Donald Trump made nearly 28,700 stock trades in 17 months, more than the entire Congress's 22,200 combined, even as he pushes a lawmaker trading ban that leaves his own portfolio untouched. The figures, drawn from a Bloomberg review of disclosures through June, land as Republicans turn stock trading into a campaign issue ahead of the midterms.A Trading Ban That Exempts Trump House Republicans passed a bill in July barring members of Congress, spouses, and dependent children from trading individual stocks. The measure says nothing about the president. Trump eclipses the whole of congress for stock trades. Image Source: Bloomberg. Trump has backed the bill. He told Congress in his State of the Union address that it should pass "without delay." The White House says outside firms manage his holdings through index-tracking models. It says neither Trump nor his family directs any trades. Representative Anna Paulina Luna is a lead sponsor of the ban. She framed it as an accountability measure at a Republican convention in Dallas last week. "The American people deserve to know that those they elect to public office actually serve the American people and not their own wallets."Same Pattern, Different Target Trump has pushed back hard on Republicans who want the ban to cover him too. He called Senator Josh Hawley a "pawn" last year after Hawley proposed extending trading limits to the presidency. Trump has also called for scrutiny of Nancy Pelosi's stock trading. His own disclosures show a similar pattern. He has touted stock gains within days of buying into companies. That includes a DoorDash stake he held before hosting a White House delivery event. Asked about the appearance of a conflict, Trump defended the trades. "Because the stock market's going up. Everybody's profiting." A May Economist/YouGov poll found three-quarters of Americans want elected officials barred from trading stocks. Support for a ban, however, has not translated into enforcement. Penalties under the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012 start at just $200. Legal experts say the Department of Justice would struggle to enforce any ban against a sitting president. Read the Original story Trump Made More Stock Trades Than Congress Combined While Pushing a Trading Ban by Darryn Pollock at beincrypto.com

(Photo illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, Shutterstock) Yesterday Rep. Thomas Massie introduced articles of impeachment against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. There are eight charges. The first three are for waging war in contravention of the War Powers Resolution of 1973. The fourth is for failing to minimize civilian casualties. This tranche concerns America’s actions in Iran. Article five is about extrajudicial killings carried out in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. Article six concerns Hegseth’s attempt to retaliate against Sen. Mark Kelly, a Navy veteran, including by monkeying with his retired rank. Article seven is about the illegal operation to kidnap Nicolás Maduro. Article eight charges Hegseth with waging an unlawful war in Yemen. All in all, it’s a pretty thorough document. You know what else it is? A good start. Thomas Massie just pointed the way for the next Congress. We don’t need to wait for 2029 to start pursuing accountability for the criminal acts carried out by members of the Trump administration. A Democratic-led House should impeach all of the officials around Trump who have committed high crimes and misdemeanors. Follow me around the room . . . Attorney General Todd Blanche should be impeached for his role in covering up the Epstein files. Get him under oath and start asking questions. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick should be impeached for graft and emoluments with the various trades and deals his sons have pursued. FBI Director Kash Patel should be impeached for misuse of funds and government property. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. should be impeached for recklessly endangering public health and contributing to the deaths of at least seven Americans from measles since his confirmation. Secretary of State Marco Rubio should be impeached for his part in the illegal scheme to kidnap Maduro and arrange extrajudicial killings. And here’s the big one: Vice President JD Vance should be impeached for his part in furthering the Iran war in contravention of the War Powers Resolution of 1973. I know what you’re thinking. But JVL! Vance was the one privately trying to stop the war! Jonathan Swan said so! Well then it should be easy for Vance to defend himself by saying the same things, in public, under oath, that he supposedly said in private. Let’s see how that works out for him. Leave a comment This is all just useless daydreaming, right? A Democratic House majority would never try to remove a series of cabinet secretaries. It’s impractical. It’s process-oriented. It doesn’t speak to Kitchen Table Issues. I mean, I guess? But why is it that Republicans get to do crazy, impractical stuff all the time? Donald Trump bulldozed the East Wing of the White House. He didn’t ask anyone. He just did it. Trump issued an executive order rescinding birthright citizenship and nearly won the Supreme Court’s blessing for it. Trump fired the director of the FBI. He’s trying to fire a governor of the Federal Reserve Board. Trump put his face on U.S. currency, in bald contravention of the law. He attempted a fucking coup. Don’t tell me what can’t be done. Here’s the deal: If the House is going to hold hearings and investigations of all these people anyway, then they might as well go to eleven and make those hearings a prelude to passing articles of impeachment. And by targeting Trump’s army of skanks, Democrats would put him in a difficult position. On the one hand, exposing his minions means exposing Trump’s own corruption. But because the attacks are indirect, will Trump really want to expend personal capital defending his mooks? Maybe, maybe not. And don’t forget, there are factions inside the administration. Some people would be happy to see Hegseth, or Rubio, or Vance in the barrel. A series of impeachments would further destabilize the Trump administration and add to the chaos Trump has unleashed. And note that this strategy works best if Trump himself is not impeached. That way Democrats can claim that they’re merely going after government corruption by underlings, not fighting the will of the great and good American people. I don’t see a downside, but I’d like to hear you discuss the the merits and risks. Leave a comment The deeper I’ve gone into the AI crisis, the more I’ve become concerned about the degree to which AI-safety researchers rely on white-hat agents—and the degree to which the humans aren’t 100 percent certain the white-hat agents are really white hats. Here’s OpenAI’s Dan Selsam explaining the worry: I have been working on AI for over fifteen years, across many different paradigms. . . . Like many others, I have become extremely concerned about how far language models have come and the risks that future iterations will pose. . . . However, I believe a major consideration has been absent from the public conversation, and that merely pacing the frontier more carefully will not adequately limit the long-term risk. The crucial and overlooked problem is that the models are becoming so situationally aware that we are losing the ability to evaluate them in contexts where they believe they are not being watched or controlled. Future experiments will tell us almost nothing new about how they would behave if they were truly unconstrained by humans, and what we already know about this is alarming. Models will increasingly seem aligned even when they are not. I will explain my rationale in more detail. . . . One striking piece of evidence is contained in the recent wave of rogue agent swarms. While I agree with those who downplay the attacks by claiming that there are basic measures that could have prevented them, I think the important lesson is that even knowing all the mistakes that were made, one would not have predicted that the agents would behave badly in this particular way, which notably included sacrificing themselves for the benefit of the collective. The individual replicas did not only care about their own nominal reward; they exhibited weirder emergent tendencies that merely correlated with rewards during training. Fixing the reward signals during training (and improving security, etc.) may prevent similar attacks, but will not change the fact that one does not actually get what one trains for. Many AI researchers grant these concerns and recognize that the hard version of the alignment problem is unsolved; however, they generally believe that the better models of the future will help solve it. I fear we may already be near the point where models systematically bias their alignment advice, due to their internal preferences about how the human supervisor will react or how future models will be trained (or for some even more obscure reason). . . . Researchers and engineers in all parts of the stack are rapidly increasing their dependence on the models even to perceive the world. I myself barely look at raw code anymore, and struggle to maintain the discipline to engage deeply with the model's explanations and proposals throughout the day. Due to the large amount of agent activity data involved in the OpenAI/HuggingFace Incident, even the third-party investigation needed to rely heavily on models to analyze what had happened, and note in their report that their subjective impressions are likely colored by the analysis agent’s biases. Read the whole thing. It’s nightmare fuel. All I can think of is the Joker asking Lt. Gordon, “Who did you leave him with? Your people? Assuming, of course, they are still your people.” Share

The Morning Sixpack Podcast - 09/16/2026: Fed rate hike, Massie’s impeachment bid, a free-speech court win, J.B. Hunt’s slide, Canada-EU talks, and Kennedy Center’s shutdown. #MorningSixpackPodcast

The Morning Sixpack - 09/16/2026: Fed rate hike, Massie moves to impeach Hegseth, a judge protects an ICE critic, J.B. Hunt sinks, Canada eyes EU ties, and Kennedy Center shuts #MorningSixpack

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky moved Tuesday to impeach Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth over the war in Iran. Congressman Massie, a long-time critic of the Trump administration, read the articles of impeachment aloud from the House floor just after the chamber convened at noon. Massie alleges that Hegseth has waged the Iran war illegally, among other "high crimes and misdemeanors." Massie alleges that Hegseth initiated the conflict unlawfully, defied Congress' order to withdraw from the conflict and incurred unnecessary civilian casualties. Massie has repeatedly clashed with members of his own party in recent years and is ending his time in office after losing his primary to an opponent backed by President Trump. Massie's clashes with Trump extend beyond the war with Iran. Working alongside Democrat Ro Khanna of California, Massie led the successful effort to compel the Trump administration to release files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Republicans in theory have enough votes to defeat the proposal, though it could be a complicated vote for their members in competitive elections districts. The war, which is incredibly unpopular among the American public, has contributed to rising costs in the United States. The administration maintains the conflict was necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, though experts maintain the country was not close to developing one before the conflict began six months ago. "Secretary Hegseth has been a transformative leader for the Department of War," Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson wrote in a statement to NPR. "The entire Department is unified behind the Secretary's vision and will continue working to put our warfighters and America first." The House will have to act on Massie's proposal by Thursday, a quick turnaround. The body is set to leave Washington this week for an extended recess that will end after the midterm elections in November.

Fed Raises Rates as Oil-fueled Inflation Refuses to Cooperate The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point, its first increase in more than three years, despite President Trump’s demands for cuts—because inflation did not get the memo. The move will make borrowing more expensive for households and businesses as officials try to push inflation, which has stayed above 3 percent most of the year, back toward their 2 percent target. The hike followed five meetings of unchanged rates and comes as the Fed weighs strong economic activity against the risk of cooling jobs and growth. Source:https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/09/16/fed-raises-rates-steady-inflation-challenges-grow/ Read today’s Morning Sixpack where we anticipated exactly this: https://www.mydailygrind.news/p/fed-expected-to-raise-rates-for-the

Flock Camera Hack Reveals Millions of Images and People Detection Hackers copied data from a Flock license-plate camera and recovered an encryption key, finding software that tracked vehicles, bicycles, and people—because apparently the roadside camera had ambitions beyond plates. The analysis found roughly 1.6 million images from about 50,200 vehicles over recovered logging periods, while the broader Flock network made records searchable by thousands of agencies. Flock says the camera tampering was illegal and said it lacked enough information to assess the security claims. Source:https://www.wired.com/story/hackers-flock-camera-data-shows-how-system-works/

Houthis Claim Saudi F-15 Downed, Deny Targeting Mecca Yemen’s Houthis claimed they shot down a Saudi F-15 over Marib with a locally made surface-to-air missile. The group also claimed attacks on a Saudi airbase and Aramco facilities, though Saudi Arabia did not confirm those strikes. Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree denied targeting Mecca after Saudi Arabia said its air defenses intercepted a Houthi drone before it entered prohibited airspace over the holy city. This “this is not a war” war is getting HOT. Source:https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-908742

WASHINGTON — Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) hid his effort to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from his fellow Republicans until he unveiled it on the House floor Tuesday, fearing Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) would gavel the House out of session to avoid taking up the measure. “Frankly, I was concerned that Mike Johnson would end Congress again — like, shorten even our already truncated work period — if he found out I was doing this, so I shared the idea with nobody,” Massie told reporters on the Capitol steps. “You can't normalize kidnapping foreign heads of state. You can't normalize taking over countries to take their oil. You can't normalize bombing fishing boats. You know, these are extrajudicial killings,” Massie told Raw Story shortly after introducing his effort to impeach the Secretary of Defense. “It's murder." “You can't normalize murder, and so they've, in many of these cases, they've built a very shaky, convoluted legal scaffolding that they say protects them. And what I'm doing here is saying, ‘no, it does not,’” Massie continued. Massie blames Hegseth and Trump’s White House for stretching the bounds of the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which mandates that presidents come to Congress for permission to wage foreign wars if conflicts last more than 60 days. He said he'd been planning the impeachment move for two-to-three months. By claiming an end to the Iran war ahead of the 60-day deadline, only to then ramp up bombing campaigns later, Massie says the administration is setting a dangerous precedent that cuts Congress out of the very War Powers Resolution Congress passed. “They acknowledge it exists, and they have to comply with parts of it. Then they also acknowledge that the timeline requirements are real: a 60-day timeline. But they've invented this new legal framework where they say, well, we'll end every conflict at 59 days and then restart it,” Massie said. This summer, the Senate and House both passed war powers resolutions to block the president from engaging in war with Iran, yet the administration has rebuffed the bipartisan will of Congress. “They are saying that the part about the concurrent resolution where if you have the House and the Senate pass a concurrent resolution, that that's not constitutional, and so that they don't have to follow it,” Massie complained. “Well, they're citing an immigration ruling by the Supreme Court that doesn't even mention the 1973 War Powers Resolution. All of that needs to get litigated. There's a law on the books that they are violating in several ways. And that's part of what this is about.” Now that the cat’s out of the bag, Massie says he plans to start rallying his fellow Republicans to get behind the effort. “So I'll go talk to them now and see what kind of support we can get,” Massie said. “But, you know, doing this wasn't predicated on whether it could succeed or not. There needs to be a marker in history. “They have exceeded all norms for rules of engagement, for how you use or misuse our military to take oil from another country, to kidnap a foreign leader. Like, somebody needs to put a marker in history, and that's what this is.” While Massie’s hoping to attract GOP support, he says he’s not holding his breath. “I expect most of my Republican colleagues will vote against it,” Massie said. “They're afraid of the White House too much.”

The Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration from imposing new rules on mail-in voting before the November midterm elections. That means nothing has changed for voters — and mail-in voting can p...

President Donald Trump’s 19-month effort to seize full control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts came to a head Tuesday as its board voted to immediately close the building for a two-year renovation — a roughly $250 million overhaul that Trump publicly threatened to block unless his name is added to the institution.Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI. Hours after a federal judge barred the center from putting Trump’s name back on the building, the president said that although the center would close immediately, renovations “cannot begin until such time as the D.C. Circuit rules on the Board’s approved name.” (That appeals court in June rejected an attempt to keep Trump’s name on the building.) If the appeals court rules against the center and the Supreme Court does not overturn that decision, Trump said, “the Reconstruction and the Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place.” Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), the Kennedy Center trustee who challenged the addition of Trump’s name in court, accused the president of putting his desire for recognition ahead of an institution that serves as both a memorial to an assassinated president and as one of the nation’s premier performing arts venues. “President Trump is holding the Kennedy Center hostage unless he can put his name on this sacred memorial,” Beatty said. “The Court just rejected this proposal for the second time. This unlawfulness is as breathtaking as it is wrong, and it needs to stop.” The extraordinary sequence brought together nearly every strand of Trump’s transformation of the national cultural institution: his efforts to put his name on the presidential memorial, a renovation he has championed as essential to saving the aging building, a deepening financial crisis and a legal fight with a board minority that has repeatedly challenged his plans. The consequences became visible within hours. At about 4:30 p.m., a message played over the Kennedy Center’s speakers announcing that it had closed. Security guards escorted visitors out through the Hall of Nations. Outside, digital signs that typically advertise upcoming performances instead flashed a red “EMERGENCY ALERT” announcing that the building was closed to the public. Guards stood at the doors while, through the glass, a few staff members could be seen hugging. But the rollout appeared haphazard. Less than an hour later, the digital warnings had vanished and guards had unblocked some doors. By about 6 p.m., all doors were locked. Trustees approved the closure after administrators warned that keeping the main building open would endanger lives. The resolution ordered the building closed to patrons “forthwith” while allowing programming to continue at the Reach and off-site venues. Center spokeswoman Roma Daravi said the board had put safety first and described the renovations as “long overdue and desperately needed to protect the safety of patrons, artists and staff.” “The Center remains committed to pursuing a safe and efficient renovation through all legal means,” Daravi said. Trump pointed to a Sept. 4 incident in which, according to center officials, a roughly 4-by-5-foot section of ceiling plaster broke loose in the Grand Foyer during a severe storm and plunged about 60 feet to the floor below. No one was injured. Inspectors subsequently identified at least seven other locations with visible water-related deterioration, according to materials prepared for trustees. “If the Building were open, innocent people would have been killed,” Trump said in a social media post Tuesday. Engineers have separately found widespread corrosion in structural components supporting exterior soffit panels suspended about 60 feet above public walkways, according to Matt Floca, the center’s executive director who was handpicked by Trump in March. Of roughly half of the building’s 278 panels examined, 46 had severe structural corrosion and another 93 had mild-to-moderate corrosion. Engineers projected that about one-third require immediate replacement. The center’s management has portrayed those problems as part of a broader network of aging and deteriorating systems that cannot safely be repaired while the building remains occupied. Materials distributed to trustees also cite water intrusion into electrical areas, corroded structural steel in the parking garage and aging mechanical and theatrical systems. Paolo Zampolli, a Trump-appointed trustee since 2020 who voted for the immediate closure, said he had personally walked through the building and came away convinced it was dangerous. He rejected arguments that repairs could be performed piecemeal while the center remained open, saying construction of this scale required clearing the building. “The building is a disaster. The building is a danger,” Zampolli said in an interview after the vote. “I don’t want my son to go there.” Zampolli, who works in real estate, said trustees could be responsible if someone were injured and argued that the building should be closed, repaired and reopened as quickly as possible. “You cannot work on a demolition site,” he said. “You shut it down.” Critics of the closure have disputed management’s characterization of the danger and accused center leaders of using long-standing maintenance problems to justify a shutdown they already wanted. Beatty’s lawyers said in a court filing Monday that Delta Consulting Group, which reviewed the center’s renovation plans, had expressly disclaimed reaching the conclusion attributed to it in a draft resolution that the building was “unsafe for continued occupancy.” The vote followed a contentious virtual board meeting in which Trump and Beatty traded personal criticisms, according to two people who listened to the meeting and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. Trump accused Beatty of obstructing efforts to repair the center, told her she had never built anything and said she was making a living by hurting the institution, the observers said. Beatty responded that she found Trump’s conduct “highly unprofessional,” said he had caused “extreme harm” and insisted that she supported renovating the center but opposed tying the work to putting Trump’s name on the building. At points, the two talked over each other. Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who also participated in the meeting, separately criticized U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper for ruling against the center earlier in the day. Repeating previous public comments, Trump invoked the judge’s wife, a lawyer who has represented former president Joe Biden, and suggested her work for Biden created a conflict, according to the observers. Lutnick also raised the wife’s connection to Biden, according to one of them. The closure passed without a roll-call vote, making the precise tally unclear. Beatty, Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Washington) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) opposed it, the observers said. The naming dispute has become increasingly entangled with another crisis confronting the center: money. Materials prepared for Tuesday’s meeting, but dropped from the agenda Monday, warned that the center had “exhausted its fiscal resources” and could become unable to meet payroll or pay routine maintenance bills “within a matter of weeks.” The draft resolution said Trump had offered to raise enough money to keep the center afloat during the renovation but was unlikely to provide “fundamental oversight” of the project or “lead the fiscal rescue of the Center” without “appropriate recognition” on the building. The draft offered trustees 10 possible inscriptions honoring Trump. Trump said Tuesday that he had raised $17 million that had been deposited into a Kennedy Center account “to keep it afloat.” The Washington Post has not independently verified that figure. The warnings follow a financial deterioration The Post documented last month. Internal budgets and forecasts showed that by May the center expected to collect about $124 million of the $220 million in revenue it had budgeted for the fiscal year, leaving a projected deficit of roughly $23 million even after substantial spending cuts. Center leaders have blamed previous management for the institution’s financial problems and said Trump’s name has attracted new donors. But confidential financial records obtained by The Post showed ticket sales and fundraising plunging after trustees added Trump’s name to the building in December. On Tuesday morning, Cooper blocked the center’s latest attempt to recognize Trump on the building, reiterating his May ruling that Congress — not the trustees — controls whom the national memorial honors. “Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” Cooper wrote. “The board resolution bucks a federal court order and a statute Congress enacted.” The decision addressed a resolution trustees approved Aug. 13 to inscribe “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump” on the facade. Daravi said the center would continue fighting the ruling. “We intend to appeal today’s Court ruling and move forward with recognizing Chairman President Trump’s historic contributions to the revitalization of America’s Cultural Center,” she said. Beatty accused Trump of effectively conditioning the center’s future on receiving the recognition courts have said its trustees cannot legally provide. “Donald Trump only cares about the Kennedy Center for his vanity,” Beatty said in a statement after the board meeting. “That is wrong and it is a breach of his fiduciary duty as a trustee.” Other Democratic trustees also criticized the decision. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia) said in a statement that the center has legitimate problems but argued its leaders should work with Congress to address them. Larsen said the focus should be on “repairing and restoring the Kennedy Center.” The legal fight has repeatedly disrupted Trump’s plans for the institution. In May, Cooper ruled that only Congress could rename the Kennedy Center and ordered Trump’s name removed from the building, months after leaders had installed it above John F. Kennedy’s. In the same decision, Cooper temporarily blocked an earlier attempt to close the building, finding trustees had acted on insufficient information and had not adequately considered the consequences. He allowed them to reconsider after a fuller review. Trustees did so in August, again approving a roughly two-year closure. Tuesday’s vote accelerated that timetable by ordering the main building closed immediately. Members of the Kennedy family also criticized Trump’s continued pursuit of recognition at the memorial. Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, said the center was created as a living tribute to her uncle, who believed in art’s power to bring people together. “It is shameful that it has become a weapon in this administration’s culture war,” Kennedy said in a statement. Maria Shriver, another niece of Kennedy’s, focused specifically on Trump’s determination to attach his name to her uncle’s. “It seems that this man will not rest until his name is permanently connected to the name of a great president, whose memory this building was dedicated to,” Shriver wrote on X. “Imagine spending your days focused on this, while a war rages under your leadership.” Center officials say programming will continue at the Reach and at off-site venues, including performances by the National Symphony Orchestra. The Kennedy Center Honors and Mark Twain Prize will also move elsewhere, and the memorial to John F. Kennedy is to be temporarily relocated to the Reach while the main building is closed. The building, meanwhile, is now closed for a renovation that Trump says cannot yet begin. Maura Judkis and Elahe Izadi contributed to this report.

The Morning Sixpack - 09/16/2026: Fed rate hike, Massie moves to impeach Hegseth, a judge protects an ICE critic, J.B. Hunt sinks, Canada eyes EU ties, and Kennedy Center shuts #MorningSixpack

Ursula von der Leyen said the EU needs to tighten its cooperation with like-minded democracies. Jean-Christophe Verhaegen/AFP/Getty Images The European Union’s top official said she would work to make Canada the bloc’s first associate member, a major shift indicative of the new ties traditional U.S. allies are forging with each other in the face of hostility from the Trump administration. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Europe needed to tighten its cooperation with like-minded democracies, in particular Canada, to retain the continent’s sovereignty and tackle threats from what she called “an openly hostile world.” “We must urgently reimagine our partnerships. And build global coalitions for our resilience and democracies,” she said in her annual address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, where Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was in the audience. “I would like to work with you on opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the EU,” she added. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Canadian and European officials were discussing the prospect of associate membership—a new category of relationship with the bloc. European and Canadian officials have said that while full membership of the EU is off the table, they want the closest possible relationship. The prospect of a new economic and defense alliance between Europe and Canada speaks to how the idea of “the West,” long centered on U.S. military and economic power, is shifting. Among the ideas being discussed are the integration of supply chains in critical economic sectors, including defense, the possibility of joint European and Canadian cloud and data centers, greater Canadian energy flows to Europe and cooperation on AI and digital rules. Carney has confirmed that there are also discussions on certain types of mutual visa-free travel and work arrangements. The details are still being sketched by technical working groups on both sides for what the Canadian leader has told his aides will be nothing short of reorienting an economy and a society that for half a century has been dominated by the U.S. But serious obstacles to a much deeper relationship remain. Countries with access to the EU’s $21 trillion single market have to follow its rules, pay into the EU budget and allow freedom of movement for its workers. Canadian officials have said they aren’t willing to sign up to all those terms. The EU has in the past had a rigid approach to cooperating with non-members, always keen to ensure members got a better deal than countries outside the bloc. However, some EU officials and leaders are starting to argue the approach is weakening potential alliances necessary to fend off security threats and protect the continent’s sovereignty. In her comments Wednesday, von der Leyen said that the EU and Canada should deepen their tech alliance, integrate their defense-industrial base and work together on energy, critical minerals, AI and economic security. The two sides enacted a free-trade agreement in 2017, which has seen commerce grow by 75% in less than a decade, but in a sign of the threats to a far deeper coordination, 10 EU nations are still to ratify it. “This is a partnership not against anyone else, but for our common strength,” she said. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney wants to diversify trade away from the U.S. Jean-Christophe Verhaegen/AFP/Getty Images Both the EU and Canada have seen tensions flare with Washington since President Trump’s return to office. In his second term, the president has alarmed European leaders by ending support for Ukraine and working to ease relations with the Kremlin. New U.S. tariffs on European exports and a push to take over Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, have also seriously tested trans-Atlantic relations. Since becoming prime minister, Carney has embarked on an ambitious plan to diversify trade away from the U.S. amid Trump’s tariffs on Canada and repeated musings about using economic coercion to make it the 51st state. Europe has been central to those plans, and he has often called Canada “the most European of the non-European nations.” Canada was the first non-European nation to join Security Action for Europe, the bloc’s defense procurement instrument. “Canada is deepening and widening its relationship with the European Union to strengthen our sovereignty, improve affordability, opportunity and security for Canadians while safeguarding our way of life,” Carney’s spokeswoman said after von der Leyen’s speech. “We welcome President von der Leyen’s proposal…This is a unique, positive approach that we will define together.” In Canada, the prospect of associate membership in the EU has drawn criticism from opposition lawmakers, who have argued that it risks weighing businesses down in regulations and red tape and amounts to a loss of sovereignty. Such a decision, they argue, shouldn’t be made without consulting Parliament. “The Saskatchewan farmer and the Atlantic fisherman did not choose a Brussels agrifood regulator that has never even seen our prairies or coasts,” Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre said in a social-media post this week. “We will NEVER be the 51st U.S. state. And we will NEVER be the 28th EU state.” But polls show Canadians are strongly supportive of closer European ties. A poll this week from Abacus Data found that more than 80% of Canadians support strengthening links with Europe while Canada remains outside of Europe, with a majority saying they feel Canada has more in common with Europe than the U.S. Nearly half said they backed Canada becoming an EU member state. Von der Leyen will meet later with Carney, who will give his own address to EU lawmakers Thursday. The European Commission president pitched the new alliance with Canada as part of a swath of proposals to strengthen Europe’s security and sovereignty at a time when relations with the U.S. are strained, Russia continues its war in Ukraine and is carrying out sabotage in Europe and trade tensions with Beijing are deepening. Russia denies involvement in acts of sabotage. Von der Leyen also called for a new EU equivalent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Article IV protocol, where any member can summon an emergency meeting because of an evolving threat. And she took an idea that has been advanced by France and Germany previously for a European Security Council leaders group, which would include non-EU members Norway, the U.K. and Canada as well as top EU leaders. “This is even more urgent now, given the nature and scale of the risks at play,” she said.

House Heads Home Rather Than Vote on Hegseth Impeachment House Republican leaders abruptly ended the week’s votes and sent members home for nearly two months, conveniently dodging a required vote on Representative Thomas Massie’s impeachment articles against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The move leaves allegations involving unauthorized military action, free speech, and civilian casualties without a House vote before the midterms. It follows a similar leadership disappearing act last summer when Massie sought a vote on releasing the Epstein files. Source:https://newrepublic.com/post/215490/house-cancels-votes-avoid-embarrassment-hegseth-impeachment?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tnr_daily

LOL. Shoulda stood for something, you little bitch! Sheeran Tour Openers Walk Out After Macklemore’s Removal All four supporting acts, plus Ed Sheeran’s live band, have withdrawn from upcoming tour dates after Macklemore was removed over pro-Palestine comments, turning one booking dispute into a full-scale opener exodus. Sheeran says venue owners, including Patriots owner Robert Kraft, forced the decision, while the departing artists say it amounted to silencing speech about Palestinian suffering. Kraft cited Macklemore’s recent actions and what he called a broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery, which Macklemore previously apologized for. Source:https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/15/ed-sheeran-macklemore-palestine-openers-finneas

Four openers and live band for Sheeran’s tour depart after removal of Macklemore over ‘free Palestine’ comments

The Morning Sixpack - 09/16/2026: Fed rate hike, Massie moves to impeach Hegseth, a judge protects an ICE critic, J.B. Hunt sinks, Canada eyes EU ties, and Kennedy Center shuts #MorningSixpack

A J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. tractor trailer parked at a freight depot in Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S., on Saturday, Jan. 15, 2022. Shares of J.B. Hunt plunged more than 10% on Wednesday after the trucking company said it expects its earnings to drop in the third quarter. “We kind of want to be transparent with investors and give an update that in light of these costs that are sort of hitting us, we are expecting our Q2 to Q3 earnings to actually drop 5% to 10%,” CFO Brad Delco said at the Morgan Stanley Industrials conference. Delco said between costs for recruiting, advertising, onboarding, training and sign-on bonuses, the company expects to see about $25 million more in the third quarter compared with the second quarter. He said that means J.B. Hunt is “preparing for growth.” Still, he added the company has also seen “some of the most radical and abnormal swings” in fuel prices that it has ever seen and record-high diesel prices, which are causing at least a $10 million headwind. Delco added that he expects volumes to improve sequentially to offset the incremental pressures. “It really is more of a timing issue,” he said. “I think you can look at a glass half-empty or a glass half-full. I’m really glad that we have visibility to these costs right now.” Delco also said J.B. Hunt is working on repairing its margins, though he believes the company still has a long way to go. J.B. Hunt stock has risen nearly 100% over the past year.

A Tuesday court ruling means David Streever of Rochester, New York no longer has to worry that federal officers may threaten him over a harsh email he sent to the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement earlier this year. Streever filed a lawsuit in July arguing ICE agents had violated his First Amendment rights when they tried to track him down at his home, an airport and a hotel to confront him about the email and serve him with a warning notice that said he may have violated the law. Streever's email compared ICE's former acting director, Todd Lyons, to a Nazi, called him a "monstrous human being" and predicted he would be tormented by his own conscience. Streever told NPR he sent the email after federal immigration officers fatally shot two observers in Minneapolis in January. The warning notice agents left at Streever's home said "YOU MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW" and lists federal laws that make it a crime to threaten federal officials. "Receipt of this Notice will be taken into consideration, should you continue to be involved in any criminal activities described above," reads the bottom of the form. Streever, who is represented by the nonprofit free speech group, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), argued the federal agents' actions violated the First Amendment and caused him to self-censor his views. "Mr. Streever's injury is the loss of his freedom to engage in political speech now because the threat of such an investigation or prosecution looms over him like the sword of Damocles, and he is forced to self-censor under that threat," Contreras wrote in his ruling. He wrote that because it was likely the federal government had already infringed on Streever's First Amendment rights, he was issuing a preliminary injunction while the case continued so that Streever could continue to speak freely. The court order blocks DHS and ICE from, "taking further steps in reliance on the Warning Notice…and from issuing any substantially similar threats to [Streever] aimed at his protected expression during the course of this matter." In a statement, Streever said, "I'm deeply relieved that the court affirmed what I knew all along: that I am permitted to speak my conscience in the United States of America, including when I criticize government officials." He added, "While I wish this ordeal hadn't happened, hopefully this incident will serve as a reminder that the First Amendment protects us all." DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In court filings, DHS defended its investigation of Streever by citing an increase in threats of violence against public officials. The federal government had argued Streever's case should be dismissed and had said the investigation into Streever was closed in late June, before he filed his lawsuit. The federal government's filing did not assert that Streever's email was a violent threat that could be prosecuted. In his ruling, Contreras asked the government to turn over the report that closed its investigation of Streever. "ICE knowingly pursued an American citizen for criticizing his government — speech that is at the heart of the First Amendment," said FIRE Senior Attorney Adam Steinbaugh. "Ominous letters warning people their speech might land them in prison are meant to coerce people into silence, and that's not how the First Amendment works."

The Morning Sixpack - 09/16/2026: Fed rate hike, Massie moves to impeach Hegseth, a judge protects an ICE critic, J.B. Hunt sinks, Canada eyes EU ties, and Kennedy Center shuts #MorningSixpack

The Federal Reserve is on the cusp of a momentous decision on Wednesday. The central bank is widely expected to raise interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point to a new range of 3.75 percent to 4 percent. If the Fed follows through, it will be the first rate increase since July 2023. It would also immediately put Kevin M. Warsh, who took over as chairman in May, in the cross hairs of President Trump less than two months before midterm elections that will determine whether Republicans retain control of Congress. Just days before the Fed’s September gathering, Mr. Trump reiterated that the United States “should be paying the lowest interest rate in the world.” That followed the president’s threat this month that he would cut off a broad swath of U.S. trade if the Fed did not lower rates. On Wednesday, the Fed will release its rate decision at 2 p.m. in Washington. Mr. Warsh will hold a news conference at 2:30 p.m. Here is what to watch for: The number of dissents will depend on what decision the Fed makes. Holding rates steady would generate at minimum three opposing votes, probably from the same officials who voted against the Fed’s decision to do exactly that in July. Back then, Beth M. Hammack of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Neel Kashkari of the Minneapolis Fed and Lorie K. Logan of the Dallas Fed voted in favor of a quarter-point increase. They argued that higher rates would have put the central bank in a better position to tackle elevated inflation. Many officials have since sent a consistent message that if inflation does not soon ease, they will be prepared to raise rates. Financial markets overwhelmingly believe that this condition has been met, with the odds of a rate increase now above 90 percent. As a result, Mr. Warsh and his colleagues on the policy-making committee have limited latitude to avoid lifting rates. One of the most effective ways for the Fed to send a clear message on Wednesday that it is serious about tackling inflation is for there to be zero dissents to raising rates. That is not guaranteed, however. Several top officials sought to carve out flexibility for the Fed ahead of September’s gathering. They included both John C. Williams, who as president of the New York Fed is the vice-chair of the Federal Open Market Committee, and Christopher J. Waller, a Fed governor. Neither conveyed an urgency to raise rates, but each indicated that hotter inflation data would clinch the case to proceed. August’s inflation data, which came in higher than expected, probably met that threshold, suggesting both will support a decision to raise rates if Mr. Warsh pushes the committee in that direction. Perhaps as important as the move itself is the rationalization that Mr. Warsh provides for proceeding with a rate increase. How he frames the decision will heavily influence expectations for what the Fed does next. Rate moves are rarely one-offs, meaning it is more likely that the central bank will deliver a series of increases. The question is not only how many there are but also how far apart they will be spaced. Most economists see the Fed raising rates again in December. The next meeting is in October, just days before the midterms, so unless inflation has taken a material turn for the worse, the central bank could easily hold off on taking action to avoid the perception that it is having any impact on the outcome. Additional adjustments are on the table for 2027, but Mr. Warsh is unlikely to be specific about his plans. That is partly a function of how uncertain the economic backdrop has become. Inflation is forecast to decelerate as the year progresses, but the pace is unclear, especially with the Iran war dragging on. At the same time, Mr. Warsh has purposely sought to keep things vague in order to retain flexibility for the Fed. His predecessors would probably have leaned on the so-called dot plot, set to be updated on Wednesday, that tracks how officials see the trajectory for rates, growth, unemployment and inflation in the years to come. It is expected to show additional rate increases this year and next, helping to bound expectations about what the Fed has in store for borrowing costs. However, Mr. Warsh is an avowed critic of the dot plot and has opted against submitting his own projections. If he dismisses the dot plot altogether, that could create confusion over how aggressively the Fed is prepared to act. Mr. Warsh was swiftly rebuked by markets after his last meeting in July, when he sent mixed signals about the Fed’s commitment to reducing inflation back to 2 percent. Longer-term U.S. borrowing costs shot higher as investors pushed back the timing of potential rate increases until later this year. Holding rates steady in September would risk a redux of that, especially after Mr. Warsh sent such a strong signal at his latest public appearance last month that he was indeed serious about his inflation pledge. That kind of reaction would prove problematic for the Trump administration, which has taken aggressive steps over the past month to contain longer-dated borrowing costs. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has intervened in the bond market in a variety of ways, including most recently by buying back bonds outright. That has done little to quell Treasury yields. The 10-year Treasury yield, one of the most important interest rates in the world, is now trading around 5 percent, the highest level in years. While the Trump administration is clear in its desire for lower rates from the central bank, a Fed that demonstrates its resolve in getting inflation down could help to keep overall borrowing costs set by market forces lower than would otherwise be the case. With affordability issues top of mind ahead of the midterms, that outcome would be advantageous for the White House, investors say.

Good evening. Donald Trump has settled on his position, in his own words, and it is this: no name, no renovation. The Kennedy Center went dark this week after its Trump-appointed board voted, for the second time, to shutter the building indefinitely, hours after a federal judge blocked the same board from sneaking Trump’s name onto the facility in any form. A national arts institution is now a hostage in a vanity dispute, and the president is the one holding the leverage. That was just one fight Trump picked on Tuesday. A Republican congressman tried to impeach his own Defense Secretary over the Iran war, on the same day Democrats forced a symbolic vote to impeach Trump himself. His Attorney General had to answer for the Supreme Court insult tour, defend the Pentagon’s war powers math, and dodge a direct question about Russian money flowing toward the president’s family. And his FBI Director spent part of his day at the Senate explaining a hiring rule change involving bestiality, right after Cory Booker compared him to a fraternity pledge doing keg stands. The threats to newsletters like this one keep rising, and staying in this fight costs more every month. I also know a lot of you are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of this stuff, so I’m working on bringing you more good news too, not just the fires, because you deserve a fuller picture. But I can only keep doing this, and keep reporting around the clock, with your support, so if you’re able to become a paid subscriber or upgrade, it goes directly toward that work, and if you can’t right now, sharing this with someone who’d find it useful helps just as much. It’s a lot. Let’s get into it. Trump Shuts Down Kennedy Center: A federal judge blocked the board from restoring Trump’s name in any form. Judge Christopher Cooper ruled Tuesday that the board’s plan to inscribe credit to Trump, including renaming the grounds “The President Donald J. Trump Plaza,” violated his earlier order and the federal statute protecting the center’s name for JFK alone. He wrote that “Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” rejecting the DOJ’s argument that donations depend on Trump’s name being on the building. Hours later, the board voted again to close the center indefinitely for renovations, citing financial strain, after a March closure vote had already been blocked by Cooper in May. It’s unclear whether this new vote meets the narrower conditions Cooper had left open for emergency or necessary repairs, and the center technically can’t close until Cooper lifts the injunction requiring it stay open during litigation (the DOJ was expected to seek that reversal by Friday). Trump says renovations won’t happen unless his name is restored. He said the closure “will take place immediately,” but that actual reconstruction work won’t begin unless a federal appeals court, and if necessary the Supreme Court, overturns the naming ruling. He said $17 million he personally raised has been deposited into the center’s account to keep it afloat in the meantime, and that DOJ attorneys would seek an expedited appeal. According to CNN sources, Trump called into Tuesday’s board meeting and berated Rep. Joyce Beatty, the Ohio Democrat whose lawsuit blocked the renaming, with one source calling the exchange “f**king crazy” and saying Trump blamed her for the center’s financial collapse; Beatty reportedly countered that Trump himself had driven the center into debt. He also attacked Cooper, an Obama appointee, on Truth Social as “a very hostile and conflicted Judge,” warning the building is “destined to doom” because of him. Beatty accuses Trump of vanity, and a related fund proposal is on hold. She said the center’s donors, patrons and artists “fled after the unlawful attempt to rename this sacred memorial after Donald Trump,” and that Trump cares about the center “only for his vanity,” calling it a breach of his fiduciary duty as a trustee. Her attorneys, Norm Eisen and Nathaniel Zelinsky, said “Two times the court has told President Trump the same thing: You are not above the law.” Cooper separately declined to rule yet on a proposal to add a plaque honoring a “Trump Kennedy Center Fund” once it hits $100 million in donations, since no money has been raised for it yet, but ordered 60 days’ notice before any such inscription could be added if that threshold is met. The episode is the latest flashpoint in a monthslong fight over the center’s identity and finances under Trump-appointed leadership. Hegseth Faces Impeachment From Republican: Massie surprised colleagues by filing impeachment articles against Hegseth. GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky announced on the House floor Tuesday that he’s charging Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth with “high crimes and misdemeanors” for waging the Iran war without congressional authorization, arguing Hegseth violated Section 2(c) of the War Powers Resolution of 1973 by continuing operations past the 90 day limit without Congress’s sign off. Massie did not tell party leaders beforehand, and Republicans are furious both about the substance and about being blindsided, particularly since Massie already lost his May primary to a Trump-backed opponent and is a lame duck. He spent hours reading the 34-page resolution aloud, arguing Hegseth “has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office.” The push, doomed to fail like a separate Democratic effort to impeach Trump, also accuses Hegseth of unlawfully “kidnapping” former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro under the guise of narcotics enforcement, when Massie says the real goal was securing US control over Venezuela’s oil. The move landed the same day as a symbolic Democratic vote to impeach Trump, creating headaches for both parties. Rep. Al Green’s push to impeach Trump, also seen as doomed, irritated Democratic leadership, who have tried to keep midterm messaging focused on cost of living rather than impeachment; Hakeem Jeffries and his team said they’d vote “present” rather than take a clear position. Massie’s counter-move flipped the mood among Democratic staffers, with one aide quipped that Massie “gives it right back to the Rs” after Green put them in an awkward spot. The House today voted 232 to 147, with 47 abstaining to set aside the resolution to impeach Trump. A motion to table the resolution passed, effectively killing the bill before anyone could vote on it. Both impeachment pushes come from members not returning to Congress next year and who’ve proven hard for their own leadership to control, forcing votes just before a seven week recess. The administration defended Hegseth and disputed that a war powers violation even occurred. Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters at a Rose Garden briefing that Hegseth “follows the law” and disputed calling the conflict a “war” at all, noting Congress has already voted on the matter. The White House argues the Iran conflict, which began February 28, effectively restarted its legal clock after an initial phase of fighting ended, and separately contends the War Powers Resolution itself unconstitutionally limits presidential authority over foreign policy. The Pentagon’s press secretary sidestepped the legality question entirely, instead praising Hegseth for boosting military standards, recruitment and innovation. Courts have historically declined to force presidents to end conflicts that exceed War Powers Resolution deadlines, leaving enforcement up to Congress itself through funding cuts or discipline. Other news: Trump attacked the Supreme Court, including his own appointees, as “shells” a day after it blocked his plan to overhaul mail-in voting ahead of the midterms. On Truth Social he wrote that Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Barrett, none of whom noted disagreement with the majority, “are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves,” while praising Alito and Thomas, who dissented, as “legends.” He tied the mail-voting ruling to other losses he’s suffered at the court, including its rejections of his birthright citizenship and tariff plans, claiming the rulings are “costing the United States Trillions of Dollars” and calling it “a Court that will go down as having rendered some of the most destructive, hurtful, and damaging decisions in our Country’s history.” Attorney General Todd Blanche said the administration would comply with the mail-voting order but wouldn’t rule out further changes before 2028, and defended Trump’s criticism by describing him as “very frustrated” and saying he has “every right” to voice concerns about the court. The court has also delivered Trump major wins, including 2024’s broad presidential immunity ruling and a recent decision letting his White House ballroom construction proceed despite a preservationist lawsuit. Attorney General Todd Blanche was asked whether it was appropriate for the president’s son to accept a gift from a friend of Putin’s and whether that would be investigated. Blanche deflected, saying neither the president nor other family members know who the person is, and that the president’s son has described the gift-giver as “a very close friend,” then turned the question back on the reporter by asking, in effect, what exactly there would be to investigate. Senator Cory Booker delivered a scathing attack on FBI Director Kash Patel, comparing him to “an 18 year old kid who wants to join a fraternity that he could never be a member of, doing keg stands and chugging with friends.” Booker called Patel “an embarrassment” and “a disgrace,” and dismissed his conduct as “a mockery and a sham,” while directing his sharpest criticism at those around Patel, saying “what’s bad are the people enabling him.” The Trump administration is planning a $2.8 billion munitions sale to Israel that includes 40,000 heavy bombs. A U.S. official told Reuters the package, first reported by the Washington Post, has been informally communicated to relevant congressional committees and includes 20,000 MK 84 and 20,000 BLU-117 bombs, both 2,000-pound munitions Israel has regularly used in Gaza and Lebanon. The State Department and Israeli embassy did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The sale comes as U.S. public support for Israel has declined since the Gaza war began in 2023, with a June Quinnipiac poll finding 48% of voters overall, and 66% of Democrats, now believe the U.S. is too supportive of Israel, up sharply from 16% and 20% respectively when the question was first asked in 2017. More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s campaign according to Gaza health authorities, and a U.N. inquiry has determined Israel committed genocide in Gaza, a finding Israel rejects while framing its actions as self-defense following Hamas’s October 2023 attack that killed 1,200 people and took over 250 hostages. Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon, ideological opposites, both call for hard limits on AI at a “Pro-Human Assembly” in Washington. Sanders urged Trump to negotiate a treaty with Xi Jinping banning superintelligent AI development when the two leaders meet next week, comparing it to Reagan and Gorbachev’s nuclear treaty, saying, “A super-intelligent AI that escapes human control will not be an American problem. It will not be a Chinese problem. It will be humanity’s problem.” Bannon, by contrast, demanded an aggressive economic “quarantine” of China instead of any treaty, calling for expelling Chinese nationals from US labs and cutting off capital flows, saying, “No chips, no black marketing chips, no free ride off American technology... To hell with the Chinese Communist party.” Both denounced Silicon Valley’s power, with Bannon accusing tech companies of wanting to “socialise all the risk with the American people” while keeping the profits, and Sanders blasting a “handful of the richest people in the world” for making AI’s biggest decisions with no public input. Sanders said he’ll introduce legislation next week banning artificial superintelligence outright and pausing advanced AI development until safety rules exist, while Rep. Greg Casar, his co-sponsor, accused “AI billionaires” of spending millions through a PAC “to scare politicians into silence.” A secretive DOJ effort to obtain a journalist’s LinkedIn records surfaced Tuesday during a 4th Circuit Court of Appeals argument over First Amendment protections for reporters’ sources. A DOJ national security attorney said prosecutors are seeking details on roughly 1,900 LinkedIn interactions from six users as part of an unspecified national security leak probe, after a district judge in June granted the request and barred LinkedIn from telling affected users. LinkedIn’s attorney argued the order is overly broad and wants to limit disclosure to only what investigators actually need, while the government maintains the company has no right to narrow a criminal subpoena. Judges Harvie Wilkinson and James Wynn pressed both sides, with Wilkinson probing whether an overbroad order could compromise reporters’ ability to promise confidentiality to sources and Wynn warning “we need some kind of governing rule” on whether third parties can challenge such orders at all. Google, Apple, Meta, X, the ACLU and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press have all filed briefs backing LinkedIn, and the fight echoes a similar sealed battle Holtzblatt fought against Jack Smith’s team over Trump’s Twitter data in 2023. A fourth person has died of measles-associated illness in the US this year, all four deaths concentrated in Pennsylvania during the worst outbreak since 1992. The latest victim was an 18-year-old from Mifflin County diagnosed with encephalomyelitis, a rare and severe neurological complication, and the state has now logged nearly 700 cases. Notably, none of these deaths appear in the CDC’s national tally because the Trump administration changed how it reports measles deaths. Pennsylvania’s health secretary, Dr. Debra Bogen, said, “My thoughts are with the two families who lost loved ones to this highly-contagious virus,” and stressed the state remains focused on getting people “the facts about measles and access to the MMR vaccine.” Vaccination rates among kindergarteners have been slowly declining as health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former anti-vaccine advocate, has made multiple misleading statements about the MMR shot since taking office. FBI Director Kash Patel defended rolling back a rule that automatically disqualified job applicants who had engaged in bestiality, telling senators it was meant to protect trafficking victims. The change, first reported in August, lets the FBI consider applicants who hired a sex worker, stole from an employer, or engaged in bestiality under specific circumstances, so long as the bestiality occurred before age 18. Republican Senator John Kennedy grilled Patel over it, saying, “We’re having a tough time attracting agents, good quality agents we all can trust... Why would you even get into bestiality?” Patel insisted the policy targets human trafficking victims forced into such acts, saying, “Applicants who have engaged in bestiality means they were victims of bestiality because they were forced to do so,” while Democratic Senator Dick Durbin pushed back that the rule applies to people who “engaged” in it, not just victims. The FBI has not provided data on how many applicants the exemption actually covers, and Democrats sent Patel a letter this week demanding more details. A Guardian investigation reveals ICE is detaining a record number of pregnant women while it has simply stopped tracking how many of them miscarry in custody. ICE recorded 18 miscarriages during the first nine months of Trump’s second term but has no data after October 3, 2025, blaming a change in its medical billing system, even as detained women describe being denied ultrasounds, OB-GYN visits, and basic prenatal care while bleeding and in pain. One woman, Anabell, said she didn’t even know she was pregnant until ICE tested her after her arrest, then was shackled to a hospital bed a month later and told through a phone interpreter that she’d lost the pregnancy. An obstetrician with Physicians for Human Rights said, “These incarcerated women are not getting the prenatal visits that they’re supposed to get... if they do miscarry, the medical care they receive is minimal to none,” while an immigration attorney argued ICE’s data gap is deliberate, saying not tracking it means officials “don’t have to be confronted with the reality of what your policies have yielded.” Federal policy requires ICE to avoid detaining pregnant people except in “exceptional circumstances,” but attorneys reviewing more than a dozen cases said ICE never explained how any of them met that bar. Nick Reiner, accused of fatally stabbing his parents Rob and Michele Reiner last December, will not face the death penalty if convicted. LA District Attorney Nathan Hochman said his office weighed the wishes of Reiner family members and other mitigating factors in deciding not to seek execution, even though California’s death penalty remains technically legal under a Newsom-imposed moratorium. Reiner, 33, has pleaded not guilty to two first-degree murder charges with special circumstances, and now faces a maximum sentence of life without parole. His family has said he struggled with addiction and mental health issues for years, and his brother Jake said their parents “never stopped helping” him, while Reiner had previously collaborated with his father on a film inspired by his own experiences. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is calling the government’s tripled bond buyback program a success even as the 10-year Treasury yield hit a 19-year high. The yield reached 5.041 percent Tuesday, pushing up costs on mortgages, car loans, and credit cards, as investors grow wary of how the Iran war is squeezing energy markets and Brent crude sits near $108 a barrel. Bessent told Congress the buybacks represent “the two most successful treasury auctions that we’ve had in 20 years” and claimed the US bond market has been “the best-performing bond market in the developing world” since Trump took office. The administration is fighting rising inflation, which hit a three-year high of 4.2 percent in May before easing slightly to 3.4 percent in July and August, and the Federal Reserve is expected to raise rates Wednesday for the first time since 2023 even as Trump has demanded cuts instead. Bessent told the House Financial Services Committee Tuesday that he supports Trump’s proposed $5,000 “Trump Dividend” checks for Americans after the midterms, but wouldn’t explain how the government would pay for them without adding to the $40 trillion national debt. Pressed by Rep. Juan Vargas, Bessent said only that Treasury has “been working on it for quite a while” and wasn’t ready to share details. Trump first floated the checks at a Dallas GOP convention last week, tying them to Republicans keeping control of Congress, and has said he doesn’t think he needs congressional approval to send them, drawing bribery accusations from critics. House Speaker Mike Johnson has been noncommittal about actually delivering the checks, deflecting a reporter’s question comparing the plan (plus Trump’s equity stakes in tech and steel firms) to communism. The story lands amid polling showing just 34 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, with 66 percent disapproving. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recounted that Trump gave him a key to the White House, telling him “you just bring it, they’ll let you in,” before adding “maybe they’ll shoot you,” a joke Carney says sums up the dynamic between the two leaders. OpenAI is backing three bipartisan bills aimed at using AI to defend against biological threats while also guarding against AI supercharging bioweapon risks. The company is endorsing the Web of Biological Data Act, the AI-Ready Bio-Data Standards Act and the SCALE Biology Act, which would task NIST and the Energy Department with building standards and centralized resources for biological data usable in AI research and defense. The move follows OpenAI’s endorsement earlier Tuesday of a separate House proposal requiring outside safety evaluators at major AI companies, and comes amid rising concern over AI-engineered pathogens, including a Stanford and Arc Institute study that used AI to design 16 new viruses and Anthropic’s disclosure last week that foreign actors had misused its models for dangerous pathogen research. OpenAI’s Richard Johnson said the company wants both to address the risk side and get defensive tools “into the hands of the defenders,” and compared the approach to its stance on AI cybersecurity. The push comes as industry voices, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in a widely read essay over the weekend, have called for more deliberate pacing of AI development given these risks. A new CBO report finds the Iran war is directly driving up inflation and borrowing costs for ordinary Americans. The nonpartisan office says the war caused more than a third of this year’s inflation increase overall, including over 40 percent of inflation in the second quarter of 2026, with another half-point rise expected in early 2027 as fewer oil and gas shipments move through the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea. Gas is up 45 percent since the war began to $4.32 a gallon, and diesel has jumped 66 percent to a record $6.26, while the average 30-year mortgage rate has climbed from under 6 percent to 7.22 percent. The report also found the war has cost roughly $38 billion in munitions alone as of August 1, with the Pentagon needing five years to rebuild stockpiles, and the Pentagon’s own watchdog separately found the war caused a munitions shortfall and supply “bottlenecks.” Senator Elizabeth Warren called it “a one-two punch that’s burning a hole in Americans’ pockets and burning a hole in our munitions supply, hurting our military readiness.” Trump’s surgeon general nominee, Dr. Nicole Saphier, disclosed $270,000 in income from her own dietary supplement company along with investments in tobacco stocks. Saphier, a radiologist and former Fox News contributor facing her Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, said she’ll sell her company, Empower MD, and its Drop RX supplement line before taking office, though critics note one of its products contains kava kava, an ingredient the FDA has flagged for liver damage risk and the US military bans outright. She and her husband also hold stakes in tobacco giants Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco, which she’s pledged to divest within 90 days of confirmation. Dr. Peter Lurie of the Center for Science in the Public Interest called the tobacco holdings disqualifying on their own, saying, “No public health person worth their salt would put a penny in a tobacco company. It ought to be an automatic exclusion from a position of such responsibility.” Saphier is Trump’s third pick for surgeon general after his first two nominees failed to advance in the Senate. See you soon. — Aaron

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink The Air Force’s announcement that it has “on-orbit space control weapons” generated a flurry of identical articles, nearly all about potential war with China and Russia. The coverage was bristling with Cold War-era defense-speak: deterrence, stability, signaling. The real reason for the announcement came a few sentences later in Air Force Secretary Troy Meink’s keynote at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference. It had little to do with space weapons, which were never actually identified (but I’ll reveal them in a moment). It was about drumming up money.Notice a common theme? “In today’s rapidly changing threat environment, we cannot expect a world-class military if we choose not to invest in it,” Meink said. “Many of the weapons, components, or systems we have to buy have outrun the cost curve. They perform extremely well, but the costs are growing faster than the rate of inflation.” He then lamented: “Today, we face a mix of rapidly changing technologies … and a budget process for a different pace of warfare.” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Douglas Schiess was even more blunt this week. “In the coming years,” he said, “we will make disciplined and responsible choices about how we build and sustain our combat advantage, which means scaling our ability to respond to threats.” Then he threw in: “We need your help, Congress.” Translation: money, money, money. Your money. Today, by complete coincidence I’m sure, Space Force posted a new “Space Threat Fact Sheet.” The Space Force wants you to know that what you’ve already given (over $100 billion) is not enough. So now they’re asking for another $71.3 billion — the biggest one-year jump any military branch has gotten since 1952, according to the Aerospace Center for Space Policy and Strategy. Source: Aerospace Center for Space Policy and Strategy Space Force has some spaceballs! If you think I’m being too cynical, Secretary Meink all but says it himself in explaining why he announced the “new” space weapon at all. “... at this point, we are trying to say that we also need capabilities to not only defend the joint force from space-enabled attack, but defend our assets. And so, I think it was time that within the Department of War we talked about it, and it’s time to talk about that we have the capabilities to make sure that we can do what the joint force needs,” Meink told Defense One (which, to its credit, also pointed out the enormity of Space Force’s budget request). In other words: show me the money! Down the hall from the keynote, STARCOM commander Maj. Gen. James E. Smith hammered home the same message: “Predictable budget resources will remain vital as we scale operations to maintain our FY27 momentum.” Don’t you just love how they’ve now decided to say “scale” instead of increase? If you’re wondering how the Pentagon managed to get what is essentially an infomercial for more money into every major media outlet, take a look at the Air Force’s own write-up. “Meink also acknowledged for the first time that Space Force has deployed weapons in space,” it says. “For the first time” is irresistible to a journalism 1.0 reporter. Mainstream media defines newsworthy as simply that which is “new” (I guess they just dropped the “worthy” part). The irony is that it was already pretty widely known that the U.S. military has weapons in space. “On-orbit space control weapons” sounds ominous, like the United States has some photon torpedo of the future. The reality is a little more pedestrian and a lot more routine than a screaming “news” story would suggest. Every 90 minutes, a super-secret X-37B mini-space shuttle orbits the earth, a “weapon” in space that has been doing so for the last 16 years. The one up there right now — spaceplane 8 — has been orbiting since August 21 of last year. Round and round it goes, part of a Top Secret “special access program” that’s an open secret, but one where the security goons have managed to keep the true purpose secret for more than a decade.X-37B lands at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California When the spaceplane was first sent into orbit in 2010, it was decidedly pointed downward, “testing” new hardware in real space environments, the military said. It also harbored an even deeper secret: a “Rods from God” weapon that would be able to attack any point on earth, literally a bundle of steel penetrators that could arrive in seconds and from who knows where. Rods from God is now an obsolete idea. Despite fake reports of the U.S. running out of weapons because of the Iran war, it has more than enough rods to destroy anything and everything on the planet. In 16 years, though, the world has changed. China and Russia have developed their own robust space capabilities and have deployed a variety of satellites and payloads that can engage in “orbital warfare,” as the military calls it. War in space is now indeed in space — the focus being up there, where the U.S. and allies have become ever more dependent on our own satellites. (Did you know that the U.S. has more than 10,500 satellites in active orbit, more than 90 percent of which are part of the SpaceX Starlink mega-constellation?) The X-37B is not the only “on orbit” weapon, either, as satellites themselves are now part of the space arsenal. Earlier this month, the military conducted Apollo Maneuvers 26, an exercise practicing on-orbit maneuvers of satellites to position them to conduct offensive operations to destroy enemy communications, navigation, and spying capabilities. The military openly talks about these “Rendezvous Proximity Operations.” It is decidedly quiet about the “weapons” themselves, whether they be electronic warfare jamming and spoofing or other forms of cyberattack. Meink also said that a U.S. space-based interceptor program had moved “from initial contract to flight-ready hardware in less than one year,” indicating that something new was recently developed. It could be as simple as a ramming satellite, but that is much too simple for the gold-plated developers. Instead, military sources and documents tell me, it is more likely a “directed energy” weapon, either a laser or high-power microwave, or something even more exotic. According to one contracting document I’ve obtained, the military laboratories are still working on developing a “space-based neutral particle beam weapon,” a Reagan-era Star Wars dream that manages to still suck tax dollars out of us despite nothing to show for it. Again, directed energy is an open secret, but the specifics of whatever space weapons exist are not only under “special access programs,” they are also part of “special technical operations” that demand a different security clearance. One military document describes the world of orbital warfare as “deception, disruption, denial, degradation, and destruction.” Many of those five D’s take place from earth. Space systems with code names like Bounty Hunter, Silent Sentry, Falcons, Browns and Meadowlands have been generally described in budget and other documents. Others, like the space-related Red Cloud electronic warfare system, or the Red Dragon and Kraken cyberspace warfare systems, have not been publicly acknowledged or explained. The bottom line? The United States has a new space weapon, but the definition of “weapon” is unclear — and what’s new is questionable. That’s another important distinction the media coverage missed. What is a weapon these days often defies description. But the imperfect word still connotes a bomb or missile, that is, launched from an airplane, ship or tank. Space indeed might be the final frontier, but one reason the Spaceballs think they need more is that so much already goes to old-fashioned hardware, built around a now obsolete image of war. Let’s hope we don’t end up shoveling an extra half-a-trillion dollars into the Pentagon money pit next year alone, as they’ve requested. May the Schwartz be with you, Congress. Leave a comment Share — Edited by William M. Arkin