Lazy Caturday Reads: Trump’s Press Ban, Greenland, and Iran

Posted: September 19, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Nine Afterlives for Light Grey Art Lab’s Color Anthropology show, by Andrew Kolb

Yesterday Trump held court in the oval office and rambled incoherently to reporters for what seemed like forever. You won’t get the full flavor of it unless you read and watch excerpts from Aaron Rupar or Acyn on Bluesky and/or Twitter. Trump often fell asleep when other people were talking. He looked like death warmed over and sounded insane.

The big headlines from the oval office press availability: Trump banned CNN, MSNOW, and Politico from the White House and he announced an agreement with Denmark and Greenland that appeared to be similar to the agreement that has already been in place since 1951.

There are also new developments in Trump’s war with Iran.

Commentary on Trump’s Press Ban

Brian Stelter at CNN: Trump says he’s ‘banning’ CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House.

President Donald Trump claimed Friday afternoon that he is “banning” CNN, MS NOW and Politico “from the White House.” He said it was “effective immediately,” but there was no indication his administration had taken steps to follow through.

A source familiar with the matter said even some White House staffers were caught off guard by the announcement, including some members of the press shop, and they were left scrambling to learn more details about how it would impact daily functions. CNN reporters remained in their White House workspace into Friday evening. A CNN team was also traveling Friday as the assigned television pool reporters with Vice President JD Vance.

The country’s leading First Amendment groups said that if Trump tries to implement a ban, it would be unconstitutional and rejected by the courts.

The newsrooms targeted by Trump echoed that sentiment.

“CNN stands fully behind our White House team and their fair and accurate reporting. We have a right under the U.S. Constitution to do that reporting without hindrance or interference from the government,” the network said in a statement. “Should the ban which President Trump threatened go ahead, it would be an illegal assault on that fundamental and constitutionally-protected right.”

“POLITICO will continue to fairly report on this White House and future ones. We will vigorously defend our First Amendment rights against any attempt to restrict them,” the outlet said in a statement. MS NOW had no immediate comment on the president’s post.

The White House Correspondents’ Association, which represents the press corps, issued a statement expressing solidarity with the news outlets Trump singled out.

Trump wrote on Truth Social around 3 p.m. Eastern that the “banning” was “a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!”

“Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America,” he continued. “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”

About an hour later, during an Oval Office press event, Trump was questioned by a group of White House reporters about how he would justify banning three news organizations. “Because they’re fake news,” he said.

“Something is wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories,” the president continued. “If they want to write them, that’s fine. I don’t have to let them into the people’s house.”

Gee, writing something “negative” about the president? Horrors! Trump really thinks he’s a dictator.

Michael M. Grynbaum at The New York Times (gift link): CNN, MS NOW and Politico Barred From White House After Trump Announces Ban.

Journalists from CNN, MS NOW and Politico were denied access to the White House grounds on Saturday, a day after President Trump announced a ban on three news organizations because of reporting he disliked.

The Kiss, by Jamie Shelman

Akayla Gardner, a White House correspondent for MS NOW, said that her White House-issued access badge failed to work at the security entrance where reporters typically enter near the West Wing.

“The officer asked me to hand over my badge; he said that it was disabled,” Ms. Gardner said in an on-air interview. “I asked why I could not get inside; he said it was above him.”

A photographer for MS NOW was also asked to relinquish their badge, but a producer for the network was allowed into the White House, Ms. Gardner said.

Betsy Klein, a veteran CNN correspondent, described a similar experience that occurred about an hour later. She said that a White House security officer, whom she has known for years, informed her that her badge had been deactivated.

“I asked if he had any more details he could share with me,” Ms. Klein said in an on-air interview. “He said I should be referred to the White House press office for more information.”

Cheyenne Haslett, a reporter at Politico, was also denied access to the White House on Saturday morning, according to a note to staff from Jonathan Greenberger, Politico’s editor in chief, that was described in the publication’s Playbook newsletter….

First Amendment experts said Friday that Mr. Trump’s media ban was unlikely to survive a legal challenge, because the president explicitly connected his decision to bar CNN, Politico and MS NOW to the content of their reporting. That’s “textbook viewpoint discrimination,” Bruce D. Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, said, referring to a kind of First Amendment violation that courts have historically disallowed.

In Mr. Trump’s first term, the White House lost a similar legal battle after it revoked the press pass for the CNN reporter Jim Acosta, whose credentials were later restored.

Erik Wemple and Michael M. Grynbaum at The New York Times (gift link): Trump Has Tried to Ban Reporters From Government Spaces Before.

The Trump administration has repeatedly moved to ban reporters from the White House and other government property.

In January 2025, Mr. Trump tried to bar Associated Press journalists from parts of the White House, including the Oval Office and Air Force One. The A.P. has sued to restore its access, but that case remains in litigation; in the meantime, A.P. photographers have had continued access to the Oval Office. Its print journalists have had more limited access.

Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, has also placed limits on reporters’ access to the Pentagon, including a requirement that all journalists be accompanied by an official escort while in the building. The Pentagon also closed the work space used for years by journalists with credentials to cover the military. The New York Times sued over the restrictions, and the litigation continues.

Dasha Burns, Will Steakin, and Adam Wren at Politico: Inside the White House media ban.

Donald Trump reupped his battle with the “FAKE NEWS” media on Truth Social Friday, banning CNN, MSNOW and POLITICO for reporting “LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States,” with “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”

POLITICO called sources in and around the administration to find out why — after months of low approval ratings for the president and his signature issues — now?

In My Arms, by Tita Costa

Here’s what POLITICO learned.

Many senior staff were surprised by the directive, which happened while chief of staff Susie Wiles was out of town, and weren’t aware it was coming until they saw the post, according to three people close to the White House with knowledge of conversations in the West Wing.

One person said Trump previously tried to ban certain media, at one point even trying to put the press in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, but was talked down.

On Friday the press shop was blindsided and unsure of how to respond, with one aide simply pointing back to Trump’s Truth Social post.

Even so, they’re taking it seriously.

“It’s real and permanent as far as POTUS is concerned,” the person said.

Over a dozen current and former Trump White House White House officials POLITICO called, texted and Signaled — granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations — were also puzzled by the development. Other key White House officials reached out to us unsolicited to say it was a head scratcher.

Trump spoke with reporters in the Oval Office Friday shortly after the post at a pre-scheduled event on healthcare. He took questions, but didn’t offer much beyond decrying the “fake news,” adding that “cumulative stories” prompted the move.

Perhaps the incident will be filed away as one of Trump’s seemingly spontaneous eruptions that staff struggle to explain, from his fascination with genetics to his hatred for windmills.

But perhaps not. A second person close to the White House said there’s already been discussions about adding more outlets to the ban. Trump himself on Friday cited The New York Times and The Washington Post as possible additions.

Commentary on Trump’s Greenland Agreement

Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Jeffrey Gettleman, and Anton Troianovski at The New York Times (gift link): U.S. Has Reached Security Deal on Greenland, Trump Says.

President Trump said on Friday that his administration had reached a deal with Denmark and Greenland to expand the U.S. security presence in Greenland, a semiautonomous Danish territory, raising the possibility of a diplomatic solution to a U.S.-made threat that nearly upended the Western alliance.

The full contours of the deal Mr. Trump was describing were not immediately clear, but shortly after his announcement, leaders of Greenland and Denmark issued statements indicating they expected an agreement to be signed next week during the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

The two sides described the agreement in very different terms. Mr. Trump claimed the United States had secured “permanent control over security, and all other needs” in Greenland, while the Danish prime minister said the deal “recognizes the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of the Kingdom of Denmark.

Cat in a Cardboard Box by British artist Ruskin Spear (1911–1990)

That description would mean the agreement fell well short of Mr. Trump’s longstanding demand of total control over Greenland.

Instead, what Mr. Trump described on Friday was a deal that would prevent U.S. adversaries from having a base on Greenland and expand the U.S. military presence in the territory. In his social media post, Mr. Trump said that under the deal, “no U.S. adversary can EVER have a base in Greenland, have a military presence in Greenland, or make sensitive investments in Greenland, without our express written approval.”

Officials from Denmark and Greenland did not immediately confirm that the United States had received such veto power — a U.S. demand that they had strongly opposed in closed-door negotiations in recent months. And two people close to the negotiations said Mr. Trump’s declaration of permanent control over Greenland’s security exaggerated the degree of new powers the United States would get over the territory. The U.S. military will be working with its counterparts in Denmark and Greenland under the agreement rather than asserting control over them, a U.S. military official said.

Still, the apparent deal, reached after months of high-stakes confidential talks with officials from the United States, Greenland and Denmark, could mark an off-ramp to an issue that caused widespread concern among NATO allies earlier this year.

PBS News Hour: What’s in the Greenland agreement between U.S. and Denmark.

Geoff Bennett:

Late today, President Donald Trump announced a deal had been struck with Denmark and Greenland. Mr. Trump has long coveted the mineral-rich island which has been part of the kingdom of Denmark since the 1700s. On social media, Mr. Trump wrote that the deal — quote — “gives the United States permanent control over security and all other needs in Greenland, completely addressing all of our many U.S. concerns. There will be no cost to the United States.”

With us here to unpack this late-breaking development is Nick Schifrin.

So, Nick, what’s in this deal?

Nick Schifrin:

Geoff, reminder that the U.S.-Greenland pressure has caused a rift between the United States and Europe and really led to questions in Europe about whether the United States was an ally. And so this was a huge deal when the president started this.

And I have talked to U.S. and European officials just in the last few minutes, and both sides seem to be happy. That’s the real headline here. So let’s look at what’s exactly in this deal.

The top line is this. It provides U.S. permanent basing, access and overflight rights. What does that mean? The U.S. can create new bases on Greenland. It can fly over Greenland and it can keep that ability no matter what Greenland chooses for its own political future in any kind of self-referendum.

Number two, it bans non-NATO bases. That means no Russia, no China bases are allowed on Greenland. There’s also this part, the third part, a screening mechanism for investments. That means no Chinese or Russian investments.

And, in return, this last point that is really key for Greenland and Denmark, the Greenland population can choose its political future. That means that they can choose to be independent, which some people on Greenland want to be. And no territory of Greenland is transferred to the United States.

And that, again, was the core of the rift. The president didn’t say, we want a little bit more access to Greenland. He said, we want Greenland. And that is a real — was a real threat to European sovereignty. And that’s why the Europeans tonight are breathing a sigh of relief, in addition to the U.S. officials saying this is a good deal.

Oliver O’Connell, Max Matzaand, and  Adrienne Murray at BBC:  Nato welcomes Greenland deal as Trump says it will give US ‘permanent security control.’

The US and Denmark have announced a deal on Greenland’s security, resolving a diplomatic dispute sparked by President Donald Trump’s threats to seize it by force.

Nato said the deal would help stabilise the region, as Trump said Denmark would grant the US “permanent control over security, and all other needs” in the semi-autonomous Danish territory.

A New Day (2021) by Catalan artist Ramiro Fernandez

The leaders of Denmark and Greenland welcomed the deal to “strengthen security”, which they said was expected to be signed next week, but did not outline its contents.

The deal comes after months of threats by Trump to “take” Greenland over national security concerns, citing its strategic location for defence purposes and its mineral wealth.

No text of the agreement has been released. Trump said the deal came with “no cost to the United States” and would grant it the ability “to do what is necessary” to “secure and defend the security of Greenland”, in a post on Truth Social.

He said it included a rule that no US adversary could maintain a military presence in Greenland or “make sensitive investments in Greenland, without our express written approval”.

A Nato spokesperson said the military alliance welcomed the deal, which would “help advance security, stability and cooperation in this vital region”.

Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she was “pleased that there is a prospect of a good agreement” for all three parties, which was expected to be signed at the UN General Assembly next week.

The deal “strengthens our common security in the Arctic and the North Atlantic area” while also recognising “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom and the right of the Greenlandic people to self-determination”, she said in a joint statement with Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen.

The agreement would still need to go through “the necessary parliamentary procedures to enter into force” once signed, the statement noted.

Iran War Developments

Rachel Dobkin at The Independent: More troops have died in the Iran War than Trump’s administration has revealed: report.

More American troops have died in the Iran War than President Donald Trump’s administration has revealed, according to a new report.

At least 22 service members have been killed in the conflict, five U.S. officials familiar with the Pentagon’s internal casualty accounting data told The Washington Post.

The estimate accounts for four more than the 18 military fatalities posted on a public government database known as the Defense Casualty Analysis System, according to the Post….

Country Life, by Louis Wain

A sixth U.S. official who spoke to the Post said 23 troops have died in the Middle East during the war, but noted that not all of the undisclosed fatalities are directly tied to the conflict.

As of Friday, the Pentagon’s database showed seven hostile and seven non-hostile deaths during the U.S. military campaign against Iran, which it has dubbed “Operation Epic Fury.”

An additional four hostile deaths were listed in a separate category called “Overseas Operations” that started on July 7 — around the time when a fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran collapsed.

It appears that this may be an effort to avoid paying death benefits for the “non-hostile” deaths.

Eric Schmitt at The New York Times (gift link): Cost of Iran War Estimated at $43.6 Billion.

The cost of the war in Iran was $43.6 billion through Sept. 3, with bombs, missiles and other munitions accounting for more than 60 percent of the expenses, the Pentagon told Congress this week.

The estimate for the first time offered an unclassified breakdown of costs incurred by each of the armed services, as well as for specific categories, like damaged or destroyed weaponry.

The Air Force, for instance, has spent $6.6 billion to pay for operating dozens of fighter and bomber squadrons. The Navy has incurred $2.2 billion in costs to deploy more than two dozen warships, including several aircraft carriers. And it has cost the Army $1.6 billion to sustain its forces in the region. Overall, more than 50,000 troops are assigned to the war mission, according to U.S. Central Command.

Congressional officials shared the cost estimates with The New York Times after it was provided to congressional national security committees.

Since the war started on Feb. 28, the military has burned through $28.1 billion in munitions, seriously depleting global stockpiles of some critical weapons, like Patriot air-defense interceptors, and siphoning supplies from U.S. military commands in Asia and Europe.

The Pentagon has spent $4.3 billion to replace dozens of damaged or destroyed combat aircraft and other weaponry and equipment. It has spent $633 million to move and support several thousand Special Operations commandos in the region.

The information also revealed spending in other critical battlefield accounts, with the military spending $23.5 million on “in-house medical support” for U.S. service members, according to one congressional official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the information provided to lawmakers. The Pentagon says 18 service members have been killed in the war and more than 830 injured.

U.S. Transportation Command spent $92.1 million to move supplies and equipment, and U.S. Cyber Command spent $10.5 million on “cybersupport operations,” the official said.

Kylie Atwood, Jennifer Hansler, and Zachary Cohen at CNN: Frustration grows as Houthis widen Middle East conflict with US unwilling to intervene.

Dramatic recent advances by the Iran-backed Houthis, including the seizure of a strategically important island in the Red Sea, have dealt another blow to a region reeling from the US war with Iran and exacerbated an already severe global energy crisis. But neither the US nor its key ally Saudi Arabia has a clear plan to beat back the group, multiple sources told CNN, leading many in the region to ask where the counteroffensive will come from.

Barbara Perrine Chu ~ Woman with Gray Cat

Although US officials acknowledge the Yemeni rebel group is advancing with the goal of ultimately asserting control over the critical Bab al Mandeb Strait, the Trump administration is signaling it has little interest in using the American military to stop them – relying instead on Saudi Arabia to do so.

But even with additional US intelligence and targeting support, Saudi Arabia has not been able to effectively stop the Houthis from taking key coastal towns in Yemen, frustrating Gulf and American officials. Sources who spoke with CNN expressed doubt that the Saudis would be able to stop the Houthis on their own.

The Houthis moves have not come as a surprise to sources in the region, as well as former diplomats, who said the weaknesses of the Saudi-backed Yemeni forces were well-known. For months US intelligence reports indicated the group would attempt to close another key waterway for commercial shipping as Iran did earlier this year, US officials said.

Still, the US believes it is currently providing Saudi Arabia with everything it needs to be successful against the Houthis, one American official told CNN, referring to the recent increase in sharing intelligence support and sharing of targeting data support with the Kingdom. And after about a decade of training the Yemen government’s military, the Kingdom had assured US officials that they were confident in their ability, two sources told CNN.

Read more at CNN.

Al Jazeera: Iranians rally in biggest show of defiance against US since war began.

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians have marched in a government-organised show of defiance in Tehran, pledging their readiness to take up arms.

The Iranian government showcased a newly formed volunteer force at the rally on Friday. It will receive limited military and emergency response training to serve as an additional layer of security for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij militia.

Volunteers rallied through downtown Tehran in combat uniforms, some carrying flags and weapons, while the government displayed drones, anti-aircraft batteries and other weaponry.

Tehran’s IRGC chief, Hassan Hassanzadeh, told the state broadcaster IRIB that over 600,000 people had registered to participate in the voluntary Janfada-ye-Iran campaign. That roughly translates to “Those who sacrifice their lives for Iran”, with over one million expected to take part in the training.

Those are my recommended reads for today. What do you think? What other stories have captured your attention today?

Wild Wednesday Reads

Posted: September 16, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Trump is supposedly involved in a war with Iran that is spreading throughout the Middle East, but all he really seems to care about is tearing down the White House to build a giant, garish ballroom, putting his name on buildings, and imposing his ideological views on all of us.

Yesterday, it was the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a building dedicated to an assassinated president.

Julia Jacobs and Zach Montague at The New York Times (gift link): Kennedy Center Closes Its Doors Despite a Judge’s Order.

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

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

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

A security guard stands in front of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Sept. 15, 2026 in Washington, D.C.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A bit more:

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

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

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

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

Use the gift link to read more, if you wish.

Joey Garrison at USA Today, via Yahoo News: Trump threw ‘tantrum’ at Kennedy Center meeting, Congresswoman says.

President Donald Trump threw a “tantrum” during a Kennedy Center board meeting when he learned that a federal judge blocked his administration’s latest effort to put his name on the institution’s building, according to a Democratic congresswoman who serves on the board.

Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio)

Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, the lead plaintiff who the judge sided with in his ruling, recounted the heated Sept. 15 meeting in an appearance on MS NOW. She said it opened with attorneys informing the board ‒ which Trump chairs after he appointed himself ‒ that in the case of Beaty v. Trump, “Beatty had been victorious.”

“And he went into a tantrum,” Beatty said. “I mean, let me just make it simple. It was the most unprofessional thing that I’ve ever witnessed or been a part of. He went into name-calling, everything from trying to say that I was an obstructionist, I was dumb. He said, ‘I think you’re incompetent.’ And I said, ‘I know you’re incompetent.'”

Shortly before the board met, U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that the Kennedy Center’s plan to add an inscription below the building’s sign to honor Trump’s financial contributions violates federal law and the judge’s previous ruling in May ordering the Kennedy Center to remove Trump’s name from the center’s title and signage.

As the president aired his frustrations to her, Beatty said she asked the president, “‘Are we really going to do this? This is really unprofessional.’ But I was not going to let him call me awful things. And he said he was going to hold me responsible if something fell out of the ceiling (of the Kennedy Center) and killed someone.”

Kennedy family members appealed to Trump to be reasonable (not likely!). Devin Garbit at ABC News: Kennedy niece says Trump holding Kennedy Center ‘hostage’ amid battle over name.

One of former President John F. Kennedy’s nieces accused President Donald Trump of taking the Kennedy Center “hostage” after Trump said he wouldn’t spend congressionally approved funding for the center’s renovation unless the building also bears his name.

The comments by Kerry Kennedy, whose father was Robert F. Kennedy, followed a ruling by a federal judge blocking the performing arts center’s board from adding a tribute to Trump on the building or site.

About an hour after that ruling, the board, which is controlled by Trump appointees, voted to close the center immediately for renovations.

Trump, in a social media post following the board’s vote, then said those renovations will not take place unless his name is added onto the building.

Kerry Kennedy

Congress last year appropriated $257 million for the renovation. In a Tuesday interview with CNN, Kennedy described the board’s efforts as “a tragedy,” adding that the center is loved by many and the public “see the corruption of this.”

“President Trump has said they have $250 million ready to hand over tomorrow,” Kennedy said. “He’s just withholding it because he wants his name on the building. So, this is like so many other things that trump has touched. It’s a bankruptcy because he adds his name to it.” [….]

Lazy Caturday Reads: Trump Focuses on Golf While His War Spins Out of Control.

Posted: September 12, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Good Afternoon!!

A New Arrival, by Walter Osborne (Irish artist)

This post is focused on major developments in Trump’s war and his seeming lack of concern about them.

While the situation in the Middle East was spinning out of control, Trump was partying at the “midterm convention” in Dallas.  Today, as the Saudis are forced to shut down a vital oil pipeline, Trump is in Ireland to watch a golf tournament at his own property in Doonbeg.

In order to justify spending millions in taxpayer money for a pleasure trip, Trump met briefly with Irish politicians and addressed a group of business leaders and embassy employees at the U.S. embassy. Of course, he managed to embarrass himself (and us). And guess who accompanied Trump to the Emerald Isle? No, not Melania. Natalie Harp.

But first, the war. Attacks by the Houthis have led to the shutdown of Saudi Arabia’s main pipeline for moving their oil.

Nick Robinson and Lauren Kent at CNN: ‘A f***-up of epic proportions’: Blame game begins after Iran-backed Houthis’ lightning advance down Red Sea coast.

The desperate pleas for air cover from Yemeni generals started coming mid-morning on Thursday. An advance by the Iran-backed Houthis toward Yemen’s strategic port city of Mocha was in full swing, and backup support from chief ally Saudi Arabia was nowhere in sight.

“The Houthis committed everything they had – waves upon waves of fighters … along with their available ballistic missiles and weapons,” a senior Yemeni source attached to their military forces told CNN. The source said he contacted the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) and was assured the US was “watching the situation closely and that Saudi air support was coming.”

“But the air support never came,” the source said. “And Mocha has now fallen.”

Hours later, on Friday, the Houthis captured another key coastal asset, Perim Island, at the mouth of the Red Sea. The island splits the Bab al-Mandeb Strait in two, giving Tehran de facto control over another key shipping route.

The Houthis’ rapid advance amounts to an extraordinary 36 hours in a conflict that had been largely on ice for years. But the kindling for renewed fighting had been laid for months amid the conflict between the United States and Iran, as Tehran seeks to use oil prices – and their impact on the global economy – as leverage.

Now, Yemen and the Red Sea have the potential to become a true second front in the Iran war.

A bit more detail:

Iran’s effective control of the Strait of Hormuz plus its tightening grip on the Bab al-Mandeb Strait threatens to push oil prices even higher, weeks before November’s midterm elections in the United States.

Young Woman with Cats, by Lovis Corinth (German artist)

While the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the gateway to the Suez Canal shipping route, is less critical to global energy markets than Hormuz, it still carries essential goods worldwide, including millions of barrels of oil every day. The strait has become increasingly important since the start of the Iran war, as Saudi Arabia has re-routed some exports through the waterway to bypass Hormuz.

“(The Houthis) don’t need to use advanced weapons to close Bab al-Mandeb. They can just use a cannon on a car,” said Amr Al-Bidh, the top official of Yemen’s Southern Transitional Council (STC). The STC has fought both the Houthis and Saudi-backed forces in the past, and wants an independent state in the south.

“It’s a leverage that they have without using advanced weapons,” Al-Bidh told CNN in an interview. “And they will keep it.”

It wasn’t just Yemen begging Trump for assistance. He also got calls from Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. Barak Ravis at Axios: MBS urged Trump to strike Houthis amid Red Sea threat.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) called President Trump twice Thursday, urging him to launch strikes against the Houthis as the Iran-backed group closed in on a vital Red Sea chokepoint, two U.S. officials told Axios.

  • Trump declined, and U.S. officials stressed the administration has no plans to intervene directly against the Houthis for now.

Why it matters: Oil prices surged Thursday as the Houthis seized a strategic coastal city in Yemen, pushing them closer to the Bab al-Mandab Strait — a vital artery for global trade and Saudi oil exports.

  • With Iran already disrupting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, Houthi control of Bab al-Mandab could give Tehran a powerful new point of leverage over the U.S. and its Gulf allies.

The latest: Reuters reported Friday morning that the Houthis had taken control of a key island in the strait.

  • They also reported that smoke was seen over the key east-west Saudi oil pipeline, though the source was not clear.

Driving the news: The U.S. is concerned about the rapidly escalating fight in Yemen and is stepping up support for Saudi Arabia while trying to avoid direct military involvement.

Adm. Brad Cooper, the commander of U.S. Central Command, traveled to Saudi Arabia on Thursday for urgent coordination meetings, two sources with knowledge of the matter said.

I’m not a military expert; but from what I’m reading, Trump’s war is rapidly getting bigger and more uncontrollable.

Oliver Holmes at The Guardian: Nearly 50,000 Yemeni civilians flee as Houthis advance along Red Sea coast.

Nearly 50,000 people have fled a sudden advance by Houthi forces in western Yemen, with entire villages emptied and families trapped near frontline fighting with depleting food supplies, according to aid workers.

Nora Heysen (Australian, 1911-2003) – A Boy with his cat

Civilians in the Middle East’s poorest country have found themselves victims of a global struggle for control over one of the most important shipping routes in the world, which threatens to turn Yemen’s on-off conflict into a forever war.

In a lightning advance this week, the Iran-backed Houthi militants have seized a string of towns along the Red Sea coast from forces aligned with the US- and Saudi-backed Yemeni government. Hundreds of people are reported to have been killed. Many fear a return to the full-scale civil war that killed 150,000 and brought many others to the brink of famine….

The UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Friday that 46,000 people had been displaced across the governates of Taiz and Hodeidah, where steep verdant mountain ridges give way to arid coastal plains. For many families, this was their second or even third time they had been forced out of their homes.

A significant number of people were observed to be leaving the city with their belongings. Fighting has cut key roads, while phone lines are down in some areas. “The scale of displacement is increasing rapidly,” said Joe Lowry, IOM’s Middle East and north Africa spokesperson in Cairo.

The Saudis have shut down a pipeline after an attack that originated in Iraq.

Freddie Clayton at NBC News: Saudi Arabia’s shutdown of key pipeline limits oil flow as Yemen hits back against Houthis.

Saudi Arabia has closed a critical oil pipeline after it was struck by drones launched from Iraq, with the latest squeeze reverberating through the region Saturday as attacks by Iran-backed Houthi rebels threatened to deepen the world’s energy crisis.

The 745-mile pipeline had helped Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, bypass the blocked Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of the world’s oil used to pass before the U.S. and Israel waged war on Iran in late February.

The Saudi Energy Ministry confirmed the shutdown of the East-West pipeline on Friday, adding that drone attacks had resulted in a number of injuries and that its teams were “taking the necessary measures to secure the pipeline and assess its safety.”

By Zoya Scholis

Saudi Arabia said that, following a request from Iraq’s prime minister, it would not retaliate for now but reserves the right to take all necessary measures to protect its sovereignty, security and critical facilities, according to a Saudi Foreign Ministry statement.

An Iraqi military commander was dismissed early on Saturday after investigations confirmed the latest drone attacks targeting Saudi Arabia originated from Iraq, according to a statement by Iraq‘s prime minister’s office. An umbrella group of Iran-backed militias in Iraq denied its involvement.

Iraq also closed two key border crossings with Iran, Iraq’s state-run news agency reported Saturday.

Kuwait, a U.S. ally in the region, warned that the pipeline attack was a “dangerous escalation that undermines the security and stability of the region” while Bahrain stressed Saudi Arabia’s right to “take all necessary measures to protect its sovereignty.”

Meanwhile, In Ireland Trump seemed unconcerned:

U.S. President Donald Trump said on ⁠Saturday that everything would “work out just ⁠fine” when asked about the region on a visit to Ireland. He also said, without providing evidence, that Iran was “probably” behind the pipeline attack.

The pipeline strikes came as rebel Houthi forces in Yemen captured Perim, an island in the middle of the vital Bab el Mandeb Strait that serves as a gateway to the Red Sea trade route that links Europe and Asia.

Trump also said the Iran War would most likely end after the midterm elections.

Azhar Sukri at CNBC: Trump sees Iran war ending soon after mid-term elections, predicts oil prices will then fall sharply.

The war in Iran will likely end soon after November’s mid-term elections, President Donald Trump said Saturday, and predicted that energy prices would fall sharply once that happens.

“I think very soon, I think it’ll be right after the mid-terms, actually,” Trump said on a trip to Ireland when asked by reporters when the Iran war is likely to end. “I would say shortly, and oil will come tumbling down when that happens,”

Hans Heyerdahl, Girl with a Cat (Norwegian artist)

Oil prices retreated on Friday, but notched sharp weekly gains after soaring above $100 a barrel for the first time in months.

Brent crude oil futures, the global benchmark, settled down 2.8% at $104.61 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate was down 2.4% to settle at $100.05 per barrel. On Thursday, Brent crude peaked at around $108 a barrel, while WTI hit more than $104.

The price decline came after Iranian state media said Tehran will meet with Gulf states in Oman to discuss the Strait of Hormuz, indicating some diplomacy is taking place despite a week of sharp escalation.

MS NOW quoted a senior government official and a Gulf diplomat as saying that Iranian and Gulf officials will meet in Oman’s capital, Muscat, on Monday to sign an agreement that will establish an Iran-Oman shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz.

But Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said his country will not surrender, adding that it has resisted aggression from the U.S. and Israel.

“Iran has successfully stood against Israel and the U.S.,” Pezeshkian said late Friday as he addressed a gathering of Indian religious leaders in New Delhi. “Since we are seeking truth and justice, we will not yield in front of bullying arrogance.”

One more on the war and the oil situation from Lisa Friedman, Jenny Gross, and Rebecca F. Elliott at The New York Times (gift link): Gulf Tankers Are Running Out of Ways to Export Oil: ‘These Waters Aren’t Safe.’

The world’s most valuable energy corridors are pinching shut.

On Friday, Houthi militants backed by Iran expanded their control of the Red Sea, threatening a critical route for Persian Gulf crude. That left the region with few alternatives, since shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — once the world’s primary oil transit point — remains significantly constrained and far below what it was before the war.

A Girl with a Black Cat by the Dutch artist Frida Holleman (1908–1999)

And oil exports from Saudi Arabia, long the most important producer in the Middle East, plunged last month to their lowest point in at least 13 years.

The U.S. Navy has been able to keep oil flowing out of the Strait of Hormuz on sea paths close to the coast of Oman, the opposite side from Iran. But that has required an extensive and dangerous operation.

For shipping companies, the once routine operation of navigating the strait has become a high-risk endeavor. At least 23 ships were hit in the waterway near Oman in July and August. Since the war began at the end of February, at least 22 sailors have been killed in the Middle East.

“These waters aren’t safe,” said Michelle Wiese Bockmann, an analyst at Windward, a maritime intelligence company.

As the war in Iran nears its seventh month, it appears to be spinning out of control, analysts said. With no diplomatic end in sight, the Middle East, the epicenter of energy production, is facing its most severe supply crisis in decades.

The Trump administration “has been using a variety of tools very effectively to keep the oil price and the gasoline price at bay,” said Amos Hochstein, who served as a foreign affairs and energy adviser in the Biden administration. But now, he said, fewer options are available to President Trump and his team. “They’re “stuck.”

You can use the gift link to read the rest if you’re interested.

Trump was in Dublin this morning to justify spending taxpayer money on his golf trip. Natalie Harp was was there, lined up with the Trump family on the receiving line.

Natalie Harp on the receiving line in Dublin.

 

The AP via NPR: Trump meets Ireland’s leaders before heading to his golf club in Doonbeg.

U.S. President Donald Trump held talks Saturday in Dublin with his Irish counterpart Catherine Connolly during a weekend visit that’s more about a major golf tournament hosted on a course he owns on the country’s Atlantic coast. He also met with Ireland’s Prime Minister Micheál Martin.

Trump will address the U.S. and Irish business leaders at the U.S. ambassador’s official residence in Dublin before traveling to his oceanfront golf club in Doonbeg, on the other side of the country, to watch the Irish Open.

Connolly is a left-wing politician who was among those who protested when Trump visited Ireland in 2019 during his first term in office. She is now Ireland’s elected, largely ceremonial head of state. A supporter of the Palestinian cause, she in the past has criticized U.S. policy in the Middle East and called Trump a “bully.”

Wild Wednesday Reads: “Call It Evil”

Posted: September 9, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

There is a lot of news today, as usual. Here are the stories I’ve been looking at. Yesterday was the New Hampshire primary election, and the results could help determine which party wins control of the Senate in November. Trump’s weird midterm convention opens today; his two speeches will air opposite the first two games of the NFL season. Will the event help or hurt Republican office-seekers? Yesterday, Trump unleashed a batch of disgusting lies about 9/11. Speaking of disgusting, what about that mystery meat that Trump is importing from foreign countries?

New Hampshire Primary

Steven Porter at The Boston Globe: John E. Sununu, Chris Pappas win N.H. primary for US Senate.

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Chris Pappas and John E. Sununu will face off in the Nov. 3 general election to represent the Granite State in the US Senate, according to the Associated Press.

Pappas, 46, is projected to win the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, defeating progressive rival Karishma Manzur, while Sununu, 61, is projected to defeat Scott Brown in the showdown for the Republican nomination.

Pappas, the current US representative for New Hampshire’s First Congressional District, entered the race in April, three weeks after Senator Jeanne Shaheen announced her retirement, then secured her prompt endorsement. He maintained a lead in the polls, even as Manzur gained ground.

His victory in the primary represents a win for the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, at a time when more progressive candidates have prevailed in other states.

Representative Chris Pappas speaks to supporters after winning the New Hampshire Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday.Credit…John Tully for The New York Times

Pappas, a lifelong Manchester resident whose family has operated the Puritan Backroom Restaurant for decades, would be the first openly gay man to serve in the US Senate. He has been married to lawyer Vann Bentley since 2023.

Sununu is hoping to win back the seat he lost to Shaheen in 2008. His success or failure in the general election could prove pivotal in deciding which party holds the Senate majority for the second half of President Trump’s term.

Trump endorsed Sununu despite their past differences. In the 2024 campaign cycle, Sununu had backed Nikki Haley for the GOP presidential nomination and called Trump a “loser.” Still, the president lent his support in February, solidifying Sununu’s status as the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

‘A win by Pappas could help Democrats win control of the Senate.

Simon Rosenberg at Hopium Chronicles: Pappas Scores A Decisive Win In NH.

Rep. Chris Pappas had a decisive win last night in New Hampshire, winning his Democratic primary 65%-33% (+32) in a state VP Harris won by 3 points in 2024. There are two reasons for us to be a bit more optimistic about Pappas’ chances than we are hearing in the current chatter:

  • Democrats outvoted Republicans in the Senate primary last night 156,000 to 112,000. That’s very encouraging, a sign of the Democratic intensity we’ve seen all over the country these last 20 months.
  • There have been two general election polls in NH n recent days. The St. Anselm poll had Pappas up over John Sununu 48%-41 (+7). A University of New Hampshire poll had Sununu up 45%-43% (+2). Of the two the St. Anselm poll was much closer to the primary result last night as it had Pappas at +31, off by just a point. The UNH poll had Pappas winning the primary by only 13 points, which was off by 19 points.

So I at this point given our strong turnout last night, given the national partisan lean we’ve seen across the country, and given the accuracy of the St. Anselm poll my sense is the the +7 Pappas is closer to being right than the +2 Sununu. But we will be keeping an eye on it in the coming days and for now sticking to our mission here which is to flip seats, states, and legislative chambers and take stuff away from MAGA…….

Emily Davies at The New York Times: Chris Pappas Defeats Progressive Challenger in New Hampshire Senate Primary.

Mr. Pappas, 46, who represents the state’s First District, prevailed over Karishma Manzur, a medical scientist and member of the Southern New Hampshire Democratic Socialists of America, who sought to harness the anti-establishment mood and shifting sentiment against Israel that have upended Democratic primaries nationwide.

“Today New Hampshire’s voters have sent a clear message,” Mr. Pappas said after securing the Democratic nomination. “They’re fed up with what’s happening in our politics, and they’re ready for change.”

His victory sets up a general election contest that could help determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. Mr. Pappas will face former Senator John E. Sununu, who easily won the Republican nomination on Tuesday.

John Sununu

A recent poll by the University of New Hampshire showed Mr. Pappas running narrowly behind Mr. Sununu in a general election matchup. The main Republican Senate super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund, has pledged to spend $17 million in the state for the general election; the group’s Democratic counterpart, Senate Majority PAC, has announced initial plans to spend $10.2 million in television advertising.

Mr. Pappas, a moderate Democrat from Manchester, has been among the state’s most successful politicians in recent history, holding onto a House seat in the state’s notably swingy First Congressional District. He had previously served three terms on the state’s five-member Executive Council, a body responsible for approving high-level appointments and state contracts. Before that, he served two terms as treasurer of Hillsborough County and two terms in the State Legislature.

If elected, Mr. Pappas, the grandson of the man credited with inventing chicken tenders, would be the first openly gay male senator. He triumphed over Ms. Manzur with significant support from party leaders and a significant fund-raising advantage. Former Vice President Kamala Harris endorsed him; Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Mark Kelly of Arizona actively campaigned on his behalf.

As of late August, Mr. Pappas’s campaign had raised more than $15 million, according to campaign finance records.

Trump’s Midterm Convention

Politico Playbook: Adam Wren, Dasha Burns, Will Steakin, and Megan Messerly write:  ‘The vibes are very bad’ in Texas.

We’re here in Dallas for the convention — and we’re already getting a pulse check around the extravaganza before the speeches kick off….

DALLAS — Republicans’ Trump-a-palooza threatens to put the party’s general-election headaches on blast, with candidates finding new ways to keep their distance from President Donald Trump over fears he’ll drag them down in November.

On the ground in Dallas, the early reports aren’t giving Republicans a ton of hope for a turnaround.

“The vibes are very bad,” a Republican lobbyist close to the White House who attended an RNC donor event at the Ritz Carlton last night told us. “Dems are salivating. Our people are debating Israel. Or melting down about this or that. No one is motivated to vote. Only the DSA rise is what’s keeping us in the game.”

For those coming to Texas this week, trepidation reigns about what could transpire on the stage — and what it might mean for lawmakers back home.

In fact, as a person close to the White House told Playbook, the best case scenario might be people tuning out.

“My only hope is that no one watches it since it’s competing versus NFL opening games,” the person said. “Hopefully nobody notices the embarrassing show.”

This person added: “I don’t think it will matter. No one knows about it, no enthusiasm, and it’s during football. Only D.C. people care.”

There’s more at the link.

Will Weissert at The Independent: Anxious Republicans watch from the sidelines as Trump keeps tight grip on cash and spotlight.

Channeling a western persona, President Donald Trump is heading to Dallas for this week’s Republican convention to rescue his party’s prospects ahead of the upcoming midterm elections.

The unprecedented gathering begins Wednesday, with Trump aiming to rally his base by transforming the Nov. 3 vote into a direct assessment of his own record. Although his name will not appear on the ballot, he created the event to help GOP candidates.

However, with his approval ratings at record lows, uncertainty remains about whether his presence will energize Republican voters or mobilize the opposition.

The president will dominate the schedule, delivering a keynote speech on Wednesday and returning the next evening to offer final remarks following an address by Vice President JD Vance. The format effectively turns the two-day convention into a showcase centered on Trump, flanked by a lineup that features several of the party’s most at-risk legislators.

“If Trump is in the orbit then everything gets swallowed up into a black hole. It’s just unavoidable,” said Rick Tyler, a Republican strategist and a critic of the president….

The American Airlines Center, as preparations are underway for the Republican National Midterm Convention in Dallas, Texas, U.S., September 7, 2026. REUTERS/Jessica Koscielniak

Networks and NFL ratings threaten to overshadow Trump’s high-stakes Dallas convention.

Republicans familiar with the event’s organization report that the president maintained direct personal oversight of every detail. Indeed, his command of the schedule was so absolute that anyone seeking logistical details in recent weeks was informed that plans were still pending because Trump had not yet finalized his choices.

Despite all the cowboy imagery throughout the gathering, it remains uncertain whether meaningful reinforcements are truly on the way for struggling campaigns, however.

MAGA Inc., the political organization aligned with the president that possesses a war chest of nearly $400 million, announced a $10 million investment in television and digital advertisements focused on the Texas Senate race. Nevertheless, this marks the first time the group has deployed its large financial reserves in a serious way, even as Republicans nationwide urgently seek major funding to help in tight election battles across the country.

Additionally, an outside group called Securing American Greatness has initiated an ad campaign celebrating the president’s record in the lead-up to the midterms. These gauzy promotional videos focus almost entirely on Trump, giving scarcely any attention to candidates running for Congress.

Furthermore, the main broadcast networks have stopped short of committing to air most of the convention each evening. The scheduled proceedings will also face direct competition from the kickoff of the NFL season, with games likely taking place alongside both of Trump’s primary speeches.

Trump’s 9/11 Lies

Judd Legum at Popular Information: Trump’s 9/11 fantasies.

This week is the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Trump is marking the occasion by describing his role in heroic terms, claiming he personally went to Ground Zero to aid recovery efforts. On September 6, Trump made the following remarks on Fox News:

And I went down. I was building a building in New York, and I had a lot of construction workers. And I went down there very shortly thereafter the following day, you couldn’t go down the same day, but like the following day, very, very quickly afterwards and we worked long and hard.

Trump relayed a similar story at a White House event on Tuesday:

I was building a big building in New York and I took the whole crew down there right after this happened, and they had no hesitation. Everybody went down with me. We went down as a big group of people. Wasn’t too much we could do, I’ll be honest. It was — it was raw. Nobody’s seen anything like it ever.

Although some details change, Trump has made similar claims in interviews for decades, claiming to have sent 100 or more construction workers to Ground Zero. Trump has claimed he “helped“ clear rubble and “spent a lot of time down there.”

There is no evidence any of this is true.

President Donald Trump arrives to speak during a Steel Across America event on September 8, 2026 in Washington, DC. SAUL LOEB AFP via Getty Images

Two Trump-branded buildings were under development in New York at the time — Trump World Tower and Trump Place at Riverside South. But neither Trump nor the Trump Organization employed “a lot of construction workers.” Rather, the construction manager of both developments was Bovis Lend Lease. So any construction workers were employees of Bovis Lend Lease or their subcontractors, not Trump. Journalist Tim O’Brien, who wrote a biography of Trump, noted that in 2001, the Trump Organization as a whole employed around a dozen people. Trump has never identified an employee who worked on emergency response at Ground Zero.

Richard Alles, was a battalion chief of the New York Fire Department in 2001, and supervised “search and rescue units for the entire first two weeks of the operation.” After that, Alles worked at Ground Zero in various capacities for months. “I was in a supervisory role with the fire department at the time,” Alles told PolitiFact in 2019. “I was there for several months — I have no knowledge of his being down there.”

Further, Alles said, if Trump had sent 100 construction workers to Ground Zero, “there would be a record of it” because “[e]verybody worked under direct supervision of the police and fire department and the joint commander for emergency services.” In 2019, the New York Times reported that “there is no documented evidence of [Trump] marshaling his resources to aid in the relief effort.” [….]

On Tuesday, Trump also offered a new version of a story involving him being physically carried away from danger by firemen:

United States Steel Building was creaking. Really creaking. And we thought it was going to fall down. The truth is it creaked a lot. It creaked. It still creaks, but it never came down.

And I’ll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us. And two firemen, big strong guys — and I’m not the smallest guy in the world — they grabbed me under the arm, said, ‘Got to get out of here.’ And they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I’m big. They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said, ‘Fellas, I can run myself.’ But they were amazing. But they thought it was coming down. It didn’t come down.

There’s no evidence for this tale either. Read the rest at Public Information.

Noah Berlatsky at Everything is Horrible: Trump’s 9/11 Lies Are A Moral Failure, Not A Cognitive One.

Donald Trump lies on every day ending with day. Yesterday, he chose to lie about his actions on 9/11 while addressing a gathering of first responders. He claimed he had gone himself with a crew of workers to try to assist on the day of the attack, and that two firemen who thought he was in danger because of a rickety building picked him up and ran with him to safety.

There is no corroboration from witnesses or public records. It sounds like nonsense, and it is nonsense.

Inevitably, Trump’s remarks have led many to reiterate accusations that he is in mental decline due to his advanced age. At 80, the argument goes, he can no longer tell lies from truth. He is senile and therefore makes self-aggrandizing claims, conflating what he wants to have happened with what is true.

Trump does constantly mistake his own inner heroic monologue with truth. But this is not a new phenomenon for him. Mental decline did not create Trump’s moral failures. Rather, his moral failures have destroyed his cognitive capacity. He is a fool because he is evil, not the other way around….

Trump’s claims about his role in 9/11 are an especially good test case. That’s because he has been lying about his role in 9/11 from the moment it happened 25 years ago.

Trump was 55 years old when the towers came down; he was not senile, and no one really believes he was in cognitive decline at that point. Nonetheless, when he was interviewed on the day itself, he rushed to do what he does best, which is tell disgusting self-aggrandizing lies. In a telephone interview just after the attack, Trump boasted that his property at 40 Wall Street was the tallest building still standing in Manhattan. That was a lie; it was the second tallest. And it was an incredibly fucked up thing to say while the bodies were still being counted.

Two days after 9/11, Trump uttered the first version of his lie about being involved in clean-up efforts. He told a German reporter that “I have a lot of men down here right now…over 100 and we have about 125 coming.”

Nor was that Trump’s last falsehood. In 2015, when he was 69 years old and running for President, he claimed that he saw “thousands and thousands” of Muslims cheering the fall of the World Trade Center in New Jersey on television. He did not; it never happened. It was just a racist lie.

And in 2016, Trump lied again about being involved in clean up efforts on 9/11, insisting he had “helped clear the rubble.”

Trump, has, then, told multiple lies about 9/11 over 25 years, starting when he was 55, continuing when he was 70, and now, at 80, elaborating further. That doesn’t suggest someone who is in cognitive decline and has suddenly started having trouble telling truth from lies. It suggests someone who has lied consistently, remorselessly, gleefully, for decades.

I strongly agree with Berlatsky that Trump is truly evil. Recently, I came across a book by moral philosopher Susan Neiman. Here is the New York Times Review of her book (gift link): This Philosopher Thinks It’s Time We Call Out Evil in Our World.

Susan Neiman has noticed a paradox. “As the world drifts toward disaster,” she writes in her new book, “our language has become more cautious.” Yet this tentativeness has been remarkably asymmetrical. President Trump loves to use hyperbole (“nasty,” “sleazebag,” “vermin”), while establishment Democrats have, at least until recently, mostly hewed to the language of decorous risk aversion.

In “Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era,” Neiman argues that widespread misapprehensions about what evil is make people too reluctant to use the word. Despite her willfully provocative title, she categorically states: “This is not a book about Donald Trump.” An American-born moral philosopher now based in Germany, Neiman wrote an incisive history of evil in modern thought in 2002. Her new book is less a philosophical exploration than a polemical guide to the current moment. She believes that people are so attached to understanding evil in terms of individual monstrousness — the gleeful villain, the depraved sadist — that they lose sight of how evil more typically works.

Susan Neiman

She recalls an interview with a podcast producer who kept asking her about a gruesome case of cannibalism in Florida. Even when she tried to tell him that such incidents distract from evils she considered more common and more dangerous (“making war to stay in power”; cutting aid to lower taxes on the rich), the producer kept returning to the lurid particulars.

Neiman wants readers to think about evil in ways that are less spectacular and more systemic. She cites Hannah Arendt’s concept of “the banality of evil” as especially useful. The fact that Arendt was denounced for it illustrates our stubborn reluctance to see evil as anything but demonic.

Arendt was writing about Adolf Eichmann, one of the Nazi organizers of the Holocaust, and her critics excoriated her for depicting him as a desk-murderer marked by “sheer thoughtlessness.” But Arendt insisted that this didn’t make him any less guilty, or any less evil — quite the opposite. What makes such evil so destructive is that it has no depth, Arendt said: “It can overgrow and lay waste to the world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface.”

The consequences of this line of thinking are generative but intensely uncomfortable. Neiman realizes that plenty of anxious liberals may agree with her condemnation of the Trump era but nevertheless blanch at her terminology. “Evil is the most explosive word we have,” she writes. “Used indiscriminately, it can serve to stir up evil itself.” To call something evil marks a limit, and gestures at a terrible realm beyond it. “Crimes are things for which we have procedures,” she says. “Evil is what you say when your jaw begins to drop if you sense that a line has been crossed.”

You can use the gift link to read the rest of the review if you’re interested. The book will be released on September 15.

I’ve been a longtime critic of food-safety practices in the U.S. meatpacking industry. But some of the practices in the 16 countries currently authorized to export raw beef to the United States are worse than any on these shores. During the past year, China rejected two shipping containers of beef from Uruguay after finding residue of an anti-parasitic drug in the meat, and rejected beef from Argentina reportedly because it tested positive for a banned antibiotic that can cause serious blood disorders.

One of the worst food-safety scandals occurred in Brazil, the world’s largest exporter of beef. In 2017, the Brazilian federal police raided nearly 200 meatpacking plants after allegations that government inspectors and politicians were being bribed to allow the sale of contaminated beef. Rotten meat treated with ascorbic acid and other chemicals to mask the contamination had been sold to hospitals and schools in Brazil and also exported. Executives at the Brazilian company JBS, the largest beef producer in the world, later admitted to bribing inspectors.

I don’t eat much beef, but I think I’m going to avoid it completely for awhile. A bit more from the article:

Why did Mr. Trump come up with this scheme to import hundreds of millions of pounds of beef?

“Regime Change,” the recent book by the Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, contains an interesting clue: a White House meeting last November between President Trump and Joesley Batista, whose family controls JBS.

Mr. Batista had long been considered persona non grata in Washington, having been jailed in Brazil as a result of, among other things, paying $186 million in bribes to almost 2,000 politicians, including three Brazilian presidents, to obtain state financing for his family’s company. In 2019, after JBS bought several American meatpacking companies, Senator Marco Rubio and his colleague Robert Menendez deplored JBS’s “admitted criminal conduct,” its “business relationships with Venezuela’s Maduro regime, as well as its growing reliance on financing from entities aligned with the Chinese government.” The senators argued that allowing JBS to own U.S. companies could endanger America’s food supply and national security.

Mr. Batista gained the White House meeting last November, Ms. Haberman and Mr. Swan wrote, because of his friendship with Melania Trump. In addition, a JBS subsidiary had donated $5 million to Mr. Trump’s second inauguration, the largest gift from any individual or corporation. Not long afterward, JBS got approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, a privilege the company had sought for almost a decade.

More examples of pure evil.

Anyway, those are my recommended reads for this wild Wednesday. What other stories have caught your interest today?

 

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: September 5, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Cat Lady, Mary James Ketch

Good Afternoon!!

Two days ago, Gloria Steinem died at age 92. How can we quantify the massive legacy this brilliant woman left us? For those of us women who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, she was a gigantic figure. She helped to change our lives forever. Today those massive changes are threatened by truly evil forces. So I want to pause and take note of her life’s work.

Katharine Q. Seelye at The New York Times (gift link): Gloria Steinem, Personification of the Women’s Movement, Dies at 92.

Gloria Steinem, the feminist crusader who galvanized the modern women’s movement, helping millions of women develop a sense of self-worth and gain a measure of equality at home, at work and in society at large, died on Wednesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 92….

Calling herself “an entrepreneur of social change,” Ms. Steinem helped usher in sweeping cultural transformations across virtually every facet of American life, from the boardroom to the courtroom to the bedroom.

For more than half a century, she personified the women’s movement and became its most enduring symbol; her tinted aviator glasses and curtain of streaked-blond hair parted in the center made her one of the most recognizable women in the world.

She was an unlikely revolutionary. Growing up a transient in the Midwest, she was 10 when her parents divorced and she was left to mother her mentally anguished mother — a formative experience that reverberated throughout her life. She had scant formal education until sixth grade; her big dream, as a budding tap dancer, was to become a Rockette.

But she read voraciously, graduated from college with honors and believed fiercely that women should be able to live whatever life they chose.

Her own feminist awakening didn’t come until her mid-30s, when, as a journalist in 1969, she attended a “speak out” of women discussing their illegal abortions. Charismatic, articulate, media savvy, deeply empathetic and a workaholic, she evolved into a political and cultural force.

She led protests and consciousness-raising sessions, wrote essays and delivered speeches, delved into political organizing, helped establish rape crisis centers and shelters for battered women, founded numerous groups that promoted women and had the Midas touch when it came to raising money for their causes.

And she and a cadre of feminists had the audacity to start a publication that flew in the face of traditional women’s magazines, examining topics like abortion, domestic violence and equal pay for equal work. The first glossy national periodical to be created, owned and run entirely by women, Ms. magazine, founded in 1971, sought to capture and channel a rising sense of female empowerment and eradicate the sexist assumptions that permeated the culture.

The magazine served as the movement’s manifesto, an incubator for social transformation and a blueprint for action. As such, it helped embolden women as they fought blatant discrimination and harassment in the workplace and unspoken oppression, and sometimes outright abuse, at home.

“When we started, there was not even a term for sexual harassment,” Ms. Steinem often said. “It was just called life.”

Decades after the movement dissipated and progressive women faced renewed setbacks, Ms. Steinem continued to push for their rights and equality. Indefatigable, she wrote essays and lectured into her 90s, and the news media never stopped seeking her opinion. She was the author of nearly a dozen major nonfiction books; her latest, “An Unexpected Life,” is scheduled for publication in late September.

Use the gift link to read the rest. You can also read an excerpt from Steinem’s memoir at The Atlantic (gift link): ‘Everything We Do Matters.’ Gloria Steinem on what older people can teach America.

One more tribute to Steinem by Nina Burleigh at American Freakshow: SIC TRANSIT GLORIA: Ms. Steinem Forever.

To preteen girls of my 1970s junior high, there was no other way to be. Hiphuggers, short skirts, aviators, long swingy hair. A lot of sass. And for many of us, the first post “Women’s Lib” generation, the expectation of an adventure-filled, self-reliant future with marriage and motherhood as options not imminent requirements.

To her peers in the adult public square at the time, she had threaded the needle of sexy and smart in a way that made male detractors look like idiots. The record of their blustering scorn and contumely and the open ridicule heaped on her, and the women she led, is part of history.

Feminazi. Furry Legged fanatic. C-word. B-word. And the perennial favorite: Man-hater.

They couldn’t take it. Her wit and panache drew out their scorn the way certain salves drain boils. The casual insolence and open diminishment toward her and her peers was part of the cultural wallpaper of the era. Among the men engaged in it, the psychological temperature ranged from lightly snide to psychotic.

Reporting on the creation of Ms. Magazine, ABC news anchor Harry Reasoner said on national television, “I give it six months before they run out of things to say.”

By the 1980s, the Viagran Centurions of the media had mobilized. The shock jocks – Limbaugh, Imus Stern – can’t you take a joke? – and their spiritual grandsons the fight club rape propagandist Tate bros and their herd of manosphere sheep. The disappointed entitled, the preternaturally insecure, the incels, and their insidious cousins, the fascist tiki-torch carrying “You Will Not Replace Us” troops.

Gay Talese, revered chronicler of the famously misogyinistic Italian Mafia, sharing a taxi with Steinem and another great 20th Century phallocrat the author Saul Bellow – once famously said: “You know how every year there’s a pretty girl who comes to New York and pretends to be a writer? Well, Gloria is this year’s pretty girl.”

To her face.

Can’t you take a joke?

Charles Manson, weighing in from prison in a 1970 interview uttered a phrase that decades later is close to an actual slogan dripped from the mouths of men from JD Vance to the Tate brothers: “Gloria Steinem and all those girls’ libbers, they’re taking the manliness out of the man. They want to be the men, but they don’t want to carry the weight.”

Replacement was always the underlying fear.

Millions of men now share the views of a psychotic mass murdering cult leader.: Taking the manliness out of the man.

Steinem saw this coming back in 1972: “Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.” In later speeches she would add to that: “But too few men are becoming the women they wanted to marry.”

She could name the core issues like no one else. Cut to the chase. “Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That’s their natural and first weapon.”

And: “She will need her sisterhood.”

Where is that sisterhood half a century later?

Read the rest at the link.

And now we’ve lost another feminist icon.

Greg Evans at Deadline: Robin Morgan Dies: Former Ms. Magazine Editor, Women’s Media Center Co-Founder With Jane Fonda & Gloria Steinem Was 85.

Robin Morgan, a former editor-in-chief of Ms. Magazine who co-founded the Women’s Media Center with Ms. co-founder Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, died today, September 5, just several days after the passing of her friend and colleague Steinem. Morgan was 85.

Her death was announced by her son Blake Morgan and Julie Burton, president and CEO of the Women’s Media Center. A cause of death was not disclosed, but her son noted that she died peacefully in her sleep. Robin Morgan was in her second decade of living with Parkinson’s Disease.

Girl with a cat (2020) by Olga Gordienok

In a statement, Fonda said, “Robin Morgan was an artist, a poet, an activist, and in my eyes, a living legend — a woman whose anthology series, Sisterhood is Powerful, Sisterhood is Global, and Sisterhood is Forever provided the evidence needed to launch a feminist revolution, and it was part of my feminist education that led to the movie, 9 To 5.”

“I have learned so much from Robin over the years,” Fonda added. “I love her and all that she has brought to the world, the women’s movement, and to me on the most personal levels. I already miss her and my heart is broken.”

The editor-in-chief of Ms. Magazine from 1989 to 1994, Morgan, over the last decade, hosted, wrote, and produced the award-winning WMC podcast Women’s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan. The podcast recently produced its 500th episode.

Morgan, Fonda and Steinem co-founded the Women’s Media Center 21 years ago with a mission to give voice to and strengthen democracy for women in media and beyond. “Our job is to make women visible and powerful in the media,” Morgan once told Fox 5 Good Day New York. “And we do that through lots of programs — through training women in media skills, through SheSource, which is the go-to place for experts, through many programs and our radio program [now podcast], Women’s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan.”

And now, sadly, back to the reality of Trump world.

Yesterday, during one of his oval office bull

sessions with the media, Trump revealed his true feelings toward the men and women he has sent to fight and die in his Iran war.

Sarah Ewall-Wice at The Daily Beast: Trump Makes Jaw-Dropping Insult to the Dead of His Own War.

President Donald Trump has dismissed his war in Iran, in which 18 U.S. service members have been killed, as “small potatoes for us.”

The president, 80, was taking questions in the Oval Office on Friday when he was asked how he would describe the conflict with Iran.

The question came after Vice President JD Vance insisted on Thursday it wasn’t a war despite the U.S. carrying out new strikes this week.

“Can you explain to the American people, if this is not a war, what exactly is it?” ABC News’ Rachel Scott asked Trump.

“Well, I’ll tell you what, a lot of people don’t call it a war. I call it a military conflict because it’s, it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing,” Trump said. “We did Venezuela, and we did this.”

But the president did not stop there. He went on to compare war casualties to back up his claim that the conflict in Iran was “small potatoes.”

“In Venezuela, we lost nobody, and this, we lost 18 people,” Trump said. “In Vietnam you lost 100,000 people, and in other conflicts, you lost tens of thousands of people.”

Trump, who himself received five military draft deferments during the Vietnam War, went on to say that he would call the conflict with Iran “intermittent strikes” and agreed with Vance that it was not a war.

“We’re not fighting right now. There’s no fighting,” Trump rambled.

Trump obviously couldn’t care less about the men and women who have died and been injured in his war. And actually, there is fighting.

The Washington Post (gift link): U.S. military says it hit 3 Iranian tankers after Navy ships targeted.

The U.S. military said Saturday it hit three Iranian oil tankers, including one near Kharg Island, the country’s main oil terminal, after Iran launched missiles toward two U.S. Navy warships.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the region, said in a statement that its strikes disabled an oil carrier off the coast of Kharg Island and another off Jask, and it destroyed a third one in the Gulf of Oman.

Blaise, Saint-Louis (1956 – 1995) Haitian artist

“Let the message to the IRGC be clear: If you shoot at two of our ships, we will impose an even higher economic cost — taking out three of yours,” said Adm. Brad Cooper, Centcom commander, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “We will not hesitate to defend American forces, and if necessary, destroy Iran’s limited and exposed oil fleet.”

Iranian state media earlier in the day reported that an oil tanker was hit by U.S. missiles near Kharg Island.

Iran’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Kharg Island, about 15 miles from the Iranian mainland in the Persian Gulf, is the centerpiece of Iran’s oil-based economy, with about 90 percent of the country’s oil exports moving through there.

Since the U.S. and Israel launched the first airstrikes against Iran six months ago, President Donald Trump has been mired in an unpopular war with no end in sight.

No end in sight. And it’s a war.

Meanwhile, back home in the Pentagon, Paranoid Whiskey Pete is hunting for leakers.

Jonathan Swan, Adam Entous, Maggie Haberman, and Eric Schmitt at the New York Times (gift link): In Major Leak Hunt, Pentagon Gives Polygraph Tests to Joint Staff Members.

U.S. government investigators have taken the extraordinary step of subjecting roughly 50 members of the U.S. military’s Joint Staff to polygraph tests over leaks to journalists, including about how the Iran war has created a shortage of crucial munitions, according to officials briefed on the move.

The investigators asked military officers and civilian employees on the Joint Staff if they disclosed classified information to members of the press, and about whether they provided information about diminished U.S. munitions stocks.

The polygraph tests were conducted in August after a flurry of news reports detailed diminished stocks of crucial munitions, including of long-range missiles and Patriot interceptors. The show of force appeared aimed at not just ferreting out anyone who may have shared information, but intimidating others who might do so in the future, according to people with knowledge of the effort.

Between 1,500 and 2,000 officers and officials work for the Joint Staff, which coordinates operations, policy and war plans with combatant commanders around the world….

The scope of the investigation is without parallel. Mass polygraph tests have never been administered to the top ranks of the U.S. military in modern history.

Woman with cat, Tracy Porter

“I’ve never seen polygraphs employed this broadly or at this seniority level,” said Rear Adm. Donald J. Guter, a retired top judge advocate general for the Navy from 2000 to 2002. “In my experience, it’s unprecedented.”

The move comes as multiple news organizations have revealed details about how the war with Iran has drained munition stockpiles and reported on concerns inside the administration about the strategic direction of the conflict.

President Trump has pressured administration officials to aggressively hunt for those leaking information. But the president has gone further than merely trying to stop the flow of unauthorized information; he has labeled “treasonous” the media coverage that is critical of the U.S. handling of the war in Iran and the shortages of munitions.

The leaks have intensified an atmosphere of deep distrust and paranoia inside the Pentagon, one that current and former officials say has been fostered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Surrounded by a tight inner circle of loyalists, Mr. Hegseth has pushed out or blocked the promotions of at least 80 generals, admirals and other officials during his tenure. Since early last year, the Pentagon has been conducting a number of leak investigations in response to news coverage about his leadership, even as he faced criticism for sharing sensitive details about strikes in Yemen in a Signal group last year.

The only thing Trump really seems to really care about is building his ballroom and putting his name on everything he can think of. The latest announcement from the administration is that they are going break ground for Trump’s “triumphal” Nazi arch.

Rachel Treisman at NPR: Trump’s arch may break ground without final approval. Veterans are trying to stop it.

The Trump administration plans to break ground on its proposed 250-foot arch near Washington, D.C.’s National Mall in the coming days, without key approvals and despite an ongoing lawsuit.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum wrote on social media Thursday that “we are preparing to start, over the next two-week period, the excavation work necessary for the Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck.”

But the arch is still awaiting final approval from the National Capital Planning Commission, as well as federally mandated reviews regarding aviation safety and historic preservation.

Historic preservation experts have long criticized the Trump administration for seeming to rush the arch approval process, including by moving to weaken protections for historic sites altogether. This latest development raises concerns that the White House seeks to sidestep the process, which it denies.

Cecilia Beaux, Man with the cat

“Work will begin that does not require approval, but rather helps in the process,” the White House told NPR in a statement on Friday. “We will of course continue on our path of seeking final approval from all applicable entities.”

The White House, Department of the Interior and National Park Service did not respond to NPR’s questions about the timeline and extent of the excavations or the addition of the word “military” to the structure’s title.

President Trump told journalists last year that the arch is for “me.” But since then, the administration has said the arch is intended to honor the nation’s 250th anniversary.

“This will be one of the Great Pieces of American Architecture, honoring the history and significance of Arlington Cemetery and befitting the most powerful Capital in the World,” Burgum posted this week, alongside renderings of the white-and-gold structure, topped with three large gilded statues.

The administration told the judge something different.

Emily Badger at The New York Times (gift link): Is Work Starting for Trump’s Arch? It Depends Who’s Asking.

The Trump administration told a federal judge that it was not preparing to start construction on the president’s planned triumphal arch in Washington, a day after Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced that excavation work for the project would begin within the next two weeks.

The work the government plans to do, the Department of Justice said in a court filing on Friday, consists of archaeological excavation of the site necessary for the required historic review of the project. And it stated, despite President Trump’s frequent promotion of the project, that no final decision had been made to begin building the arch, which would stand near Arlington National Cemetery.

That starkly different message follows a pattern across other cases in which the administration has made one pronouncement in public and another in court.

Responding to the conflicting messages, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the administration late Friday night to give her at least 48 hours’ notice if it proceeds with anything other than the limited archaeological work. And she reminded the administration that it is under an existing order to give the court 14 days notice before beginning construction on the arch.

The flurry of filings on Friday followed Mr. Burgum’s surprise announcement that excavation work for the arch would begin, even before it receives final approvals.

The Language of Care, by Kateryna Kolesnykova

“We are pleased to announce that after a very long wait (over 125 years!), we are preparing to start, over the next two-week period, the excavation work necessary for the Great Triumphal Arch,” Mr. Burgum wrote on social media.

The Department of Justice put things differently, after a group of veterans suing to block the arch sought a temporary restraining order on Friday. “This activity is not construction, or demolition in preparation for construction, of an arch,” the department said.

Judge Chutkan appeared to tread a middle path, allowing the limited work the government said in court it was pursuing, while warning it against going any further at this point.

My guess is that Trump will go ahead with the construction regardless of what the judge says. Remember, he has immunity for anything he does as president.

One more from Josh Fiallo at The Daily Beast: Trump Admits Real Reason He’s Building Monuments to Himself.

President Donald Trump has made a stunning admission while revealing why he’s obsessed with remodeling Washington.

Trump, 80, has candidly told New York magazine that he is building monuments for himself and slapping his name everywhere because he knows that nobody else will do so when he is gone.

Reporter Ben Terris shared with Trump an attack line from Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, who says that Trump’s obsession with vanity projects stems from knowing he is the only person willing to memorialize him.

“That’s true,” Trump responded. “Nobody will do it once I’m gone. When I leave here, nobody will.”

That is just pathetic.

That’s it for me today. Have a great long weekend, Sky Dancers!

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