by Danielle Steitz | Sep 23, 2026 | Opinion, White House
Let’s be clear: No matter what President Donald Trump may say, the national security of the United States does not require the construction of a massive arch in the middle of a traffic circle.
In a saner world, this would not need to be said. But on Friday, the president announced a new purpose for the 250-foot-tall tourist attraction he is seeking to build in the roundabout at the end of Washington’s Memorial Bridge. The arch will double as a “military complex,” Trump said, housing drones and ammo while providing a platform for snipers.
What possible threat aimed at Arlington National Cemetery — of all places — requires the construction of a marble-and-gold arch?
Throughout his second term, Trump has repeatedly invoked flimsy national security excuses to justify policy priorities both big and small. The arch might be the most ludicrous example yet: By claiming that this obvious vanity project is in fact a top Pentagon priority, the administration is clearly hoping it can convince U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan to reconsider her injunction pausing its construction.
My guess is that the argument will get laughed out of court. But that leaves a bigger issue: Judges have long given presidents vast leeway when it comes to national security decisions. Trump’s obvious abuse of that privilege has started forcing them to rethink that stance, which could make it harder to deal with a real emergency in the future.
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‘Assault on liberty’: Trump blasted by Democratic Sen. Kelly over arch
September 21, 2026 / 08:16
Now, about that arch. The monument/arms depot/sniper hideout that Trump is proposing would stand at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery, where tens of
by Paul Waldman | Sep 23, 2026 | Opinion
According to a new investigation from ProPublica, Sen. Susan Collins narrowly escaped being embroiled in an FBI bribery probe into defense contracts, lawmakers and large campaign contributions. For that, she can thank the Trump administration’s commitment to making America a place where the wealthy, connected and morally flexible can get away with almost anything. The good news is that if we’re determined enough, we can undo the damage that has been done.
ProPublica’s story begins in 2019, when the head of Collins’ super PAC, Scott Reed, met with executives from a defense contractor called Navatek that the senator had helped land a Navy research contract in Maine. Then Collins’ fundraiser made a request: The company should make a six-figure donation to help the senator in her re-election bid. The executives said they would pony up — if Collins helped them get more contracts.
When President Donald Trump took office in 2025, he gutted the Justice Department’s public integrity section, the unit that investigates political corruption.
But government contractors aren’t allowed to contribute to campaigns.
“To skirt campaign finance laws and conceal the source of the funds,” ProPublica reported, “Navatek planned to funnel the donation through a shell company. The CEO [Martin Kao] wanted assurance that Collins would know where the money came from. Reed confirmed that she would, the executive said — and that Navatek would get its government contracts.”
When the FBI closed in on Kao, he gave them the names of “dozens of lobbyists, congressional staffers and members of Congress who he said helped him trade cash for contracts.” ProPublica said it independently corroborated much of his account by reviewing legal records and
by Joseph Zeballos-Roig | Sep 23, 2026 | Congress, Economy, Opinion
Republicans have long ridiculed Jimmy Carter as a feckless figure who did little to help a limping economy and was outsmarted by foreign adversaries like Iran. President Donald Trump once used the occasion of Carter’s 100th birthday, in October 2024, to declare him a success — at least compared with Joe Biden.
Now, with few options at their disposal to tackle the record-high diesel prices battering farmers and truck drivers, and with just six weeks to go until the midterms, growing pockets of the Republican Party are reaching into the Carter playbook.
In the past three days, the concept of a diesel export ban caught fire among Republican lawmakers. Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa spearheaded the GOP jailbreak when he endorsed the proposal on Saturday, saying in an X post that “high diesel prices ARE KILLING FARMERS INCOME.”
Republicans are falling back on a Carter-era idea that only deepened rock bottom for farmers.
Now a stampede of Iowa Republicans is rushing to back the proposal, as diesel scaled to a record high of $6.53 per gallon nationwide. It’s more than double the price from a year ago, thanks in large part to the Iran war and, to a lesser extent, the war in Ukraine. Republicans are demanding immediate action.
“Iowa farmers are filling combines this week at the highest diesel price this state has ever seen, while oil companies ship record amounts of American diesel overseas,” Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks said, calling companies to “sell American diesel to Americans first.” The three-term congresswoman’s re-election race has been rated as a toss-up by Inside Elections, a nonpartisan publication.
Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is campaigning to replace retiring Sen.
by Hayes Brown | Sep 22, 2026 | Opinion, White House
In a social media post Sunday, President Donald Trump announced a major update to the “triumphal arch” he intends to build in Washington. The president declared that the 250-foot structure will now also be a “top grade military complex” that launches drones and houses snipers on its roof. That’s quite a shift from previous design plans, which imagined the arch as a tourist attraction with visitors able to purchase tickets to a planned observation deck.
The surprise transformation of the proposed arch’s intended purpose is likely grounded less in military needs than in flailing legal stratagems. But combining a fixation on aesthetics with the threat of violence is nothing new for this president. Trump’s vision of a utopia has become inseparable from the tropes of dystopia as he works to transform America into a beautiful police state.
Combining a fixation on aesthetics with the threat of violence is nothing new for this president.
None of the agencies working on the arch have confirmed Trump’s claim that the change comes at “the strong request of the United States Military, and for National Security purposes.” The president’s assertion, however, closely resembles the administration’s arguments in ongoing lawsuits attempting to halt construction of a massive White House ballroom. It’s not hard to see Trump pre-emptively shifting the supposed necessity for the arch now to head off potential delays down the road.
If such a request from the Pentagon does exist, it will likely make its way into court filings in the coming days. A group of veterans filed a lawsuit in February hoping to halt the arch, which they said would “dishonor their military and foreign
by Zeeshan Aleem | Sep 22, 2026 | Business, culture, Opinion, World
In the wake of spooky incidents of artificial intelligence agents defying their creators’ commands and rules, the great fear of the day is the prospect of rogue superintelligence that turns on humankind — and extinguishes it. But a recent incident in which the United States reportedly almost sparked a war with China based on false intelligence generated by AI reveals that there is a far more immediate threat to worry about: the fallibility of humans.
CNN, citing four sources familiar with the episode, reported that this spring a special operations command analyst put together an urgent intelligence report claiming that “a Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting components of a nuclear weapons program.” The implications of the report pushed the U.S. to serious action — members of the U.S. military were “preparing to board the ship” and “military planes were in the air.” But at the last minute officials dug a little further into the report and found that a chatbot the analyst had used had “inaccurately identified the material the ship was carrying.” (U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific and the Pentagon did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.)
The U.S. was astonishingly close to a military confrontation with the world’s second most powerful country based on what appears to have been an AI hallucination. That we got so close to accidentally triggering a global war should drive home the point that the imminent threat surrounding AI isn’t some runaway malevolent superintelligent entity like Skynet from the “Terminator” franchise. It’s humans misusing AI.
CNN reported that “across the U.S. military and the intelligence community, officials are pushing to weave AI
by Ray Brescia | Sep 22, 2026 | Civil Rights, Opinion, White House
During a testy press conference the day after the 2018 midterms, Jim Acosta of CNN asked President Donald Trump about a supposed migrant caravan heading to the United States, as alleged by Republicans and their media boosters in the weeks leading up to the elections. The migrant caravan never materialized, and reports about it quickly faded after the elections. Republicans lost decisively in the House’s midterm elections, though they retained control of the Senate.
The White House, however, said it was revoking Acosta’s press credentials and access to the White House briefing room. CNN sued over the retaliatory actions, claiming the efforts to revoke his access violated free speech and due process rights. CNN quickly prevailed, and the case was ultimately settled, with the White House restoring Acosta’s access.
While the attacks on otherwise free institutions might each look somewhat distinct, the institutions have largely taken two different paths in response. Some have fought back, while others have sought the route of appeasement.
Trump, now six weeks from another midterm election that sees his party’s control of both houses of Congress at risk, has picked another fight with the press. On Friday afternoon, he issued a post on his social media site stating that he was revoking the White House credentials of reporters from CNN, Politico and MS NOW, and on Saturday morning those outlets were denied access to the White House, their reporters’ credentials revoked. These news organizations have now filed a new lawsuit, asserting that the administration’s actions violate the First Amendment and the organizations’ due process rights. And their case is before the same judge who decided the Acosta case.
