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President made more than 440 purchases and 700 sales despite voter anger over elected officials trading stocks

Donald Trump made over a thousand stock sales and purchases worth between $79m and $270m in July, according to a Guardian analysis of his latest financial disclosure released Tuesday.

His two largest sales were of Amazon and Microsoft stock, selling between $5m and $25m each on 20 July. That same day, he also sold up to $5m worth of Oracle and Costco stock, $500,000 to $1m in Nvidia, and bought up to $5m worth of shares in Intuit and Salesforce, among dozens of other transactions.

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In light of current events, we wanted to take a moment to say a huge thank you to our readers for allowing us to operate as independent media who will not bend to the President and his team of bullies. Engagement from free readers helps get more eyes on our content and the support of paid subscribers enables us to continue our operations. If you’re able to, consider upgrading to a paid subscription today.

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US President Donald Trump takes a question from NBC reporter Kelly O’Donnell in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on September 18, 2026. Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP via Getty Images.

For the insecure tyrant, “all questioning is a forcible intrusion … like a knife cutting into the flesh of the victim,” the writer Elias Canetti once wrote. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar of fascism and authoritarianism at NYU, invoked that line to describe President Trump’s decision to bar CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House.

Trump has insulted and excluded individual journalists throughout both of his terms, Ben-Ghiat noted, but banning entire news organizations marks an escalation. She places the latest move inside a recognizable pattern of autocratic behavior, noting that “such leaders very rarely course correct. Instead they double down: aggressions increase as their legitimacy decreases, and the mania to control the narrative grows.” She calls it “autocratic backfire” and ties it to Trump’s sinking numbers ahead of the midterms.

It began, as many things do with the 47th president, with a Friday afternoon Truth Social post, perhaps with help from his aide and confidante, Natalie Harp. “I am banning [CNN, MS NOW and Politico] from the White House as a result of their constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” Trump wrote, adding that the ban was “effective immediately.” He continued, “Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America,” warning that “other Fake News Media Outlets” would follow. He gave no indication of how the ban would be enforced, and some White House staffers were reportedly caught off guard by the announcement, as has become quite common of late.

On Saturday morning, security stopped reporters and a cameraman from MS NOW at a West Wing entrance, and Secret Service officers confiscated their press badges. CNN’s Betsy Klein and Politico’s Cheyenne Haslett were denied entry the same morning. By Sunday night, the White House had also pulled CNN from Monday’s pool television rotation, an assignment that would have had CNN crew members traveling with Trump to the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

Asked whether the ban was meant to intimidate the press, Trump denied it. “No, no, no, no. I dislike dishonest press, like you. I think you’re terrible,” he responded to a Bloomberg reporter, adding that the outlets “purposely write negative news” to “diminish the Republicans and a Republican administration.”

Monday evening, the White House’s official account teased an announcement. “Something’s coming. Stay tuned,” it declared over footage of an old television set. Then it launched “Trump TV: The Essentials Station” at 7 p.m., a 24/7 stream described as covering “the Trump Administration’s biggest moments all in one place.” It went live the same day the television pool went dark. A handful of pro-Trump accounts moved to fill the coverage gap within hours, declaring themselves a replacement White House pool. But as legal analyst Joyce Vance pointed out, they lacked the technical capacity, meaning the equipment, staffing and control-room infrastructure pool duty requires.

Propaganda, Ben-Ghiat wrote, needs both “noise and silence.” The ban supplied the silence, and the White House supplied the noise: a 24/7 in-house stream, “Trump TV,” launched from whitehouse.gov the same evening. But the audience did not follow. According to reporting by The Daily Beast, the stream, hosted on the White House’s YouTube channel, drew about 8,000 viewers at its 7 p.m. launch; 90 minutes later, viewership had fallen below 4,000, and by 9 p.m. it was down to roughly 3,000 — a fraction of what the major networks draw in the same prime-time hour. By 10:40 p.m. only 2,425 people were watching, a sliver of the channel’s 3.18 million subscribers, and it bottomed out overnight at barely 1,000 viewers during a rerun of a year-old Trump speech alongside Britain’s King Charles.

Trump TV may have failed right out of the gate, but the ban is in place for now. So will it be struck down by the courts? This should be an easy yes, but there are some nuances. To understand where things stand and how we got here, we need to rewind to Trump 1.0.

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The ban as a pattern, not an aberration

This is, of course, not the first time Trump has tried to silence his critics with an outright ban. During his first term, in November 2018, we got a clear view of the autocrat-to-be when Trump suspended CNN chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta’s White House press credentials, following a heated exchange over the midterm elections. CNN sued, arguing the revocation violated both Acosta’s First Amendment right to report and his Fifth Amendment right to due process.

U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly, whom Trump had appointed to the bench the year before, granted CNN a temporary restraining order. But he did so only on the due process claim. He found the White House’s decision-making “so shrouded in mystery” that no one could explain who had pulled Acosta’s pass or why. Kelly was explicit about the limits of his ruling. “I have not determined that the First Amendment was violated here,” he wrote. Rather than litigate further, the White House permanently restored Acosta’s press pass, and CNN dropped the suit. The First Amendment question went unanswered.

Fast forward to Feb. 11, 2025, when Trump banned the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One after it declined to adopt “Gulf of America” in place of “Gulf of Mexico” in its stylebook. That was a particular level of petty, and the AP understandably sued. The case went before U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden, another Trump appointee.

On April 8, 2025, McFadden granted a preliminary injunction, writing: “under the First Amendment, if the Government opens its doors to some journalists — be it to the Oval Office, the East Room, or elsewhere — it cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints. The Constitution requires no less.” He added that the AP was not asking for “extra special access” — “all the AP wants, and all it gets, is a level playing field.”

The White House appealed, and on June 6, 2025, a divided three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit stayed McFadden’s order as to the Oval Office, Air Force One and other small spaces. Judge Neomi Rao, writing for the panel’s conservative majority, reasoned that “these restricted presidential spaces are not First Amendment fora opened for private speech and discussion” and that “the White House therefore retains discretion to determine, including on the basis of viewpoint, which journalists will be admitted.” But the panel drew a line at the Brady Briefing Room, where reporters work daily. “When the White House opens its facilities to the press generally... it cannot exclude journalists based on viewpoint.” The full D.C. Circuit declined to rehear the stay en banc on July 22, 2025. The same three-judge panel heard oral argument on the underlying merits on Nov. 24, 2025. Ten months later, it has still not ruled.

The networks answer

Following the White House’s latest blanket ban on three news outlets, CNN responded within hours of Trump’s post, before the ban had even taken effect. “We have a right under the U.S. Constitution to do our reporting without hindrance or interference from the government,” the network wrote, “and this ban is an illegal assault on this fundamental right.” Politico’s global editor-in-chief, Jonathan Greenberger, told his newsroom on Saturday that reporter Cheyenne Haslett had been turned away at the gates. “We stand by her and all reporters here covering the White House. As we said yesterday, we will vigorously defend our First Amendment rights.”

By Monday morning, those statements had gelled into court filings. CNN, MS NOW and Politico filed a joint lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, naming as plaintiffs the outlets themselves along with three of the barred reporters. The case, Cable News Network v. Trump, also names as defendants White House communications director Steven Cheung, Secret Service Director Sean Curran and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

“This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes,” the outlets said in a joint statement. “Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting. Left unchallenged, this threatens press freedom and the public’s right to independent journalism free from government interference.” The complaint named the harm directly. “This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles.”

The Associated Press, which fought its own yearlong access battle with the administration, issued a statement of solidarity. “No news organization — or person — should be retaliated against by the government over the words they use.” The White House Correspondents’ Association, led by Fox News correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, called for a reversal of the decision, warning that the exclusion set a standard that “could be applied to any outlet in the future” and declaring, “The American people, through a free and independent press, must be able to scrutinize those elected to power, regardless of whether government officials view it favorably.” The New York Times and The Washington Post joined the boycott by withholding even still photographs of Trump’s events that day.

ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC — the five networks that make up the White House television pool — announced Monday that they would suspend pool coverage of the president entirely in solidarity with the banned outlets. In a rare joint statement, the five declared, “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.” C-SPAN noted that it could not broadcast White House events without the pool feed.

The Find Out portion arrived within hours. Monday afternoon, Trump held a ribbon-cutting for a new White House helipad. He declined to take questions shouted at him before he boarded Marine One but, without a pool camera or microphone present, his remarks were unintelligible over the noise of the parked helicopter. Newsmax, one of the few outlets still covering the event, acknowledged the problem on air. “There’s no microphone because the pool cameras aren’t there,” anchor Bianca de la Garza said, adding: “Obviously the ramifications are right here. Can’t hear what the president’s saying.” Axios called the moment “a remarkable and immediate ramification of Trump’s attempt to limit pool access.”

Later Monday, asked about the boycott after a meeting with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Trump insisted he was not worried. “They said they were going to boycott me, but they never boycott me, so I wasn’t very worried about that.”

Veteran journalist and longtime anchor Dan Rather called the ban a test Trump is failing on his own terms. “Journalism has survived dictators, despots, and others who have tried to control the Fourth Estate. It will survive Donald Trump too.” He noted that the ban was announced without consulting the president’s own staff — “his chief of staff wasn’t even in Washington” — and argued that Fox’s participation in the boycott, more than anything else, “may be an indicator that even they are sensing that he has gone too far.”

Trump, the courts and the judge he already knows

Monday’s lawsuit drew an immediate reply from Trump himself. In a second Truth Social post, he complained about the assigned judge directly and previewed his own expected outcome: “The Judge’s name is Tim Kelly, and he was, sadly, appointed by ‘TRUMP.’ In other words, almost without question and, as usual, we’ll go for appeal because Fake News people and publications that only write negatively, and who violate our National Security by writing false and defamatory stories with unknown ‘sources,’ shouldn’t be allowed access to the most important Office anywhere in the World.” He added: “With such a Crooked and Corrupt Press, how did I win in such a LANDSLIDE?” and called “FAKE NEWS ... A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY.”

Kelly is the same judge who ordered Acosta’s credentials restored in 2018, a fact Trump volunteered along with his own prediction of the outcome. But Kelly’s docket includes another irony Trump has not mentioned. In 2023, Kelly handed down a 22-year sentence to former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio for seditious conspiracy. It was the longest sentence given to any Jan. 6 defendant. But Trump pardoned Tarrio on his first day back in office.

Reporters seeking comment on the lawsuit were directed by the press office to Trump’s own Truth Social post rather than given a formal statement. The White House is still without a press secretary since Karoline Leavitt’s departure. Fox News did obtain an unattributed line from “the White House” defending the ban. “The Fake News has no place demanding a spot in the President’s Oval Office. The lies they smear are a disservice to the American public and tear at the very fabric of our Democracy. They’re completely capable of reporting from directly outside.”

Vice President JD Vance offered the most substantive on-record defense so far, explaining to Breitbart that the banned outlets retain plenty of access short of White House credentials: “They can still report on the Trump White House. They can still get the public reports. They can still, of course, talk to people in the administration and outside the administration.”

The First Amendment quicksand beneath the ban

Legal takes on Trump’s position have reached a rare consensus: they are uniformly against it. Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck called the ban “overtly viewpoint-based” and said flatly that “this is just not a close case” — that hand-picking three outlets for exclusion because of the president’s disagreement with their coverage is “about as close to a textbook violation of the existing precedents as it comes.” He added that the outlets “should (and almost certainly will) win.”

Vladeck’s conservative counterpart, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who has been sharply critical of the banned outlets’ coverage and stresses that the White House “is not without good-faith arguments,” reaches the same conclusion, writing that “viewpoint discrimination has long been viewed as not a reasonable basis for exclusion.”

Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, explained that the ban’s legal exposure stems partly from where the outlets were banned from. “If President Trump means to expel these news organizations from the White House press pool, his action is doubly unconstitutional because the press pool is a ‘public forum’ under the First Amendment, which means the president can’t exclude journalists from it on the basis of their viewpoints.” Katie Fallow, the institute’s deputy litigation director, made the same point about the briefing room specifically, noting that “the courts have said repeatedly the government is not allowed to kick people out of that forum based on their viewpoint.”

Case law backs their confidence. Sherrill v. Knight is the leading precedent. In 1977, the D.C. Circuit considered the case of Robert Sherrill, a Nation correspondent denied a White House press pass on Secret Service security grounds. The court held that denying a pass to a bona fide journalist “violates the first amendment unless it furthers a compelling governmental interest identified by narrowly and specifically drawn standards,” and separately required notice, an opportunity to rebut, and a written decision before any pass could be revoked. The court did not find a freestanding constitutional right to White House access. But it found that once the government establishes that access, it cannot arbitrarily take it away.

The government is not entirely without an argument, but it rests on forum doctrine rather than any claim of unlimited discretion. Under Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Defense Fund (1985), government property that has not been opened to general public discourse — a “nonpublic forum” — need only be governed by restrictions that are “viewpoint-neutral and reasonable.” That’s a far lower bar than the “strict scrutiny” courts apply to a public forum.

As Turley notes, the D.C. Circuit has already ruled for the White House on this theory. In Ateba v. Leavitt, the court upheld the denial of a permanent hard pass to journalist Simon Ateba, treating the White House press area as a nonpublic forum. And in the AP litigation, Justice Department lawyers pressed a version of the same argument to defend the Oval Office and Air Force One exclusions specifically because those spaces are not press facilities like the Brady Briefing Room but rooms intended for the president’s personal use, where he retains “personal autonomy” to decide whose questions he answers. Judge Rao’s stay in the AP case adopted that reasoning, finding the government likely to succeed as to those spaces specifically because they are not “First Amendment fora opened for private speech and discussion.”

The trouble for the White House is that this new ban does not target the Oval Office or Air Force One. It targets general grounds access, hard passes and pool duty. This is the White House’s general-purpose press infrastructure, the very part of the nonpublic-forum spectrum that Ateba and Rao’s own opinion treat differently. Even a nonpublic forum’s restrictions must be viewpoint-neutral; Sherrill, Ateba and Rao’s AP ruling all say so.

The government’s strongest argument, then, would have been to argue not that it can exclude CNN, MS NOW and Politico because of their viewpoints (which the ban clearly does, based on Trump’s own Truth Social posts) but that the exclusion represents a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral reallocation of limited space, unconnected to the content of the outlets’ coverage.

But nothing in the record so far suggests the regime intends to make that argument, or that it could do so credibly given Trump’s own statements.

I didn’t want any stupid press coverage anyway!

Given the law’s protection of open fora from viewpoint discrimination, and the White House’s very likely loss in this battle, we shouldn’t be surprised if, in a pique of spite, Trump decides to bar every member of the press from the White House. That’s admittedly a truly absurd and bad outcome for our democracy, even if it would feel like a welcome reprieve for many. But it would also be a self-own that would starve him of the very attention he craves and thrives on.

After all, “Trump TV,” with its few thousand die-hard viewers, isn’t going to get him the ratings he needs.

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Guardian political editor Pippa Crerar asked Donald Trump if he had any sympathy for allied countries suffering from the devastating economic consequences of his war in Iran. The US president said he was confident prices would be lower after the war and that talks were under way

• US politics live

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US president calls UK prime minister ‘a natural businessperson’ as leaders meet at UN assembly in New York

Donald Trump has asserted his relationship with the UK is “more up” with Andy Burnham than under Keir Starmer despite tensions between the two countries on a range of thorny issues including regulation of artificial intelligence, the Chagos Islands and the war in Iran.

At their first face-to-face meeting, the US president praised Burnham, who sat nervously alongside him, as a “natural businessperson”, saying he thought he had “lots of assets on his side” and would be a “great” prime minister.

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Meeting at the UN in New York, the UK prime minister showed signs he can handle trash-talking President Trump

• US politics live – latest updates

How do you deal with a problem like The Donald? The simple answer is that you don’t. You can’t. The normal rules of political engagement don’t apply. The US president is like a five-year-old child with the world as his set of toys: a King Baby.

Nothing is ever constant or predictable. What’s agreed one day can be forgotten the next. Any deal can be interrupted with a temper tantrum at any time. Trying to second-guess Donald Trump is a fool’s errand.

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President Trump's enormous gains among Hispanic voters in the last election propelled him to victory in the national popular vote and prompted talk of a political realignment. Two years later, that talk is over. In an average of high-quality national polls over the last month, Democrats led Republicans among Hispanic likely voters by 35 percentage points, 64-29, on the generic congressional ballot, which asks voters which party they will support for Congress. That would mark an extraordinary reversal since 2024, when the same pollsters found Kamala Harris leading Donald J. Trump by an average of only seven points among Hispanic voters in their final surveys.

Good morning. The row over media access to the presidency has deepened, with major US television news outlets agreeing to suspend their video coverage of Donald Trump after the administration banned journalists from several outlets from entering the White House grounds. The president had abruptly announced his ban against CNN, MS Now and Politico, saying he had had enough of "purposely negative stories" about him. On Monday the ban against CNN meant no broadcaster was covering Trump's midday ribbon-cutting for a new White House helipad. The White House provided its own livestream but the president's remarks were inaudible over the sound of a helicopter's engine.

US president may have upstaged the ghost of Soviet leader Khrushchev by musing destruction of fellow member state

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Eleven minutes into a 40-minute address, the US president announced he had “a big decision to make” over Iran, which has staged a much more determined resistance than Trump anticipated when he decided to go to war against the country in February.

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Donald Trump has praised the UK prime minister as a ‘natural businessman’ after their first meeting at the UN general assembly

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GOP nominee for governor Byron Donalds removes multiple mentions of president from his campaign website

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Another prominent Florida Republican has publicly distanced himself from Donald Trump, days after María Elvira Salazar called out the US president’s immigration-enforcement policy targeting law-abiding undocumented immigrants.

Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee for governor in November’s US midterm elections, launched an updated campaign website on Tuesday that was stripped of almost every mention of Trump and removed a photograph of the congressman and his wife, Erika, posing with the president, the Miami Herald reported.

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In what is probably one of the biggest battles yet between the press and Donald Trump, major TV networks have united in a boycott of pooled coverage of his administration. It comes after three news organisations – CNN, MS Now and Politico – were denied access to the White House because of Trump’s concerns about their coverage. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s international news editor Paul Owen

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US president says British PM has a ‘lot of assets on his side’ as pair meet at UN in New York

Donald Trump has praised Andy Burnham as a “natural businessperson” and said the UK was “more up” than under Keir Starmer. But he berated the UK for its decision to give up the Chagos Islands.

In their first face-to-face meeting, Trump gave a warm assessment of the relationship, saying he thought Burnham had a “lot of assets on his side” and would be a “great prime minister”, adding: “We talked about everything from Rolls-Royce to energy to immigration – we covered a lot.”

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President Donald Trump issued a stern warning Tuesday for Iran to make a deal soon or face severe consequences for its pursuit of a nuclear weapon. "I have a big decision to make: Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before – maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world?" Trump told the United Nations General Assembly in his morning address.

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The Trump administration is removing close to 750,000 people from Affordable Care Act (ACA) coverage due to allegedly fraudulent enrollment, Vice President Vance announced Tuesday. The cancellations would save an estimated $2.2 billion in taxpayer funds.

President chided Kaitlan Collins for asking him question at UN after White House ban on CNN, MS Now and Politico

Donald Trump has scolded a CNN anchor for covering him at the UN in New York after banning the network and two other media outlets from the White House.

Kaitlan Collins asked the US president on Tuesday when the Iran war would end, citing a poll that claims two-thirds of Americans don’t think the US is winning.

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US president threatens to ‘annihilate’ Tehran and dismisses threat from AI as a ‘hoax’ in bellicose address

• US politics live – latest updates

Donald Trump has called on nations to unite to isolate Tehran and bring down global energy prices, as he gave a bellicose defence of his administration’s foreign policy and decision to strike Iran.

“I call on all nations to help to enforce the complete economic isolation of Iran,” Trump said in a speech to the UN general assembly on Tuesday. “If we stand united, we will soon see a world free of the last 51-year menace of Iranian terror … and oil prices will come plummeting down even lower than they were at the start of the conflict.”

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In what is probably one of the biggest battles yet between the press and Donald Trump, major TV networks have united in a boycott of pooled coverage of his administration. It comes after three news organisations – CNN, MS Now and Politico – were denied access to the White House because of Trump’s concerns about their coverage. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s international news editor Paul Owen – watch on YouTube

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The US president spoke about the war with Iran during the UN general assembly on Tuesday, threatening to 'annihilate' the country and 'drive them into hell' if the regime didn’t agree to a deal with the United States

• US politics live

• Middle East braces for more violence as Iran claims US is planning to renew bombing campaign

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The US president remarked on CNN's presence at the UN general assembly on Tuesday, telling reporters he was 'surprised' the news network was covering him and that it 'shouldn't be here' after he banned the outlet along with MS Now and Politico from the White House last week

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• US TV networks suspend White House pool coverage over Trump media ban

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Late-night hosts respond to Trump’s removal of outlets such as CNN and Politico from the White House press pool over ‘negative stories’

Late-night hosts reacted to Donald Trump’s dramatic White House media ban and casual disregard of the first amendment.

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Putin ally helped cover cost of renting private island in the Bahamas for wedding of Trump Jr and Bettina Anderson

• US politics live – latest updates

A Republican senator has accused Donald Trump Jr of corruption and demanded a Senate investigation into revelations that a Russian oligarch bankrolled part of his recent wedding in the Bahamas.

John Curtis, of Utah, wrote to the leaders of the US Senate judiciary committee on Tuesday, urging them to subpoena Trump Jr over his business dealings, his relationships with foreign individuals, gifts he has received – and any occasions where his connection to his father, Donald Trump, “was invoked or understood to provide value”.

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Trump administration expresses ‘serious concerns’ that forcing firms to allow algorithm optout would infringe Americans’ free speech

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The Trump administration has warned the Australian government that its plans to boost online safety through digital duty of care laws risks becoming a mechanism for “viewpoint-based censorship” and called for American platforms to be exempted.

Restating strong opposition to measures the White House considers “extraterritorial censorship of protected speech by Americans online”, the US has used a submission to the Albanese government’s public consultation process to express serious concerns about Australia’s communications minister having legal powers to declare “foreseeable harm”.

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White House press coverage row continues while anchor-less channel of the administration’s ‘latest and greatest’ streams propaganda for the Maga faithful

Donald Trump’s previous television career centred on his role on The Apprentice, but the US president’s latest media venture is a rather lower-budget affair: the launch of Trump TV in the wake of his ban on several outlets from covering the White House.

With major US networks agreeing to not cover the president while the dispute continues, on Monday the White House announced the new 24/7 YouTube live stream, which it promised would feature “top past moments, announcements, and the latest and greatest from the administration all in one place”.

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Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan were bylined, after Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt, on NYT’s account of Trump’s equivocations over whether to help Mohammed bin Salman fight back the Houthis.

For two weeks, the question of whether to yield to pleas from Saudi Arabia and order the U.S. military to strike targets in Yemen controlled by the Iran-backed Houthis has bedeviled President Trump.

A decision to go forward could open another front in the war against Iran that Mr. Trump started but has been unable to end as it spreads economic shock around the globe.

The president had wavered for weeks over the Saudi appeals for help in fighting the Houthis, who took advantage of the instability in the Middle East and reignited their war with the kingdom this summer.

But things came to a head on Thursday: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto leader and a major ally in the Iran war, called the president to implore him, again, to step in to help blunt the rapidly advancing group, administration officials said.

Mr. Trump had met with advisers just the day before and told them he did not favor strikes. But after speaking with the Saudi crown prince, he reversed himself and told the Pentagon to prepare for airstrikes against the Houthis.

But by midday Sunday, the president appeared to have reversed himself again. There would be no U.S. airstrikes against the Houthis — at least not for the time being, according to administration officials. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss military planning.

The story came out Sunday, and so after Trump went to Camp David on Saturday to make this decision. And so also after something … weird happened on Saturday night: Trump returned from Camp David early.

Donald Trump flew home to D.C. late Saturday evening, cutting short his trip to Camp David as the State Department warned Americans abroad that the conflict between Saudi forces and Yemen’s Houthi rebels was rapidly escalating.

But the president was focused on other issues Sunday as he took an early morning ride to his golf club in Sterling, Virginia, after he was spotted with golfers Gary Player and Bryson DeChambeau – along with DeChambeau’s model girlfriend Mikayla Demaiter – on his helicopter ride back to the White House. Rain and clouds rolled through the D.C. area over the weekend, which typically cause changes to the president’s schedule when he’s flying back from Camp David.

The Independent reached out to the White House for a reason why Trump cut short his trip to the presidential retreat in Maryland, after White House officials declined to give an explanation to pool reporters tailing him. On Sunday morning, Trump left for his Sterling, Virginia club — a short drive from the White House — just before 9 a.m.

Meanwhile, the conflict in the Middle East appears to be deteriorating with no sign of a negotiated settlement to end hostilities on the cards for the near future. Territorial gains by Houthi militants in Yemen and further clashes with Saudi forces have caused fears to rise of even tighter restrictions or greater danger to civilian energy traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz and the surrounding waterways.

And, per the pool report, Trump returned early on a separate helicopter from his irreplaceable aides, Natalie Harp and Walt Nauta, who returned five minutes earlier on a different helicopter. The next day, Sunday, Trump went to his Virginia golf course for seven hours, but was not seen playing golf.

Most of the press attention about this early return has focused on Bryson DeChambeau and his busty girlfriend because it gives them an excuse to show boobies. And I do find it notable that Trump walked away from a planning session on how to bail the Saudis out of the security crisis he had created by starting a stupid war with one of the LIV golfers who made a losing bet on Saudi money.

But I’m interested in Gary Player’s presence. Or perhaps I want to use Gary Player’s presence to talk about the role he plays in the epilogue of Maggie and Swan’s book. Because like Maggie and Swan, Player seems to serve a mirroring function for Trump that parrots his desire for power.

The epilogue describes how the journalists had spent two months trying to get an audience with Trump for the book, until suddenly in mid-March — as the Iran War, and with it, his presidency and the US empire, had started falling apart — he granted it, but not before claiming Maggie “insists on writing false stories about me, even though she fully knows and understands that the exact opposite of anything she says is usually the truth” in a Truth Social post.

They situated the interview as occurring on the seventeenth day of the war: “Trump had made a demand for an international coalition of warships to secure the waterway, but few nations seemed interested in helping.”

Trump talked about maple trees. Steven Cheung talked about TikTok engagement arising from the war. Trump showed off his ballroom plans.

The journalists interjected, making an extradiegetic comment, describing a focus group, starting that same day, that would show voters hated the war. But Trump didn’t care about polls, the journalists continued their interjection, because he was operating on gut instinct. They closed that interjection with this astonishing paragraph:

It would take a combination of mind reader and psychologist to explain fully why Trump was willing to gamble so much more recklessly now. There were the obvious theories: He was term-limited and no longer had to worry about reelection; he had immunity confirmed by the Supreme Court and no longer had to worry about prosecutions; he was more confident in his instincts; he had already served a presidential term and had felt vindicated so often; and there was the fact that he was a walking moral hazard, rarely saddled for long with the costs or consequences of his risk-taking and rule-breaking. Now was his moment to try things, like military adventures and overthrowing the global trade system.

The don’t consider what the rest of us would (indeed, Maggie has specifically disavowed the possibility in interviews) — that the man is nuts, in a dangerous combination of Narcissistic spiral and senility, which makes him very easy to manipulate by a shrinking number of handlers both within and outside the White House. Nor do they consider that possibility in the next paragraph, where they describe how “digressive” the actual interview was. McDonald’s stunt, Walter Reed, Netanyahu “is not afraid of war,” Miss Universe and Venezuela, Pam Bondi’s slowness “with respect to things,” his enthusiasm for but ignorance of his own tariffs.

Then the journalists invite Trump to reflect on how powerful he (believes he) is. That’s where Gary Player came in.

Instead of answering directly, he embarked on a strange story.

“There’s a great golfer named Gary Player,” he said. “Did you ever hear of him?” Player, Trump explained, was a friend and one of the greatest golfers of all time. He had recently turned ninety and Trump had played with him to mark his birthday. “And he shot a seventy-one, which is pretty tough.”

But the point of the story was not about golf. It was about a friend of Player’s, a man Trump described as “a historian.” They had attended an event honoring Player, Trump said, and the historian—whose name Trump could not immediately recall, dispatching Harp to find it—had gotten up to speak. “And he said, ‘I’d like to say something about the President.’ ”

Trump gestured for Harp to bring us copies of the two-page document. He began reading from it, reciting the names of some of history’s most powerful figures, explaining how each fell short of his own power as U.S. President. Alexander the Great, the Caesars, William the Conqueror—“They didn’t have airplanes, right? You couldn’t travel around.” Genghis Khan. Attila the Hun. Tamerlane. “Napoleon,” he said with relish. “Hitler. Mao. Stalin.”

These leaders “maintained power through fear,” he said. “Who would ever do a thing like that? Right?”

Trump lingered on the document’s central argument: that each leader, however fearsome in his day, had no global reach. Their power was local. But his was not.

“I never thought of it in terms of that,” Trump said. “It’s very interesting, the power.” Then he added: “But when I read it, I said, ‘He’s right.’ ”

[snip]

“If President Trump is the American Eagle, then William the Conqueror was merely a sparrow.”

“You can’t talk about your power,” Trump told us. “Oh, I’m so powerful. You can’t do that. Doesn’t come off well.” He was content to let someone else make the case on his behalf, and he wanted to make sure we left with a copy.

The idea was, Trump’s lifetime biographer insinuated, that Trump was letting Gary Player’s “historian” tell of his unsurpassed power, rather than speaking of it himself. He was using a storyteller to make himself the most powerful man in history.

The journalists interject again to reveal that the author of this sycophantic assessment was not a professional historian, but rather a hobbyist; he was actually Player’s caddy. (But then, Trump’s caddy, Dan Scavino, is one of the few who remains in his proximity.)

Nevertheless the caddy story is the foil for Trump to tell Maggie and Swan exactly what they were spinning away through their whole book: he really is that powerful. And they agree with him.

Embellishing this idea, Trump then surprised us by articulating one of the central arguments we had made in the introduction to our book, though from his own peculiar vantage point:

[snip]

the underlying point he made—that if he had served a consecutive second term beginning in January 2021, he would never have accumulated the power he now wielded—matched our own analysis.

The indictments, the conviction, the assassination attempts, the four years of exile that allowed him to shed the restraining forces of his first term, to assemble a team of true loyalists who had spent years studying the levers of government and plotting how to seize them—all of it had, paradoxically, made Trump stronger, more ruthless, and more commanding than he could have been otherwise: the most powerful President of our lifetimes.

Even in quoting John Judis making a different point, that Trump had destroyed a world, they still see that as Trump’s power, not his weakness.

Nobody—not the diplomats in Brussels, not the generals at NATO headquarters, not the delegates at the United Nations—believed the old order was coming back. In making this argument, the political commentator John Judis had compared Trump to one of the philosopher Hegel’s “world-historical individuals”—figures who, without fully understanding what they were doing, demolished one era and ushered in another.

This is, indeed, their thesis, as they lay out in insanely stupid partisan frame in the book’s introduction.

History is full of ironies. For Democrats, there could be no irony more painful than the realization it was their own success in removing Donald Trump from the White House in the 2020 election—and their subsequent determination to ensure he would never return—that has made him the most consequential and feared President of our lifetimes.

Maggie, who provided cover for his first criminal investigation over and over (and makes excuses for doing so in this book), and Swan, who lied about his weaponization of DOJ, treated the attempted prosecution of a coup and stolen documents as a partisan ploy, precisely what Trump claims they were. If only Joe Biden had let himself be beat in 2020, is the conceit, Trump — who was already hiring people using willingness to invoke the Insurrection Act in his lame duck — would not have embraced fascism (though the word fascism only appears in this book in a misleading description of Tyler Robinson’s bullet inscriptions). They outsource the responsibility for Trump’s fascist turn in a book that routinely ignores that the outside foreign influences described as intervening in his second term got him elected the first time (which I’ll return to).

The epilogue ends with Trump bullying Maggie again, in a bid to get her to proclaim him a winner.

Remember this,” he said. “I know your book will be critical, but remember this: People are tired of your bullshit. Always criticizing.”

He invoked his political comeback and 2024 victory. “They illegally indicted me, they impeached me, they did everything—they shot me, I guess you could say. But I won the election in a landslide. Nobody else could’ve done it,” he added. “And there’s only one thing you can say about me that anybody believes, and you know what that is.

“Essentially I won every fucking time,” he said.

Maggie told him she hoped he would read the book, that we thought it captured his presidency quite well.

Trump wasn’t finished. “And I’m tired of winning and winning and winning and just getting bad fucking press. It’s about time that you tell the truth. Okay?”

In the final scene, Trump signs Executive Orders the content of which he doesn’t understand, and a heavy gray hangs over DC.

This is, as Maggie’s stories always are, novelistic non-fiction, a narrative that always casts herself as privileged interpreter of his power and in so doing obscures the most important details, as I described when her last book came out.

Those stories, individually and as a corpus, revealed Trump to be a skilled bully. But those stories of Trump’s bullying commanded our attention, just like his reality TV show did, and reassured him that continued bullying would continue to dominate press coverage.

That press coverage, I’m convinced, not only was complicit in the bullying, but also served as a distraction from things that really mattered or levers that we might have used to neutralize the bullying.

It was power by reality TV. And Maggie Haberman was and remains a key producer of that power.

But we’re at a narrative break. We’re at a moment of Trump’s own making where both the bases of US power — its empire’s roots in the Middle East — and his own family — with Crown Prince Bonesaw’s enormous investments in Trump’s family, may collapse.

And at the moment that happened, Trump chose to travel with the guy whose caddy deemed Trump the most powerful ever over traveling with Natalie Harp.

The post A Player To Be Named Later appeared first on emptywheel.

Thousands flee fighting as Iran-aligned group seeks to consolidate territorial gains against Saudi-backed government forces

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As many as 169 people have been reportedly killed in Yemen in the last three days as Iran-aligned Houthis battle Saudi-backed government forces for control of strategic heights on the Red Sea coast, while thousands flee the violence.

Houthi military officials said at least 118 people had been killed in clashes, as well as Saudi air and artillery strikes on Taiz, al-Jawf, Marib and Saada provinces since Sunday, Agence France-Presse reported. Yemeni government sources have said at least 36 people have been killed on their side of the conflict.

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Donald Trump and Xi Jinping will meet each other next week, but it’s unlikely they’ll agree to AI regulation

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian, writing to you while reading and disagreeing with Jenny Odell’s 2019 book How to Do Nothing. I’m pro-screen time. Today in tech, we’re discussing the upcoming meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, in which AI will likely feature prominently.

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Prime Minister of Canada Mark Carney is Nervous.

He was angry-nervous when he addressed Davos at the beginning of this year. He was polite-and-firm nervous when he was telling the idiot hegemon of America that he couldn’t, and would never, own Canada.

He brought a different nervous to his address to the European Parliament last week. It was more a rally-the-troops nervous, a nervousness that offers too much, too quickly. He came to Europe as a man in need, trying to protect his people. The Parliament welcomed him. As someone who hasn’t had a lot of good meetings lately, that was probably nice for him.

Mark Carney waits patiently while Trump bloviates about some nonsense.

It is reasonable for the Prime Minister of Canada to be nervous about America, almost unreasonable not to be. May of 2025 was when he had to tell Trump that Canada was not for sale. Carney is someone who famously has a bit of a temper (…and the pride of being a self made man…)

He had to pack that all that fury at the mistreatment and mockery of his country by the venal and stupid American president in the the last “ever” of his statement to a US president threatening his country that Canada would never be for sale.

Carney has more reasons to be nervous than most people realize; all is not well in Canada itself. Pierre Poilievre, the leader of Canada’s right wing is mostly off the board right now, and that leads many people to believe that Carney isn’t facing much domestic trouble.

But in fact, he faces a threat that is existential to the integrity of Canada itself, just when the rest of the world is going crazy as well, which makes it easy to miss the trouble out west in Canada, in a province of only four million people. For him, it’s other, less internationally known right wing crazies who are currently much more dangerous.

Mark Carney Has an Alberta Problem

Carney was born in the Northwest Territories, but he grew up in Edmonton, Alberta. He knows the place well, and he knows its politics. Alberta is so often called the Texas of Canada that’s all a lot of Americans know about it.

Alberta, like Texas, is a petro-land. They like to talk big talk about how they prop up their nation and do all the real work. They also, like Texas, like to talk about how maybe they’d be better off without the rest of liberal Canada dragging them down. And like Texas, it’s mostly big nonsense talk. But, again like Texas, they can be a bit crazy… the roads are long and straight, and you can start seeing things when you’ve been on them hour after hour after hour.

No one brings the high level Canadian Crazy quite like Alberta’s premier, Danielle Smith. She is a former right-wing media personality turned politician, which, I would like to remind Canada, is supposed to be our thing.

Jokers to the North

Smith recently came out against Albertan separation, after being kind of for it for a long time? She’s not very easy to understand. She’s also no where near the craziest, full-on dead-end right-winger in the fight about Alberta’s future in Canada. But as premier she is the responsible party in charge of forwarding the steps towards Albertan secession on the ballot, very soon.

On October 19, 2026, Albertans will vote on referenda that includes taking steps to leave Canada. This is not just because of Danielle Smith, but she is the face of Albertan Separatism, at least right now. She’s for it enough to work to put it on the ballot. Kind of, maybe. She’s also come out against Albertan secession, and I find her very confusing.

The movement has its crazies, but no Nigel Farage-like central figure. My guess is that even Alberta’s craziest couldn’t stomach a Nigel Farage. But they do have their own home-grown madmen, (and they are mostly men) and they have their do-or-die Maple MAGAs.

Mitch Sylvestre runs Stay Free Alberta, which got the signatures to put secession on the ballot in the first place. He is a piece of work all on his own.

Jason Lavigne hosts his own eponymous show. He describes himself as an independent journalist, entrepreneur, and homesteader. So, that tracks. Both have gone hard on independence, have MAGA-coded followings, and seem to have the Right Wing instinct that something is only lawless or crazy if damn liberuuls do it. There are more of these types in Alberta, but as an American I can’t dig too deep into Albertan crazy, and don’t feel like doing it anyway.

Alberta Crazy politics does look more funny than dangerous, especially to American eyes. But then, so did Donald Trump in 2015. Here’s a question I don’t know the answer to: If the referendum fails, but it’s close, or it fails along the way, what will Alberta Crazy say, and who will it say it to?

If an oil rich province of Canada cries out for liberation from Canada (In the form of a podcaster who knows one of Trump’s kids or some nonsense like that) will Donald Trump try to free Alberta from its savage capture by Ottawa, one way or another? Probably not, hopefully not. It seems unlikely. It doesn’t seem impossible.

Prime Minister of Canada Mark Carney is Nervous.

Amongst Friends

Carney’s recent speech to the European Parliament went well.

A man in his element with an audience who loves him.

At the beginning, an AFD right wing chud shouted USA repeatedly in the parliament as Carney took the stage. But other than that brief and weird moment, the room was his. He’s well known in Europe from his time as England’s top banker. He is respected and admired all around the EU, even in some of the more right leaning states. Europeans know how to appreciate a good banker.

He worked the room, giving a barnstomer of a speech. Carney opened talking about Vimey Ridge in WW1, and trees planted between France and Canada.

Anything, absolutely anything, that he could tie the EU to Canada, be it trade, values, history, (but mostly values) he tied together. I believe Carney would have reached for just about anything that could be seen to bind the EU and Canada together.

He talked about Canada’s fossil fuels, almost as if he could redirect them toward the energy hungry EU. But most of their output (that isn’t going to Canada’s unspeakable southern neighbor) is already promised and tooled to go out of BC and across the Pacific. Very little comes east, and even less is in the east naturally. He was suggesting something he couldn’t give, and they must have known it, but the room still loved him.

Still, despite the love from the EU, Mark Carney seems nervous to me.

Carney referred to hegemony only once at the EU Parliament, unlike his repeated references in Davos. He never mentioned America, or its president. He wanted to be with the Europeans, geography and law be damned. He wanted the coalition of middle powers he has envisioned to come alive and restrain the powerful crazy marching across the world. But he can’t be with the Europeans. Logistics and geography won’t allow it.

The hegemon himself hung in the Parliament’s air like a cursed ghost, afflicting not just Canada, but Europe and the world as well. (I imagine this is Trump’s favorite part; knowing everyone is thinking about him, reacting to him, making him a real boy.)

Carney’s speech was truly good, I liked it very much, as did much of Europe. It’s a good watch, if you like that kind of thing. He talked about values, in a way that he could back up, in many cases better than many of the nations in the room. Carney said, “This is about sovereignty. Our ability to live as we wish.” And in this he was completely right. The threats are to our rights, our sovereignty, our peace, our collective future itself – and our future on this planet. But in that august chamber, there is less ability than anyone would like to admit to determine our own futures, in either Canada or Europe.

In the spirit of the moment, perhaps even swept up in the moment, Ursula von der Leyen proposed associate membership to the EU as a status for Canada. But it’s more a synecdoche of the European support; “associate membership” is not a thing. It is something she has seemingly pulled out of her butt. If it was a real thing, that will come as an infuriating surprise in the southeast of Europe. After the work put in by counties like Montenegro, Moldova, and of course Ukraine, they’d probably like to know why they can’t be “associate members” and access the benefits that would theoretically have.

Like his oil moving west to east, it can only be small. But it does also reflect real values, a yearning to stand together in a dangerous world.

The EU loved his speech, his presence. They loved Carney, and the bygone world he represented where a good man could make a fine speech and maybe save the world a little.

“We share one ocean, one set of values, one way of seeing the world. And we will now build our shared future as well,” von der Leyen said of their Canadian guest.

Trump showing off a model of his arch like it’s his favorite toy to the leader of a real, grown up, country.

But that ocean is in practice a barrier to trade and support, and the mad hegemon sits below them, staring at Europe in particular, a Europe further away than Canada, but a place he wishes to dominate for reasons of race and race theory. This world is growing more fragile day by day, not just for the victims of the Trump admin, but for everyone, even the villains. The crops are uncertain under hotter skies. The rains are unpredictable; money itself is slowly losing meaning as the US continues to spiral into madness and treasuries debt.

The EU is nervous.

Perhaps we should all be a bit nervous.

 

The post Carney’s Stuck in the Middle with EU appeared first on emptywheel.

Trump threatens to ‘annihilate’ Iran and ‘drive them into Hell’ if there isn’t a deal, while also underscoring US policy on Cuba, Mexico, Greenland and AI

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Trump is arriving at the UN HQ right now.

After very brief doorstep comments – almost exclusively mocking CNN - he answers a reporter’s very loud question by saying his message to Putin is: “settle the war.”

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Agreement signed at the UN general assembly in New York

Nordic correspondent

Emotions among Greenlanders are a mixture of hope, scepticism and fear ahead of the signing of a new much vaunted deal on Arctic security between the US, Greenland and Denmark.

“There have been many different reactions in Greenland because they are talking about a deal but no one can see the deal, we don’t know what it is all about, and what’s in it for us or what’s in it. Also, because we have been terrorised as a people for the last 1.5 years by the American president, so many people feel no trust at all.”

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If anything, the ongoing war is uniting a divided country against the foreign invaders. Washington seems a long way from grasping this point

The US president, Donald Trump, asked recently on one of his Truth Social rants: “When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?” So frenetic and all-over-the-place are Trump’s statements that one does not know which are actual policies and which are simply noise. But if counting on the “Iranian people” to rise up and fight is indeed US policy then, as far as I can tell from within Iran, it is a failed one. And miserably so. At least for now.

There is no reliable nationwide polling that can tell us what Iranians think about the war in real time. So this is an observation, not a poll. It comes from conversations I have had with many people.

Hossein Hamdieh holds a joint PhD in Geography and Anthropology from Humboldt University of Berlin and King’s College London. He is currently based in Tehran, where he works as a social researcher

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US president says Burnham will be ‘a great PM’ in friendly first meeting on the sidelines of New York gathering but makes jibe at Starmer

If Andy Burnham wanted to inject some edge into his meeting with Donald Trump later (which he doesn’t), he could bring along a copy of today’s Financial Times. This front page headline speaks for itself.

Mortgages ‘on the front line’ as Iran war deals £840 blow to homeowners

British homeowners are paying an average of £840 a year more when they refinance their mortgages, as the rising borrowing costs triggered by the Iran war start to impact consumers’ spending power.

Approximately 1m households have rolled off fixed-rate mortgage deals since February, according to Bank of England data.

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Since the Trump Justice Department warned state and local election officials that they could be charged with allowing fraudulent voting activities, more than 200 arrests and indictments have been secured in a crackdown on election fraud and noncitizen voting, and that number could double soon, a top official revealed to Just the News.

US president uses speech to UN General Assembly to push his narrative of the war

Tehran appears to have relaxed its preconditions for reopening the strait of Hormuz, saying it is prepared to do so within seven days so long as the US takes reciprocal steps to ease the pressure on Iran.

Previously Iran had set seven onerous pre-conditions for lifting the blockade including “an end to war on all fronts” and a commitment by the US to cease all aggressive actions against Iran including sanctions.

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Molly McCann Sanders has a lot in common with many of the other women who helped Donald Trump win a second term as president. A pro-life Catholic who lives in Texas, she has staunchly conservative opinions on immigration and a fierce hatred of eminent domain—the practice of the government taking private property for public use.

President has been posting on Washington arch, AI and his ‘25 top achievements’ – the chances of an uplifting speech appear slim

The annual gathering of the United Nations general assembly has historically been a platform for US presidents to display their most serious face and a positive vision to the world.

From Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower to John F Kennedy and Barack Obama, over eight decades US leaders have used the setting to expound on grand themes before a global audience at pivotal moments in international affairs.

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Peace Vigilers remember Peace Vigil site on anniversary of eviction. Photo: Photographer 4 Justice

Washington DC—It hardly seems like a year has passed since the Secret Service raided the William Thomas Memorial Peace Vigil Tent and took down its signage. The Peace Vigil Tent sat across from the North Portico of the White forty-four years straight, the longest running peace vigil in the North American continent.

Members of the Peace Vigil held a one year remembrance of the legendary Peace Vigil and spoke about the great sacrifices its former activists made to keep it going. They also heralded its many achievements including honoring the principles of the First Amendment.

“The Vigil stands for everybody’s right to the First Amendment,” said Philipos Melaku-Bello, longtime peace activist. “With that being taken down, watch out for the things you actually care about.” He recalled the incidents of the days leading up to its removal. He spoke about Will Roosien, one of its youngest activists who jumped onto the tent to protect the tent as National Park Service Police detained him and took away the tent.

Rowena, another peace activist, said, “ The Peace Vigil was our place to have our First Amendment Rights to protest and its been there for 44 years. The ‘Peace President,’ the man who said he wanted the Nobel Peace Prize is the one who dismantled it after 44 years, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”

What Led To The Peace Vigil Takedown

On September 17 2025, right-wing media personality Brian Glenn broached the subject of the Peace Vigil Tent to Trump. In his question, which was more like a loaded screed, he implied the Peace Vigil stored weapons and posed a “national security risk” in Lafayette Park. He further alleged the Vigilers were radical leftists standing against American values, using drugs, and creating a rat-infested space. Melaku-Bello said that none of this is true.

Upon hearing Glenn’s screed, Trump response to his staff was to “Take it down. Take it down today, right now.” Later on Friday after Melaku-Bello learned of the press conference, he extended his shift at the Peace Vigil through Friday night past his scheduled quitting time. He remained there all through Saturday, Saturday night, and he did not leave until early Sunday morning. Melaku-Bello anticipated police would arrive at any minute and he wanted to be there if they did. By Sunday morning it seemed that the threat had passed as no police forces had come.Will Roosien, who had remained with Melaku-Bello throughout the 40-hours’ marathon shift, remained behind as Melaku-Bello left for a break.

Minutes after Melaku-Bello left—after sitting for nearly 2 days straight—U.S. Park Police swept into Lafayette Square and confiscated the blue tarp tent, its frame, and cinder block anchors. Roosien called Melaku-Bello, who immediately returned to join the relief activist, and he continued seated at the Peace Vigil for the third day. He remained at the Vigil as of September 19, 2025, Sunday night at 6 pm.

Led by Phillipo Melaku-Bello, a dozen or so vigilers continued holding onto their court protected spot on the red bricks. Exhausted by a long waiting game, Mulaku-Bello left after holding watch for nearly 40 hours. Just 15 minutes later, when all but one Vigiler was left, Secret Service rushed in and confiscated the tent, its frame and anchors, and all the signs. No weapon was found. There were no drugs. No alcohol. No charges were filed because there was no violation of any statute.

There was no justification for the takedown except that a right wing media report asked Trump about it and Trump ordered that it be removed. No other president had been so threatened by the tent and none other had ordered it removed. In fact the opposite is the case. Several presidents had food brought out to the Vigilers on Thanksgivings past. One president had food brought out with $100 dollar bills taped to the bottom of the plates. During President Obama’s tenure one of his daughters visited the Vigil and spoke to the activists at the tent. She wanted to know about them and encouraged them to continue.

A Brief History Of The Peace Vigilers

The history of those who envisioned a continuous presence outside the White House is a colorful story that could be a novel. Hundreds of activists took part in its 4 1/2 decades timeline. Some are no longer living. Some can only be recalled in photos exhibited on the black wired fence the activists put up to memorialize them.

Historically the Peace Vigil clawed its way into existence by the tireless effort of William Thomas, the vigil’s founder, along with many uncounted peace activists who accompanied him. They set up a continuous protest on June 4, 1981, outside the White House to demonstrate against the nuclear arms race. Their persistence annoyed then President Ronald Reagan. As a result they faced constant police harassment and many arrests because they kept returning to the sidewalk after being released.

After hundreds of arrests, a DC Superior Court Judge ordered that the Peace Vigil could remain which finally enshrined its right to remain across from the White House as long as it met several conditions. The order required the signs not be displayed over 6 feet and that someone always be present at the tent, 24-hours a day, 7-days a week, even on holidays.

The Peace Vigil was not expected by anyone to last very long. The Judge and President Reagan didn’t fret about the court order and the Secret Service kept its distance except to watch the stream of activists come and go.

Since the Peace Vigil tent was by order allowed on the sidewalk at Lafayette Square, responsibility to oversee its conformance with the court order fell under the authority of the U.S. Park Police. Lafayette Square is considered a National Park therefore code violations falls under its authority.

But William Thomas had plans for it to last indefinitely and that court order gave him everything he needed. He purchased a property on 12th Street at a property auction, he named it the Peace House. He and a committed group organized around the Peace House and it provided a stable location for activists to rest and refurbish between shifts. Havoa home to organize gave the activists an opportunity to organize more deeply in the community. The Peace House became a Mecca for many activists and campaigns.

The Proposition One Campaign (Prop1) was born of the efforts of the activists at the Peace Vigil. In concert with DC Representative Eleanore Holmes Norton (non-voting) an initiative to void the country of nuclear weapons was proposed 17 times. The latest was in 2025. The proposal never made it out of the House.

After William Thomas died, the Peace House survived until 2016 when it fell into disrepair under the management of some individuals who had stopped supporting the Peace Vigil. It was eventually sold after a long court battle.

Activists continued supporting the Peace Vigil despite the difficulties of transportation and logistics. Some activists were houseless and supported it anyway. By 2025 the Peace Vigil celebrated its 44th anniversary. It lasted through 7 presidents, quite an achievement when considering the Judge who issued the order and the president in office at the time had long since perished. The Peace Vigil message survived.

The spirit of the resistance against nuclear weapons was subsumed by other pressing issues as time passed: world hunger, human rights, Palestinian rights, Tibetan independence, the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, and many other issues took over the signage as the decades passed. But one issue remained constant and that was the right of citizens to speak out in opposition to their elected representatives and government. It was with that spirit the Peace Vigilers returned on Saturday, September 19, for the anniversary of the tent takedown. Even now they refuse to go away though they have to assemble nearly 200 feet from the space permanently granted to them 44 years ago.

The Peace Vigil survived through Presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bull Clinton, George W. Bush, Barak Obama, Donald Trump (First Term), Joe Biden, and Donald Trump (Second Term). It survived because of grit and determination on the part of those who believed ir was something worthy of their time and volunteerism.

Many vigilers learned about people from around the world because it attracted tourists who wanted to know what it meant that a resistance tent was so close to the White House. Then stories would be shared about life in their home countries. Many left with an understanding of what the First Amendment meant in practice because its unique concept was often not something they had been able to experience back in their countries.

Will The Peace Vigil Return?

The future of the Peace Vigil remains uncertain at this time but the Vigilers have committed to keep it alive. Their voices have not been silenced and their spirit is still burning hot. It is hoped that the tide of oppressive government will soon turn in the U.S. At the present, rights are being stripped away daily.

On Sunday, a day after the Vigilers assembled to remember and reflect on their institution, the president banned legacy media outlets CNN, MS Now, and Politico from the West Wing pressroom. On Monday their credentials were confiscated. Of course they will challenge the ban in court.

There was no solid reason given for the ban, only that their reporting did not suit the president’s agenda. And yet it was another violation of the First Amendment, no different than tearing down the court-protected Peace Vigil tent.

None of these news organizations were around to cover the removal of the Peace Vigil Tent last September. They did not speak out for the Peace Vigil or its members. These media organizations were also among those institutions unwilling to challenge the president for his gradual departure from respecting rights when Trump first took office as he began stripping them away in January 2025. Many rights have been stripped from different parties and institutions in different ways.

The legacy press are now beginning to understand the consequences of not having courage to defend their rights for others’ rights sake like that of the Peace Vigil.

Will the Peace Vigil return to the Red Bricks outside the North Portico of the White House? That will depend upon how much the community is willing to fight to get their First Amendment rights restored. The Vigillers cannot do it on their own.

The post Evicted Peace Vigil Activists Stake Claim To Lost First Amendment Rights One Year On appeared first on DCMediaGroup.

Republican president said he hoped the democratic socialist would be a ‘great mayor’ for New York City

Donald Trump said on Monday that he hoped Zohran Mamdani would be a “great mayor” for New York, an unusually warm assessment of the democratic socialist leader whom the president and his Republican allies have spent months holding up as a symbol of the Democratic party’s alleged embrace of “communism” ahead of the November midterms.

At a news conference following their closed-door meeting at Gracie Mansion, Trump and Mamdani appeared friendly as they have in previous meetings. Mamdani said he and Trump held a “wide-ranging” discussion, which touched on affordable housing and immigration, but did not offer extensive details regarding any disagreements between them.

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A Dozen Ways Donald Trump Is Rigging the Midterms: An Exhaustive Report on a Premeditated Election-Theft Plot

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Supreme court, which has twice blocked maps from being used in November, likely to have final say in legal fight

A long-running legal fight over Missouri’s congressional map took another turn Monday when a federal appeals panel ruled in favor of new districts backed by Donald Trump, even though the US supreme court has blocked those districts from being used in the November election.

A three-judge panel of the 8th US circuit court of appeals said Missouri should use the new Republican-drawn US House districts in the November election, just as the state did in its August primary. To revert to its prior districts for the general election would violate the US constitution, the appeals judges said.

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Andy Burnham seeks stability in Middle East to bring down prices at home as first meeting with Trump looms

The UK has agreed to provide defensive air support to Saudi Arabia to help counter Houthi fighters and restore stability in the Middle East while driving down the cost of living at home, Andy Burnham has said, ahead of his first meeting with Donald Trump.

The prime minister said he had agreed to a request for air-to-air refuelling of Saudi jets to defend energy infrastructure against the Iran-backed rebels and help keep oil flowing from the Gulf to ease global economic turmoil.

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Satire is dead. But it’s been dead since the first Trump administration, back when people were “owning the libs” with a combination of horse dewormers and willfully contracting COVID. Bleach consumption was discussed. It was a whole thing.

Not enough of those people died, apparently. We somehow got a second season of Trump and at this point, it looks like farce may finally have been killed off.

In addition to forming a white Christian nationalist death cult, Trump really wants history to remember him as one of the most self-aggrandizing people to ever serve as President of the United States. He would rather raze the Kennedy Center to the ground than have it continue without his name splashed all over it. He has literally gilded the lily all over DC, sending out his Parks and Rec folks to splash a bunch of gold paint over a bunch of monuments and statues.

In addition to constructing a hideous ballroom apparently inspired by the 1921 July 4th Ball held at the Overlook Hotel, Trump has held a military parade in his own honor and turned the 250th birthday of America into an MMA/White House crossover filled with mandatory attendees.

He also wants his own Arc de Triomphe. But while the French version celebrates the country’s military victories (both of them!) and is generally representative of national pride, Trump’s version would be all about Trump.

The problems are several. First, it’s the subject of litigation. Second, even his own National Park Service has pointed out that it would have an “adverse effect” on nearby historical monuments, including the Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial (the one with the misbehaving pool). Trump’s own FAA expressed some concerns about the proposed arch’s interference with flight paths but ultimately did the let’s-give-Trump-what-he-wants thing and suggested the only alteration be some sort of a warning light on top for planes… perhaps some sort of “eternal flame.” [Vomits involuntarily.]

Trump is struggling to justify building a gaudy piece of white-and-gold bullshit as a paean to his superior mediocrity. So, he’s doing what he always does in situations like these: fire up Truth Social to deliver rants/statements that look like they were composed by someone on a cocaine-and-151 bender.

To wit:

If you can’t read/see the embed… oh man. You’re in for a treat. I’m just going to post the whole thing here because any cherry-picking of the best/worst parts might lead some people to believe that I’m just making this shit up.

Buckle up, buttercups:

At the strong request of the United States Military, and for National Security purposes, I have agreed to convert the magnificent Triumphal Arch, planned since the Civil War Era many years ago, at the Receptive Circle adjoining the Arlington Memorial Bridge, into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage. There will be no facility like this anywhere in the World. Out of the 59 top cities and Capitals, Washington, D.C., IS THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD THAT DOES NOT HAVE A TRIUMPHAL ARCH, but it will now and, by far, the greatest of them all! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

You’re seeing this too, right? It’s not just me who may or may not be on a cocaine-and-151 bender? This is a guy who thinks everyone respects him just out there on main claiming the “United States Military” has requested he turn his ego stroke of a monument into some sort of immobile war machine.

This sounds like it was written by a seven-year-old to explain the massive amount of hand-drawn violence currently covering the notebook paper he was supposed to be using to show his work during math class. I cannot imagine any healthy adult actually claiming a “triumphal arch” can — or even should! — house “large numbers of drones, plus Snipers… and… large quantities of sniper ammunition.”

Are we supposed to believe the “roof” of the monument will just be launching pads for drones — drones, I might add, that will be launched directly into the flight paths of descending commercial flights arriving at Dulles? Are the snipers just going to live there? Will the two towers of the arc act like extended clips for sniper ammo? Will it just be 250+ feet of belt-fed ammo accessed directly through “Freedom Slits” or whatever the fuck?

And what even is a “top grade Military Complex” in the context of self-gratifying embarrassment of a monument? And if it is actually going to be all of these things, why are we telling everyfuckingbody that we’re building a drones-and-bullets centerpiece in Washington, DC? Won’t that just make it one of the first targets in any invasion/terrorist attack/rummaging for pawnable goods after its erection? Speaking of erections, why can’t we have a president who gets off to normal things, like Marilyn Monroe? Or being cucked by Lorena Hickok?

All I can see now is some sort of drone-encircled, twin-towered .50 cal with Trump branding and a bunch of pissed off guys dressed like Solid Snake doomscrolling social media 250 feet above the ground. If for no other reason than Trump’s own Truth Social post, this abomination should never be constructed. But if we’re going to get blighted by the blightiest of self-declared urbanites, we may as well make it something everyone in the world will instinctively want to destroy.

White House promoted its own ‘Trump TV’ feed online after ABC, CBS, Fox News and NBC decline to participate

The major US television news outlets agreed to suspend their video coverage of Donald Trump after the administration banned journalists from several outlets from entering the White House grounds.

The collective decision came after the barred outlets – CNN, MS Now and Politico – sued the administration on Monday, saying the president’s actions were a violation of their first amendment rights.

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President Trump is losing the lights and cameras as his Left-wing media ban took an unexpected turn Monday. Fox News pulled out of the presidential news pool in response to the White House's ban on CNN, Politico, and MS NOW, meaning the president's trip to the United Nations General Assembly will go without a television crew providing video coverage. The presidential television pool consists of five networks — CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox News. Each network takes turns serving as "pool chair," meaning it provides video coverage of presidential events designated as pool events...

Major TV networks that rotate covering the president for wider media distribution say they will not do so moving forward after President Trump banned three media outlets from the White House last week. Fox News Media, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News and CNN responded to the ban in a rare joint statement, saying "the public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government."...

The White House press pool covers and travels with the U.S. president every day, providing news outlets and the public with a near-constant stream of information on the leader's activities. With the television pool suspending coverage of President Donald Trump after he banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, the public could be deprived of critical information about the president's activities...

The Great Greenland Crisis has ended, and Donald Trump has declared victory. Last Friday, the president announced that he had reached a deal with the Danes that would give "the United States permanent control over security, and all other needs, in Greenland, completely addressing ALL of our many U.S. concerns." The barren, icy prize is finally ours. Or is it? Despite the usual bluster, bravado, and social media posts showing Greenland colored in with the Stars and Stripes, Trump's avowed aim of annexation was not accomplished. The Dannebrog will still flutter in the Arctic breeze. According to a statement put out by Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen Friday, the deal "recognizes the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom [of Denmark] and the Greenlandic people's right to self-determination."

Apparently autumn is when President Donald Trump feels free to admit to his anti-free speech, anti-free press ways. For a guy who constantly lied about being in support of free speech, despite regularly suing people and news organizations for their speech, he’s been remarkably willing to admit to wanting to abuse power to suppress speech lately. A year ago, he admitted that he “took the freedom of speech away” when he tried to remove the First Amendment protections (something he cannot actually do) regarding flag burning. And last week, when asked about it in the oval office, he admitted that he was “banning the free press”:

Trump says he's "banning the free press"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-09-18T20:38:14.520Z

Specifically, he’s banning CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House. (MS NOW, for anyone who missed the rebrand, is the network formerly known as MSNBC.) If you didn’t see it, he (naturally) announced the ban with no due process on his personal propaganda and grift site, Truth Social:

That’s him posting:

I am proud to announce that, effective immediately, I am banning Fake News CNN, MSNOW (who recently changed their name from MSNBC due to lack of viewership and credibility!), and Politico (The recipients of an illegal and ridiculous $8 Million Dollar subscription, an All Time Record, directly from the United States Government, under Crooked Joe Biden, in order to keep them “alive.” Seems like corruption to me!), from the White House as a result of their constant “reporting” FAKE NEWS! Media Outlets shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President of the United States, the Trump Administration, or the United States of America. Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Yes, you’re very proud to announce yet another attack on free speech and the free press. Also, the whole “$8 million dollar subscription” thing is a bullshit misreading of subscriptions taken out by many different individuals and agencies across the federal government to Politico’s subscription offering.

Of course, all this is unconstitutional. We know this because we’ve been through this before. In his first term he banned a couple of reporters from the White House for asking questions he didn’t like, and he lost in court.

In this case, the White House has already denied access to reporters from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico:

Reporters for CNN, MS NOW and Politico said they were denied access to the White House grounds Saturday, a day after President Donald Trump said the three news organizations were banned from the location.

The fact that this is such an extreme and obvious attack on speech doesn’t much matter to Trump or his MAGA supporters, who are already making up all sorts of excuses about how this is perfectly normal and fine.

They’re lying.

And we know they’re lying. We know it from Trump’s own first term, and we know it from Obama’s first term, when many of these same people lost their minds over something far less egregious: avoiding having administration officials appear on Fox News, claiming the network was “a wing of the Republican Party.” After widespread complaints about this, including from other White House reporters, the White House backed down and made officials available to Fox News again.

Years later, Tom Fitton’s Judicial Watch FOIA’d the White House emails about all this and spun them into another round of stories about Obama officials making jokes at Fox News’ expense.

“The Obama administration seems to have lied about its attempt to exclude Fox News Channel from access to an interview with the ‘pay czar,'” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.

Fitton told Fox News the White House treatment was “something Hugo Chavez might do but it really has no place in modern-day America.”

Rather than condemning Trump’s action, Fitton went on X and posted a link about the Obama story, leaving out every detail that makes the two situations different. So, to be clear: Trump has fully banned three top news orgs from the White House. In 2009, the Obama administration thought about excluding Fox News from a pool of reporters to interview a mid-level administration official, and then backed down almost immediately when the rest of the media industry complained. To Tom Fitton, these are apparently the same thing:

As always, with MAGA folks, the hypocrisy is the policy. Trump and his supporters love showing off about how they get away with breaking the rules that they would never allow a Democrat to break. To them it’s a form of “owning the libs.”

Also, what a weird group of news orgs to exclude. CNN has spent years bending over backwards to try to sanewash nearly everything that Trump has done. They regularly platform liars like Scott Jennings to spew Trump’s false talking points. Meanwhile, Politico is owned by Axel Springer, whose CEO, Mathias Döpfner, has spent years platforming far-right political figures from Viktor Orban to Elon Musk, and has repeatedly supported Donald Trump. He even wrote an ass-kissing piece in Politico (now banned from the White House) as a kind of open letter to the EU, that they should give Trump what he wants: “Trump wants a strong Europe — and Europe should listen.”

And his reward: having his journalists banned from the White House.

Why, it’s almost as if sucking up to the petty, thin-skinned authoritarian in the White House is no guarantee that he won’t turn around and punish you for saying something he dislikes.

Unsurprisingly, CNN, Politico, and MSNOW sued earlier this morning.

This ban could not be a more direct assault on the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles. Presidents from the earliest days of the Republic have disagreed with and complained about the tenor and content of press coverage of their administrations. But as the Supreme Court has recognized, the First Amendment, including its guarantee of a free press, reflects “a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 270 (1964). And the Constitution protects the liberty and property interests that news organizations and White House reporters have in their press credentials and the access those credentials afford them to cover the White House for the benefit of the public. No official can deprive Plaintiffs of those interests on a whim—with no notice, no process, and no warning—as the President did here.

As Trump’s health and political power begin to wane, we’re starting to see major media companies display what can only be described as the faint outline of a backbone. We’ve seen it with ABC’s lawsuit against the FCC for its bogus censorship efforts. And we’re also seeing it here, as numerous major media outlets say they’re cutting off all coverage of presidential events due to the ban:

BREAKING: TV pool will not be providing coverage of presidential events until further notice b/c of CNN's ban, pool chair and FOX News Washington Bureau Chief Bryan Boughton said. It's effectively a boycott by the fellow members — ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX: www.washingtonpost.com/business/202…

— Scott Nover (@scottnover.bsky.social) 2026-09-21T13:11:51.388Z

Perhaps realizing that his own statements on “banning the free press” are likely to look bad in court, Trump went back to Truth Social this morning as well to insist that when he said he was “banning the free press” he didn’t actually mean a ban on the free press:

That’s him saying:

The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America. It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control. It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

Which… is not how any of this works. The whole point of the First Amendment is that no government official, let alone the president, gets to decide what is good reporting and what is “fake news.” Because the second a government officials gets to make that determination is the second the First Amendment is nothing but a dead letter.

As Trump gets more afraid of his own embarrassing political and existential collapse, he’ll only lash out further. But the threats will increasingly carry less weight; particularly if the midterms deliver a lame duck president. And again, while intended to portray strength, they’ll only demonstrate growing fear and weakness by a dim authoritarian narcissist clearly approaching the end of the line.

At this point no one serious still believes that Trump is “the free speech president,” but calling out each of his increasingly erratic censorial attacks on free speech is still important in reminding everyone that this is not normal, not constitutional, and absolutely not in support of free speech.

Protesters in Austin, Texas, demonstrated against the Trump administration’s hardline anti-immigration campaign after an ICE agent shot and wounded a man on Sunday afternoon. Eyewitness footage filmed moments after the shooting shows the ICE officer standing next to an open car door, in which there is a visible dent. The man, identified by relatives and his lawyer as 28-year-old Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, was taken to a hospital in Austin in a serious but stable condition, officials said, before being taken into custody.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said it was leading an investigation into the officer involved in the shooting, with the help of the FBI. Austin police officers were not involved in the operation or the shooting, which occurred after a traffic stop, mayor Kirk Watson stated at a press conference

• ICE agent shoots and wounds Venezuelan man at traffic stop in Austin, Texas

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