Good morning. It is September 22nd. It's cloudy so far in the last few hours of summer here in New York City. But by the time astronomical autumn arrives in early afternoon, it's supposed to be sunny, and this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

The number of boatloads of people that President Donald Trump has massacred in the Caribbean, has gone indeterminate yet again. On Friday, he posted on social media that the United States Southern Command had made another “lethal kinetic strike,” in his words, against a boat with three people aboard in international waters. The New York Times interpreted this as confirmation of, and elaboration on, his tossed-off claim three days before that the US had struck a third boat. The Miami Herald interpreted it as an announcement that Trump had hit a fourth boat. This leaves the death toll in the president's campaign of murder against unarmed civilian navigation in the Caribbean at either 16 or 19. 

In other presidential social media news, on Saturday, Trump posted what looked like it was meant to have been a private DM to attorney general Pam Bondi, complaining that the Justice Department has not yet come up with any criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey, New York State Attorney General Letitia James, or Senator Adam Schiff, the former leader of the House January 6th inquiry. Trump being Trump, he treated the seemingly wayward DM about how he wished to see people who'd investigated him targeted by the Justice Department as an intentional proclamation, continuing his so far successful strategy of doing things much worse than Watergate without bothering to cover them up. 

The Times has not yet reported on the Bondi DM, but it did put the larger story surrounding it in the lead news slot on the Sunday paper as part of an unusually aggressive and responsive weekend news package. The story on the Sunday front was a NEWS ANALYSIS piece, “Ouster pushes Justice Department closer to cliff. Independence in doubt under Trump's watch.” Again with the pathological understatement by the headline writing, but the story itself says “the ouster on Friday of the federal prosecutor who failed to charge two of President Trump's most reviled adversaries was a huge blow to the Justice Department's teetering tradition of independence, showing how far Mr. Trump has gone in exerting personal control over the institution.”

The story continued “the way in which the prosecutor, Eric S. Siebert, was abruptly forced from his post atop the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of Virginia. Deepened troubling questions,”—still can't help confusing questions with answers there—“Deepened troubling questions that have arisen in recent months about the politicization of the Justice Department's supposedly self-governing satellite offices. But it also raised a blunter and more immediate issue. Which of the nation's U.S. Attorneys might be next? Beyond their efforts to push out Mr. Siebert, whose inquiries into Letitia James, New York's attorney general, and James B. Comey, the former FBI director, effectively fizzled out, administration officials have also ramped up pressure against Kelly O. Hayes, the U.S. attorney in Maryland, according to three people familiar with the matter. Ms. Hayes, a career prosecutor who has spent more than a decade in that office, is leading inquiries into two other vocal critics of Mr. Trump, Senator Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, who's been accused of mortgage fraud by Mr. Trump's allies, and John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump's former national security advisor, who is facing scrutiny over allegations of mishandling classified information.” The story went on to say “White House interference in the work of U.S. attorneys was once considered such a taboo that former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzalez, who served under President George W. Bush, resigned in scandal after the Justice Department fired nine U.S. attorneys in 2006 for what were perceived to be political reasons. But Mr. Trump's reaction to Mr. Siebert's ouster could not have been more different. Several people, including Attorney General Pam Bondi and Todd Blanch, the deputy attorney general and the president's former defense lawyer, lobbied hard to keep Mr. Siebert in place, arguing that he had been an efficient and cooperative partner on immigration and crime enforcement in Washington's southern suburbs. But Mr. Trump responded to repeated entreaties by saying, ‘I don't care,’ according to a person with knowledge of the matter.”

Next to that on the Sunday front page was another blatant law enforcement corruption scandal. “Inquiry halted on cash given to Trump ally. said to accept $50,000 last year. Tom Homan,” the Times wrote, “who was later named President Trump's border czar, was recorded in September 2024 accepting a bag with $50,000 in cash in an undercover FBI investigation. According to people familiar with the case, which was later shut down by Trump administration officials. The cash payment, which was made inside a bag from the food chain Cava, grew out of a long-running counterintelligence investigation that had not been targeting Mr. Homan, according to the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the case. Mr. Homan's encounter with the undercover agents, recorded on audio tape, led him to be investigated for potential bribery and other crimes, after he apparently took the money and agreed to help the agents, who were posing as businessmen, secure future government contracts related to border security, the people said.” 

After the jump, the story did go on to say, “it remains unclear whether the investigation into Mr. Homan would have been dropped, regardless of which party controlled the White House, given recent Supreme Court rulings that set a high bar for what constitutes a bribe or other corrupt act. But the revelation about the inquiry and the decision to shut it down comes amid broader fights over the degree of control Mr. Trump holds over how the Justice Department handles criminal cases particularly those related to his perceived enemies.” 

50,000 bucks in a bag may sound like a lot, but how could it be a serious bribe when it's only a quarter of the value of Clarence Thomas's perfectly acceptable free motor coach? 

The front of this morning's New York Times is considerably less bare-knuckled toward Trump than Sunday's was. Following the lead of the president's propagandists in deeming yesterday's memorial rally for Charlie Kirk in Arizona to have been the most important story in the world yesterday. There's a four-column photo of the mourners, and the lead column is “KIRK’S MEMORIAL BLENDS POLITICS AND EVANGELISM / A CHURCHLIKE STADIUM / Rally Shows His Imprint on G.O.P. — Trump
and Vance Speak.” 

“Part Christian prayer service, part supersized political rally,” the Times writes, “the memorial on Sunday for the slain conservative kingmaker, Charlie Kirk, drew tens of thousands of supporters to fill a football stadium and cheer speech after speech, calling him a martyr and praising the tireless missionary to America's right-leaning youth. ‘Our greatest evangelist for American liberty became immortal,’ President Trump said. ‘He's a martyr now for American freedom.’ But before long, the president shifted to attacks on radical left lunatics and unnamed groups that he said cheered Mr. Kirk's death. ‘Some of the same people who call you a hater for using the wrong pronoun were filled with glee at the killing of a father with two beautiful young children,’ Mr. Trump said.” The story notes that Vice President J.D. Vance and others spoke of dark forces behind Mr. Kirk's slaying rather than a single gunman. Then returning to Trump's speech, the Times writes, “the president who toggled throughout his speech between honoring Mr. Kirk and promoting his political agenda noted differences between Mr. Kirk and himself. ‘I hate my opponent and I don't want the best for them,’ Mr. Trump said. ‘He wasn't interested in demonizing anyone.’” 

On the left side of the top of the page, the headline is “As U.N. Meets, The Institution Is in ‘Free Fall’ / Solemn Atmosphere for Its 80th Anniversary.” That's a downhearted curtain raiser on a week of impossible traffic in Manhattan. “When world leaders converge on New York City this week,” the Times writes, “for the annual gathering of the United Nations General Assembly, the organization will be observing its 80th anniversary. But the mood is far from celebratory as wars rage around the world, a budget crisis looms, and questions abound about whether the UN is even relevant anymore. Year after year, UN officials and world leaders use the annual gathering to put forth lofty ideas and offer elaborate roadmaps for change, but tangible progress remains stubbornly elusive. Russia's war against Ukraine,” the story continues, “is more than three years old. The Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza has been raging for nearly two years, and the world is still nowhere near achieving its goals on development or a solution for climate change. Even the United Nations' global humanitarian aid work, one of the few areas where the organization has continued to excel and lead the world, is now threatened by budget cuts, donor apathy, and staff reductions.” Then comes the money quote from the headline. “‘We can actually say we are in an organization that is in sort of a free fall,’ said Richard Gowan, the UN director for the International Crisis Group, adding that ‘the coming week is not going to offer us clear answers to all the UN's problems, but it may give us a more acute sense of exactly how difficult the situation is.’” 

On the other hand, on page A10, the Times writes, “the high seas, the vast waters beyond any one country's jurisdiction cover nearly half the planet. On Friday, a hard-fought global treaty to protect the cornucopia of biodiversity living there cleared a final hurdle and will become international law. The High Seas Treaty, as it is known, was ratified by a 60th nation, Morocco, crossing the threshold for United Nations treaties to go into effect. Two decades in the making, it allows for the establishment of enormous conservation zones in international waters. The U.S. is among the signatories, thanks to the Biden administration but it has continued its record of never actually ratifying any marine conservation treaties. And the Trump administration is planning to, the Times writes, “allow NOAA to issue permits for deep sea mining in international waters, a move that dozens of other countries said breached the terms of an earlier UN treaty, commonly known as the Law of the Sea.” 

And page A8 has a little more context for the upcoming UN meeting. “Britain, Canada, and Australia confirmed on Sunday, the Times writes, that they now formally recognize Palestinian statehood, piling pressure on Israel to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and putting three major allies at odds with the Trump administration. The coordinated statements came on the eve of the annual gathering of the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Later Sunday, Portugal also confirmed its recognition of Palestine.” 

Back on page one, the Times is letting Jeremy W. Peters not even under a NEWS ANALYSIS banner, talk about grand conceptual issues in American politics. “Speech Policing Spurs Concerns Of ‘Woke Right’.” No, it doesn't. The idiotic concept that the right wing's use of coercion and censorship on a scale to match its activities during the McCarthy era was somehow inspired by, modeled on, or to be blamed on left-wing activities of the last few years is such a weird niche fantasy of the reactionary political and journalistic class that Peters can't actually even wedge the word “woke” into the story until far past the jump, where he gets Jonathan Rauch, a scholar at the liberal leaning Brookings Institution, who has said that the progressive left hurts its own causes with unreasonable purity tests in recent years, to endorse the concept and then backs him up with quotes from the far-right lunatics James Lindsay and Rod Dreher. Nevertheless, Peters' nonsense, flattering as it does the sensibilities and sensitivities of the people who run the paper, gets page one. 

And again, a straight news story package, whereas Adam Liptak, writing about how the actual removal of Jimmy Kimmel from the airwaves, as the Trump administration threatened to use its regulatory powers against ABC, was intentioned with the conventional understanding of what the constitution allows, lands on page A18 with a NEWS ANALYSIS tag on it. 

Back on page one, under the picture of the Charlie Kirk mourners, the headline is “Parents Fighting Vaccines Say They’re Winning / Outbreak of Measles Has Changed Few Minds in Texas.” Just about what you would fear it would be.

Down at bottom of the page, there's a look at how the maker of Swiss Army knives, which the story helpfully explains is pronounced “vic-tor-EE-nox,” is getting clobbered by Trump's random tariff against Switzerland. 

And down in the bottom right, the story is “Musk Keeps Promising the Moon, But Delays Put the U.S. Behind.” 

“Elon Musk has a history of making promises,” the Times writes, “to rapidly deliver technological breakthroughs, only for them to end up taking longer than predicted or fail to materialize. Among these are his promises for fully autonomous self-driving cars or tunnels under Los Angeles to solve traffic congestion. Now, some federal government officials worry that his pledges for landing astronauts on the moon will suffer similar delays.” 

“Delays” is a charitable word. After the jump, the story notes, “the 15 story tall Starship has not yet carried any astronauts or commercial cargo. It has exploded during three of its four recent tests sending a spectacular but potentially dangerous plume of debris over the Caribbean on two of those aboard it trips to space. And its current version can carry only a fraction of its promised payload of at least 100 tons into low earth orbit.” 

Now imagine being one of the people with a brain implant from the company that he cares about even less than he cares about SpaceX. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod.

The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. You, the listeners, keep us going through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Keep sending those along if you are able, and if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.