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Foreign.
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September 21, 2025 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, Erica McIntar, 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 fear monger Colleen Heflin, an expert on food insecurity, nutrition and welfare policy at Syracuse University, told the Wall Street Journal, 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 Immigra 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 Lindsay Smith Taylor of the University of North Carolina Gilling 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, or 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's only getting 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 narco trafficking in the US southcom area of responsibility, trump posted. Trump said three men whom he called narco terrorists 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 Laura 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 US 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 H1B visas would have to pay a 100,000 doll for their entry into the US 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 US 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, Eric 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 that 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, Siebert 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 or 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 five 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 Lavrenti Beria, head of the Soviet secret police under Stalin. Show me the man and I'll find the crime. A report from Carol Lennig and Ken Delaney and of MSNBC yesterday showed what a politicized just system looks like. They reported that FBI agents last year caught Tom Holman, 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 Holman was soliciting payments in 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, or NATO. 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 Kaya Kallas, who hails from Estonia, called Russia's incursions over Estonia an extremely dangerous provocation.
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Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, Massachusetts, recorded with music composed by Michael Moss Facebook.