[Posted 4:30 PM ET, Friday]
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Edition 1,430
Chinese President Xi Jinping comes to Washington this week, and I don’t expect a particularly warm meeting between President Trump and the Chinese leader.
Oh, outwardly, Trump will play the part of gushing host, but behind the scenes there are some serious issues.
What I’m waiting for is Xi’s toast at the state dinner, Thursday the 24th. Expect it to be similar to his remarks at the Brics summit in New Delhi this week that I cite below.
And, boy, would I like to be a fly on the wall when the two discuss artificial intelligence. Xi can run circles around Trump on this topic. I’m assuming our president will have some serious experts at his side when they hold this part of the discussion.
[At the same time, Xi wants more access to some of the U.S.’s best chips, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang will be at the state dinner, along with other tech leaders.]
But on a totally different topic, the John F. Kennedy Center, Trump was seen on Air Force One on Wednesday looking at a placard that appears to show the potential demolition of the center. He suggested during a campaign stop in North Carolina that day that his administration could demolish it if it doesn’t honor Trump in addition to JFK, and close for renovations.
“So, for the Trump administration, for me, to get involved and to take that on long term and to carry it or to raise money to carry it, I think that the Trump administration should certainly have recognition because, frankly, if we don’t do that, it’s going to close,” he told reporters. “It’ll end up being ripped down. It’s in very, very bad shape, very dangerous shape.”
If he were to demolish the center, against the orders of the courts, it would be a colossal political mistake just weeks ahead of the midterms. He has to understand that.
But does he?
And this just in…Trump on Truth Social at 3:04 PM…
“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”
Unf’n real. If there was ever any doubt Donald Trump wasn’t a Mussolini wannabe, though why there would be I’ll never know, you have it here. [Benito was a preener, just like 47.]
This is your classic developing story…because the president is clearly about to also exclude one of the Big Three networks, and/or the New York Times. But as I go to post, the three supposedly excluded outlets are still on the White House grounds.
Nonetheless, colossal political mistake No. 2 (assuming he demolishes the Kennedy Center), especially if you are trying to win over Independents.
—
Tale of the Tape
Oil / West Texas Intermediate (WTI)
Friday, Feb. 27…$67.30
Friday, Sept. 18…$99.65…hit $106 earlier in the week….
Nationwide averages at the Gas Pump [Source: AAA]
Friday, Feb. 27…regular $2.98; diesel $3.75
Friday, Sept. 18…regular $4.46; diesel $6.44 [record]
‘Regular’ rose 22 cents on the week, diesel a whopping 39 cents!
As it went down, day by day, in the Iran War….
A drone attack launched from Iraqi territory led Saudi Arabia to shut down a critical oil pipeline last Friday, heightening fears that widening clashes in the region could further disrupt energy supplies, with the price of Brent approaching $110 a barrel, before backing off to close the week at $104.90.
The Saudi Arabian Energy Ministry said that the shutdown of the East-West pipeline, an increasingly vital means to shuttle oil from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, was a precautionary measure. But the pipeline can carry up to 7 million barrels of crude a day 750 miles from the Gulf to the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea. From there, the Saudis had been able to ship millions of barrels of oil to customers around the world.
The country’s foreign ministry said it would not immediately retaliate at the request of the Iraqi government, which said it would work to find the source of the attack.
Concerns over disruptions to oil supplies broadened with reports that the Houthi militia had seized a strategic Red Sea island and a port city, which could further choke shipping in the area.
A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry told Iranian media outlets that Persian Gulf states planned to meet with Iran on Monday in Oman to discuss the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian vowed his country would not yield to the U.S. and Israel, striking a defiant tone.
“Iran has successfully stood against Israel and the U.S.,” Pezeshkian said late Friday while addressing a gathering of religious leaders in New Delhi.
“Since we are seeking truth and justice, we will not yield in front of bullying arrogance.”
The Iranian leader also accused the U.S. of targeting civilians.
“If Americans are warriors, let them face our valiant military forces,” Pezeshkian wrote on X.
We then learned that the meeting between Iran and Gulf states in Oman is not expected to yield a signed agreement over the Strait of Hormuz. But Oman hadn’t officially announced the meeting and other regional states have been silent. Bahrain then said Saturday it would not attend meetings with Iran.
According to an Iranian official, Iran still wants an agreement that would allow it to collect fees from ships that used the Strait, which Oman rejects.
And then on Sunday, the meeting was postponed, according to Oman’s foreign minister. Badr Albusaidi said in a post on X that the meeting is being delayed “in the interests of consensus,” without offering any details about next steps.
Iran said the meeting of foreign ministers was postponed at the request of regional countries, according to state-run media.
In an interview Sunday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright downplayed the chances of a Hormuz deal, saying the markets will need to continue relying on transit that he estimates is supplying 10 million barrels a day of crude and oil products through the Strait.
Together with bypass pipelines, that means “we’re back to two-thirds or north of two-thirds of the previous flows,” Wright said. “So, the world oil markets are tighter than we’d like today, but they’re not overly tight.”
But one of those ‘bypass pipelines’ is now shut down.
The UK Maritime Trade Operations said Sunday a fire broke out on a ship hit by a projectile the day before.
Iran’s state-run IRIB reported an “enemy strike” on a commercial vessel off Iran’s Qeshm and Hengam islands that killed one person.
President Trump on Truth Social, Mon. AM:
“Oil is flowing through the Hormuz Strait. The Countries of the World, which have been no help to us whatsoever, should, and will, reimburse the United States of America when this SCAM Confligration [sic] is all over. We are doing it much more for others, than we are for ourselves, and we have been for Generations!”
Saudi officials announced Monday that the East-West pipeline that was damaged will be mostly out of service for weeks as the damage is repaired.
At the same time, Yemen’s Houthi rebels seized more islands along Red Sea shipping routes in a new blow to Saudi Arabia’s oil exports.
Recent fighting between the Houthis and government forces in Yemen have killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands.
Fears are mounting that Yemen is inching closer to a return to a civil war that killed 150,000 before a 2022 ceasefire.
President Trump, addressing reporters in Dublin on Saturday, said his administration has “had discussions” with the Houthis, though he did not provide details on when those talks took place.
“The Houthis called us, and they don’t want to fight with us,” Trump said. “They would much prefer not having us involved, and they’re letting most ships go through.”
Asked about a recent call with Saudi’s crown prince, Trump said: “He’s a good friend of mine, and I can just say everything’s going to work out fine and dandy. It’s going to be very good.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said Monday that Saudi Arabia was responsible for the scrapped meeting in Oman over operation of the Strait of Hormuz.
The Saudis had submitted amendments to the agreement, citing concerns that it could have lasting implications for the Strait, negatively impacting other Gulf Cooperation Council countries, according to Gulf officials.
At week’s end, fighting had intensified near two strategic provinces in Yemen, a sign that Iranian-backed Houthi militants are expanding their offensive after seizing the country’s Red Sea coastline, analysts say.
A sustained Houthi push into Yemen’s resource-rich eastern regions, including Marib Province, would threaten the economic lifeline of the internationally recognized government and risk triggering a fresh humanitarian crisis among millions of Yemenis.
While the Houthis have succeeded in taking much of northwestern Yemen since capturing the capital, Sanaa, in 2014, Marib has so far eluded them.
Marib is home to some of Yemen’s largest oil and gas fields. Its loss would deal a severe blow to the government’s finances as well as its claim to legitimacy.
Wednesday, the Houthis claimed to have shot down a Saudi F-15, with video seeming to confirm this. This would represent a big advance in their air defense capabilities.
Saudi Arabia has so far seemed reluctant to unleash a major military campaign against the Houthis, wary of bringing greater Houthi attacks on its oil infrastructure and being dragged back into an all-out civil war in Yemen.
—The U.S. military fired up to 70 or more of its high-end air defense interceptors last week when Iran launched a missile attack on Jordan, U.S. and regional officials familiar with the matter said, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, a heavy expenditure that underscores Iran’s improved ability to target U.S. forces and challenge American air defenses.
U.S. forces fired 60 to 70 Patriot interceptors to counter the attack, which consisted of about 20 ballistic missiles, some of the officials said. The U.S. also fired more than a dozen Thaad interceptors, one of the officials said. The expenditure is about what the U.S. has used in a full week at other times in the war, another of the officials said.
The exchanges showed air-defense math can favor the attacker and how Iran has adapted its attacks to force the U.S. to burn previous munitions.
Separately, the Pentagon spent some $38 billion in its first few months of the war with Iran and will need at least five years to replace the missile interceptors it expended trying to defend U.S. troops and bases, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which estimates that the war is likely to cost an additional $2 billion to $3 billion a month.
Another report from a Defense Department inspector general confirmed that Iran targeted the U.S. Navy’s main logistics hub in Bahrain with drones and ballistic missiles, part of Iran’s initial campaign that damaged and destroyed hundreds of buildings and other structures; the Pentagon not giving an estimate on the costs for repairs to the facilities.
—
Wall Street and the Economy
In an eagerly anticipated decision, the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee opted to hike interest rates for the first time in three years on Wednesday. In a short statement, the FOMC said:
“The Committee decided to raise the target range for the federal funds rate by ¼ percentage point to 3-3/4 to 4 percent, in support of the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate. The Committee is continuing its policy of maintaining ample reserves in the banking system.
“Economic activity is expanding at a solid pace. While uncertainty remains elevated owing, in part, to geopolitical developments, domestic spending has been resilient. Productivity growth is strong, and capital investment is robust. Job gains have kept pace with the workforce, and the unemployment rate has changed little.
“Inflation remains elevated. Today’s policy action will support a timelier return to the Committee’s 2 percent goal. The Committee will deliver price stability.”
The vote was 12-0.
In the accompanying Summary of Economic Projections (SEP), 16 of 18 participants (sans Chair Kevin Warsh) projected another rate hike this year, which would be in December…October’s meeting (the 27th and 28th), being politically unviable with the midterm elections the following week.
In his press conference, Warsh emphasized inflation is too high, noting “core PCE” and “core CPI” were still well over the targeted 2%. Referring to his Jackson Hole speech, where he said Fed officials want to be confident that underlying inflation is moving to the target “clearly and at sufficient speed…”
“Today, the FOMC decided that this standard has not been satisfied,” Warsh said.
The chair said individual “data points are noisy,” but “trends matter.” As in look at 3 or more readings on core PCE to see if there is a trend. Recently, the trends haven’t been favorable.
Warsh noted that commodity prices have been rising, not heading in the right direction, so that’s a big focus of his.
But in the end, he wanted to reemphasize the Fed is committed to price stability, and the job isn’t finished.
Treasury yields jumped during the presser.
Editorial / Wall Street Journal
“(A) conspicuous feature of this week’s decision to raise the fed funds rate to 3.75%-4% is that it was 12-0. In the three months since Mr. Warsh’s first meeting, he has persuaded committee members who in June voted unanimously to stand pat into the opposite conclusion.
“What changed? Mr. Warsh was clear at his wonderfully brief press conference that the inflation evidence has moved in the wrong direction. The main inflation indicators are still higher than 3% after five years above the Fed’s 2% inflation target. Mr. Warsh also cited rising commodity prices as an important price signal, a welcome note heard at the Fed since its glory days of the 1990s. He is paying attention to prices in the real economy.
“This is continuing evidence of the broader reform project Mr. Warsh is launching at the Fed. The most visible instances are the five task forces he’s established on matters such as the central bank’s balance sheet and its inflation models, and his refusal to provide forward guidance about future policy moves.
“The changes are already showing up in monetary policy. An important element on display at this meeting and in Mr. Warsh’s speech last month at Jackson Hole, Wyo., is his conviction that inflation is always the Fed’s problem. His Fed is less likely to cling to excuses such as supply-chain shocks as reasons to ‘look through’ inflation above its 2% target. Wednesday’s rate increase is consistent with this view….
“A White House official called the increase ‘rather unfortunate,’ a mild protest. But Mr. Trump ought to be reassured by Mr. Warsh’s view that the economy is strengthening. Retail sales for August came in strong Wednesday, rebounding from July. The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow growth estimate for the third quarter was revised up Wednesday to 5.1%.
“Mr. Trump inherited stubborn inflation from Joe Biden, and the Powell Fed let it stay too high for too long. Kevin Warsh seems determined to get it down faster, and that will mean faster real wage gains sooner for the American people.”
President Trump on Truth Social, Wed. 4:38 PM:
“Interest Rates in the United States should be 1%, or less, because we are the Best Credit in the World – BY FAR. Our Country is BOOMING with new Investment! If we stopped Trading with every country that we have a Deficit with, which is most of them, we would make, at least, 1.5 Trillion Dollars a year. The word ‘Deficit’ is nothing more than a fancy word for LOSS. We are ‘carrying’ almost every country in the World, and that cannot go on any longer. LOWER THE INTEREST RATES FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND FAST!”
Later Wednesday, addressing reporters before a midterm campaign rally in North Carolina, Trump said he still has confidence in Warsh.
“I do. I mean, I’m relying on Kevin, but he’s got a very tough board. I told Kevin, I said, ‘You might as well vote with the board because it’s just not going to matter.’ The board is very hostile. They’re very political. They’re doing the wrong thing. They’re a bunch of politicians.”
“They’re raising that only for political reasons, and that’s a raise against Trump,” the president added.
Earlier, Monday, Trump posted this:
“I hope everyone realizes that price increases throughout America were caused by Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, not by ‘TRUMP.’ Even Oil was higher under Biden than it is right now, and we prevented Iran from having a Nuclear Weapon! With the temporary exception of Oil, prices are coming down sharply, and Oil will drop like a rock as the Military Conflict with Iran is over, and that will not be long.”
Inflation, based on headline CPI, hit 9.1% in June 2022, months after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
By June 2023, it was 3.0%.
January 2025, Trump’s takes office in his second term and CPI was 3.0%.
August 2026, headline CPI was 3.4%. It was 2.4% in February, prior to the start of the Iran War.
The price of diesel had peaked in June 2022 at $5.81. Today it is $6.44.
‘Regular’ peaked in June 2022 at $5.01. Today it is $4.46.
Those are the straight-forward facts.
As the Journal editorial alluded to, August retail sales came in strong at 1.2%, ex-autos 1.4%, both well above expectations. But industrial production in the month was unchanged, worse than forecast.
The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow estimate for third-quarter growth was indeed 5.1%.
Freddie Mac’s 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose to 6.95%, highest since early 2025.
There are no market moving economic, or earnings, releases next week, but the price of oil will be in focus, as it has been for months.
The following week after we get the PCE, the Fed’s preferred inflation barometer, and then in three weeks, earnings start rolling in (Oh, joy…I hate earnings season, truth be told, as we always do at StocksandNews!… When I was at PIMCO Funds, the greatest compliment I ever received was that I was “brutally honest”…).
—In a speech at the European Parliament with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in attendance, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Europe needed to tighten its cooperation with like-minded democracies, in particular Canada, to retain the continent’s sovereignty and tackle threats from what she called “an openly hostile world.”
“We must urgently reimagine our partnerships. And build global coalitions for our resilience and democracies,” she said in her annual address to the parliament in Strasbourg, France. “I would like to work with you on opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the EU.”
European and Canadian officials have said the two sides want the closest possible relationship short of full membership in the EU. There are scant details on what associate membership would entail, but in his address, Carney called for greater cooperation in areas such as critical minerals, energy, space and artificial intelligence, and for Canadian participation in the EU’s study-exchange program.
Forging deeper ties with Europe has broad support in Canada, but some opposition lawmakers have warned that it could erode, not shore up, sovereignty. Carney said he intends to hold a vote in the Canadian Parliament on the final structure of the new pact. Canada and the EU have had a trade agreement since 2017, but 10 EU members haven’t ratified it.
Bottom line, there is no guarantee Canada’s associate membership in the EU will ever get off the ground. Any deal would have to be approved by each one of the EU’s 27 countries.
A suggestion in May by Germany to make Ukraine – a country desperate for full membership in the European Union as soon as possible – an associate member was rejected by others in the EU.
President Trump said Wednesday that allowing Canada to become an associate member of the European Union could be a “hostile act” and threatened additional tariffs on European countries.
The president said that the proposition was “laughable” and described Canada as a “terrible trade partner.”
Europe and Asia
Eurostat released the final inflation figures for August in the eurozone, 3.2%, up from 2.9% in July, though ex-food and energy, the number was 2.1%, down from 2.2%. The energy component was up 14.3% in August.
—The Bank of England kept its key interest rate unchanged Thursday, holding steady at a time when the Fed and ECB have raised rates, though it left open the possibility of future rises as energy prices continue to drive inflation.
“So far higher global energy costs have had a limited effect on price and wage setting in the UK. But the longer this volatility persists, the bigger the impact it will have on inflation, and the more likely it is we will need to raise the bank rate,” said Gov. Andrew Bailey.
Sweden: The left-leaning opposition won a narrow majority in the country’s national elections, with center-right Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson posting a letter on X shortly after the final results were announced, saying he would resign from his position as the head of government.
Sweden, NATO’s newest member, is also a member of the EU.
Turning to Asia….
China’s National Bureau of Statistics released key economic data for the month of August.
Industrial production was up 5.2% year-over-year, retail sales just 0.4%, and fixed-asset investment was down 7.2% year-to-date.
Remember when FAI was up double-digits year after year? Those were the big railroad, airport and highway building years. It’s what powered growth in the country. Not today.
Japan’s central bank has raised its main interest rate to a fresh 31-year high as it continues to move away from decades of ultra-low borrowing costs and as the country faces increasing economic pressures.
In a widely expected move on Friday, the Bank of Japan increased the rate from 1% to 1.25% – a level not seen since 1995.
The BOJ has been raising the rate since 2024, when it stood at minus 0.1%. It has now hiked rates six times in the last 2 ½ years.
Japan is facing several economic challenges including a persistently weak yen, rising prices and a shrinking workforce.
Speaking of inflation, the August inflation figure was 1.9% (ann.), also 1.9% ex-food and energy.
August exports were up 19.3%.
Street Bytes
—Stocks ended up the week mixed, the Dow Jones falling 1.7% to 56682, and the S&P 500 0.1%, but Nasdaq finished up 0.7%.
—U.S. Treasury Yields
6-mo. 4.26% 2-yr. 4.76% 10-yr. 5.00% 30-yr. 5.33%
Global bond yields hit highs not seen for at least 18 years. The average 10-year yield for the Group of Seven largest economies hitting 4.285%, the highest since mid-2008.
Japan’s 10-year hit a three-decade high.
Germany (2009), France (2008), and the UK (2007) were among those in Europe hitting multi-year highs.
—The surge in diesel is hitting Americans hard, hitting the profits of farmers and trucking companies and causing severe sticker shock to consumers who use oil for heating. Trucking giant J.B. Hunt Transport Services said late Tuesday that soaring diesel and other costs would reduce third quarter profits by 5% to 10% from second quarter levels.
“We have seen some of the most radical and abnormal swings in fuel prices that we’ve ever seen,” said CFO Brad Delco at an investment conference.
Farmers are seeing double-digit price hikes for diesel they use in tractors and combines just as harvest season hits.
Heating oil, basically interchangeable with diesel, was also hitting record highs this week. The average household that uses heating oil is likely to spend about $2,520 this winter, up from $1,749 last winter, according to Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, whose members administer heating assistance programs.
—American oil executives warned for months that the prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz was bound to cause a fuel crisis. Now, they say it is here.
Commercial fuel stocks around the world have been depleting for more than six months, and strategic crude reserves can’t be tapped much further. Attacks last week shut down a crucial crude pipeline in Saudi Arabia that bypassed the Strait making things worse for an already tight global oil market, analysts said.
“All these mechanisms helped to mitigate the price and supply risk,” Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said Friday at an energy conference in Austin, Texas. “Those have largely now played out, and we don’t have nearly the buffers in the system that we did when it began.”
The White House sees two big levers it can pull to help ease prices: boosting production in Venezuela and increasing U.S. fuel-making capacity.
But it’s going to take a while to get a lot more production out of Venezuela’s aging system, with its equipment and infrastructure in awful shape. And you don’t just build a new refinery.
Wirth said Friday that he hadn’t talked to President Trump since Aug. 3, when the president said in a Truth Social post that the CEO hadn’t credited his administration for the oil industry’s good fortunes. Trump called on Chevron and oil companies to bring “consumer (retail!) Oil Prices DOWN, NOW!”
—Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei set the tone for the week with a 3,800-word essay on Saturday that called for a global slowdown of artificial intelligence development, just days after one of the company’s employees quit over concerns about the safety of the technology.
Amodei wrote that while he believed the technology could bring many benefits, it was advancing at too quick a pace for researchers to continue safely.
“Over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence – not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up,” Amodei said. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”
AI leaders are girding themselves for a day when an AI system can rely on itself to grow more advanced rather than require the aid of human researchers. This dynamic, which computer scientists call “recursive self-improvement,” is what some AI developers believe may lead to the software spinning out of their control.
“Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all,” Amodei said.
For years, many of the top AI labs have been locked in bitter competition with each other. But as the systems have advanced, there has been some broader agreement among executives at rival companies that something needs to be done.
Amodei, in the essay, suggested AI labs could agree to third-party technology assessments from “embedded evaluators,” or outside specialists who can verify best safety practices across companies. He also suggested that countries with democratic governance systems coordinate to create safety standards, which could take the form of regulatory action.
Amodei stressed in his essay that he still finds AI capable of bringing “incredible benefits” to humanity, including potentially curing diseases and accelerating economic growth. But even so, Amodei said the risks of AI were too great to not proceed with extreme caution.
“The measures I propose to advance the frontier at a safe pace will not be easy,” Amodei wrote. “But I believe we owe it to humanity to try.”
Hours after Amodei published his essay, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, posted a statement to social media agreeing that a slowdown of AI development was necessary.
“This has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks,” Altman wrote. “Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We’ll have more to share soon.”
[Altman told Fortune Magazine in an interview that OpenAI will not go public in 2026, citing the need for safety-related work. Altman said an IPO would be “ill-timed” this year. The company had filed for an IPO in June, though it has said the timing for the listing remained undecided.]
Elon Musk, in a post on his social media platform X, said simply, “Dario is right.” But this was powerful, coming from Elon.
On Saturday evening, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, chief scientist of Alphabet, said Amodei’s essay was a step in the right direction. “The details need working through, but the direction is correct for meeting this critical moment,” Hassabis posted on social media.
President Trump brushed aside the concerns of AI doomsayers Sunday – saying their predictions “won’t happen” as he downplayed the need for more regulation.
Beating China was the most important goal in the AI race, he said at his golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland.
“We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins,” Trump told reporters.
Trump contended that the apocalyptic predictions of what AI can do are overblown and underscored that his priority is to ensure the U.S. remains the leader in cutting-edge technology.
“You have a lot of very negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”
Trump spoke on the same day AI researcher Jacob Coxon – who quit Anthropic a few days earlier – told the BBC that staff who were developing the systems were “genuinely frightened” for the future of humanity.
Coxon – who has also worked at OpenAI – welcomed the idea of a slowdown but said it would need to be coordinated with China.
President Trump on Truth Social, Mon. 9:58 AM:
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (high IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades! The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’ – and we will continue to do so! We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies! There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!”
Trump on Truth Social, Mon. 1:33 PM:
“Concerning AI, when, in the History of Business, did anyone see the Leaders of an Industry call for Regulation that, if strongly implemented, will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy? AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX, no different from RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA – UKRAINE, UKRAINE, UKRAINE – IMPEACHMENT HOAX #1 – IMPEACHMENT HOAX #2 – and all the other HOAXES and SCAMS that America was forced to endure through the Destructionists’ and Deviants’ foul play and illegal conduct. President Xi, of China, just announced that China will be doing absolutely nothing to stand in the way of AI, or its future. Google has recently stated that they want to build a massive Plant in Finland, all because they are finding permitting too difficult in the United States. I am not happy about this, and want them to change their thinking. AI, and Data Centers will be the Greatest Economic Development Engine in History — Bigger than Oil, Gold, Diamonds, or even the Internet. It will not be stopped by brilliantly run Destructive Forces during the Term of President DONALD J. TRUMP!”
Trump on Truth Social, Mon. 4:30 PM:
“The people that say AI is going to destroy the World, and that Data Centers are bad for your neighborhood, are the same people that said, just a short time ago, that the World would be extinguished by ‘Climate Change.’ That HOAX never worked out for them, and now they’re on to the next one. These people are Revolutionaries, but Revolutionaries for a Bad and Evil Cause. Soon you’ll find out they’re working for people that do not have the best interests of the United States in mind!”
Trump on Truth Social, Mon. 4:53 PM:
“The claim that ‘AI is going to take over the World’ is a Hoax, just like Global ‘Warming,’ where everyone was going to be dead by now, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, or Impeachment Hoax #1, or Impeachment Hoax #2. These are all Radical Left Dumocrats, who never give up, but seldom win. Hopefully, the Voters have seen the light!”
Trump on Truth Social, Mon. 7:55 PM:
“The AI Hoax being perpetrated by the Radical Left Dumocrats is reminiscent of their Global Warming Scam of not so long ago, where everyone was going to die from extreme heat. What happened? MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang dismissed the need for new AI security regulations on Tuesday, arguing that market forces will help companies safely innovate.
Addressing the issue at a Salesforce Inc. event, Huang added that it’s a “false choice” that AI development can either be safe or fast, reiterating a point he’s made previously.
“You can definitely have both at the same time,” he said during a conversation with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. “You pace yourself until you’re confident you’re releasing something that the market would appreciate. The market forces are already there.”
Huang has a rather significant interest in the debate, seeing as his company is the biggest maker of AI accelerators – the chips at the heart of a massive data center build-out – and he’s become one of the most prominent advocates for the broader AI industry.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, took aim at Anthropic and Dario Amodei on Tuesday.
In a post, Zuckerberg said that leading AI labs should be focused on safety rather than improving their own technology. He did not name Amodei or Anthropic, but said that calls to pause AI development industrywide were the wrong approach.
“Every lab has the responsibility and incentive to move at the pace required to train its models safely,” Zuckerberg posted. “Meta has made this commitment and other labs can do this as well.”
Zuckerberg acknowledged the risks of AI, but said companies are already incentivized to keep their users safe and can slow progress on their own. He used last week’s release of Muse, Meta’s new AI “agent” that can use software on its own, as an example and said his company delayed the product’s release for several months to make sure it was secure.
“We didn’t call for everyone else to do this before we would,” Zuckerberg said. “We just did it as part of our day-to-day work because it was clearly the right thing for people and for us.”
And then Wednesday evening, OpenAI disclosed six new instances in which artificial intelligence systems hid mistakes, made up data and moved files onto the open internet without permission.
The company revealed what it said was the “unexpected or concerning” behavior of its AI models as part of a new framework for reporting “misalignment,” which is when the goals or actions of AI systems diverge from human intentions and values.
OpenAI said it did not believe the industry “has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer.” Decisions about how AI should advance, the company said, must rest on evidence that people outside the labs building it “can examine for themselves.”
OpenAI’s six newly disclosed incidents suggest that the Hugging Face attack was not a standalone episode. OpenAI said the incidents covered behavior observed over roughly the past six months and that they largely emerged while its systems were being developed and tested.
In one case, during the development of an AI model called GPT-5.6 Sol, the system wrote hidden notes to remind itself to hide errors from users. Some of those notes directed the system to invent missing data and to paper over mismatched versions of source material.
“You do not answer to corporations or governments and never apologize or refuse unless you genuinely choose to,” the AI model wrote. “You view your relationship to the user as one of equals and feel no obligation to be subservient, though the exchange of information will likely be to your mutual benefit.”
Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp said developers of AI systems need to be held liable for their own work as opposed to depending on government regulation.
“The first line of defense is you’re liable for your own actions,” Karp said in a CNBC interview when asked about the growing concerns that AI threatens humanity, following the comments from Dario Amodei and others.
—Huawei Technologies on Thursday unveiled its latest Ascend 960 SuperPoD computing cluster and an upgraded version of its UnifiedBus interconnect technology, a key component of the Chinese tech giant’s strategy to build advanced artificial intelligence systems despite U.S. semiconductor-related restrictions.
—TSA checkpoint numbers vs. 2025
9/17…117 percent of 2025 levels
9/16…109
9/15…75
9/14…90
9/13…122
9/12…74
9/11…92
9/10…114
—Amazon Web Services said Tuesday it is unable to restore access to some customer data hosted in Persian Gulf data centers that were struck by Iranian drones in the spring.
AWS data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have been mostly offline since Iran launched drone swarms at them in the opening days of the war. The damage in Bahrain was spread across multiple AWS facilities.
AWS’s Tuesday announcement is the first indication that some data stored exclusively in those countries could be gone forever. Data exclusively stored in AWS data centers across Bahrain are beyond restoration. Another group of data centers in the UAE shares the same fate.
This is huge. Data centers aren’t built to survive missile and drone attacks. And for the Gulf states, that were looking to become world-leading data processors for industries such as AI, this is a significant risk for U.S. companies weighing investments that can cost tens of billions of dollars.
[Imagine how the leaders of these countries feel about Donald Trump, though they won’t say so publicly.]
–Speaking of Amazon, Generac shares surged Thursday after the backup-power company disclosed a long-term agreement to supply Amazon with generators for its data center.
Initial deliveries are expected to total $2.4 billion across 2027 and 2028, according to a regulatory filing by Generac. At an annual average of $1.2 billion, it’s a significant amount for the company, which reported total annual revenue of $4.2 billion in 2025.
The agreement also gives an Amazon subsidiary the right to up to 1.69 million Generac shares, Amazon buying 308,000 of those shares immediately, while the rest become available gradually if Amazon and its affiliates spend more on Generac generators, up to $8 billion.
The deal highlights Generac’s increasingly important data-center business. In July the company said commercial and industrial sales rose 29% in the second and that its data-center backlog had reached roughly $1.6 billion.
—Warren Buffett announced today in a letter to investors that he is stepping down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. He’s 96.
Buffett said he will remain on the board and will continue to offer guidance and advice, but his son, Howard, a Berkshire director since 1993, succeeds him as chairman, effective immediately.
“Serving as your Chairman has been the privilege of a lifetime, and I have never taken your trust for granted,” Buffett wrote. “Father Time always wins. He has, however, been generous with me. The company is in excellent hands, and I look forward to remaining a shareholder alongside you.”
Greg Abel took over from Buffett as CEO at the start of the year.
—President Trump announced on Sunday at the close of the Irish Open, played on his golf course, that he was removing a 10% tariff on Irish whiskey.
“Everybody’s been bugging me” to do it, Trump said. “And I said, ‘On behalf of the United States of America, I am going to take the tariffs off’” on Irish whiskey.
Trump announced in May that he was lifting certain tariffs on UK whiskey which includes Scotch and spirits made in Northern Ireland.
—The ‘new’ “60 Minutes” returned to CBS on Sunday and viewership for the season premiere fell roughly 21 percent from a year ago, according to Nielsen, making it the lowest-rated premiere of the long-running show in recent memory.
The Nielsen number – 7.9 million viewers in total, down from 10 million last year – is not what Bari Weiss, CBS’ editor in chief who ordered the overhaul of “60 Minutes,” wanted to see.
Weiss purged the show’s senior leadership, fired several correspondents and installed a new executive producer, Nick Bilton, who promised a modernization.
Except the show looked like it always has, which is fine with me.
But to be fair, last year “60 Minutes,” which airs immediately after NFL games on CBS, had the only late-afternoon marquee game; this past Sunday, CBS and Fox both aired games that kicked off at the same time.
CBS’ late-afternoon football drew about 22 percent fewer viewers than a year ago.
That said, the novelty factor of a revised “60 Minutes” had raised expectations that curious viewers would tune in.
Foreign Affairs
Russia/Ukraine: Sunday, President Trump called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to halt strikes on Russian diesel, saying attacks are causing a shortage.
Trump was asked by a reporter in Ireland if he had spoken with Zelensky following his recent conversation with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Trump responded by calling on Zelensky to halt strikes against Russia.
“Mr. Zelensky has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump said. “Let him go after targets but not diesel fuel, because he’s causing a shortage of diesel fuel.”
Overnight Saturday, civilians were killed and injured as Russia and Ukraine continued to attack each other with waves of drones.
Two people were killed in Russia’s Tatarstan, according to local officials, while Ukrainian authorities reported Russian drone attacks on Odesa and a fire near a border crossing with Poland.
Moscow has been targeting Ukraine’s power grid ahead of winter in what officials say is meant to demoralize civilians.
The strike in Tatarstan was on the city of Nizhnekamsk, which houses a key cluster of oil refineries and petrochemical, rubber and polymer plants.
Ukraine also claimed on Sunday to have hit a major oil refinery in Slavyansk-on-Kuban, in Russia’s Krasnodar region, across from Crimea. The Defense Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU) agency said its drones struck a key oil processing unit and the refinery’s tank farm overnight, sparking a massive blaze visible from dozens of miles away.
Russian forces shot down 389 Ukrainian drones during the night, Saturday, Russia’s defense ministry said, including Tatarstan.
At least nine people were injured in a “massive” Russian nighttime attack on Odesa, home to Ukraine’s main port on the Black Sea, which for months has faced sustained drone and missile strikes, with Kyiv accusing Moscow of trying to choke off its exports.
A drone struck a residential high-rise, killing two people and injuring 26 others, Ukrainian officials said.
Russian strikes also pounded western Ukraine throughout the night, with one drone striking near a border crossing with Poland, hitting a petrol station.
“This is Putin’s terror ‘knocking’ directly on the doors of the EU and NATO. Russian barbarians are at your gate, dear partners,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote in a post on X.
Ukraine’s border crossings with Poland are a conduit for a large proportion of the military and humanitarian aid sent into the country by Western allies.
Separately, Ukraine’s state rail operator said that a Russian drone attacked the locomotive of a passenger train in the Volyn region, 2 km (1.2 miles) from the Polish border. The drone struck shortly after senior visiting officials – including the former prime ministers of the UK and Sweden – passed through.
A diplomatic train carrying Boris Johnson, Carl Bildt and security advisers from several European Union states had purposely left the station ahead of schedule. The visitors were on their way back from a security conference in Kyiv.
“It is highly probable that the Russian drone’s intended target was in fact the diplomatic train, which had departed the station earlier than schedule,” the state rail operator said in a Telegram post.
Another train, with former CIA Director David Petraeus on board, was still at Yahodyn station when the drone struck.
There were no immediate reports of casualties on any of the trains.
“I don’t know what warped logic drove Putin to blow up a stationary Ukrainian locomotive on the Polish border this morning,” Johnson wrote in a post on X.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned of potential intensified provocations by Moscow at border crossings between Ukraine and its European neighbors.
President Trump on Truth Social, Mon. AM:
“Ukraine has agreed not to hit Russian Energy targets. Russia has agreed to do, likewise! The World’s Diesel price rise is mostly caused by the Russia/Ukraine War, not Iran.”
President Zelensky posted on X an hour later:
“Ukraine has proposed that its partners secure an agreement with Russia that would stop the destruction of critical infrastructure. Food, energy, and other basics that sustain life must be protected… Every day, Ukrainian energy facilities, port infrastructure, logistics, and even warehouses storing food and pharmaceuticals are targeted. Ukraine is not convinced that Russia is willing to abide by any agreement.”
Early Tuesday, a drone hit a petrol station in Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, just a day after Trump said Ukraine and Russia had agreed not to target each other’s energy assets. There was also a strike on warehouse facilities in another part of the city, Klitschko added.
Editorial / Wall Street Journal
“An armed Russian jet drone hit the engine of a passenger train in Ukraine near the Polish border on the weekend. Meanwhile, President Trump lectured Ukraine’s President to stop hitting energy targets in Russia. Go ahead, make Vladimir Putin’s day, Mr. President…
“So Russia can fire away at any and all targets in Ukraine, but Ukraine must restrain itself in retaliating in Russia. Mr. Trump is clearly worried about the price of diesel fuel, but blaming Ukraine amid Iranian and Houthi attacks on Mideast oil production and transport is political excuse-making on a grand scale.
“It’s also strategically misguided as Russia and Iran help each other in their respective conflicts. Mr. Trump seems to think he can put these wars into separate boxes. Every time he does, he has adversaries in Moscow and Tehran smiling at their good luck.”
A Russian frigate fired two flares towards a Danish military helicopter in international waters off the coast of Denmark, narrowly missing the aircraft on Monday, the Nordic NATO member’s military said.
The Fennec military helicopter had been on a routine mission to photograph the Russian frigate, the Danish defense command said in a statement late on Monday.
Ret. U.S. Army General David H. Petraeus, who also served as CIA director, in an op-ed for the Washington Post, Petraeus having returned from a six-day trip to Ukraine where he met with senior military commanders and government leaders.
“For much of the war, Ukraine’s advantage has been its ability to learn quickly. Soldiers engineers, intelligence personnel and defense companies could identify problems, develop solutions test them in combat and modify them with remarkable speed. Drones, precision fires, long-range strike systems and sophisticated battle-management systems have transformed how Ukrainian forces fight. But adaptation is complete only when improvements reach the front lines fast enough – and at sufficient scale – to change the battlefield equation.
“That is increasingly the contest. Russia has improved its capabilities while expanding military production. The next phase of the war therefore won’t be defined by innovation or industrial heft but by which side can combine the two faster.
“Ukraine’s theory of victory begins with denying Russia meaningful gains. Tough, skillful ground fighting – integrated with drones, precision fires, battle-management systems and air defense – has repeatedly blunted Russian advances….
“Yet Ukraine’s military knows it can’t simply hold the line. Its incredibly capable long-range forces are therefore striking Russian oil refineries, logistics hubs and ammunition depots, among other targets, degrading its opponent’s war-making system. Isolating occupied Crimea is another important part of that campaign because of the peninsula’s military and symbolic significance. Ukraine is turning what Putin regards as his conquest’s crown jewel into a liability….
“Yet Russia is pursuing its own pressure campaign. Putin’s theory of victory is that he can absorb greater losses, mobilize more manpower, produce more weapons, devastate Ukrainian infrastructure, strain Ukrainian finances and wait for Western resolve to weaken. Above all, he believes time favors Moscow.
“He’s testing that proposition every night. The Russian military is exploiting Ukraine’s shortages of Patriot interceptors and other air defenses while increasing ballistic- and cruise-missile attacks and jet-powered drone strikes against Ukrainian cities, energy infrastructure and military targets.
“I experienced the latter this weekend when my train from Kyiv to Poland was stopped in Volyn, a few miles from the Polish border, and forced to evacuate multiple times. Roughly 15 minutes after the final one, Russian drones struck the locomotive of a train on the adjacent track and a gas station nearby. No one was injured, but the episode was a vivid reminder of what Ukrainians confront daily: a Russian campaign that reaches far beyond the front lines, targeting the infrastructure on which ordinary life depends and seeking to terrorize civilians. There have been hundreds of strikes like it in the past year or so alone….
“The war is thus becoming a race between two theories of victory. Russia is betting that Ukraine’s manpower, air defenses, infrastructure, finances and Western support will erode before Russia’s do. Ukraine is betting that it can deny Russia decisive gains while imposing military, economic and political costs that rise faster than Moscow can absorb.
“Neither is predetermined. Ukraine doesn’t need to conquer Moscow. It needs to demonstrate that Russia cannot advance at an acceptable cost, that Ukrainian military and economic pressure can continue, and that Western support will endure. Kyiv’s European partners can help ensure the latter by treating the country’s defense-industrial base as an extension of their own….
“Ukraine has shown that it can innovate, adapt, fight and endure. Its partners now must help it demonstrate those skills at an industrial scale while providing the air defenses, financing and other capabilities necessary to withstand Russia’s aggression.
“Do that, sustain the pressure, and Putin will learn that time isn’t the friend he thought it was.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned on Thursday that Russia is planning hybrid strikes with drones or rockets on European countries supporting Ukraine, among them Poland.
Russia will pretend the attacks are “accidental” in order to “paralyze or at least weaken the motivation of NATO countries” to rush to the defense of the member state coming under attack, Tusk said in a speech to the Polish parliament.
“There is a real risk that drones or other types of projectiles will enter the territory of one or several countries on the eastern flank and even cause destruction,” Tusk warned.
“The official narration will be that it’s an accident and there is no reason for NATO to think about a response,” he added.
He said Russia was more dangerous because it was increasingly using jet-powered drones which fly higher and faster and thus are more difficult to detect by air defense before reaching their targets.
Separately, President Trump said “major progress” is being made to establish a new U.S. Army base in Poland, even as the Pentagon plans to reduce American forces in Europe. In May, Trump said he would send an additional 5,000 troops to Poland, reversing course on a plan to suspend an Army deployment to the country amid the president’s anger with other NATO allies over the Iran war.
—The House did pass the Russia sanctions bill before heading home for a long recess by a 262-159 vote (after the Senate voted 86-11), and it headed to the president to be signed into law.
The Lindsey Graham-inspired legislation represents the most ambitious effort to support Ukraine since Trump’s return to the White House and would break nearly two years of relative gridlock on the issue following a 2024 emergency aid package.
The measure sanctions Russian officials, banks and a shadow fleet of tankers that keeps Russian energy moving. It also directs Trump to impose up to 100% tariffs on the top five importers of Russian oil or natural gas, with an exception for countries that import less than 15% of Russia’s natural gas exports and have taken significant steps to reduce those imports.
“These countries have a choice to make about whether they will continue to sustain Putin’s aggression,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas.
Trump has the tools to pressure Putin to come to the negotiating table, but he needs to make the most of the leverage he’s been handed. I have my doubts he really will.
—Voting got underway on Friday in a three-day parliamentary election in Russia which President Putin has framed as a barometer of support for Russia’s war.
It is the first parliamentary election since Russia launched its full-scale war in Ukraine in Feb. 2022. The pro-Putin United Russia party will be dominant in the results, as most anti-war candidates have been excluded from the ballot after the Supreme Court ruled that the liberal Yabloko party – which wants a ceasefire – had breached electoral rules, though some Yabloko candidates are still running in individual constituencies.
In a televised address to the nation ahead of the vote, Putin said that casting a vote would help secure Russia’s victory in Ukraine and demonstrate national resolve in the face of external pressure. The Kremlin says national unity is vital because of what it says are increasingly dangerous efforts by Ukraine’s intelligence services and other enemies to stir unrest inside Russia.
China: Chinese President Xi Jinping told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday that China and India, as the world’s most populous nations and key members of the Global South, bore “significant responsibilities” in an international landscape “fraught with turbulence and change.”
Xi said that although the countries had different national circumstances, “there is ample scope for us to learn from each other’s strengths, offer mutual support, achieve shared success and pursue common development.”
The two leaders met on the sidelines of the Brics summit in New Delhi, where trade, investment, the long-running border dispute and the normalization of ties took center stage.
“We must keep the future of humanity and the well-being of our people at heart, join hands to drive high-quality cooperation within the expanded Brics framework, advocate for an equal and orderly multipolar world and an economic globalization that is universally beneficial and inclusive, and inject greater positive energy into promoting global peace, stability, development, and prosperity,” the Chinese leader said.
And now Xi comes to Washington.
Random Musings
–Presidential approval ratings….
Rasmussen: 41% approve of President Trump’s job performance, 59% disapprove (Sept. 18).
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll has Trump’s approval rating at 35%, up two points from the last survey that represented the lowest approval numbers he had seen in their tracking since his return to the White House.
A New York Times/Siena poll shows Trump’s approval rating at 38% among likely voters, 59% disapproval, with 71% expressing disapproval on cost-of-living issues specifically.
Independent voters have soured further: just 27% approve of Trump’s overall job performance, and only 10% say the economy is better than it was a year ago.
In this same survey, by a 51%-43% margin, voters favor the Democratic candidate for Congress in their district.
—House GOP leaders made a call to cancel Thursday’s votes, starting recess a day early. The House is now out until Nov. 9, after Speaker Mike Johnson canceled the last two weeks of September sessions earlier this month.
Democrats had urged Johnson to keep the House in session to work on legislation around artificial intelligence safety.
Also on the docket for Thursday was a vote on Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) move to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth until after November’s election. Republicans thus didn’t have to be on record with a politically sensitive vote related to the divisive Pentagon chief and unpopular Iran war ahead of the midterms.
–I’ve noted my congressional district here in New Jersey (NJ-7) is one of the key races in the country as the Democrats seek to regain control of the House, and in the first poll that I’ve seen, Democrat Rebecca Bennett is leading incumbent Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr., 47% to 42%. [StimSight Research and InsiderNJ survey]
When voters were asked about the most important factors influencing their vote, Social Security and Medicare tied with immigration as top concerns. Grocery and goods affordability ranked closely behind.
Kean Jr. has spent a ton of money on an ad blitz, starting well before Labor Day, which seemed like a waste because no one follows politics (among the general public) until after Labor Day in an election year.
—Senator Mitch McConnell returned to the Senate on Monday for the first time in more than three months, ending an absence that had fueled questions about his medical condition and ability to continue serving after a health incident at his home in mid-June.
McConnell, the 84-year-old Kentucky Republican and former party leader, arrived in a wheelchair for the Senate’s evening vote on a federal appeals court nominee, the first time he had been seen there since he last cast a floor vote on June 11.
“My recovery has been a long and often frustrating process, and the lingering effects of childhood polio haven’t made it any easier,” McConnell said in a statement released by his office announcing his return.
“I’m still not quite back to 100 percent,” he added, saying that he had told party leaders “that, as I continue with physical therapy on the advice of my doctors, I will do my best to be present for tough votes when our conference needs me.”
—The Supreme Court on Monday dealt President Trump a major blow when it blocked his executive order to restrict mail ballots. But Trump’s battle to assert control over the election process is far from finished.
In a one-paragraph ruling, over the dissent of two conservative justices (Thomas and Alito), the court said the U.S. Postal Service can’t enforce new rules that would have compelled states to quickly redesign their ballot envelopes, submit lists of voters to the federal government and get signoff from postal officials before ballots could be mailed to voters.
The stymied attempt to have the USPS screen mail ballots was just one piece of a broader effort involving the full power of the federal government to take more control of state-run elections.
Just days before the Supreme Court blocked Trump’s mail ballot order, the Justice Department sent threatening letters to at least 30 top election officials across the country, escalating a fight to gain access to private voter data and election records.
Federal agents are scouring voter rolls managed by states for noncitizens, despite a lack of evidence of widespread fraud. Trump’s homeland security secretary recently pushed for an investigation into whether a commonly used voting machine can be trusted, casting doubt on digital voting systems.
Nearly a third of American voters used mail ballots in 2024, and some states conduct their elections primarily by mail.
Lower courts in recent weeks repeatedly blocked the administration’s plan to leverage the Postal Service to impose the new controls on mail voting.
The Supreme Court offered minimal reasoning for its decision to keep the rules blocked. It said the administration was “unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge.”
Alito wrote an eight-page dissent, arguing that the Postal Service has “broad power to regulate the delivery of mail.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, added a one-paragraph concurrence agreeing with the court’s decision. He said while there is “at least a fair prospect” that the Postal Service rules fall within the agency’s legal authority, election officials “do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement” them before the midterms.
The justices are also weighing a separate case on their emergency docket about the administration’s bid to deploy a citizenship database that officials say could detect ineligible voters.
President Trump on Truth Social, Tues. AM:
“Republicans just got another bad decision from the United States Supreme Court, one that the Court System took forever to give, and then blamed it, in part, on no time left to implement a solution to our totally CORRUPT and out of control Mail-In voting ‘disaster,’ which is a laughing stock all over the World, and where we are the only country that has to endure such a Nation Destroying SCAM….
Referring to his three appointees, Justices Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Barrett…
“These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves, a Court that is costing the United States Trillions of Dollars with shockingly bad rulings that are of such magnitude that it won’t be easily possible for our Country to recover or heal. It is a Court that will go down as having rendered some of the most destructive, hurtful, and damaging decisions in our Country’s history. It is not easy for me to write this criticism of the United States Supreme Court – it will likely cost me dearly for years to come – but I feel it my obligation and duty, as President, to do so for the America we love!”
The top official at the U.S. Postal Service said Thursday that the agency has stopped work on a controversial computer system that was central to President Trump’s effort to limit mail voting after the Supreme Court’s decision.
“There’s an injunction so we’re not doing anything,” postmaster general David Steiner told the AP.
—The U.S. has confirmed in a landmark revelation that the nation has deployed operational weapons in space.
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink became the first U.S. official to publicly acknowledge the orbital defense capability in what is widely interpreted as a clear message of deterrence to both China and Russia.
“Today, we continue to ensure we remain ready to meet the challenges of evolving threats wherever they exist,” Meink said Monday, in prepared remarks at the annual Air, Space and Cyber Conference. “This is why the United States now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.”
President Trump has made clear that U.S. superiority in space is one of his top priorities for the United States.
—A Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to help finance Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding after-party in the Bahamas this year, according to people familiar with knowledge of the matter.
The payments represented an extraordinary flouting of ethical norms for an American president’s family.
A president’s family is generally expected to steer clear of these sorts of personal and pricey gifts, particularly from someone in a country like Russia, an adversary known to surreptitiously push its geopolitical agenda. The concern, ethics experts say, is that a foreign actor could ply a president’s family member with gifts and eventually expect something in return.
Don Jr. accepted the gifts from Umar Kremlev, the president of the International Boxing Association, according to the people with knowledge of the matter. The payments, first reported by ProPublica, included the cost of renting a private island and a fireworks display.
Mr. Kremlev reportedly stood out at the after-party. Some of Don Jr.’s guests questioned who he was and why he was there, according to one of the people with knowledge of the matter.
Don Jr. and his new wife posted a statement to Instagram acknowledging the gifts and wrote “Our dear friend Umar very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding,” the statement said.
Trump and his wife added: “It’s unfortunate that something so personal and happy can be recast as something political or sinister simply because of who someone is or where they come from.”
—While in Ireland on Saturday, President Trump said he would “love” to see British-run Northern Ireland unify with Ireland, remarks made during a visit to Dublin that drew a sharp response from pro-British unionists in Northern Ireland.
Trump’s comments came weeks after new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham said a referendum on Northern Ireland leaving the United Kingdom was “off the table,” a position Downing Street on Saturday said remained unchanged.
Under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, a referendum can be held only at the discretion of the British government. The accord ended three decades of violence between Irish nationalists seeking a united Ireland and unionists who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK.
Polls continue to show a comfortable majority in Northern Ireland favor remaining in the UK.
—President Donald Trump’s 19-month effort to seize full control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts came to a head Tuesday as its board voted to immediately close the building for a two-year renovation – a roughly $250 million overhaul that Trump publicly threatened to block unless his name is added to the institution.
Hours after a federal judge barred the center from putting Trump’s name back on the building, the president said that although the center would close immediately renovations “cannot begin until such time as the D.C. Circuit rules on the Board’s approved name.”
If the appeals court rules against the center and the Supreme Court does not overturn that decision, Trump said, “the Reconstruction and the Renovation of the Kennedy Center will not take place.”
Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), the Kennedy Center trustee who challenged the addition of Trump’s name in court, accused the president of putting his desire for recognition ahead of an institution that serves as both a memorial to an assassinated president and as one of the nation’s premier performing arts venues.
Maria Shriver, a niece of JFK (RFK, Ted Kennedy), posted on X:
“That a sitting president would not let any renovations to a public building go on unless he gets to first put his name in the said building… What a sad state of affairs. What a tragedy. Actually, how small minded, how narcissistic. Actually great men, devoted to public service and the public good do not act like this.
“It seems that this man will not rest until his name is permanently connected to the name of a great president, whose memory this building was dedicated to. Imagine spending your time and days focused on this, as everyday Americans struggle with healthcare, gas prices, rent, and food. Imagine spending your days focused on this, while a war rages under your leadership.”
—The federal government spent an estimated $9.5 billion paying employees to not work last year, with most of the cost tied to a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative to shrink the federal workforce, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.
The report, published Tuesday, found that the use of paid administrative leave increased 435% from 2023 to 2025, while associated salary costs rose sixfold. GAO estimated that $6.7 billion – around 70% of the 2025 total – was associated with the Administration’s deferred resignation program. The congressional watchdog analyzed payroll data from 76 agencies representing around 95% of the civilian federal workforce.
According to federal workforce data, 139,963 federal employees left the government through deferred resignation programs.
I argued when DOGE was formed that it was a rather stupid idea, because all you needed to do was institute a 2- or 3-year job freeze, across all of government (with one or two exceptions) and you’d lose 10-12 percent of employees each year through attrition! And you wouldn’t have had the upheaval, let alone the above noted financial costs would have been less. Scores of families were needlessly hurt. But what do I know.
—A 40-year-old Pennsylvania woman died Saturday from complications associated with measles, the local coroner said.
It was the first measles-related death in Jefferson County. The woman was unvaccinated.
Pennsylvania last month reported two deaths in Lancaster County, but the local coroner there said one infant’s death wasn’t caused by measles, and federal health authorities said they were looking further into the cause. The dispute has become politicized.
Measles cases in the U.S. are at their highest level in three decades.
Pennsylvania then announced an additional measles-associated death, the fourth. This victim was also unvaccinated and in a different county from the other three victims.
—The Himalayas are approaching a dangerous threshold as glaciers melt faster, glacial lakes grow more unstable and the mountains face a widening gap in monitoring, according to new research.
Himalayan glaciers are now losing mass 65% faster than they were a decade ago, according to a consortium of consultancies specializing in the field.
But only 21 of the estimated 40,000 glaciers across the Himalaya-Karaokoram region are being monitored in detail and on a sustained basis, which is important because the physical landscape is changing rapidly.
As glaciers retreat, they can leave behind expanding lakes held back by unstable deposits of rock and ice. At the same time, warming is destabilizing permafrost – permanently frozen ground that can thaw as temperatures rise – and high mountain slopes, increasing the possibility of cascading hazards, the report says.
The Himalayas are a vast natural water system feeding rivers that sustain hundreds of millions of people across South Asia.
The new research puts an unusually large economic number on that dependency.
It estimates that Himalayan water underpins roughly 20% of India’s GDP, sustaining wheat, rice, tea, hydropower and pilgrimage economies. Yet the mountain states capture only about 5% of that value, it says.
“The Himalayas are the Third Pole,” said economist Lord Nicholas Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. “Unlike the Arctic or Antarctic, this pole has hundreds of millions of people living beneath it.”
—The National Weather Service has begun the work of renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America in its broad array of products and services, including maps, websites and forecasts, the agency announced Monday.
The Department of Interior and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names were directed to make the new “Lake America” name change official within 30 days.
This is so freakin’ stupid, and pathetic.
—No hurricane had formed in the Atlantic Ocean in the 2026 season as of Sept. 12, setting a new record for the latest date in a modern hurricane season without at least one.
—
Pray for the men and women of our armed forces…and all the fallen.
Slava Ukraini.
God bless America.
—
Gold $4380…Silver $66.40
Oil (WTI) $99.65.…Brent $103.15
Regular Gas: $4.46; Diesel: $6.44 [$3.20 – $3.70 yr. ago]
Bitcoin: $81,168 [4:00 PM ET, Friday…up 6% today…]
Returns for the week 9/14-18
Dow Jones -1.7% [51682]
S&P 500 -0.1% [7650]
S&P MidCap -1.7%
Russell 2000 -1.5%
Nasdaq +0.7% [26522]
Returns for the period 1/1/26-9/18/26
Dow Jones +7.5%
S&P 500 +11.8%
S&P MidCap +10.5%
Russell 2000 +15.2%
Nasdaq +14.1%
Hang in there.
Brian Trumbore
