Late Night Report
If Tuesday night’s Miami Marlins – Philadelphia Phillies game hadn’t experienced about an hour delay during a heavy rainstorm in Philadelphia in the ninth inning and continued on to a Marlins victory in the eleventh inning, I would not have still been up watching TV at 11:25 p.m. when the game ended.
But some good came of that, since Jimmy Kimmel was due to return to his regular time slot at 11:30 p.m. after ABC and Disney changed their mind about buckling under to Trump’s FCC head who had never heard of the First Amendment.
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| Kimmel |
What the heck, of course I stayed up another half hour to watch Kimmel’s opening monologue on ABC. (In a very funny skit, Robert DeNiro played the FCC chairman). If you missed it, check it out on You Tube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1tjh_ZO_tY (It's all over the internet but try for a version that runs about half an hour.)
Kimmel’s language might have been less elaborate when he spoke of the right wing’s efforts to avoid being associated with the still-unknown motivation of Kirk’s assassin, but that doesn’t matter. Even lies are allowed under the First Amendment, so long as no one is hurt by them and they are not malicious, and Kimmel was certainly most gracious in his condolence message to Kirk’s widow.
Twenty percent of ABC’s stations, those controlled by right wing Trump loyalists like Sinclair and Nexstar, refused to carry the show, in which Kimmel didn’t hesitate to criticize the President. At best, they are an example of media sources that do not fully understand the First Amendment.
Kimmel’s return, the result of public and media support for him, may mark a change in the unwarranted acceptance of Trump’s misuse of the presidency, to which far too many corporations, businesses, educational institutions, media sources, and law firms have spinelessly succumbed, disregarding the Constitution. I hope that change expands and continues.
It looks like the American people have a louder voice than the foes of our democracy. One might not agree with Kimmel, but real Americans defend his right to say what he believes. Kimmel’s return included a clip showing Texas Senator Ted Cruz, with whom Kimmel rarely agrees, making that point.
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And here’s what had been already scheduled to appear on Jackspotpourri today.
Often, Jackspotpourri’s content seems to become stale from the time I type it until its appearance on the blog a few days later, but I feel that this piece by Heather Cox Richardson still is worthwhile. So here goes:
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America’s Democracy is at Stake
Let’s start with Professor Heather Cox Richardson’s September 22 ‘Letters From an America’ posting (released the preceding evening). You might not bother with a link so here it is verbatim. Every word is included.
It's very frightening stuff! What’s at stake? America’s democracy! (I’ve used some color in a few places for emphasis.)
The President is attacking democrcy on many fronts. Taken together, they add up to a fascist dictatorship.
‘Letters From an American’ isn’t the only place on the internet where he is being taken to task; many sites ranging from the Daily Kos to the New York Times’ columnists are criticizing him, but Professor Richardson’s column is a great example, touching many areas that Trump contaminates.
Nevertheless, such criticism can cause him to redouble his efforts to destroy American democracy as rapidly as possible. That doesn’t change what Professor Richardson wrote about, appearing below, and in her other posts. Read them, and other commentators on the political scene, each day!
'September 21, 2025 - Appearing September 22.
Heather Cox Richardson - Letters From an American
“On Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics postponed the release of the annual report on consumer expenditures—a key report for understanding inflation—without explanation. The BLS has been under stress since President Donald J. Trump fired its head, Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, after the July jobs report showed far weaker hiring statistics than expected as well as a downgrade for previous months. Officials at the BLS said the new report will be “rescheduled to a later date.”
This weekend, Dan Frosch, Patrick Thomas, and Andrea Peterson of the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is ending its annual report on household food security. Those reports began in the 1990s to help state and local officials distribute food assistance. Last year’s report found that 18 million U.S. households experienced food insecurity during 2023. In a statement, the Department of Agriculture said: “These redundant, costly, politicized and extraneous studies do nothing more than fearmonger.”
Colleen Hefflin, an expert on food insecurity, nutrition, and welfare policy at Syracuse University, told the Wall Street Journal reporters: “Not having this measure for 2025 is particularly troubling given the current rise in inflation and deterioration of labor market conditions, two conditions known to increase food insecurity.” Whitney Curry Wimbish of The American Prospect reported last week that food banks across the country are seeing more visits even as immigrants are staying away from them out of concern that their information might be shared or that Immigration and Customs Enforcement might show up.
Nutrition scholar Lindsey Smith Taillie of the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health told the reporters: “I think the only reason why you wouldn’t measure it is if you were planning to cut food assistance, because it basically allows you to pretend like we don’t have this food insecurity problem.” The budget reconciliation law the Republicans passed in July cuts funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by about 20%, or $186 billion through 2034, the largest cuts to SNAP in its history.
This news got less attention last week than the administration’s apparent determination to silence its critics.
Although, as Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times pointed out on Thursday, Trump promised in his second inaugural address to “immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America,” what he appeared to mean was that he intended to free up right-wing activists to spread disinformation about elections and Covid-19.
Now, in the wake of the murder of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk, as Peter Baker pointed out today in the New York Times, the administration has cracked down on the media and political opponents under the guise of tamping down words that could cause political violence.
But, as Baker notes, Trump is making it clear that he is trying to stop speech that criticizes him and his administration. Last week alone, he called for people who yelled at him in a restaurant to be prosecuted and for comedians who made fun of him to be taken off the air, and he sued the New York Times.
On Friday, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that covering the administration negatively is “really illegal.” He went on: “Personally, you can’t take, you can’t have a free airwave if you’re getting free airwaves from the United States government.” As Baker notes, Trump’s chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, who wrote the chapter of Project 2025 that covers the FCC, has complained that many broadcasters have a liberal bias and that they do not serve the public interest as the FCC requires.
That attempt to control information is showing clearly at the Pentagon. In February, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threw out long-standing media outlets who had been covering the Pentagon, including NPR, the New York Times, and NBC News, and brought in right-wing outlets including Newsmax and Breitbart. On Friday the Pentagon said it would revoke press credentials for any journalists who gather information, even unclassified information, that the Pentagon has not expressly authorized for release.
Hegseth has been on a crusade to figure out who is leaking negative stories about him and defense issues under his direction, and he seems to have decided to try to stop their publication rather than the leaks themselves.
Although Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell called the changes “basic, common-sense guidelines to protect sensitive information as well as the protection of national security and the safety of all who work at the Pentagon,” Washington Post reporter Scott Nover noted that this position is a “sharp departure” from decades of practice. Until this year, the Pentagon held two televised question and answer sessions a week (and, in my observation, the journalists who covered the Pentagon were excellent).
The National Press Club also weighed in on Friday’s changes. “If the news about our military must first be approved by the government, then the public is no longer getting independent reporting,” said club president Mike Balsamo. “It is getting only what officials want them to see. That should alarm every American.”
On Friday the Pentagon referred to the White House questions about a strike on a third Venezuelan boat that Trump announced on social media. “On my orders, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Trump posted. Trump said three men, whom he called “narcoterrorists,” were killed. He said the military showed him proof that the men in the boats were smuggling drugs, but he has not shared that evidence with lawmakers or the public.
As Lara Seligman reported in the Wall Street Journal on September 17, military lawyers and officials from the Defense Department are concerned that decision makers in the Pentagon are ignoring their warnings that the administration’s strikes on the vessels Trump claims are bringing drugs to the U.S. are illegal.
David Ignatius of the Washington Post recalls that when he took office, Hegseth purged from the military the judge advocate generals, who are supposed to advise leaders on the rule of law and whether orders are legal. In February, calling the top lawyers in the Army, Navy, and Air Force “roadblocks to orders that are given by a commander in chief,” he fired them. Earlier this month, he announced he was moving as many as 600 JAG officers to serve as immigration judges.
Also on Friday, Trump announced that companies employing skilled workers who hold temporary H-1B visas would have to pay a $100,000 fee for their entry into the U.S. beginning Sunday. This set off a mad scramble as workers outside the country on business trips, vacations, or family visits rushed to get back into the U.S. before the new rule took effect. Not until Saturday did the administration clarify the new rule does not affect those who already hold visas.
Friday was a busy day. Trump also told reporters in the Oval Office that he wanted the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, “out” after Siebert declined to prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully sued the Trump Organization for fraud, for allegedly committing mortgage fraud. Siebert also declined to prosecute former FBI director James Comey, who refused to kill the investigation into the relationship between members of the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives, for allegedly lying to Congress.
Siebert was Trump’s own pick for the job and is a well-regarded career prosecutor. As legal analyst Joyce White Vance noted in Civil Discourse, Siebert managed to win the support of both the Virginia Republican Party and the senators from Virginia, both of whom are Democrats. His refusal to prosecute indicates there was not enough evidence to convict a defendant; Vance notes that’s the standard a prosecutor must meet to seek an indictment.
On Friday night, Seibert resigned.
On Saturday morning, Trump posted on social media: “He didn’t quit, I fired him!”
In the evening, he posted on social media a missive that appeared to be intended as a direct message (DM) to Attorney General Pam Bondi. It read: “Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially ‘same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.’... We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT.”
In other words, Trump wants to use the power of the government to punish those he considers his enemies. As Joyce White Vance puts it: “Let’s be clear about what Trump wants. He wants to turn us into a banana republic where the ability to prosecute people becomes a political tool in the hands of the president. That means he wants to exercise the ultimate power to put down any opposition to his rule.” She recalled the comment attributed to Lavrentiy Beria, head of the Soviet secret police under Stalin: “Show me the man and I’ll find the crime.”
A report from Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian of MSNBC yesterday showed what a politicized justice system looks like. They reported that FBI agents last year caught Tom Homan—now Trump’s “border czar”—on video accepting $50,000 in cash from agents posing as business executives after he promised he could help them win government contracts for border enforcement in a second Trump administration. The FBI had opened an investigation after someone told them Homan was soliciting payments in exchange for contracts under a future Trump administration.
After obtaining the evidence, the FBI and the Justice Department waited to see whether Homan would provide the aid he offered once he joined the new administration. But the case stalled as soon as Trump took office, and after FBI director Kash Patel recently asked for a status update on the case, Trump appointees officially closed the investigation.
The reporters say that when asked about it, the White House, the Justice Department, and the FBI all dismissed the investigation as politically motivated and baseless.
While Trump tries to silence his critics, Russia is taking advantage of U.S. inaction to test the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. On Friday, three Russian jets entered the airspace of Estonia. Italian fighters stationed in Estonia as part of NATO’s new Eastern Sentry operation responded and forced the Russian jets out. As Poland did last week after Russian drones and jets entered its airspace, Estonian officials requested consultations with the North Atlantic Council under Article 4 of NATO’s treaty.
High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, who hails from Estonia, called Russia’s incursions over Estonia an “extremely dangerous provocation.”
Notes:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg3xrrzdr0o
https://www.axios.com/2025/09/19/bls-cpi-report-inflation
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/09/21/trump-usda-hunger-report-food-insecurity/
https://www.wsj.com/economy/trump-administration-cancels-annual-hunger-survey-ca3d3793
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/10/trumps-big-beautiful-bill-cuts-snap-for-millions-of-families.
html
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/09/17/dhs-calls-media-and-far-left-stop-demonization-president-trump-his-supporters-and
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/business/media/trump-kimmel-cancel-culture-free-speech.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/us/politics/trump-media-news-free-speech.
html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/us/politics/trump-free-speech.
html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/09/19/pentagon-hegseth-press-unauthorized-material/
https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-lawyers-raise-concerns-over-trumps-drug-boat-strikes-b8327a5c
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/09/19/hegseth-national-guard-military-lawyer-purge/
https://abcnews.go.com/International/3-killed-3rd-us-strike-alleged-drug-boat/story?id=125757014
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/u-s-carried-out-3rd-fatal-strike-on-alleged-drug-smuggling-boat-in-the-caribbean-trump-says
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/restriction-on-entry-of-certain-nonimmigrant-workers/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-raises-fee-h-1b-visas-100000-rcna232525
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/asia/trump-h1b-visa-fee-travel-tech-workers-india-china-immigration-rcna232695
https://prospect.org/health/2025-09-17-more-americans-going-hungry-worst-still-to-come/
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/20/donald-trump-h1b-visas-overhaul-00574345
https://abcnews.go.com/US/us-attorney-plans-resign-amid-pressure-trump-after/story?id=125750006
https://abcnews.go.com/US/friend-former-fbi-director-james-comey-subpoenaed-federal/story?id=125666973 "
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These ‘notes’ Professor Richardson appends to her thoughts are there to show that she just isn’t making this stuff up.
And she didn’t get near the lies being sold to the American public by Health (?) and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Dr. Mehmet Oz about vaccinations! If you value your health and that of your family, ignore anything they say and trust what your personal physician advises. Please! Believe me, Tylenol or acetaminophen (which the President was unable to pronounce) is not associated with autism. (Try ‘a-set-o-MIN-o-fen’)
And finally, a word about Attorney-General Bondi. She got her law degree from Stetson University’s Law School, ranked as number 99 among American law schools by US News & World Report, in a tie with three others. I wonder to which other ones she even applied. She is no more an independent voice as Trump’s Attorney-General than she was in that same position in Florida, obedient to Governor DeSantis. She doesn’t know that an Attorney-General is the people’s lawyer, and not the President’s.
I hope all of this serves to awaken those who do not understand the great threat to our democracy posed by the wannabee-dictator in the White House, those in Congress who support him, and those who, for a variety of reasons, voted for him.
Even at the massive funeral service for Charlie Kirk, while his widow spoke of love and forgiveness, Trump used the occasion to attempt to mobilize those loyal to him against the rights for which many Americans, including Kirk, have fought and died.
Quite simply, Trump is a disgrace to the presidency. I amend that. He’s a disgrace to the nation (period).
JL
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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
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More on the Sources of Information on Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered daily ‘paper’ newspaper (now becoming the South Florida Sun Sentinel) and what appears in my daily email. Be aware that when I open that email, I take these steps:
1. I quickly scan the sources of the dozen or two emails I still get each day at my old email address to see from where they are being sent. Most are from vendors which I may have used years ago. Without reading 99% of them, I usually immediately delete them.
2. I then go to the email arriving at jacklippman18@gmail.com. Gmail enables ‘Promotion’ emails to be so designated and separated out. I believe their criteria are whether or not they end up asking for donations or if they are no more than advertisements. I ignore most of these ‘Promotion’ emails without reading them, deleting them. A very few, perhaps one or two a day, get moved over to the two or three dozen other emails which I will actually open.
3. Then I read my email.
Besides email, my other source of information is the Google search engine (or other search engines) where I can look up any subject I want. Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri. After such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than the AI summary. I feel that It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect. Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence.
JL
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