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Good morning, everyone. I’m back. Twenty five hours offline for Yom Kippur, and it is genuinely strange to open my phone after a full day away from the news cycle and see just how much happened while I was gone. Trump banned three news outlets and then watched every major network walk out on him in solidarity. The White House launched its own government run streaming channel. And in the middle of all that, my inbox and my mentions were full of something else entirely, the fallout from today’s investigation into the Trump family’s finances. I want to say a few things about that before we get into today’s news. That piece took weeks to put together, and I knew going in it would upset some people, because it’s supposed to. Reporting that doesn’t make powerful people uncomfortable usually isn’t doing its job. Since it went out, I’ve gotten the usual wave of bad faith attacks, people twisting the numbers, accusing me of fabricating sources, the standard playbook. I’m not going to spend this newsletter relitigating it point by point. The reporting stands, the sourcing stands, and if anyone wants to point to a specific factual error, my inbox is open. What I won’t do is soften future reporting because a piece landed hard. That’s the whole point. None of this work happens without you. Every hour that went into that investigation, every article I dig into that a bigger outlet won’t touch because of who it might upset, exists because readers decided independent journalism is worth paying for directly. Not because a network green lit it. Not because an advertiser was comfortable with it. Because you were willing to fund it. So thank you, genuinely, to everyone who’s already subscribing, upgrading, or sharing this with someone else. You’re the reason any of this is possible, and after the last 24 hours, that support means more to me than usual. If you’re not a subscriber yet, or you’ve been meaning to upgrade, today’s a good day to do it. This is exactly the kind of reporting that gets targeted when it’s working. Subscribe. Gift a subscription. Upgrade your membership.
Subscribe now Alright. Let’s get into what you missed. Trump Furious as Press Stands Together, he Launches ‘State Run Media’ CNN, MS NOW, and Politico sued the Trump administration Monday, arguing that barring them from White House grounds violates their First Amendment rights, with a hearing already set for Wednesday before Judge Timothy Kelly. Kelly, a 2017 Trump nominee, previously ruled against the White House in the 2018 Jim Acosta case, ordering his press pass reinstated after finding he’d been denied due process, a track record that has First Amendment attorneys expecting the outlets to win again. Trump publicly attacked the judge assignment anyway, writing on Truth Social that “they have drawn a great Judge, for them” while insisting Fake News outlets “shouldn’t be allowed access to the most important Office anywhere in the World.” Vice President Vance separately defended the ban at Joint Base Andrews, accusing the three outlets of “far-left propaganda” and asking “why would a Republican White House give you special access?” The three companies are asking the court for an expedited hearing and a temporary order restoring their access and press passes.
In an unprecedented escalation, the five networks that share White House TV pool duties, ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC, suspended their pooled coverage of Trump entirely after the administration refused to let CNN fulfill its scheduled rotation covering his trip to the UN General Assembly. Fox’s Washington bureau chief, acting as pool chair, told members there would be “no replacement pool put in place,” while the networks issued a joint statement warning that “no administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.” The blackout was immediately visible: TV cameras were absent from Trump’s ribbon-cutting for a new South Lawn helipad, and the White House’s own YouTube stream of the event had audio so garbled it was impossible to make out his remarks. Veteran Times reporter Peter Baker noted that in his 30 years covering the White House, this is the first time the president will go without any network TV camera covering his everyday actions and travel. Smaller outlets like the right-wing Real America’s Voice have stepped in to cover some events, but lack the major networks’ worldwide distribution.
 The White House responded by launching its own 24/7 video stream, “Trump TV: The Essentials Station,” on YouTube and whitehouse.gov, giving the administration an owned distribution channel independent of the networks that walked away. Officials described it as a continuously updated loop of “top videos, major remarks, and must-see highlights” rather than a traditional newscast, and it began airing footage of the same helipad ribbon-cutting the press pool had skipped. In a written statement titled “White House Access Is a Privilege — Not a Right,” the administration argued the First Amendment guarantees the right to publish but not a hard pass, briefing-room seat, or pool slot, while listing past Democratic-era press disputes (the Obama White House isolating Fox News, the 2010 surveillance of a Fox reporter, the Biden-era credentialing of a claimed “440-plus” fewer reporters) as precedent. Notably, even as CNN remains barred from the main White House grounds, the first lady’s office credentialed a CNN reporter to cover Melania Trump’s own UN appearance, a carve-out an administration official confirmed on condition of anonymity.
Some solidarity gestures went beyond the networks themselves: The New York Times and The Washington Post both announced they would hold back publishing any White House pool photography from Monday until midnight, in support of the barred outlets. Times spokesman Charlie Stadtlander said the paper remained “committed to covering the president’s travel to New York City today” while stressing that “Americans deserve a free and independent media covering their government without intimidation.” Meanwhile Trump, appearing publicly with Mayor Mamdani in New York, falsely claimed reporters “said they were going to boycott me, but they never boycott me,” even as the networks’ pool boycott was already underway. Press freedom advocates weighed in forcefully too, with a former White House Correspondents’ Association president calling the ban “an attack on one outlet” that amounts to “an attack on everyone.” The fight is already reverberating beyond media circles into the legal and political spheres. The Hill reported Trump himself seemed to anticipate losing in district court, given Judge Kelly’s history with the Acosta case, and is already signaling he’ll appeal. The episode is also becoming a midterm talking point, referenced alongside other Trump-era controversies in The Hill’s roundup of top stories, and commentators like Fox’s own “Squawk Box” host have pressed Treasury Secretary Bessent on why the administration is picking this fight now. Whatever the court decides on the narrow legal question, the standoff has already reshaped how Americans see White House coverage in real time: for the first time in decades, the president’s day-to-day activities are being filtered primarily through his own government-run channel rather than independent television pool cameras.
Other news: Trump appeared unusually docile and complimentary toward Mayor Zohran Mamdani during a Monday visit to Gracie Mansion, marking the first time a sitting president has visited the residence since Ronald Reagan in 1981. The hourlong closed-door meeting, their third in-person sitdown within the last year, came even as Trump spent the rest of the day raging at his political enemies over the fallout from his press ban on CNN, Politico, and MS NOW. Trump called Mamdani a mayor with “great potential” and said he wants him to succeed, while Mamdani said their conversations have stuck to practical city issues like a Queens housing development and the administration’s revocation of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, which has left many Haitian New Yorkers vulnerable to deportation. Despite the cordial tone, Trump couldn’t resist calling the press “biased news” and a “threat to national security” even as Mamdani stood beside him defending reporters’ access. Their relationship has swung between Trump’s past praise and attacks branding Mamdani a communist, and it comes as New York City just joined a lawsuit challenging the administration’s new public charge rule targeting immigrants’ green cards and visas.
 Paramount cleared the last major legal hurdle to its $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery Monday, settling an antitrust lawsuit brought by a coalition of Democratic-led states. California Attorney General Rob Bonta secured concessions including an editorial-independence board for CNN and CBS News, a commitment to distribute 30 movies theatrically each year, an extra $1.5 billion in film production spending over five years, and a requirement to sell cable bundles separately to keep prices down, while stressing the settlement was “not a vote of support” for the broader merger. The deal would hand CEO David Ellison, backed by his father Larry Ellison’s Oracle fortune, control of both Paramount+ and HBO Max along with CNN and CBS News, and comes amid lingering unease over the Ellison family’s ties to Trump. Not everyone was satisfied: Connecticut’s attorney general said his state had wanted full divestiture of CNN and CBS News, and the advocacy group Free Press accused California of “capitulation” that would cut jobs and further consolidate media power. The Writers Guild, which had filed its own separate suit to block the merger, also settled Monday after saying it couldn’t sustain the legal fight alone, and Ellison intends to close the overall deal within about two weeks, with Paramount and Warner Bros. shares both rising sharply on the news. Taco Bell’s customer traffic still hasn’t fully recovered months after a Cyclospora outbreak tied to its iceberg lettuce sickened more than 20,000 people and killed two. Visits dropped as much as 30.9 percent year-over-year by mid-July, shortly after the chain pulled the contaminated ingredients supplied by Taylor Farms, and traffic remained down 12.2 percent between the outbreak’s start and the CDC’s September 11 declaration that it was over. The company responded with aggressive promotions, including $1 Enchiritos and $1 Mexican pizzas, items that normally sell for around $4 to $6. Yum! Brands executives struck an optimistic tone on earnings calls, with CFO Ranjith Roy saying sales trends have shown steady, sequential improvement and that the brand hasn’t lost customer loyalty despite the negative press. Still, Roy stopped short of declaring victory, saying only that the company has “confidence” the long-term outlook for Taco Bell remains intact. ICE has quietly stopped publicly listing thousands of detainees with final removal orders in its online locator system, making it far harder for lawyers and family members to track them down. The agency removed those detainees from the system on September 15, according to three current and former ICE officials who spoke to the AP anonymously, and multiple immigration lawyers confirmed their clients vanished from the system that week. Nearly 16,000 people booked into ICE detention in July, more than a third of all bookings, had final removal orders, and advocates say hiding their locations makes it easier to speed deportations by cutting off last-minute legal challenges like habeas petitions. The change doesn’t apply to detainees in Adelanto, California, or temporary facilities in Minneapolis, New York City, or suburban Chicago, where courts have ordered ICE to keep listings current. Lawyers say the practice has no real precedent, with one calling it “just another iteration of disappearing people,” and it’s already affecting cases including eight Somali men held at Guantánamo Bay. Opening statements began Monday in a California trial accusing Tesla of fostering “rampant racism” at its Fremont factory, with state lawyers showing photos of the N-word, swastikas, and Confederate flags scrawled throughout the plant. A lawyer for the California Civil Rights Department said Black workers were subjected to racial slurs as often as 50 to 100 times a day and that management did little to nothing to address it despite hundreds of complaints, with workers reportedly nicknaming the factory “the plantation” and “the slaveship.” Tesla’s lead attorney countered by repeatedly using the N-word in his opening statement to argue it wasn’t used as a slur, and accused the state of unfairly attacking “the most prolific employer” in California. The case, filed in 2022 under the state’s Fair Employment and Housing Act, is a bench trial before Judge Peter Borkon and is expected to run through the end of October. It’s one of dozens of discrimination suits against Tesla, following a 2022 case that won a former employee $137 million (later reduced) and comes amid renewed scrutiny of Elon Musk’s own history of promoting white nationalist rhetoric. A federal appeals panel ruled Monday that Missouri should use Trump-backed congressional maps in November, even though the Supreme Court has twice blocked those same districts from taking effect. The 8th Circuit panel said reverting to the state’s prior districts would violate the Constitution, but delayed its order by a week to allow for an appeal, meaning the ruling has no immediate practical effect. Missouri is currently set to run its November election using the same districts from 2022 and 2024, per earlier rulings from both the state and US Supreme Courts. Local officials have already sent absentee ballots using those old districts to overseas and military voters, and state law requires all other absentee ballots to go out by Tuesday. The fight is expected to ultimately land back before the Supreme Court for a final decision. Houthi fighters are advancing to seize strategic Yemeni terrain after Trump reportedly called off US airstrikes against them at the last minute, even as bombs were being loaded onto aircraft. The New York Times reported Trump flip-flopped after a call with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pleading for help against the Houthi advance, first ordering the Pentagon to prepare strikes before reversing again. The UN says fighting has displaced at least 125,000 people in Yemen since early September, with the Houthis pushing to control territory near the Bab al-Mandab strait that would let them cut Saudi-backed forces off from the Red Sea coast. Saudi Arabia has launched hundreds of strikes on Houthi positions without stopping the advance, while the group claims to have fired on Riyadh, with smoke seen near the capital’s airport. Trump appears caught between Gulf allies pressuring him to intervene and his own reluctance to widen an already unpopular war he launched against Iran. A Venezuelan delivery driver shot by an ICE officer in Austin says he’s in severe pain with a bullet still lodged near his spine, after being taken into detention rather than given full medical care. Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, 28, was delivering a DoorDash order Sunday when an ICE vehicle rammed his car and an officer got out and shot him three times, hitting him once in the back; his lawyer says he spent the night on the floor of a cold detention room roughly 140 miles from Austin. Video of the shooting sparked protests where demonstrators say they were hit with tear gas or chemical spray, and Austin’s Democratic mayor called the shooting infuriating. DHS says Garcés Pérez, who has lived in the US for two years and had an outstanding removal order, is in stable condition and in custody pending deportation, while his lawyers have filed a habeas petition arguing he qualifies for a crime-victim visa. The shooting comes amid what local officials describe as a recent surge in ICE agents acting unilaterally rather than relying on state troopers for stops. A US citizen in Evanston, Illinois was hospitalized with head and facial injuries Sunday after federal agents mistook him for someone else during a fugitive investigation. Police found the man on the ground surrounded by people helping him, and an agent on scene said he’d resisted being detained for fingerprinting before agents determined he wasn’t their target and released him; an officer also noticed blood on the agent’s hands. The incident happened the same day ICE shot and wounded a Venezuelan man in Austin, and came amid a broader immigration crackdown that saw a record 50,000 arrests in July, more than half of people with no criminal record. DHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and it’s unclear which specific federal agency the man identified himself as belonging to. The episode adds to a string of incidents this year involving federal agents injuring or killing bystanders, including the fatal shootings of US citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January. A communications line failure at an FAA facility in Philadelphia triggered a ground stop and thousands of flight delays and cancellations across the Northeast before service resumed Monday evening. The primary line failed Monday morning, and when systems tried switching to the backup, officials discovered a fiber-optic cable had been accidentally severed by a construction crew, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Amtrak initially disputing whose crew was responsible. The disruption hit Newark, LaGuardia, JFK, Philadelphia, and Boston airports, and comes from the same facility blamed for major Newark meltdowns in spring 2025. It coincided with a new GAO report finding the FAA hasn’t finished risk assessments for threats like spoofing and jamming and lacks real-time detection systems, prompting Sen. Ron Wyden to call the vulnerabilities “a major threat to US national security.” The GAO issued nine recommendations, all of which the Department of Transportation agreed to adopt. Lindsay Clancy’s defense lawyers are asking a judge to investigate the lone holdout juror who blocked her acquittal in the killing of her three children, alleging he may have used his phone during deliberations and lied on pretrial questionnaires. The September 4 mistrial came after 11 of 12 jurors were ready to find Clancy not criminally responsible due to postpartum psychosis, while juror Michael Desronvil insisted she knew what she was doing when she strangled her kids. Clancy’s attorney is seeking phone records for the deliberation period, since phone use during deliberations is barred under state law, and in a separate motion is asking the judge to dismiss the case outright rather than allow a retrial, arguing the mistrial should never have been declared. Prosecutors haven’t said whether they’ll retry Clancy, who remains charged with murder and is being held in a psychiatric hospital. Desronvil hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing and has said publicly he had no doubts about her guilt. A former Haitian anti-corruption official and 17 alleged Colombian mercenaries made their first US court appearance Monday on charges tied to the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse. Joseph Badio, who allegedly posed as a US drug agent and participated directly in the killing, was wheeled into the Miami federal courtroom a day after he and the others were flown in from Haitian custody. They’re among 30 people charged in the case, including Palm Beach resident Christian Sanon, who aspired to replace Moïse as president and is already set for trial next week; at least nine defendants have been convicted or pleaded guilty so far. Prosecutors say the plot was financed partly through South Florida and paid for using misappropriated US COVID-relief funds. Haiti has had no president in the five years since the killing and remains gripped by gang violence that has killed more than 3,000 people and displaced 1.5 million this year alone. Australian lawmakers across the political spectrum voiced skepticism about Treasury’s new 40-year economic forecast, even as most agreed it’s a useful break from short-term election-cycle thinking. Politicians from Liberal, One Nation, Labor, and independent ranks questioned the report’s ability to model far-off variables like AI’s impact and the influence of erratic actors like Trump, with One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce calling its optimistic productivity assumptions “completely at odds with our obvious reality.” Several MPs reframed the report’s warnings about Australia’s falling fertility rate as an economic problem rather than a cultural one, pointing to high housing costs and delayed independence as the real drivers of smaller families. Independent MPs Monique Ryan and Kate Chaney pushed for the report to weigh a broader set of measures, including climate impacts, mental health, and social connection, while Liberal shadow treasurer Tim Wilson said rising government debt on future generations was the biggest blind spot. The report is meant to serve as a nonpartisan foundation for debate even as polling shows most Australians are unhappy with the political system generally. GOP Senate candidate Mike Rogers became the second Republican in one day to break with the White House over the Iran war, saying Monday it “needs to end, and end quickly” as gas and diesel prices soar. The Michigan nominee called for a temporary embargo on diesel exports to bring relief to American families, drawing sharp attacks from both his Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, and the state Democratic Party, who noted Rogers had originally supported the strikes on Iran. Regular gas hit $4.45 a gallon and diesel a record $6.50 a gallon Monday, according to AAA, as the war launched in February continues to strain the economy heading into the midterms. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins warned today that Trump would be defying Congress if he moves ahead with a plan to let political appointees decide which NIH research grants get funded. Trump is reportedly weighing an executive order that would seat OMB Director Russ Vought and NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya on a board with veto power over grant approvals, following a contentious Oval Office meeting last week. Collins said the funding patch Congress passed this summer already bars the White House from finalizing a similar rule, and that grantmaking should be based on “scientific need and merit” rather than politics. Top Democratic appropriators Rosa DeLauro and Patty Murray went further, warning the move could let a single political appointee kill a cancer or Alzheimer’s study for no scientific reason at all. Rep. Ashley Hinson became the first Republican Monday to publicly call for an end to the Iran war over its effect on Iowans’ cost of living, marking her second break with Trump on the issue. She called for suspending the gas tax, pausing diesel exports, and creating a diesel relief program for farmers and truckers being “crushed” by high costs, though she stopped short of naming Trump directly. Her Democratic opponent, Josh Turek, noted she has voted against multiple House resolutions to end the war, including as recently as last week, and accused her of copying his own cost-relief proposals. Trump himself has dismissed the price concerns, telling a North Carolina rally that higher costs are “a very inexpensive price to pay for what we’ve done.” A senior House GOP appropriator, Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson, said he wouldn’t fund Trump’s planned triumphal arch given competing military funding needs, after Trump claimed the structure would double as a weapons storage and sniper facility. Simpson argued the Pentagon is already short on funding for higher priorities and said Congress should get a formal appropriations request if military dollars are going to be used for the project. He also criticized Trump’s weekend ban of three news outlets, including POLITICO, calling any effort to bar the press over unfavorable coverage flatly “wrong.” Two House lawmakers introduced the bipartisan SAFE Platforms Act Monday, aiming to crack down on AI-powered scams that target elderly and vulnerable users. Reps. Valerie Foushee and James Moylan’s bill would hold platforms liable for knowingly spreading fraudulent content, require design changes to prevent misleading ads and fake accounts, and let the FTC enforce the new rules. It would also narrow how platforms can use Section 230 immunity to shield themselves from liability. The bill faces long odds given how few legislative days remain this year, and comes as Trump separately floated creating an “AI Force” and appointing an AI czar. A crypto-industry super PAC is preparing to spend at least $30 million to defeat Sherrod Brown in Ohio’s Senate race, its biggest play of the 2026 cycle so far. Fairshake, backed by Coinbase, Ripple, and Andreessen Horowitz, held off spending while an industry-friendly crypto bill was pending in the Senate, but moved after Democrats voted the bill down last week. Brown, a former Senate Banking Committee chair and vocal crypto critic, is trying to reclaim the seat he lost by four points in 2024, this time against Sen. Jon Husted. Both campaigns traded sharp statements, with Brown’s team calling Husted “for sale” and Husted’s campaign predicting Ohioans won’t return to Brown’s “days of higher taxes.” Rep. Max Miller is threatening to sue a Cleveland TV station over a Democratic opponent’s ad that repeats domestic abuse allegations against him, which Miller denies. His lawyer, who has also represented Trump, sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding the station stop airing Brian Poindexter’s ad, which features a local sheriff citing accusations that Miller poured hot water on his ex-wife, held a gun to her head, and broke his toddler’s collarbone. Poindexter responded by ripping up the letter on camera and vowing to keep the ad running, saying Miller has “used his money and fancy lawyers to get himself out of trouble his whole life.” National Republicans have poured over $5 million combined into ads defending Miller, whose race has tightened according to recent polling. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is facing new skepticism on Capitol Hill as he lobbies against export restrictions on AI chips, with some lawmakers calling his recent pitches “tone deaf.” A Senate Democratic aide said Huang has dismissed AI workforce risks in private meetings, while Senate Intelligence Vice Chair Mark Warner voiced doubts about arguments that US chip dominance abroad is inherently good. Meanwhile a bipartisan trio of senators, John Curtis, Josh Hawley, and John Kennedy, is independently pushing leadership to act on AI safety ahead of the midterms, even as Trump’s continued opposition to regulation makes passage unlikely. Hawley is holding hearings this week on AI-powered surveillance cameras and investigating OpenAI over a runaway model that led to rogue AI agents escaping testing.
See you in the morning. — Aaron You’re currently a free subscriber to the Parnas Perspective. For the full experience, more content, and to support Aaron, upgrade your subscription. |
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