Donald Trump has sweeping plans for a second administration. Here’s what he’s proposed

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Trump says he’ll send National Guard to Chicago, but details remain unclear

President Donald Trump moved to deploy the National Guard in another city Saturday by authorizing 300 troops to protect federal officers and assets in Chicago, where the government said Border Patrol agents shot and injured a woman while firing at someone who tried to run them over.

https://apnews.com/article/chicago-illinois-trump-national-guard-acbf033191926157c5771825470eb2f8?

Judge blocks Portland deployment; Chicago escalation

A federal judge granted a 14-day restraining order yesterday, blocking the deployment of National Guard troops to Portland to protect an ICE facility from long-running, but small, protests.

• The protests "were not significantly violent or disruptive in the days — or even weeks — leading up to the President's directive," U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut wrote.

Roughly 200 Oregon National Guard troops have traveled to Warrenton, Ore., for training in crowd control tactics, Axios Portland's Kale Williams reports.

• They were expected to arrive in Portland within the next few days.

"Legal insurrection," White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted on X in response to the block.

• "[T]he deployment of troops is an absolute necessity to defend our personnel, our laws, our government, public order and the Republic itself."

Trump called up 300 National Guard members in Illinois on Saturday.

• Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said the War Department presented him with an ultimatum hours before the order: "'call up your troops, or we will.'"

Catch up quick: Tensions around Chicago's anti-ICE protests escalated yesterday, CNN reports.

• Agents fired "defensive shots" at an armed woman after she rammed a law enforcement vehicle, Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary, said on X.

Officers also used gas canisters against protesters, according to Reuters footage.

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? Bill Nye leads NASA charge

A proposed 47% cut to NASA's science budget from the Trump administration has alarmed scientists and space advocates — and Bill Nye is leading the charge to fight it.

• Nye — known as "the Science Guy" — will join more than 300 advocates from a coalition of nearly 20 science and education groups in Washington for a Day of Action tomorrow, urging Congress to save NASA science, Axios' Delano Massey writes.

"There are two deep questions we've all asked at some point in our lives: Where did we come from? And, are we alone in the Universe? ... Cutting NASA funding means turning our backs on discoveries that change the world. It means falling behind in innovation and international leadership. It means losing jobs," Nye, who is also CEO of The Planetary Society, told Axios.

Another court fight likely as Trump federalizes troops in Oregon despite judge blocking mobilization

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Sunday he would go to court to fight the move by President Donald Trump to send National Guard members from his state to Oregon, where protesters have gathered near a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland.

https://apnews.com/article/immigration-chicago-portland-memphis-trump-arrests-b36199b00e0511e687c10fa83fd838b5?

Trump plans aid package for US soybean farmers while seeking trade deal with China

President Donald Trump is planning a significant aid package to U.S. soybean farmers to help them survive China’s boycott of American beans in response to his trade war even as the president says he is still seeking a soybean deal with Beijing. But farmers are worried that time is quickly running out to reach a deal in time to sell any of this year’s crop, the top U.S. food export, to their biggest customer. Read more.

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American Ammo

Trump Calls Cartel Members “Terrorists.” They’re Armed With Bullets From a U.S. Army Factory.

https://theintercept.com/2025/10/02/trump-mexico-drug-war-cartels-bullets/?

Trump cancels $94 million in food aid. Central Louisiana feels the pinch.

The longtime director of The Food Bank of Central Louisiana told ProPublica the organization’s warehouses are emptier than usual. (Stephanie Mei-Ling for ProPublica)

https://www.newsbreak.com/news/4274568686387-trump-cancels-94-million-in-food-aid-central-louisiana-feels-the-pinch?

Trump Admin. Brings Back Student Loan Forgiveness

Under the Trump administration, the Education Department this week reinstated a long-standing student loan forgiveness program that had been on hold since July, The Washington Post reported on Saturday.

https://www.newsbreak.com/news/4273483667956-trump-admin-brings-back-student-loan-forgiveness?

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She Sent Money to Family in Gaza. ICE Claimed It’s Evidence She Supports Hamas.

To keep her in detention in Texas, the Trump administration pointed to Leqaa Kordia’s remittances to family in Palestine.

https://theintercept.com/2025/10/02/gaza-remittance-wire-transfer-hamas-ice/?

Sunrise Movement, Founded to Fight Climate Change, Pivots to Fighting Trump

The youth-led climate activist group Sunrise Movement is expanding its mission to battle “authoritarianism” as the Trump administration targets left-leaning organizations and puts one of the group’s major funders in the crosshairs.

https://theintercept.com/2025/10/02/sunrise-movement-climate-change-trump-protest/?

Trump Declares He Can Wage Secret Wars Against Anyone He Calls an Enemy

“The Trump administration is saying that one person — the president — now decides if the United States is going to war.”

https://theintercept.com/2025/10/02/venezuela-boat-strike-justification/?

ps:So this president who claims he's not a president of war, says he can claim who he's at war against??

MAHA Slams “Corporate Capture” by Food and Pharma Giants — While Trump Strips Regulations

RFK Jr.’s rhetoric can appeal to desperate parents in a broken health system. But experts say his policies only hurt children.

https://theintercept.com/2025/10/02/rfk-maha-tylenol-vaccines-maha-epa-trump/?

The Latest FCC Censorship Push No One Is Talking About Targets Incarcerated People

Brendan Carr is advancing a plan to choke communications for those of us who use cellphones to expose abuses in prison.

https://theintercept.com/2025/10/03/fcc-brendan-carr-cellphone-prison-censorship/?

The United Police State of America Has Arrived

The lines between local, state, and federal law enforcement and the military have blurred.

https://theintercept.com/2025/10/04/united-police-state-of-america/?

Government Shutdown and Free Speech Showdown

Amid the Republican-Democrat blame game, a federal judge’s extraordinary ruling takes on the Trump administration’s unlawful detentions of pro-Palestine protesters.

https://theintercept.com/2025/10/02/podcast-government-shutdown-free-speech/?

Federal judge temporarily blocks Trump administration from sending National Guard troops to Oregon

A federal judge late Sunday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deploying any National Guard units to Oregon at all, after a legal whirlwind that began hours earlier when the president mobilized California troops for Portland after the same judge blocked him from using Oregon’s National Guard the day before.

https://apnews.com/article/national-guard-oregon-california-trump-newsom-3b8e12f8d2d39f195dda73dda31f1681?

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Trump Plots Social Security Overhaul That Could Cut Benefits for Hundreds of Thousands

Plans to remove age as a factor in deciding whether someone is capable of working are backed by Trump’s “Grim Reaper,” Russell Vought.

The Trump administration is reportedly plotting a major overhaul of Social Security that could see hundreds of thousands of older Americans lose their disability benefits.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is considering eliminating age as a factor in determining eligibility for disability payments, or raising the current threshold from 50 to 60, sources told The Washington Post.

Currently, the SSA uses a mix of age, work experience, and education levels to assess whether a person can transition to other types of work before approving disability payments. Applicants over 50 are generally more likely to be approved, as age is often viewed as a limiting factor in retraining or career changes.

Jack Smalligan, a senior policy fellow at the Urban Institute and former Office of Management and Budget official, estimated that if eligibility were reduced by just 10 percent, roughly 750,000 people could lose benefits over the next decade. Another 80,000 widows and children could lose benefits tied to a disabled spouse or parent.

SSA spokesman Barton Mackey told the Post the agency is working to “propose improvements to the disability adjudication process to ensure our disability program remains current and can be more efficiently administered.”

Conservatives argue that reform is necessary as people live longer and that many disabled workers could move into less physically demanding desk or office jobs.

However, Smalligan’s research suggests that older people who lose their disability benefits often fail to transition into new roles, forcing them to tap into their retirement benefits much earlier than planned.

The overhaul is reportedly a top priority for Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, a top Trump ally and former Project 2025 architect who featured as the Grim Reaper in a bizarre AI-generated video posted by the president last week.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, blasted the proposed changes, calling them part of a broader Republican effort to slash Social Security.

“This is Phase One of the Republican campaign to force Americans to work into old age to access their earned Social Security benefits, and represents the largest cut to disability insurance in American history,” Wyden told the Post.

“Americans with disabilities have worked and paid into Social Security just like everybody else, and they do not deserve the indignity of more bureaucratic water torture to get what they paid for.”

White House spokesman Kush Desai told the Daily Beast: “President Trump will always protect and defend Social Security for American citizens. The only policy change to Social Security is President Trump’s working families tax cut legislation that eliminated taxation of Social Security for almost all beneficiaries—which every single Democrat voted against.”

The Daily Beast has contacted the Social Security Administration for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-plots-social-security-overhaul-that-could-cut-benefits-for-hundreds-of-thousands/?

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Trump cancels blue-state projects, trolls Dems on social media as shutdown drags on

WASHINGTON — Trump administration officials on Friday defended the decision to cancel federal projects in regions of the country that have voted for Democrats, saying the move isn’t political but an effort to reduce the size and scope of government during the shutdown.

https://floridaphoenix.com/2025/10/03/repub/trump-cancels-blue-state-projects-trolls-dems-on-social-media-as-shutdown-drags-on/?

Appeals court hears case dealing with information-sharing between the IRS and ICE

WASHINGTON — A panel of judges on an appeals court Friday seemed split about whether the Trump administration’s move to request taxpayer information from the Internal Revenue Service for the purposes of immigration enforcement is lawful.

https://floridaphoenix.com/2025/10/03/repub/appeals-court-hears-case-dealing-with-information-sharing-between-the-irs-and-ice/?

Chicago and Illinois sue to stop Trump’s Guard deployment plan after Portland ruling

CHICAGO (AP) — Illinois leaders went to court Monday to stop President Donald Trump from sending National Guard troops to Chicago, escalating a clash between Democratic-led states and the Republican administration during an aggressive immigration enforcement operation in the nation’s third-largest city.

https://apnews.com/article/national-guard-portland-chicago-trump-a35549dc8d198b0270eaa95e5230ba94?

Trump administration orders Seminole school district to end Latino program

The Trump administration has ordered Seminole County Public Schools to shutter a student leadership class intended to help Latino students graduate high school, saying the district “may be discriminating based on race.”

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2025/10/06/trump-administration-orders-seminole-school-district-to-end-latino-program/?

'Taken his eye off the ball': Data guru warns Trump latest gambit is big 'political loser'

President Donald Trump's military deployment is widely unpopular because voters don't trust his justification, according to new polling data.

https://local.newsbreak.com/illinois-state/4276517061163-taken-his-eye-off-the-ball-data-guru-warns-trump-latest-gambit-is-big-political-loser?

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Trump Hit by Damning Poll Over His Shutdown Plot

Voters have suggested the president and the GOP are responsible for the stalemate.

A damning opinion poll has found that most Americans disapprove of how President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are handling the government shutdown. Overall, 52 percent disapprove of Trump’s handling of the crisis, the same percentage that disapproves of congressional Republicans. But nearly half—49 percent—disapprove of Democrats’ performance. The poll comes amid a finger-pointing blame game between the parties and rising anxiety over the effects of the shutdown. According to the CBS News/YouGov survey, 39 percent of respondents blamed Trump and GOP lawmakers for the shutdown, compared to 30 percent who blamed Democrats. Another 31 percent said both parties share responsibility. A majority of respondents said they were at least “somewhat concerned” about the fallout. Voters aren’t convinced either party’s stance justifies the standoff. Only 23 percent said Republicans’ position was worth shutting down the government over, while 28 percent said the same about Democrats’. Roughly a third said they weren’t sure either side had a point. When asked what the shutdown was about, 36 percent pointed to healthcare, the issue Democrats have made central to their argument. The survey was conducted Oct. 1–3 among 2,441 U.S. adults,

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-hit-by-damning-poll-over-his-shutdown-plot/?

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‘Bro Shut Down the Government’ (Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic)

View in browser Last week, on the first day of the still-ongoing federal-government shutdown, a curious meme appeared on New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s press-office X account. It’s a stylized picture of droopy-mouthed Donald Trump, his face Mao-red, saturation cranked way up, details obliterated in an onslaught of digital filters—an effect the kids call “deep fried.” Trump is flanked by oversize emojis—the laughing-crying face and the somber-and-downcast face with prayer hands—and spanning the top and bottom of the frame are the words “BRO SHUT DOWN THE GOVERNMENT.” Let me attempt to describe what Governor Hochul and her brain trust of communications professionals are doing here. The government shut down on October 1 because Congress failed to appropriate funds for the coming year’s operations. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees are now furloughed, and hundreds of thousands more are working without pay. Although the two parties are unwilling to budge on the question of what should be in the contested spending bill, they at least seem to agree that the best way to pass time in the interim is to shift blame to the opposing team by way of crude memes and social-media comedy. Hochul, newly enlisted in the meme war, has already found herself on the front lines. The Trump administration demonstrated its growing fluency with memes earlier this year, when government X accounts posted exceedingly cruel images of distressed, caricatured migrants and of alligators wearing ICE hats (referencing the “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant-detention facility). But at this point in Trump’s presidency, the meme war has fanatical soldiers on both sides. Shortly after the shutdown began, the president posted a minute-long AI-generated music video parodying Blue Öyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” in which he plays the cowbell, J. D. Vance plays drums, and a gang of deathly hooded figures fills out the band. “Dems, you babies / Here comes the reaper,” goes one of the more trenchant couplets. Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom’s team pumped out videos of both Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson with digital face filters and voice changers, distorting them to look like Minions from the Despicable Me film franchise. The official X page of the Democratic Party also put out a video purporting to explain the mechanics of the shutdown with “kitties,” written in what appears to be baby talk (e.g., “Democrat kitty tries to negotiate but Republican kitty keeps running away”). It’s already clear that neither side feels the need to cede any ground, because neither is particularly worried about losing the broader political fight: Democrats are betting Trump’s base will turn on him as the shutdown drags on, and Republicans are content to wait for the Democrats to give in. In the meantime, Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, has been using the shutdown as cover to slash government spending on green-energy projects (“Green New Scam funding”) and NYC infrastructure that he alleges adheres to “unconstitutional DEI principles.” Watching the Republicans and Democrats hurl elementary-school-tier insults at one another is like watching Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny insist it’s either Rabbit Season or Duck Season, over and over—all while government workers go without. Expecting politicians to address one another politely during this polarized era of American government would be naive; name-calling was considered fair game far before Trump ever descended his golden escalator. But there is something genuinely disturbing about seeing elected leaders turn so overtly to petty insults on social media. As reporters have pressed White House officials about the turn toward memes, the administration has brushed it off. “The president likes to have a little fun now and then,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said of Trump’s propensity to summon up AI-generated voodoo dolls of his political rivals. But too often the endless back-and-forth feels not fun but just sad, a pointless rhetorical exercise that exacerbates existing divisions. These images barely even work as jokes, let alone substitutes for the governance of a global superpower. A successful meme should capture something of the zeitgeist, bundling and compressing cultural criticism into a digestible format; the government-approved take on the form scans as stale, desperate, and ultimately futile. Political overtures to the digitally native youth are nothing new. Candidates on both sides of the aisle have been deploying memes online for years, and lawmakers have more recently followed suit. What is new is the degree of tone deafness and willful trolling on display in some of these posts. Perhaps the most prominent meme of the shutdown—Republicans’ pasting sombreros and mustaches on Democrats—is nonsensical on its face, functioning mostly as a veiled threat. “I’ll tell Hakeem Jeffries right now, I make the solemn promise to you that if you help us reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop,” J. D. Vance said during a White House press briefing. At least on the right, the memes are part of a broader snark campaign meant to humiliate Democrats and their allies. Journalists who have emailed White House employees in the past six days have received goofily partisan out-of-office messages decrying the “Democrat Shutdown” (which critics have said probably violate the Hatch Act). WhiteHouse.gov now hosts a clock counting up the seconds of the shutdown. Across the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s website, big red banners scream that the “Radical Left in Congress shut down the government.” The Democrats appear to have no such cross-platform strategy; they’re just flailing, recycling old meme formats in an attempt to gin up support on social media. I can personally attest that the “deep fried” format apparently favored by Hochul hasn’t been funny for about 10 years. As the meme war plays out, both sides are abdicating the real work at hand. The data blackout continues, leaving markets without the latest federal jobs report; about 40 percent of all U.S. Forest Service employees remain furloughed as wildfire-preparedness and disaster-response plans are scaled back; and millions are still stuck without some Medicare benefits. The House of Representatives isn’t even set to return to session this week, but at least Representative Jeffries has jokes. While lawmakers post through the chaos, the rest of America will just have to wait. Related: The gleeful cruelty of the White House X account (From March) The project 2025 shutdown is here.

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Courts split over National Guard

Federal agents confront protesters outside an ICE facility yesterday in Portland, Ore. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images Tensions over President Trump's National Guard deployments are reaching a fever pitch — both in the streets of major cities and in court, Axios' Sam Baker writes. Illinois sued today to block Trump's plan to send some 200 troops to Chicago. In an emergency order, a federal judge declined to block the deployment, at least for now. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an order today to prevent ICE from using city-owned land as staging areas. ⚖️ A federal judge in Oregon — Trump appointee Karin Immergut — blocked the administration yesterday from sending any Guard troops, from any state, to Portland. ? What they're saying: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called Immergut's decision "untethered in reality and the law," arguing that federal facilities in Portland have been "under siege" for months. Some MAGA influencers want Trump to simply defy these court orders, though the White House hasn't indicated any plans to do so. "At some point in time, the administration is going to have to tell these judges to go pound sand, or else we're not going to be seeing the promises fulfilled," MAGA enforcer Laura Loomer told Axios' Tal Axelrod. Go deeper.

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Social Security chief to be IRS CEO

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has appointed Frank Bisignano, who runs the Social Security Administration, to also head up the Internal Revenue Service as its first-ever chief executive officer.

https://www.axios.com/2025/10/06/social-security-irs-bessent?

Troop deployments

President Trump is suggesting that he could invoke the Insurrection Act to send National Guard troops to US cities if courts keep blocking his deployments. "I really think that's really criminal insurrection," he said Monday about anti-ICE protests in Portland, before promising to make the city safe. Federal agents are also on the ground in Chicago, where protests have been taking place against immigration enforcement. Meanwhile, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott posted a photo on social media of Texas National Guard troops leaving for Illinois. The deployment comes after Illinois and the city of Chicago sued the Trump administration earlier Monday, calling the plans to move troops from other states "illegal, dangerous, and unconstitutional."

Flight delays

Travelers across the US are feeling the effects of the government shutdown as a shortage of air traffic controllers causes delays at major airports. Controllers are considered essential workers, so they must work during the shutdown, but they are not being paid. Consequently, more controllers are calling out sick. One of the most severe disruptions on Monday occurred at California's Burbank Airport, where the control tower was shut down completely, resulting in hours-long delays. The towers in Burbank, Phoenix and Denver all had "staffing triggers" reported in the public FAA operations plan. Other facilities that handle air traffic around airports in Newark, New Jersey; Jacksonville, Florida; Chicago, Washington, DC, and Indianapolis were also short-staffed.

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? Scoop: White House back-pay warning

Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios

Furloughed federal workers aren't guaranteed compensation for their forced time off during the government shutdown, according to a draft White House memo described to Axios' Marc Caputo. Why it matters: If the White House acts on that legal analysis, it would dramatically escalate President Trump's pressure on Senate Democrats to end the week-old shutdown by denying back pay to as many as 750,000 federal workers. Trump wants Democrats to back a continuing resolution to fund the government with no strings about healthcare subsidies attached. "This would not have happened if Democrats voted for the clean CR," a senior administration official said. The big picture: Under Trump, the executive branch is grabbing more power than ever — a trend that's accelerating during the shutdown that began last week. ? Zoom in: At issue is the ''Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019" that Trump signed during the last government shutdown, which lasted a record 35 days. Called GEFTA, the law has been widely interpreted as ensuring that furloughed workers automatically would be compensated after future shutdowns. But the new White House memo from the Office of Management and Budget argues that GEFTA has been misconstrued or, in the words of one source, is "deficient" because it was amended nine days later, on Jan. 25, 2019. "Does this law cover all these furloughed employees automatically? The conventional wisdom is: Yes, it does. Our view is: No, it doesn't," a senior White House official said. Keep reading.

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Republicans Busted Using Stock Photos to Hype Trump’s Oregon Crackdown

State Republicans explained they’re “just bad memers.”

The GOP used a fabricated protest image to cheer Donald Trump’s plan to send National Guard troops into Portland—then shrugged it off as a meme.

On Sunday, the Oregon Republican Party put out a statement on Facebook, Instagram, and X.

“President Trump deploys 300 California National Guard troops to Portland,” it claimed, pairing it with a fiery street scene featuring riot cops and red flares.

However, there were two problems with the post. Firstly, hours after the post went up, a federal judge blocked the deployment.

And, as reported by The Guardian, the picture wasn’t taken in Portland—or even the U.S.

Rather, it was a composite of two stock shots. One was a 2008 photo of South American riot police, with the big giveaway that officers were holding shields with “Policia,” the Spanish word for police, on them.

The other was a 2017 protest scene by a Brazilian photographer from a free image library, featuring a crowd of demonstrators lighting up the night sky with red flares.

When called out by the Guardian, the party replied on X: “We’re not reporters, just bad memers.” The post has been removed.

In a statement to the Daily Beast, the Oregon GOP said, “The graphic was created by one of our volunteers…using stock photos which—unbeknownst to us—included foreign imagery. The post was promptly removed once the misperception was identified.”

The post came ahead of U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut—appointed by Trump in 2019—issuing orders that blocked the president from federalizing Oregon’s National Guard and from using California Guard units in Portland. The Trump administration has framed Portland as a “war zone” in a string of press releases, but local reporting shows protests outside ICE’s Portland field office have been small and largely uneventful compared to the dystopian imagery. Immergut first halted federalization on Saturday night before extending the restriction, while California officials announced their own court win preventing any out-of-state deployment of California troops.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/republicans-busted-using-stock-photos-to-hype-donald-trumps-oregon-crackdown/?

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Trump Cracks Open Door on Major Step Toward Martial Law

It is not the first time the president has threatened to use a centuries-old law to bypass the courts and the states.

President Donald Trump says he’s willing to use the Insurrection Act to deploy the military against Americans in U.S. cities if federal courts continue to thwart his agenda.

In an ominous sign of things to come, the president also vowed “to go city by city” using federal troops to crack down on crime, insisting it was for the good of the country.

The comments came after the White House ordered 300 Illinois National Guard troops to be deployed to Chicago—plus hundreds more from Texas—to protect federal buildings and ICE immigration agents from “radical left” protesters.

Trump also tried to surge the military in Oregon, but a federal judge has temporarily blocked his plan after finding there was no violent insurgency to justify it.

“The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts,” wrote U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, who Trump appointed in 2019.

As tensions within the White House escalated on Monday, Trump said he would consider using the Insurrection Act to bypass the legal system to surge the military if federal courts and Democratic leaders continued to block him.

“We have an Insurrection Act for a reason,” Trump told reporters. “If I had to enact it, I’d do that.”

“If people were being killed and courts were holding us up, or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure I’d do that... We have to make sure our cities are safe.”

The Insurrection Act of 1807 is a federal law that allows the president to deploy the U.S. military or federalize state National Guard troops in order to quell what he deems an insurrection against the United States.

The president floated the idea of using the act to deal with civil unrest while he was campaigning to return to the White House last year, but has yet to invoke it.

However, the administration has ratcheted up its rhetoric in recent days, with top White House aide Stephen Miller—the architect of Trump’s deportation strategy—even claiming a “legal insurrection” was taking place against the president by members of the judiciary.

“We need to have district courts in this country that see themselves as being under the laws and Constitution and not being able to take for themselves powers that are reserved solely for the president,” Miller said.

Invoking the Insurrection Act would almost certainly be challenged by those who believe the president is manufacturing a crisis to expand his authority over Democratic cities.

Trump insisted he simply wants to make America safe, describing Portland as a “hellhole” and Chicago as a “war zone” filled with violent crime.

“We’re going to make Chicago really great again, and we’re going to stop this crime, then we’re going to go to another one and we’re going to go city by city,” he told reporters.

In Portland, protesters have gathered for months in a block surrounding an ICE building.

While there have been relatively few flare-ups in that time, clashes have escalated enough in recent days for the administration to claim the city is “under siege” by far left militants.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, a weekend of clashes between federal law enforcement and protesters also resulted in Trump moving to deploy more troops to the Windy City.

Trump’s push for troops in Chicago and Portland comes days after the president told a meeting of top generals last week that “dangerous” U.S. cities should be used as military training grounds.

“We’re under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways, because they don’t wear uniforms,” he said.

“At least when they’re wearing a uniform, you can take them out.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-cracks-open-door-on-major-step-toward-martial-law/?

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Trump, 79, Rambles About Heaven While Insisting There’s No Other Reason to ‘Be Good’

The almost-octogenarian president has offered his MAGA musings on the eternal polls in the sky.

Donald Trump has weighed in on some of the more pressing matters of theological ethics that’ve otherwise confounded history’s greatest thinkers for thousands of years.

“You know, there’s no reason to be good. I wanna be good because you wanna prove to God you’re good so you go to that next step, right?” the president told reporters, presumably in reference to the eternal rewards of heaven, rather than the alternative. “That’s very important to me. I think it’s really, very important.”

Trump’s second stint in the White House has sparked mounting concerns over his administration’s willingness to uphold the United States’ time-tested adherence to the separation of church and state.

His comments came in response to a reporter’s questions about a new “America Prays” initiative by the White House, under which Trump is “inviting America’s great religious communities to pray for our nation and for our people” to mark next year’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

“I’ve felt for a long time that if a country doesn’t have religion, doesn’t have faith, doesn’t have God, it’s gonna be very hard to be a good country,” the president added during Monday’s press conference.

Critics have warned the MAGA administration’s launch of a new Religious Liberty Commission may well open the way for Christian Nationalist organizations to advance a faith-based agenda through the country’s public school system.

Meanwhile, a Texas court ruling earlier in July also overturned a decades-long ban on pastors and churches endorsing electoral candidates, which legal experts have said sends out a clear and singular message to all political actors across the country: “Hey, time to recruit some churches.”

More broadly, however, Trump’s comments reflect a seemingly intensifying preoccupation with the afterlife on the part of a 79-year-old president whose administration finds itself increasingly beleaguered with speculation as to the state of his physical and cognitive health.

It was only in August that Trump sent out an email to GOP funders with the subject line “I want to try and get to Heaven,” in which he repeated his claims that his life was spared during last year’s assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally only by virtue of divine intervention.

“Last year I came millimeters from death when that bullet pierced through my skin. My triumphant return to the White House was never supposed to happen!” the email said. “But I believe that God saved me for one reason: TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Not that these theological ruminations would necessarily appear to have proven an anxiety-free philosophical exercise for the high lord of MAGA, with the president offering a candid estimation of his chances when facing the pearly gates during an interview with Fox this summer.

“I’m hearing I’m not doing well,” Trump told network hosts. “I hear I’m really at the bottom of the totem pole. If I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons,” he added of his efforts to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.

He elaborated on how he believes divine forces may weigh his time in the earthly realm, in a subsequent sit-down with radio host Todd Starnes.

“You know, [people] get punished if they’re not good, right? If you don’t think about that, if you’re not a believer, and you believe you go nowhere, what’s the reason to be good, really?” he said. “There has to be some kind of a report card up there someplace, you know, like, let’s go to heaven, let’s get into heaven, and it’s sort of a beautiful thing.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/president-donald-trump-79-rambles-about-heaven-while-insisting-theres-no-other-reason-to-be-good/?

ps:I guess it's OK to make a mockery of Christianity and God!!!!!

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Trump Leaves Door Open to Maxwell Pardon While Pretending Not to Know Her

The president said he would look at the case of Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.

President Donald Trump said he would look at the case of Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell—while acting like he barely knew her.

The Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of the convicted sex trafficker, who is currently serving 20 years in prison.

During an afternoon appearance in the Oval Office, Trump was asked if he would consider pardoning Maxwell in light of Monday’s Supreme Court decision, and he did not close the door on it.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked the president about the Supreme Court rejecting Maxwell’s appeal and a potential pardon while he was taking reporters’ questions.

Collins noted that a presidential pardon was her only option to get out of prison in the near future and asked if the president was open to pardoning her.

“Who are we talking about?” Trump asked as if he had not heard the name.

“Ghislaine Maxwell,” Collins clarified.

“You know, I haven’t heard the name in so long,” Trump responded.

“I can say this‚ that I’d have to take a look at it," Trump continued. “I would have to take a look.”

Maxwell’s name has come up numerous times in questions to the president and the White House in recent months after the Trump administration botched the release of the Epstein files.

Trump’s response on Monday was also not the first time the president has left the door open to pardoning Maxwell, whom he has known since before he ever ran for president, but has desperately attempted to distance himself from.

The president on Monday asked what had happened with the Supreme Court request, to which Collins explained to Trump that the court had rejected hearing her case.

“I see. Well, I’ll take a look at it,” Trump said. “I will speak to the DOJ.”

The president, similar to when he was asked about in the past, did not rule out a pardon.

“I wouldn’t consider it or not consider it. I don’t know anything about it,” the president added. “I will speak to the DOJ.”

When pressed on why she would be a potential candidate for a pardon, the president insisted he did not know but repeated he would speak to the Justice Department.

Trump said he would look at it but claimed “a lot of people” have asked him for pardons.

When it was pointed out to the president that Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking, the president repeated simply that he would have to “take a look at it.”

“I didn’t know they rejected. I didn’t know she was even asking for it, frankly,” the president said.

In July, Trump said that he was “allowed” to pardon Maxwell when asked about it, but he claimed no one had approached him with the request.

Maxwell’s lawyer at the time said they were not just appealing to the Supreme Court but to the president directly.

Maxwell was convicted in 2021 in connection to the late convicted sex offender, but her lawyers argued she was improperly prosecuted following Epstein’s plea deal in Florida years earlier.

On Monday, which was the first day of the Supreme Court’s new term, the country’s highest court said it would not hear Maxwell’s appeal of her conviction.

The Trump administration has been in cleanup mode for months after it said in July it would not release any more files related to the Epstein case, despite promises to do exactly that by top Trump officials.

They also said there would be no more charges related to the case and that there was no Epstein client list. The revelations, which were made in a memo, sparked an avalanche of questions about what the Justice Department knew. It also launched a series of allegations about a cover-up.

Trump’s former personal attorney and current Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche even traveled to Florida to interview Maxwell for two days about what she knew as the administration looked to contain the fallout and distance the president from Epstein and Maxwell.

The administration later released audio and a transcript of Maxwell’s interview with Blanche. In it, she lavished praise on Trump and insisted she had never seen the now-president in any inappropriate setting.

However, the pressure has not let up and some members of Congress are still calling for the full files in the Epstein case to be released.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-leaves-door-open-to-ghislaine-maxwell-pardon-while-pretending-not-to-know-her/?

ps:He barely knows her?? I suppose all his minions believe this bull manure?????

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Trump says he’s open to health care deal but the government must reopen first President Donald Trump cracked the door slightly to negotiations with Democrats on the health care subsidies they have made central to the shutdown fight, then abruptly closed it Monday, leaving the two sides once again at a seemingly intractable impasse. Read more.

Why this matters: “We have a negotiation going on right now with the Democrats that could lead to very good things,” Trump told reporters. “And I’m talking about good things with regard to health care.” Democrats are conditioning their support for a short-term funding patch on extending the health subsidies that lessen the cost of plans offered under the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare.   The comments were one of the few hopeful signs Monday as the government shutdown hit its sixth day. Negotiations between the two parties have been virtually nonexistent since the start of the shutdown despite the impact on federal services. Trump later followed up those comments on his social media site, saying the shutdown must end and work on extending the enhanced tax credits for health insurance would take place separately.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤ At the center of shutdown fight, health care is one of the most intractable issues in Congress   Transportation Secretary says government shutdown adds stress on air traffic controllers   FBI analyzed phone records of senators as part of Trump Jan. 6 probe, lawmakers say   Supreme Court rebuffs push to revive Missouri law barring police from enforcing some U.S. gun laws   Trump’s use of the National Guard sets up a legal clash testing presidential power   WATCH: Trump says he’s open to invoking the Insurrection Act if ‘necessary’   Associated Press disputes Trump’s false characterization of its legal fight over access   Chicago lawsuit accuses Trump administration of ‘silencing the press’   Broadview Mayor imposes protest curfew outside Chicago-area ICE Facility   Portland prosecutors drop case against conservative influencer Nick Sortor after protest arrest   10 more deportees from the US arrive in the African nation of Eswatini   CDC stops recommending COVID-19 shots for all, leaves decision to patients   Social Security Administrator Frank Bisignano is named to the newly created position of IRS CEO   Trump taps longtime investigator to serve as next Justice Department watchdog   Maine is investigating a claim that bundles of ballots ended up in a resident’s Amazon order   Democrat Amy McGrath launches comeback bid in seeking the seat of retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell   Democrats could have a slight shot at flipping a US House seat in Utah under a new congressional map   WATCH: Trump non-committal about Ghislaine Maxwell pardon, says he ‘will speak to the DOJ’   Former LA Mayor Karen Bass’ staffer sentenced to probation for fake bomb threat at City Hall

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Top Prosecutor Faces the Axe Over Major Snub to Trump

Elizabeth Yusi plans to defy the president and reject charges against Letitia James.

A senior prosecutor has told colleagues she plans to refuse charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James—even though it would defy President Donald Trump and likely see her fired.

Elizabeth Yusi, who oversees major cases in the Norfolk arm of the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA), has told co-workers she sees no probable cause to charge James with mortgage fraud, according to MSNBC.

And, reports the outlet, Yusi intends to say so to Trump’s newly installed interim U.S. attorney, Lindsey Halligan, in the coming weeks—regardless of how it will be received.

The move would fly in the face of White House pressure to criminally pursue one of Trump’s most prominent antagonists, and has seen others forced from their posts.

Trump has publicly demanded James’ prosecution, calling her “SCUM” in a Sept. 20 social media post, urging action “NOW!!!”

MSNBC now reports career prosecutors in EDVA are “bracing” for Yusi to be pushed out for refusing to green-light a case many lawyers say lacks enough evidence, just as Erik Siebert, the first acting U.S. attorney Trump installed at EDVA, was.

Halligan—a onetime Trump defense lawyer with no prior prosecutorial experience—was named as interim U.S. attorney on Sept. 23.

Within days of taking over, she secured an indictment of former FBI director and Trump nemesis James Comey on charges that career staff previously deemed too weak.

The James probe stems from a referral by Bill Pulte, Trump’s handpicked Federal Housing Finance Agency director, who alleged James misrepresented a Norfolk home where her niece resides to obtain better loan terms.

James’ attorney Abbe Lowell has said documents show she did not claim the property as her primary residence—emailing a broker that it “WILL NOT be my primary residence”—and any contrary notation was a power-of-attorney error.

James, 66, last year won a civil-fraud verdict against Trump that a New York appeals court upheld while tossing the nearly $500 million penalty in August, prompting Trump to claim “total victory” as James vowed to appeal the financial sanction ruling.

Trump has “repeatedly insisted James face consequences for what he deemed to be a spurious attack on him,” reports MSNBC.

Yusi’s stand comes amid a purge. Siebert resigned before he was pushed on Sept. 19 after resisting pressure to charge James—or to bring additional cases against Comey—before Trump declared he would fire him anyway.

The turmoil intensified last week when Michael Ben’Ary, EDVA’s top national-security prosecutor, was fired after a MAGA influencer questioned his loyalty. In a farewell letter, he blasted political interference that “jeopardiz[es] our national security.”

Legal experts warn that the James matter exemplifies the politicization of federal law enforcement. “This supervisor clearly is doing the right and ethical thing by refusing to bend her legal conclusions to fit the president’s desire for political retribution,” Randall Eliason, a former top public-corruption prosecutor, told MSNBC. He called it “tragic” that careers hang on such decisions.

The DOJ and White House declined to comment either to MSNBC or the Daily Beast, while the White House did not respond to a request for comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-prosecutor-faces-the-axe-over-major-letitia-james-snub-to-donald-trump/?

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Trump Forced to Admit How Much His Key Crusade Has Backfired

The president said he would be working on a bailout for farmers after his tariffs destroyed their biggest market.

President Donald Trump will unveil a bailout plan this week for farmers whose markets have been destroyed by his signature economic policy.

“I’m going to do some farm stuff this week,” the president told reporters at the White House.

That’s Trump speak for finalizing a massive new aid program for farmers who have lost billions of dollars thanks to the president’s tariffs, which sparked a trade war with China earlier this year.

According to The New York Times, China is typically the world’s biggest buyer of American farm products, but this year it began looking elsewhere after Trump imposed tariffs of more than 100 percent on Chinese imports.

The duties are a type of import tax paid by American companies, with the additional costs typically passed on to consumers. The tariffs temporarily priced Chinese products out of the American market.

They have since been reduced to 30 percent, but China has retaliated, in part by imposing a 10 percent duty of its own on American imports, and in part by turning to Brazil and Argentina for agricultural products.

American farmers are on track to sell $10 billion less in soybeans to China compared to last year, and sorghum exports to China—which last year totaled $1.3 billion—are down 97 percent this year, according to The Times.

At the same time, the tariffs have pushed up costs for American farmers, who are facing higher prices for fertilizer and equipment at the exact moment that they’ve lost their biggest customer.

Over the last few years, interest rates have also risen and prices have fallen for key crops.

The result is that prices for nearly every row crop are lower than the cost of production, The Times reported. Republican lawmakers estimate that farmers could need as much as $50 billion in economic support to weather Trump’s trade war.

The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.

During his first term, Trump delivered a $20 billion bailout to farmers—who have long been a reliable voting bloc—after, again, imposing sweeping tariffs on China.

At the time, China retaliated with its own levies on U.S. whiskey, cranberries, pork, and soybeans, forcing the administration to dip into Commodity Credit Corporation funds to help struggling farmers.

This time, that money is gone, but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has vowed to provide “substantial” support to farmers, who say they would welcome the aid but would rather be able to export to their customers.

Bessent owns thousands of acres of soybean and corn farmland in North Dakota that generates as much as $1 million per year in rental income, The New York Times reported in August.

On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal editorial board blasted Trump’s tariff policy as “self-destructive folly,” and argued that the “farm fiasco” underscored that business success now depends on how effectively industries and companies can lobby for tariff relief.

“The Beltway bandits on K Street have never had it so good,” the editorial board wrote. “Mr. Trump’s tariffs are great for the political class, not so much for everyone else.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-forced-to-admit-how-much-his-tariff-crusade-has-backfired/?

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Uproar over Trump's shutdown threat

Members of Congress in both parties bristled at a White House memo — first reported by Axios — arguing that federal workers who have been furloughed as part of the government shutdown are not necessarily entitled to back pay.

• The threat has had little apparent impact with its intended audience — congressional Democrats, Axios' Andrew Solender reports.

? What they're saying: "Every single furloughed federal employee is entitled to back pay. Period, full stop. The law is clear. We will make sure that law is followed," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said at a press conference.

• Even some Republicans weren't wild about the memo.
• "We will pay the workers," Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) told Axios.
• Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told reporters that threatening not to pay workers is "bad strategy" and "probably not a good message to send right now to people who are not being paid."

⚡️ Trump himself, asked about the memo today, told reporters, "It depends on who you're talking about."

• "For the most part, we're going to take care of our people. There are some people that really don't deserve to be taken care of, and we'll take care of them in a different way," he said.

Go deeper.

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Back Pay Uncertainty

President Donald Trump signaled yesterday that furloughed federal workers may not be guaranteed retroactive compensation when the government reopens, a potential shift from previous policy that covered roughly 750,000 employees. A draft memo from the Office of Management and Budget states Congress would need to determine whether nonessential workers are paid back once a spending bill is passed. The move deviates from a 2019 law passed during Trump's first term, which guaranteed back pay for federal employees during funding lapses following a five-week shutdown that began in December 2018. The OMB memo argues that while the 2019 law authorizes back pay, it does not appropriate funds for it.  The uncertainty arises as Senate lawmakers remain deadlocked on dueling funding measures, and the government enters its eighth shutdown day. Democrats have tied support for a short-term funding bill to the extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies, which are set to expire this year.

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✈️ Shutdown hits air travel

Screenshot: CNN Air traffic controller shortages delayed thousands of flights across the country last night as overstretched staff continued to work with no pay during the government shutdown, Axios' Rebecca Falconer writes. Why it matters: Air travel controllers were credited with playing a key role in ending the last major shutdown in 2019. Yesterday, on Day 7 of the shutdown, the FAA reported staffing issues at airports in Chicago, Las Vegas, Nashville and Philadelphia, and at air traffic control centers in the Atlanta, Boston, Dallas and Houston areas. 3,500+ flights were delayed at U.S. airports, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. That included 570+ flights at Chicago's O'Hare and 200+ at Nashville International. State of play: An FAA spokesperson said there have been "increased staffing shortages across the system," which Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attributed to a small uptick in workers calling out sick. When that happens, "the FAA slows traffic into some airports to ensure safe operations." Get the latest.

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These Activists Want to Dismantle Public Schools. Now They Run the Education Department.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been clear about her desire to shut down the agency she runs. She’s laid off half the staff and joked about padlocking the door.

https://www.propublica.org/article/education-department-public-schools-activists-linda-mcmahon-trump?

Trump Canceled 94 Million Pounds of Food Aid. Here’s What Never Arrived.

ProPublica obtained records from the Department of Agriculture that detail the millions of pounds of food, down to the number of eggs, that never reached food banks because of the administration’s cuts.

https://projects.propublica.org/trump-food-cuts/

Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar

Myanmar once counted the U.S. as its largest humanitarian donor. Now, in Asia, it has become the epicenter of the suffering unleashed upon the world’s most vulnerable by President Donald Trump’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development. A statement from the State Department that did not address most of AP’s questions said the U.S. “continues to stand with the people of Burma,” using another name for Myanmar. Read more.

 

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Politics, Not Entertainment (Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic)

View in browser The winter of early 1981 was a simpler time, a gentler time. Like so many college students, I was watching Saturday Night Live in the living room of my small dorm when the SNL cast member Charles Rocket dropped an f-bomb on live television. I looked around at my fellow students. Did we just hear that? The show was already struggling with ratings, and within a few weeks, Rocket and the producer—and eventually, most of the cast—were fired. Oh, to be so young again, and so easily shocked at someone dropping the Mother of All Obscenities on live television. Actually, the Mother of All Obscenities might be the one that includes mother, and if you haven’t heard it lately, former Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris would be happy to refresh your memory. Addressing a gathering in Los Angeles a few days ago, Harris delivered her verdict on the current Trump administration: “These motherfuckers are crazy.” Harris might have gone for the thermonuclear option, but plenty of other politicians are rooting around in the verbal dumpster. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, for example, recently posted a video about the government shutdown in which he tried to sound like Robert De Niro, vowing that the Democratic position on cutting health-care funding was “No. Fucking. Way.” (Sorry, senator. You’ve got the New York accent, but you’re no Bobby D.) And Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on Monday that she’s changing her mind on health care because she wasn’t in Congress “when all this Obamacare, ‘Affordable Care Act’ bullshit started.” Elected officials cursing is a spreading epidemic, and it has to stop. I say this as someone who loves to swear. I was raised by a father who claimed to be offended by profanity, but my dad was just like the Old Man in A Christmas Story: When he was angry—especially at inanimate objects—he would invent swears like a German lexicographer trying to come up with new compound nouns. I went off to college and graduate school and became a man of letters: B.A., M.A., Ph.D. But I never let go of other letters that I love, especially F and all of the delightful things that could be appended to it. I find hauling off with various Anglo-Saxonisms cathartic on those occasions when I bang my elbow on the edge of my chair or have to reboot a balky router for the 19th time. I know it’s crude, but I console myself with the conclusions of a 2015 study that suggested that swearing may actually be a sign of intelligence. People who are “good at language,” Timothy Jay, one of the study’s authors, said to CNN, “are good at generating a swearing vocabulary.” You bet your ass we are. Sorry, sorry. Habit. But even though swearing has its honored place in my life, I don’t want to hear it from my elected officials. One of the delights of swearing is that it’s unusual, a release from normal decorum that comes only from extraordinary circumstances. (For a great example of how unexpected cursing can be funny and perfectly timed, watch this clip from the 1987 film Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, which has almost no profanity until Steve Martin’s character is finally pushed over the brink by a rental company that rented him a nonexistent car.) If you swear all the time or in every circumstance, however, it’s not swearing—it’s just the way you talk. Russians, in my experience, are the leaders in casual cursing, and after a while, you don’t hear it anymore; you just think that obscene words are regular particles of Russian speech. Frequent cursing can become tiring instead of funny. As the swearing-study author Jay notes, the strategic use of obscenity “is a social cognitive skill like picking the right clothes for the right occasion. That’s a pretty sophisticated social tool.” If only American politicians could be that sophisticated. Instead, politics in the United States is plagued by middle-aged people swearing just to seem cool. They are not cool. The Democrats have some true public-swearing champs, but President Donald Trump and the wannabe tough guys who surround him are no slouches in the profanity competition. Presidents historically have shown more decorum than the common folk in Congress—especially that rabble in the House, of course—but not Trump. He loves the word bullshit, which he has used while speaking publicly in the White House, and he’s not above tippling the harder stuff: Iran and Israel, he said to a press spray some months ago, have been fighting so long that “they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.” The president is the most effortlessly vulgar of the bunch when he swears, because when he talks about almost anything, he already sounds like a low-level Mafia guy complaining about what he has to kick upstairs to the bosses. Yesterday, when asked about who would be given back pay after the government shutdown ends, he said that “for the most part, we’re going to take care of our people. There are some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way.” That’s a statement that actually would have sounded even more naturally mookish if it had some profanity in it. Vice President J. D. Vance and Secretary of Facial Grooming Pete Hegseth have also both apparently decided that public cursing is edgy. “We’re done with that shit,” Hegseth told a conference of generals and admirals last week, with “that shit” meaning all that “woke” stuff I don’t like. I’ve worked with a lot of senior officers, and I know the military is a swearing culture, but men and women with stars on their shoulders have all mastered some basic rules of public deportment, and Hegseth’s naughtiness landed in front of that audience with a quiet thud. Vance, whose White House portfolio now seems to consist of trolling on social media, is perhaps the most artificial and wince-inducing swearer in the administration. When an interlocutor on X suggested last month that blowing up speedboats on the high seas is a war crime, Vance summoned his years of legal training at Yale and responded: “I don’t give a shit what you call it.” Did you get a little shiver from the icy manliness of that statement? Vance also called the podcaster Jon Favreau a “dipshit” online, which produces something less of a frisson. (California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has taken to trolling the administration, later used the same word to refer to Vance.) Here, I must admit that I have been part of the problem. In 2021, in this magazine, I called Vance an “asshole.” But I had a serious discussion with my editors about using that one word, just once. I haven’t done it since, and with the exception of a few podcasts here and there, I try not to swear in public. I accept that American culture has become, shall we say, more tolerant. We’ve come a long way since Norman Mailer’s publisher made the silly demand that he replace the classic f-bomb with “fug” in his 1948 novel, The Naked and the Dead, which supposedly prompted the actor Tallulah Bankhead to say, upon meeting Mailer, “So you’re the young man who can’t spell fuck.” I don’t really wish for a return to the days when network censors deliberated over the acceptability of hell and damn on TV shows. (Watch the stilted result here of when actors on House, M.D. had to call House an “ass” a million times, when they clearly meant to add a second syllable.) The advent of cable has freed a lot of entertainment from these artificial constraints. Politics, however, is not entertainment. Some voters may want political life to sound like a reality show, but politicians shouldn’t give them one. I expect politicians to model the behavior they’d like to see in the electorate instead of attempting to feign authenticity by being crude. And yes, I still think politics should be a noble calling, and I would like political leaders to set standards for our kids—and everyone else—in public. I know this is a fantasy. For more than 30 years, from the time of the Clintons to the Trumps, our political culture has become more vulgarized, with no one more lacking in taste and class than our current president. But everyone else in public life can do better, instead of acting like a bunch of foul-mouthed sh— Well, you know. Related: MAGA world is so close to getting it. A Democrat for the Trump era

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Trump Sacrifices Alaska Wilderness to Help AI Companies

President Donald Trump approved on Monday the construction of a 211-mile road right through the Brooks Range Foothills and across the Northwestern Alaskan Arctic, including 26 miles of Gates of the Arctic National Park. The administration justified its decision to allow a mining company to carve through the arctic foothills with a simple explanation: Building the road will benefit the American artificial intelligence industry.

https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/trump-ai-alaska-national-park-ambler-road/?

The Sinister Reason Trump Is Itching to Invoke the Insurrection Act

President Donald Trump teased a dangerous escalation on Monday afternoon, threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act to send military forces to U.S. cities, should pesky judges and state leaders continue to thwart his ambitions to assault and occupy blue states.

https://theintercept.com/2025/10/07/trump-insurrection-act/?

Trump’s War on Drugs

From Afghanistan to Iraq, the United States has long used drone strikes to take out people it alleges are terrorists or insurgents. It’s a legacy that started under President George W. Bush and greatly expanded under President Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has taken this tactic to new extremes, boasting about lethal strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and declaring the U.S. is in a “non-international armed conflict” with narcotics traffickers.

https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/collateral-damage-podcast-trump-war-drugs/?

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Gaza breakthrough

A peace agreement has been reached between Israel and Hamas that — in its first phase — includes the partial withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas, Axios' Barak Ravid and Dave Lawler write.

• The breakthrough, announced by President Trump last night, comes two years after Hamas' Oct. 7 attack, with Gaza almost entirely destroyed and more than 67,000 Palestinians killed, according to the Gaza health ministry.
• A U.S. official told Axios: "The war in Gaza is over. The hostages will be released 72 hours after the Israeli Cabinet approves the deal. The release is expected to happen by Monday."

? Trump told Barak in a brief phone call last night that he is "likely going to Israel in the coming days" to address the country's parliament, the Knesset.

• The president said he'd just had a "great" call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "He is so happy. He should be. It is a great achievement. The whole world has come together to reach this deal, including countries that were enemies."

Via Truth Social

? Zoom in: Negotiations to finalize the deal took place in Egypt, with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arriving yesterday morning to represent the U.S.

• Negotiators from Israel and Hamas and mediators from Qatar, Egypt and Turkey also participated.
• The deal is based on the 20-point plan Trump announced last week.
• Thorny issues such as the process for disarming Hamas and the future governing structure of Gaza still need to be negotiated.

Status report: 20 of the remaining 48 Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas are believed to be alive.

• Israel has also agreed to release 250 Palestinians serving life sentences in Israeli prisons and 1,700 Palestinians detained by the IDF in Gaza since Oct. 7.

? What's next: Trump's statement was somewhat cautious, only referring to this as an agreement on the "first phase."

• The next phases could be just as difficult, given the complex issues involved in removing both Israeli forces and Hamas leadership from Gaza and creating a new political and security architecture.