“‘I’m looking, but I can’t claim that I can identify that person,’ former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels told POLITICO. Daniels, a Republican from a more genteel time in American politics, was not alone in his assessment of the bleak landscape. Bill Daley, former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, said in an interview that President Donald Trump ‘is the only one who can do it, because he represents everyone.’ Rep. Don Bacon, the iconoclastic Nebraska Republican, told a reporter he hoped the president would step up to the challenge, adding, ‘But he’s a populist, and populists dwell on anger.’ In a video statement recorded from the Oval Office late Wednesday, Trump denounced the violence on a Utah Valley University campus that led to the death of the 31-year-old conservative fixture. The president, who survived two attempts on his own life, spoke of the scourge of ‘demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible’ … For some, Trump himself is part of the problem. As president, he has the power to ease an already tense situation — or inflame it. ‘There is a violent undertow, and we have to be very careful about unleashing it,’ said William Barber, an influential pastor and civil rights activist who co-chairs the Poor People’s Campaign, which advocates for the nation’s lowest-income residents. It was founded by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.” (Adam Wren and Brakkton Booker/Politico)
“Writing in The New York Times in June, University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape argued that ‘since the beginning of President Trump’s second term in January, acts of political violence in the United States have been occurring at an alarming rate.’ Pape cited the assassination of Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and the attempted assassination of one of her colleagues; the arson at the home of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro; and the killing of Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC. He also noted that this surge in violence, which dates back to the polarization that started with Trump’s candidacy in 2016, also manifested itself in the January 6 insurrection, the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, and the assassination attempts against Trump, among many other cases. Pape painted a dismal picture of society where political violence is becoming much more common and socially accepted …” (Jeet Heer/The Nation)
“In the Epstein life drama, it’s tempting to put Ohio native and women’s apparel magnate Leslie H. Wexner in the role of ‘little buddy.’ He’s often portrayed as the dupe of a world-class criminal. But as Wexner toddles into his dotage behind a high hedge of lawyers, and the House Oversight Committee pokes through the detritus of the criminal’s vast career, it behooves the public interest for the Committee to take a look at the original source of Epstein’s wealth. Wexner is the gremlin beside Epstein’s Dark Lord. The shy midwestern billionaire made his fortune on cheap fashion for American mall-going teenage girls in the 80s, and a decade later, on push-up bras and thongs sexualizing the same cohort of, now, women. For a time, the surest sign of supermodel-dom was a runway strut in stilettos, a Victoria’s Secret bra and underwear, and a pair of gigantic white feathery wings strapped to your naked back. Eventually we would learn that Epstein added the Victoria’s Secret modeling gig to the lures in his bag of grooming tricks. Bigger men – bankers, politicians, CEOs – have been exposed in the Epstein story. Some have taken big falls. But we still don’t have the faintest idea why Wexner – defying his own advisors – would hand off power of attorney over a fortune to Epstein just as the inexperienced, uneducated mystery man was building his career as a trafficker of girls to high-level males around the world. Nor do we really know what Epstein did with it.” (Nina Burleigh/American Freakshow)
“My initial assessment of the PLA parade that has just finished in Beijing. Overall, no major surprises although there was some new equipment. The structure and content of the parade was pretty standard. (Some) key themes stood out for me, however. Theme 1. Most of the weapons and platforms were not brand new, but generally, every land, air and sea platform was more modern than that in the inventories of western military organisations. Newer does not always mean better, however. While most western military equipment has been tested in Iraq, Ukraine and elsewhere, none of China's new kit has. Theme 2. The new weapons and platforms were interesting and demonstrate the ongoing, advanced military R&D eco-system that China now has. The Large Underwater Uncrewed Vessels, the uncrewed rotary wing aircraft and the HHQ-16C, DF-61 and DF-31BJ missiles as well as the laser defence systems were new reveals by the PLA. I thought the UAV on the back of the Infantry Fighting Vehicle was interesting. Long gone are the days where China was reliant on Russia or other foreign systems. This level of indigenous capacity infers high levels of sustainability in any future conflict … The really interesting question is this: what was Putin thinking watching the parade, and what are his generals thinking? Surely, they must be concerned. They have fought against China in the past century and have stripped out large parts of their force structure from the east to fight in Ukraine.” (Mick Ryan/Futura Doctrina)
“Chief Justice John Roberts is smart and skilled. He will be remembered, however, as a historic failure. This is not a claim to make lightly, but his record compels it, because Roberts’ legacy will be defined by two catastrophic roles he played. First, Roberts has played the lead role in destroying indispensable rules of our democracy. Second, Roberts has played the lead judicial role in serving as the handmaiden to President Trump’s efforts to turn our democracy into an autocracy ...
Roberts’ role in destroying essential rules of our democracy Chief Justice Roberts has taken the lead in writing a series of opinions that have destroyed essential rules governing our democracy. They deal with:
The sacred right of every eligible citizen to vote.
The integrity and honesty of the political system.
The right of citizens to have an unrigged opportunity to choose their representatives.
The idea that public officials should not be allowed to sell influence with their office.
The foundational principle that no person is above the law.
The following opinions, written by Roberts and joined in all but one case only by the Republican-appointed majority on the Court, have done unprecedented harm to our democracy.” (Fred Wertheimer)
“The past six years have seen at least two dramatic and stunning shifts in federal health and benefits policy. First, during the depths of the COVID pandemic the government dramatically expanded a variety of public benefits, including support for income, food, housing, and health care. These expansions had incredibly positive effects, and those who received the newly expanded benefits were largely satisfied with them. But the expansions were quickly followed by the second dramatic and stunning shift: after a relatively short time, Congress rolled back nearly all of the benefits expansion. But it’s worse than that. The immediate pullback from COVID-era expansions set the stage for even more significant retrenchments in the second Trump Administration. Where in 2023 the United States came the closest it has ever come to universal health care—with a record-low uninsured rate of 7.7%—the Trump Administration’s Medicaid cuts and its likely failure to extend enhanced marketplace subsidies will have wiped out essentially all of the gains we have made since adoption of the Affordable Care Act. That is not what the drafters of the COVID-era expansions thought would happen.” (Samuel R. Bagenstos)
“It’s kind of hard to remember these days, but one of the loudest themes in 2010s prestige journalism was worrying about Free Speech on Campus and the dread Cancel Culture. A new censorious leftism was supposedly building thanks to woke social justice warriors doing things like protesting the fascist Milo Yiannopoulos when conservative campus groups would invite him to deliver a speech. Outlets from the center-left to the far right published a bulging container ship–sized load of this stuff. Here’s Bari Weiss in The New York Times whining about a protest of Christina Hoff Sommers at Lewis & Clark College. Here’s Conor Friedersdorf in 2015—in one out of about an Avogadro’s number of Atlantic articles—complaining about a micro-controversy over sandwiches in the Oberlin dining hall. Here’s Ben Shapiro in 2017 complaining that people get mad at him when he gives campus speeches arguing that transgender people do not exist and white people are the most victimized racial group. It should go without saying that while left-wing social media mobs have gone way too far on occasion, most of these incidents were hugely exaggerated, especially in the monomaniacal focus on wealthy private schools. There are almost 4,000 credentialed colleges and universities in this country, yet almost all of these articles focused on a small handful of Ivy League or elite liberal arts schools (because that’s where elite reporters went to school).” (Ryan Cooper/TAP)
“Tyler Robinson, apprehended last night in connection to the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, allegedly left engraved bullets at the crime scene that were covered in a furry meme, a reference from the video game Helldivers 2, and an extremely online taunt. In an FBI briefing this morning about his arrest, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox described the sequence of events that led to the capture of Robinson, 22, who was turned into the police by his father. They also clarified the nature of the notes engraved on the bullet casings found at the scene, which had been rumored to be slogans relating to antifascist and ‘transgender ideology.’ As it turns out, the messages are a confusing mix of internet memes and pop culture … The first bullet casing, which was fired, is a meme referring to furry online roleplay, according to Know Your Meme. It’s not hard to see where the ‘anti-fascist’ conclusion came from on two of the other bullets: “Bella ciao” is an Italian song adopted by partisans and resistance fighters while Italy was governed by the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Cox said in response to a question during the conference that the ‘hey fascist’ message ‘speaks for itself.’ Three downward-slanting arrows are a symbol used by both historical and contemporary antifascists. But the full arrow sequence was quickly recognized as something else: a combo from Helldivers 2 for calling the Eagle 500kg Bomb stratagem. The world of Helldivers — which evokes Robert Heinlein’s book Starship Troopers and the subsequent movie — concerns fascism thematically; developer Arrowhead has characterized it as a satire where players fight for a fascist state … Fans of the game immediately noticed. Shortly after the press conference on Friday morning, the Helldivers subreddit was flooded with players who had picked up on what may be references to the game. A thread, now deleted, was titled: ‘Hey Facist Catch!’ with the poster asking, ‘Did anyone else hear/notice?!’ A commenter, responding to the thread, said, ‘The moment I heard [the arrows] my eyes widened.’ Another thread, also apparently deleted by moderators, referenced the arrows that authorities say were on one of the unfired bullet casings recovered at the scene. ‘It sickens me having people like this playing this game and using it to real violence to tarnish this awesome game and community,’ the poster wrote.” (Tina Nguyen and Mia Sato/Vox)
“In 1971, a few weeks after The New York Times wrapped its explosive series on the Pentagon Papers, the conservative magazine National Review ran a scoop of its own: another set of secret papers, this time showing that victory had been possible in Vietnam if only the U.S. government and military had taken a more aggressive approach. The stunning revelations triggered widespread coverage—on the wire services, Voice of America, and the front page of The Washington Post—and frantic investigations at the Pentagon and State Department. Only after suspicious editors at the Times began raising questions did William F. Buckley Jr., the founder and editor of National Review, cop to the truth: He and his colleagues had fabricated the papers. Rather than apologize, they blamed the outlets who had run with the story for not double-checking the magazine’s reporting. When that excuse didn’t dim the outrage, Buckley told reporters, through a wry smile, ‘We admit we proceeded in something of an ethical vacuum.’ Buckley was no stranger to ethical vacuums, as journalist and biographer Sam Tanenhaus shows in his stunning new biography of the conservative personality, Buckley: The Life and the Revolution that Changed America. Throughout his life, Buckley was guided by ideology and personal gain far more than truth and virtue. Yet his charm, generosity, and loyalty ensured that he never paid much of a price for his transgressions. A nationally syndicated columnist at the time of the Pentagon Papers hoax, he laughed it off when 14 papers dropped his column. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I am down to 348 papers.’ Three hundred and forty-eight papers, one national television show, one magazine, and a direct line to the President of the United States. Life was good inside his ethical vacuum.” (Nicole Hemmer/Democracy)
“Multiple Russian drones were reportedly shot down in Polish airspace earlier this week, and now, the Polish government is urging NATO to respond. The violation of Polish airspace marked the first time that a NATO member directly engaged in combat with Russia. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk stated that Poland has never been closer to enter a conflict since World War II. Polish President Karol Nawrocki believes that Russia is testing its limits. The government has called on NATO allies to invoke Article 4: ‘The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.’ Not to be confused with Article 5, Article 4 is merely an agreement to discuss the security of a member nation. ‘The Russian provocation was nothing more than an attempt to test our capabilities and response. It was an attempt to check the mechanism of operation within NATO and our ability to react,’ President Nawrocki commented. Russia believes that the drone spotting was a false flag, and a ‘myths repeatedly spread by Poland in order to escalate the Ukrainian crisis further.’ US President Trump questioned Russia’s actions on social media. Secretary General Mark Rutte affirmed that ‘allies expressed solidarity with Poland and denounced Russia’s reckless behavior.’ Article 4 is often the prelude to Article 5. It is the emergency meeting that takes place ahead of action. Poland has deployed 40,000 troops to its border with Belarus, where the drones were shot down. Russia and Belarus have planned to execute a joint military exercise named Zapad 2025 that will involve tens of thousands of troops.” (Martin Armstrong/Armstrong Economics)
“Under (William F.) Buckley’s ebullient warmth was a darkness, and many people drawn into his inner circle ended up burned. Tom Guinzburg, Buckley’s roommate at Yale, suffered the flame. Like Buckley, he cut an impressive figure as an undergraduate. Buckley was the son of a wealthy oilman and impressed all with his quick mind, but Guinzburg was an ex-Marine, decorated with a Purple Heart at Iwo Jima, and the son of the founder of Viking Books. When Buckley was the chairman of the Yale Daily News, Guinzburg was the paper’s managing editor, and the pair were as thick as thieves, vacationing together in Mexico and inducted into Yale’s most coveted secret society, Skull and Bones. Like many of Buckley’s other friends, Guinzburg became a fixture at the family estate in Connecticut, and he soon started dating Buckley’s sister Jane. Trish Bozell remembers Guinzburg as ‘a charming guy, beautiful smile, very attractive. It was a beautiful romance.’ The problem came when the couple started thinking about marriage: Guinzburg was a Jew, and as Tanenhaus puts it, Buckley’s father ‘despised Jews with an intensity he made no effort to conceal.’ William F. Buckley Sr. would constantly remind his children that ‘all Jews were Communists’ as well as ‘stingy, pushy, money-grubbing liars.’ Jane clearly did not accept this view, but that did little to sway the family patriarch: ‘We don’t want a Jew in this family,’ he told his matchmaking son. An otherwise loyal guy, Buckley Jr. agreed and pressured Guinzburg to break off the relationship, a fact that Jane would learn only decades later. ‘Jane was never quite the same again,’ her sister Trish recalled. ‘I think she really loved Tom.’ Buckley, for his part, had little remorse for whatever grief he’d caused his sister and his friend. Late in life, he told his biographer that ‘to marry a Jew was dumb.’” (Jeet Heer/The Nation)
“To understand why residents of New York City, the epicenter of American capitalism, are supporting a democratic socialist candidate for mayor, look no further than its warped rental market. In a city where roughly two out of three residents lease their homes, record-high rents have long bogged down the working class. But these days, more high earners are feeling the squeeze: At least 65,000 households making between $100,000 and $300,000 a year pay a third or more of their gross income to landlords, according to NYC Housing and Vacancy Survey estimates. That’s tens of thousands more than just four years ago. Some of the acute pain points are in trendy neighborhoods like Manhattan’s Tribeca, Brooklyn’s Greenpoint and Long Island City in Queens, where median rents stagnated or even dipped during the pandemic and then skyrocketed as the city reopened, according to StreetEasy data. In many of these same areas, voters supported democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in the June mayoral primary, making him the favorite to win the general election in November. Even though Mamdani’s plans revolve around freezing price hikes for about a million rent-stabilized apartments, his focus on affordability has resonated with high earners in business, finance and tech questioning whether they can live the life they want in the city. ‘What has changed is who is feeling the crunch,’ said Barika Williams, executive director for the Association of Neighborhood & Housing Development. ‘It’s spreading all the way up.’” (Paulina Cachero, Max Rivera, Ann Choi, Rachael Dottle/Bloomberg)
“The politics of a shutdown favor (Democrats) nonetheless. Democrats have a big edge on what’s seen as the No. 1 problem in America: affordability. According to a new CBS News poll, a paltry 36 percent of Americans approve of the way Mr. Trump is handling inflation, a blaring sign of the president’s vulnerability on the main issue that brought him back to the White House. In a world of short attention spans, Democrats should go to the ramparts on just three instead of four issues, with a tightly focused popular solution for each. Today’s version of M.M.E.E. should be H.T.T. — health, tariffs and troops in the streets. The first two are directly related to affordability, with health-care premiums and drug costs surging and tariffs causing steep price increases, not to mention resentment from parents who don’t want the president telling them, as he did in April, that it’s OK if they can now afford only two dolls for Christmas. On health, Democrats should demand an extension of the popular tax credits that make Obamacare more affordable for millions of Americans, which are scheduled to expire next year. They should insist on restoring funding for popular National Institutes of Health grants, particularly for cancer research. And in the glare of a shutdown it would be tough for Republicans to resist a Democratic push to reverse at least some of the unpopular Medicaid cuts. Finally, Democrats should insist on a provision guaranteeing the availability of vaccines, a position supported by 78 percent of adults in a recent NBC News poll, including overwhelming majorities of independents and Republicans. On tariffs, Democrats should demand that almost all tariffs be approved by Congress, a view that might soon also have the backing of the Supreme Court. This would peel off some Republican senators who like neither tariffs nor Mr. Trump trampling on the legislative branch’s longstanding authority over trade.” (Jonathan Alter/NYT)
“Until a month or two ago, Nicholas J. Fuentes was regarded by right-wing influencers as a mosquito-like interloper whose lifeblood was attention. Ignore his openly racist and sexist rants, their thinking went, and Mr. Fuentes would eventually flitter off into oblivion. But today an entirely different consensus has emerged on the right. The footprint of the oratorically proficient late-night streaming show host has not dwindled in the least, with his tens if not hundreds of thousands of alienated young male conservatives followers known as Groypers, a nickname derived from an alt-right meme. If anything, his anti-Israel, anti-immigrant, anti-transgender and anti-civil-rights views seem to have gained new currency during the second Trump administration. There is now growing alarm among leading conservatives about Mr. Fuentes, who routinely tests the cultlike devotion of his young male fans by savaging their patriarchal figure, President Trump, for not being right-wing enough. In the process, he has emerged as one of the loudest voices on the right to turn on the president. ‘When I was a teenager, I thought he was a Caesar-like figure who was going to save Western civilization,’ Mr. Fuentes, 27, said in an interview. ‘Now I view him as incompetent, corrupt and compromised.’ Specifically, he has criticized the president for showing solidarity with Israel over the war in Gaza, for refusing to release the Epstein files and for considering extending student visas to Chinese nationals. On Labor Day, Mr. Fuentes posted on social media, ‘Trump 2.0 has been a disappointment in literally every way but nobody wants to admit it.’ Asked to comment on Mr. Fuentes’s remarks, White House officials declined. Current and former members of the Trump administration as well as outside advisers would not be quoted for the record about Mr. Fuentes out of fear, they said, of inviting online attacks from him and his zealous followers.” (Robert Draper/NYT)
“An official in charge of nearly three decades of archaeological finds in Gaza has described how the artefacts were hurriedly evacuated from a Gaza City building threatened by an Israeli strike. ‘This was a high-risk operation, carried out in an extremely dangerous context for everyone involved – a real last-minute rescue,’ said Olivier Poquillon, director of the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem (EBAF), which housed the relics. On Wednesday morning, Israeli authorities ordered EBAF – one of the oldest academic institutions in the region – to evacuate its archaeological storehouse on the ground floor of a residential tower in Gaza City that was due to be targeted. The Israeli army did not confirm the warning when asked by AFP, but several sources said France, Unesco and the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem played a key role in securing a brief reprieve that allowed most of the artefacts to be removed. ‘With almost no international actors left on the ground, no infrastructure, nothing functioning, we had to improvise transport, labour and logistics,’ said Poquillon. The evacuation, he added, was carried out in strict secrecy, with ‘the overriding concern, as a religious organisation, of not endangering human lives’, as Israeli military pressed operations in the territory’s largest urban hub. The depot contained about 180 cubic metres of finds from Gaza’s five main archaeological sites, including the fourth-century Saint Hilarion monastery, listed as a Unesco world heritage site. All of these sites have been damaged, EBAF said, expressing concern for ‘unique’ mosaics left exposed despite their fragility. Poquillon said Gaza has ‘an extremely ancient heritage, very precious for the region, showing the succession and coexistence of peoples, cultures and religions.’ One of Gaza’s two museums has been destroyed and the other heavily damaged since the war started nearly two years ago.” (The Guardian)