October 2025 News

Editor’s Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and October 2025 news and views

Note: Excerpts are from the authors’ words except for subheads and occasional “Editor’s notes” such as this.

Oct. 4

New York Times, Trump Seizes On Shutdown to Punish Political Foes, Tony Romm, Oct. 4, 2025. President Trump has embarked on a legally dubious campaign to weaponize the federal budget during a contentious government shutdown, halting more than $27 billion in approved funding in a bid to punish Democratic-led cities and states.

Rather than broker a legislative truce or seek to ameliorate the fallout of a costly fiscal stalemate, the president has leveraged the crisis to exact revenge on rivals, slash federal spending and pressure Democrats into accepting his political demands.

Since the shutdown started on Wednesday, the Trump administration has canceled or delayed federal aid to 16 states, most of them run by Democrats. In the latest example, Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, said on Friday that the administration would halt about $2.1 billion in approved funding for long-planned transit improvements in Chicago.The funding cuts are a stark escalation in Mr. Trump’s campaign to cut federal spending and reconfigure the budget in service of his political priorities. Since returning to office, the president has closed agencies and programs while halting or canceling billions of dollars in enacted funds, acting out of a belief that he can override lawmakers to achieve his agenda.

Mr. Trump has attacked funding for science and research, public education, public broadcasting, green energy, transportation infrastructure, disaster response, federal oversight and foreign aid. He has often blocked this money because he believes it was being spent wastefully or fraudulently, or because it did not conform to his views on policies like immigration.

States and other recipients have filed dozens of lawsuits to force the release of federal aid, claiming that the president has broken the law by withholding congressionally approved funds. A federal court ordered the Trump administration this week to restore $187 million in counterterrorism funding to New York, which the federal government had stripped without explanation.Trump Administration: Live UpdatesUpdated Oct. 2, 2025, 6:14 p.m. ETOct. 2, 2025

Trump name-checks Project 2025 as he threatens to dismantle agencies. Partisan language was inserted into Education Department workers’ automated emails without their consent. ‘Really bummed’: Visitors find a closed presidential library in Atlanta.

But Mr. Trump has remained undeterred by legal threats and unconstrained by Republicans in Congress. He and Mr. Vought, an architect of the conservative Project 2025 blueprint, have instead seized on the moment to test the limits of their powers.

“We have the authority to make permanent change in the bureaucracy here in government,” Mr. Vought told Fox Business on the eve of the shutdown.

Hours into the shutdown, Mr. Vought began by taking aim at New York City. He wrote on social media that the administration would halt $18 billion in infrastructure funding “to ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional DEI principles,” using the initials for diversity, equity and inclusion.

New York Times, Israel and Hamas Say They’ll Work With Trump’s Gaza Plan, but Gaps Remain, Aaron Boxerman, David M. Halbfinger and Adam Rasgon, Oct. 4, 2025. Israel said it would cooperate with the White House to end the war, but much is still unclear about Hamas’s future and whether it will agree to disarm.

Israel and Hamas signaled a readiness to move forward with parts of President Trump’s cease-fire plan in what many hoped would lead to a diplomatic breakthrough, but significant gaps will need to be negotiated to bring an end to the war in Gaza.

The Israeli government said on Saturday morning that it was preparing for the “immediate implementation” of the first steps of Mr. Trump’s proposal. Hours earlier, Hamas said in a statement that it would release all of its remaining hostages, a key part of the plan, but the group did not directly address many other parts of it.

Mr. Trump exuded confidence that a deal was imminent, saying it was a “big day” while also exhorting Israel to stop bombing Gaza. He conceded that negotiators still needed “to get the final word down in concrete.”

Neither Israel nor Hamas were explicit in their statements about what had long been seen as the major sticking points to reaching an agreement. Hamas’s statement did not say whether it would accept Mr. Trump’s stipulation, backed by Israel, that the group disarm.

It was also unclear whether Israel was willing to accept any major changes to Mr. Trump’s plan, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said he supported during a visit to the White House this week.ImagePresident Trump shakes hands with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House on Monday.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Israeli negotiators were preparing on Saturday to travel abroad for indirect talks with Hamas, but it was not known when they would leave, said four officials from the region, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive political matters.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Mediators from Qatar and Egypt were holding their own talks with Hamas about the proposal, while the United States was speaking with Israel, according to another two diplomats with knowledge of the contacts, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

Israelis and Palestinians were caught between disbelief, tentative hope and utter confusion after the back-to-back developments, which many hoped could at least bring an end to the nearly two-year war.

The Israeli military said it was also preparing for the potential release of hostages, but it was unclear how that was influencing conditions in Gaza City, where Israeli forces have launched a sweeping ground offensive that forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to flee.

Avichay Adraee, an Israeli military spokesman, warned displaced Palestinians against seizing on the optimism around a cease-fire to try to return to the north of the enclave. Israeli soldiers “are still surrounding Gaza City, and attempting to return there poses extreme danger,” he said on social media.

Two Palestinians in Gaza said explosions and gunfire continued into the early morning, suggesting continued Israeli military activity. Many Gazans, exhausted and traumatized by the war, say they hope Hamas makes whatever concessions necessary to reach a deal with Israel.

“Get us out of this situation in any way possible, and quickly,” said Abdelkarim al-Harazin, a doctor who recently fled Gaza City for the south of the enclave. “We’ve been through this before, a million times, thinking that it might happen — only to get burned.”

New York Times, News Analysis: For Netanyahu, Trump’s Nod to Peace Puts Him in a Tough Spot, David M. Halbfinger, Oct. 4, 2025. The Israeli leader thought he had a plan from the U.S. president that would have represented total victory over Hamas. Suddenly, it looks as though he might not get everything he wants. This did not go the way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted.

On Monday, the Israeli leader won a peace plan from President Trump that promised him total victory, in the form of a take-it-or-leave-it message to Hamas. The militant group would have to release all the Israeli hostages remaining in Gaza within 72 hours, lay down its arms and surrender any role in the territory’s future — or Israel would be given a free hand to pursue the group’s destruction.

On Friday, responding to a new ultimatum from Mr. Trump, Hamas announced that it was ready to release all the hostages. But it said nothing about how soon it would do so, demurred on laying down its arms, and said it wanted to “discuss the details” of Mr. Trump’s plan.

To Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of Mr. Netanyahu’s, this was “in essence, a rejection by Hamas” of the president’s proposal, he wrote on social media.

To Michael Herzog, Mr. Netanyahu’s former ambassador to the United States, it was “a ‘no’ cloaked as a ‘yes,’” he said in an interview.

Yet Mr. Trump embraced the Hamas statement as an unqualified “yes.” “Based on the Statement just issued by Hamas, I believe they are ready for a lasting PEACE,” he wrote on social media. “Israel must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza, so that we can get the Hostages out safely and quickly!”

Mr. Netanyahu’s office waited several hours before responding, after 3 a.m. Israel time on Saturday, that the country was ready for the “immediate release of all hostages.” It made no mention of Hamas’s conditions. Instead, it referred back to Mr. Trump’s peace plan, saying Israel would cooperate with the White House “to end the war in accordance with the principles set forth by Israel that are consistent with President Trump’s vision.”

The prospect of a return of the hostages and an end to the war buoyed hopes in both Israel and Gaza on Saturday after nearly two years of brutal conflict and devastation.

Mr. Netanyahu now finds himself squeezed both by domestic political concerns and by geopolitical pressure from Mr. Trump, from Muslim and Arab nations across the Middle East, and from countries far and wide that greeted Friday night’s developments as if peace had already broken out.

“He will find himself with the entire world clapping and he needs to explain why he’s against it,” said Eran Etzion, a former deputy Israeli national security adviser.

The president’s call for the Israeli military to stand down immediately — with negotiations to follow between Israel and Hamas — could not have been welcomed by the prime minister, Mr. Etzion said. “These negotiations will be conducted under the conditions of a cease-fire, which is contrary to Netanyahu’s design,” he said. “Netanyahu wanted this all to take place under Israeli military pressure.”

The turn of events on Friday night was also likely to threaten Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition. His right-wing partners had already been informed, through Mr. Trump’s Monday proposal, that they would have to abandon their dreams of forcing Palestinians to leave Gaza for good, allowing Israelis to settle and annex the coastal enclave. Now, they were effectively being told that Hamas would not be going away after all, and might not even agree to disarm.

“I don’t see how his coalition partners can live with that,” said Shira Efron, an analyst on Israeli policy at RAND Corporation, a think tank.

“If Netanyahu wants to market it as an achievement, he can,” she said, by noting the Trump plan would end the war, return the hostages, replace Hamas with some other entity to govern Gaza, and bring Arab and Muslim nations in to help with the stabilization and reconstruction of the enclave.

“But his partners were hoping for a different story,” she said. “An unrealistic story.”

New York Times, Trump Administration Is Said to Plan to Cut Refugee Admissions to a Record Low, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Hamed Aleaziz and Miriam Jordan, Updated Oct. 4, 2025. Many of the slots would go to white South Africans and others facing “unjust discrimination,” according to people familiar with the matter and documents obtained by The New York Times.

The Trump administration plans to slash refugee admissions to a record low level in the upcoming year, reserving a bulk of the limited slots for white Afrikaners from South Africa and others facing “unjust discrimination,” according to people familiar with the matter and documents obtained by The New York Times.

President Trump is expected to lower the ceiling on refugee admissions to 7,500, a drastic decrease from the cap of 125,000 set by the Biden administration last year, according to a presidential determination dated Sept. 30 and signed by Mr. Trump.

The new limit would effectively shut the door to thousands of families waiting in camps around the world and refocus a program meant to provide sanctuary for those fleeing war and famine to support mostly white South Africans.

A White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the unannounced plans for the refugee program, said the limit on admissions would be final only when the administration consulted with Congress, as the federal government is required by law to do each year. The official said the government shutdown was preventing that consultation from happening and claimed no refugees would be admitted into the country in the fiscal year that started on Oct. 1 until Democrats and Republicans reached a deal to fund the government.

Democrats in Congress said this week that Mr. Trump had already missed the deadline and called on him to consult with them.

“Despite repeated outreach from Democratic and Republican committee staff, the Trump administration has completely discarded its legal obligation, leaving Congress in the dark and refugees in limbo,” Representatives Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Senators Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Alex Padilla of California said in a statement.

“The consequences are dire,” they said, adding that the virtual shutdown of the refugee program was “betraying the nation’s promise as a refuge for the oppressed.”

Mr. Trump took steps to effectively kill the refugee program when he signed an executive order on the first day of his second term suspending resettlement for most refugees. He has also effectively cut off migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border from seeking protection under another program known as asylum, part of a broader effort to restrict immigration to the United States.

Mark Hetfield, the president of HIAS, a Jewish resettlement agency, said the administration was eroding America’s global standing by turning its back on the most vulnerable.Editors’ PicksWhat a Signal in a Failed Star’s Clouds Means for the Search for LifeCan an Ancient Ritual Fix Our Loneliness Problem?Sex in a Power Suit

“Such a low refugee ceiling would break America’s promise to people who played by the rules,” said Mr. Hetfield, whose organization has had to lay off more than half its staff since Mr. Trump gutted funding for the refugee program.

“Trump isn’t just putting the Afrikaners to the front of the line,” Mr. Hetfield said. “He is kicking years-long-waiting refugees out of the line.”

The new ceiling on refugee admissions would be half the previous record low of 15,000 slots that Mr. Trump set before leaving office in 2020.

In the 2024 fiscal year, the United States resettled roughly 100,000 refugees for the first time in more than a decade. That number has withered since Mr. Trump paused the program. Figures for refugee arrivals in the government database have not been updated since he returned to office, but officials working with refugee organizations say just scores of non-South African refugees have been processed into the United States.

When the administration froze the program in January, the White House argued that the nation did not have the resources to absorb refugees after a record number of migrants entered the United States through the U.S.-Mexico border during the Biden administration.

Migrants at the border, however, enter the nation through a program that is separate from the State Department’s roughly 40-year-old refugee program. Applicants for the refugee program must often wait years in camps overseas before coming to the United States. They must pass extensive background checks, interviews and medical exams before they are welcomed to the country.

The Trump administration has argued that the program needs to be upended to align with the national interests of the United States.

For Mr. Trump, that has appeared to mean refocusing the program on South African descendants of Dutch and French settlers who arrived there in the 17th century.

After he suspended refugee admissions in January, Mr. Trump signed an executive order stating his administration would create an exception for Afrikaners from South Africa, even as Congolese families in refugee camps and those hoping to flee civil war in Sudan remained cut off.

Mr. Trump has claimed that the South African minority faces racial persecution in its home country, a claim vigorously disputed by government officials there. Police statistics do not show that white people are more vulnerable to violent crime than other people in South Africa.

The first group of Afrikaner refugees arrived on a chartered flight in May, a remarkably quick turnaround given that families from other nations often wait years for their chance to be vetted and brought to the United States. They were resettled in Alabama, New York and North Carolina, among other states. Dozens more have arrived since then, according to people familiar with their resettlement, who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak about the matter.

Meanwhile, thousands of other refugees who were in the process to be welcomed to the United States remain stuck overseas.

About 130,000 conditionally approved refugees and 14,000 Iranian religious minorities who registered to come to the United States remain in limbo. They had already met American standards for acceptance into the U.S. refugee program.

Twin Falls, a city of about 55,000 in southern Idaho, had been receiving hundreds of refugees annually, until Mr. Trump paused the program. The refugee families there had fled countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea and Sudan, and many had waited years for approval to travel to the United States, living precariously in camps or urban centers.

Some of the newly arrived Afrikaners have also encountered challenges in the United States, even after Mr. Trump said in March that they would enter with a “rapid pathway to Citizenship.”

In May, two Afrikaner families were resettled in Twin Falls. They represented nine out of the first group of 59 Afrikaners who arrived under the Trump relocation program.

The resettlement agency in Twin Falls offered the Afrikaner families the same assistance it gave other refugees, including case management, housing placement and cultural orientation for the first four months.

In June, one Afrikaner family, that of Willem Hartzenberg, was living in a duplex next door to a Sudanese refugee family in a development of tract homes.

He declined to speak with a reporter, and urged her to leave without answering questions. But his partner, Carmen, said they were waiting for their Social Security numbers to begin their job search.

Mr. Hartzenberg could not be reached for an update on his family’s circumstances.

More Global News

New York Times, Sanae Takaichi Is Likely to Be Japan’s Next Leader. Who Is She? Javier C. Hernández and Hisako Ueno, Oct. 4, 2025. Ms. Takaichi would be Japan’s first female prime minister in a country where women are drastically underrepresented at the highest levels of power.

Sanae Takaichi, a veteran conservative lawmaker in Japan who cites Margaret Thatcher as an influence, is set to become Japan’s first female prime minister after prevailing Saturday in an important leadership election.

While she is poised to break a gender barrier in politics, Ms. Takaichi’s own views on women’s rights are complicated, and she has been criticized by some for not doing enough to promote gender equality.

Her rise reflects an eagerness for change by the governing Liberal Democratic Party, which she now leads, after electoral defeats over the past year — as well as the party’s attempt to respond to the growing strength of right-wing groups in Japan.

Here’s what to know about Ms. Takaichi, her views and the challenges she might face in leading Japan.What is Ms. Takaichi’s background?

Ms. Takaichi, 64, grew up in Nara Prefecture in central Japan. She is an unusual figure in high-level Japanese politics because she does not come from a prominent political family. Her mother was a police officer, and her father worked for a car company. She was first elected to Parliament in 1993.

She attended Kobe University, where she played drums and drove a motorcycle. After graduation, she spent time in the United States, interning with Representative Patricia Schroeder of Colorado, a Democrat.How did she rise in politics?

In the 2000s, Ms. Takaichi became an ally of Shinzo Abe, who went on to become a long-serving prime minister. He was assassinated in 2022 after he had stepped down. Like Mr. Abe, she supported amending the pacifist Constitution, a contentious position in a country wary of military aggression.

U.S. Governance, Politics

New York Times, Treasury Plans to Mint $1 Commemorative Trump Coin, Alan Rappeport, Oct. 4, 2025 (print ed.). The coin, bearing President Trump’s face, would honor the 250th birthday of the United States.

The Treasury Department is developing a one-dollar commemorative coin in celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday bearing the image of President Trump.

According to draft images of the coin posted on social media by the U.S. treasurer, Brandon Beach, the “heads” side would have Mr. Trump’s profile and the “tails” side an image of him standing before the American flag and pumping his fist under the words “Fight, Fight, Fight.” The coin would be legal tender and go into circulation in 2026.

The Treasury is authorized to mint the coins for a year, according to the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020. The coins must have “designs emblematic of the U.S. semiquincentennial,” the legislation says.

It is not clear that Mr. Trump’s image can be featured on a coin. An 1866 law enshrined a tradition that only deceased people could appear on U.S. currency to avoid the appearance that America was a monarchy.

An explanation of the legislation on an archived page from the Treasury’s website noted that the act “was caused by an uproar over the actions of the chief of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, Spencer Clark,” who had “placed himself on a five-cent note and had a large quantity of them printed before it was noticed.”

That webpage has been removed from the Treasury’s website.

A Treasury spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the legality of featuring Mr. Trump on the coin.

Mr. Beach said in his social media post that more information about the coins would be shared soon, “once the obstructionist shutdown of the United States government is over.”

Law, Courts, Crime

Politico, Would-be Kavanaugh assassin sentenced to over 8 years in prison, Josh Gerstein, Oct. 3, 2025. Prosecutors had sought a 30-year sentence. Sophie Roske was arrested near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home carrying a bag containing a gun, ammunition, a knife and other tools.

A person who admitted to traveling to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Maryland home in 2022 in an aborted attempt to kill him was sentenced Friday to just over eight years in prison by a judge who called the crime “incredibly serious,” but found unreasonable prosecutors’ recommendation of at least 30 years behind bars.

U.S. District Court Deborah Boardman imposed a 97-month prison term— just one month more than defense attorneys proposed — on Sophie Roske, 29, at the end of a daylong sentencing hearing. The judge also ordered that Roske be on supervised release, a form of probation, for the rest of her life.

Boardman said her decision to sentence Roske well below federal sentencing guidelines was driven in large part by Roske’s decision to turn herself into police after she approached Kavanaugh’s residence with a gun, other weapons and tools in the middle of the night three years ago.

“This is an atypical defendant and an atypical case. … Though she got far too close to executing her plans, the fact remains she abandoned them,” said Boardman, a Biden appointee. “Sophie Roske’s admission of guilt and effort to come clean did not occur after or even because she was caught in the act by police. … If she had not called 911, law enforcement would never have known about Sophie Roske and her plot to kill a Supreme Court justice.”

Boardman called the crime an act of terrorism and said the eight-year sentence should convey that Roske’s actions were intolerable.

Boardman also said the incident inflicted “real harm” and “anxiety” on Kavanaugh and his family. “He’s a justice on the Supreme Court but he’s a human being, he’s a public servant and he and his family should never have to face the fear of threat because he does his job,” the judge said.

In a tearful statement to the court just before the judge delivered her sentence, Roske expressed deep regret over the incident, which she suggested was driven by a mental health crisis.

“I sincerely apologize to the justice and his family for the considerable distress I put them through,” Roske said, standing at the defense table in a yellow jail uniform. “I have been portrayed as a monster, and this tragic mistake I made will follow me for the rest of my life. I also realized how twisted my thinking and sense of self can become when my mental health is at its worst.”

Defense attorneys disclosed to the court last month that Roske is transgender and now uses the first name Sophie and female pronouns. Defense lawyers and family members did so Friday during their presentation, while the prosecutor who spoke at the sentencing generally avoided the issue by referring to Roske as “the defendant.”

During Friday’s hearing, Boardman questioned whether Roske would receive adequate mental health treatment in federal prison. The judge referenced President Donald Trump’s executive order banning gender-affirming care for federal inmates.

“Let’s not hide the fact that there’s an executive order on this specific topic,” Boardman said.

A lawyer for Roske, Assistant Federal Defender Andrew Szekely, said he is confident that the Bureau of Prisons will give Roske the medicine she requires, but “beyond that little is sure.”

When delivering the sentence, the judge said she took Roske’s transgender status into account, although she didn’t say how much weight she gave to that issue.

“I take into consideration the conditions of pre-trial confinement and the fact that she is a transgender woman and will be sent to a male-only [Bureau of Prisons] facility,” Boardman said.

Prosecutors had sought a sentence of at least 30 years in prison, while defense attorneys recommended an eight-year prison sentence followed by 25 years of probation. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday the Justice Department would appeal the “the woefully insufficient sentence imposed by the district court, which does not reflect the horrific facts of this case.”

“The attempted assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was a disgusting attack against our entire judicial system by a profoundly disturbed individual,” Bondi said.

Politico, Republicans Have a Senate Map Without the Meltdowns, Jonathan Martin, Oct. 3, 2025. Trump may be the kingmaker, but with Thune working behind the scenes, Republicans are avoiding the messy primaries that once cost them winnable Senate seats.

hile Washington is gripped with the federal government shutdown, the most revealing congressional news this week may have come from Birmingham rather than the beltway. It’s in Alabama, where college football talk show host Paul Finebaum is musing about trading calls from Phyllis from Mulga (RIP) for quorum calls in the United States Senate.

Finebaum is set to visit Washington for meetings with Republicans later this month and is serious about a possible bid, I’m told. Still, it remains to be seen if the “Mouth of the South” wants to spend the better part of his retirement years on airplanes as a freshman senator for a $174,000 salary that’s well south of his ESPN payday (assuming the newly-revealed Republican can get through a purity test of a GOP primary).

What’s significant about the Finebaum float — his interest in a run and, more to the point, the interest in him — is how it illustrates the paradox of today’s Senate Republicans.

Senate GOP Leader John Thune and his lieutenants have largely remained silent as President Donald Trump has ordered the Justice Department to target his adversaries, enriched himself and his family through brazen self-dealing and repeatedly stepped on congressional prerogatives, among other transgressions they’d never tolerate from a Democratic president. The reason the Republican pushback on the FCC’s threats against Jimmy Kimmel stood out last month is because GOP lawmakers have otherwise been so pliant.

Yet at the same time — and with purposefully little fanfare — Thune and other lawmakers have quietly gone about trying to normie’ize their conference with mainstream Republicans. Of course, what’s normal in the Trump era is all relative — the price of admission for every GOP senator and would-be senator not named Murkowski or Collins is complete and total fealty to the president.

What Thune is doing, though, is shaping a Senate Republican conference that will outlast Trump (if not Trumpism) and offer some ballast against a House that’s sure to move with the momentary tides toward isolationism and populism.

Trump gets winners and Thune gets to repurpose the GOP’s one-man primary to protect his incumbents and anoint his preferred open seat candidates. Not that Thune would ever say it out loud, but he’s effectively reprogramming the ultimate anti-establishment leader to put down any insurgencies. And Trump is happy to do it, as long as the candidates say nice things about him.

Just glance at the 2026 Senate map. What jumps out, with one very important exception, is what’s not happening: Unlike so many times in the last 15 years, Senate Republicans are not poised to throw away winnable seats because of messy primaries and controversial nominees.

You know the roster, which probably still causes Mitch McConnell to wake up in the middle of the night: Kari Lake, Roy Moore, Blake Masters, Dr. Oz, Herschel Walker, Matt Rosendale. I could go on. Christine O’Donnell, witch, etc. But you get the point.

Largely thanks to Thune’s diplomacy — and, yes, willingness to bite his tongue on Trump’s conduct — almost every Senate Republican incumbent appears to be avoiding a primary challenge that could imperil the seat in the general election.

The president has already endorsed, among others, Senators Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Mike Rounds (S.D.), Jon Husted (Ohio), Shelley Moore Capito (W.V.) and Dan Sullivan (Ark). This early laying of hands effectively insulates these incumbents — who hail from the pre-Trump era of GOP politics — from an intra-party threat.

Just as significant, and far more surprising, Thune and White House aides have convinced Trump there’s nothing to be gained by publicly attacking Senator Susan Collins, let alone calling for a primary against her. With his silence, a word rarely used in the same sentence with Trump, the president has done more for the Senate GOP’s most endangered incumbent than his criticism or praise would in blue-but-bifurcated Maine.

As striking is how swiftly Trump has intervened in a handful of open seat races, perhaps most significantly in Michigan.

By endorsing former Rep. Mike Rogers, who only lost his Senate bid by 0.3 percent last year, the president has spared Thune and Co. of a costly primary in a state once famous for its Republican divisions. Instead, it’s Democrats who will have a protracted primary in the race to succeed Sen. Gary Peters, who’s retiring. A Republican hasn’t won a Senate seat there since 1994, but Rogers, a decidedly pre-Trump figure who’s reinvented himself to pass in Trump’s party, gives them their best chance to win a seat there since, well, he ran in 2024.

The biggest potential mess — one of those primaries of yore that still keep McConnell up at night — is in Texas.

In a difficult midterm where Republicans can’t flip Georgia, Michigan or New Hampshire, it’s possible to squint hard enough and see Texas as either the 50th or 51stt Democratic seat (yes, that involves some intense squinting — and Maine, North Carolina and potentially Ohio going blue).

Media, Tech, Education, Religion, Culture Wars

White House Chronicle, Commentary: The AI Tsunami Is Approaching Shore; Jobs at Big Risk, Llewellyn King, Oct. 4, 2025. The Big One is coming, and it isn’t an earthquake in California or a hurricane in the Atlantic. It is the imminent upending of so many of the world’s norms by artificial intelligence, for good and for ill.

Jobs are being swept away by AI not in the distant future, but right now. A recent Stanford University study found that entry-level jobs for workers between 22 and 25 years old have dropped by 13% since the widespread adoption of AI.

Another negative impact of AI: The data centers that support AI are replacing farmland at a rapid rate. The world is being overrun with huge concrete boxes, Brutalist in their size and visual impact.

Meta Platforms (of which Facebook is part) plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build several massive AI data centers; the first called Prometheus and the second Hyperion.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on his Threads social media platform: “We’re building multiple more titan clusters as well. Just one of these covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan.”

Data centers are voracious in their consumption of electricity and are blamed for sending power bills soaring across the country.

But AI has had a positive impact on the quality of medicine, improving accuracy, consistency and efficacy, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Predictive medicine is on a roll: Alzheimer’s Disease and some cancers, for example, can be predicted accurately. That raises the question: Do you want to know when you will lose your mind or get cancer?

Where AI is without downside is medical “exaptation.” That happens when a drug or therapy developed for one disease is found to be effective with another, opening up a field of possibilities.

AI also offers the chance of shortening clinical trials for new drugs from years to a few months. Side effects and downsides can be mapped instantly.

Life expectancy is predicted to increase substantially because of AI. Omar Hatamleh, an AI expert and author, told me, “A child born today can expect to live to 120.”

Likewise, predictive maintenance with AI is already useful in forecasting the failure of industrial plants, power station components and bridges.

Oh, and productivity will increase across the board where AI and AI agents — the AI tools developed for special purposes — are at work.

The trouble is AI will be doing the work that heretofore people have done.

Pick a field and speculate on the job losses there. This may be fun to do as a parlor game, but it is deeply distressing when you realize that it could happen in the very near future — like in the next year.

Most are low-skilled white-collar jobs, such as those in call centers, or in medical offices checking insurance claims, or in an accounting firm doing bookkeeping. In short, if you are a paper pusher, you will be pushed out.

Look a little further — maybe 10 years — and Uber, which has invested heavily in autonomous vehicles, will have decided that they are ready for general deployment. Bye-bye Uber driver, hello driverless car.

Taxis and truck drivers might well be the next to get to their career-end destinations quicker than they expected.

By the way, autonomous vehicles ought to have fewer accidents than cars with drivers do, so the insurance industry will take a hit and lots of workers there will get the heave-ho. And collision repairs may be nearly outdated.

These aren’t speculation; they are real possibilities in the near future. Yet the political world has been arguing about other things.

As far as I am aware, when the leadership of the U.S. military gathered at the Marine Corp Base Quantico in Virginia recently to get a pep talk on shaving, losing weight and gender superiority, they didn’t hear about how AI is transforming war and what measures should be taken. Or whether there will be work for those who leave the military.

The Big One is coming, and the politicians are worrying about yesterday’s issues. That is like worrying about your next guest list when an uninvited guest, a tsunami of historic proportions, is coming ashore.

Lincoln Square Media Logue: YouTube Pays Tribute to Trump & the Supreme Court Chips Away at Due Process, CJ (Charles) Penneys, Oct. 4, 2025. A government shutdown should be the headline — instead it’s the background noise. 

If you were wondering what counts as governance, it includes inciting an insurrection and receving no punishment for doing so.

• YouTube, once the platform that muted Trump for inciting an insurrection, now cut him a $24.5 million check that mostly bankrolls his dream of a gaudy White House ballroom — democracy’s funeral catered with Google money.
• At Quantico, the commander-in-chief told a hall of generals that American cities should double as combat training zones, because nothing says freedom like using Detroit as a live-fire exercise. The job market lost 32,000 paychecks while the shutdown gagged the official data, leaving workers guessing and Wall Street sweating.
• The Supreme Court kept churning out rulings on its emergency docket, letting Trump’s policies take effect before anyone could blink, because apparently due process is too “woke.”
• By week’s end, Trump had frozen $26 billion for Democratic states, turning the shutdown into a political ransom note while federal workers mowed cemetery grass for free.

What ties it all together is the alchemy of grievance into power. Trump doesn’t need truth when repetition can baptize a lie. He doesn’t need functioning agencies when dysfunction is proof of his own necessity. He doesn’t need courts to rule on the merits when settlements and shadow dockets deliver faster wins. Chaos isn’t a bug in this system — it’s the business model. The destruction itself becomes the credential.

And so the state becomes a stage, every institution an unpaid extra in the one-man show. Tech companies fund the props, generals provide the uniforms, courts supply the scripts, and workers pick up the bill. Governance isn’t about outcomes anymore; it’s about applause lines. And the audience is forced to watch whether it buys a ticket or not.

YouTube coughed up $24.5 million to end Trump’s lawsuit over his 2021 suspension, transforming what was supposed to be accountability into a funding drive for his next vanity project. Of that haul, $22 million is earmarked for a 90,000-square-foot White House ballroom — a $200 million monument to excess that will outlast his presidency even if democracy doesn’t. The rest of the money trickles to his friends at CPAC and Naomi Wolf, proof that Trump never sues alone, only with a cast of professional grievance merchants. Google didn’t admit guilt, but the check they wrote speaks louder than any press release. A penalty for inciting violence has now become a down payment on chandeliers and catering space; the consequences of insurrection are catered dinners under gilded ceilings.

This is the MAGA twist on justice: Turn accountability into proof of persecution, persecution into lawsuits, and lawsuits into cash. Meta already financed his presidential library in Miami, X cut its check months ago, and now YouTube has bought its way out of the doghouse. Each case becomes a shakedown, with Trump cashing in on the same platforms that once banned him. He’ll call it vindication, spin it as proof that “the fake news” tech overlords admitted fault, and wave around the receipts as trophies. It’s not a settlement, it’s a tribute — the kind mob bosses collect when people know resistance is bad for business. Big Tech, for all its billion-dollar bluster, keeps lining up to pay protection money.

What makes it corrosive is not the payout but the precedent. If the companies that claimed to defend democracy against Trump’s lies are now financing his ballrooms, then democracy isn’t being defended at all — it’s being rented out by the hour. A suspension for undermining the republic has become a cash stream for staging his rallies inside it. Accountability has collapsed into enrichment, punishment into prestige, law into spectacle. Trump doesn’t survive crises; he metabolizes them into monuments. The courtroom that was supposed to restrain him is now underwriting his empire built on grievance and revenge.

New York Times, Charlie Kirk Killing: Journalists at 3 Newspapers Quit Over Edits to a Charlie Kirk Story, Neil Vigdor, Oct. 4, 2025 (print ed.). The publications in Alaska lost significant staffing after the owners made changes to an article that had drawn criticism from a Republican state lawmaker.

Several journalists resigned this week from three newspapers in Alaska after the publications’ corporate owner made significant edits to an article about Charlie Kirk’s death, appearing to yield to pressure from a Republican state lawmaker who had criticized the coverage.

The four journalists, who worked for The Homer News, The Peninsula Clarion and The Juneau Empire, wrote in a joint resignation letter on Monday that they were never consulted about the edits, made by the Alabama-based Carpenter Media Group.

“We believe this destroys the credibility the public has placed in us as reporters and editors,” the journalists wrote. “The willingness to acquiesce to a public official’s editorial demands and have conversations with her about the direction of our coverage is a betrayal not just of the journalists who work for Carpenter Media, but of the company’s integrity as a purveyor of news.”

The letter was signed by Chloe Pleznac, the Homer News reporter who wrote the article; Erin Thompson, the regional editor of the three newspapers and the one who approved the story; Jeff Helminiak, a sports and features editor for The Peninsula Clarion; and Jake Dye, a reporter for the same publication.

The resignations, which they said would take effect on Oct. 13, were accepted immediately and left two of the newspapers with one reporter each, and a third without any journalists on staff, they said.

The article at the center of the revolt chronicled a Sept. 17 vigil in Homer, Alaska, for Mr. Kirk, the Turning Point USA founder and a right-wing ally of President Trump’s who was fatally shot while speaking at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10. The story ran online on Sept. 23 and in print on Sept. 25 in The Homer News, according to Ms. Pleznac.

Its description in the second paragraph of Mr. Kirk — whom the article called a “Christian-Nationalist icon” and defender of “often racist and controversial views” — had struck a nerve with one of the vigil’s co-organizers.

In a letter to the corporate owners of the papers, Sarah Vance, a Republican state representative, assailed the coverage as “hate-baiting at its worst” and suggested that advertisers were planning to boycott the publications. Her criticism was not dissimilar to the political pressure other conservatives have exerted on media companies to punish those whose commentary about Mr. Kirk they deem objectionable, most notably the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, who was temporarily taken off the air after remarks he made on his show in the wake of the shooting.

Soon after publication, something peculiar happened.

“The story just disappeared,” Ms. Thompson, 44, said in an interview on Thursday. “We were all flabbergasted.”Editors’ PicksSex in a Power SuitThe Case for Laughing With Strangers in the DarkShould I Tell an Acquaintance That Her Husband Is Leading a Double Life?

Several hours later, the story was reposted online, with some significant changes to its structure and description of Mr. Kirk, who was 31 years old and played an instrumental role in Mr. Trump’s return to the White House.

In the revised version, the second paragraph appeared about 12 paragraphs into the article stating that Mr. Kirk’s views “have been tied by many to a rise in Christian nationalism across the U.S.” In describing Mr. Kirk’s frequent visits to college campuses, the article said that he had regularly defended his criticism of the Civil Rights Act and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as his opposition to gun control and affirmative action.

Gone from the article was a line stating that Mr. Kirk had perpetuated “conspiracy theories, including Covid-19 and climate misinformation, as well as replacement theory,” which posits that Jews are trying to replace white Americans with nonwhite immigrants.

In a statement on Thursday, Carpenter Media Group, which is based in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and owns more than 250 media properties, said that the journalists’ resignation letter had contained a number of inaccuracies. It did not specify what they were.

“CMG made the decision to edit a piece of content that fell well short of our standard and the standards of unbiased community journalism,” the company said. “We stand firmly by that decision. Our primary responsibility is to the communities we serve, and we will continue to ensure that our publications reflect fairness, accuracy, and respect for these communities.”

All three community newspapers are relatively small. As of 2023, The Homer News, a weekly newspaper, had a print circulation of about 1,205 copies, according to a media kit. It covers Homer, a city of about 6,000 people on the Kenai Peninsula. The journalists said the story also ran on the website of The Peninsula Clarion, in Kenai, Alaska, about 80 miles north of Homer.

Gregory Knight, an aide to Ms. Vance, said she had not asked the media company to make changes to the story. He provided a statement from Ms. Vance saying that she did not expect her complaint to contribute to the resignations.

“My concern has always been singular and straightforward; I want The Homer News to uphold the highest standards of journalism, to provide reporting that is fair, accurate, and free from bias,” Ms. Vance’s statement said. “I place tremendous value on truth and on the vital role that local media plays in keeping residents informed and connected. That commitment to integrity in reporting is the only reason I spoke up.”

Kelly McBride, senior vice president and head of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit focused on raising the standards of journalism, said in an interview on Thursday that she was troubled by the way the story was changed.

“That’s a bad practice because it undermines the independence of the journalists,” Ms. McBride said.

Ms. McBride said that news organizations need to be clear about what their standards are and have consistent policies in place when those are not being met.

She said that there were some similarities in the way the company that owns the papers had responded and Mr. Kimmel’s suspension.

The owner of the publications did “exactly what ABC did,” she said. “They capitulated.”

Ms. Pleznac, 25, who said she had worked in Alaskan public radio newsrooms since she was 18, referred to the resignation letter on Thursday when asked for comment.

The other two journalists who resigned did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Ms. Thompson said that one of her managers had told her the context about Mr. Kirk’s views was presented too high in the article. “They smoothed out the edges,” she said.

She said that initially she had not planned to resign, but could not “see a path forward to do my job in an honest and straightforward way, using my best judgment.”

Oct. 3

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 2, 2025 [Federal Raid on Chicago], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Oct. 3, 2025. At about 1:00 on Tuesday morning, federal agents from Border Patrol, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) raided an apartment building on Chicago’s South Shore Drive.

Using helicopters and large vehicles, as well as flash-bang grenades, and dressed in military fatigues, agents broke down the doors of the residents of the five-story building and pulled them from their homes in zip ties, some of them naked. Agents left the people tied up outside for hours before letting all but 37 of them go. The apartments residents returned to were trashed.

Cindy Hernandez of the Chicago Sun-Times reported on the raid, noting that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said some of those arrested ““are believed to be involved in drug trafficking and distribution, weapons crimes and immigration violators.” It also said the neighborhood was “a location known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates.”

But, as Hernandez reports, DHS did not offer any evidence to support its assertions. Some of the people detained during the raid are U.S. citizens.

Eyewitness Eboni Watson told Cate Cauguiran, Craig Wall, Tre Ward, and Lissette Nuñez of ABC News 7 that the people “was terrified. The kids was crying. People was screaming. They looked very distraught. I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner, because they was bringing the kids down, too, had them zip tied to each other. That’s all I kept asking. What is the morality? Where’s the human? One of them literally laughed. He was standing right here. He said, ‘f*ck them kids.’”

Eyewitness Darrell Ballard told the reporters: “We’re under siege. We’re being invaded by our own military.”

Today, Charlie Savage and Eric Schmitt of the New York Times reported that the Trump administration informed congressional committees that the president has decided the U.S. is in a formal “armed conflict” with the drug cartels the administration has labeled terrorist organizations. If the U.S. is engaged in such an armed conflict, the administration said, those suspected of smuggling drugs for the cartels are “unlawful combatants.”

This declaration backfills the administration’s justification for striking three boats in the Caribbean in September, killing 17. According to international law, Savage and Schmitt explain, in an armed conflict it’s lawful for a country to kill enemy fighters even when they don’t pose a direct threat.

This redefinition is problematic not just because most overdose deaths in the U.S. come from fentanyl from Mexico, not drugs from Venezuela, the home base of the boats the administration struck. Legal experts say that trafficking an illicit consumer product is not the same as armed conflict. It is problematic also because the administration did not identify any of the drug cartels it claims it is engaging in armed conflict, who must be engaged in organized armed combat to be part of an armed conflict.

Even more problematic, as retired judge advocate general (JAG) lawyer Geoffrey S. Corn, who was the Army’s senior advisor for interpreting the laws of war, told Savage and Schmitt, the administration’s declaration is an “abuse” that crosses a major legal line. “This is not stretching the envelope,” he said. “This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart.”

Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, posted: “Every American should be alarmed that Pres[ident] Trump has decided he can wage secret wars against anyone he labels an enemy. Drug cartels must be stopped, but declaring war & ordering lethal military force without Congress or public knowledge—nor legal justification—is unacceptable.”

The declaration means that the administration is laying claim that the U.S. is in an active armed conflict, which would give the president extraordinary wartime powers. This dovetails with the September 17 demand of DHS that the “media and the far left” must stop “the demonization of President Trump, his supporters, and DHS law enforcement.” It also supports Trump’s warning to military leaders on Tuesday that “[w]e’re under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy,” followed by complaints that “Venezuela emptied its prison population into our country” and a vow to “straighten…out” the cities “run by the radical left Democrats.”

That assault is underway now, not only through raids like the one in Chicago on Tuesday, but also by administration figures who are using the government shutdown to hurt Democrats and their constituencies. Independent journalist Marisa Kabas reported this morning that the Department of Education changed out-of-office email replies for furloughed employees from generic messages to ones blaming Democrats for the government shutdown. Leah Feiger and Vittoria Elliott of Wired reported that when employees changed their out-of-office responses back to neutral language, the message changed back to blaming the Democrats.

Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought has vowed to cut $26 billion from projects in New York City that Congress approved, despite the illegality of such impoundments, and has vowed to slash the federal government, again without a lawful basis for such cuts. A shutdown gives Vought no more legal authority than he ever had.

Jordain Carney of Politico reports that even Republicans are concerned about the damage Vought is doing to their own constituents as he attempts to weaponize the government against Democrats. But, as Carney reports, Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) says the Republicans have no control over what Vought might do.

The nation’s rapid advance toward authoritarianism is one story right now, but there is another: the administration is rotting from inside.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo reports that the groundwork required for the mass layoffs Vought has threatened is not apparent, suggesting the administration is trying to project power it does not have.

The Republicans are trying to pin the blame for the shutdown on the Democrats, but Trump is apparently so unstable he is hurting their cause. The Democrats are insisting they will not be complicit in slashing through Americans’ healthcare. The law the Republicans passed in July—the one they call the “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act”—extended tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations but permitted the premium tax credits that subsidized the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) to expire at the end of 2025, and people are already seeing dramatic increases in their healthcare premiums.

On Tuesday, after his 70-minute incoherent speech to the nation’s top military leaders, Trump proved Democrats’ point when he told White House reporters that the administration intends to use the shutdown to cut programs the American people want, including ones that give them access to medical care.

Trump said: “We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for [Democrats] and irreversible by them. Like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like. And you all know Russell Vought, he’s become very popular recently because he can trim the budget to a level that you couldn’t do any other way. So they’re taking a risk by having a shutdown because because of the shutdown, we can do things medically, and other ways, including benefits. We can cut large numbers of people out.” Then, as if recognizing that he had just proved the Democrats’ point, he added a non sequitur: “We don’t want to do that, but we don’t want fraud, waste, and abuse, and you know we’re cutting that.”

Trump reiterated his support for Vought’s program today, posting: “I have a meeting today with Russ Vought, he of PROJECT 2025 Fame, to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent. I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.”

This is another unforced error, with Trump tying himself to Project 2025 after assuring voters before the 2024 election that he had nothing to do with it and knew nothing about it. An NBC News poll from late September 2024 showed that voters who knew about Project 2025 hated it. Only 4% of voters said they liked the plan. It was unpopular even among voters identifying as MAGA Republicans; only 9% of them liked it. As the administration has put Project 2025 into place, it’s unlikely people like it more than they did before. Government agencies are not “Democrat Agencies”; they are agencies that provide services and protections for all Americans. Cuts to them have been widely unpopular.

Yesterday, the day after Trump’s 70-minute rambling talk in front of the nation’s top military leaders, Representative Madeleine Dean (D-PA) confronted House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). A camera caught the exchange:

Dean: “The president is unhinged. He is unwell.”

Johnson: “A lot of folks on your side are, too. I don’t control him.”

Dean: “Oh my God, please. That performance in front of the generals?”

Johnson: “I didn’t see it.”

Dean: “That is so dangerous! You know I serve on Foreign Affairs and Appropriations, this is a collision of those two things. Our allies are looking elsewhere. Our enemies are laughing. You have a president who is unwell.”

Johnson: “I just left the Speaker’s apartment.”

Trump has been posting on social media often since Tuesday but has not appeared in public. Vice President J.D. Vance took the White House press briefing today to answer questions about the government shutdown.

The Contrarian, Opinion: Undaunted, Jennifer Rubin, right, Oct. 3, 2025. Patriots from Boston to Quantico to Portland defend democracy.

We had no shortage of undaunted defenders of democracy this week. In three locations, Americans stepped forward to protect the Constitution and uphold democratic norms.

In one of the most damning opinions I have ever read, Ronald Reagan appointee U.S. District Judge William Young in Boston held that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and their subordinates “acted in concert to misuse the sweeping powers of their respective offices to target non-citizen pro-Palestinians for deportation primarily on account of their First Amendment protected political speech.” He meticulously dissected their gross First Amendment violations, denounced this administration’s attack on dissent, and made a moving plea for Americans to care about our precious rights and liberties.

A sample of what Young wrote about Donald Trump:

He meets dissent from his orders in those other two branches by demonizing and disparaging the speakers, sometimes descending to personal vitriol.

Dissent elsewhere among our people is likewise disfavored, often in colorful scurrilous terms. All this the First Amendment capaciously and emphatically allows. When he drifts off into calling people “traitors” and condemning them for “treason,” however, he reveals an ignorance of the crime and the special burden of proof it requires. More important, such speech is not protected by the First Amendment; it is defamatory. In his official capacity as President, however, President Trump enjoys broad immunity from any civil liability.

Young also excoriated Trump for his retribution campaign against political enemies. “Where things run off the rails for him is his fixation with ‘retribution.’ ‘I am your retribution,’ he thundered famously while on the campaign trail.” He then enumerated instances in which courts have intervened to protect law firms, the media, and universities.

Young ended with an ominous question:

I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected. Is he correct?

This opinion is bound to stand the test of time as a magnificent indictment of Trump and defense of the First Amendment. If only the Supreme Court MAGA justices were as clear-eyed and committed to defense of the Constitution as Judge Young.

Judge Young was not the only heroic figure this week. Hundreds of our top military officers (unnecessarily dragged away from posts around the world to Quantico, Va. at the cost of $6M to taxpayers) illustrated their loyalty to the Constitution. They remained stone-faced and refused to applaud during the most cringeworthy addresses ever delivered by a secretary of defense and a commander in chief.

Trump and his unqualified, clownish Secretary of Defense (who strutted around the stage issuing vulgar pronouncements and silly cliches) grossly underestimated the integrity of our top brass. As the New York Times reported, “The military officers assembled in the room listened silently. It is likely, though, that at least some of them were seething at his suggestion that their collective failure to enforce basic standards had caused, or even contributed to, the military’s failings in Afghanistan and Iraq.” Some likely left more convinced than ever that Trump is nuts and Hegseth is a joke.

Military leaders who have attained such high rank and put in decades of service could not help but be repulsed by Trump’s vile suggestion that “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.” Hearing the president declare that “America is under invasion from within…no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in any ways because they don’t wear uniforms” would deeply disgust senior officers steeped in Constitutional norms and a sense of duty. Some previously may not have fully grasped the depth of their civilian leaders’ moral, intellectual, and temperamental unfitness.

Although Hegseth and Trump disgraced themselves, uniformed military leadership did us proud. Now, however, they must navigate the next 3-plus years without endangering national security and violating their constitutional oaths. (Frankly, in a functioning democracy, Trump would be carted away under the 25th Amendment, and Hegseth would be compelled to resign.)Subscribed

Meanwhile, another band of undaunted democracy advocates rose to the occasion in Portland, Oregon. Local and state politicians, faith groups, community organizers, and unions had prepared for Trump’s military occupation, which he has telegraphed for months. Civil society and political leaders came out in unison to oppose the invasion of federal forces. They blanketed social media with lovely scenes of their peaceful city and mocked the notion their city was “war ravaged.”

An umbrella community group Protect Oregon kept the public informed and put out a uniform message. “Any takeover of any community in Oregon is an abuse of power, a gross federal overreach, and a misuse of the military,” its website explained. “People across the state and the political spectrum are coming together to peacefully oppose politically motivated attacks on our communities.” It also helped organize a peaceful demonstration on Sunday away from the ICE facility.

Most important, within hours of Trump’s announcement, state and local authorities filed a lawsuit (set for hearing today) spelling out why the deployment is illegal and unconstitutional. “While Congress has delegated a portion of that power to the Executive, it carefully limited the President’s authority to exert control over a state’s National Guard—the modern term for the militia—to specific circumstances,” the complaint stated. “And for over a century and a half, Congress has expressly forbidden federal military interference in civilian law enforcement.” It continued: “Defendants have trampled on these principles by federalizing members of the Oregon National Guard for deployment in Portland, Oregon, to participate in civilian law enforcement.”

It was a magnificent “whole of society” response to authoritarian bullying. Trump looked unhinged and clueless. In one of the most revelatory comments he has ever made, Trump asked, “Am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening?” Well, if he is watching footage of disturbances from five year ago running on MAGA media, he sure is.

All told, from a courtroom in Boston to an auditorium in Quantico to Portland, undaunted, unbowed, and unapologetic patriots took up the fight to preserve democracy. We take confidence in knowing that while MAGA fanatics plot to destroy the republic, much larger legions of courageous, principled, and astute pro-democracy voices remain loud and determined.

New York Times, The Jobs Report That Wasn’t Leaves Economists Guessing, Lydia DePillis, Oct. 3, 2025. Policymakers have entered uncharted territory without employment data that the government withheld because of its shutdown.

Every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics produces the most reliable gauge of U.S. employment. But close watchers of the economy were left rudderless when the bureau withheld the data on Friday because of the federal government shutdown.

The agency’s measurements of wage growth, unemployment and job creation guide investors allocating capital and monetary policymakers deciding whether the economy needs a boost.

Without the data, the outlook is foggy as hazards abound, so businesses could be even less willing to make decisions about the future.

“In this environment, the risk of slower growth stems from reduced visibility into the economy in an already uncertain period, and less so from the shutdown itself,” wrote Mike Reid, a U.S. economist at RBC Capital Markets, in a note to clients.

The numbers are not likely to be released until the government reopens, but right now the forecast for employment growth is muted. Economists polled by Bloomberg expected that employers added 53,000 jobs last month, fewer than the 64,000 added on average over the six previous months, before revisions. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago estimated that the unemployment rate remained at 4.3 percent.

Other labor market indicators generated by the private sector have been downbeat. The payroll processor ADP estimated that nongovernmental employers shed 32,000 jobs in September, while the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that companies’ announced hiring plans so far this year were at the lowest level since 2009.

“Labor market weakness is evident and it’s accelerating, and what counts as a good jobs report is going to increasingly get revised down,” said Andrew Flowers, chief economist at Appcast, a recruiting technology firm. “The main driver of that is labor supply contracting, particularly with immigration restrictions. But there’s also evidence that demand is also weakening.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, sent a letter on Thursday calling on the Labor Department to release the data despite the shutdown. According to William Beach, a former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the monthly survey was collected and processed this week.

Shutdown or not, the government has already canceled some data collection, such as an annual survey of food security and another on farmworker wages, that will obscure understanding of America’s economic health.

New York Times, Government Shutdown Live Updates: Senate to Return for Votes as Spending Deadlock Reaches 3rd Day, Christina Morales, Oct. 3, 2025. The Senate was set to vote on advancing bills that need to pass for the government to reopen. President Trump mocked Democrats in social media posts, adding to the partisan conflict.

The Senate was set to reconvene Friday as a federal shutdown entered a third day and seemed likely to extend into next week, with neither side showing signs of backing down from a partisan impasse over federal spending.

The Senate was planning to vote on procedural motions to advance the spending bills that need to pass for the government to reopen. Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, said that he was planning to send senators home for the weekend if Democrats again moved to block the G.O.P. stopgap spending bill.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Mr. Thune said: “They’ll have a fourth chance tomorrow to vote to open up the government, and if that fails, we’ll give them the weekend to think about it, and we’ll come back and vote on Monday.”

President Trump and congressional Republicans continued to perpetuate the false claim that Democrats shut down the government because they want to extend federal health coverage to undocumented immigrants. Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, said the subject barely came up in an Oval Office meeting earlier this week.

“We met for over an hour, and probably Republicans spent less than 10 seconds on this fake issue related to undocumented immigrants and health care,” he said.

Mr. Trump also seemed to further inflame the conflict late Thursday night, mocking and demeaning Democrats and their leaders in a series of social media posts.

Here’s what else to know:

• Maximizing pain: Mr. Trump’s planned meeting on agency cuts was part of a strategy to maximize the pain of the shutdown and target political foes. The White House was also readying a plan to potentially lay off droves of civil servants. The administration also paused or moved to cancel billions of dollars in approved funds, including more than $7.5 billion in awards terminated by the Energy Department, mostly for projects in states with Democratic governors and senators.
• Dueling plans: Unlike many past shutdown stalemates, the current fight is not over any policy provision or funding item that the G.O.P. included in its spending plan. Instead, Democrats are demanding that Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress and the presidency, negotiate on those terms before they agree to lend their votes to a bill needed to reopen the government.
• Jobs report: The Bureau of Labor Statistics withheld data from the monthly jobs report because of the shutdown.
• Out-of-office emails: Furloughed workers at the Department of Education found out that their out-of-office email messages had been changed without their knowledge to include partisan language that blamed the government shutdown on “Democrat Senators.”

Global News

Lev Remembers, Nuclear Crisis: Europe’s Largest Nuclear Plant in Blackout — Meltdown Risk Rising, Lev Parnas, Oct. 3, 2025. The continent’s largest nuclear plant has lost all external power — pushing Ukraine and Europe to the edge of disaster.

A silent and growing danger is unfolding before our eyes. It is not a distant problem or a hypothetical scenario. It is immediate, real, and potentially catastrophic. For over a week, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant — Zaporizhzhia (ZNPP) — has been cut off from external power, forced to rely on fragile diesel backup generators to keep its reactors cool and its safety systems alive. At the same time, Chornobyl — the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster — has again gone dark after Russian strikes. These are not accidents. They are deliberate acts of sabotage and escalation designed to hold an entire continent hostage to the threat of radiation.Subscribed

This is now the tenth time Zaporizhzhia has been disconnected from external power since Russia seized it. The reactors are in “cold shutdown,” but without constant cooling and electricity, the danger remains. Diesel backup generators were never meant to run for weeks at a time under wartime stress. Fuel is limited. Water in the cooling pond is dropping. At 13.4 meters now, it is closing in on the critical threshold of 12 meters, below which cooling could fail.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has already warned that six of its seven safety pillars at the plant are compromised. Staff rotations, security, and logistics are unstable. This is what a slow-motion nuclear crisis looks like.

The same pattern is playing out at Chornobyl. Russian strikes on the workers’ city of Slavutych cut off power to the New Safe Confinement, the steel shield built to contain the radioactive remains of Reactor 4. For hours, one of the most dangerous sites on the planet had no external power. Ukraine scrambled to restore it — but this is proof that Russia is using nuclear fear as a weapon.

President Zelensky has warned that Russia is deliberately creating nuclear threats, exploiting the weakness of international agencies and the world’s fragmented attention. 

New York Times, Partisan Language Inserted Into Education Dept. Workers’ Automated Emails, Eileen Sullivan and Michael C. Bender, Oct. 3, 2025 (print ed.).The out-of-office responses from the accounts of employees on furlough cast blame for the shutdown on Democrats.

Some furloughed workers at the Department of Education expressed shock on Thursday to find that their out-of-office email messages had been changed without their knowledge to reflect the Trump administration’s view that the government shutdown was the fault of “Democrat Senators.”

“Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in appropriations,” the emails said. “Due to the lapse in appropriations I am currently in furlough status. I will respond to emails once government functions resume.”

One Education Department employee, who like another worker interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution, said they wanted to change the language but worried that logging into the system might violate a federal law that prohibits furloughed employees from working.

The language apparently inserted into the emails, which the system automatically sends in response to incoming correspondence, echoes messages plastered on a number of government websites and social media accounts since the government ceased most operations on Wednesday. Congress has been unable to agree on how to fund the government, and congressional Democrats refuse to agree to a spending plan that does not restore funding for Medicaid and extend health insurance subsidies.

Some agencies updated their websites on Wednesday with boldface messages announcing the shutdown and laying the blame on Democrats. In some cases they referenced the “radical left,” echoing Republican talking points. Notably, the Education Department’s website has not been among those casting blame on Democrats.

Multiple agencies directed federal workers to include similarly partisan language in their out-of-office email responses notifying senders that they would not be able to write back until the government reopened.

But the language inserted into the Education Department staff responses appeared to be the first example of the administration overriding an employee’s automatic reply.

In response to a request for comment, an automatic reply from an Education Department spokeswoman, Madi Biedermann, did not include the politically charged language. Instead, it read, “Thank you for your email. There is a temporary shutdown of the U.S. government due to a lapse in appropriations.”

About an hour later, Ms. Biedermann sent another response referencing the continuing resolution that would have funded the government: “The email reminds those who reach out to Department of Education employees that we cannot respond because Senate Democrats are refusing to vote for a clean C.R. and fund the government. Where’s the lie?”

Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, said he had heard from constituents who were outraged that partisan rhetoric was being foisted onto government agencies.

New York Times, Trump Offered Universities an Invitation for a Deal. Some See a Trap, Anemona Hartocollis, Michael C. Bender and Alan Blinder, Updated Oct. 3, 2025. Trump officials want universities to sign on to conservative priorities to get special treatment. Some in higher education say agreeing would end academic freedom.

The Trump administration promised a select set of universities what the government said would be a great deal.

In exchange for agreeing to a list of demands, like limiting international students and protecting conservative voices, universities would get a leg up on grants, potentially beating out the competition for billions in federal funds.

At least one institution, the University of Texas, said it would be eager to sign up.

But to others in higher education, the Trump administration’s latest effort to use federal funding as leverage to push universities to conform to its own political policy agenda has provoked outrage.

They see it as another threat against their independence as the government attacks higher education over what it perceives as endemic liberal bias, and as a remarkable push to grab power for the executive branch.

“This is a real inflection point,” said Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of the history of education at the University of Pennsylvania.

Under the compact, a mix of nine public and private universities would receive favorable terms for government aid if they agreed to conditions like banning consideration of race or sex in hiring and admissions, capping international undergraduate enrollment, requiring that applicants pass admissions examinations and suppressing grade inflation. Universities with large endowments would be asked to waive tuition for students interested in the hard sciences.

While some of the ideas might be broadly embraced, like tamping down tuition increases, Dr. Zimmerman said, he was troubled by the idea that the federal government would be telling universities how to do it.

“The parts of the order that drive me crazy are the ones that I actually agree with, like we should have ideological diversity, we shouldn’t stigmatize conservative thought — I’m down with all that,” Dr. Zimmerman said. “Keeping tuition down — that seems fine, in fact laudable. But the federal government being the determinant of that is terrifying.”

The institutions approached by the administration included the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia. Most would not say Thursday whether they would agree to the terms.

But within hours of the Trump administration’s offer, the compact was inflaming divisions in higher education.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech advocacy group, said the requirement that universities monitor the speech of employees could violate the First Amendment.

“A government that can reward colleges and universities for speech it favors today can punish them for speech it dislikes tomorrow,” Tyler Coward, FIRE’s lead counsel for government affairs, said in a statement. “That’s not reform. That’s government-funded orthodoxy.”

And the leaders of the American Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors, which represent faculty members, argued that the government’s demands on universities were hypocritical.

“They would reward campuses that toe the party line and punish those that cherish their independence,” a statement from the groups read. “In doing so, it would commit the very viewpoint discrimination it claims to redress.”

They referred to the compact as a “loyalty oath.”

And the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, a vocal political enemy of the president, vowed to strip state funding from any California university that signed on to the deal, saying in a statement Thursday that “California will not bankroll schools that sell out their students, professors, researchers, and surrender academic freedom.”

In contrast, Kevin Eltife, the chairman of the Board of Regents for the University of Texas, said the proposal appeared to complement Republican policies in the state of Texas.

“Higher education has been at a crossroads in recent years,” he said in a statement, noting that Texas leaders had implemented “sweeping changes for the benefit of our students and to strengthen our institutions to best serve the people of Texas.”

Some of those changes include banning diversity, equity and inclusion offices on every state university campus and strengthening the influence of the regents, who are appointed by the governor.

Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, said the document seemed to him like a naked exercise of power, lacking internal coherence. He said that if institutions agreed to the compact, it would set “a horrible precedent to cede power to the federal government.”

The compact is part of an emerging trend inside the administration to skirt traditional lawmaking and government spending protocols in Washington.

Instead of negotiating with Congress to overhaul federal policy, the administration has increasingly reached out directly to institutions and school systems, seeking their sign-off on pledges to adopt portions of the Trump administration’s agenda — often under the threat of losing federal funding.

In April, the Education Department ordered local school officials to sign pledges attesting that they had eliminated all programs aimed at promoting diversity, equity and inclusion, which the administration has argued unfairly discriminate against white Americans.

That move was blocked by Judge Landya B. McCafferty of the Federal District Court in New Hampshire, who ruled that the government had failed to adequately define “diversity, equity and inclusion.” She also said the policy threatened to restrict free speech in the classroom and overstepped the executive branch’s legal authority over local schools.

The administration has also used signed pledges to prioritize funding for groups to develop or expand artificial intelligence courses and certification programs.

Dr. Zimmerman argued that the compact was another example of a split screen in the Trump administration’s priorities. Government officials are on the one hand seeking to reduce federal power over education by gutting the Department of Education, while “at the same time they’ve been orchestrating an unprecedented centralization of power.”

New York Times, Duke Was Paring Back Diversity Programs. Trump Targeted It Anyway, Vimal Patel, Oct. 3, 2025. Duke University kept a low profile. But it is the alma mater of Stephen Miller, a top Trump official who often criticized the school while he was a student.

The Trump administration had for months been expanding its nationwide attack on higher education. But Duke still made for an odd target.

Leaders of the school, North Carolina’s largest private university, embraced a stealth strategy as other elite colleges fell into the Trump administration’s cross hairs, avoiding showy standoffs with the government for interfering in academic affairs. The campus is a relatively conservative place, protests over the war in Gaza were muted and it had begun dialing back some diversity efforts.

The Trump administration came for it anyway.

In late July, Trump officials announced they would investigate Duke over the criteria its student-run law journal used to select editors. They also accused the university’s health system of “systematic racial discrimination,” without citing any specific incident.

Duke’s turn on the hot seat provides a window into how the administration’s priorities broadened in recent months, from a focus on antisemitism to efforts to stamping out diversity measures.

It also highlights how the administration has sown confusion and fear in higher education as it chooses its targets — and its favorites.

Even as the administration has picked out one set of elite institutions it disfavors for drastic funding reductions, it asked others this week to sign a compact agreeing to certain demands in return for preferential treatment.

The schools picked for punishment or favor can seem to have little in common. But while the choice of one school over another may seem haphazard, Duke’s case in particular has raised concerns among the president’s critics that the administration’s politics are often personal.Why Duke?

Some at Duke’s sprawling Gothic campus in Durham speculate that Stephen Miller, President Trump’s confidante, played a role in earmarking the school for funding cuts.

Mr. Miller earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Duke in 2007. Now, he oversees the White House policy operation, and no significant measure emerges from the West Wing without his awareness, input or direction, including a federal investigation into his alma mater. Two senior administration officials, however, said Mr. Miller was not the driving force behind the investigation.

But Mr. Miller has been interested in details, the officials said, and his own critiques of Duke are nearly two decades in the making. A former columnist at the school’s student newspaper, he was president of the university’s chapter of Students for Academic Freedom, a conservative-leaning group. In his writings, he frequently decried political correctness and criticized his school for its “monolithic academic environment.”

Oct. 2

News Roundup

Letters from an American, Historical Commentary: Oct. 1, 2025 [Fake News From Who?], Heather Cox Richardson, right, Oct. 2, 2025. Last night, as the government barreled toward a shutdown, President Donald J. Trump posted yet another doctored video on social media.

This one showed House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) reacting to Trump’s deepfake video of September 29 that faked Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) attacking Democrats and racial minorities and showed Jeffries sporting a Mexican sombrero and waxed mustache while Mexican music played.

On September 29, Jeffries told MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell: “It’s a disgusting video and we’re going to continue to make clear: bigotry will get you nowhere. We are fighting to protect the healthcare of the Americanpeople in the face of an unprecedented Republican assault.”

Trump’s video from last night replayed Jeffries’s statement up to “bigotry will get you nowhere.” Then four images of Trump, each wearing a sombrero and playing an instrument in a mariachi band, popped up behind Jeffries, whose image suddenly had a sombrero and a mustache again.

The president does not appear to be taking the government shutdown very seriously.

Republicans are though: not to resolve it, but to use it to attack Democrats. Republicans control the Senate and could end the filibuster for the continuing resolution that would fund the government, thus enabling them to pass it through the Senate with a simple majority if they wanted to. Instead, they want Democratic votes for it, evidently wanting to make sure Republicans alone do not take the blame for their budget reconciliation bill of July as its deeply unpopular measures are becoming clear.

That measure cut Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits as well as a slew of other programs. While it extended tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, Republicans permitted the premium tax credit for purchasing health insurance under the Affordable Healthcare Act to lapse at the end of this year. The end of that program is already sending healthcare insurance premiums skyrocketing.

Democrats say they will not agree to a continuing resolution to fund the government until the premium tax credits are extended past their end date of 2025. Republicans want to force Democrats to abandon this demand, thus getting at least a semblance of a buy-in to the dramatic cuts that are already hitting Americans hard.

Administration officials are making sure the shutdown doesn’t affect their own priorities. They have prioritized the $20 billion bailout of Argentina’s failing economy as essential, so it will proceed.

The bailout will help right-wing leader Javier Milei, a Trump ally. Judd Legum, right, of Popular Information reported Monday that the bailout will also help billionaire hedge fund manager Rob Citrone, an associate of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, shown below, who has invested heavily in Argentine companies and in Argentine debt.

The White House says construction of Trump’s ballroom in place of the East Wing of the White House will also continue during the shutdown.

Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought has weaponized the shutdown by continuing his illegal impoundments of congressionally approved funding, but this time using them solely against states with Democratic senators. Today he said he is canceling $8 billion in funding for programs that he claims “fuel the Left’s climate agenda.” “The projects are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA,” Vought posted on social media. Amelia Benavides-Colón of NOTUS reports that states have not yet been notified of the plan.

Vought also announced on social media: “Roughly $18 billion in New York City infrastructure projects have been put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional DEI principles.” He said he was referring to funding for the Hudson River Tunnel Project known as Gateway, and the Second Avenue Subway project.

The publication of a new document today shows that the administration has launched another power grab, this one in foreign affairs. On September 29, Trump signed an executive order giving to Qatar security guarantees that are much like those guaranteed by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The order says: “The United States shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States. In the event of such an attack, the United States shall take all lawful and appropriate measures—including diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military—to defend the interests of the United States and of the State of Qatar and to restore peace and stability.”

An executive order is not a treaty and can be overturned by another president, but the declaration of a military commitment to a foreign nation without ratification by the Senate as the Constitution requires shows the belief of administration officials that they can act as they wish without consulting Congress.

The agreement appeared to come to pass during the Monday visit of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House, and likely reflects Qatar’s demand for a guarantee that Israel’s recent strike on Qatar would not be repeated. But the deal shows just how ill advised Trump’s illegal demand for, and then receipt of, a $400 million luxury 747-8 from Qatar turned out to be, for now it certainly looks as if Qatar received U.S. military commitments in exchange for a used plane.

Usually, administrations asserting authoritarian power make gains because they are popular. The Trump administration, though, is neither popular nor likely to become more popular as its policies hurt ordinary Americans.

Today the National Employment Report of the payroll processing company ADP said that the U.S. lost 32,000 jobs in the private sector in September. The ADP National Employment Report measures the labor market based on weekly payroll data of more than 26 million private-sector employees. ADP also revised August’s employment growth, which had been recorded as 54,000 jobs, down to a loss of 3,000.

The independent ADP report has taken on additional significance since Trump has undermined the U.S. government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). In August he fired the commissioner of the BLS Erika McEntarfer, complaining that she had “RIGGED” jobs figures “to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.” To replace her, he nominated right-wing economist E.J. Antoni, whose scholarship was not nearly as strong as his support for Trump. Then Em Steck and Andrew Kaczynski of CNN uncovered a racist, sexist, and anti-LGBTQ Twitter account of Antoni’s.

Today Trump withdrew Antoni’s nomination after Republican senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska refused to meet with him, suggesting he could not be confirmed.

Also today, Leonardo Garcia Venegas, an American citizen born in Florida but currently living in Baldwin, Alabama, and working in construction, filed a lawsuit against the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice and officials including Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and Attorney General Pam Bondi. The complaint says that “[t]wice in the past few months, federal immigration officers have raided…private construction sites…without a warrant, and detained Leo simply for being at work. Both times, Leo told the officers he was a citizen and showed them his REAL ID, an identification card issued only to citizens and lawful residents. But the officers still wouldn’t let him go.”

“Once immigration officers are on a site,” the suit alleges, “they preemptively seize everybody they think looks undocumented. And they detain these workers indefinitely—even those who have a REAL ID—until the officers eventually check the legal status of the people they’ve detained. Sometimes it takes 20 minutes; sometimes it takes days.”

On September 8, in a case that permits Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to use racial profiling, Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that such profiling is acceptable because “[i]f the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.” In practice, though, reports of abuses have become so commonplace that such encounters have been dubbed “Kavanaugh stops.”lThe suit lists similar detentions of U.S. citizens, for example:

“Jorge Luis Hernández Viramontes, a U.S. citizen, was arrested while working at a carwash. Immigration agents took him to a nearby warehouse for questioning even though he had shown them his state-issued identification.”

“Javier Ramirez, a U.S. citizen, was handcuffed during a workplace raid at a tow yard where he worked despite screaming, ‘I have my passport! I have my ID! I’m a U.S. citizen!’”

“Jonathan Guerrero, a U.S. citizen, was handcuffed at gunpoint by immigration officers while working at a car wash in his hometown.”

“Julio Noriega, a U.S. citizen, was detained after he handed out his resume at a Jiffy Lube and put in the back of a van without the chance to tell the officers he’s a citizen. The officers drove Mr. Noriega around for four hours and then held him at a detention center for six more hours before someone checked his wallet and realized he was a citizen.”

“Andrea Velez, a U.S. citizen, was tackled by immigration officers on the sidewalk between her mom’s car and her office door.”

“Hediberto Ramirez Perez was arrested during a workplace raid at a nutrition-bar factory despite carrying his employment-verification ID card; immigration officers told him, ‘We don’t care about that for the moment.’”

Such detentions, the lawsuit alleges, violate the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. Venegas hopes to make this a class action suit to stop the government from continuing its abusive policies.

U.S. Military, Security — War Crimes? 

President Trump addresses about 800 U.S. generals and admirals in a political-rally-style speech at Quantico, VA on Sept. 30, 2025, preceded by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a former National Guard officer who prefers to call himself “Secretary of War” instead of the congressionally mandated term “Secretary of Defense.” 

Senior military leaders look on at Marine Corps Base Quantico on September 30, 2025 in Quantico, Virginia

New York Times, News analysis: ‘Dangerous Cities,’ the Military, Trump and the Founding Fathers, Helene Cooper, Oct. 2, 2025 (print ed.). The U.S. armed services have long sought to preserve the tradition of a nonpartisan military.

In the middle of Tuesday’s rambling speech at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, President Trump told hundreds of the country’s military commanders his latest thinking on where they should next set their sights.

Not Poland, or Romania, or Estonia or Denmark, all NATO allies where Russian drones have in the past month violated airspace in a challenge to the alliance’s borders.

The president chose San Francisco. Chicago. New York. Los Angeles.

“We’re going to straighten that out one by one, and this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room,” Mr. Trump told the generals, admirals and enlisted leaders, referring to what he has described as crime-filled urban hellscapes.

“It’s a war from within,” he said.

In that moment, the president again pitted himself against the wishes of the country’s founding fathers, historians and former military leaders say.

Mr. Trump’s suggestion that “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military” is in tension with a core principle that the country’s armed services have long sought to preserve — that the military should be nonpartisan.

This principle, with its deep roots in American democratic traditions, is meant to ensure that the standing army initially feared by the country’s founding fathers serves the nation as a whole, and not one political party or leader.

That military was meant to be directed at foreign enemies, not the “enemy from within,” as Mr. Trump said on Tuesday.‘A Fraught Moment’

Mr. Trump has tried this before.

During Mr. Trump’s first term, Defense Secretaries Jim Mattis and Mark T. Esper and the chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley and Gen. Joseph Dunford, tried to prevent the president from using the military domestically to further his political agenda.

When Mr. Trump demanded a deployment of 10,000 to 15,000 military troops to fend off what he called a migrant “invasion” at the southwest border, Mr. Mattis responded by sending 6,000 National Guardsmen, and told them to make sure to stick to support roles and to steer clear of migrants.

When Mr. Trump wanted to send the 82nd Airborne onto the country’s streets during social justice protests, Mr. Esper called a news conference to announce his opposition, for which he was eventually fired.

Those men are now gone, and the men Mr. Trump has installed in their place in his second term have either amplified his wishes or bowed to them.

Gone too is the congressional opposition that blocked Mr. Trump during his first term. Republicans control both the House and the Senate, and have acquiesced to all of Mr. Trump’s directives and appointments that relate to the American military.

The result: National Guard troops deployed in Washington against the wishes of the city’s elected leaders. Active-duty Marines sent to Los Angeles over the protests of the mayor and governor. Books by writers of color, including Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” banned from the library at the U.S. Naval Academy. A Pentagon leadership that refuses to promote decorated combat soldiers who served under men Mr. Trump dislikes. A plan to use military lawyers, known as JAGs, as immigration judges. And Mr. Trump’s promises to send National Guard troops to more American cities.

New York Times, Trump ‘Determined’ the U.S. Is Now in a War With Drug Cartels, Congress Is Told, Charlie Savage and Eric Schmitt, Oct. 2, 2025. A notice calls the people the U.S. military recently killed on suspicion of drug smuggling in the Caribbean Sea “unlawful combatants.”

President Trump has decided that the United States is engaged in a formal “armed conflict” with drug cartels his team has labeled terrorist organizations and that suspected smugglers for such groups are “unlawful combatants,” the administration said in a confidential notice to Congress this week.

The notice was sent to several congressional committees and obtained by The New York Times. It adds new detail to the administration’s thinly articulated legal rationale for why three U.S. military strikes the president ordered on boats in the Caribbean Sea last month, killing all 17 people aboard them, should be seen as lawful rather than murder.

Mr. Trump’s move to formally deem his campaign against drug cartels as an active armed conflict means he is cementing his claim to extraordinary wartime powers, legal specialists said. In an armed conflict, as defined by international law, a country can lawfully kill enemy fighters even when they pose no threat, detain them indefinitely without trials and prosecute them in military courts.

Geoffrey S. Corn, a retired judge advocate general lawyer who was formerly the Army’s senior adviser for law-of-war issues, said drug cartels were not engaged in “hostilities” — the standard for when there is an armed conflict for legal purposes — against the United States because selling a dangerous product is different than an armed attack.

Noting that it is illegal for the military to deliberately target civilians who are not directly participating in hostilities — even suspected criminals — Mr. Corn called the president’s move an “abuse” that crossed a major legal line.

“This is not stretching the envelope,” he said. “This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The Trump administration had called those strikes self-defense, asserting that the targets were smuggling drugs for cartels that the administration has designated as terrorists and invoking the laws of war to justify killing them rather arresting them. The administration has also stressed that about 100,000 Americans annually die from overdoses.

However, the focus of the administration’s attacks has been boats from Venezuela. The surge of overdose deaths in recent years has been driven by fentanyl that drug trafficking experts say comes from Mexico, not South America. Beyond factual issues, the bare-bones argument has been broadly criticized on legal grounds by specialists in armed-conflict law.

The notice to Congress, which was deemed controlled but unclassified information, cites a statute requiring reports to lawmakers about hostilities involving U.S. armed forces. It repeats the administration’s earlier arguments but also goes further with new claims, including portraying the U.S. military’s attacks on boats to be part of a sustained, active conflict rather than isolated acts of claimed self-defense.Specifically, it says that Mr. Trump has “determined” that cartels engaged in smuggling drugs are “nonstate armed groups” whose actions “constitute an armed attack against the United States.” And it cites a term from international law — a “noninternational armed conflict” — that refers to a war with a nonstate actor.

CBS News, Head of Eisenhower library resigns after sword spat with Trump administration, Gabrielle Ake, Oct. 2, 2025. The head of a presidential library resigned this week after a tug-of-war with the Trump administration over gift selection and a sword for King Charles III, sources familiar with the matter told CBS News.

Todd Arrington, a career historian who previously held posts with the National Park Service and National Archives and Records Administration, stepped down on Monday as director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home.

Sources said Arrington’s departure came after he resisted taking an original Eisenhower sword out of the library’s collection to give to King Charles last month during President Trump’s unprecedented second state visit to the United Kingdom.

Four U.S. officials involved in the lavish royal visit were unaware that the library director had left his job, and said the White House played no role in his exit. UK Hosts President Trump And First Lady Melania Trump For State Visit – Day TwoKing Charles III and President Trump inspect the Guard of Honor during the State visit by the President of the United States of America at Windsor Castle, Sept. 17, 2025, in Windsor, England. Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images

In a statement last month, Buckingham Palace didn’t specify which sword was given to the monarch, but noted that Charles was given a replica, saying the gift “symbolizes profound respect and is a reminder of the historical partnership that was critical to winning World War II.”

A former Army general, Eisenhower, right, possessed several swords, including a Sword of Honor given to him in 1947 by the city of London for his role as allied supreme commander during World War II, an honor saber gifted to him by the Netherlands in 1947, and his West Point officer saber.

It is not clear who specifically requested the sword. First lady Melania Trump personally decided which gifts to give Queen Camilla, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and their children, a senior administration official said.

Officials at the State Department who compiled an array of gift options for the first couple, sought an Eisenhower sword to reiterate the significance of the U.S.-U.K. relationship since World War II, sources said. But Arrington argued against giving away an artifact that had been accepted as a donation and had become the property of the American people.

Arrington told officials he could help find an alternative gift, but sources say State Department officials persisted. The library’s team offered to help find a replica.

Ultimately, West Point provided a Cadet Saber from the military academy.

Some in the Trump administration were unhappy with Arrington, sources said.

Arrington didn’t respond to an email from CBS News seeking comment. NARA didn’t reply to requests for comment, nor did the Eisenhower library, but both entities began operating Wednesday with limited staffing due to the shutdown of the federal government.

Two sources close to the matter said no one said anything to Arrington about being upset about not being able to have a museum piece — the conversations before the U.K. trip about finding a substitute for the real sword were polite and tension-free.

One administration official said Arrington was believed to have spoken critically about the president and the administration.

The White House plays no formal role in hiring or firing directors of presidential libraries that are part of the National Archives system. The duty of hiring library directors falls instead to the archivist of the United States, who oversees NARA. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is serving as acting archivist, and James Byron, a senior adviser to the archivist, is running day-to-day operations for NARA.

Arrington started in August 2024 as director of the Eisenhower library, in Abilene, Kansas, one of 16 presidential libraries or museums operated by NARA, including those that will be built for Mr. Trump and former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The president’s son, Eric Trump, announced this week their family plans to one day construct the Trump library and museum in Miami.

More On U.S. Governance, Politics 

The Bulwark Morning Shots, Political Opinion: Trump’s ‘Shoot the Hostage’ Shutdown Strategy, Andrew Egger, Oct. 2, 2025. The White House’s 3D-chess move: crushing the economy to own the libs. Donald Trump’s shutdown strategy: Inflicting maximum economic pain on blue states, without much thought for who it actually hurts. 

This morning, we woke up to news of a stabbing at a synagogue in Manchester, England, killing at least two on this holiest day of the year for Jews. It is yet another reminder that houses of worship are increasingly targets of violence. Let’s all collectively pray, regardless of our individual faith, that this comes to an end. Happy Thursday.

In theory, Donald Trump and his Republicans are the ones holding the cards in this current government shutdown fight. Democrats had plenty of good reasons to withhold their votes for a government funding bill.¹ But it’s always risky being the party that directly provokes a shutdown. Unless you can convince the public that your policy priorities—in this case, renewing expiring health care subsidies—are worth playing hardball, you’re likely to take the blame. And that job is harder when you’re hopelessly outgunned in the realm of industrial-strength Ministry-of-Truth propaganda.

Then there’s the other problem facing Democrats: They and their constituents will be feeling the shutdown pain more acutely than Trump and his. (Trump isn’t particularly bothered by the plight of federal workers—and he certainly doesn’t mind that, for instance, the Bureau of Labor Statistics wasn’t able to release what was likely to be a third consecutive alarming jobs report yesterday.) In theory, all Trump has to do is play it slow and wait for Democrats to cave.

But that’s not really his style, is it? Instead, Trump and his mooks are taking what you might call the “cartoon supervillain” shutdown approach. Yesterday morning, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, right, announced that the administration was freezing $18 billion in federal funding for two major New York City infrastructure works: the Hudson River Tunnel Project and the Second Avenue Subway project. The government was concerned, Vought said, that funding might be “flowing based on unconstitutional DEI principles.”

That’s right: The White House had suddenly decided—ten months into Trump’s term—that these contracts needed more Department of Transportation scrutiny. And, ah, wouldn’t you know it? That scrutiny can’t take place while the government is shut down. So Vought decided to put the whole thing on ice for the time being. Better safe than sorry—New Yorkers wouldn’t want a woke subway tunnel.

It was a blatantly illegal and nakedly transparent attempt to put the screws on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a fact Vice President JD Vance didn’t bother to hide during the White House press briefing yesterday. “I’m sure that Russ is heartbroken about the fact that he is unable to give certain things to certain constituencies,” the vice president smirked.

And Vought wasn’t done. A few hours later, he had a new announcement to make: “Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled,” he tweeted. Of the 16 affected states he named, all voted for Kamala Harris last year and have Democratic senators.

The heedlessness and shortsightedness here is staggering. Set aside the open, obscene partisanship, the loathsome fact that the White House seems to see inflicting economic pain on blue Americans as a worthwhile goal in itself. Although it’s worth wondering whether it will actually be blue America that suffers: The outer-borough blue-collar white guy has been a remarkably valuable voter for the GOP in recent years, handing Republicans a brace of New York congressional seats without which they would not hold the House majority today. Whoexactly does Vought think works construction jobs in the Big Apple, or in any of the rest of those blue states?³

But it’s somehow stupider even than that. Keep in mind that all this is happening at a moment of remarkable economic precarity. The jobs data, rattled by tariff pain, looks more unsteady with each passing month; everyone from the chair of the Federal Reserve to the forecasters at Moody’s are warning of storm clouds on the economic horizon.

And how does the White House respond to this moment? By firing potentially tens of thousands of federal workers and pulling the plug on a host of already funded and half-finished development projects, most notably in New York City, America’s biggest economic hub. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face—this is more like cutting off your arm.

New York Times, Trump Administration Asks Colleges to Sign ‘Compact’ to Get Funding Preference, Michael C. Bender, Oct. 2, 2025. The White House on Wednesday sent letters to nine of the nation’s top public and private universities, urging campus leaders to pledge support for President Trump’s political agenda to help ensure access to federal research funds.

The letters came attached to a 10-page “compact” that serves as a sort of priority statement for the administration’s educational goals — the most comprehensive accounting to date of what Mr. Trump aims to achieve from an unparalleled, monthslong pressure campaign on academia.

The compact would require colleges to freeze tuition for five years, cap the enrollment of international students and commit to strict definitions of gender. Among other steps, universities would also be required to change their governance structures to prohibit anything that would “punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”

Colleges that sign the agreement would receive “multiple positive benefits,” according to a letter included with the compact signed by Education Secretary Linda McMahon, right; Vince Haley, the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council; and May Mailman, the White House’s senior adviser for special projects.

Colleges that agree would get priority access to federal funds and looser restraints on overhead costs. Signed compacts would also serve as assurance to the government that schools are complying with civil rights laws. Federal civil rights investigations have been used to halt much of the research funding that the administration has blocked so far this year.

Letters on Wednesday were sent to the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia.

The nine schools declined to comment or did not immediately respond to messages late on Wednesday.

Ms. Mailman, who has orchestrated much of the administration’s higher education strategy, said the compact could ultimately be extended to all colleges and universities. She said the administration was open to hearing feedback about the compact from college leaders.

“We hope all universities ultimately are able to have a conversation with us,” she said.

The letters were sent as the White House was aiming to close a settlement with Harvard University, the only university to sue the administration over its pressure campaign. Mr. Trump on Tuesday said that a deal, which had been elusive as talks stalled, was close to being finalized. The Wall Street Journal first reported that the compact has been sent to schools.

The administration has secured individual deals with schools to restore funding, requiring the universities to pay steep fines and effectively adopt new policies. And while there is some overlap in the agreements, the first round of deals has all stood on their own.

The University of Pennsylvania agreed to align its athletic policies with the Trump administration’s beliefs about participation by transgender people. Brown University promised to provide a more granular level of student admissions data than is required by law.

The so-called “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” is effectively a declaration of the administration’s political priorities for higher education.

The first round of schools received the compact along with a letter that frames the pledge as an opportunity to proactively partner with the administration and its effort to shift the ideological tilt of the higher education system, which the president and his team view as hostile to conservatives and intent on perpetuating liberalism.

The demands in the compact also include providing free tuition to students studying math, biology, or other “hard sciences” if endowments exceed $2 million per undergraduate.

“Institutions of higher education are free to develop models and values other than those below, if the institution elects to forego federal benefits,” the compact says.

Demands sent to nine top schools included pledging to freeze tuition for five years and to commit to strict definitions of gender.

Hedge fund manager Rob Citrone attends a charity dinner in New York City on November 15, 2022. (Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: UPDATE: Hedge fund billionaire pressed Treasury Secretary for Argentina bailout, Argentine media reports, Judd Legum, right, Oct. 2, 2025. Rob Citrone, whose hedge fund bet big on Argentina, reportedly asked his friend for a rescue package. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent delivered.

On September 24, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a $20 billion package to rescue the Argentinian economy. It was a dramatic move to bail out a country that has little economic impact on the United States. Argentine President Javier Milei is scheduled to meet President Trump at the White House later this month.

On Monday, Popular Information revealed that the taxpayer-funded bailout had massive economic benefits for hedge fund billionaire Rob Citrone, a personal friend and former colleague of Bessent. Citrone’s fund, Discovery Capital, had bet heavily on Argentina, purchasing Argentine debt and equity in numerous companies closely tied to the country’s overall economy.

Citrone’s investments reflected his belief that Milei’s right-wing economic program, which emphasizes deregulation and sharply reduced government spending, would revitalize the Argentine economy.

That theory began to unravel as growth slowed, unemployment spiked, and Milei’s popularity tanked. This spring, Citrone reportedly urged Bessent to help Milei secure a separate $20 billion package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF funds began to arrive in April, but proved insufficient to turn the Argentine economy around.

Concerns turned into panic after Milei’s party was routed in the Buenos Aires provincial election in early September, fueling fears that Milei would soon lose control of the economic agenda. Investors began dumping the peso and liquidating other Argentine assets, which spelled major trouble for Citrone’s hedge fund.

Major Argentine media outlets are now reporting that Citrone asked Bessent for a United States rescue package. Ariel Maciel, Political Economy Editor at Perfil, a large Argentine media outlet, wrote that after the Buenos Aires elections, Citrone “returned to his friend and former colleague… to request a second bailout, this time from the very coffers Bessent manages: the US Treasury.”

CE Noticias Financieras, a major wire service in Latin America, similarly reported that after Argentine officials ran into resistance with lower-level Trump officials, “Citrone managed to connect with Bessent to get him to intervene directly.”

Maciel elaborated on his reporting during an appearance on Net TV, an Argentine broadcaster. “Citrone is really the one who intervenes. He basically tells Bessent, ‘Hey, we need to help in Argentina,’” Maciel said during the segment.

Popular Information contacted Discovery Capital and asked if the reports that Citrone asked Bessent to bail out Argentina were accurate. Discovery Capital declined to comment.

Maciel also noted that two weeks before Bessent announced the bailout, Citrone purchased additional bonds for “almost nothing.” Maciel said the timing of Citrone’s recent purchases has raised “suspicions” that Citrone had access to “confidential information.”

New York Times, For Workers, Mixed Signals. For the Public, Limited Impact on Shutdown’s First Day, Eileen Sullivan, Updated Oct. 2, 2025. Federal agencies gave shifting and mixed guidance to their work forces about who should come to work and who shouldn’t, but the initial effect on services appeared scattered and limited.

The first government shutdown in nearly seven years left federal agencies in flux and many of their employees in a state of confusion on Wednesday, as they received last-minute and conflicting instructions from managers.

Even though the likelihood of a shutdown has been high for months, agencies were late to post their contingency plans compared with previous years, leaving employees and the public in the dark about what to expect. And internal guidance to work forces in some cases was not consistent with the official plans. Some employees who expected to be furloughed learned on Wednesday that they had to report to work.

But despite the uncertainty inside the government, the initial ripple effects across the country were scattered and limited.

There was no major disruption to air travel. The Internal Revenue Service answered calls from taxpayers. And federal agents arrested immigrants who showed up for routine court appearances in Lower Manhattan.

But the impact was felt elsewhere. The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta was closed, and visitors got a quick civic lesson: Presidential libraries are operated by the federal National Archives and Records Administration, which furloughed more than half of its staff.

“We thought it was privately funded, or we would have come yesterday,” said Cindy Mobley, 64, of Baltimore. Ms. Mobley and her husband were in town visiting their son, a freshman at nearby Emory University.

Not being able to visit the museum, Ms. Mobley said, “is a small price to pay if it leads to something better for all of our citizens.” She said she supported congressional Democrats who are refusing to agree to a spending plan that does not restore funding for Medicaid and extend health insurance subsidies.

For Chris Hill, of New York, the first day of the shutdown brought an unprompted message from the Department of Veterans Affairs. He said he had been working with the agency to resolve a benefits issue regarding his late father and was surprised to see the message informing him that the government was shut down, noting that some agency services would not be available.

The message also blamed Democrats for the shutdown, which Mr. Hill said also caught him by surprise.

“It was such a political and one-sided message sent out by a department that is supposed to deal equally with veterans, regardless of their political opinions,” he said in an interview.

Similar political responses have come from other agencies, marking what many believe to be the first time an administration has used the bureaucracy to deliver blatantly partisan messaging during a shutdown.

Legal experts say doing so violates a federal law, the Hatch Act, designed to ensure that the federal work force operates free of political influence or coercion. And many federal workers expressed discomfort about being drawn into the political morass.

New York Times, Fed’s Independence Remains at Risk Despite Temporary Legal Victory, Colby Smith, Oct. 2, 2025. A Supreme Court order keeping Lisa Cook on the Federal Reserve Board for now is “a time to exhale but not breathe easy,” one expert said.

Lisa Cook notched a temporary win in her legal battle against President Trump this week when the Supreme Court said she could remain a governor on the Federal Reserve Board.

But the threat to the Fed’s longstanding independence will continue to loom large over the central bank for at least the next several months.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed Ms. Cook to remain in her job while her lawsuit against Mr. Trump proceeds. The president, who has tried to gain more control over the Fed, tried to fire her over unproven allegations of mortgage fraud.

Still, the decision — part of a two-sentence, unsigned order — fell short of a decisive victory for the central bank. Instead, the court agreed to wait to rule on Ms. Cook’s status until after it hears arguments on the matter in January.

“It’s a time to exhale but not breathe easy,” said Peter Conti-Brown, an expert on Fed governance at the University of Pennsylvania. “The wrecking ball that the Trump administration has been wielding through the administrative state just hit a brick wall that it could not crumble.” Mr. Conti-Brown warned, however, that the issue was far from resolved.

Mr. Trump has accused Ms. Cook of committing mortgage fraud, citing that as justification to fire her. Under the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, the president can remove a Fed official only “for cause” — which has typically meant gross malfeasance or a neglect of duty while serving in the job. Congress put that safeguard in place to ensure that the Fed was protected from undue meddling by the president.

Ms. Cook, who has not been charged with a crime, has argued that the Trump administration’s allegations are “flimsy” and “unproven.” She has also said Mr. Trump did not give her ample time to rebut them before he fired her.

It is not the first time Mr. Trump has taken aim at the country’s independent agencies. But the order on Wednesday reaffirmed that the Supreme Court views the Fed as a distinct one.

Earlier this year, the court granted the president the ability to remove leaders of independent institutions like the Federal Trade Commission and the National Labor Relations Board while the cases are being litigated. Mr. Trump fired Democratic officials from those two agencies purely because of policy differences, something previous court rulings barred.

Jeremy Kress, a law professor at the University of Michigan who previously worked as a lawyer at the Fed, said the court’s move gave him more confidence that the justices would eventually side with Ms. Cook. Still, he cautioned against reading too much into what he described as an “unexplained procedural order.”

Global News

New York Times, ‘Enough Is Enough’: Many Palestinians Say Hamas Must Accept Cease-Fire Plan, Liam Stack, Oct. 2, 2025. Interviews in Gaza suggest wide support for a proposal that calls for an immediate end to a war that has brought immense civilian suffering.

Palestinians in Gaza have spent almost two years longing for an end to the war that has destroyed their communities and killed tens of thousands of their neighbors. Many say their best hope yet is the latest cease-fire plan proposed by the United States — if only Hamas would accept it.

“Hamas must say yes to this offer — we have been through hell already,” said Mahmoud Bolbol, 43, a construction worker who has remained in Gaza City with his six children in the battered shell of their home throughout the war.

President Trump unveiled the proposal while meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House on Monday. Mr. Trump said that if Hamas did not accept its terms, then he would give Israel the green light to “finish the job” of destroying the armed group.

Hamas has not yet given its response to the proposal, but interviews with Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday suggested widespread public support for the plan. It calls for an immediate end to a war that has brought immense civilian suffering.

For the past two days, Mr. Bolbol said, his neighbors have talked about almost nothing but the cease-fire proposal. If Hamas rejects it, he said, his family would finally leave Gaza City and head for what he hoped would be the relative safety of the enclave’s south.Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Israel, the United Kingdom, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

“Hamas needs to understand: Enough is enough,” Mr. Bolbol said. Most Gazans are not members of the group, he added, “so why drag us into this?”

New York Times, Live Updates: 2 Killed in Car Ramming and Stabbing Outside U.K. Synagogue, Police Say, Michael D. Shear and Lizzie Dearden, Oct. 2, 2025. The attack in Manchester, England, happened on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. The police said the assailant died after being shot by officers.

The attack occurred in an area of Manchester that is home to many Orthodox Jews and came at a time of heightened fears in the Jewish community as tensions persist over the two-year-old war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

More On U.S. Media, Religion, Education, Culture Wars

The Contrarian, Opinion: Self-Reflection Allows us to Do Better, Jennifer Rubin, right, Oct. 2, 2025. Atoning for political errors, missteps, and sins. At sundown Wednesday, Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, began. It provides an opportunity for reflection, repentance, and change. For defenders of democracy and the Democratic Party specifically (which is the only major national pro-democracy party), this is as good a time as any to take stock.

The essential prayers for Jews on this climax of the High Holy Days are the Al Chet and the Ashamnu, acrostic prayers that alphabetically enumerate our collective sins. Going through the entire alphabet (in Hebrew, no less!) would be excessive, but working through the first part of the English alphabet can be instructive. U.S. Capitol in reflection

In that spirit, let’s recognize, make amends for, and vow to avoid the following, when presented with opportunities to transgress the political sins of:

Arrogance: Too many political insiders foolishly insist that all voters listen to politicians 24/7 (hence, they mistakenly assume a level of familiarity with political minutiae). Political elites convince themselves that talking points have saliency beyond hyper-political Americans, that ordinary Americans do not care about immigrants snatched off the streets (leading to anything less than full-throated criticism of ICE), that the most important leadership must emanate from Washington, D.C., and that “democracy under attack” is self-explanatory and motivating for average people.

The antidote to arrogance involves listening to voters, speaking plainly, personalizing the results of Trump’s cruel and misguided actions (How many more dollars will tariffs cost you? What happens if Trump can indict or knock off the air any opponent?), and appealing to Americans’ common sense and innate sense of decency (e.g., it’s cruel and stupid to round up and deport grandmothers). Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is expert at this.

Bullheadedness: Establishment politicians and stuffy insiders too often stick with political hacks rather than embrace effective reformers (whether candidates for the DNC chairman or the mayor of New York). They have failed to listen to the base (which is invariably far ahead of politicians). They have neglected to set the stage for substantial reform of the Supreme Court, which has become a partisan adjunct to the MAGA regime.

The opposite of bullheadedness is pragmatism (choosing what works in practice, which leaders energize voters), humility, curiosity, and respect for a younger generation of leaders and effective voices outside the Beltway. Learning new habits means embracing new media, new platforms, and new expectations for authenticity. It requires discipline to, for example, cheer on lower courts that defend the rule of law but keep up withering criticism of the Supreme Court, which enables authoritarianism through its shadow docket.

Caution/Complacency: It is time to end the ossification of the Democratic Party that comes from clinging to deadwood pols unsuited to 21st century politics. Enough with the false confidence that certain segments of the electorate can be taken for granted, the flawed assumption that ignoring issues like immigration or crime is better than coming up with better answers than Republicans are offering, and the fantasy that timidly splitting the difference on major issues has wide appeal. No more phony and stomach-turning courtesy extended to “distinguished colleagues” in Congress and a corrupt New York City mayor; no more naive reliance on legacy media to get the message out; and no more treating Trump like he is an ordinary president.

The cure for excessive caution and complacency is experimentation, bold policy ideas that are overwhelmingly popular with voters (e.g., subsidized childcare, paid sick leave, a constitutional amendment to ban dark money), full embrace of alternatives to the legacy media, and support for aggressive reforms (e.g., term limits for the Supreme Court, banning crypto and individual stock trading for everyone in all three branches).Subscribed

Distraction-itis: Too many political observers and insiders become convinced that everything is a distraction from something else (e.g., occupation of D.C. is a distraction from the Epstein files, which are a distraction from tariffs, which is a distraction from E. Jean Carroll’s ruling, which is a distraction from…). However, democracy defenders cannot shy away from confronting multiple, serious harms inflicted by a president who floods the field with abuses, cruelties, and lies.

Rather than deciding which outrage is distracting from which other outrage, democracy defenders must prioritize our most urgent issues (e.g., mass deportation to El Salvador), as they arise without entirely abandoning other issues. Certainly, one cannot break through the noise by talking about everything all at once. That still means democracy advocates can highlight different things over the course of a week or month. Defense of democracy requires passionately opposing militarization of our streets and Trump’s grotesque corruption and weaponization of the criminal justice system.

Ennui: It is easy to become depressed, fatigued, and defeatist in the Trump era. But we do not have that luxury. Democracy and our fellow Americans, especially the most vulnerable, depend on our resilience and fortitude. Falling prey to cynicism (all politicians are alike), pessimism (voters are permanently unreachable), and depression (I cannot do everything so therefore I will do nothing) emboldens authoritarians’ will.

To counteract ennui, one must take time for joyful activities, family, and friends. Staying in the fight requires keeping up one’s mental and physical health and recharging periodically. Doing as much rather than worrying or doom-scrolling invariably buoys one’s spirits.

Moreover, we must seek inspiration from immigrants struggling to keep their families together, from civil rights advocates working every day on behalf of the powerless, from families caring for loved ones with disabilities, from social workers looking after shut-ins, and from neighbors who unselfishly give time in their community.

If they do not quit, we cannot either.

For those observing Yom Kippur, I wish you an easy fast and g’mar tov (be sealed in the Book of Life).

Oct. 1

A Republican leadership comprised of House Speaker Mike Johnson, center at the microphone, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, at left, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (center, behind Johnson), and Vice President J.D. Vance, right support President Trump’s stance on the government shutdown Sept. 30 at a news conference outside the White House following failed discussions with Democrat (New York Times photo by Doug Mills).

New York Times, Shutdown Enters First Full Day With No Hint Either Side Will Give, Catie Edmondson, Updated Oct. 1, 2025. Government funding was cut off shortly after midnight in a spending deadlock that could cut essential services and lead to mass layoffs.

The government shut down on Wednesday morning at 12:01 a.m., amid a bitter spending deadlock between President Trump and Democrats in Congress that will disrupt federal services and leave many federal workers furloughed.

It was the first federal shutdown since 2019, when parts of the government were shuttered for 35 days in a standoff between congressional Democrats and Mr. Trump over the president’s demand to fund a wall at the southern border.

This time, the dispute is over Democrats’ demand that the president agree to extend expiring health care subsidies and restore Medicaid cuts enacted over the summer as part of Mr. Trump’s marquee tax cut and domestic policy law.

The shutdown became all but inevitable on Tuesday night after Senate Democrats voted just hours before a midnight deadline to block Republicans’ plan to keep federal funding flowing.

In back-to-back Senate votes that reflected how acrimonious the funding dispute has become, each party blocked the other’s stopgap spending proposal, just as they had earlier in the month.

On a 55-to-45 vote, the G.O.P. plan, which would extend funding through Nov. 21, fell short of the 60 needed for passage. Republicans also blocked Democrats’ plan, which would extend funding through the end of October and add more than $1 trillion in health care spending, in a 47-to-53 vote.

Shortly afterward, Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, directed agencies in a memo to “execute their plans for an orderly shutdown.”

Senate Republican leaders held the votes as a part of what they promised would be a daily effort to force Democrats to go on the record against extending government funding.

“The Democrats’ far-left base and far-left senators have demanded a showdown with the president,” said Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader. “And the Democrat leaders have bowed to their demands. And apparently, the American people just have to suffer the consequences.”

Democrats said they were resolute in their determination to continue the standoff until Republicans relented to their demands, which include the extension of Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year, as well as the reversal of cuts to Medicaid and other health programs that Republicans included in the tax cut legislation.

“If the president were smart, he’d move heaven and earth to fix this health care crisis right away, because Americans are going to hold him responsible when they start paying $400, $500, $600 a month more on their health insurance,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader. “We have less than a day. If there was ever a moment for Donald Trump and Republicans to get serious about health care, it is now.” 

President Trump addresses about 800 U.S. generals and admirals in a political-rally-style speech at Quantico, VA on Sept. 30, 2025, preceded by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a former National Guard officer who prefers to call himself “Secretary of War” instead of the congressionally mandated term “Secretary of Defense.” 

Senior military leaders look on at Marine Corps Base Quantico on September 30, 2025 in Quantico, Virginia

Popular Information, Accountability Journalism: Trump declares war on America, Judd Legum, right, Rebecca Crosby, and Noel Sims, Oct. 1, 2025. “It’s the enemy from within and we have to handle it before it gets out of control.”

In a speech before an unprecedented gathering of hundreds of the nation’s top military commanders, President Trump declared war on major American cities.

We have many cities in great shape, too, by the way. I want you to know that. But it seems that the ones that are run by the radical left Democrats, what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places. And we’re going to straighten them out one by one. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war, too. It’s a war from within.

He also singled out Portland, Oregon, which Trump said was so overrun with crime and chaos that it “looked like World War II.”

Trump criticized restrictions on the use of force by the National Guard and other military personnel on U.S. soil. Trump said he has removed those restrictions and, from now on, “they spit, we hit.” He praised members of the military for “pounding” gangs of “kids” in Washington, D.C.

Trump said he told Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to “use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.” He highlighted that he “signed an executive order to provide training for quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances.” Trump said deployments in U.S. cities are “going to be a big thing for the people in this room because it’s the enemy from within and we have to handle it before it gets out of control.”

The phrase “enemy from within” has an ugly history. It was famously used by Senator Joseph McCarthy in a 1950 speech: “When a great democracy is destroyed, it will not be from enemies from without, but rather because of enemies from within.” (McCarthy attributed the quote to “one of our outstanding historical figures,” but that claim appears to be apocryphal.) McCarthy used the concept of the “enemy within” to justify the trampling of civil rights and academic freedom. Earlier, the Ottoman Empire used the concept of the “enemy within“ to rationalize the Armenian genocide.

Not only is Trump’s rhetoric disturbing, but his claims about crime trends in American cities are objectively false. He is using this misinformation to justify deploying the military in a manner that is antithetical to American democracy.The facts about crime in American cities

The reality is that crime is down in many major cities across America. In some cities, crime is at historic lows.

In Los Angeles, for example, murders were down 14% in 2024 compared to 2023. Victims shot also decreased by around 19% in 2024. Crime has continued to drop in Los Angeles this year. From January to July 2025, property crime decreased 15%, violent crime decreased 12%, and murders decreased 26% compared to the same period last year, according to the Real-Time Crime Index by AH Datalytics. According to data from the first half of 2025, the city is on pace to see the fewest homicides “in nearly 60 years,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

This trend continues across other cities that Trump claims are unsafe. In 2024, murders were down 32% in San Francisco compared to 2023, according to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) data. In 2024, San Francisco’s homicide rate reached a low “not seen in the City since the early 1960s.” Property crime in San Francisco was also down 29% in 2024 and violent crime was down 13% compared to the year before. This year, crime in San Francisco has continued to decline, with murders down 20%, violent crime down 20%, and property crime down 29% in the first seven months of 2025 compared to the same period last year, according to the Real-Time Crime Index.

In 2024, murders decreased 9% in Portland compared to the year before, according to FBI data. Overall property crime also decreased by 6% in 2024, while violent crime did not see a significant change. Crime in Portland has continued to decrease in 2025. In the first seven months of the year, murders were down 51%, violent crime was down 16%, and property crime was down 4% compared to the same period in 2024, according to the Real-Time Crime Index

In Chicago, violent crime dropped 10% in 2024 compared to 2023, according to FBI data. Murder also dropped 7% in 2024, while overall property crime stayed relatively flat, with a 1% increase in 2024 compared to 2023. Crime has continued to plummet in Chicago this year. This summer, “Chicago recorded the fewest homicides in June, July, and August since 1965,” WBEZ reported. According to the Real-Time Crime Index, violent crime was down 20% in the first seven months of the year compared to the same period last year. Murders were also down 31% and property crime dropped 19%.

Trump also claimed that New York City is unsafe. But overall crime was down almost 3% last year, according to the New York City Police Department (NYPD). While there was not a significant change in violent crime or property crime from 2023 to 2024, murder was down 5% in 2024, according to data from the FBI. In 2025, crime has continued to drop. According to the Real-Time Crime Index, murders dropped 21% in New York City in the first seven months of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, while overall violent crime decreased 3% and property crime dropped 4%. In the first eight months of the year, the city also “saw the fewest shooting incidents and shooting victims in recorded history,” according to the NYPD.Why America has laws restricting the use of the military domestically

Trump’s call for war on American cities is both legally questionable and contrary to the long-held American principles. The primacy of civilian authorities has been central to American ideals since the Boston Massacre catalyzed the independence movement in 1770.

When the British colonized America, grievances about military force and control became a key motivator for independence. In the Declaration of Independence, the colonists wrote that under British rule, the military had become “independent of and superior to the civil power,” which impeded their rights. This principle was so important to the Founding Fathers that they included many provisions in the Constitution and Bill of Rights to check the domestic powers of the military.

Two primary laws govern the use of federal troops on U.S. soil: the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act.

The Posse Comitatus Act, which was passed in 1878, reads “Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force, or the Space Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”

The Posse Comitatus Act prevents the use of the military on U.S. soil for law enforcement purposes absent explicit Congressional approval. Other laws allow the military to conduct other domestic operations, including providing emergency relief in the event of a public health crisis or natural disaster. But the military cannot ordinarily make arrests or conduct searches domestically.

The Insurrection Act is the main exception to the Posse Comitatus Act. It allows the president to use federal troops when a state requests assistance to quell an insurrection or when an insurrection impedes the federal government’s ability to enforce federal law. For example, the Insurrection Act was invoked to enforce desegregation in the South during the civil rights movement against the wishes of state governments, which sought to maintain segregation.

By waging “war” on American cities, Trump threatens to violate this essential American principle and turn federal troops against citizens. But his authority to do so rests on shaky legal ground.

While the Supreme Court has held for nearly 200 years that the president retains the authority to decide what constitutes a “rebellion” under the Insurrection Act, it has also ruled that the president’s decision is subject to review by the courts to determine if the decision was made in bad faith or based on an error.

Already, Trump’s decision-making has been called into question. In early September, a judge ruled that his administration’s use of federal troops in Los Angeles was illegal because “there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law.” 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth focused remarks on the importance for the department of a “Warrior Ethos.”

Lev Remembers, Urgent: America at the Edge — Trump’s Shutdown, Indictments & the Generals’ Test, Lev Parnas,right, Sept. 30-Oct. 1, 2025. Not random. Not coincidence. A coordinated push to rewrite history and cripple democracy.

As I sit here just hours away from the government shutting down, I want you to pause and really hear me. This isn’t about another budget fight in Washington. This is a deliberate, coordinated push to advance Project 2025 — and they’re not even hiding it anymore.

Donald Trump is warning Democrats that once the shutdown happens, he will begin making “irreversible changes” — mass firings, dismantling programs, and gutting our institutions — all while still blaming the other side.

At the same time, while Washington was consumed with the looming shutdown, down in Quantico Trump was turning his focus on the generals.

Even as he moves to weaken the government in D.C., he is testing the loyalty of our military leadership, seeking to bring them under his control. This is not coincidence — it is a coordinated two-front assault: cripple the government in the Capitol, and coerce the military into obedience at Quantico.

History is clear: for any dictatorship to take root, it must secure the loyalty of the military. That’s exactly what we’re witnessing now. My sources tell me there is already a list of generals they want gone. This isn’t speculation. This is a purge-in-progress.

But it doesn’t stop there.

I’m also hearing from my sources that the indictments are not over. More are coming. And simultaneously, Trump and his allies are preparing a full-scale campaign to rewrite history itself. What they want to do with January 6th is exactly what the Chinese regime did with Tiananmen Square — bury it, erase it, and replace it with a propaganda version that claims it was a “deep state Democrat operation” to set up Donald Trump, not a MAGA insurrection.

This is the story they are trying to cement into the public record — a lie meant to absolve Trump and vilify his opponents.

Think about it: Speaker Mike Johnson did everything he could to keep the Epstein files from being released. Why? Because Trump is doing everything he can to bury them permanently. These are not isolated actions. These are pieces of a larger strategy — part of Project 2025 — to consolidate power, erase the truth, and crush accountability.

• The shutdown.
• The purge of generals.
• The propaganda campaign to rewrite January 6th.
• The suppression of the Epstein files.
• The upcoming indictments.
• The attacks on American cities.

This is all preparation for what’s coming next: a future with no fair and square elections in 2026 and beyond. Everything I’ve been warning you about is coming to a head right now.

Our last line of defense is no longer Congress. It’s no longer the courts. It’s the men and women of our military — our generals, our veterans, our military families. These are people who swore an oath to the Constitution, not to any one man. They have risked everything to protect our freedoms, and now they’re being put in an impossible position.

Trump has already floated using the military against American citizens. He needs generals who will obey illegal orders. We cannot let that happen.

Our generals and military leaders have given their lives to serve this country. They’ve fought wars abroad, endured unimaginable sacrifices alongside their families, and stood as a shield so that we could live free under the Constitution. That same Constitution is now under attack from within. The clear and present danger to our democracy is not America’s cities or its people — it is Project 2025 and those driving it. These leaders must recognize the real threat, stand firm, and refuse unlawful orders. Their loyalty must remain with the American people and the Constitution, not with any one man. They cannot step aside or allow this purge to happen. They are now being called upon to defend the very freedoms they swore to protect — to stand up, to say no, and to ensure that our democracy survives.

So I’m pleading with you: call every veteran you know. Call every military family. Share this message far and wide. Let them know we see them. We support them. And we need them to support us — to support the Constitution over any would-be dictator.

This isn’t politics. This is about the survival of our democracy.

I don’t write these letters lightly. I risk everything to bring you these truths. And with every purge, every whistleblower forced out, it gets more dangerous by the day, by the hour. One day, if we don’t act now, we may wake up and discover our freedom to speak has vanished.

This isn’t just a newsletter. This is a movement. Every truth I risk to bring you, is because I believe our voices together can stop what Donald Trump and Project 2025 are trying to do to this country.

More On U.S. Government Shutdown

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: The Silence of the Generals, Andrew Egger, William Kristol, Oct. 1, 2025. And the searing words of a veteran on the bench.

Well, here we go: The federal government has shut down. Senate Democrats have vowed to oppose any spending measure that doesn’t restore some of the healthcare cuts of this summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act; meanwhile, Republicans are refusing to negotiate point blank, while continuing to lie that what Democrats are really after is free taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegal immigrants.

And Donald Trump has pledged to use the shutdown as a pretext slash and burn the federal government to unprecedented levels. 

The Contrarian, Opinion: No Wonder We Have a Shutdown, Jennifer Rubin, right, Oct. 1, 2025. Trump’s abject ignorance and narcissism made this inevitable. Trump’s abject ignorance and narcissism made this inevitable.

With Donald Trump in the White House and congressional MAGA Republicans afraid to cross him, no one should be surprised that the federal government has shut down. Aided and abetted by MAGA Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (who sent his members out of town rather than stick around for a vote and risk swearing in the new Democratic representative…who would be 218th vote for a discharge petition to release the Epstein files), Trump made no effort to keep the government open.

Trump cannot fathom that Democrats would resist his commands. In a belated meeting on Monday with congressional leaders that predictably went nowhere, Trump appeared clueless about how his own big, ugly bill would affect healthcare. (But he also does not seem to know what was going on in Portland.) It’s difficult to reason—let alone negotiate—with someone so willfully ignorant.

Operating in a narcissistic fantasy that he is beloved by voters and clueless about what is at stake, Trump naturally cannot imagine that Democrats would deny him their votes to take away healthcare from millions of Americans. Republicans have ceded their Article I powers and the Supreme Court has blessed his unilateral power grasp, so he naturally expects to keep undercutting congressional authorization deals with unilateral rescissions. Democrats’ insistence that he actually respect Congress’s power of the purse must flummox him. Whatever Trump believes, his hand is weak.Subscribed

First, he is overwhelmingly unpopular. As The New Republic’s Greg Sargent recently recounted:

The new Quinnipiac poll has Trump’s approval at an abysmal 38 percent, while 54 percent disapprove. The new Associated Press poll has him at 39 percent approving to 60 percent disapproving. The new Gallup poll has him at 40 percent to 56 percent. Reuters has him at 41 percent, and the new Economist/YouGov poll has him at 39–56.

Those numbers are not just rotten; they are historically rotten for a president at this point in his term. Presidents who prevailed in shutdowns have not been so widely disliked.

The assumption that the side “causing” the shutdown is destined to lose is faulty when the president is underwater on every issue, the economy is in decline, and he seems obsessed with everything but the shutdown issues (e.g. attacking Jimmy Kimmel, invading another peaceful city, persecuting his enemies, and politicizing the military).

Moreover, the latest Navigator poll shows that by a 49 to 34 percent margin voters in battleground states say “Congress should let the government shut down to hold the line against funding cuts for healthcare programs and keeping tariffs in place,” rather than “keep the government open, even if it means funding cuts for healthcare programs and keeping tariffs in place.”

Meanwhile, a Morning Consult polls shows “45% of voters say they’d blame Republicans in Congress for a government shutdown, while only 32% say they’d blame Democrats in Congress.” In short, voters’ negative assessment of Trump is likely to color how they view the shutdown.

Second, Trump’s excuses are easily debunked and/or unintelligible. He ranted on Truth Social: “[Democrats] are threatening to shut down the Government of the United States unless they can have over $1 Trillion Dollars in new spending to continue free healthcare for Illegal Aliens (A monumental cost!), force Taxpayers to fund Transgender surgery for minors [...] allow men to play in women’s sports, and essentially create Transgender operations for everybody.” When he has no colorable argument to defend his conduct, Trump is reduced to such babbling.

Government healthcare has never and will not be available to undocumented people. And, needless to say, Democrats’ concerns (Medicaid cuts, subsidies for the Affordable Care Act exchanges, and an end to illegal rescissions) have nothing to do with any transgender issue. Getting other Republicans who face the voters next year to parrot these pathetic attacks may be difficult.

Third, Republicans are exceptionally vulnerable on the underlying issue at the heart of this.

The core of the MAGA agenda—taking away healthcare to pay for tax cuts for billionaires—is indefensible.

Even Republicans have tried to rebrand the “big, beautiful bill.” It remains a loser with voters. In August, Pew Research Center found it was 14 points underwater. KFF in late July found only 36% of adults held a favorable view while a jaw-dropping 63% has an unfavorable view. So long as the shutdown is about healthcare—and it is—Republicans are in deep trouble.

Fourth, Trump’s threat to conduct huge permanent layoffs during the shutdown has landed with a THUD. He has already unilaterally fired tens of thousands of workers (blessed by the MAGA majority on the Supreme Court by lifting stays on his executive power grabs). Even if Democrats managed to pass a “clean” continuing resolution, he would likely continue slashing away at the federal workforce and at vital government services.

Trump might well try to continue his lawless destruction of the federal government, but the shutdown would not make that any easier. Having abused his authority so frequently, his threats now ring hollow.

Suffice to say, government shutdowns are highly undesirable. They hurt government workers and the Americans who depend on “non-essential” services. However, ripping away healthcare from millions of Americans and facilitating Trump’s illegitimate confiscation of the power of the purse are even more destructive—and even more unpopular. It will be Democrats’ task over the ensuing days and weeks to lay out the stakes clearly to the American people. Do millions want to lose healthcare insurance? Do they want Trump to keep ripping up government no matter what Congress decides?

If Democrats do their job, Republicans may regret forcing through an agenda Americans detest and abdicating their role as the first branch of government.

New York Times, News Analysis: Democrats See No Need to Capitulate, Nor Republicans to Cut a Deal, Carl Hulse, Updated Oct. 1, 2025. The last time Senate Democrats found themselves taking the blame for a government shutdown, they quickly caved. That’s less likely to happen now.

The last time Senate Democrats found themselves taking the blame for a government shutdown, they quickly caved and raced to reopen federal agencies in 2018, as their more moderate members demanded a fast resolution after only three days.

This shutdown could be different.

The Democrats from red states who decried the shutdown strategy as a foolish miscalculation and pressed for an immediate reversal in the showdown with President Trump seven years ago are long gone.

The ideological makeup of the party has shifted to the left, and Democrats are now bracing for an extended confrontation with the White House and congressional Republicans, despite the clear political risks. The same dynamic is at play in the G.O.P., which has lurched to the right under Mr. Trump and no longer sees room for compromise.

Democrats believe they have a powerful message on health care, with some Americans set to face soaring premiums unless Republicans agree to extend federal subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. They shrugged off Mr. Trump’s threat to engage in the wholesale firing of federal workers, saying he would do so regardless of the status of government funding.

And Democrats do not see much benefit in providing the votes for a temporary spending extension, since Mr. Trump and his budget czar, Russell T. Vought, have already demonstrated that they are willing to spend federal dollars — or not spend them, as the case may be — however they want, no matter what Congress says.

They have so far done so with little pushback from Senate Republicans.

“How could we negotiate a bipartisan agreement and then have the president unilaterally through impoundment, or the Republican Party through rescissions and the president unilaterally through pocket rescissions, undo it all without any input,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, asked as he explained Democratic resistance.

New York Times, Trump Administration to Withhold $18 Billion for N.Y.C. Transit Projects, Matthew Haag, Oct. 1, 2025. Funds for two of the nation’s largest infrastructure projects, the Second Avenue subway and Hudson River tunnels, are being held up in apparent attempts to pressure Democrats amid a government shutdown.

The Trump administration announced on Wednesday that it would withhold $18 billion in federal funds previously awarded to New York City for two of the largest infrastructure projects in the country.

The two projects — the expansion of the Second Avenue subway line and new commuter rail tunnels under the Hudson River — have been in the works for years and are aimed at alleviating bottlenecks and improving travel for millions of people and daily commuters in New York City and beyond.

Both are already underway after numerous starts and stops, with construction advancing on the tunnels, a $16 billion project known as Gateway that sits at the center of the busy Northeast Corridor.

Sean Duffy, the transportation secretary, said in a statement that funds for the two projects would not be distributed while the Transportation Department reviewed what it described as New York State’s “discriminatory, unconstitutional contracting processes.”

The review was in response to President Trump’s executive orders earlier this year targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs, Mr. Duffy said, and following a rule issued by the department on Tuesday that forbids recipients of federal transit funds from mandating race- and sex-based contracting requirements.

The substantial funding freeze targeting the two projects also appeared to be intended to pressure Democrats to join Republicans in reopening the government. With Department of Transportation employees furloughed, the review could not begin, and federal funds could not be released for work already underway.

While federal funding for transit projects across the country could now be at risk, the department chose first to single out projects in the backyards of Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, and Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, who have sparred with President Trump over the shutdown.

As the Trump administration has begun carrying out its threats to freeze and claw back federal funds from states and cities that promote diversity initiatives or do not cooperate with it on federal immigration enforcement, New York has been a main target, with hundreds of millions of dollars withheld.

But this funding freeze is the largest yet in New York and could have potentially widespread effects, disrupting a regional economy dependent on the movement of residents and commuters.

Like other efforts by the Trump administration to withhold or delay federal funding to New York, the decision is likely to be challenged in court.

The decision has caused confusion among the agencies overseeing the projects, including the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is managing the subway extension project that was expected to be open in 2032.

“The federal government wants to immediately ‘review’ our compliance with rules they told us about moments ago,” John J. McCarthy, the chief of policy and external relations at the authority, said in a statement. “We’re reviewing their tweets and press releases like everyone else. For now, it looks like they’re just inventing excuses to delay one of the most important infrastructure projects in America.”

Despite the Transportation Department’s announcement, work on both projects is still moving forward, for now. In a letter to the Gateway Development Commission, which oversees the tunnel project, a department official said the pause would “temporarily impact disbursements.”

New York Times, Hakeem Jeffries called Trump’s deepfake post ‘racist.’ JD Vance said it was ‘funny,’ Staff Report, Oct. 1, 2025. The vice president said Americans can recognize the posts are fake.

Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday brushed off President Donald Trump’s posts of vulgar AI-generated videos of top Democratic leaders as “funny,” and an example of his boss “joking and having a good time.”

After meeting with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries this week, the president posted a video depicting the two Democrats speaking to reporters with fake audio of Schumer saying Democrats “have no voters anymore, because of our woke, trans bullshit” and that “if we give all these illegal aliens health care, we might be able to get them on our side so they can vote for us.”

In that deepfake post, and another, Jeffries was depicted in a sombrero while mariachi music played in the background.

The crude memes are a reference to a Republican shutdown talking point — that Democrats are fighting to reverse health care provisions enacted in the GOP tax and domestic policy law earlier this year, including provisions aimed at excluding noncitizens from public benefits. Federal law already makes most undocumented immigrants ineligible for federal health coverage under Medicare, Medicaid and Affordable Care Act subsidies.

“I think it’s funny. The president is joking and having a good time. You can negotiate in good faith while poking fun at the absurdities of the Democrats’ positions, and poking fun at the absurdity of the Democrats themselves,” Vance said to reporters in the White House briefing room. “I will tell Hakeem Jeffries right now, I make a solemn promise to you that if you help us reopen the government, the sombrero memes will stop. And I’ve talked to the president of the United States about that.”

Jeffries has slammed the videos as “racist” and “bigoted” and said Trump needs to be “focused on doing his job.” He later posted a photo of Trump with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Schumer, for his part, said: “If you think your shutdown is a joke, it just proves what we all know: You can’t negotiate. You can only throw tantrums.”

Vance also shrugged off Jeffries’ response, and said Americans can recognize the posts are fake.

“Is he a Mexican American that is offended by having a sombrero meme?” Vance said. “Give the country a little credit. We are all trying to do a very important job for the American people.”

More On Trump ‘Enemy Within Threat’

ABC-TV: Jimmy Kimmel Live, Trump & Hegseth Lecture Generals About Being Fat and a Visit from Gov Gavin Newsom & Seth Meyers! Sept. 30, 2025. Stephen Colbert and Jimmy, above, are simultaneously guests on each other’s shows tonight, Guillermo makes his big entrance as a pizza chef, we are moments away from a government shutdown, all the top military leaders were pulled together for a mandatory meeting with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Trump showed up to lecture the generals.

The Bulwark, Political Opinion: Qualms From Quantico, Bill Kristol, right, Oct. 1, 2025. There was little that was surprising in yesterday’s speeches at Quantico from President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. We already knew that Trump is a demagogue whose clownish solipsism shouldn’t mask the danger of his authoritarianism. We already knew that Hegseth is a Fox & Friends personality whose pathetic desperation to want to appear tough shouldn’t overshadow the damage he can do to our military.

Their speeches were predictably depressing and dangerous. My fellow Bulwarkians and I discussed them here and here. And JVL analyzed some of the implications of Trump’s speech here.

So I won’t dwell today on how alarmed we should be by Trump’s wish to deploy the military to fight a “war” against the enemy “within.” And I won’t dwell on how repulsed we should be by Hegseth’s apparent yearning for armed forces that resemble the Soviet military more than the American.Instead, I want to mention a couple of aspects of yesterday’s news from which we can take some hope.

First, the general and flag officers at Quantico rose to the occasion. They listened in dignified and even stone-faced silence to Hegseth and Trump. Retired Army general Mark Hertling wrote ahead of the gathering that he hoped “the loudest message” the senior officers send “is no message at all—only that they have the quiet, disciplined silence ofprofessionals who know their oath is to the Constitution, not to a man.”

That was the message they sent. It was impossible not to see it. And it was impressive.

I was also impressed by the many younger veterans who stepped up afterwards on social media to express disapproval of what Trumpand Hegseth had to say. I was particularly struck by this post from a leader of the group Veterans for Responsible Leadership, reacting to Hegseth’s boast that “America’s warriors . . . kill people and break things for a living.”

This is a disgraceful message. There was a soldier that I served with in the army that later was killed in Mosul, Iraq that said the reason he joined the military was because he believed that it was the greatest force for good that the world has ever known. He said the military not only taught its soldiers to be lethal, but it also taught us to be compassionate and empathetic and care about not only the American people but also freedom-loving and -seeking people from all over the globe. This is the true warrior ethos that so many of us veterans know and love. I’m thinking about him a lot tonight and will be damned if sons of bitches like Trump and Hegseth will transform our great military into something resembling the Russians.’ His memory and service must not be in vain.

Obviously, there are post-9/11 veterans who have been sympathetic to Trump and Hegseth. But I’m confident that many understand, especially after yesterday, that Trump’s vision of America—and Hegseth’s of the military—is not what they and their comrades-in-arms signed up and sacrificed for.

Yesterday also saw a notable contribution to our public discourse from a veteran of a different generation, a man who served a tour in the Army over six decades ago and then continued his public service with a distinguished career as a U.S. federal district court judge.

William G. Young, a Ronald Reagan appointee to the federal bench in Massachusetts now a senior judge, wrote a long and careful opinion in American Association of University Professors et al. v. Marco Rubio, finding that in one of the early ICE arrests this year the Trump administration had trampled on the free speech rights of an immigrant.

But Young chose to go beyond his important legal analysis of free speech jurisprudence to discuss the larger meaning of “our magnificent Constitution.”

And so he addressed the practice of ICE agents’ wearing masks:

Can you imagine a masked Marine? It is a matter of honor—and honor still matters. To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police. Carrying on in this fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and everyone who works in it.This remark was especially striking in the context of the speeches by Trump and Hegseth. For what they want, in a way, is to turn the U.S. military into an institution more like ICE: an internal police force, unconstrained by many laws or norms, bullying and intimidating people here at home on behalf of the current administration in Washington.

I have considerable confidence that the current crop of general and flag officers do not want a kind of a military that looks like or behaves like ICE, and that they would resist it.

But what of the military leadership three years from now? The Washington Post recently described efforts by Hegseth to shape the next generation of senior officers. “Even at the one- and two-star level, the secretary’s team is scrutinizing old relationships and what officials have said or posted on social media, as they determine whom to send forward for a higher rank or assignment,” the paper reported.

What will the officer corps look like in three years? Can we be confident that Trump and Hegseth won’t succeed in turning the U.S. military into something more like ICE? The thought seems incredible. But that ICE would be doing what it is now doing on our streets would have been shocking just a year ago.

The opinion of Judge Young and the silence of the generals at Quantico offer some grounds for hope. But military officers and district court judges alone won’t save us. And it’s perhaps worth noting that neither the judge nor the senior officers were elected to their offices.

At the end of the day, free government can’t be preserved without the commitment and courage of elected officials. So the question is: Can more of our elected officials rise to the occasion? Which means, can more of the American people rise to the occasion? That’s the question with which Judge Young concludes his opinion:

I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected.

Is he correct?I

The Atlantic, Commentary on National Security: Hundreds of Generals Try to Keep a Straight Face, Nancy A. Youssef and Missy Ryan, Pete Hegseth gathered commanders from around the globe to unveil new physical-fitness standards.

In the days before Pete Hegseth stepped onstage to address the hundreds of generals and admirals he summoned for a mysterious meeting outside Washington, D.C., officials at the Pentagon joked that the defense secretary could have saved a lot of time and money by making his remarks via email instead. As it turns out, what Hegseth delivered at Marine Corps Base Quantico could very well have been a copy of his 2024 book, The War on Warriors, which offers an exhaustive rebuke of the military he left in 2021 with the National Guard rank of major.

Hegseth’s speech, which required yanking commanders from posts dotting the globe and whisking them to Washington at taxpayers’ expense, marked a new phase in the former Fox News host’s campaign to transform the military in his image and align it more closely with the MAGA agenda. All of the pathologies diagnosed in his book—diversity initiatives, facial hair, accommodations for women, systems to hold “toxic” commanders accountable—were struck down on the spot, ending what Hegseth depicted as a long journey through the wilderness for what should rightfully be known as the War Department. “Foolish and reckless political leaders set the wrong compass heading, and we lost our way. We became the ‘Woke Department,’” Hegseth told an auditorium packed with senior brass. “Not anymore.”

“No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate-change worship. No more division, distraction, or gender delusions. No more debris. As I’ve said before and will say again, we are done with that shit,” Hegseth told the officers.

In a 45-minute speech that preceded an even longer one by President Donald Trump, Hegseth roamed the stage as though he were delivering a TED Talk. Speaking to a room full of career officers with far more experience than he had, he called out “fat generals,” decried the punishment of troops for minor mistakes, and promised to reverse what he falsely said was a lowering of unit standards to accommodate women and people of color. Vowing to rebuild a force worthy of his eldest son—he made no mention of his daughters—Hegseth said he would enact stricter fitness standards and a host of new regulations: no more exceptions, no more shaving waivers for “beardos,” no more adherence to “stupid rules of engagement.”

The Pentagon shared no information in the days leading up to the meeting about what Hegseth would do or say, fueling anxiety and speculation that he might fire generals en masse or escalate the administration’s nascent war against Latin American drug gangs.

Hegseth appeared to relish the suspense, taking the trouble to comment on a retired general’s social-media post about a 1935 meeting in which Nazi generals were asked to swear allegiance to Hitler rather than the Weimar constitution. “Cool story, General,” Hegseth wrote.

Politico, Hegseth uses rare meeting of generals to announce new military standards, Paul McLeary and Jack Detsch, Oct. 1, 2025. He warned commanders who don’t support the changes could leave the service.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth outlined an overhaul of military standards and gender rules on Tuesday in an extraordinary meeting of top brass, an effort that could reduce the role of women in combat as he seeks to bolster an image of American might.

“You are not politically correct and don’t necessarily belong, always, in polite society,” he said to hundreds of senior military leaders, who were ordered last week to gather at Quantico base in Virginia.

Hegseth has made setting the military apart from civilian society a hallmark of his tenure as Defense secretary. And while he largely trod over familiar ground Tuesday, the Pentagon chief announced new orders that would codify the “highest male standards” in training, set specific grooming rules and further eliminate gender- or race-based programs.

“I don’t want my son serving alongside troops who are out of shape or in combat units with females who can’t meet the same combat arms physical standards as men,” he said.

Hegseth’s speech, which resembled a TED talk and came hours before a likely government shutdown, called for restoring a throwback vision of the military — one that could win quick, decisive wars using overwhelming force. It marked a clear distinction from policy speeches by previous Pentagon leaders, such as Jim Mattis and Lloyd Austin, who outlined Russia and China as explicit U.S. threats.

At one point, Hegseth compared himself to the World War II-era Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine to the legendary Gen. George Marshall.

The secretary also decried “fat generals and admirals” walking the halls of the Pentagon and lambasted Biden-era objectives to promote diversity in the ranks as actions of the “Woke Department.”

Hegseth appeared to borrow from internet meme culture noting American adversaries threatening the country could “FAFO,” an acronym that stands for “fuck around and find out.”

“If necessary, our troops can translate that for you,” he said.

The new rules will put in place the “highest male standard” for fitness in combat roles, he said, which are “gender neutral.” But he acknowledged women may not be able to meet them.

“If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it,” Hegseth told the assembled generals. “That is not the intent, but it could be the result.”

He told officers that even generals and admirals would be required to pass two yearly physical tests. And he hinted that the Pentagon would overhaul inspector general investigations, just as the Defense Department watchdog is expected to release a report on Hegseth’s sharing of sensitive information on military strikes in a Signal group chat.

Perhaps most ominously, the Defense secretary warned of additional firings to come — a year after he terminated Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. C.Q. Brown, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti and several other top military officers.

Global News

New York Times, Analysis: Blair, Tapped by Trump for Gaza Plan, Brings Expertise (and Baggage), Mark Landler, Oct. 1, 2025. After peace in Northern Ireland, Tony Blair’s reputation was tarnished by his role in the invasion of Iraq. Is he stepping into another quagmire?

When Tony Blair,  shown at right in a 2014 file photo, published a how-to book for newly elected leaders last year, one of his tips was to tend to their legacies while still in office — something he said he neglected in his 10 years as Britain’s prime minister.

Now, Mr. Blair is seizing another chance to define his legacy, in a region that has preoccupied, even tormented, him since he backed George W. Bush’s war in Iraq 22 years ago. With a central role in President Trump’s new plan to end the war in Gaza, Mr. Blair could reshape a narrative that was tarnished by Iraq and unredeemed by a frustrating stint as a Middle East peacemaker after he left 10 Downing Street.

His odds of success are perilously slim. Mr. Trump’s perseverance as a peacemaker is unpredictable. If Mr. Blair thrusts himself into Gaza as a kind of colonial viceroy, critics warn that it will only inflame tensions. Far from ending the war, he could find himself stuck in the middle of another intractable conflict.

Much of Mr. Trump’s plan reflects ideas in Mr. Blair’s own 21-page blueprint for peace in Gaza, including a high-level transitional board, on which Mr. Blair will serve as a member. He drew up the plan over the past several months and had been a candidate for a leadership role, according to people familiar with the process. But in a last-minute twist, Mr. Trump took the chairman’s seat.

“Good man, very good man,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Blair on Monday, after meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. He said nothing about Mr. Blair’s responsibilities or his contributions to the plan.

Still, if the plan gains traction — a major if, given the unremitting hostility between Israel and Hamas — Mr. Blair would be one of those most responsible for delivering it. It is a striking turn for a 72-year-old retired politician, who has since built a lucrative business advising governments, banks and other clients on issues like the transformative power of A.I., and who remains a polarizing figure on Middle East issues.

And yet, it is entirely in keeping with Mr. Blair’s statesmanlike ambitions.

Ukraine Matters, BLACKOUT: Ukraine’s US Weapons Leave Russia in the Dark, Giorgi, Sept. 30, 2025. Zelensky: If Russia threatens a blackout in Kyiv, Moscow must be prepared for a response….Envoy Kellogg: Trump authorizes long-range stricks on Russia.

New York Times, Moscow Indicates Retaliation if Europe Uses Russian Assets for Ukraine, Paul Sonne, Oct. 1, 2025. Amid a plan to lend $165 billion to Ukraine using Russian state assets, European officials are mindful of the possibility of Russian blowback.

The Kremlin warned on Wednesday that it would seek the prosecution of individuals and countries engaged in the “theft” of frozen Russian sovereign assets in Europe, as European leaders convened to discuss a proposal to lend $165 billion to Ukraine based on the frozen funds.

The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, made no distinction between stealing the frozen Russian assets and using them to extend a loan to Ukraine without seizing them, as top European leaders have proposed. “We are talking about theft,” Mr. Peskov said in a call with reporters.

His comments came a day after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia signed a decree to accelerate the process of redistributing assets within Russia. Analysts say that Russia could respond to the European proposal by seizing the assets of foreign companies and individuals from nations backing the loan. Russia has already seized the operations of multiple Western companies, part of a broader redistribution of wealth during the war.

Anton G. Siluanov, the Russian finance minister, said last year that his country had frozen an amount of Western assets equal to the Russian assets frozen by the West, adding that Moscow would respond symmetrically. Since the start of the war, Moscow has been distributing the profits from Western assets in the country into special bank accounts frozen by the Russian state.

European officials have begun to eye Russian frozen money more intensely as American aid for Ukraine dries up under President Trump. The European Union’s executive arm is advancing a proposal to issue an interest-free “reparations loan” of 140 billion euros, or about $165 billion, to Ukraine, financially engineered to make use of the Russian assets without seizing them outright. The loan would be repaid only if Russia compensated Ukraine for the damage caused during the war. Britain is considering a similar plan.

“We need a more structural solution for military support,” the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Tuesday. “This is why I have put forward the idea of a reparations loan that is based on the immobilized Russian assets.”Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia and Ukraine? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

She said the loan would be dispersed in tranches and would not involve any direct seizure of Russian assets. The Group of 7 nations has already provided a loan to Ukraine using interest from the Russian assets as collateral.

The idea to further exploit the assets has gained traction after an initial proposal by Ms. von der Leyen and a similar one last week by the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz. He faces a rising far-right opposition at home that has attacked him for spending German taxpayer money on Ukraine. But the prime minister of Belgium, where most of the Russian assets are held, has opposed the idea, citing outsize risk for his country.

“It’s a very interesting geopolitical turn,” said Maria Shagina, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Given Mr. Trump’s isolationist foreign policy, she added, “Europe needs to play ball and adopt another strategy.”

The change in Europe is an unwelcome development for Russia, as Mr. Putin has invested heavily over many years in his nation’s financial stability.

The roughly $300 billion of Russian sovereign assets frozen in the West, mostly located in the European Union and Britain, make up nearly half of the Russian Central Bank’s gold and foreign-exchange reserves, the country’s Finance Ministry said in 2022. Western nations froze the assets shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Russia appears to view the proposed European financial engineering of the loan, which would stop short of seizing the Russian assets outright, as a distinction without a difference. 

 

Source: https://www.justice-integrity.org/2141-october-2025-news