Bulletin Board: A Running Tally of Posts From Other Sources

The Guardian, October 7

How Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin center in skepticism of Trump’s new promise to build a steel factory in Iowa.

Arwa Mahdawi, October 3

Hegseth, who has been married three times and paid $50,000 to a woman who accused him of rape in 2017 (he denies the accusation), found God relatively recently. He joined an evangelical church in 2018 and is now busy imposing his own brand of religion on the Pentagon, framing the war on Iran as a modern crusade and instituting monthly prayer services.

Sometimes he blends Pulp Fiction with the Bible at these services; other times he prays for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” The Jesus that told people to love their enemies, it seems, is far too woke (and bearded) for Hegseth.

This week, Hegseth took his personal crusade to a whole new level, announcing a new Pentagon Office of Religious Affairs, which reports directly to him. The military he said, was putting on “the full armor of God.”

Heather Cox Richardson, September 23, 2026

The anti-corruption group of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) for engaging in a pay-to-play scheme in which defense contractor Navatek made illegal donations to her 2020 campaign and later got multimillion-dollar contracts from the government. Collins is the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

And yet, the story continues, when he returned to the White House in 2025, Trump fired the investigators building the case and largely stopped investigating public corruption.

The bribery angle of this story is huge. So, too, is that the story suggests that Trump, at least, might perceive that he has something to hold over Collins’s head to keep her behind his actions, even when they have dramatically weakened her power at the head of Appropriations.

… Even before Trump announced that the American taxpayer wouldn’t pay a dime for the White House ballroom project, the administration had already signed contracts that put the American taxpayer on the hook for more than $300 million for it.

Heather Cox Richardson, September 18, 2026

Wall Street Journal article titled: “Why I’m Voting for a Texas Democrat.” The op-ed was written by Karl Rove, Republican strategist and senior advisor to President George W. Bush.

…

Trump’s anger at the press was probably fed today by three scoops.

Katie Bo Lillis and Zachary Cohen of CNN reported that this spring, the U.S. military set out to intercept a Chinese ship in the Middle East after an intelligence report said it was carrying components for a nuclear weapons program. After preparing to board the ship and sending up planes, officials realized that the report had been generated by AI. It was, a source told the reporters, “entirely false.” But it almost “started a war.”

Audrey Decker and Mark Satter of Politico reported that a shipment of F-35 fighter jet parts headed from Australia to the U.S. for repairs this summer was diverted to Hong Kong and disappeared, raising the possibility that China could have accessed key components of a highly classified U.S. weapons system.

Noah Robertson, Tara Copp, Warren P. Strobel, and Alex Horton of the Washington Post reported today that at least four more U.S. service members have died in the Middle East during the Iran war than the Department of Defense has announced. Three military contractors have also died since the combat began.

From Heather Cox Richardson, September 16, 2026

Representative Joyce Beatty (D-OH), an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center board and the member who sued over his takeover of the center, explained to Symone Sanders-Townsend of MS NOW that Trump called into the board meeting after the court decision and “went into a tantrum.” While most people appear to have refused to confront Trump to his face — Maine governor Janet Mills’s “We’ll see you in court” was so rare it made headlines — Beatty took him on. She recounted:“It was the most unprofessional thing that I’ve ever witnessed or been a part of it.” But after he called her “an obstructionist” and “dumb” and said he thought she was “incompetent,” she retorted: “I know you’re incompetent.” Beatty appealed to the chair to stop Trump’s unprofessional behavior, but when he continued to berate her, claiming it would be her fault if someone were killed at the center, she responded: “You’re already killing people, we’re at war.” And when he talked about what a great developer he was, she “reminded him that he had more bankruptcies than anybody in the room.”

How Cults Collapse

A media ecosystem builds a false reality inside the viewer’s mind. An information wall seals them inside it. Broken promises strengthen commitment among the most invested because the cost of admitting failure is too high. Group identity traps members in a community they cannot leave without losing themselves. And the entire structure depends on one person’s charisma, which is the most unstable form of authority that exists.

Every cult in history has followed this arc. The structure holds until it does not. The leader performs until he cannot. The promises fail until the cost of denial exceeds the cost of admission. And then it ends. Sometimes slowly. Sometimes all at once. But always.

Heather Cox Richardson, August 29, 2026

In several states, Republican lawmakers have introduced measures to cut naturalized and dual citizens out of candidacy for elected positions, while in Congress, at least five Republicans have called for prohibiting them from federal judgeships, Cabinet posts, ambassadorships, and congressional seats. South Carolina representative Nancy Mace said: “This isn’t personal. It’s about what standard we want for the people entrusted with enormous power over the American people.”

Her word choice was revealing. Our elected officials are entrusted with the enormous power of the American people, not over them.

Heather Cox Richardson, August 24, 2026

The Wall Street Journal editorial board noted that Trump “has contrived an array of pretexts—from fentanyl trafficking to trade deficits—to bludgeon Canada with tariffs.” And the editorial board, known for its right-wing slant, called Trump’s tariff war on Canada “the dumbest trade war in history” and said it “makes no economic or political sense.”

Canada is the second largest trading partner of the U.S., and the editors noted that Trump’s “latest round of border taxes will hit an array of consumer goods, construction materials and manufacturing components,” driving prices still higher at a time when consumers are already squeezed. … The New York Times on August 20 [reported] that the Bureau of Land Management under Trump has been selling wild horses for slaughter as meat for as little as $25 a head. Wild horses are legally protected from hunting or capture, but the administration appears to be selling them to middlemen who resell them into the food pipeline unquestioned.

Heather Cox Richardson, August 19, 2026

There is also the uncomfortable fact that the national debt passed a record $40 trillion yesterday, much sooner than expected. The U.S. is currently spending more than a trillion dollars a year to pay interest on the national debt, more than it spends on defense. In 2025, Trump said he would balance the federal budget, but in fact, thanks largely to his tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, the deficit is growing. … The national debt relative to gross domestic product (GDP) is about to break the record set during World War II. … He promised to bring the cost of gasoline below $2 a gallon; it is now above $4 a gallon.

Heather Cox Richardson, August 16, 2026

When officials at George Pullman’s Palace Car Company outside of Chicago cut wages five times without lowering rents in company housing and then fired members of an arbitration committee, workers went on strike. By July 1894 the nation’s transportation system had ground to a halt, and the federal government sent troops to Chicago, North Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming, California, Utah Territory, and New Mexico Territory. Clashes destroyed $250,000 in property.

As Democrats tried to revise the tariff and replace missing revenue with an income tax, Republicans insisted they were socialists. … William Jennings Bryan, speaking at the Democratic National Convention, stood firmly for the people. “There are two ideas of government,” he said. “There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up and through every class which rests upon them.”

Republicans flooded the country with speakers and pamphlets charging Democrats with trying to instigate “class warfare” and saying Bryan was a “demagogue” who hoped to create a “red welter of lawlessness as fantastic and as vicious as the dream of a European communist.” He was planning to change the government of the people, for the people, and by the people into “a government of a mob, by the demagogue, for the shiftless and the disorderly and the criminal and the semi-criminal.”

Testing testosterone for military troops (The Guardian)

Originalism