Media ban, flying furries: GOP’s midterm messaging is a mess

Source: USA Today
by Rex Huppke

“In America right now, the people are shouting, ‘Gas prices! Food prices! Health care costs!’ And the Republican Party, six weeks out from the midterm elections, is responding: ‘What’s that? You want us to fight with the media? Or how about we get mad about this issue nobody has ever heard of because it’s something we made up?’ It’s as if the words ‘read the room’ never entered the GOP’s lexicon.” (09/24/26)

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/09/24/trump-republicans-midterms-media-ban-gas-prices/91905826007/

Trump’s lost his star power, at home and abroad

Source: Los Angeles Times
by Jackie Calmes

“President Trump might not look smaller, but he is. At home and abroad, among a significant majority of Americans that includes increasing numbers of Republicans, as well as in the eyes of foreign leaders, the president of the United States is shrinking by the day into a hapless peacock, a cartoon figure posting comic word balloons at all hours on the falsely labeled Truth Social network or bloviating for the (fewer and fewer) cameras by day. Consider Trump’s losses and humiliations just over the past week …” (09/24/26)

https://archive.is/xXx04

The Unitary Executive Theory in All of Its Historical Perversity

Source: Washington Monthly
by Jack Rakove

“Among the many theories of constitutional interpretation that swirl through American politics, the Unitary Executive Theory (UET) is the most important one circulating today. … To be taken seriously—in an era when the original meaning of the Constitution is the ostensible lodestar of interpretation—a theory of executive power this robust should be strongly grounded in historical sources. In fact, the advocates of the UET presume what they need to prove: that the adopters of the Constitution held a coherent and consensual view of presidential power that could be stretched so far. The more closely one surveys this historical foundation, the more tenuous the theory becomes.” (09/24/26)

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/09/24/unitary-executive-theory-history/

Australia: Regime says OpenAI agent hacked website, checks for more breaches

Source: Yahoo! Finance

“Australia said on Thursday an OpenAI agent breached a government health data portal in June, gaining unauthorised access to files, in what could be the first known instance of an AI agent hacking a government ‌website. The breach is one of the highest-profile incidents of AI agents accessing external systems outside the United States, coming on top of several ‌recent breaches globally by rogue AI agents that have alarmed governments and companies. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the OpenAI agent gained unauthorised access to the medical statistics portal of Medicare, Australia’s universal ​health insurance programme, while conducting research on public medical spending.” (09/24/26)

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/australia-pm-albanese-says-openai-204422718.html

Never Forget Federal Marijuana Frauds

Source: JimBovard.com
by James Bovard

“For more than 50 years, the federal government shamelessly pretended that marijuana had no recognized medical use. Last December 18, President Trump signed an executive order entitled, ‘Increasing Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research.’ Trump ordered the Attorney General and the Drug Enforcement Administration to speed up rule-making to finally enable far more medical research on the benefits of marijuana. … Of course, libertarians want to see all federal restrictions on marijuana abolished. The nearly 100-year federal war on the loco weed has been a disgrace and a failure from the start. But the long history of federal persecution of marijuana users, researchers, and growers provides a high-potency kick on the perils of federal intervention to purportedly protect Americans’ health.” (09/23/26)

https://jimbovard.com/blog/2026/09/23/never-forget-federal-marijuana-frauds/