Letter From An American by Heather Cox Richardson

mickeyrat · September 4

September 3, 2025 (Wednesday)

[Please note that this post talks about sexual assault in the last four paragraphs.]

A Wall Street Journal–NORC poll released yesterday found that only 25% of Americans believe they have a good chance of improving their standard of living. Nearly 70% said it was no longer possible to work hard and get ahead. A majority of those polled said the generation before them had an easier time starting a business, buying a home, or staying at home to parent a child.

A different piece in the Wall Street Journal explained that there were 927 American billionaires in 2020 and 1,135 in 2024. Together, they are worth about $5.7 trillion. The 100 richest of the set control more than half of the total at about $3.86 trillion. As the number of billionaires grew, “supply side” economic policies in the U.S., designed to concentrate wealth at the top of the economy among investors rather than on the “demand side” made up of consumers, hollowed out the middle class. From 1975 to 2018, at least $50 trillion moved from the bottom 90% to the top 1%.

Yet another piece in the Wall Street Journal, this one by Katherine Hamilton and Alison Sider, noted that consumer confidence is sliding. While wealthier Americans seem to be doing fine, they write, rising distress about the economy is obvious among the middle class: those making about $53,000 to $161,000 a year. Chief economist at Morning Consult John Leer told the reporters: “There was a period of time, briefly, where the middle-income consumer looked like they were being dragged up by all that was going well in the world. Then things fell off a cliff.”

In an interview with the Financial Times published yesterday, billionaire Ray Dalio, the founder of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, warned that the U.S. today looks a lot like “what happened around the world in the 1930–1940 period.” Dalio identified the policies of President Donald J. Trump as the sort of “strong autocratic leadership that sprang out of the desire to take control of the financial and economic situation” in the 1930s.

Trump’s rise in 2016 was fueled in part by his promise to defend those left behind in the supply-side economy. But he abandoned his economic promises with his 2017 tax cuts that benefited the wealthy and corporations far more than average Americans, and rallied his supporters with culture-war issues.

In 2024, Trump ran on the argument that Democrat Joe Biden had not adequately addressed inflation—although the U.S. managed the post-pandemic inflation spike better than any other developed economy—promising that he would make prices come down “immediately.” Instead, his tariffs and deportations have sent inflation upward again, and the budget reconciliation bill he forced through Congress is already pushing people off their healthcare insurance and threatening the survival of rural hospitals.

The law Trump and the Republicans dubbed the “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” is profoundly unpopular, with about two thirds of Americans opposed to it. So today, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio, and Trump political director James Blair met with Republican congress members to tell them that people will come to like the law if “they completely rebrand it and talk about it differently.”

The administration officials told the congress members, who have been hearing from constituents angry about the law’s deep spending cuts, that they should be pushing the idea that the law helps “working families.” Vice President J.D. Vance tried this last week in Wisconsin, and this afternoon, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) appeared to take that advice out for a spin, publicly referring to the law the same way Vance did: as the “working families tax cut act.”

The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes that under the law, a family earning less than $50,000 a year would get less than $300 in tax cuts in 2027 while losing access to Medicaid and food assistance, while a filer earning more than $1 million would receive about $90,000 in tax breaks. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the 10% of Americans at the bottom of the economy will lose about $1,200 a year.

Trump’s policies are working well for his family, though. Angus Berwick of the Wall Street Journal reported that the Monday launch of their WLFI cryptocurrency netted them about $5 billion on paper. Today Eric Trump launched American Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency mining company; Kyle Khan-Mullins and Dan Alexander of Forbes reported today that he is now worth at least $3.2 billion.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to insist that he must have the powers of a dictator to make the country prosperous again. When a court found his use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to justify his sweeping tariffs was illegal, he said, “If you took away tariffs, we could end up being a third-world country,” although the U.S. was not a third-world country before Trump launched his tariff war in April. He has said he will take the case before the Supreme Court.

If he loses there, as Elisabeth Buchwald wrote for CNN, the U.S. might have to pay back more than $210 billion to the American businesses that have paid the tariffs. On Monday, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo pointed to a story Louise Matsakis and Zoë Schiffer of Wired reported in late July: Wall Street companies, including Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial services company run by the sons of billionaire commerce secretary Howard Lutnick since Lutnick joined the Trump administration, have been buying up the rights to collect tariff refunds if the tariffs are struck down.

Marshall notes that while making a bet on an uncertain outcome is a huge part of modern finance, the idea that a commerce secretary’s company is making bets on something the commerce secretary has significant authority over is a perfect symbol of the Trump era.

While the Trump family and loyalists cash in on their control of the government, Trump continues to assert that he requires authoritarian powers to “Make America Great Again.”

Trump has relied heavily on the Supreme Court’s defense of his leeway as the nation’s leader in foreign affairs, and after being stymied by the courts for its actions at home, the administration yesterday announced it had blown up a boat in international waters in the Caribbean with eleven people on it, alleging the boat was carrying illegal drugs to the United States from Venezuela. Although U.S. forces could have stopped the boat without destroying it and often do so, shooting at engines, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the boat posed an “immediate threat to the United States,” so the U.S. had the right to destroy it. Perhaps thinking it demonstrated power, the administration circulated a video of the strike.

Legal analyst Ryan Goodman wrote: “I worked at [the Department of Defense]. I literally cannot imagine lawyers coming up with a legal basis for [the] lethal strike of [a] suspected Venezuelan drug boat. Hard to see how this would not be "murder" or war crime under international law that DoD considers applicable.”

Notre Dame law professor Mary Ellen O’Connell told John Hudson, Samantha Schmidt, and Alex Horton of the Washington Post that the strike violated international law. “When the president decides this is a person who can be killed summarily, there’s no restraint on him,” she told the reporters. “It’s a very dangerous new move,” since he could decide to launch similar strikes within the United States in pursuit of those he calls drug traffickers.

Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said the strike was “deeply concerning,” noting that “[t]he administration has not identified the authority under which this action was taken, raising the question of its legality and constitutionality.” Smith added: “The lack of information and transparency from the administration is even more concerning. Does this mean Trump thinks he can use the U.S. military anywhere drugs exist, are sold, or shipped? What is the risk of dragging the United States into yet another military conflict?”

Legal analyst Joyce White Vance noted that the justification for the strike was dubious enough that even Rubio appeared to want a little distance from it, as he made a point of specifying that the U.S. acted “on the president’s orders.”

Trump has attempted to demonstrate authoritarian power with his military displays in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and yesterday he announced that “we’re going in” to Chicago, although he didn’t offer any specifics. After Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker rejected the idea the president could simply send troops, Trump appeared to back off, saying Pritzker should ask him for help. “When did we become a country where it’s OK for the U.S. president to insist on national television that a state should call him to beg for anything—especially something we don’t want?” Pritzker said. “Have we truly lost all sense of sanity in this nation, that we treat this as normal?”

A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll shows just 38% of Americans approve of Trump’s deployment of troops in Washington, D.C.

Trump has reason to be afraid of the American people for another reason, too: they want to see the files from the federal investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, especially now that they know Trump is mentioned in those files. Speaker Johnson dismissed the House early for its August break this year to avoid having to deal with the demands of members for the release of the files, but now Congress is back in session and the demands are right back on the table. Trump has tried to stop Republicans from asking for the files by warning such a demand would be seen as a hostile act against the administration.

Today the administration arranged a military flyover during the visit of President Karol Nawrocki of Poland, in honor of a Polish army pilot killed in a training exercise. The flyover occurred just at the time more than 100 of the women who survived sexual grooming, assault, and rape in their association with Epstein and his associate, convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, spoke at a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol, drowning out their words.

But it did not silence the words of survivor Jess Michaels.

“For 27 years, I thought I was the only one that Jeffrey Epstein raped. I believed I was alone, and I was kept silent by the shame that was inside me and by the fear outside in the world,” she said. “But I wasn't the only one. None of us were. And what once kept us silent now fuels that fire and the power of our voices. We are not the footnotes in some infamous predator’s tabloid article. We are the experts and the subjects of this story. We are the proof that fear did not break us. And we don't just speak for ourselves, but for every survivor whose story is still unspoken…. This is what power looks like. Survivors united, voices joined, refusing to be dismissed. Know this: justice and accountability are not favors from the powerful. They are obligations, decades overdue. This moment began with Epstein's crimes, but it's going to be remembered for survivors demanding justice, demanding truth, demanding accountability, and we will not stop until survivor voices shape justice, transform culture, and define the future. We are no longer whispers. We are one powerful voice, too loud to ignore, and we will never be silenced again.”

mickeyrat · September 5

September 4, 2025 (Thursday)

Senators challenged the decisions of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. as he testified before the Senate Finance Committee for about three hours today. Kennedy has slashed through thousands of advisors and staffers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who do not share his animosity toward vaccines and has canceled $500 million in research funding for mRNA vaccine research. Last week he fired the newly confirmed director of the CDC, Susan Monarez, when she refused to preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel Kennedy had stacked with anti-vaccine advocates.

Because of Kennedy’s history of repeating debunked lies and breaking promises he made to the Senate, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), the highest ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, asked that the committee swear Kennedy in before he began his testimony. Committee chair Mike Crapo (R-ID) declined. Wyden said: “This committee’s unwillingness to swear this witness is basically a message that it is acceptable to lie to the Senate Finance Committee about hugely important questions like vaccines.”

During his testimony, Kennedy insisted his purges are designed to restore faith in the CDC after it “failed miserably” during the coronavirus pandemic. He called the CDC “the most corrupt agency at HHS, and maybe the government.” He denied the official tally that more than 1.2 million Americans have died from Covid-19, and denied that new government guidelines for the covid vaccine mean that people cannot get them. He was combative and seemed angry that he was being questioned. He repeatedly suggested Democratic senators were lying when they quoted facts or data that didn’t fit his narrative.

Republican senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a doctor who was instrumental in securing Kennedy’s confirmation, noted that pharmacies might not offer covid vaccines after Kennedy said the shots are no longer recommended for healthy adults under 65 or for children. Cassidy said “Effectively, we’re denying people vaccines.” Kennedy retorted: “You’re wrong.”

On Monday, nine former directors of the CDC wrote an op-ed in the New York Times warning that Kennedy is “endangering every American’s health,” and yesterday more than 1,000 current and former employees of the Department of Health and Human Services wrote a public letter saying that Kennedy is endangering the health of the nation by spreading inaccurate information. They called for Kennedy to resign or be fired.

Former CDC director Monarez published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today warning that Kennedy and his anti-vaccine colleagues “use a familiar playbook: discredit research, weaken advisory committees, and use manipulated outcomes to unravel protections that generations of families have relied on to keep deadly diseases at bay. Once trusted experts are removed and advisory bodies are stacked, the results are predetermined. That isn’t reform. It is sabotage.”

Egged on by President Donald J. Trump in summer 2020, people involved in the MAGA movement zeroed in on government attempts to combat the coronavirus pandemic as an assault on their freedom. Now Kennedy and adherents of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) branch of MAGA are attacking vaccines in general as a government assault on freedom.

In a letter issued to the states today, the Department of Health and Human Services reiterated that states “must respect state religious and conscience exemptions from vaccine mandates.” It reiterated Kennedy’s position that American freedom dictates the removal of the government’s power to require Americans to get vaccines. “States have the authority to balance public health goals with individual freedom,” the letter quotes Kennedy as saying. “Protecting both public health and personal liberty is how we restore faith in our institutions and Make America Healthy Again.”

Yesterday, Florida became the first state to move to eliminate all vaccine requirements for public school students. If the state legislature agrees, the move would end Florida’s previously required vaccinations for polio, tetanus, chicken pox, hepatitis B, and measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR). No state mandates the covid vaccine.

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo said that every government vaccine mandate “is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.” He added: “People have a right to make their own decisions, informed decisions. What you put into your body is because of your relationship with your body and your god. I don’t have that right. Government does not have that right.” After Florida’s announcement, CNN’s Aaron Blake noted, top Trump health advisor Mehmet Oz appeared to agree with it, saying on the Fox News Channel: “I would definitely not have mandates for vaccinations.”

For decades, the Republican Party has called for the dismantling of government regulations with the argument that such regulations were destroying American freedom. As Ronald Reagan put it in 1964 in his speech supporting Barry Goldwater for president, on the one hand there was “individual freedom consistent with law and order,” and on the other hand was “the ant heap of totalitarianism.”

But the fight over vaccines illustrates the difference between freedom from government overreach and freedom to build a life that is not cramped by preventable obstacles. The CDC estimates that between 1994 and 2003, childhood vaccinations prevented 32 million hospitalizations and 1,129,000 deaths among children, and saved at least $540 billion. Removing those vaccines removes the individual freedom to determine one’s future.

While they might not articulate these two very different forms of freedom, Americans certainly seem aware of them and appear eager to preserve the concept that the government has a role to play in protecting individuals’ freedom to build a life free of preventable obstacles. A KFF poll released today shows that 81% of American parents support public school requirements that students be vaccinated for measles and polio. In Florida, that number is 82%.

Even as Kennedy and Florida reject vaccines as government overreach that restricts freedom, Democratic states are embracing them as protecting Americans’ freedom to live without the threat of illness or death from preventable diseases. Yesterday, California, Oregon, and Washington announced a “West Coast Health Alliance” to coordinate information about vaccines and public health based in science rather than ideology. Nine states in the Northeast are forming a similar “Northeast Public Health Collaboration.”

Today Massachusetts governor Maura Healey announced measures to make sure vaccines continue to be available to all Massachusetts residents, despite the restrictions set out by Trump and Kennedy. “We won’t let Donald Trump and Robert Kennedy get between patients and their doctors,” Healey said. “When the federal government fails to protect public health, Massachusetts will step up. The actions we are announcing today will make sure people can continue to get the vaccines they need and want in Massachusetts.”

At the turn of the last century, when wealthy industrialists controlled Congress and the Supreme Court and prevented federal laws from addressing the abuses of industrialization and the concentration of wealth, certain state governments stepped in to figure out how to use government power to protect their citizens. Under Governor Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette, Wisconsin led the way, bringing together researchers, lawmakers, and state officials to craft policies that would end corruption, promote education and social welfare, and create a strong and fair economy.

The “Wisconsin Idea” made that state “literally a laboratory for wise experimental legislation aiming to secure the social and political betterment of the people as a whole,” Republican president Theodore Roosevelt wrote. “All through the Union we need to learn the Wisconsin lesson.” His presidency launched the idea that the government must defend Americans’ right to live free of economic coercion, industrial pollution, and laws that privilege corporations.

Aside from using the idea of freedom from government overreach to get rid of vaccine mandates, the Trump administration appears generally to have jettisoned that Republican position. Instead, it is using the power of the government to attack those it perceives as political enemies, the same charge made by the House of Representatives against President Richard M. Nixon as it considered impeachment proceedings in 1974.

Today the Department of Justice launched a criminal investigation into Lisa Cook, a governor of the U.S. Federal Reserve, for allegedly committing mortgage fraud by claiming two separate properties as her primary residence. Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski of Pro Publica reported today that three of Trump’s own Cabinet members—Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and EPA administrator Lee Zeldin—have all done the same.

A video released today by right-wing activist James O’Keefe—who often edits his material to mislead viewers—showed the Department of Justice’s acting deputy chief of special operations, Joseph Schnitt, saying that Jeffrey Epstein associate and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell was moved to a minimum security prison camp because the government is “offering her something to keep her mouth shut.” He also told an undercover journalist that both that the Epstein files exist and that before their release, the government will “redact every Republican and conservative person in those files and leave all the liberal, Democratic people.”

Tonight the Department of Justice published what appears to be an apology of sorts that confirms the material in the video. In an apparent screenshot of an email, Schnitt says he was talking to a woman he had met on a dating app and that his comments were “my own personal comments on what I’ve learned in the media and not from anything I’ve done or learned via work.”

Even more dramatic a government assault on freedom is the administration’s deployment of troops in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and its threat to deploy troops in Chicago and other cities. Now it has gone so far as to assert the government’s power to order the military to kill individuals Trump declares are gang members smuggling drugs, as it did by apparently killing 11 people on what they claimed was a drug boat.

With Trump and his loyalists abandoning the avowed Republican commitment to freedom from government overreach except when it serves their political interests—by attacking vaccines, for example—Americans determined to prevent the dismantling of our modern government are beginning to speak up to defend government protection of our freedom to live without unwarranted outside interference.

Recently, the 18 universities that make up the Big Ten Conference announced they will be running an ad during sporting events that “focuses on how Big Ten universities make America healthier, safer and more prosperous through everything from discovering new medical treatments to developing healthier foods to driving economic growth.”

Pushing back on the Trump administration’s attacks against universities and scientific research, they intend to highlight the importance of their work for the public good.

mickeyrat · September 6

September 5, 2025 (Friday)

Today President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War, although the 1947 abandonment of the Department of War name was not simply a matter of substituting a new name for the original one. In 1947, to bring order and efficiency to U.S. military forces, Congress renamed the Department of War as the Department of the Army, then brought it, together with the Department of the Navy and a new Department of the Air Force, into a newly established “National Military Establishment” overseen by the secretary of defense.

In 1949, Congress replaced the National Military Establishment name, whose initials sounded unfortunately like “enemy,” with Department of Defense. The new name emphasized that the Allied Powers of World War II would join together to focus on deterring wars by standing against offensive wars launched by big countries against their smaller neighbors. Although Trump told West Point graduates this year that “[t]he military's job is to dominate any foe and annihilate any threat to America, anywhere, anytime, and any place,” in fact, the stated mission of the Department of Defense is “to provide the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security.”

As Amanda Castro and Hannah Parry of Newsweek note, in August, Trump said he wanted the change because “Defense is too defensive...we want to be offensive too if we have to be.” By law, Congress must approve the change, which Politico estimates will cost billions of dollars, although Trump said: “I'm sure Congress will go along if we need that. I don't think we even need that.” By this evening, nameplates and signage bearing the new name had gone up in government offices and the URL for the Defense Department website had been changed to war [dot] gov.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has pushed the change because he sees it as part of his campaign to spread a “warrior ethos” at the Pentagon. Today he said the name change was part of “restoring intentionality to the use of force…. We're going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality, violent effect, not politically correct. We're going to raise up warriors, not just defenders. So this War Department, Mr. President, just like America, is back.”

In 1947, when the country dropped the “War Department” name, the chief of staff of the U.S. Army—the highest-ranking officer on active duty—was five-star general Dwight D. Eisenhower. It is unusual for anyone to suggest that Eisenhower, who led the Allied troops in World War II, was insufficiently committed to military strength. Indeed, the men who changed the name to “Defense Department” and tried to create a rules-based international order did so precisely because war was not a game to them. Having seen the carnage of war not just on the battlefield but among civilians who faced firebombing, death camps, homelessness, starvation, and the obscenity of atomic weapons, they hoped to find a way to make sure insecure, power-hungry men could not start another war easily.

The Movement Conservatives who took over the Republican Party in the 1980s leaned heavily on a mythologized image of the American cowboy as a strong, independent individual who wanted nothing from the government but to be left alone. That image supported decades of attacks on the modern government as “socialism,” and it has now metastasized in the MAGA movement to suggest that the men in charge of the government should be able to do whatever they want.

Just what that looks like was made clear on Wednesday when the Trump administration launched a strike on a boat carrying 11 civilians it claimed were smuggling drugs. Covering the story, the New York Times reported that “Pentagon officials were still working Wednesday on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters.”

Today, David Philipps and Matthew Cole reported another military strike approved by Trump in his first term that was previously undisclosed. In the New York Times, they reported that in early 2019, Trump okayed a Navy SEAL mission to plant an electronic device in North Korea. The plan went awry when their activity near the shore attracted a civilian fishing boat with two or three men diving for shellfish. The SEALs killed the men on the boat, punctured their lungs with knives so the bodies would sink, abandoned the mission, and returned to base.

The administration never notified the Gang of Eight, the eight leaders of Congress who must be briefed on intelligence activities unless the president thinks it is essential to limit access to information about a covert operation. The Gang of Eight is made up of the leaders of both parties in each chamber of Congress, as well as the chairs and ranking minority members of the intelligence committee of each chamber.

Military officials appear concerned that Trump might continue to send personnel into precarious missions. Those who were involved in or knew about the North Korea mission said they were speaking up now because they are worried that such failures are often hidden and that if the public only hears about successful operations, “they may underestimate the extreme risks American forces undertake.”

Trump’s promise that his demonstrations of strength would make the U.S. a leader on the international stage is also falling apart. Barak Ravid and Dave Lawler of Axios reported that in a conversation yesterday with European Union leaders, Trump backed away from his promises to increase pressure on Russia to stop its war against Ukraine and instead told the leaders they must do it themselves.

Also yesterday, the Financial Times reported that the administration will no longer help to fund military training and infrastructure in Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, Baltic nations vulnerable to Russian incursions. National security scholar Tom Nichols commented: “I am adamant about people not falling prey to conspiracy theories about Trump and the Russians, but this is a classic moment where it's understandable to ask: If the Russians owned him, how would his actions be any different?”

The administration has not briefed Congress on the change.

Earlier this week, on September 3, leaders Xi Jinping of China, Vladimir Putin of Russia, Kim Jong Un of North Korea, and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus met in Beijing to celebrate the anniversary of the formal surrender of Japan and the end of World War II. The day before, Putin described Xi as a dear friend and said the ties between the two leaders are at an “unprecedented level.”

Trump did not appear to take the meeting well. He posted at Xi, reminding him of “the massive amount of support and ‘blood’ that the United States of America gave to China in order to help it to secure its FREEDOM from a very unfriendly foreign invader” and adding: “Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against the United States of America. PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP”

India’s president, Narendra Modi, also met with Xi this week as Beijing continued to push the idea that it is now the head of a new world order. Trump responded: "Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!"

Reality is also intruding on the Republicans’ insistence that only they know how to run the economy.

Although Trump inherited a booming economy, he insisted that it was actually in terrible shape and that his tariffs would bring back manufacturing and make life better for those left behind by 40 years of economic policy that concentrated wealth at the top of society.

In fact, data released Tuesday show that U.S. manufacturing has contracted for six straight months. Economic journalist Catherine Rampell noted that the U.S. has fewer manufacturing jobs today than it had before the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. The country has lost 78,000 manufacturing jobs this year. Seventy-two percent of Texas manufacturers say the tariffs are hurting their businesses. Only 3.7% think the tariffs are helping them.

Yesterday’s immigration raid on a Hyundai Motor battery plant in Georgia is unlikely to send a reassuring message to manufacturers. U.S. agents arrested 475 individuals, more than 300 of whom were South Korean nationals. Included in the sweep were business travelers. In August, Hyundai said it would invest $26 billion in the U.S. through 2028.

Today’s new jobs report, the first since Trump fired the previous director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) after accusing her of rigging the numbers for political reasons, was poor. It showed that the U.S. added just 22,000 jobs in August, far below the expected 75,000, while the jobs numbers for June and July were revised downward by 21,000 jobs. The numbers show that the economy is faltering.

Just before the report was due to be released, the BLS website went down, an unfortunate reminder that the bureau is in turmoil. Today Em Steck and Andrew Kaczynski of CNN confirmed and expanded an August story by David Gilbert of Wired revealing what appears to be an old Twitter account belonging to E.J. Antoni, Trump’s pick to run the BLS. The account posted conspiracy theories and sexist, racist, and homophobic attacks, and parrotted Trump’s talking points.,

Last night, when asked if he would trust today’s job numbers, Trump answered: "Well, we're going to have to see what the numbers, I don't know, they come out tomorrow. But the real numbers that I'm talking about are going to be whatever it is. But, uh, will be in a year from now when these monstrous huge beautiful places they’re palaces of genius and when they start opening up. You’re seeing, I think you’ll see job numbers that are absolutely incredible. Right now it’s a lot of construction numbers, but you’re going to see job numbers like our country has never seen before.”

mickeyrat · September 7

September 6, 2025 (Saturday)

Today the social media account of President Donald J. Trump posted an AI-generated image of Trump as if he were Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore from the 1979 film Apocalypse Now in front of the Chicago skyline with military helicopters and flames and the caption “Chipocalypse Now.” Kilgore loved the war in Vietnam in which he was engaged; his most famous line was “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

Over the image, Trump’s social media post read: “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’ Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.” The words were followed by three helicopter emojis, symbols the right wing uses to represent former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s goons’ disappearing political opponents by pushing them out of helicopters.

Although it has become trite to speculate about what Republicans would say if a Democratic president engaged in the behavior Trump exhibits daily, this open attack of the president on an American city is a new level of unhinged. Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo wrote: “The president of the United States just declared war, actual military war, not a metaphorical one, on a major American city, and one governed by his political opponents.” He added, accurately: “In any other period, this would be impeachment-worthy.”

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker called attention to the gravity of Trump’s post: “The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal. Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.” Under the words “Know your rights, Illinois,” and “Stay safe and stay informed,” the governor’s social media account posted information about Americans’ rights in both English and Spanish.

Trump’s threats against American citizens are outrageous, but they also feel desperate. Trump’s popularity is tanking, the economy is faltering, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is facing a chorus of calls to resign or be fired, and the American people are taking to the streets. Thousands of people turned out today in Washington, D.C., for the “We Are All D.C.” march to protest the presence of troops in the city, and in Chicago for the “Chicago Says No Trump No Troops” protest. The protests are notable for the seas of signs the peaceful protesters carry.

And then, with Congress back in session, there is the resurgence of the issue of Trump’s appearance in the Epstein files. Last week, the White House warned Republicans that voting to release the Epstein files “would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration.” Yesterday, Trump reiterated his claim that the agitation for the release of the files is a “Democrat HOAX…in order to deflect and distract from the great success of a Republican President.”

Also yesterday, lawyers for the Justice Department asked a federal judge to keep the names of two associates who received large payments from Epstein in 2018 secret. Days before the payments, the Miami Herald had started to examine the sweetheart deal Epstein got in 2008. One associate received a payment of $100,000, and the second received $250,000. As part of his plea deal, Tom Winter of NBC News reports, Epstein got a guarantee that the associates would not be prosecuted.

Last night, Trump hosted the inaugural dinner of what the White House is calling the “Rose Garden Club” in the newly-paved White House Rose Garden, telling those assembled that they were there because they are loyal to the president. “You’re the ones that I never had to call at 4:00 in the morning,” Trump told them. “You are the ones that have been my friends, and you know what I’m talking about."

Yesterday, talking to reporters about the Epstein files, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said that Trump was “an FBI informant to try to take this stuff down.” The idea that Trump was secretly working to bring Epstein down is common fare among conspiracy theorists, but as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo suggests, Johnson’s embrace of it might well be an attempt to spin material in the files before it becomes public.

Marshall notes that journalist Michael Wolff, who interviewed Epstein at length during Trump’s first presidency, says that Epstein suspected it was Trump who told the authorities about his systemic sexual assault of girls. But if so, Marshall explains, this is damning rather than exonerating.

It’s pretty well known that Trump and Epstein had a falling out in 2004 after Trump went behind Epstein’s back to buy an estate in South Florida that Epstein wanted. But at the time, Trump was headed toward bankruptcy, and it was not clear where he was getting the money to buy the estate.

Marshall calls attention to a recent interview in which Wolff said that Epstein suspected Trump was laundering money for a Russian oligarch—and indeed, Trump did flip the property to a Russian oligarch for a profit of more than $50 million a few years after buying it—and threatened to sue Trump, bringing the money laundering to light. At that point, the Epstein investigation began.

According to Wolff, Epstein believed Trump had notified the police about what was going on at Epstein’s house, which he knew because he was a frequent visitor. Marshall speculates that Johnson mentioned that Trump was an informant because that information could well be in the files the Department of Justice has, and they’re trying to spin it ahead of time to make it sound like Trump was a hero.

But both Wolff and Marshall note that if indeed Trump turned the FBI onto Epstein, it shows he knew what was taking place at Epstein’s properties.

Johnson’s claim that Trump was an FBI informant suggests Trump’s team is worried that as more and more people get access to the files, it will be increasingly difficult to hide what’s in them. Trump's demand for Republicans’ loyalty suggests that at least some of them are starting to recalculate it. And that, in turn, might have something to do with why he is putting troops in the streets.

mickeyrat · September 8

September 7, 2025 (Sunday)

Tonight is a picture night, but one a little bit different than usual.

Cartoonist and writer Liza Donnelly and I have been experimenting with different ways to integrate art, politics, and history, and since tomorrow is the anniversary of President Gerald Ford’s pardon of President Richard Nixon, we took that event out for a spin.

You can find Liza at her Substack Seeing Things; I'll link it in the comments. It's an illustrated review of the day’s news including people or scenes Liza sees in her travels.

I’ll be back on my regular beat tomorrow.

And if you have ideas for historical events you’d like to see us cover this way, please drop them below.

https://youtu.be/xqPrJJivR7I?si=vx-dKz6MVGKzzw4b

mickeyrat · 5:58AM

September 8, 2025 (Monday)

On Friday, September 5, Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell told Southern Baptist pastor and Newsmax host Tony Perkins that Trump may try to declare that “there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States" in order to claim “emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward,” overriding the Constitution’s clear designation that states alone have control over elections. Mitchell has long called for voting restrictions and was on the infamous January 2021 phone call Trump made to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger in which Trump pressed Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” that would give the state’s electoral votes to him rather than the victorious Democratic candidate, Joe Biden.

Democracy Docket, the media organization founded and run by voting rights and election lawyer Marc Elias, has been tracking the administration’s assault on democracy and has repeatedly called out both such language and Trump’s attempts to monkey with the machinery of our democracy through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and now the use of the military in Democratic-led cities.

In August, Jim Saksa of Democracy Docket explained that through intimidation, harassment, and delays, troops could keep large numbers of voters from casting ballots. The administration might even claim fraud to seize voting machines, as Trump contemplated doing in 2020. Today in Mother Jones, Ari Berman noted the administration has dismantled efforts to promote election security and is working to stack state elections boards with loyalists.

MAGA loyalist Steve Bannon recently said: “They’re petrified over at MSNBC and CNN that, hey, since we’re taking control of the cities, there’s going to be ICE officers near polling places. You’re damn right.” Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker, speaking of Trump’s threatened military incursion into Chicago, observed: “This is not about fighting crime. This is about the President and his complicit lackey, Stephen Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities, and end elections.”

Yesterday the administration announced a surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents into Boston, and today it announced a surge into Chicago. Although Trump has been threatening to send in federalized National Guard troops, at least so far the announcement appears to be limited to ICE agents, who are part of the country’s regular law enforcement systems. Pritzker noted that the administration had made no effort to reach out to state officials as it would have if it actually wanted to combat crime. Instead, Pritzker said, “we are learning of their operations through their social media as they attempt to produce a reality television show.”

The apparent plan of the Trump administration reflects the strategy of Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt, whose writings seem lately to have captivated leaders on the American right, including billionaire Peter Thiel and the man who influenced him, Curtis Yarvin. Schmitt opposed liberal democracy, in which the state enables individuals to determine their own fate. Instead, he argued that true democracy erases individual self-determination by making the mass of people one with the state and exercising their will through state power. That uniformity requires getting rid of opposition. Schmitt theorized that politics is simply about dividing people into friends and enemies and using the power of the state to crush enemies. As J.D. Vance described Schmitt’s ideas in 2024: “There’s no law, there's just power.”

Much of Schmitt’s philosophy centered around the idea that the power of a nation that is based in a constitution and the rule of law belongs to the man who can exploit emergencies that create exceptions to the constitutional order, enabling him to exercise power without regard to the law. Trump—who almost certainly has not read Schmitt himself—asserted this view on August 26: “I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States. If I think our country’s in danger—and it is in danger in the cities—I can do it.”

Although the Republicans have control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, meaning Trump should be able to get his agenda passed according to the normal constitutional order, since taking office he has operated under emergency powers. On August 22, Karen Yourish and Charlie Smart noted in the New York Times that since he took office, Trump has declared nine national emergencies and one “crime emergency” in Washington, D.C. The journalists report that since 1981, presidents have declared on average about seven national emergencies per four-year term. Trump declared that many in his first month back in office, although experts say no such emergencies exist.

Under normal constitutional provisions and laws, Trump’s actions would have required congressional approval or long regulatory review, the journalists note. Instead, he has enacted sweeping immigration measures, deregulated energy, launched a tariff war that is crushing the U.S. economy, and now put troops in U.S. cities, all on his own hook.

Even when Trump didn’t announce a new emergency, he has cited crises to justify new extreme actions, as when he (or someone; he told reporters he did not sign the order) invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to justify rendering undocumented Venezuelan immigrants to the notorious terrorist prison CECOT in El Salvador and when he justified the cuts billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” made to congressionally-approved funding because such cuts addressed “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Although the administration continues to insist voters wanted what Trump is doing, his poor job approval rating and the popular dislike of his policies across the board say the opposite. Perhaps more to the point was this weekend’s social media post from J.D. Vance, who pushed back on widespread concern that the administration’s strike against a boat in international waters last week was illegal. The administration claims that the 11 men in the boat were gang members smuggling drugs, but even if it offered evidence for such an assertion, which it has not done, the U.S. cannot legally kill civilians of a nation with whom we are not at war.

This weekend, Vance posted on social media: “Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.” Political commentator Brian Krassenstein replied: “Killing the citizens of another nation who are civilians without any due process is called a war crime.” Vance replied: “I don’t give a sh*t what you call it.”

The federal courts are working overtime to hold the administration to the rule of law. As Jay Kuo noted on September 3 in The Status Kuo, just last week saw courts invalidating most of Trump’s tariffs, stopping the administration from deporting unaccompanied children to Guatemala, and declaring his cuts to Harvard University’s funding, his use of troops in Los Angeles, and his invocation of the Alien Enemies Act illegal. Today an appeals court upheld the $83.3 million judgement a jury rendered last year against Trump in a defamation case brought by writer E. Jean Carroll.

But the Supreme Court has been overruling lower court decisions, deciding in favor of Trump’s expansion of power. Today it allowed Trump to ignore the decision of a lower court that he could not fire the last remaining Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, Rebecca Slaughter, while her case was in the courts. Since 1935, the court had said the president does not have the power to fire members of independent agencies created by Congress.

It also said today that the administration can use racial profiling, including personal appearance, language, or type of employment, to stop people in order to check their immigration status, even though that will necessarily mean that U.S. citizens and legal residents will be swept up. Essentially, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, Latino Americans must now keep papers on them at all times to prove they are citizens or they can find themselves incarcerated.

The court decided these cases without hearings, briefs, or a written decision, under what is called the “shadow docket.” Traditionally, such unsigned, unexplained decisions are used for emergencies either to keep the status quo or to resolve a procedural issue, but under Trump the court’s use of them has exploded. The court, three of whose justices Trump appointed, has sided with him in shadow docket decisions more than 70% of the time.

On September 4, Lawrence Hurley of NBC News noted that this new practice of overturning lower court rulings with no explanation is undermining faith in the judiciary. It supports the administration’s narrative that the courts are trying to subvert Trump’s presidency. As the administration has attacked the courts, violent threats against judges have dramatically increased. Hurley notes that the lower courts painstakingly research the law to reach a decision, then administration officials criticize any that doesn’t support their actions, Then Trump appeals to the Supreme Court, which rejects the judges’ decisions with little or no explanation.

Under the control of Republicans, Congress has also declined to assert its constitutional power. Yesterday, Julian E. Barnes and Catie Edmondson of the New York Times reported how Republican leaders have accepted the administration’s unilateral cuts to programs Congress approved, launches of military strikes without informing Congress, and, last week, the Pentagon’s cancellation of a classified visit to the Virginia headquarters of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency by Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Far-right activist Laura Loomer had complained about the visit. The administration has already limited congressional oversight of immigrant detention centers; now the Pentagon says it is also imposing new limits to congressional oversight of intelligence facilities.

“Is congressional oversight dead?” Senator Warner asked. “Where does this end? If none of my Republican colleagues raises an issue, does this mean we are ceding all oversight?”

The administration appears to be in a rush to replace democracy with a dictatorship before the whole administration collapses. On Saturday, Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers reported that 46% of Americans—almost half of them—“strongly disapprove” of the job Trump is doing as president while only 24% “strongly approve, a 22% enthusiasm gap.

That gap seems likely to grow. Tonight the Wall Street Journal published the 2003 birthday letter to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein bearing Trump’s signature whose existence the paper revealed in July. The image in the article by Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo was even worse than earlier reports of it: the image drawn over the words is not the outline of a woman, but of a girl. The text reads, in part, “Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything. Donald: Yes there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.” Those words from “Donald” are outlined with pubescent breasts.

The words continue: “Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.
Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: Yes we do, come to think of it.
Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?
Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.
Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.

The signature, “Donald,” mimics public hair.

After the Wall Street Journal revealed the existence of the letter in July, Trump sued the reporters, the publisher, and the Journal’s parent company for ten billion dollars, saying the letter was “nonexistent.”

Today’s story also reported on another letter from the book that included a giant check made out for $22,500, mocked up to look like Trump wrote it to Epstein. A handwritten caption below it says: “Jeffrey showing early talents with money + women! Sells ‘fully depreciated’ [redacted] to Donald Trump for $22,500. Showed early ‘people skills’ too. Even though I handled the deal I didn’t get any of the money or the girl!”

Letter From An American by Heather Cox Richardson

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