We begin today with a rather simple question.
What made Argentina’s President Javier Milei think that he was going to fare any better with a visit to the White House than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky or South African President Cyril Ramaphosa?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Ana Ionova/The New York Times
“If he doesn’t win, we’re gone,” Mr. Trump said as he welcomed Mr. Milei, who he has called his “favorite president,” to the White House. “If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina.”
In Argentina, those comments were taken by many as a clear attempt by Mr. Trump to put his thumb on a sovereign country’s electoral process.
The fallout was swift. The peso tumbled as investors went on a panicked selling spree of Argentina’s currency. Mr. Milei’s political opponents railed against what they called American extortion, urging voters to reject his party at the polls. And Mr. Milei’s government rushed to try to assure Argentines that Mr. Trump wouldn’t abandon the nation based on Mr. Milei’s political fortunes.
To many, Mr. Trump’s conditional economic support represented yet another attempt to influence, through economic sticks and carrots, the internal affairs of another Latin American country. The turmoil that followed also highlighted the risks Mr. Milei faces as he shackles his political fortunes, and Argentina’s economic future, to America’s deep pockets and Mr. Trump’s fickle friendship.
I’ll admit that I am trying to suppress a giggle.
While federal judges have ruled that National Guard troops cannot be deployed in Chicago and Portland, OR, National Guard troops have arrived in Memphis and are now helping the Memphis Police. In the meantime, Adam Friedman of the Tennessee Lookout reports that Memphis Police are now using a “buffer law” to limit the recording of any police activities.
In 2025, Tennessee lawmakers passed the buffer law, allowing law enforcement officers engaged in official duties at a traffic stop, crime scene or “an ongoing and immediate threat to public safety” to create the 25-foot zone even if the person in question doesn’t pose a safety risk or is not obstructing law enforcement.
Anyone in violation of the law can be charged with a misdemeanor.
The Tennessee law is similar to those passed in Indiana and Louisiana, which two federal courts have ruled unconstitutional due to the laws’ vague nature in allowing police broad discretion to create buffer zones. [...]
In Tennessee, seven news organizations filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the law grants law enforcement officers limitless authority to bar journalists and the public from reporting on protests and other newsworthy events. The Lookout is a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Chris Geidner of LawDork thinks that the U.S. Supreme Court appears to be in favor of limiting the reach of Section Two of the Voting Rights Act but might not in favor of completely declaring Section 2 unconstitutional.
Barrett asked Hashim Mooppan, the principal deputy solicitor general at the Justice Department. whether the court even needed to make a “modification” of the nearly 40-year-old test for considering vote-dilution claims under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Could DOJ’s proposed path forward, she asked, instead just be seen as a “clarification” of that test, the Gingles test? [...]
DOJ’s path would indeed make vote-dilution cases — cases where parties argue that a redistricting map illegally dilutes a minority group’s opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice — more difficult to prove and win, but it would be a better path for those seeking to maintain the power of the VRA than many expected going into arguments.
Throughout the arguments, there were repeated questions about how far the court needed to go in to case — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was laser-focused on the difference between a remedy ordered in a case and the actual requirements of Section 2 — and whether the procedural posture was important to how the court should view the case, leaving the specific outcome unclear.
Although it wasn’t clear what specific reasoning would ultimately control the outcome — and, with that, what guidance, if any, the Supreme Court would give to state lawmakers and lower courts — it ultimately looked likely that the court would not end the use of Section 2 in vote-dilution cases altogether as a constitutional matter.
Michael Sainato of The Guardian reports that a federal judge has declared an injuction preventing the Trump regime from firing thousands of federal employees.
The ruling by Judge Susan Illston of the US district court’s northern district of California came in response to a lawsuit filed by labor unions representing federal workers.
“I am inclined to grant the plaintiff’s motion,” said Illston during a
court hearing on the injunction request. “The evidence suggests that the office of management and budget, OMB, and the office of personnel management, OPM, have taken advantage of the lapse in government spending, in government functioning to assume that all bets are off, that the laws don’t apply to them any more, and that they can impose the structures that they like on the government situation that they don’t like, and I find, I believe, that the plaintiffs will demonstrate, ultimately, that what’s being done here is both illegal and is in excess of authority and is arbitrary and capricious.” [...]
The ruling comes as Russ Vought, the White House OMB director, said on The Charlie Kirk Show that more cuts were coming, claiming the firings could be “north of 10,000” workers. [...]
Unions representing federal employees – the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) – filed a lawsuit on 30 September, before the shutdown, in response to threats from the Trump administration that it would conduct reductions in force.
The lawsuit alleges that the OMB, through Vought, violated the law by making firing threats and instructing federal employees to carry out work related to the firings during the shutdown.
Paul Krugman explains why the tacky shoe salesman flip-flopped on his threat to impose increased tariffs own China.
On Friday, Trump blasted China’s new export controls on rare earths, declaring them a “moral disgrace” which were “obviously a plan devised by them years ago.” And he threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs on China, on top of the already high existing tariffs.
Less than a day later he was groveling...
But what caused this quick, abject retreat? I’d like to believe that economic experts within the administration took a sober look at the situation and concluded that China would have the upper hand in a trade war. But there are no economic experts in this administration, and anyway, who would dare to tell Trump anything he doesn’t want to hear?
No, Trump was almost certainly reacting to the markets. Stocks fell sharply Friday, but the really striking action came in crypto, where Bitcoin fell 20 percent and smaller, less liquid tokens fell even more. Here, to take an arbitrary example, is what happened to the value of the official Trump coin...
Finally today, Ivan L. Nagy of Columbia journalism Review writes about the refusal of major news organization to sign Hegseth’s Pentagon pledge limiting access to the Pentagon. Some reporters are hopeful that the action may need to a more “adversarial” relationship between the press and Pentagon sources.
In addition to Fox, right-leaning outlets like the Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal refused to sign the pledge. Newsmax claimed that “the requirements are unnecessary and onerous.” So far, the only outlet known to have signed is One America News Network. OANN was one of the organizations that entered the Pentagon press corps in February after Hegseth “reshuffled” workspaces inside the building and removed New York Times and NBC reporters, the first of many steps aimed at blocking journalistic scrutiny. OANN’s representatives did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Breitbart, which received a seat in the pressroom alongside OANN. [...]
While many in the Pentagon press corps are mourning the change, some veteran reporters see a silver lining. James Risen, a Pulitzer-winning national security reporter, described Hegseth’s policy as “part of a larger dystopian nightmare that’s going on in America,” but said it could end up benefiting the public. “I covered the CIA for a long time, and the CIA does not give reporters press passes,” Risen said. “And in a way, I think it forced reporters who cover the CIA to be more adversarial. And I think that’s been a long-standing problem with the coverage of the military. The reporters get so close to specific generals or military units that they begin to kind of carry water for them.” [...]
Risen acknowledged that reporting from outside the building may be more challenging. “It’s going to be very difficult. It’s going to require much more in-depth reporting. And it’s going to require a lot of reporters willing to provide assurances of confidentiality in ways that they haven’t had to do before,” he said. “If I was an editor or a reporter, I would try to look at it as an opportunity to be more adversarial and to prove to the Pentagon that what they are doing is going to lead to even tougher coverage. You’ve got to write tough stories to convince people to take you seriously. It’s an opportunity for the Pentagon press corps to actually show some independence.”
Everyone have the best possible day that you can!
