- The Moderate Voice covers the lack of coverage as Trump bans CNN, MSNOW, and Politico from the White House and the networks that provide pool coverage stop pool coverage of Trump.
The way it usually works:
Five networks — ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC — have long shared the responsibility of providing television coverage of presidential events, splitting the financial costs and distributing footage that is carried by news organizations worldwide.What gets covered now:
“Effective today, the TV pool will not be covering events designated as pool coverage of the President,” Bryan Boughton, the Washington bureau chief at Fox News, wrote in a note to television pool members on Monday…So the free press acts as if it’s the free press. Quoting a joint statement from ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and NBC:
The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government. No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting. - tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors reports on ping pong news about banning networks for bad news Trump doesn’t like.
Federal Judge bars the bar.
Ooops. Reporters report they are still barred.
Or maybe it’s a system lag – incompetence.And, of course, there’s more->
Awkward — “VP JD Vance has been exposed as the source of a story whose supposed leak was used by the White House in court to justify the termination of Politico's access to the press pool.” 😬
— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) September 23, 2026 at 10:02 PM
- In Hackwhackers the Schrödinger’s Press ban (It’s alive AND it’s dead) is showing the unexpected power of what everyone thought was mere human comforter Natalie Harp.
- Journalist Marcy Wheeler at EmptyWheel covers coverage of the suspension of pool coverage, as Trump blew up because his friend Natalie Harp showed him bad news.
Apparently, Trump’s poll numbers are showing Americans don’t like him. Very seriously don’t like him. In a big, big way don’t like him.
Although Katy Tur made Trump’s blood boil by covering his horrible poll numbers, Marcy brings us another piece, this one from CNN, that made Trump’s head explode.
CNN was telling the same story, with a typically animated Harry Enten showing a up to 60-point swing in Latino support.I can see some mild irritation as Harry occasionally goes to a demented Ricky Ricardo presentation. Trump was furious at the numbers themselves, knowing as he does that he is actually wildly popular.
- So Trump banishes three mainstream news outlets from the White House because their coverage is fake news, with polls showing Americans really don’t like him.
But you can’t ban the news just because of polls, right?
A decidedly unsympathetic News Corpse covers the shift in reasoning from Fake News to threats to National Security.
Yeah, that’s it!
Fake news is a threat to National Security.Quoting Trump on Truth Social:
I’m old enough to remember way back when National Security restrictions would involve state secrets, especially state secrets putting lives at risk.
Now National Security requires no more than the hurt feelings and personal insecurities of the occupant of the Oval Office. - CalicoJack in The Psy of Life integrates posts, public statements, and answers by Donald Trump to show that, however unwittingly, Trump is arguing that he is not fit to be president.
- In Canadian satire, The Beaverton has Trump reduce the press corps to podcasters and adds Stephen Miller in a mustache.
- Dave Columbo requires only a minute to defend Trump’s ban on Fake News:
- Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson notes the slavishness with which candidate for governor Tom Tiffany follows Trump’s example. A Tiffany aide was sent to physically block two reporters from covering a campaign event after they investigated funding Tiffany would have hoped would remain secret.
U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, GOP candidate for Wisconsin Governor:
The two reporters had waded through a maze of financial documentation and discovered three billionaires who have been funding the Tiffany campaign.
Unfortunately for the Tiffany campaign, the image of the hulking Brooks preventing the diminutive Spicuzza from entry into the campaign event was recorded on video by both the newspaper and CBS 58, forcing the issue.
The question Wisconsin’s media organizations now need to ask themselves and their audience, do they want a governor with a Trump-like disdain for the freedom of the press? - In Rural Missouri, Jess Piper goes to childhood memories of an abusive grandfather and words from her grandmother. She finds parallels in Missouri.
Grandma said, if he wanted to be nice or loving or understanding, he would have been. He ended up proving her right after she finally left.
- Jason Linkins explains that the Trump Dividend Checks have already gone out. Just not to you.
So you might have to wait a while for your $5,000 check. But that doesn’t mean that the Trump dividend hasn’t already been paid out. To the contrary, the president and his congressional enablers have been handing out money left and right. They’ve made people very rich, in fact. It’s something that they’re quite good at doing—at least for a few. - In case you’ve been concerned, or even alarmed, after reading shallower than shallow (As in ankle deep) media coverage of the Supremes ruling in favor of a sketchy Trump federal database being used to keep voters from voting:
Author and educator Amanda Nelson explains in some detail why we shouldn’t worry about it
We should just do what we should be doing anyway. Check to make sure we’re registered.
Amanda provides an accurate web site where it’s safe (Which is to say no Musk trickery) to do just that.
https://www.nass.org/can-I-vote
- driftglass goes creatively poetic with an ode to election disruptors of the past.
The Nader people.
The Steiniacs.
The West volk.
The Forwardians.
Countless others.
The people who hurled ballots into the machinery:
Angry notes stuffed into bottles and cast into the sea.
I’m old enough to remember those rebellious souls.
And I recall the oft repeated rationale: that preventing less than perfect Democrats from winning, ensuring destructive Republicans would take office, would so damage life back on earth that a grateful electorate, having learned their lesson, would flock eagerly toward election perfection next time around.I’m also old enough to fail to understand (sorry – my flaw, not his) whether driftglass writes to bury or to praise.
Perhaps our noble Antony doth both.
And the prodigal iconoclasts have found their peace
As foot soldiers in the army
Of everything they despise. - Brian Beutler points out that Obama’s newer than new ideas on AI regulation are very good.
They are SO very good that Brian has been advocating them for a long, long time.
Interestingly, Brian doesn’t seem at all irritated.
You can’t prove that Obama isn’t a subscriber / avid reader…
www.offmessage.net/p/killer-rob…
www.offmessage.net/p/30-thought…
— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler.bsky.social) September 19, 2026 at 4:19 PM
Seems to enjoy it.
- Infidel753 warns of a coming AI bubble burst, a fraud the final collapse of which could crash the economy.
Infidel has a habit of accurate research combined with intelligent review. We’d best pay attention to his analysis.
All the talk about how “AI” could “wipe out humanity”, which the tech billionaire CEOs are suddenly astroturfing, is just the final stage of the scam. By now, even they know that they and the venture capitalists they’ve been duping are never going to get back all the hundreds of billions of dollars they’ve sunk into this.It won’t last, because it can’t.
The bubble is going to collapse, meaning a stock market crash that might be as deep as 1929. - Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit has a few details and one snarky, but legitimate, speculation as the FBI gets hacked and loses lots of personal information on employees and their families.
Something Else for J. Edgar Boozer to Get Hammered About
Maybe they should look through all those DOGE firings for any previously unneeded cybersecurity experts?
- Journalist Arturo Dominguez examines in some detail ICE claims that their agents are being targeted by migrants.
Available evidence compellingly shows that is simply not true.
Arturo dives into the most recent publicized case:
In the latest shooting, bystander video shows an ICE vehicle ramming a car, an agent exiting the ICE vehicle, and firing at least two rounds onto the back passenger-side window, striking the driver at least once. No agents were in danger or in the car’s path, which was stopped after ICE agents rammed the vehicle.
However, during a press conference, Austin Police said they understood that agents were under threat and that there was a “small foot pursuit” – a narrative not corroborated by publicly available video from multiple angles.The phrase they understood that does some heavy lifting.
Arturo demonstrates a connection…
While the agency has not officially released a statement saying what it believed happened, the comment highlights how common it is for ICE agents to lie about being threatened before shooting or violently targeting someone.…and shows what has become typical:
Case after case, ICE and other federal agencies have been found not to be justified in using violence against migrants, and many were caught lying about the incidents. More troubling are the incidents that we don’t hear about because they didn’t result in death. - Dave Dubya draws on specific quotes, threats, and actions, to show that Trump is bringing the US to the moral level of our enemies.
- We start with the startling:
Julian Sanchez demonstrates a basic ethic normal morality would seem to dictate:
It still somehow had the capacity to shock me when the president & VP just openly boast that we are using military force to steal the resources of other countries. They evidently assume the general public will not consider this shameful & appalling. We’ve sunk very low indeed if that’s true.
— Julian Sanchez (@normative.bsky.social) September 21, 2026 at 9:46 PM
- In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson relates Trump’s preoccupation with how useful monuments will be to US security. In one imaginary scenario, Trump will defend the US from air attack from atop his planned triumphal Trump Arch in Washington (No, really).
Meanwhile, back in the real world beyond Trump awareness, indictments are issued detailing assassination squads set up in the US by Putin to kill critics of his attacks on Ukraine.
The same analysis is now available in audio format, as Richardson narrates in podcast.
- From The Borowitz Report the Hitler estate sues Trump for stealing the late German chancellor’s arch design:
Kevin Carter/Getty Images
- For those of us (Okay, pretty much all of us) that missed the Hasan Piker image up on the giant screen at the Republican Trump-is-Awesome Convention in Dallas, Josh Johnson explains what it was all about:
- More bizarre fictional problems (Hey! It worked with “voter fraud”, right?)::
M. Bouffant at Web of Evil links to coverage as Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville accuses airline pilots of participating in a secret cult that dresses up as furry animals when no-one else is looking.
I suppose it’s better than accusing immigrants of stealing your dogs and cats for a private dining experience.
M. Bouffant provides the headline:
Just Who Exactly is “Mentally Ill”? - Libertarianism at it’s most extreme has always struck me as wildly idealistic, to the point of willful naïveté. It is that all government that is not voluntary on the part of everyone is inherently evil. Taxation itself is evil. So is anything at all that is collectively coercive.
Traffic tickets are evil, as are speed limits.
On the other hand, so are public highways, since they are financed by involuntary taxes.
Similarly, public sidewalks are evil.
Fire Departments are evil for the same reason.
Defund the police should be accomplished to the point of abolition.
Public education is evil.
The famous Problem of the Commons should be solved by making the commons a privately owned entity.
Food safety regulations are evil.
So are worker safety rules. Or child safety laws, for that matter.Communes are good, including religious, hippie style, or secular, because they presumably are entirely voluntary. Love em or leave em.
And on and on.But let’s make some distinctions.
Most libertarians are not that extreme. While not conservative in the traditional sense, they are more conservative/adjacent.
Some even want public funding for (quoting Bill Buckley) widows and orphans and ABMs.Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara may hesitate at the widows and orphans part. But he is for law enforcement in order to prevent infringement on property and freedom.
He veers into vagueness on how to finance that without involuntary taxation but, HEY, nobody’s perfect.
Sadly, like most of those who dwell on the fringes, he has trouble with ideological distinctions.
In his latest he defends, at length, communes (remember they’re voluntary) with a variety of examples. But democratic socialists are pretty much anti-American Stalinists.
Hence the title:
Criminal Socialism vs. a Free SocietyIt’s a good read. Educational, although requiring, to some degree, a suspension of skepticism.
- Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has numbers that will discourage good government types:
More than a third of adult Americans cannot name the three branches of government.
- North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz notes a host of claims concerning a male loneliness epidemic. He suggests a possible reason
If we’re going to talk about lonely men, we’re gonna need to address the orange elephant in the room. - Right Wing Watch brings us Christian Nationalist pastor Brian Sauvé, explaining that women should not have access to social media unless some competent man is curating and blocking and directing…
- SilverAppleQueen explains in poetic beauty why she is not one for religion.
- In Scotties Playtime, those of us with pets, and those of us who once had pets, can relate as Ron and Scottie express a sad goodbye to Tupac.
We got it all done. We have two boxes of food we bought for him that we will give to a person we know with a cat who is on a very limited budget. I think Tupac would like that.
- Professor PZ Myers gets somewhat irritated when articles in the popular press sensationalize scientific discoveries way beyond anything the science supports.
To illustrate, he points to a headline in ScienceDaily:
Stanford scientists discover the human brain may actually be two separate organsSeems the brain has separate cells that perform separate functions.
Myers explains:
No, your brain is not two separate organs, any more than your liver is multiple organs because it contains multiple tissue types.Turns out this is a developmental pattern that happens routinely in a whole lot of human organs. It helps them perform more than one function, thus promoting survival, a simple outcome of evolution.
Calm down. This is a routine observation that does have some practical uses.He points to the liver as just one example.
Every organ is a composite organ in some sense. We are a multicellular gemisch with some regional organization. - At The Onion, a man posting what will become a career ending comment on social media carefully eliminates spelling errors.
Let’s see, is it ‘they’re’ or ‘their’? Phew, that would have been embarrassing…
…hard at work correcting the thousands of people who had posted his home address online and had mistakenly spelled his name… - Dave Barry explores video games, beginning with Pong, getting humiliated by Super Smash Brothers, resting in Grand Theft Auto and ending up in a bizarro world simulation within GTA called Vice City.
That last is not it’s own video game. But it is the center of a proposal actually proposed by officials of Miami-Dade County to …wildly… promote Miami.
So in addition to being an exciting game, GTA VI is, in a way, a vivid portrait of Miami, presenting it as an exciting and fascinating town, filled with interesting people and places to see and rob. Which is why it makes perfect sense that some local government officials, when they heard about GTA VI, thought: “A game depicting our community as rife with squalor, drowning in drugs, teeming with dirtbags and beset by violent crime? This is a golden marketing opportunity!“
Really.Dave shows one of the exciting pitch slides officials have been using in the fond hope of enticing the owner of Grand Theft Auto, Rockstar Games, into a partnership. Dave says it is inspired by the Miami sewer system:
Dave describes how it would work on behalf of Miami:
That’s right: They proposed Vice City manhole covers. If THAT wouldn’t attract hordes of tourists, I don’t know what would. Picture a well-traveled married couple, trying to decide on a vacation destination…And a fun time is had by all.
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