August 31, 2025

Karen DeYoung & Kate Brown of the Washington Post: “A postwar plan for Gaza circulating within the Trump administration, modeled on ... Donald Trump’s vow to 'take over' the enclave, would turn it into a trusteeship administered by the United States for at least 10 years while it is transformed into a gleaming tourism resort and high-tech manufacturing and technology hub. The 38-page prospectus ... envisions at least a temporary relocation of all of Gaza’s more than 2 million population, either through what it calls 'voluntary' departures to another country or into restricted, secured zones inside the enclave during reconstruction. Those who own land would be offered a digital token by the trust in exchange for rights to redevelop their property, to be used to finance a new life elsewhere or eventually redeemed for an apartment in one of six to eight new 'AI-powered, smart cities' to be built in Gaza. Each Palestinian who chooses to leave would be given a $5,000 cash payment and subsidies to cover four years of rent elsewhere, as well as a year of food.” The link is a gift link. MB: Sounds more like a gleaming war crime to me.

Mariana Alfaro of the Washington Post: “The Trump administration on Sunday grounded planes carrying migrant children that the White House intended to deport to Guatemala after a federal judge issued an emergency order temporarily blocking any removal of about 600 unaccompanied minors. Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said she learned from plaintiffs that the administration was putting hundreds of unaccompanied minors onto flights on Sunday morning despite an order she issued earlier in the day barring officials for 14 days from deporting 10 children named in a lawsuit. As a result, she moved up a hearing to early Sunday afternoon and extended her pause to cover the roughly 600 children from Guatemala at risk of deportation....  

“Drew Ensign, who represented the Justice Department, said during the hearing that his agency was not aware of the initial order blocking the deportations when the children were first put on the plane. Sooknanan had issued the order early Sunday morning after the National Immigration Law Center entered an emergency filing seeking a pause in the deportation of 10 Guatemalan children. While Sooknanan’s first order covered only the 10 children listed as plaintiffs in the initial filing, she extended her pause during the afternoon hearing to cover the roughly 600 children at risk of deportation because the suit was filed as a class action.” Politico's story is here.

Traitors Ask for Compensation. Alan Feuer of the New York Times: “...  even though the president has given [the January 6 insurrectionists] their freedom and has taken steps toward satisfying their desire for retribution, they are asking for more: In the past several weeks, the rioters and their lawyers have made a concerted effort to push the Trump administration into paying them restitution for what they believe to be their unfair prosecutions. On Thursday, one of the lawyers, Mark McCloskey, said during a public meeting on social media that he had recently met with top officials at the Justice Department and pitched them on a plan to create a special panel that would dole out financial damages to the rioters — much like the arrangement of a special master to award money to the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.” 

Todd Feurer, et al., of CBS News: "Mayor Brandon Johnson signed a sweeping but largely symbolic executive order Saturday afternoon to protect residents' rights in preparation for federal agents possibly arriving in Chicago for a major immigration enforcement effort. The order also seeks to bar any federal agents working in Chicago from wearing masks, and to require them to wear badges and other identifying information. The Democratic mayor's signing of the 'Protecting Chicago Initiative' comes amid growing concerns of a military deployment to America's third-largest city as soon as Friday. The order seeks to ensure that residents know their rights, and every part of the city government is directed to protect residents from federal action, the mayor said at a news conference." ~~~

~~~ Kaia Hubbard of CBS News: "Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday that 'we haven't taken anything off the table' when asked about expanding immigration enforcement operations to cities throughout the U.S.... Noem said Sunday that there's been 'ongoing operations with ICE in Chicago and throughout Illinois and other states, making sure that we're upholding our laws.' But she acknowledged that 'we do intend to add more resources to those operations.'"

David Cohen of Politico: “'I only see harm coming,' said Demetre Daskalakis in an interview that aired Sunday about his departure from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Speaking to host Martha Raddatz on ABC’s 'This Week,' Daskalakis discussed his resignation as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, which came after the ouster last week of CDC Director Susan Monarez, a Trump appointee who came in to conflict with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccinations. Three other top health officials also resigned.”

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: “Rudolph W. Giuliani was injured in a car accident in New Hampshire on Saturday evening and taken to a hospital with a fractured vertebra, according to the head of security for the former mayor of New York City.... A person close to Mr. Giuliani said he was expected to recover. Mr. Giuliani, 81, was traveling on a highway after having stopped to help a  'woman who was the victim of a domestic violence incident,' Michael Ragusa, Mr. Giuliani’s security official, said in a social media post.” At 4:30 pm ET Sunday, this was a developing story. An NBC News story is here.

Thanks, Trump! Laura Bicker, et al., of BBC News: "The leaders of China and India say there is now deepening trust between them after years of tension that includes a long-running border dispute. China's President Xi Jinping and Indian PM Narendra Modi met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) in the port city of Tianjin. It is Modi's first time in China in seven years. Xi told Modi that China and India should be partners, not rivals, while Modi said there was now an 'atmosphere of peace and stability' between them. Russian President Vladimir Putin is also at the summit, attended by more than 20 world leaders, which this year has been overshadowed by trade wars with the US." ~~~

~~~ Kapil Komireddi in a New York Times op-ed: “For three decades, successive American presidents have invested enormous diplomatic capital to cultivate a friendship with India.... To Washington, India was a vast emerging market, a potential counterweight to China, a key partner in maintaining Indo-Pacific security and a rising power whose democratic identity would bolster a rules-based international order. For its part, India — mistrustful of the West after nearly a century of British colonial rule — shed its Cold War suspicion of Washington, which had armed and financed its archnemesis Pakistan for decades, and moved steadily closer to the United States. It took Donald Trump one summer to obliterate these gains.”

Adeel Hassan of the New York Times: “A rural Tennessee sheriff who was portrayed by Hollywood as a leader who had to bend the law in order to fight crime killed his wife 58 years ago, prosecutors announced on Friday. They said that they had amassed enough evidence against the sheriff, Buford Pusser, who served in McNairy County from 1964-70, to present an indictment to a grand jury in the killing of his wife, Pauline Mullins Pusser, 33, who died in 1967. Though Sheriff Pusser died in a car crash seven years after his wife’s death, prosecutors said it was critical to make public what they had learned, in part because the case inspired the Nixon-era law-and-order hit 'Walking Tall' in 1973. The movie ... starred Joe Don Baker as Sheriff Pusser, a crusading official who cleaned up the streets with the help of a colossal baseball bat.”

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Trump Issues Another (Unconstitutional) Royal Decree. Yan Zhuang of the New York Times: Donald “Trump said late Saturday that he would issue an executive order to require voter identification for all U.S. elections, a continuation of his efforts to overhaul the nation’s election laws, which he has long attacked and falsely blamed for his 2020 election loss. In a post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump said, 'Voter I.D. Must Be Part of Every Single Vote. NO EXCEPTIONS! I Will Be Doing An Executive Order To That End!!!' He did not provide further details about the order. He also reiterated his intention to restrict mail-in voting except for those who are very ill or in the military serving far away, as well as his opposition to voting machines.... The Constitution gives the president no explicit authority to regulate elections. Rather, it gives states the power to decide the rules of elections, oversee voting and try to prevent fraud. It gives Congress the ability to override state laws on voting. Any executive order from the president regarding elections is likely to see immediate legal challenges.”     

Trump Upset Subs Ruined the Stone Slabs He Installed to Ruin the Rose Garden. Jennifer Bahney of Mediaite: “...  Donald Trump ranted on social media against 'stupid' subcontractors he accused of nearly ruining the White House Rose Garden remodel. In a lengthy Truth Social post, Trump referenced his real estate background before saying he found a 'deep and nasty' gash in the Rose Garden and he angrily insisted to know who was responsible. 'I used, at the White House, the most beautiful marble and stone available anywhere. Surfaces are very important to me as a Builder. As everyone knows, I built many GREAT Buildings, and other things, over the years,' Trump wrote.” (Also linked yesterday.)

This Will Not Surprise You. Erica Green of the New York Times: “While tens of thousands of employees have lost their jobs in Mr. Trump’s slash-and-burn approach to shrinking the federal work force, experts say the cuts disproportionately affect Black employees — and Black women in particular. Black women make up 12 percent of the federal work force, nearly double their share of the labor force overall. For generations, the federal government has served as a ladder to the middle class for Black Americans who were shut out of jobs because of discrimination.... According to a New York Times tracker of Mr. Trump’s cuts, agencies where minorities and women were the majority of the work force, such as the Department of Education and U.S.A.I.D., were targeted for the largest work force reductions or complete elimination.... In his second term, Mr. Trump has been aggressive in removing high-profile leaders of color, in particular, often disparaging them as incompetent, corrupt or D.E.I. hires....  

“The A.C.L.U. and a group of employment attorneys alleged that among other things, the dismissals 'disproportionately singled out federal workers who were not male or white,' in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.Economists say that Black women are being hit especially hard by Mr. Trump’s policies, which are also rippling through the private sector as corporations have abandoned their diversity, equity and inclusion practices and related jobs, many of which were held by Black women.”

Trump did not invent this playbook. It depends on the squelching of all independent centers of thought, and that includes universities, law firms and scientists. -- Thomas Countryman, career diplomat 

Despots want science that has practical results. They’re afraid that basic knowledge will expose their false claims. -- Paul Josephson, history professor ~~~

~~~ William Broad of the New York Times: Donald Trump's “blitz on science stands out because America’s labs and their discoveries powered the nation’s rise in the last century and now foster its global influence.... n rapid bursts, Mr. Trump has also laid off large teams of scientists, pulled the plug on thousands of research projects and proposed deep spending cuts for new studies. If his proposed $44 billion cut to next year’s budget is enacted, it will prompt the largest drop in federal support for science since World War II, when scientists and Washington began their partnership.... His assault on researchers and their institutions is so deep that historians and other experts see similarities to the playbook employed by autocratic regimes to curb science.... Mr. Trump has long scorned experts as overrated and has stated that he prefers to rely on common sense and gut instincts....

“The [17th-century] Catholic Church’s double standard — crushing blue-sky science [-- Copernicus’s heliocentric theory --] while enjoying the practical benefits [-- allowing churches to serve as solar observatories to help set the date of Easter] — became a favorite tactic of monarchs, despots and modern autocrats.... The lopsided approach let rulers curb free thought that threatened their authority while promoting technological spinoffs of applied science that could empower their regimes.... The dictators of the 20th century turned the suppression of basic science and the promotion of applied research into superweapons of social control.... [Twenty-first century] autocrats ... relied on subtle threats, budget cuts and high-tech surveillance to curb science.” The link is a gift link. MB: Update: I apologize. It appears to me now that I had used up my last chance to share a NYT link, so I don't think this worked as a gift link. 

Marie: I was disappointed to discover that a New York Times op-ed titled "Happiness Is a Big, Ugly Sofa" was by & about a woman who let a big, ugly sofa into her living room and not about JayDee. 

Ken Bensinger of the New York Times on the nutty, lying right-wing fake journalists the White House has invited into the press room & other media events: “Among them is Jack Posobiec, who in 2017 helped spread the debunked  'Pizzagate' conspiracy theory and last year stated that his goal was to 'overthrow' democracy; Tim Pool, a podcaster who last fall was revealed to have been paid indirectly by Russia as part of a secret political influence operation; and Julie Kelly, a right-wing journalist who helped start the false narrative that the Jan. 6, 2021, riots were an 'inside job.' Even among that group, [Benny] Johnson, who has a large following on YouTube, a popular daily podcast and a large X account, stands out for his checkered journalistic record. Over the years, he has been fired from one job for plagiarism and suspended from another for publishing an article containing an unfounded conspiracy theory about Barack Obama that was later retracted. He has been accused of repeatedly propagating false election information and, like Mr. Pool, produced videos that had been secretly funded, via a seemingly legitimate media firm, by Kremlin operatives.” Thanks to Ken W. for the link. (Also linked yesterday.)

Quelle Mess! Jaclyn Peiser & Aaron Gregg of the Washington Post: “Consumers, shippers and small businesses at home and abroad are in flux as an exemption that allowed low-cost goods to enter the United States duty-free came to an end. For nearly a century, the de minimis rule allowed merchandise worth $800 or less to bypass import tax. But it expired at 12:01 a.m. Friday, meaning such shipments are now subject to an additional 10 to 50 percent levy that coincides with the tariff rate of the country of origin, or a flat rate of $80 to $200, depending on which option the merchant chooses.The change has caused widespread uncertainty over how the levies will be collected.... Donald Trump’s July 30 executive order states that transportation carriers have to collect the tax from merchants before arriving in the U.S. using a third-party service preapproved by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. As of midday Friday, only a dozen service providers had been certified to collect and pay such duties.” The link is a gift link. Read on, if you wonder what's happened to your stuff-in-transit. And good luck! ~~~

~~~ If only Trump could create a mess like this, the possible demise of the mess is putting a damper on some of his other dirty tricks. ~~~ 

~~~ Jacob Bogage & Emily Davies of the Washington Post: “A federal appeals court late Friday held  that [Donald] Trump does not have the authority to use emergency economic powers to impose taxes on imports, finding that power lies squarely with Congress or within existing frameworks to investigate trade imbalances. The ruling is a major setback for the White House and it threatens to stall much of Trump’s second-term agenda.... [He] has used the threat of tariffs as a bargaining chip with foreign leaders, counted on their revenue to raise trillions of dollars and even wielded them as part of an effort to head off international conflicts.... [The court's ruling is ] '... a big setback, but it’s far from a complete foreclosing of tariffs,' said Scott Lincicome ... [of] the libertarian Cato Institute, who has criticized the import taxes, 'because the reality is there’s all these other laws that Trump can use to effectively reverse-engineer a global tariff regime.'” ~~~ 

     ~~~ Marie: One way Trump has wielded the tariffs in a way the reporters failed to mention but Akhilleus caught yesterday: as a cudgel/bribe to force Norway to give him the Nobel Peace Prize. As a Guardian story noted a couple of weeks ago, "Donald Trump cold-called Norway’s finance minister last month to ask about a nomination for the Nobel peace prize...." But the call was ostensibly about tariffs. Funny that. ~~~

     ~~~ Finally, the WashPo article linked above cites conservative Avik Roy, who says, “Ironically, [Trump] will benefit a great deal from this fairly destructive economic policy being destroyed by the courts.”

Tim Arango of the New York Times: “In the days since the president deployed hundreds of National Guard troops and federal agents to patrol city streets, crime has continued to drop in Washington.... Local politicians, along with people who study crime for a living, say [the trend probably won't last].... If the president is interested in long-term solutions, experts suggested a number of other ways the federal government could help drive down crime rates in a more lasting way, from funds for training and recruitment for local officers to ideas that are less obviously focused on crime. One is something Mr. Trump himself has already floated: a $2 billion dollar spending project to spruce up Washington’s public spaces, including fixing sidewalks, improving parks and adding new streetlights.... But [Trump's plan] would have to include the parts of the city where most of the gun violence and other crime occurs, not just the areas around the White House and the Mall that Mr. Trump has promised to beautify.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Trump doesn't care about crime mitigation nearly as much as he likes beating up on Black people. That's why he's cutting funding for programs that actually work to deter crime, like those Arango highlights near the end of his article. Ferinstance ~~~

... they had so much fun. They pulled people over. They started to take off. They chased them. They stopped them. -- Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, thanking his nibs at last week's Cabinet meeting for allowing dangerous D.C. car chases ~~~

~~~ Emma Uber of the Washington Post: “U.S. Park Police have initiated at least 10 car chases in the past three weeks as part of ... Donald Trump’s surge in federal law enforcement in D.C., court records show.... Court records ... show that among the 10 chases since Aug. 14, at least six involved crashes. The pursuits — all of which began as traffic stops for nonviolent crimes and were initiated by federal task forces formed in response to Trump’s Aug. 11 executive order — would have violated D.C. police policy. The District’s police department allows car chases only when the driver is putting other lives in danger or is suspected of committing a violent crime.” ~~~

~~~ AND here's another ferinstance: ~~~

~~~ Chris Hippensteel & Orlando Mayorquín of the New York Times: “Weeks before an assailant opened fire on a Catholic church in Minneapolis, the Trump administration cut funding to a program in Minnesota aimed at preventing acts of mass violence, documents show. The cancellation of those funds does not appear to have had an impact in the handling of the attack at Annunciation Catholic School that killed two children and injured 18 people. But state officials say the move severely weakens local efforts to identify future threats.... In July, the Department of Homeland Security announced it was cutting $18.5 million in spending that involved one of its arms called the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, or CP3. 

“The center was introduced during the first few months of the Biden administration and provides grants to state and local law enforcement agencies and other institutions to help recognize and prevent potential terrorist threats. The money also funds mental health services and training programs. About $700,000 of that money had been designated for the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.... An official with Homeland Security said in a statement on Saturday that grants issued by CP3 were used for 'left-wing ideologies and did next to nothing to combat actual threats in our communities.'”

Perry Stein of the Washington Post: “In the first weeks of the current Trump administration, Justice Department officials gave a select group of top senior career attorneys a choice: They could either quit or go to a newly created Sanctuary Cities Enforcement working group. About a dozen lawyers from high-profile sections ... agreed to the transfer.... Six months later, all of those attorneys have left DOJ for good, the last one packing up this week. And five people familiar with the working group say they got the impression that the task force was designed to do nothing but frustrate and eventually force out lawyers the administration felt it could replace with people more loyal to the president.... Members [of the group] were asked to do Google-type searches and other menial research on those policies — and were told there was no need to communicate with the lawyers who were actually filing high-profile lawsuits.... 'The assignment was a sham,' said Bonnie Robin-Vergeer, former chief of the Civil Rights Division’s appellate section, who quit after six weeks.” ~~~

     ~~~ People familiar with regulations said the administration had carefully orchestrated this “VIP rubber-room” technique because it was the only was to legally force out senior staff. The link is a gift link, so you can see how the trick worked. MB: This seems like a fine example of how the Trump 2.0 team used the interregnum to bone up on ways to beat the system, then put those means and methods to use as soon as Trump regained the presidency*. 

Joshua Partlow & Brianna Sacks of the Washington Post: “The immigration raid by Border Patrol agents on an active fire scene [in western Washington state] shocked many veteran wildland firefighters. Several of them said ... that such enforcement efforts would ... have a chilling effect among a workforce that relies heavily on immigrant labor.... The episode outraged many in the Northwest, from firefighters to public officials.” MB: What's more important to Trump? Saving trees in an unvacuumed forest in a “Democrat state” or catching a couple of working immigrants (one of whom reportedly has lived in the U.S. since he was four years old)? ~~~

     ~~~ Martha Belisse of the AP: “Lawyers are demanding the release of a longtime Oregon resident arrested by Border Patrol while fighting a Washington state wildfire, saying Friday that the firefighter was already on track for legal status after helping federal investigators solve a crime against his family. His arrest was illegal, the lawyers said, and violated Department of Homeland Security polices that say immigration enforcement must not be conducted at locations where emergency responses are happening.... The firefighter ... has lived in the U.S. for 19 years after arriving with his family at age 4.”

Paul Kane of the Washington Post: “In a dramatic shift from 50 years ago, Republicans in Congress overwhelmingly attended nonelite universities for undergraduate and postgraduate studies. At the same time, almost half of all Democrats graduated from an Ivy League institution or some other elite university for undergraduate or postgraduate work, a slight increase from the early 1970s.... [Fifty years ago,] both parties were dominated by figures who attended universities like Harvard, Yale, Georgetown or Stanford to today, when many Democrats still have elite credentials while very few GOP lawmakers attended such institutions.... Even leading Republicans who do have elite credentials have essentially shunned their academic backgrounds and are instead leading the charge against these universities.”  

Jeremy White & Christine Mui of Politico: “Netflix co-founder and Democratic megadonor Reed Hastings has given $2 million to help California redraw its House maps in the latest indication of the campaign’s outsize stakes. Hastings is a stalwart supporter of Democratic causes and an ally of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has championed the push to counter Texas’ GOP gerrymander with a new map designed to oust California Republicans. He also spent $3 million to help Newsom beat back a recall attempt in 2021.”

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Israel/Yemen. Miriam Berger, et al., of the Washington Post: “Israel has killed the prime minister of the Houthi government in Yemen, the rebel group’s most senior member to be killed in conflict, officials said Saturday. Prime Minister Ahmad al-Rahawi and several ministers were killed in an Israeli strike on a government meeting in Sanaa on Thursday, the Houthis said in a statement carried by Saba News Agency, their official news platform. The group did not release the other officials’ names. Several ministers were wounded in the attack, their Al-Masirah satellite television reported.”