Keeping Up With Events In America - Heather Cox Richardson

18th September 2025

Heather Cox Richardson writes daily letters on events and dig into some details. She exposes many of the problems in the Trump government. She reads the letters for listening.

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Examples
September 16th, 2025

The phrase that kept coming up over the last several days was, make fetch happen. It's a reference to the film Mean Girls, when one of the characters tries to make the word fetch trendy, using it to mean cool or awesome. Another character eventually slaps back, stop trying to make fetch happen.

It's not going to happen. Over the weekend, it appeared MAGA leaders were trying to make fetch happen, hoping to distract attention from popular anger about the economy, corruption, the administration's disregard for the law, and the Epstein files by trying to gin up the idea that the United States is being torn apart by political violence coming from what MAGA figures called the left, or Democrats, or just them. Their evidence was the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk last Wednesday in Utah, although the motive of the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, remains unclear. Today, the state of Utah indicted Robinson on seven counts, including aggravated murder.

But a 2024 report from a research arm of the Department of Justice itself noted that since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists. Julia Ornato of the Daily Beast reported that the Department of Justice removed the report from its website after the shooting. But as G. Eliot Morris explains in Strength in Numbers, most Americans reject political violence in all circumstances, especially when you measure it carefully. Morris notes that only a small fraction of Americans genuinely support political violence. About 9% approve of threats against political opponents, 8% approve of harassment, 6% support nonviolent felonies, and about 4% support using violence.

Morris notes that both Democrats and Republicans significantly overestimate their political opponents' willingness to use violence and that social media elevates extremists, making them appear more numerous than they are. Morris explains that violent acts associated with politics happen because members of that small minority respond to rhetoric coming from political leaders. Violent metaphors polarize audiences and attract high-aggression followers.

Reducing violence requires political elites to tone down their rhetoric. It also helps for leaders to reinforce democratic norms. On that, President Donald Trump is in some trouble. Olivier Knox of U.S. News & World Report reported yesterday that U.S. farmers are not okay. Droughts and flooding from climate change, as well as higher costs for fertilizer and equipment, were cutting into operations even before Trump's tariffs hit. The U.S. used to be China's top source for soybeans, but in retaliation for the new tariffs, China has replaced the output of U.S. farmers with soybeans from Brazil. Cuts to food programs have hit small producers, while the administration's crackdown on undocumented immigration have created shortages of workers.

There were more farm bankruptcies by the end of July than in all of 2024. The administration appears to be considering providing emergency aid for farmers, as it did during the trade wars of Trump's first term, although those programs often help larger producers more than smaller ones. Knox notes that agriculture, food, and related industries contributed about $1.5 trillion to the economy, about 5.5% of gross domestic product, in 2023, making up about 22.1 million jobs. Matt Egan reported in CNN today that Americans' credit scores are falling at the fastest pace since the Great Recession as Americans struggle to keep up with the
high cost of living and the return of student debt payments. The average FICO score, which assesses a borrower's creditworthiness, dropped by two points this year, the largest drop since 2009. Meanwhile, Stuart Anderson reported in Forbes that the officials who launched the raid on a Hyundai plant in Georgia, which has caused an uproar in South Korea after U.S. officials arrested more than 300 Korean workers, had a warrant to look for four people from Mexico. According to Anderson, once the officials were there, they decided to meet the quotas established by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller by arresting South Koreans. A deep story by Eric Lipton, David Yaffe Bellany, Bradley Hope, Tripp Mickel, and Paul Mosier in the New York Times yesterday suggested that the Trump administration has engaged in an astonishingly corrupt deal in which two multi-billion dollar deals appear to be intertwined. In May, an investment firm run by Sheikh Tanud bin Zayed Al-Nayan, who controls the sovereign wealth of the United Arab Emirates,
announced it would invest $2 billion in World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency startup founded by the Trump family and by Steve Whitcoff and his
son, Zach Whitcoff.

Steve Witkoff is Trump's Middle East envoy. Two weeks later, the administration permitted the UAE to gain access to hundreds of thousands of the world's scarcest and most advanced computer chips as part of a new deal to turn the UAE into an artificial intelligence powerhouse. G42, a technology company controlled by Sheik Tanun, would receive many of the chips.

While there is no evidence that one deal was explicitly offered in return for the other, the reporters write, the confluence of the two agreements is itself extraordinary. Put plainly, while the UAE was negotiating with the White House to secure chips for G42, a G42 employee was helping the Whitcoffs and the Trumps make money. Yesterday,
Trump filed a $15 billion lawsuit against the New York Times and some of its leading reporters for a grab bag of reasons, alleging the Times is a full-throated mouthpiece of the Democrat Party. The case filing praised Trump fulsomely for his success as a politician, entertainer, and entrepreneur.

The New York Times said the case lacks any legitimate legal claims and instead is an attempt to stifle and discourage independent reporting. The New York Times will not be deterred by intimidation tactics. We will continue to pursue the facts without fear or favor and stand up for
journalists' First Amendment right to ask questions on behalf of the American people. Also on Monday, Trump posted on social media that U.S. military forces have struck another boat, apparently from Venezuela, killing three people. Trump said they were, "...positively identified, extraordinarily violent, drug trafficking cartels and narco-terrorists," but offered no evidence. Today,
he told reporters that forces had also knocked off another boat, but the military did not respond to questions about the claim. Today, FBI Director Cash Patel testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Patel is under scrutiny for his performance during the search for Kirk's killer and for cuts he's made to the agency.

When pressed on the files concerning the Epstein investigation, Patel told Senator John Kennedy, a Republican of Louisiana, that the material in the case files is limited and does not show that Epstein trafficked girls to any people other than himself. There is no credible information, none, that he trafficked to other individuals, and the information we have, again, is limited. Senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat of California, expressed astonishment at this statement. Then Patel yelled at Schiff when the Senator challenged Patel's assertion that the Bureau of Prisons alone made the unprecedented decision to move Epstein Associate Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum security work camp after she spoke to Department of Justice officials.

Haley Fuchs and Kyle Chaney of Politico noted that the White House congratulated Patel for tangling with Schiff, whom Trump calls Pencil Neck. But the president has not been able to get away from the Epstein files. Activists projected an image of Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein
onto the walls of Windsor Castle as Trump and First Lady Melania Trump landed in the United Kingdom for a state visit with King Charles III and Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Channel 4 Television announced today that while the President is in the country, it will run a special show listing more than 100 lies Trump has told so far in his second term. Trump vs. the Truth will air on Wednesday and will offer fact-checking of the President's statements. In Washington, D.C., work crews have begun moving some trees and cutting down others around the east wing of the White House to prepare for Trump's $200 million, 90,000-square-foot ballroom.

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.

September 17th 2025
This evening, John Koblin, Michael M. Grynbaum, and Brooks Barnes of the New York Times reported that ABC was pulling the television show of comedian Jimmy Kimmel off the air. The suspension is allegedly over his comments Monday about the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, although Chris Hayes of All In pointed out that after CBS pulled Stephen Colbert, another political comedian, off the air in July, President Donald Trump told reporters that comedians Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel would be “next. They’re going to be going. I hear they’re going to be going.”

Kimmel has one of the top late-night television shows, attracting younger viewers in the 18-49 year old demographic. He delivers monologues that skewer President Donald J. Trump and the administration. His YouTube channel, which replays his show, has more than twenty million subscribers.

During his monologue on Monday’s show, Kimmel said: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving. On Friday, the White House flew the flags at half staff which got some criticism but on a human level you can see how hard the president is taking this.”

Kimmel then played a clip of Trump’s response to a reporter who asked how the president was holding up after Kirk’s death. Trump answered: “I think very good. And by the way right there you see all the trucks, they just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House which is something they’ve been trying to get as you know for about for 150 years and it’s gonna be a beauty.”

On the podcast of right-wing influencer Benny Johnson on Wednesday, chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Brendan Carr said that Kimmel’s words were part of a “concerted effort to try to lie to the American people” and that the FCC was “going to have remedies that we can look at.” “Frankly, when you see stuff like this,” he said, “I mean look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Carr explained: "There's actions we can take on licensed broadcasters. And frankly, I think that it’s really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say…'We're not gonna run Kimmel anymore...because we licensed broadcasters are running the possibility of fines or license revocation from the FCC.'"

The largest operator of ABC affiliates, Nexstar—which needs FCC approval for a $6.2 billion merger—said it would stop airing Kimmel’s show from its stations. Then ABC suspended Kimmel’s show.

Benny Johnson, the podcaster on whose show Carr threatened Kimmel, was one of the influencers Russian state media funded to spread propaganda before the 2024 election. After Kimmel’s suspension, Johnson posted on social media: “We did it for you, Charlie. And we’re just getting started.”

Exactly two hundred and thirty-eight years ago today, on September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the men we know now as the Framers signed their final draft of a new constitution for the United States, hoping it would fix the problems of the first attempt to create a new nation. During the Revolutionary War, the Second Continental Congress had hammered out a plan for a confederation of states, but with fears of government tyranny still uppermost in delegates’ minds, they centered power in the states rather than in a national government.

The result—the Articles of Confederation—was a “firm league of friendship” among the thirteen new states, overseen by a congress of men chosen by the state legislatures and in which each state had one vote. The new pact gave the federal government few duties and even fewer ways to meet them. Indicating their inclinations, in the first substantive paragraph the authors of the agreement said: “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”

Within a decade, the states were refusing to contribute money to the new government and were starting to contemplate their own trade agreements with other countries. An economic recession in 1786 threatened farmers in western Massachusetts with the loss of their farms when the state government in the eastern part of the state refused relief; in turn, when farmers led by Revolutionary War captain Daniel Shays marched on Boston, propertied men were so terrified their own property would be seized that they raised their own army for protection.

The new system clearly could not protect property of either the poor or the rich and thus faced the threat of landless mobs. The nation seemed on the verge of tearing itself apart, and the new Americans were all too aware that both England and Spain were standing by, waiting to make the most of the opportunities such chaos would create.

And so, in 1786, leaders called for a reworking of the new government centered not on the states, but on the people of the nation represented by a national government. The document began, “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union….”

The Constitution established a representative democracy, a republic, in which three branches of government would balance each other to prevent the rise of a tyrant. Congress would write all “necessary and proper” laws, levy taxes, borrow money, pay the nation’s debts, establish a postal service, establish courts, declare war, support an army and navy, organize and call forth “the militia to execute the Laws of the Union,” and “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.”

The president would execute the laws, but if Congress overstepped, the president could veto proposed legislation. In turn, Congress could override a presidential veto. Congress could declare war, but the president was the commander in chief of the army and had the power to make treaties with foreign powers. It was all quite an elegant system of paths and tripwires, really.

A judicial branch would settle disputes between inhabitants of the different states and guarantee every defendant a right to a jury trial.

In this system, the new national government was uppermost. The Constitution provided that “[t]he Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States” and promised that “the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion….”

Finally, it declared: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

But after their experience throwing off the yoke of what they considered an overly powerful king, those concerned about creating too powerful a national government worried the new government would endanger individual liberty. They demanded that the framers of the new government enumerate the ways in which it could not intrude on the rights of the people.

In 1789 the new Congress passed ten amendments to the Constitution, and the states ratified them the same year. Taken together, the amendments were known as the Bill of Rights.

The first of those amendments prohibits the government from intruding on the basic liberties that enable individuals to challenge it. It prohibits the government from establishing a state religion or infringing on the right of individuals to publish whatever they wish, to assemble peacefully, or to ask the government to remedy unfair situations.

It prohibits the government from infringing on the right of individuals to speak freely, without fear of government retaliation.

Americans take their First Amendment rights seriously. In April 2025, a Pew Research Center poll showed that 92% of Americans thought it was important “that the media can report the news without state/government censorship.”

Kimmel’s suspension has produced an uproar. Comedian Paul Scheer noted that Kimmel is off the air but Brian Kilmeade of the Fox News Channel, who recently called for killing homeless Americans by “involuntary lethal injection,” is still employed. The union that represents the musicians on Kimmel’s show called the suspension “a direct attack on free speech and artistic expression,” adding: “These are fundamental rights that we must protect in a free society.” The Writers Guild of America posted: “The right to speak our minds and to disagree with each other—to disturb, even—is at the heart of what it means to be a free people…. If free speech applied only to ideas we like, we needn’t have bothered to write it into the Constitution…. Shame on those in government who forget this founding truth.”

On CNN, conservative pundit David Frum called it “state repression.” On his show, right-wing activist Tucker Carlson said: “[I]f they can tell you what to say, they’re telling you what to think. There is nothing they can’t do to you because they don’t consider you human…. A free man has a right to say what he believes.”

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker posted: “This is an attack on free speech and cannot be allowed to stand. All elected officials need to speak up and push back on this undemocratic act.” He pointed out that in 2023, Brendan Carr himself posted: “Free speech is…the check on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian’s dream.” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) warned of a coming campaign to “use the murder of Charlie Kirk as a pretext to use the power of the White House to wipe out Trump’s critics and his political opponents."

From England, where he is on a state visit, Trump posted: “Great News for America: The ratings challenged Jimmy Kimmel Show is CANCELLED. Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what needed to be done. Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!! President DJT”

Two hundred and thirty-eight years ago today, the Framers signed their names to the blueprint for a new government established by “We the People of the United States.” The next day, James McHenry, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, recorded in his diary that a lady had asked delegate Benjamin Franklin whether the convention had established a republic or a monarchy. “A republic,” Franklin said, “if you can keep it.”