst sex criminals of the century—shipping her from a Florida prison to a low-security prison camp in Texas that lawmakers have described as “not suitable for a sex offender.” Maxwell’s attorneys are also pressing the White House for a pardon.

While Trump administration officials attempted to publicly justify reopening conversation with Maxwell, questions abound about her credibility and why her answers in 2025 would differ from her original interviews with federal officials.

Trump Invents Bizarre New Conspiracy About Charlie Kirk and Jack Smith - 2025-09-17T13:30:49Z

President Donald Trump went on a wild rant against former special counsel Jack Smith for allegedly investigating Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA.

“Why was the wonderful Turning Point under INVESTIGATION by ‘Deranged’ Jack Smith and the Corrupt & Incompetent Biden Administration,” Trump wrote. “They tried to force Charlie, and many other people and movements, out of business. They Weaponized the Justice Department against Sleepy Joe Biden’s Political Opponents, including ME!”

The short answer to Trump’s question is because of his alleged efforts to remain in power after losing the 2020 presidential election.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday, Chairman Chuck Grassley said that Turning Point USA, Kirk’s conservative youth organization, was one of several Republican organizations targeted by Arctic Frost, an FBI probe into Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

A read-out published by Grassley explained that operation Arctic Frost was a joint effort started in April 2022 between the FBI, the DOJ Office of Inspector General, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the National Archives and Records Administration that had been assigned to Smith.

Turning Point USA received a subpoena in December 2022, along with several other event-organizing groups, such as the Make America Great Again PAC. These groups had been subpoenaed along the “thread” of possibly supplying money for the deadly riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Kirk had publicly promoted the January 6 rally, as well as Trump’s infamous call to “fight like hell,” before the riot turned deadly, according to The Guardian. Turning Point Action, the advocacy arm of Kirk’s organization, had been one of a dozen groups to deliver busloads of Trump allies to the “March to Save America.”

Unable to dwell on a single thought, even in writing, Trump continued to rant about a gag order placed on him by New York state Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, after the president led attacks against Merchan’s family and staff nearly a year ago.

Transcript: Trump Rages Wildly at Media as Poll Exposes a Key Weakness - 2025-09-17T11:13:33Z

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the September 17 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

President Trump seems even more angry at the media than usual. His lawyers just filed a batshit insane lawsuit against The New York Times that’s literally chock full of crazy rants that sound like they were dictated by Trump himself. And on two other occasions on Tuesday, he snapped at reporters in ways that seemed strange even by his standards. Is Trump angry because his magical political powers are failing him? That’s the argument that Paul Waldman made recently on his Substack, The Cross Section. And in fact, a new poll just landed that reveals a surprisingly steep drop for Trump among independents, a key metric for gauging political strength or weakness. So we’re talking to Paul about all this today. Hey, Paul, good to see you, man.

Paul Waldman: Good to see you too, Greg.

Greg Sargent: So let’s start with some audio of Trump. A reporter asked him if it’s appropriate to engage in so much business activity while in office. Trump said his kids are running the business, but then Trump asked for the reporter’s nationality and the reporter answered that he’s Australian. Then this happened.

Trump (voiceover): In my opinion, you are hurting Australia very much right now. And they want to get along with me. You know, your leader is coming over to see me very soon. I’m going to tell them about you. You set a very bad tone.

Sargent: So Trump actually threatened to tell Australia’s prime minister about this reporter’s impudent question. But Paul, what struck me about this is that Trump thinks his self-dealing should be beyond question and that he simply believes that this reporter would actually have to fear reprisal from Australia’s leader. What did you make of this odd threat?

Waldman: Well, I think there are a couple of things going on at the same time. On one hand, when he comes out either on the lawn of the White House or in the Oval Office and kind of spars with reporters, which he does all the time, it’s supposed to be a show. You know, he is the main character, and all of the reporters are like little bugs who are pestering him. And he’s going to show how strong and agile and smart he is by deflecting all their questions and turning things around on them and making these kind of dominance displays to show that he’s the one with the power. And they can’t impede him in the realization of his will. So there’s something very performative about it.

But it’s also true at the same time that his emotions do come through. And I think he does genuinely believe that nobody has the right to ask him any kind of impertinent question. And I think it is worth saying just from the standpoint of substance, that the stuff that he is doing in terms of using the office of the presidency to enrich himself is absolutely unprecedented to orders of magnitude greater than anything we’ve ever seen before, including what we saw in his first term.

I mean, there was just a piece in The New York Times, I think yesterday, and we’ll probably talk about his lawsuit against The New York Times. There was a piece there that went into great detail about what can only be described as something akin to a bribery scheme involving the United Arab Emirates and channeling money through various crypto firms to give him and his family tens of millions of dollars in fees. It’s rather complicated, and it has to do with chips used [in] artificial intelligence and this complicated network of crypto companies. But the net result is that foreign governments are essentially putting money in his family’s bank account in order to get the kind of policy outcomes that they want.

Sargent: It’s funny though that he actually thinks it’s a defense to say his kids are running the company, as if that somehow rebuts the charge that the company is profiteering off of his presidency. And also, I just want to underscore the vision that it reveals on Trump’s part of how the press is supposed to function, that he says, I’m going to tell the prime minister of Australia on you.

Waldman: Yeah, and I think that he believes or hopes that in other countries, he can dictate how they’re going to have relations with their own press, even in democratic countries like Australia—that he can essentially, as you say, tell on this reporter and that somehow that will mean that the reporter will get punished by his own prime minister. So he does have this desire to make this into a kind of performance of dominance, but he also really doesn’t think that anyone should ask him any kind of question that would really reflect poorly on him.

Whenever he gets a really challenging question, one of the things that he does is he quickly dismisses the substance of it, and then he turns it into an attack on the reporter. And this is actually a pretty effective technique because it’s alarming to everyone in the room and to people watching at home. If he’s saying to a reporter, You you’re a terrible person, how dare you ask a question like that? It’s not the kind of thing we normally see from presidents. And still, even at this late date, it has the power to shock. When you watch it, you almost forget about the thing that the person asked the question about, and you’re drawn into this conflict between him and the reporter. So in that case, it’s pretty shrewd.

Sargent: Yeah, I think it works in a way, especially for his supporters. And you mentioned that lawsuit that Trump filed against The New York Times. It is indeed crazy. It concerns several articles in a book by Times reporters that looked skeptically at Trump’s business success. No one should dare ever question that, of course. Now, First Amendment lawyers are calling this lawsuit an utter complete joke, but that aside, again, there’s this anger. The lawsuit accuses Times reporters of deliberately trying to inflict maximum damage on Trump. It accuses them of repugnant distortions and fabrications about Trump designed to help the Democratic Party; it says the reporters couldn’t stand the thought of Trump winning the election. And it even says the reporters hate Trump in a deranged way. The lawsuit is chock full of crazy stuff like that. And then Trump announced the lawsuit with an explosion of fury on Truth Social, in which he called the Times “the most degenerate of newspapers in the history of our country.”

Waldman: Yeah, if you actually read the lawsuit, it reads like something that was produced by the North Korean Department of Propaganda. I mean, it’s incredible, just full of praise for how extraordinary Donald Trump is and how his win in 2024 was the greatest achievement in American history. And as you said, it sounds like he dictated it. And if you look back at the history of Trump and lawsuits against media organizations, he’s used them for a long time. And for most of time, it’s been just kind of an intimidation tactic. He sues all kinds of people. Sometimes it’s with the intention of actually getting some kind of money, but often it’s just to sort of put people on their heels because he would oftentimes, in his pre-political life, sue people when they were less wealthy or less powerful than him and they wouldn’t have the ability to sustain the legal fees in the way that he could. And so that was an effective intimidation tactic for him.

That included a lot of lawsuits against news organizations and individual reporters. And it is an effective technique because except for really the biggest news organizations, it’s very difficult to pay all those legal fees. And sometimes people are motivated to just settle it or issue some kind of an apology or whatever. And having everyone know that Trump is going to sue you if he doesn’t like something that appears in your newspaper or on your television station is itself a kind of intimidation.

But then something different happened in his second term, which is that he realized that this could actually be kind of a method of quasi-legal bribery. He could file a really absurd lawsuit, and it didn’t matter how absurd, but he could intimidate these news organizations into settling with him and giving him many millions of dollars for his presidential library, if such a thing ever actually comes into being, or in some other way that they’re going to have to pony up money. And they’re so intimidated that even though the lawsuits were all completely frivolous and he never had any chance of prevailing in court, that it was actually something very effective.

Sargent: Well, I got to think that him doing this with The New York Times really ups the ante in a major way. I can’t tell whether it’s a sign of hubris or not. It sort of smacks of that. Now, as you mentioned, ABC News settled a big lawsuit with Trump. So did CBS. They both had reasons for doing so that didn’t really seem on the up and up. Their parent companies seemed to want to settle. And Trump essentially extorted them through that method. But it’s a little difficult to see The New York Times going down that road, which means he’s going to have to actually litigate this insane lawsuit over time. What do you think he’s thinking there, if thinking’s the right word for it? The Times can’t let itself get extorted in the same way ABC and CBS can, can it? And what does that mean over time?

Waldman: I don’t think they can. And the Times is still the most important news organization in America. And one of the differences is that if you look, for instance, at CBS, well, CBS’s parent company Paramount needed to get a merger approved. That was clearly the subtext of everything that was going on there. Trump was essentially demanding tribute, and they ponied up the money and then they got their merger approved. But The New York Times isn’t asking for anything from the federal government in the same way. And they’re a very wealthy company and they have plenty of lawyers and they’re perfectly able to fight this in court, and the suit is so preposterous that you would think it would get thrown out on its first contact with the judge, but you never know.

So, I don’t think that the Times is going to pony up any kind of a settlement. I think it’s just a way of kind of sustaining the narrative that he likes: that he is at war with the media, that the media are unfair to him, and he can just keep feeding that. And what does it really cost him? He dictates some things to his lawyers that he wants them to do. They file this preposterous suit. It doesn’t really cost him very much money, at least not given the billions by which his fortune has expanded over the course of the last year with all the different ways people are looking to put money in his pocket. And so, you know, there’s no cost to him. It can be essentially a P.R. move. But the Times, I think, would be very, in a very bad position among their peers, among their audience, if they actually were to knuckle under and give him any money at all.

Sargent: Yes, it seems very unlikely. Well, here’s another really strange rant from Trump. A reporter, apparently from ABC News, asked about Attorney General Pam Bondi, who recently threatened to prosecute people for hate speech, which is a bullshit threat. Then Trump said this.

Trump (voiceover): She should probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they’ll come after ABC. Well, ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hate speech, right? Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech, so maybe they’ll have to go after you.

Sargent: So what’s funny is that Pam Bondi subsequently had to walk back her ridiculous threat to prosecute hate speech anyway, so the question was perfectly legit and reasonable. That aside, Paul, note how he rubs it in, that he extorted a big settlement out of ABC News. You mentioned that this is all a dominance display. That was about as clear as you could possibly want it. He’s basically saying, You reporters are a bunch of bugs that I am squashing under my heel pretty regularly. Your thoughts on that?

Waldman: Yeah, it really is. He wants to remind the reporters and himself and his own supporters of what he considers a great victory over one of his main enemies, the news media. And this was a very interesting little episode, both regarding him and Bondi, it was as if they both kind of forgot what the term hate speech represents and what it represents to the right, including his own supporters. For a long time, it was progressives who talked about hate speech and made the argument that in some cases, certain kinds of speech constitute an action that you could take action against, that it’s not just speech, it can do real harm to people in the right context. And that was something that conservatives for years have been very angry about and have argued against. And then Pam Bondi kind of got over her skis a little bit.

[Trump] has sparred with Jonathan Karl, that ABC reporter, a lot over the years. And Karl wrote at least one book, if I’m recalling correctly, that Trump didn’t like. And so he sees him and remembers who he works for and says, Ah, this is a chance for me to take him down. And so it’s very, very personal. It has that kind of utility as a part of the show that he can demonstrate dominance to his supporters. But it’s also something, I think, that’s very personal for him. He likes being able to show that he can really stick it to somebody that he doesn’t like. And with Trump, that’s always going on at the same time. Simultaneously, there’s an aspect that is strategic in what he’s trying to present to the public and there is also his own emotional impulses that are always at work.

Sargent: Pathological impulses, in fact. What I find striking about that exchange is that on the one hand, he’s citing this settlement with ABC News as proof that he’s ground the media under his heel. And yet he’s simultaneously angry that he can’t actually control the lines of questioning from reporters.

This is the funny thing about Trump’s authoritarian presidency. He can win these symbolic victories, maybe getting a huge company to hand over an extortion payment to him, but he can’t actually control things. And it’s driving him into a fury. He himself knows his control is hollow, that it’s mostly a sham. I find that a strikingly revealing moment in that way, Paul.

Waldman: Yeah, I think so. You know, he’s always had this extremely complicated relationship with the media. He despises reporters, but he’s desperate for their approval. He wants to be the main character of American politics and wants still to see himself on the TV news. He wants to see his name in the headlines and the paper. He knows that he has this symbiotic relationship with the press. And even though it is antagonistic, he’s always kind of pushing them away and then pulling them back. And that’s been who he has been for decades. And that doesn’t change; even though he would like to be able to dictate every headline and the slant of every news story, he knows he can’t do that. And he has all kinds of ways that he tries to get the news coverage that he wants, but he still is desperate to be in their sights, to be the focus of their attention. And he’s never going to be able to control it in the way that he wants to.

Sargent: That’s for sure. So now this new poll, which underscores the point even further, it’s from The Economist. Thirty-nine percent of Americans approve of Donald Trump’s performance as president. Fifty-seven percent disapprove. Among independents, that’s an absolutely abysmal 28 percent to 64 percent. And on the economy, his approval among overall Americans is 35 to 57. On inflation and prices, it’s 30 to 64. That is actually really, really terrible for him. And I think goes to the point you made in your piece the other day, which is that his magical powers are actually failing him. You wanna talk about that a bit?

Waldman: I think because Trump is so ubiquitous, it’s easy to fall into the belief that he must be persuading people. And he repeats the same things over and over, often the same kinds of lies. And you can look at that and say, you know, He won the last election, people must be buying this stuff. And that isn’t necessarily true. I mean, his approval ratings were low during his first term. They are very low now. And, you know, he tops out, it seems, at about 40 percent, and given the polarization that we have in our country, where almost everybody in any president’s party is going to say they support them and almost everybody in the other party is going to say they don’t, you know, you’re not going to do much better than 40 percent, and you’re not going to do much worse than that.

But I think that what’s really striking in some of the polls we’re seeing now is that Trump is doing really poorly, especially on the economy, jobs, and inflation. And people are starting to see some prices rise. We don’t know where that’s going to go yet. But Trump spent months trying to convince the country that tariffs were going to bring an age of prosperity that we had never seen the likes of before. And there was kind of an education that went on. A lot of people, I think a year ago, if you had asked people how tariffs work, most people wouldn’t have been able to tell you. But there was a lot of news coverage of both what Trump was saying and about how tariffs actually work. And people did get an education. And if you look at polls, what you see is that most people don’t think tariffs are a good idea, despite how hard Trump tried to convince everyone of that. So I think there are real limits to how he can persuade people, not only because most Americans just generally don’t really approve of him and so are not necessarily inclined to believe the things that he says, but even when he has something very specific he’s trying to convince people of, oftentimes it just doesn’t work.

Sargent: Well, just to close this out, I think that really gets to the core of why he’s in such a fury with the media right now, sort of separate from the specifics that he’s pretending to be angry about. The argument over tariffs, in a way, is one of the areas where the media was actually successful. There was really good reason to believe at the outset of this presidency that Trump could actually win the argument over tariffs. It’s, you know, not that hard to sell them, just say, I’m trying to protect Americans from global economic forces, and all those Democrats don’t protect you from them. And I think there was reason to assume that people might sort of, you know, lose track of the details and see it in those terms, but the press actually covered the issue with great, I think, penetration and really in an informative way. And the result, as you say, has been that the polls are showing that people really understand how tariffs actually work. And Trump, no matter how many times he uses his magical lying powers to say that other countries are paying the tariffs or whatever, it just isn’t really offsetting the actual knowledge that the American people have developed on this issue. And I think that’s a weirdly heartening thing among all the terrible news we’re seeing these days.

Waldman: Yeah, you know, Trump spent his whole life trying to kind of bring reality into being by speaking it, you know: telling people that he was the richest guy around, that he was the biggest developer in New York, which was never true. That, you know, he was the embodiment of success, even when he was going bankrupt. And a lot of the time it worked. He could convince people of a lot of things. He is a gifted marketer and showman, but there are real limits to how much he can convince people to believe in a world that is contradicted by what they see in front of them. And I think we’re seeing that now in his second term in a way that he is really frustrated by. And it’s kind of a puzzle that he can’t quite figure out how to solve, other than getting himself in our faces more and more every single day and repeating the same things over and over. But that doesn’t seem to be enough.

Sargent: Paul Waldman, really well said. Folks, Check out Paul’s book, White Rural Rage. Great title. Paul, always great to talk to you, man. Thanks so much for coming on.

Waldman: Thanks a lot, Greg.

Bill McKibben’s Far-Too-Sunny Outlook for Solar Power - 2025-09-17T10:00:00Z

The hour on the climate clock has always been late. By the time NASA scientist James Hansen delivered his landmark Senate testimony in 1988, bringing “the greenhouse effect” to public attention for the first time, the atmospheric carbon count had surpassed 350 parts per million, considered the “safe” upper limit to avoid catastrophic climate change. Twenty years later, the count was sailing past 380 when Bill McKibben launched 350.org, a name chosen to bring attention to the urgent task of slowing and possibly reversing the clock’s wildly racing minute hand. Seventeen years after that, the count has struck 430. Beyond midnight metaphors, the climate clock is now deep in a.m. territory, the folkloric hour of the wolf.

McKibben is not one to sugarcoat this. His first book, 1989’s The End of Nature, appeared one year after Hansen’s testimony, inaugurating a career dedicated to reporting the Holocene’s careen into the Anthropocene. After 36 years, millions of words, and several protest-related misdemeanor arrests, he is climate journalism’s elder statesman, sainted to some, whose books serve as temperature checks, strategy documents, and sources of movement funding. Here Comes the Sun, his new survey and defense of solar energy and its scaling potential, fits this mold; McKibben used part of the advance to support an upcoming national day of action called “Sun Day.” The book begins with an acknowledgment of his long-held apprehension that the window for meaningful action may be closed. After decades of covering the science and politics of climate change, he describes the sorry state of things as “the summation and the vindication of all that angst.”

Yet angst is not his register here. The hour of the wolf is associated with nightmares and death, but also with birth and, eventually, dawn. Like the song it’s named after, Here Comes the Sun is a major-key invocation of a salvational sunrise. “Right now, really for the first time,” he writes, “I can see a path forward. A path lit by the sun.”

Neither the sunlit path of a renewable “transition” nor McKibben’s advocacy are new, of course. He has been staking his name and reputation on this transition for the better part of two decades. What’s new is the mix of aggressive offense, scrappy defense, and oversize confidence he brings to it. Here Comes the Sun is the most programmatic of McKibben’s more than 20 books, a collection of good-news headlines and data points arranged to bolster faith in the supposition that we can solarize electricity and electrify the global economy, all without reducing global energy demand, in time to attain net-zero emissions by 2050. Every prong of this remains controversial, including across the broad spectrum of those who support phasing out fossil fuels and building out renewable energy with all deliberate speed. But McKibben treats these matters as all but settled, and he punctuates his lawyerly pitch to the general reader with gavel-rapping requests for order in the climate movement court.

“There’s a great global machine undergirding our civilization, and at the moment it runs on hydrocarbons,” he writes. “Our task is to rip out the guts of that machine and replace them with sun and wind and batteries, and to do it while the machine is running.”

Under this pragmatic directive, questions about the size and purpose of the machine are distractions, intellectual luxuries we cannot afford. Bothering ourselves with evidence that climate change is the symptomatic fever of a larger ecological crisis—driven by centuries of growing resource demands and pollution that now exceed the biosphere’s capacity for renewal—will only “divert us from the work we must quickly do.”

McKibben’s solar story begins in 1954, when a trio of Bell Labs researchers discovered that exposing sheets of silicon to sunlight unsettled their electrons, creating a steady voltage that could be captured with tiny wires. Jimmy Carter devised new energy policies around this American invention after the oil shocks, but was denied reelection, and his plans died in the crib. The German Greens managed to do what Carter could not in the early 1990s, using tariffs and pricing power to incentivize the adoption of rooftop panels that fed the national grid. In the 2010s, Angela Merkel’s policy of Energiewende, or “energy turnaround,” further spurred demand for Chinese-made panels, pushing prices downward, and expanding global adoption.

In telling the story of solar’s global spread, McKibben leans heavily on energy reporting by Bloomberg and The Economist, as well as reports published by renewable advocacy and research organizations, notably the Rocky Mountain Institute. Many of the headline milestones achieved in recent years are indeed remarkable, arriving ahead of most estimates. In July 2023, the world began installing a gigawatt of solar panels every day—roughly the same output as a coal or nuclear plant. A year later, developed nations were installing a gigawatt of solar electricity every 18 hours, using panels four times more efficient than those developed in the 1950s. In the United States, more than 80 percent of new electric generation in 2025 is expected to come from renewables, mostly from solar.

McKibben’s showcase of the future is China, “the Saudi Arabia of sun.” He details how China’s $329 billion investment into clean technology supply chains between 2019 and 2023—11 times more than the United States and Europe combined—has resulted in its domination of the world’s new renewable energy capacity, accounting for 60 percent and rising. In 10 years, China’s renewable technology exports will be worth more than the oil exported by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in 2024. Its seven leading renewable firms, McKibben writes, “are by some measures … producing more energy than the Seven Sisters of the oil industry.”

An increasing share of cheap Chinese solar panels are purchased by the global south, where renewable energy is growing two times faster than the global north. In Pakistan, McKibben reports, solar is producing a third as much energy as the dirty national grid and is beginning to replace the diesel generators long used in irrigating agriculture. In sub-Saharan Africa, the proliferation of micro-solar and community grids is even more dramatic and transformative. McKibben cites a Malawian energy researcher who estimates solarizing the entire continent could be done for $90 billion.

McKibben believes that all of this amounts to a historic global quickening. It will require some skilled midwifing by policymakers, corporations, and activists, but the crown of a new energy system is visible, about to be born. “We’re still in the early days of this transformation…. But exponential growth changes numbers very fast,” he writes, and “there’s no longer a technical or financial obstacle in the way.”

Sweeping statements like these are delivered with bracing confidence throughout Here Comes the Sun. Nothing would be nicer than to believe them. Unfortunately, the global energy picture is a lot foggier, and the light of dawn almost certainly more distant, than this book’s bright melodies would lull us to believe.

It’s true that important trend lines have begun to bend in the right direction. The share of renewable electricity is up (10 percent in 10 years), while the share of electricity produced by fossil fuels is down (8 percent in 10 years). However, electricity only accounted for roughly 20 percent of total energy use as of 2023. The other 80 percent—which powers everything from manufacturing to shipping to mining—produces the overwhelming majority of emissions. This means that, even as solar surges as a share of electricity, growing overall energy demand reduces these gains to a wash. “We saw renewables continuing to scale at pace,” write the authors of the Energy Institute’s 2024 report. “But fossil fuels grew as well to meet the rising demand for energy globally. As a result, the share of fossil fuels in world energy demand remained stubbornly stuck around the 80% mark.”

This fact does not lessen the need to promote renewables and reject fossil fuels. But it does indicate that the central premise and promise of McKibben’s maximalist renewable program—that renewables can achieve net-zero without any contraction of economic activity and reduction of global energy demand—are delusional. Instead of frankly acknowledging the quixotic nature of his trumpeted agenda, McKibben sometimes writes as if he inhabits another world, where the coast is totally clear. In one bizarre instance, he writes that he visited Mark Jacobson, a Stanford engineer and controversially Panglossian renewable transition theorist, because he “just wanted to hear him gloat.”

Here Comes the Sun does not ignore the distinction between electricity and energy, nor does it belabor it, and most of its pages concern electrified sectors of the economy where solar is most easily applied. When McKibben writes of “days when rooftop solar power alone is supplying more than 100 percent of power across South Australia,” he is referring to the home electricity needs of 1.8 million Australians, not the total energy needs of a country that—even after increasing solar capacity elevenfold in a decade—continues to produce around 90 percent of its energy and more than 60 percent of its electricity using fossil fuels. Elsewhere, he asserts we “could supply all the energy the US currently uses by covering 30 million acres with solar panels.” This invites readers to imagine greening the country’s footprint with a single, massive, Works Progress Administration–style construction project. The reality is that covering an area equal to the size of New York state with solar panels merely sets up the still-unanswerable question of how to store, transport, and apply that energy across tens of thousands of miles and thousands of (mostly industrial) uses.

McKibben’s answers are drawn from the playbook of eco-modernism, a philosophy that argues we can innovate our way to a green and sustainable version of the growth-based consumer paradigm, in which resource use is “decoupled” from ever-expansionary economic activity. Citing researchers associated with eco-modernist think tanks like the Breakthrough Institute, he proffers evidence that we can electrify everything with renewable energy, at full gallop, without addressing rising demand or its causes. In chorus with the eco-modernists, he assures us that we will soon be able to keep everything humming with highly efficient, recyclable batteries that employ novel chemistries. Though these remain speculative, there is encouraging research into new-generation batteries that replace lithium with sodium and do not require minerals such as cobalt, 70 percent of which is produced under a brutish throwback model of the colonialist exploitation in the Congo, an environmental and social catastrophe that investigative journalist Siddharth Kara memorably exposes in 2023’s Cobalt Red.

On the nonelectric energy question—the elephant taking up 80 percent of the room—McKibben marshals what good news he can. He discusses the potential for the global home heating sector, currently 90 percent reliant on fossil fuels, to be transformed with electric heat pumps (up to five times more efficient than gas boilers) and induction stoves (which use magnets to heat stovetops). On the tricky matter of retrofitting thousands of smoke-stacked factories, he cites an EU report that claims 95 percent of thermal energy used for manufacturing on the continent could be electrified by 2035: “It turns out that if you superheat bricks with solar electricity, they’ll store that warmth for weeks, allowing it to be released as needed for making glass or chemicals, metal or cement.” On the high seas, where diesel still rules and fossil fuels account for 40 percent of maritime cargo, McKibben reports that some shipping companies have added modern sails. “We can do everything,” he concludes, “but long-range aircraft.”

We can also, theoretically, create wormhole shortcuts through space-time. But that doesn’t mean we can actually do it, never mind by 2050. Even those forms of electrification within reach will require an unprecedented build-out of grids and lithium-ion batteries, currently the most efficient way to store and transport renewable electricity. These batteries will, in turn, require excavating millions of tons of heavy metals, notably nickel, copper, and, not least, cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo. While expressing “no small sympathy for those who groan at the [prospect of] yet more mining,” he defends the renewables mining scramble by calling climate displacement “the greatest colonizing scheme of all time”:

We should work hard to temper the tragedies that come with every kind of extraction. But we don’t live in a fair world—we live in a world that’s very rapidly tipping toward hell, a hell that will be hardest on precisely the people with the least power. Only moving fast can head off that hell, but moving fast means, inevitably, carelessness. It’s a hard call; I’m so scared of the climate crisis that I may bend too far.

McKibben also may bend too far in his assurances that we “have the stuff” necessary to build the panels, grid infrastructure, and batteries required by the renewable program. “We may be a little short of tellurium, but I predict we’ll find it,” he writes. He quotes a 2023 study—whose lead author, Seaver Wang, directs the Climate and Energy program at the Breakthrough Institute—purporting to show that the crucial minerals needed for net-zero “do not exceed geological reserves,” but omits countervailing research, such as a 2024 Cornell-University of Michigan study that found just one of those crucial minerals—copper—cannot be mined fast enough to electrify the United States, never mind the planet.

In 2007, just one year before he launched 350.org, McKibben published a bio-regionalist tract called The Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, which challenged the scale and ideology of the growth-oriented consumer economy that has propelled humanity into a state of overshoot. In it, he laced into “tech-driven high-growth economics” as an “empire of the mind” that “allowed us to avoid hard choices” and ignored the basic biophysical reality that “we do not have the energy needed to keep the magic [of growth] going.” That book is not an outlier in his corpus, but one of several that understand our civilization’s problem as less a matter of transplanting its viscera than of taming its hormone glands and conquering its addictions.

What to make, then, of his pivot to selling full electrification of the expansionary economy as the only credible path to net-zero? McKibben addresses the evolution of his stance in two ways. The first is to suggest his adopted eco-modernist politics are really a Trojan horse for a more radical transformation. “Conversion,” he writes, “is the most subversive possible step toward a more localized and modest world…. For a species that has become almost fatally disconnected from the natural world, the sun offers a way back into a relationship with reality.” Elsewhere he claims agreement with Andrew Nikiforuk, a degrowth-oriented Canadian energy writer and critic of eco-modernism, who has written that “responsible green energy advocates” must also advocate for localized economies and banning the “decadent waste” of materials and energy. “Those are mostly things I’ve worked on,” says McKibben. “But they’re hard…. Hopefully a clean energy transition will buy us some time to do these things.”

Which takes us to McKibben’s second argument: The climate clock has superseded the concerns of what might be called Early McKibben, and we no longer have the time for talk about civilizational values, consumption patterns, or their relationship to the bigger-than-climate problem of ecological overshoot. And here McKibben’s impatience with people who diverge on this important matter comes through. Despite the olive branch to folks like Nikiforuk, McKibben cannot hide his annoyance with those who persist in advocating for an intentional, socially just economic contraction led by the major economies—a cohort he dismisses as “(vaguely) left” nuisances, as “equally unrealistic” as “oil companies with their algae ads and centrist politicians.”

“This is an emergency, and it can’t be solved by wishful thinking,” he writes, likening his intervention to an emergency room doctor, who doesn’t “waste a lot of time worrying about their patients’ poor lifestyle choices. They do what they must to save their lives, perhaps with the hope that given a second chance their patients will choose more wisely.”

In a closing chapter called “A Subtly New World,” McKibben describes the society we might inhabit once we’re out of the climate ER. This solar-powered world looks very much like our own, with a twist of New England communitarian garnish. “We just need to be a tiny bit less individualistic, just bend a bit in the direction of community,” he writes. “The battery on my Kia can cool my neighbor’s beer before the Red Sox game.” McKibben lightly jabs journalist Matt Yglesias for his climate sanguinity, but his eco-modernist electrification agenda fits on the family tree of “abundance liberalism,” the latest iteration of the idea we can zone, unleash, and grow our way out of a collapsing planet on fire. Activists have a supporting role in McKibben’s schema, but it’s largely a matter of technological innovation and industrial know-how. “Renewable energy relies less on resources than it does on brainpower,” writes McKibben, but the kind of brainpower that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos can love.

The irony of McKibben’s eco-modernist stridency in favor of the renewable agenda is that promoting solar does not require abandoning energy realism or the related degrowth politics that he once embraced. One can advocate for building renewable infrastructure and rejecting fossil fuels while also engaging in hard conversations about the larger problem of overshoot and the obvious limits of electrification. There is no conflict here. Fighting fossil fuels, advocating for renewables, and using one’s influence to force an honest reckoning with the nature, causes, and consequences of our crisis—together these amount to an emergency treatment that serves us well. It is not a mystery why people would choose to release themselves to the fantasy of a solar-powered status quo. What’s baffling is McKibben’s decision to join them.

Trump Is Making It Harder for Women to Work in Construction - 2025-09-17T10:00:00Z

Kaitlyn Moser had been working in bars for about 10 years when she decided she needed a change. The pandemic had fundamentally altered the service industry, and she wanted to be better able to support herself and her son, who’s now 10 years old.

Moser, who is now 29, has two aunts who are retired electricians, so she asked them how they’d managed their financial independence and comfortable retirements. They pointed her to a local pre-apprenticeship program run by a nonprofit organization called Chicago Women in Trades. There, she got the resources she needed to prepare her both physically and academically to qualify for an apprenticeship—as well as sage advice on how to navigate such a male-heavy industry. Moser grew up with seven brothers. She had no illusions about what job sites could be like.

“They gave me so much insight from a woman’s perspective,” Moser, who is now a first-year apprentice with a local electrician’s union, said. She wanted to know everything from how to manage future relationships to whether and how she could get promoted in the field; she was also given tools for how to handle workplace harassment, whether she experiences it herself or sees someone else targeted. “I’ve heard horror stories … from women that I’ve met, and they would cry about their experience,” Moser said.

Construction trades can provide excellent careers. They are well paid, especially for jobs that don’t require a college degree, and are highly unionized. They can also lead to opportunities for self-employment or small-business ownership once workers become licensed. Traditionally, though, they’ve been dominated by white men. Moser became an apprentice at a time when women were specifically recruited to join early-career apprenticeship training programs, and when the federal government stepped up to ensure that these training programs took measures to prevent and deal with harassment against women and minorities on job sites.

President Donald Trump has put a stop to this. From the beginning of his second term, he’s attacked diversity, equity, and inclusion, which had helped bring more workers into the construction labor force, and this summer his Department of Labor announced a new proposed rule that eliminates a nearly 10-year-old sexual harassment training requirement that had barely gotten off the ground. “It almost breaks my heart because I feel like it took so long to get where we’re at, and it’s taken a second to go backwards,” Moser said.

Apprenticeships are highly sought after. Many provide on-the-job training at no cost, and some pay workers while they’re still learning. Apprentices don’t just save on the tuition costs they’d pay in a higher-education program, they also don’t have to work additional hours at an unrelated job to support themselves. And for workers who already have children, it’s a more financially secure path than the more traditional college route.

The only problem is that these types of training programs are heavily concentrated in male-dominated construction and manufacturing fields. Many girls and young women simply don’t believe careers in the trades are available to them after high school, an idea that’s reinforced by stereotypes of plumbing, steelworking, and similar careers as dirty, physical, rough work. Less than 10 percent of construction jobs are held by women in any given year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but those workers are overrepresented in sales, business, and management positions. The kind of skilled work that can lead to promotions—pipe fitting, plumbing, carpentry, electrical work, etc.—is even more lopsided toward men, with only about 4 percent of those jobs taken by women.

Pushing for more women and people of color to have access to these apprenticeship training programs, and the good jobs they lead to, is about fairness and equity. “Part of why a white man with no college degree outearns a Black woman with a college degree is because white men can get access to those good jobs without the education, where Black women, in order to get higher earnings, have to get that additional education,” said Kate Bahn, chief economist at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. “We don’t see women, and women of color in particular, having those opportunities for upward mobility without having to invest a huge amount in their education or otherwise.”

Ensuring that apprenticeships are more widely available can help level the playing field, especially when you consider that young women often already have caregiving duties that can make it hard to balance an education program with the need to be a breadwinner. Not only do apprenticeships pay, but they often provide sick leave and other benefits that a college program wouldn’t.

Affirmative action rules established in the 1960s helped push employers to recruit more diverse workforces, but those workers still found that they were discriminated against on the job—some before they even started their job. An Institute for Women’s Policy Research survey found that nearly half of women in these fields said that they were held to a different standard or faced discrimination, and more than a quarter reported they are “always or frequently” harassed for being a woman.

“The vast majority of women and LGBTQ+ workers say they experience some kind of harassment, regardless of the kind of employment they have,” said Emily Labarbera-Twarog, an associate professor at the University of Illinois who studies workplace harassment. “But these are jobs where women are in the very, very, very small minority. I mean, you’re talking about 4 percent of the population.… So it’s super small, and harassment is definitely something that is happening on a regular basis.”

President Barack Obama worked to expand apprenticeship programs during his tenure, and his Department of Labor established new anti-harassment rules at the end of his second term. Those rules didn’t merely require anti-harassment training, they also expanded the categories that were protected from harassment and held companies accountable for their failures to protect their workers.

While the rules survived during Trump’s first term, it wasn’t until President Joe Biden was elected that the Obama orders had a president truly invested in progress. Biden made it one of his explicit goals to bring one million more women into construction jobs and to require that some federal contractors provide childcare. His administration also worked to expand apprenticeship opportunities into more female-dominated fields, like nursing. When Trump entered office, he signed executive orders reversing many of the DEI requirements established by Obama and Biden. (Chicago Women in Trades is one of several groups suing over those executive orders.) The anti-harassment rule was targeted for elimination by Trump’s second-term Department of Labor in July, and the public comment period ended earlier this month. The Trump administration said it was eliminating “onerous and burdensome regulatory mandates.”

Ariane Hegewisch, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, said the programs were much more involved than simply watching a video, a traditional form of anti-harassment training with which many people with desk jobs might be familiar. These training sessions were often designed in short, interactive modules within unions or on job sites. The training also provided information about how to report harassment, and the Department of Labor was tasked with holding companies accountable.

Prior to their advent, women had often said that when they made a complaint about harassment at work, nothing would happen. Or worse: Since hiring for construction jobs can often happen on a project-by-project basis, those who complained would find that they were not picked up for the next job. Hegewisch said that the Department of Labor rule was a signal to companies that they should take complaints seriously. Rolling that back “is a whole way of saying that this doesn’t matter,” she said.

Multiple trades and unions often work together on job sites, as well, so the fact that the federal government is ending these requirements means that even those unions or companies that take harassment seriously might have less control over what their workers face on job sites. “If the Trump administration is saying you no longer need to worry about anti-discrimination and harassment … then they’re going to make it an even more hostile environment and they’re not going to be very tolerant of people speaking up,” Labarbera-Twarog said.

More importantly, these trainings also provided information about how to report harassment and how to help if someone witnessed, but was not the target of, the harassment. Labarbera-Twarog said many new trainings she has worked on helping design also frame harassment as a safety issue: If workers were busy cracking jokes or doodling obscene drawings on unfinished drywall, or if someone was subject to harassment, it can keep everyone from being as focused on their work as they should be. “When we frame it as a health and safety issue, I think it becomes a much more accessible way to think about it,” she said.

Without the anti-harassment training requirement, and the accountability the Department of Labor had provided around it, some of the push to better design and study the impact of these trainings may end. Proactive prevention by companies may end, as well. Women who experience harassment will have to report it to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and wait for a resolution, which can take as long as two years. During that time, they might have to go without pay, as well, she said. “The burden is on the worker to understand when they’ve been wronged,” said Beth Berendsen, policy director at Chicago Women in Trades.

Many of these programs were too new to be fully evaluated for their efficacy. And while women and Latino representation, especially, had ticked up in many of these fields in the past two years, it was still an uphill battle for these workers to earn these competitive positions. The Trump administration has pulled back funding and canceled contracts for many apprenticeship programs in general. “They talk a big game on apprenticeship,” said Mary Alice McCarthy, the senior director of the Center on Education and Labor at New America. “They actually haven’t really put any resources towards apprenticeship.”

Canceling diversity requirements on government-contracted job sites matters too because local, state, and federal government contracts can be such a huge part of this field. For many women, these are the positions for which they’re most likely to be hired; when they are, it can make the difference between staying on their career path or being forced to look for other work to make ends meet.

There is already evidence that Trump’s actions have had an effect, though. The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America pulled out of a female-centered conference, Tradeswomen Build Nations, scheduled for Chicago on September 19 to 21. “The UBC and all affiliated Councils should not have any involvement or expenditure for this conference,” the union said in a memo, citing “current executive orders and policies targeting identity-based initiatives.”

Moser is continuing her education and already has a job as an electrician. She said she is committed to staying in her field no matter what, that she’s been able to use humor to defuse any particularly awkward situations, and advocates for herself to fully take part in trainings and job opportunities. “I wanted to be proud of my workday, knowing that I made an honest living. Like I made something,” she said about her decision to go into this field. “I can walk away from a project and look up at it and know that I played a part in building that or turning on the lights.”

Without the pre-apprenticeship program and apprenticeships, which helped make her job transition affordable, she doesn’t know if she would have had the confidence or ability to make her jump into a new career—and she knows that young girls need to see other women doing the work to feel they can too. It’s a shame, she said, because women come to these jobs with experiences and talents that will make the industry better. “You know, we want to add to the world,” she said.

The Right’s Scary Quick Campaign to Exploit Charlie Kirk’s Death - 2025-09-17T10:00:00Z

O’Brien held up his left hand, its back towards Winston, with the thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.
“How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?”
“Four.”
“And if the party says that it is not four but five—then how many?”

In the days since Charlie Kirk was murdered, I’ve found myself repeatedly musing on this passage from George Orwell’s 1984. The novel’s protagonist, Winston Smith, had once written in his diary, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” In Orwell’s totalitarian state, this assertion was a thought crime, and following Winston’s disappearance into Big Brother’s torture chambers, the party sought to break him—or, more specifically, to break his commitment to the existence of an objective reality.

“You are a slow learner, Winston,” said O’Brien gently.
“How can I help it?” Winston blubbered. “How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.”
“Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”

The moment that news of Kirk’s shooting hit the internet, MAGA—its influencers, podcasters, media figures, Republican elected officials, Cabinet directors, Vice President JD Vance, and President Donald Trump—immediately began insisting that two and two make five. Their gaslighting around Kirk’s death has been so extensive—and so speedily promulgated—that it’s hard to fully grasp the sheer magnitude of their mendacity. Here’s a very brief summary of some of the self-evidently false assertions the right has been feverishly proclaiming in recent days:

• Kirk’s killing was organized by the American left. (The alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, is a 22-year-old gamer from a conservative Mormon family who did not vote in the 2024 election. All evidence suggests he acted alone.)
• Robinson became indoctrinated by radical leftists while at college. (Robinson attended Utah Valley University—a relatively conservative school whose student body identifies as 70 percent Mormon—for one semester, before enrolling in an electrical engineering program at Utah’s Dixie Technical College.)
• The left celebrated Kirk’s killing. (Every significant Democratic elected official, including all leading progressives, immediately condemned the shooting and called for an end to political violence. 
• The left is responsible for most political violence in this country. (Unequivocally, the vast majority of extremist mass killings in the U.S. are linked to the far right; the vast majority of U.S. political speech praising or inciting violence comes from right-wing politicians; and it sure wasn’t a Democratic president who actively instigated a violent attack on the Capitol several years ago.)

Though all of these lies are shocking and dangerous, the narrative that has been most troubling to me—or at least has most caused me to feel like I may actually be losing my mind—has been the right’s insistence on the universal public canonization of Kirk. They have endeavored to make his mourning mandatory, enforcing it through threats—backed by the full power of the state—against anyone who dares to share truthful observations of who this man really was. Participate in the hagiographic whitewashing of a dedicated provocateur’s career, or suffer the consequences. (Unless, of course, you’re Donald Trump, who had already gone back to obsessing over the White House ballroom within hours of Kirk’s death, and skipped his Kennedy Center vigil to go golfing.) 

Kirk was an extremely talented communicator and activist whose efficacy in building up the organizing infrastructure of the far right has materially affected American politics. He was also, by most reasonable standards, a demagogue whose espousal of Christian nationalism, platforming of racist attitudes, attacks on free speech, and support for political violence made our country a more dangerous and unjust place.

That doesn’t in any way make his murder less vile. Kirk was a human being, and his life was sacred. It is tragic that he was murdered, as it is tragic every time a human is murdered—whether it’s a student struck down in their school by another mass shooting, or a civilian shot in their car by a police officer, or a child killed in Gaza by an American-made weapon. We live in a nation where gun deaths are a dime a dozen. For many of us, this is a desperate moral catastrophe and an eternal shame; for others, it’s just the price of living in a “free” society. 

The effect is that these tragedies are overwhelmingly forgotten within days, hours, or even minutes, as was the case in last week’s shooting at Evergreen High School in Colorado, whose victims had the added bad fortune of being killed by a far-right teen the same day as Kirk. We barely mourn these tragedies anymore, and—as Kirk himself demonstrated regularly in his posthumous attacks on victims of police violence like George Floyd—we certainly do not accept that the circumstances of someone’s death rewrite the facts of how they chose to live their lives. 

But this rewriting of Kirk’s life is being forced on us all the same. Today, Kirk is being framed as an elder statesman and a free speech champion, a model of positive civic virtue. Anyone who resists this false characterization now risks being targeted, not just by MAGA trolls online but by literally the most powerful people in the world. 

Vice President JD Vance, recording The Charlie Kirk Show directly from the White House, ended the episode by exhorting listeners to respond to  “someone celebrating Charlie’s murder” by “call[ing] their employer.” Attorney General Pam Bondi proclaimed that employers “have an obligation to get rid of people, you need to look at people who are saying horrible things, and they should not be working with you.” She also announced that the Justice Department would be looking to prosecute any businesses that fail to support the mourning of Kirk: “Businesses cannot discriminate. If you want to go in and print posters with Charlie’s pictures on them for a vigil, you have to let them do that. We can prosecute them for that.”

These are not idle threats. Already dozens of Americans—teachers, professors, U.S. military members, even a Washington Post columnist—have lost their jobs for sharing messages that were critical of Kirk’s stated beliefs and conduct. And far worse free speech crackdowns look to be on the horizon. As White House policy adviser Stephen Miller put it, “With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, eliminate, and destroy this network and make America safe again for the American people.”

It would be bad enough if those of us who were ostensibly opposed to MAGA authoritarianism were facing this assault on the truth with a united front. But we are not. Too many Democratic leaders and liberal pundits have preemptively given in to the far right’s framing. The highest-profile example of this was New York Times columnist Ezra Klein’s now-infamous essay arguing that Kirk “was practicing politics in exactly the right way.” The Kirk of Klein’s fevered imagination is a man no one else has met: a free speech advocate who abhorred political violence. This bears very little resemblance to the actual Charlie Kirk, a “Stop the Steal” champion who sent “80+ buses full of patriots to DC to fight for this president” on January 6, 2021, and encouraged supporters to bail out the man who attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer.

Equally shocking were decisions by Democratic governors like Josh Shapiro and Jared Polis to copy President Trump in ordering their state’s flags to be lowered to half-staff in honor of Kirk—a sign of respect and public mourning that Polis notably did not extend to the victims at Evergreen High School in his own state. 

To get a sense of how insane this Democratic folding to the far right is, try imagining the political response we would see if, God forbid, a high-profile leftist like Hasan Piker—who, unlike Kirk, has not worked to actively incite political violence or trafficked in blatant bigotry—were murdered. I find it difficult to imagine Governors Shapiro or Polis engaging in any sort of public mourning for Piker; the idea that any GOP governor would fly their state’s flags at half-staff for him is beyond laughable. It’s similarly impossible to imagine the Trumpist right enforcing a period of public mourning for a murdered liberal figure—which we saw clearly with their response to the assassination of Minnesota Speaker of the House Melissa Hortman by a Trump-supporting anti-abortion extremist in June.

The affirmation of MAGA’s false narratives by high-profile Democrats and liberals greatly reifies the far right’s goal of severing our nation’s grasp on the existence of an objective reality. Because let’s be clear: That is their project. As Winston’s torturer in 1984 put it, “Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston.” By mobilizing the power of the state to force the nation to see Kirk through the eyes of the Republican Party, the right is using his killing to escalate its war on truth. George Orwell understood the radical dangerousness of such efforts: “The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future, but the past.… This prospect frightens me much more than bombs.”

We cannot allow ourselves, like Klein, Shapiro, and Polis did, to help construct that nightmare world. We must fight to hold onto an understanding of reality that exists outside of MAGA’s dictates. As Winston insisted to himself in a moment of clarity, “The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s centre.” Two plus two do not make five. Two plus two make four, and—regardless of the costs—it’s never been more important for the enemies of totalitarianism to stand up and say so.

Does Anybody Care This Is the Worst Bribery Scandal Since Teapot Dome? - 2025-09-17T10:00:00Z

In 1922, Interior Secretary Albert Fall collected about $400,000 from two very rich oilmen, Harry Sinclair and Edward Doheny, and granted them government leases to pump $100 million worth of petroleum from Navy reserves in Elk Hills and Buena Vista, California, and in Teapot Dome, Wyoming. It was a family affair, with Fall’s son-in-law M.T. Everhart collecting from Sinclair and Fall himself collecting from Doheny’s son Ned.

The Teapot Dome scandal, which occurred during an oligarchic period not unlike our own, followed a recognizable trajectory. The Wall Street Journal broke the story, Congress investigated, and Fall and Sinclair ended up doing prison time. Everhart received immunity from prosecution and turned state’s evidence against Fall. Ned Doheny, who received no immunity, died during his father’s trial in an apparent murder-suicide with a fellow conspirator (who was also presumed to be Ned’s gay lover). Perhaps out of sympathy, the jury let Edward Doheny walk free.

Now a century has passed and America is once again an oligarchy. But I don’t expect the World Liberty Financial scandal, which bears many similarities to Teapot Dome—and which The New York Times exposed in a superb investigative piece Monday—to follow a recognizable trajectory. That’s because nothing since January has followed a recognizable trajectory.

In the world I know, the Times story would initiate a Justice Department investigation and an impeachment inquiry, and Trump’s Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff could be counted on to resign by week’s end. In the mystifying world we inhabit today, none of these things appears likely to happen. Sometimes that gets me very depressed.

What’s the World Liberty Financial scandal? Here’s the gist.

In May, Zach Witkoff, the 32-year-old son of the billionaire Steve Witkoff, announced at a Dubai conference—while sitting beside Eric Trump—that he’d collected $2 billion from one Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who controls the sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates. That $2 billion purchased a stablecoin called USD1 from World Liberty Financial, a crypto firm of which Witkoff père et fils are co-founders, and in which the Trump family owns a 60 percent stake. It was, according to Binance (another participant in the deal), “the single largest investment into a crypto company” that the world had ever seen.

Around the same time that Zach announced the UAE investment, his father, Steve Witkoff, said he was divesting his own stake in World Liberty Financial. Four months later, though, the White House says Witkoff is “still in the process of divesting.” (High-ranking Trump officials are notorious slowpokes in this regard.)

What was worth $2 billion to UAE? By what we’re supposed to believe is sheerest coincidence, two weeks after Zach Witkoff announced Sheik Tahnoon’s stablecoin purchase, President Donald Trump agreed to allow the UAE to import a large quantity of U.S.-produced AI computer chips, with many of those chips going to a company named G42 that just happens to be controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon. Previously, the Biden administration had sharply limited how many such chips could go to UAE because the country conducted joint military exercises with China, with which G42 had multiple business partnerships. The UAE didn’t like being told no, so after Trump entered office it negotiated a better deal—with, among others, Steve Witkoff.

Another player in this drama is David Sacks, who pushed hard to give UAE expanded access to the AI chips. Sacks is Trump’s AI and crypto czar. He also continues to work for the investment firm he founded, Craft Ventures. In the minds of some White House officials, this presents a potential conflict of interest. (It’s a nice surprise to learn there remain a few ethics-minded people in the Trump administration.) For example, according to a March press release from World Financial Liberty, USD1 reserves are “custodied by BitGo,” which has significant backing from Craft Ventures. The White House counsel finessed all this by giving Sacks a sort of golden ticket that allows Sacks to participate in government decisions that might affect his investments. Albert Fall, eat your heart out!

The role of blabbermouth, played in the Teapot Dome scandal by the prodigal son-in-law Everhart, is played in the World Liberty Financial scandal by Zach Witkoff. In the unlikely event anybody ever turns state’s evidence, put your money on Zach. His compulsive truth telling furnishes this saga with some welcome comic relief.

“We really need to take a page out of His Highness’s and the Emirates’ book,” Zach said at the Dubai conference. “They are just an amazing example of how you can lead with innovation while also maintaining your family values.” The UAE, you may recall, is a tribal autocracy, essentially a monarchy ruled by seven hereditary sheikhdoms. Our present crisis is that we are already taking way too many pages from His Highness and the Emirates’ book.

According to the Times, Zach blabbed to an associate that Sheikh Tahnoon is “a good friend of the family.” (I’ll bet he is.) The Times couldn’t resist adding that Zach named his son Don, after the president. We know this because Trump said so on social media, and in confirming it Zach wrote: “It is an honor to name our son after the greatest President of all time and all that you stand for.” An anthropological aside: Over-the-top sycophancy is how people in Washington signal closeness to the president these days, the more public the better. Exaggerated self-debasement enhances status and demonstrates you’re a person to be reckoned with.

One advantage prosecutors had a century ago was that the Supreme Court had not yet decriminalized bribery to the point where one can convict a politician only if the recipient says, “Thank you, kind sir, for this illegal bribe” and recites the quid pro quo like a catechism. A second advantage is that prosecutors in the 1920s did not have to contend with the Supreme Court’s outrageous decision last year to shield presidents (well, one president in particular) from nearly every conceivable type of prosecution. There’s no reason to believe President Warren G. Harding was culpable for Teapot Dome, except insofar as he was a fathead who kept very bad company. (Harding died of a heart attack before the scandal broke.) But if he were, he would not have enjoyed the benefit of such comprehensive immunity.

Responding to the Times story Tuesday, Eric Trump said, “My father’s the first guy who hasn’t made money off the presidency.” In fact, the Trump family scored an estimated $5 billion on a single day two weeks ago with the issuing of another World Liberty Financial stablecoin, WLFI. Trump himself, who was worth $2.3 billion a year ago, is worth $7.3 billion today, according to Forbes, and I have yet to see any evidence that he invested a single cent of his own money to get there.

Our brains are not wired to comprehend presidential corruption on this scale. Nor is our government, I fear, equipped to address a financial scandal as enormous as the one revealed in the Times. It’s just another Tuesday in Pottersville. Please, somebody prove me wrong.

So You Want a Civil War? Let’s Pause to Remember What One Looks Like. - 2025-09-17T10:00:00Z

So, you say you want a “civil war”? In the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk, Republican elected officials and members of the Trump administration have led or followed denizens of right-wing social media in using the language of “civil war” to respond to what they immediately deemed an attack by the “radical left.” President Trump has kept up a steady drumbeat of blaming the “radical left lunatics” as Kirk’s real killers, as he expects the country to forget his own felony convictions, his pardoning of 1,500 convicted members of an insurrectionary mob that violently invaded the U.S. Capitol in his name, his threatening of American cities with military force, and his relabeling the Defense Department the “War” Department.

All the while, the president’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, spread vicious propaganda about a vast conspiracy of people working in “child services, as hospital nurses, and teachers” who “have been deeply and violently radicalized.” A ministry of propaganda and truth, by definition, needs no evidence. It exploits the shock of events for constant partisan revitalization and the sharpening of conceptions of the “enemy” who must be destroyed.

A little history could help us all. Those feeling some sort of primordial urge for civil war at this moment in our bitterly divided politics, on the right or the left, should carefully learn about a battle fought on this day, September 17, 1862, in our real Civil War. Today is the 163rd anniversary of the battle of Antietam, fought along a creek of that name in southern Maryland, near the town of Sharpsburg.

Two massive armies clashed in what some still call the most deadly fighting on any battlefield in that ghastly war. This was war-making as slaughter. The Army of the Potomac under the command of General George B. McClellan and the Army of Northern Virginia under command of General Robert E. Lee fought with desperate fury and modernized weapons of killing. In a sustained eight hours of brutal combat, the two sides experienced approximately 23,000 casualties, roughly 3,600 of them dead. In one cornfield, an estimated 8,200 dead and wounded bled out on the Maryland farm soil amid tall stalks of harvested corn.

It is the single bloodiest day in the history of American warfare, and after the photographer Mathew Brady went to the ghastly landscape immediately after the battle and took unforgettable images of the mangled dead near the Dunker Church, in the Sunken Road, and strewn along fences hard by the Hagerstown Pike, Americans have forever been able to see the results of unrestrained civil war. See, but not really hear, feel, taste, or smell so much death and unimaginable suffering in one concentrated place.

At Antietam, there was no “far right” or “radical left” contending for the life of the nation and its democratic experiment. There were firmly held, irreconcilable ideologies in the minds of these soldiers and the leaders who sent them to their dutiful deaths and to bear their hideous wounds. The “Union” and its many meanings, the struggle for Southern independence and creation of a slaveholders’ republic, and the fight over the future of slavery animated the minds of young soldiers.

But most probably they thought only of survival or endurance or home on that terrible day. They witnessed the bodies of their comrades and foes blown into pieces by short-range artillery. They saw bullets smash apart bones and blow off heads. They feared most being shot in the torso; that often meant no recovery. A shattered arm or leg might be survivable with an amputation (approximately 60,000 were conducted in the whole of the Civil War). They all knew the horrifying thud sound of bullets hitting bodies, theirs and their comrades’. They faced impenetrable smoke and the terrifying noise of thousands of muskets and dozens of cannon all firing at once. They saw blood everywhere; as it dried on bodies, the ground, or abandoned weapons, it turned black.

A Pennsylvania soldier at the end of the day described “a truly sickening and horrible sight.” “No tongue can tell, no mind conceive, no pen portray the horrible sights I witnessed this morning.” A member of McClellan’s officer staff tried walking across the fields near sunset after Confederates had retreated. He found dead bodies everywhere, hideously swollen and blackened. “Many,” he gasped, “were so covered with dust, torn, crushed and trampled that they resembled clods of earth and you were obliged to look twice before recognizing them as human beings.” Sometimes the dead rebelled, swelling up and exploding fluids all around, or even bursting inside makeshift coffins.

You say you want a civil war because you hate liberals?

Descriptions of such horrors on a September 17 in the nineteenth century may not dissuade many Americans from their convictions and hatreds in today’s social media–fueled hostility. But we have to begin somewhere. Real civil war is never something to invoke rhetorically, much less welcome with expectant violence. Our republic is in peril, but it could die altogether if we give in to violent urges and ignorant accusations that lead to further shootings or targeted assassinations in our gun-saturated society.

We will not prevent further violence merely by saying we must. We have to find ways to fiercely disagree about ideas and not play loosely and dangerously in the realms of conspiracy, facile ignorance, and lethal propaganda.

The battle of Antietam had extraordinary consequences in the course of the Civil War and American history. Lee’s invasion of the North was thwarted; he and his army retreated across the Potomac River and back into Virginia. Five days after the battle, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, promising to profoundly change the meaning of the war in 100 days if the Confederacy would lay down their arms and cease the war (which he knew they had no intention of doing).

More than two and a half additional years of bloodshed on an even greater scale lay ahead in this war for national existence and “new births” of freedom. But on that day at Antietam, the war’s meaning for thousands of American households and farmsteads was slaughter; deaths from which millions of mourners never found reconciliation. Antietam was an American mass killing of the largest scale ever.

So you say you want a civil war? The United States will never face a civil war with large formal armies of the kind amassed in 1862. But we are witnessing the ingredients of civil conflict. Even when we believe our opponents have become enemies, and even if we think them essentially evil in the stories they covet, we need to think of Antietam and see a Brady photograph of the dead. We should rather debate now, however loathsome the result, than die later.

In his 1910 essay “The Moral Equivalent of War,” the great American philosopher William James, a pacifist at heart, acknowledged that much is to be gained in discipline, honor, and training to service from the military. And he fully understood the impulse to violence in a human history drenched in “blood.” But he insisted that humans must try to “inflame the civic temper as history has inflamed the military temper.” Can an America awash in guns and hatreds channel our woes into a civic temper? We have to, or we could face an Antietam of our own making.

Trump Explodes in Rage at Journos as Shock Poll Exposes a Key Weakness - 2025-09-17T09:00:00Z

President Trump seems even more angry at the media than usual. His lawyers just filed a lawsuit against The New York Times that First Amendment lawyers are dismissing as a total joke. The suit, however, is also chock full of angry rants that appeared dictated by Trump himself. And he announced it with a Truth Social tirade that boiled with fury. Meanwhile, Trump himself snapped directly at reporters in strange ways, hitting one with a bizarre threat and engaging in a bizarre dominance display over the other. This comes as a new poll from The Economist reveals shockingly low support for Trump among independents, a key metric for gauging political strength—or weakness. We talked to Paul Waldman, who recently argued on his Substack, The Cross Section, that Trump’s powers of persuasion are failing him. We discuss how Trump both despises and relies on the media, the real reasons for his mounting anger, and how it’s all revealing big cracks in his authoritarian project. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.

ICE’s Newest Facility Is a Disaster—and They’re Expanding It - 2025-09-16T20:47:43Z

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement report revealed that officials at Camp East Montana, the new detention facility at Fort Bliss, have already violated dozens of federal standards for immigrant detention since welcoming detainees in August, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

Construction began hastily in late July, after the government awarded a nearly $232 million contract to Virginia-based company Acquisition Logistics to establish and operate a 5,000-bed short-term immigrant detention facility. The company specializes in supply chain management, and has no experience in detention—and it’s showing.

The first detainees arrived on August 1, only days after construction began. Just 50 days later, and with 1,400 detainees in its charge, the facility had racked up at least 60 violations, according to a recent ICE inspection.

Detainees at Camp East Montana were held in large tents on an active construction site without basic amenities, similarly to detainees at the now shuttered Alligator Alcatraz. Some toilets and sinks did not work for the first few weeks, according to an August memo obtained by the Post. Detainees were not given access to telephones, the Post reported, only tablet computers that sometimes didn’t work.

Ricardo Quintana Chavez, a 57-year-old asylum-seeker who was held at Fort Bliss for 24 days before being deported to Peru, told the Post that water seeped into his cell when other people used the showers.

Chavez also told the Post that he was rarely allowed outside. ICE policy requires one hour of recreation a day, five days per week, but inspectors at Camp East Montana found that detainees were only given 40 minutes of recreation per session, and some only received three sessions over a two-week period. Chavez also said he was fed junk food, such as cookies, candies, and potato chips, instead of substantive meals.

Detainees were kept in the dark about their cases, and many said they didn’t know who their deportation officer was, in violation of ICE standards. Chavez told the Post that he received no information about the status of his asylum case over his three-week stay at Camp East Montana.

ICE inspectors also said that officials at the detention center failed to provide proper and mandatory medical care for detainees, failing to conduct intake screenings and complete medical charts that could be used to identify medical and mental conditions.

Detainees’ family members and legal representatives struggled to get hold of them while they were at Camp East Montana, as their location was not available on ICE’s website. Legal representatives reported being turned away from the facility, as did Texas Representative Veronica Escobar. She said she’d complied with ICE’s demand for a week’s advance warning but was still told she couldn’t visit until construction was completed.

Michelle Brané, a former immigration detention ombudsman, said that the report was one of the most concerning evaluations of an immigrant detention center she had ever seen. “There is no way that this facility should be operating with their current numbers, let alone expanding,” she told the Post.

Trump Goes Full Fascist After Simple Question on His Business Deals - 2025-09-16T20:30:50Z

President Donald Trump on Tuesday was asked about how he’s profited off the presidency—and did not take kindly to the line of questioning.

Ahead of Trump’s state visit to the U.K., John Lyons, an editor at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, asked the president how much wealthier he is now than when he assumed office.

“Well, I don’t know,” Trump replied. “The deals I made, for the most part, other than what my kids are doing—you know, they’re running my business. But most of the deals that I’ve made were made before.”

The president quickly changed the subject to his latest hobby horse—the new ballroom he’s having built at the White House—before Lyons asked, “But is it appropriate, President Trump, that a president in office should be engaged in so much business activity?”

“Well, I’m really not,” Trump answered. “My kids are running the business. I’m here.” The president then derailed his own response, asking where Lyons is from and suggesting that he would hold the reporter’s queries against his home country.

“In my opinion, you are hurting Australia very much right now, and they want to get along with me,” Trump said. “You know, your leader is coming over to see me very soon. I’m going to tell him about you. You set a very bad tone.”

As Trump turned to another reporter, Lyons asked another question, and was shushed by the president, who pointed at him and sternly said, “Quiet.”

'You're hurting Australia': Donald Trump criticises ABC journalist John Lyons in White House clash pic.twitter.com/rlR4glUEVF

— Ben Knight (@benknight38) September 16, 2025

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is scheduled to travel to New York next week for the U.N. General Assembly. Trump had not previously announced, as he seemed to hint during his quarrel with Lyons, a one-on-one sit-down with Albanese. But the president apparently couldn’t help but mention it as leverage against a reporter.

Lyons’s questions come amid reports of Trump’s fortune having ballooned while in office—and of scandalous ways he’s profited off the presidency. On Monday, for instance, The New York Times published an exposé of two overlapping deals: one in which an Emirati royal’s firm invested $2 billion in a Trump family crypto business and another in which the United Arab Emirates will receive hundreds of thousands of advanced AI chips.

The White House denies the deals were linked—and, per the Times, there’s no evidence they constituted an explicit quid pro quo. (If they did, though, it would represent the biggest public corruption scandal in U.S. history by far, according to a former White House economist.)

Trump’s rapid-response social media team declared his outburst at Lyons to be a moment of strength, triumphantly tweeting that the president had “smack[ed] down a rude foreign Fake News loser.”

What Leaked Messages Reveal About Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Shooter - 2025-09-16T19:41:44Z

Friends and family of Tyler Robinson, Charlie Kirk’s suspected assassin, say that the national narrative has not aligned with what they know about the 22-year-old from Utah.

Speaking with independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, Robinson’s friends described him as smart, friendly, and largely uninterested in politics—a detail that has made the shooting all the more difficult for them to understand.

“I think the main thing that’s caused so much confusion is that he was always generally apolitical for the most part,” one of Robinson’s friends told Klippenstein under the banner of anonymity. “That’s the big thing, he just never really talked politics which is why it’s so frustrating.”

The Trump administration and its MAGA allies have thus far painted Robinson as an antifa (antifascist) agent, while left-wing verticals have portrayed him as a member of the far right. But close confidants say that neither is wholly accurate: Robinson held complicated, bipartisan views.

“Obviously he’s okay with gay and trans people having a right to exist, but also believes in the Second Amendment,” the friend said.

And although Robinson’s MAGA family have been giving sound bites to the press, there was a lot that Robinson’s family didn’t know about him, according to his friends. Case in point: his bisexuality, and his relationship with his roommate, a transgender person named Lance.

Even Lance was caught off guard by Robinson’s act, according to text messages that the two exchanged after Kirk was shot. The texts were published as part of Robinson’s criminal charges. When pressed as to why he murdered Kirk, Robinson told his partner: “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”

Robinson said he had planned the assassination for a little over a week, and added that the etched engravings on his bullet casings—which refer to a couple of popular video games—were “mostly a big meme” that he thought would be amusing to see discussed on Fox News.

Robinson had a “stone cold poker face” and could be “super hard to read,” another friend told Klippenstein. Those close to Robinson didn’t believe he was hiding anything from them. “As far as we knew he was opened up,” the second friend said.

No one could have envisioned that Robinson, a well-liked straight-A student, would be capable of or even interested in killing Kirk.

“To all of us he just seemed like a simple guy who liked playing games like Sea of Thieves, Deep Rock Galactic, and Helldivers 2, loved to fish and loved to camp,” the second friend said. “It really did seem like that’s all he was about.”

Robinson turned himself in to authorities on Friday. He was charged Tuesday with aggravated murder, felony discharge of a firearm causing serious bodily injury, and obstruction of justice, among other charges. Prosecutors announced that they are seeking the death penalty in the case.

DOJ Quietly Deletes Study on Politics of Domestic Terrorists - 2025-09-16T19:41:43Z

404 Media has reported that in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder, Trump’s Justice Department deleted a study from its website stating that right-wing violence “continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism” in the United States. This comes as the Trump  administration and Republicans generally blame political violence solely on the left.

The study was available online at least until Friday, according to 404 Media, but can now only be found via a Wayback Machine link. 

The study, published in 2024 and conducted by the National Institute of Justice, is titled, “What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism.” The first words are: “Militant, nationalistic, violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.”

“Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives,” the study noted. “In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.”

It’s highly likely that the DOJ took this study down because it doesn’t fit with the narrative the GOP is trying so desperately to push about the left being to blame for the bulk of political violence in this country, willfully ignoring countless examples of that not being the case at all.

Republican Governor Warns of Trump’s Revenge if They Don’t Redistrict - 2025-09-16T19:20:56Z

Indiana Governor Mike Braun wants state legislators to get moving on approving a new congressional district map, to spare them from President Donald Trump’s wrath. 

Speaking on Fort Wayne’s WOWO radio Monday, Braun floated the idea of lawmakers returning for a special session in November, to scrounge up extra GOP seats ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. 

“If we try to drag our feet as a state on it, probably, we’ll have consequences of not working with the Trump administration as tightly as we should,” he said.  

Braun is the only lawmaker in Indiana with the authority to call a special session in November. Special sessions are historically pretty expensive for taxpayers. If Braun doesn’t call a special session, Republicans’ redistricting efforts would have to wait until the next session begins in January 2026. 

Braun said Tuesday that he preferred to start working “earlier rather than later,” or “anytime from early November through the very earliest part” of the next legislative session. 

“All I’m telling you is that we’re going to look at [the current maps], we’re going to poll our legislators, and if it’s there, we’re going to do it,” he continued. “My feeling is it probably will happen,” he said. 

The Trump administration has previously urged Indiana to follow the lead of other states’ redistricting efforts, and deliver Trump one or two additional Republican House seats. In August, Vice President JD Vance visited with more than 55 Republicans at the Indiana state House, pressing them to approve a new map, and Trump met privately with the Republican heads of the Indiana House and Senate in the Oval Office.

In Texas, Republican state legislators passed a new congressional map that could help the GOP gain five more seats in the House of Representatives—launching a mirrored initiative in California for the Democrats. Earlier this month, Trump personally bullied Missouri lawmakers to approve a freshly gerrymandered map that would erase the Democratic seat in Kansas City. Republican lawmakers in Kansas, Ohio, and Florida are also considering taking up redistricting efforts in their states, as well as Democrats in Illinois and Maryland. 

Sonia Sotomayor Appears to Rip Pam Bondi: “That Law School Failed” - 2025-09-16T18:35:23Z

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday seemed to throw a sidelong barb at Attorney General Pam Bondi for foolishly suggesting the existence of a “hate speech” exception to free speech.

As the far right wages an ongoing crusade against people accused of mocking slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Bondi said on a Monday podcast that “hate speech” is not free speech. The Department of Justice, she vowed, will “target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”

The sentiment was widely criticized, including by MAGA commentators, for undermining the First Amendment. Bondi attempted to walk back her statement on Tuesday.

During a Tuesday morning panel at New York Law School, Sotomayor seemingly took aim at Bondi but did not mention the attorney general by name.

“Every time I listen to a lawyer-trained representative saying we should criminalize free speech in some way, I think to myself, that law school failed,” the liberal justice reportedly said. “If any student who becomes a lawyer hasn’t been taught civics, then that law school has failed,” she added. “Because it is for that system that you’re working as a lawyer.”

Sotomayor also raised concerns about people’s awareness, or lack thereof, of constraints on the power of the executive branch—evidently referencing Donald Trump, without mentioning him by name, either.

“Do we understand what the difference is between a king and a president?” Sotomayor said (a distinction that was blurred by the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling on presidential immunity in United States v. Trump, as she warned in her dissent at the time). “I think if people understood these things from the beginning, they would be more informed as to what would be important in a democracy.”

Kash Patel Loses It When Adam Schiff Asks About Ghislaine Maxwell - 2025-09-16T18:28:53Z

FBI Director Kash Patel is apparently not making child sex predators a priority at the bureau.

Patel finished his latest—and potentially last—hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee kicking and screaming Tuesday, raising his voice to Senator Adam Schiff after the lawmaker questioned the recent transfer of Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum-security prison in Texas.

Schiff pointed out that the facility was “not suitable for a sex offender” and that Maxwell’s transfer had been arranged after she provided testimony to federal authorities, including members of the FBI.

“Who made that decision and why?” asked Schiff.

Patel responded hastily: “The Bureau of Prisons.”

“The Bureau of Prisons decided on their own—without any consultation from [Deputy Attorney General Todd] Blanche or anyone else—that they were going to suddenly after this interview, completely unrelated to this interview, completely unrelated to anything she said, move her to a prison not suitable for a sex offender?” pressed Schiff. “Do you want the American people to believe that? Do you think they’re stupid?”

“No, I think the American people believe the truth, that I’m not in the weeds on the everyday movements of inmates,” Patel said, referring to the longtime associate and girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, who on her own stands as one of the most notorious child sex offenders of the century. “What I am doing is protecting this country, providing historic reform and combating the weaponization of intelligence by the likes of you, and we have countlessly proven you to be a liar in Russiagate, in January 6.”

That’s when Patel turned up the temperature.

“You are the biggest fraud to ever sit in the United States Senate,” Patel yelled, calling Schiff’s political career a “charade.”

“You are a disgrace to this institution and an utter coward,” he told Schiff. “You are a political buffoon, at best.”

Schiff, however, was willing to throw it back.

“You can make an internet troll the FBI director, but [you] will always be nothing more than an internet troll,” Schiff said as the pair spoke over one another.

The exchange concluded with a final word from Patel, though his dismissive attitude toward the topic of Maxwell’s incarceration didn’t paint a pretty picture for the podcaster’s apparently hyperpartisan priorities.

“All you care about is a child sex predator that was prosecuted by a prior administration,” Patel said. “And the Obama Justice Department and the Biden Justice Department did squat. And what did President Trump do? Bring new charges, courageously.”

Patel’s disinterest in catching child predators stretches far beyond a quick beef in the annals of Congress. Instead, there appears to be a top-down transformation at the agency influenced by Patel’s personal ideology: Just about every agent on the FBI’s Baltimore domestic terrorism squad was directed to refocus their attention on detaining immigrants, forcing agents to pause investigations into violent child predators and pedophilia networks, MSNBC reported Tuesday.

Black Man and Homeless Man Found Dead Hanging From Trees on Same Day - 2025-09-16T17:30:28Z

Two communities are reeling after two men, one Black, one white, were found dead hanging from trees in Mississippi just hours apart from one another. Demartravion “Trey” Reed, a 21-year-old Black student, was found Monday morning on his campus of Delta State University. Hours later, Corey Zukatis, 36, was found in Vicksburg. Zukatis was homeless.

Local police are reporting Reed’s death as a suicide, while they are still investigating Zukatis’s.

“At this current time, we are conducting a thorough death investigation,” read a statement from the coroner’s office on Reed’s death. “Based on the preliminary examination, we can confirm that the deceased did not suffer any lacerations, contusions, compound fractures, broken bones, or injuries consistent with an assault. At this time, there is no evidence to suggest the individual was physically attacked before his death.”

Still, the timing and imagery of the hangings has caused rampant speculation, with many recalling the racist lynchings of mostly Black people—something Mississippi, and the greater American South, has dealt with for centuries.

The Delta State community has been especially disturbed, as Reed’s body was found on campus during the week of the school’s centennial celebration.

“Our community is deeply saddened by their loss. We extend our heartfelt condolences to the family and friends impacted,” the university said in a statement earlier in the day.

It Sure Looks Like Kash Patel Lied Under Oath About Jeffrey Epstein - 2025-09-16T16:58:39Z

FBI Director Kash Patel played defense Tuesday for Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking ring by claiming that not only did the disgraced financier have no client list—he had no clients at all.

Speaking during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Republican Senator John Kennedy asked: “Who, if anyone, did Epstein traffic these young women to, besides himself?”

“Himself,” Patel quickly answered. “There is no credible information, none. If there were, I would bring the case yesterday that he trafficked to other individuals. And the information that we have—again—is limited.”

“So, the answer is no one?” asked Kennedy, somewhat incredulously.

“For the information that we have,” Patel replied, clarifying that he meant the Epstein files.

The FBI director also admitted that he hadn’t actually done the reading. “I have not reviewed the entirety of [the Epstein files] myself, but a good amount,” he said.

Patel’s claim that Epstein, who was indicted by federal prosecutors on charges related to sex trafficking minors in 2019, had procured dozens of women just for himself directly contradicts a trove of testimony from the survivors of Epstein’s abuse.

Virgina Giuffre previously alleged that she had been sexually exploited by Prince Andrew and Epstein’s other “adult male peers, including royalty, politicians, academicians, businessmen, and/or other professional and personal acquaintances.” The Duke of York denied the accusation, and the suit was settled in 2022.

In January 2024, hundreds of documents were made public as part of Giuffre’s defamation suit against Epstein, including 150 names of individuals associated with the alleged sex trafficker. And though not all of the names were directly implicated in his crimes, some were.

One survivor, Sarah Ransome, testified under oath in 2017 that she had been “lent out by him to his friends and associates” in New York City and that guests at his home in the Virgin Islands had used girls for “instant sexual entertainment.” Another unnamed survivor claimed that she was forced to have sex with two high-profile politicians, both of whom had their names redacted from the documents.

Earlier this month, a group of survivors declared their intention to compile their own list of abusers and accomplices who participated in Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking.

Trump Welcomed to the UK With Giant Photo of Him and Jeffrey Epstein - 2025-09-16T16:25:32Z

As Donald Trump embarks Tuesday on his second state visit to the U.K., demonstrators have spread an enormous banner depicting the president with notorious sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein across a lawn outside Windsor Castle—where King Charles III is set to host him.

The banner is one of many antics planned for the trip by Everyone Hates Elon, a British guerilla group formed earlier this year to troll billionaire Elon Musk with viral stunts.

For Trump’s visit, Everyone Hates Elon is endeavoring to put the 1997 photo of the president and his former friend Epstein “everywhere he goes,” thus making it “the defining image” of the trip, according to a fundraising page. (As of this writing, almost 1,800 donors have contributed 31,760 pounds—or more than $43,000—to the cause.)

For every 15 pounds raised, the group vowed to add another square meter to the banner, which was unveiled Tuesday as “the WORLD’S BIGGEST PHOTO of Donald with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.”

The Everyone Hates Elon Instagram page also boasts of sneaking Trump-Epstein merchandise into the gift shop at Windsor Castle, installing posters of the photo in a bus stop advertisement near the U.S. Embassy in London, and placing a plaque memorializing Epstein on a bench at Trump’s golf course in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, which reads: “In loving memory of Jeffrey Epstein—a terrific guy. See you very, very soon. From Donald.”

The group has additionally floated displaying the photo on a mobile billboard van, as well as placards and projections.

“Picture Trump spitting out his tea and scones as he sees the image of him with notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein at every iconic UK location,” the fundraising page states.

New York Times Hits Back After Trump Files Colossal Lawsuit - 2025-09-16T16:08:26Z

The New York Times is fighting back after President Trump filed a massive $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the paper.

“This lawsuit has no merit. It lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics,” a spokesperson for the Times said in a statement. “We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for journalists’ First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people.”

Trump is essentially filing this lawsuit on the grounds that the Times’ coverage isn’t kind enough to him. The 85-page lawsuit specifically calls out Times writers Peter Baker, Michael S. Schmidt, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner. The latter two wrote the book Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, published last year.

“Today, I have the Great Honor of bringing a $15 Billion Dollar [sic] Defamation and Libel Lawsuit against The New York Times, one of the worst and most degenerate newspapers in the History of our Country, becoming a virtual “mouthpiece” for the Radical Left Democrat Party,” Trump wrote Monday evening on Truth Social. “I view it as the single largest illegal Campaign contribution, EVER. Their Endorsement of Kamala Harris was actually put dead center on the front page of The New York Times, something heretofore UNHEARD OF! The ‘Times’ has engaged in a decades long method of lying about your Favorite President (ME!), my family, business, the America First Movement, MAGA, and our Nation as a whole.”

This is a tried and true method for Trump, as he sued Disney’s ABC and Paramount Global’s CBS News for defamation, settling each case for millions of dollars. The Times likely isn’t planning on folding in the same way, as publisher A.G. Sulzberger told media members in a Monday gala speech before Trump’s announcement to “stand up for your journalism. Stand up for your journalists. Stand up for your rights.”

Trump-MAGA Fury Drove a Georgia GOPer Into Exile. He Just Struck Back. - 2025-09-16T16:04:55Z

In the wake of President Trump’s failed violent insurrection on January 6, 2021, a major target of his fury was Geoff Duncan. As the lieutenant governor of Georgia, Duncan was one of the few Republicans in the country who resisted Trump’s corrupt scheme to steal the 2020 election, which ultimately led MAGA forces to hound Duncan—who left office in 2023—out of the GOP for good.

Now Duncan is running to be the governor of Georgia as a Democrat, having formally joined the party this summer. And in one of his first interviews since entering the race, Duncan told The New Republic that as governor of Georgia, he would oppose efforts by Trump to send the National Guard into the state’s cities.

“There’s no reason to send the National Guard into Atlanta—absolutely zero reason,” Duncan said. “If Trump wanted to really solve crime in cities, he would be partnering with mayors and governors. Instead he’s just showing up with National Guard members without any coordination.”

That’s a striking position for a former Republican who will need backing from at least some GOP voters to win a statewide general election. Duncan gained national renown after joining with GOP Governor Brian Kemp to resist Trump’s corrupt pressure on them to help steal the 2020 election in the state.

Now Duncan—who will face one of several Republicans vying to succeed Kemp—is attempting an intriguing experiment: He’s running in this highly contested swing state in part by emphasizing his willingness to take on Trump’s lawlessness, as a former Republican. The idea is that at least some Republican voters are “disgusted” by Trump, as he put it.

Indeed, Duncan blasted Trump for suggesting that political violence from the radical right is justified in response to left-wing extremism, and he condemned Trump’s threats to unleash investigations of liberal groups.

“For Trump to point only to one side is wrong,” Duncan told me. “It’s going to continue to incite the very thing that we need to stop in this country.” He added: “Trump needs to stand up as the head of his MAGA movement and push back on anybody who’s being hateful.”

What’s more, when asked how he’d respond as governor to Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, Duncan condemned them.

“To use law enforcement, which is playing out coast to coast, as shock-and-awe for ICE raids is the peak of inhumane,” Duncan said, though he added that state law enforcement assistance to ICE might be acceptable under narrow circumstances if it’s genuinely collaborative and targets serious lawbreakers.

“To watch ICE come in [with] assault rifles to commandeer a law-abiding noncitizen who is going to work and being a strong member of the community is not the right path forward for us as a country,” Duncan said.

ICE controversy recently flared up big-time in Georgia after the agency arrested around 500 workers at a Hyundai battery plant near Savannah owned by South Korean manufacturers. The raid was widely condemned as overkill, given that South Korea is investing massively in the United States, many of the workers (mostly South Korean citizens) merely had the wrong visas, and their special plant-construction skills were needed.

“Hyundai invests billions of dollars in Georgia, and they were raided with what appears to be a clerical error on the majority of the folks that were detained,” Duncan said. “This is not putting our best economic foot forward.”

On that score, Duncan also said he’d opt Georgia into the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion. “There’s no reason why millions of people in Georgia can’t go to the doctor for fear of bankrupting themselves or not having insurance,” Duncan said, adding that the failure to expand Medicaid was harming the state’s rural hospitals. Georgia is one of just 10 states that haven’t accepted the expansion.

Duncan faces a tough Democratic primary against former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and former state Senator Jason Esteves. Duncan said he would appeal to Democratic voters by emphasizing government investments in day care for single working moms and affordable housing, ideas that are also anathema to many Republicans.

In response, Bottoms accused Duncan of flip-flopping on the Medicaid expansion and of being a political opportunist. “I look forward to proudly continuing the longstanding fight for these Democratic values on behalf of the people of Georgia, just as I have my entire adult life,” she said in a statement.

Duncan advisers believe that should he win the primary, his path in a general election turns on winning the Democratic base (as a convert to the party and opponent of Trump) while overperforming in moderate suburbs and keeping Trump’s rural margins down (both due to his former GOP status).

But Ducan also stressed that he will not run as an independent in the general if he loses the primary. “I’m a proud Democrat,” he said. “No chance.”

So, to sum up: Duncan opposed Trump’s effort to steal a presidential election. He doesn’t believe Trump is above the law. He gets that Trump’s militarization of cities isn’t actually about fighting crime. He rejects Trump’s absolution of right-wing political violence. He believes it’s foolish to execute massive ICE raids on companies investing heavily in the U.S. and inhumane to unleash hyper-militarized law enforcement on immigrant day laborers and grandmothers. And he wouldn’t turn away billions of dollars in federal money to fund health coverage for his own state’s fellow residents.

No wonder MAGA forced him out of the GOP.

Kash Patel Gets Fact-Checked to His Face on Existence of Enemies List - 2025-09-16T15:58:51Z

FBI Director Kash Patel published his own enemies list in 2022, but he doesn’t want to be held accountable now that he’s actually taken retribution against them.

Speaking before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Patel plainly rejected that he had ever drafted the kind of list that he included in his book Government Gangsters, which made reference to dozens of individuals who he claimed were “a cabal of unelected tyrants.” But the proof was in the pudding.

“It appears to me that there have been adverse actions of various kinds taken against about 20 of the 60 people on your enemies list,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. “You’ve been in office for seven months. At that rate, you’ve got 14 months until you’ve hit all 60.

“Can you explain that?” asked Whitehouse.

“Again, that is an entirely inaccurate presupposition,” Patel said. “I do not have an enemies list.

“You can continue to characterize it as you wish, the only actions we take—generally speaking—for personnel at the FBI are what’s based on merit qualifications and your ability to uphold your constitutional duty. You fall short, you won’t work there anymore,” he added.

“Well, there was a list,” Whitehouse said. “You don’t like it to be called an enemies list, but it had about 60 names, and about 20 have had adverse actions. So I think those are pretty clear facts.”

PATEL: I do not have an enemies list

WHITEHOUSE: Well there was a list. It had about 60 names and about 20 have had an adverse action. So those are I think pretty clear facts. pic.twitter.com/owlLswFl6U

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 16, 2025

Some of those names included former President Joe Biden, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, former FBI Director James Comey, former Attorney General Merrick Garland, and former USAID administrator Samantha Power.

When Patel’s name was floated in December as an option to run the FBI, Paul Rosenzweig, the former deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, warned that Patel would be the “poster child of vindictiveness.”

“His infamous public declarations of retribution may lead to the dismissal of any politically motivated prosecutions he initiates against his enemies list of ‘Deep State’ opponents,” Rosenzweig wrote in The Bulwark at the time.

But a fire appears to be growing against Patel in the inner echelons of the Trump administration. Patel’s clumsy handling of the manhunt for Charlie Kirk’s killer left the White House thoroughly unimpressed, with insiders reportedly on the lookout for Patel’s replacement.

Kash Patel Has Mindblowing Defense to FBI Firing Reports - 2025-09-16T15:43:32Z

Kash Patel got slammed Tuesday for complaining that a Democratic senator’s question didn’t include the FBI director’s side of the story—while refusing to provide an answer.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Ranking Democrat Dick Durbin asked Patel to explain why he had fired FBI field officers and combat veterans Chris Meyer and Walter Giardina in August, even after Patel was warned that their terminations were unlawful.

“It appears that you terminated these two agents. Why?” asked Durbin.

“I’m not going to get into personnel decisions that we made,” Patel replied.

“So you’re not accountable for your decisions to take people who’ve served our country so admirably, and terminate them without any cause?” Durbin asked.

“That’s a one-sided story,” Patel said.

“So, tell your side of the story,” Durbin interjected, but Patel kept ranting.

“Anyone that has been terminated from the FBI generally speaking failed to meet the needs of the FBI and uphold their constitutional duties, and you providing a one-sided story from your perch is absolutely disgraceful because the men and women of the FBI deserve better,” Patel continued. “And your attack on the current leadership of the men and women of the FBI is equally disgraceful, ’cause now you’re attacking the leaders that are our brave SACs in the field that are doing the job that this county needs, and we will continue to do it.”

“It’s disgraceful when Mr. Meyer and Mr. Giardina, who served our country so well, are terminated apparently because of the rants of a podcaster,” Durbin said.

“That is your opinion, it is not a fact,” Patel retorted.

“Well, it certainly is my opinion I could back up with fact,” Durbin said.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that Meyer had been removed after a pro-Trump influencer had falsely declared him the “main” agent behind the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago that allegedly uncovered a trove of classified documents. But Meyer said he wasn’t assigned to the operation. Senator Chuck Grassley had relayed claims from whistleblowers who accused Giardina of only expressing animosity toward Donald Trump and claimed he had corroborated the infamous Steele dossier. Giardina vehemently denied those accusations and said he never worked on the Steele dossier.

In July, Steven Jensen, the head of the FBI field office in Washington, D.C., urged Patel to shield Giardina, who he felt was being unfairly targeted while his wife was dying from an aggressive form of cancer—but Patel fired him anyway, and then fired Jensen too.

Trump Threatens Reporter When Asked About Bondi’s “Hate Speech” Remark - 2025-09-16T15:10:12Z

President Trump has thrown his full support behind his administration’s hypocritical, McCarthyite censorship campaign.

“What do you make of Pam Bondi saying she’s gonna go after hate speech? … A lot of your allies say hate speech is free speech,” a reporter asked Trump on Tuesday as he was about to board his flight to the United Kingdom.

“[We’ll] probably go after people like you, because you treat me so unfairly, it’s hate. You have a lotta hate in your heart,” Trump said, threatening the reporter and mostly ignoring the actual question.

“Would that be appropriate?”

“Maybe they’ll come after ABC. Well ABC paid me $16 million recently for a form of hate speech, right? Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech. So maybe they’ll have to go after you.”

Reporter: What do you make of Bondi saying she is going after hate speech, a lot of allies say hate speech is free speech.

Trump: Probably go after people like you, you treat me unfairly, you have hate in your heart. ABC paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech, your… pic.twitter.com/MCMDjhQoMh

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 16, 2025

The president is referring to the lawsuit he filed against ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos, after the host said Trump was “liable for rape” while discussing Trump’s E. Jean Carroll case verdict in which he was actually liable for “sexual abuse.” And while a judge even acknowledged that the difference was semantic, ABC settled to avoid any further damage to its Disney ownership, giving Trump a victory in the process.

As for Bondi, she’s been pushing the same disinformation campaign that every conservative seems to be signing on to right now in an effort to take First Amendment rights from anyone they don’t like.

“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society,” Bondi told Katie Miller, wife of Trump adviser Stephen Miller, on her podcast on Monday. “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi: "There's free speech and then there's hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society...We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech." pic.twitter.com/Bqj6TQOGwP

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) September 16, 2025

This is a complete about-face that goes against everything the right—and Kirk himself—has been saying for nearly a decade. They’re just praying we don’t notice.

Trump Is Trying to Literally Erase the History of Slavery - 2025-09-16T14:56:49Z

The Trump administration’s censorship campaign has extended to the National Park Service.

The White House has ordered the removal of signs and exhibits documenting American slavery, including a 1863 portrait of an ex-slave, often referred to as either Peter or Gordon, and the thick, variegated whip scars on his “scourged back.” Gordon’s photograph became one of the most widely circulated images of the horrors of U.S. slavery during the abolitionist movement.

The mass information scrub is all in an effort to make the Park Service compliant with Donald Trump’s March executive order that directed the Interior Department to erase any information that could be misconstrued as a “corrosive ideology,” according to four sources that spoke with The Washington Post.

That order has been interpreted by the Parks Service to mean any information relating to racism, sexism, slavery, gay rights, or the persecution of Native Americans, the Post reported Monday night.

Sites affected include Harpers Ferry National Historic Park in West Virginia, where abolitionist John Brown led an unsuccessful raid that eventually led to his capture and the start of the Civil War. Staff at Harpers Ferry flagged more than 30 signs, according to the Post.

Another affected site is the President’s House Site in Philadelphia, where George Washington kept slaves. Exhibits at that location apparently do not comply with the Park Service’s new order, according to sources that spoke with the Post.  

All signage under the department’s purview is subject to review, according to Park Service spokesperson Rachel Pawlitz.

“Interpretive materials that disproportionately emphasize negative aspects of U.S. history or historical figures, without acknowledging broader context or national progress, can unintentionally distort understanding rather than enrich it,” Pawlitz said.

But the White House’s intrusion is historically unprecedented, according to historians.

“This represents an enormous increase in federal power and control over the things we learn,” Jonathan Zimmerman, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies the history of education, told the Post. “Brought to you by the team that says education should be state and local.”

America’s parks aren’t the only ones undergoing an enormous rescission. Over the course of the summer, the president has wielded a heavy hand in reshaping the Kennedy Center’s programming, and forced the Smithsonian Museum to remove mentions of Trump from its exhibit on impeachments under pressure from the White House. (Those mentions were later reinstated.) 

The administration also issued a memo challenging the application of educational lenses on race, gender, and oppression in U.S. history, and accused the Smithsonian directly of advancing a “divisive, race-centered ideology.” 

Pam Bondi Draws MAGA Outrage After “Hate Speech” Remark - 2025-09-16T14:41:26Z

Attorney General Pam Bondi is earning scorn—even in the MAGA media ecosystem—for her uninformed claim that the First Amendment has a hate speech exception.

Bondi made the distinction in a Monday appearance on The Katie Miller Podcast, suggesting that hate speech—specifically with regard to the slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk—will “absolutely” be targeted by the Justice Department.

“There’s free speech, and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie in our society,” she said. “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything, and that’s across the aisle.

Observers on the right were quick to call out her threat to get the government involved in the reckless doxing campaign MAGA is leading against people accused (often falsely) of glorifying Kirk’s death online.

Many noted that Kirk himself once tweeted, “Hate speech does not exist legally in America.”

“There obviously shouldn’t be any legal repercussions for ‘hate speech,’ which is not even a valid or coherent concept,” wrote podcaster Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire on X—though he said those who celebrate Kirk’s death should face social consequences. “We don’t need Pam Bondi swooping in to throw the entire conversation off the rails by completely missing our point,” he continued. “And having a ‘hate speech’ crackdown in the name of Charlie Kirk—a man who absolutely rejected ‘hate speech’ laws—is especially grotesque.”

Right-wing commentator Savannah Hernandez called Bondi’s sentiment “destructive,” adding, “She needs to be removed as attorney general now.” Talk show host Dave Rubin similarly called for Bondi’s “immediate resignation,” describing her statement as an “unbelievably bad take.” Provocateur Mike Cernovich tweeted that the “hate speech” claim, paired with Bondi’s mishandling of the case of Jeffrey Epstein, shows that the attorney general “really isn’t ready for this moment.”

“Our Attorney General is apparently a moron,” wrote conservative radio host Erick Erickson.

Bondi sought to do damage control Tuesday morning, stating on X, “Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment.”

“Libertarian” Rand Paul Calls for National Crackdown Over Charlie Kirk - 2025-09-16T14:10:57Z

The GOP has turned so hard on free speech that now even “libertarian” Rand Paul is calling for a “crackdown” on those using their First Amendment rights.

“I was assaulted six, seven years ago, attacked from behind, had six ribs broken and part of my lung removed, and still online, on a daily basis people say they wish that it would happen to me all over again,” Paul said Tuesday on Fox Business. “And by sort of making light of what I suffered, they are encouraging other people to do it. That oughta be taken down, and social media oughta be able to take that down.

“People say, ‘Oh people have a right to say things.’ Well, actually, they don’t necessarily have a right to say things; many people have in their contract what we call a morals clause … or a conduct clause,” Paul continued, as he compared the First Amendment to a military conduct code. “I think it is time for this to be a crackdown on people.”

Rand Paul: "People say, 'Oh, people have a right to say things.' Well, actually they don't necessarily have a right to say things. Many people have in their contract what we call a morals clause ... I think it is time for this to be a crackdown on people." pic.twitter.com/WdBecgIjnt

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 16, 2025

While it’s ironic to hear a libertarian talk about attacking free speech and civil liberties, that has been all too common in the days following Charlie Kirk’s assassination. People who were haranguing liberals and leftists for policing speech are now going full Big Brother. Vice President JD Vance (who chided all of Europe over free speech in February) said on Monday, “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out, and, hell, call their employer.” Other right-wing ghouls like Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok and Laura Loomer have also been on an intense, often inaccurate doxing campaign of anyone they think is saying bad stuff about a man who made a career off of his own hateful speech. And The Washington Post fired opinion columnist Karen Attiah for expressing very measured opinions about Kirk’s politics.

Republicans are banking on the electorate being too obtuse to notice their obvious hypocrisy. But people like Zeteo’s Medhi Hasan are already noticing, and using Charlie Kirk’s own words to call them out.

“Hate speech does not legally exist in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech,” Kirk said last year on X, as Hasan pointed out. “And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.”

Judge Throws Out Flimsy Terrorism Charges Against Luigi Mangione - 2025-09-16T14:06:44Z

A New York state court on Tuesday dismissed all terrorism charges against Luigi Mangione, the 27-year-old accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, with Judge Gregory Carro ruling they were “legally insufficient.”

To meet the definition of terrorism, Carro noted, an action must have the intent to “intimidate and coerce a civilian population.”

But while the prosecution put “great emphasis on [Mangione’s] ‘ideological’ motive,” Carro wrote, ideological belief does not necessarily meet that criteria, despite the prosecution falsely conflating the two.

“There is no indication in the statute that a murder committed for ideological reasons (in this case, the defendant’s apparent desire to draw attention to what he perceived as inequities or greed within the American health care system), fits within the definition of terrorism, without establishing the necessary element of an intent to intimidate or coerce,” Carro ruled.

“While the defendant was clearly expressing an animus toward UHC, and the health care industry generally, it does not follow that his goal was to ‘intimidate and coerce a civilian population,’” and there was “no evidence presented” that he had such a goal, the judge said.

Mangione still faces second-degree murder charges in New York, as well as federal charges and Pennsylvania state charges.

This story has been updated.