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Quick Saturday Updates: Trump Escalates His War – 9/5/26

Your quick Saturday rundown. Paywall free.

Ben Meiselas and MeidasTouch Network Sep 5

It’s Saturday, September 5th.

It’s the weekend, so I’ll make this one quicker than usual so you can get all the news and get back to your day.

U.S. President Donald Trump walks after exiting Air Force One in Morristown, New Jersey, U.S., September 4, 2026. REUTERS/Eric Lee

Also: some very exciting personal news at the top for those who have been asking. Jordy and his wife welcomed their second child to the world yesterday. Mom, baby, and big sibling are all doing great! It’s always nice to be reminded of what’s truly important in life amidst all the chaos.

Now, to the top stories:

• The U.S. strikes and destroys Iranian oil tankers

• Iran reportedly feels emboldened 6 months into the war and sees no reason to negotiate

• Paranoid Pete Hegseth is giving polygraph tests to 50 Joint Staff members over leaks about dwindling U.S. munitions

• Witkoff and Kushner land in Moscow

• Russia strikes Kyiv airports and Ukraine’s last major steel plants during the envoy visit

• Trump keeps demanding mapmakers change the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America”

• New polling shows Democrats with their biggest advantage since 2008

• House Republicans are quietly scrubbing Trump’s name off their campaign websites

• GOP strategists are panicked over Texas

Now let’s dive in.

Trump Escalates His War

CENTCOM announced earlier it struck 3 Iranian crude oil carriers, permanently disabling 2 and completely destroying a 3rd, the M/T Kylo, after directing the crew to abandon ship first. The official line is that this came in response to the IRGC firing ballistic missiles at 2 U.S. Navy warships. We don’t have independent confirmation that that happened as of now; just the news of Trump blowing up civilian oil tankers.

Meanwhile, Iran feels more confident than ever after 6 months of fighting the U.S., per the NYT. Tehran thinks it’s found the limits of American power due to Trump’s struggles, they still have enough missiles and drones to keep going, and they feel like they have real leverage by squeezing the Strait of Hormuz. Per reports, Iran would rather drag this out through the midterms and let prolonged war do the damage for them, in the form of high gas prices in the U.S.

The Pentagon is buckling under the weight of Pete Hegseth’s ineptitude as well. The White House is floating a replacement for Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, though they’re saying nobody’s being pushed out. Yet, they’re looking for his replacement. Hmm.

Speaking of Paranoid Pete: Investigators reportedly gave polygraph tests to around 50 members of the Joint Staff after reporting showed how depleted our missile and Patriot interceptor stockpiles are. One retired Navy judge called the scope of this “unprecedented.”

Hegseth also pulled his mandatory testosterone screening policy for troops over 30 just a day after announcing it.

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Witkoff and Kushner Land in Moscow

Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff were greeted in Moscow by Putin envoy Kirill Dmitriev. Per the Kyiv Post, Witkoff’s first planned trip to Kyiv was thrown into doubt after he reportedly got nervous. Zelenskyy offered to hold off on striking Moscow and other Russian cities through Monday to make it safer for the U.S. envoys to eventually show up in Kyiv. Russia hasn’t agreed to match that deal. Overnight, Russian drones and missiles hit Kyiv and Kharkiv. They leveled a hypermarket in Mykolaiv, and also struck near both Kyiv airports right as the envoys were supposedly about to fly in from Moscow. Russia also hit Ukraine’s second largest steel plant, which means all 3 of Ukraine’s remaining steel plants have now been hit within a month. Remember when former President Biden rode a train into Kyiv in the middle of the war? Trump’s people are too afraid to even fly in.

Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev wait before a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, September 5, 2026. Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Pool

Lake America and Trump’s Other Vanity Projects

So where is Trump during all of this? At his golf club in Bedminster, of course. Lots of “Executive Time.” Trump posted on his social media account how much Americans looooove renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America” and saying how excited Google, Apple, and Bing Maps are to be on board. Say what you want about Trump, but he’s clearly laser focused on the things Americans care about (sarcasm). Trump also posted about his midterm convention, which as of now, a large chunk of House Republicans plan to skip. More on this in a bit.

Speaking of Trump’s vanity projects, Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered the Trump regime to give 48 hours notice before doing any more work on his Memorial Arch project. And separately, a magistrate judge is forcing the regime to disclose everyone who was behind the scheme to create a $1.8 billion taxpayer fund to give to Trump allies, fraudsters, insurrectionists, and cop beaters.

Quick Hits Before We Go

• NATO ran submarine hunting drills off Iceland without any U.S. ships for the first time in decades, as European and Canadian forces cover the gap

• China’s new W-X stealth drone reportedly has a 170-foot wingspan and a range over 12,000 miles, comparable to a B-2 bomber

• The AP found Venezuelans still enduring blackouts and can’t afford basic groceries despite Trump’s promises of prosperity

• New Gallup data shows Democrats with their widest voter identification advantage over Republicans since 2008

• At least 7 House Republican candidates in swing districts have scrubbed Trump’s name and image off their campaign websites, per WaPo

• And Texas GOP strategist Bryan Lanza says he thinks Republicans are going to lose the U.S. Senate race in the state

That’s the quick rundown for today. Thanks for reading, and remember to grab your copy of our book WTF America today. Let me know if you’ve preordered in the comments!

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The 75 Most Corrupt Things Trump Did in 2026

Ron Filipkowski · Sep 4

… This is a list of the 75 most corrupt things Trump did in 2026. These are not all of the corrupt things. There were many more, all of which I chronicled throughout the year in my daily column ‘Today in Politics.’ I was planning to list 100. However, to get it under the length restrictions for Substack emails, I had to cut the list down to 75.

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Ex-Trump Labor Secretary Went to Strip Club on Taxpayers’ Dime

Lori Chavez-DeRemer also pressured her staff to drink on the job with her, an inspector general report found.

Malcolm Ferguson/

September 4, 2026

Former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images

A Thursday report from the Inspector General states that former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer went to a strip club while on the job, even forcing her driver to rain dollar bills on one of the dancers.

The report further details just how sloppy and reckless Chavez-DeRemer’s tenure as Labor secretary was until she stepped down in April.

“During Chavez-DeRemer’s April 15–20, 2025 personal travel to Oregon, she requested an off-the-record stop at an establishment that was determined upon entry to feature partially nude dancers,” the IG report reads, noting that Chavez-DeRemer made a point to bring her limousine driver inside with her.

“Chavez-DeRemer subsequently took money from her purse, gave the money to the driver, and directed him to give it to the performer. When the agent resisted and sought guidance from [Assistant Special Agent in Charge]1, ASAIC 1 instructed him to comply with Chavez-DeRemer’s requests,” the report continues. “Chavez-DeRemer then took additional money from her purse and asked the agent to drop the bills one by one onto the partially nude woman. The agent again hesitated and sought intervention from ASAIC 1, who told him to follow Chavez-DeRemer’s instructions. The agent complied against his wishes.”

This is the woman President Donald Trump handpicked—at the behest of Teamsters president Sean O’Brien—to lead the country’s Labor Department as part of a so-called “pro-labor” administration. And that strip club moment is just one of many ways in which she created what the IG report describes as a “toxic, intimidating, and humiliating” work environment.

The report also notes that while in Michigan, Chavez-DeRemer massaged ASAIC 1’s shoulders “while seated behind him in a vehicle after he completed a driving shift,” and asked if he was tired. ASAIC 1 told her he was “solid as a rock,” which witnesses interpreted as a sexual innuendo in reference to a massage-induced erection.

Chavez-DeRemer also reportedly discussed employees’ performance in front of them, including whether they had cried, and would drink during the workday. She and her aides would pressure other employees to join them and would mock them if they declined, witnesses said.

The dysfunction wasn’t just from Chavez-DeRemer. Her chief of staff Rebecca Wright screened Office of the Secretary applicants by race, weight, and sexual orientation—even moving someone’s desk because she didn’t want a “fat person” in her line of sight. She also told women in the office not to cut their hair too short to stop them from “turning into a lesbian.”

This is an update from the April allegations that led to Chavez-DeRemer’s resignation—that she had an affair with a member of her security detail, asked staffers to buy alcohol for her at various hours of the day, and used taxpayer funds to throw a birthday party for herself.

THE NEW REPUBLIC

RE: 11 utility giants paid negative federal tax rates

                                                                                 

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SHARED FOR INFORMATION AND EDUCATION ABOUT AN IMPORTANT ISSUE 

THAT ALLOWS COMPANIES TO USE DIVIDENDS AND STOCK BUYBACKS 

TO INCREASE PRICES!

Our new report found that Latino households are nearly twice as likely as white households to experience energy insecurity, while CEOs at 21 publicly traded utilities took home nearly $1 billion from 2023 through 2025. Eleven of those companies paid a negative federal tax rate in 2025, while the companies collectively spent nearly $94 billion on dividends and stock buybacks.1 Those numbers belong in newspaper stories, television segments, radio interviews, and digital coverage across the country. And because Latino families are being hit especially hard by rising utility costs, getting this research into Spanish-language media is particularly important. That means pitching reporters, developing the strongest stories from our research, helping journalists understand the tax data, reaching Spanish-language outlets, and pushing back when wealthy corporations try to obscure what the numbers show. Can you donate today to help us get this report in front of more journalists, more communities, and more lawmakers? Corporate utilities have teams of lobbyists and public relations professionals working to protect their tax breaks and defend the status quo. We need the resources to make sure working families hear the other side of the story. Every story that reaches a new audience creates another opportunity to expose this backwards system. Every Spanish-language outlet that reports these findings helps reach families whose experiences with rising energy costs have too often been left out of the national economic debate. This is how research becomes pressure. We uncover the numbers. We get them into the public conversation. Then we organize around them to demand that Congress stop handing tax breaks to the rich and make large, profitable corporations pay their fair share. Please donate now to help us expand the reach of this report and keep exposing the corporations and wealthy executives profiting while working families struggle with rising costs. If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your secure donation will go through immediately: Thank you for helping us get the truth in front of the people who need to see it. Pablo Willis Communications Director Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund 1 Utility Costs & Corporate Accountability: Who Pays, Who Profits (Americans For Tax Fairness -- David's email -- Families are opening their utility bills and wondering what else they can possibly cut. At the same time, the executives running some of America’s biggest utility companies are cashing checks worth tens of millions of dollars. Our new report with Climate En Acción exposes exactly who is paying and who is profiting from America’s energy affordability crisis.1 Across the 12 states we examined, residential electricity prices have increased between 3% and 30% since January 2025. Latino households are nearly twice as likely as white households to experience energy insecurity and spend about 20% more of their income on utilities. In North Carolina, residential electricity prices jumped 29.9%. New Jersey experienced a 22.2% year-over-year increase in average monthly electric bills. Now look at what is happening at the top. CEOs at 21 publicly traded utility companies took home nearly $1 billion from 2023 through 2025, including an estimated $26.4 million tied to the 2017 Trump tax cuts. Eleven of those companies paid a negative federal tax rate in 2025. And those companies still found enormous sums for wealthy shareholders. From 2023 through 2025, they spent nearly $94 billion on dividends and stock buybacks. Families are being squeezed just to keep the lights on while corporate executives and wealthy investors keep benefiting from a tax system tilted in their favor. This is exactly the kind of corporate greed and tax unfairness Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund exists to expose. Donate now to help us get this research in front of the public, the press—including Spanish-language press—and lawmakers across the country. Numbers like these do not expose themselves. Our team digs through corporate filings and tax data, connects those findings to what working families are experiencing, and turns that research into a case Congress and the media cannot easily ignore. And this report makes the stakes painfully clear. Congress has spent years handing tax breaks to wealthy executives and large, profitable corporations. Those giveaways come at the same time families are struggling with electricity, groceries, healthcare, housing, and other basic costs. The people who can least afford another increase keep getting asked to pay more. We are fighting for different priorities. Large, profitable corporations should pay their fair share in taxes. Wealthy executives do not need another tax break. That revenue should be invested in making life more affordable and strengthening the communities being squeezed hardest by rising costs. But corporate lobbyists have enormous resources to defend this system. Our strength comes from people like you helping us produce the research, organize grassroots pressure, and make sure findings like these break through the noise. Please make a donation today to power our research, media outreach, and advocacy exposing corporate tax giveaways and fighting for an economy where working families come before wealthy executives and shareholders. If you've saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your secure donation will go through immediately: Together, we can expose who is profiting from our rigged tax system and fight to make wealthy corporations pay their fair share. David Kass Executive Director Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund 1 Utility Costs & Corporate Accountability: Who Pays, Who Profits

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