Good morning. It is October 1st. A genuine autumnal coolness has arrived in New York City, and this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

The federal government went into a shutdown at midnight, as had seemed unavoidable. The Times gives that news, or news to be, given that the print deadline was earlier than the legislative deadline a four-column photograph of Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune surrounded by other people apparently mulling around in suits and a single column in the right-hand lead news spot “MESSY STANDOFF ON SPENDING BILL BEFORE DEADLINE / SHUTDOWN IMMINENT / President Threatens Cuts — Dueling Proposals Fail in the Senate.” It begins “the federal government barreled toward a shutdown on Tuesday ahead of a midnight deadline after Democrats in Congress again blocked Republicans' plan to keep federal funding flowing ahead of a midnight deadline.” 

Yes, the lead sentence in the lead news story on the front of the New York Times has a head of a midnight deadline in it twice. But more pressingly, the thinking and regular editing are as sloppy as the copy editing. Why is the minority party in Congress the principal actor here when the other party holds a trifecta? The setup doesn't even accord with the second paragraph. “In back to back Senate votes that reflected the bitter spending deadlock between President Trump and Democrats,” the Times then writes, “each party blocked the others stopgap spending proposal just as they had earlier in September. It underscored how little progress has been made toward a compromise that could head off the first government shutdown since 2019. On a 55 to 45 vote,” the Times writes, “the GOP plan, which would extend funding through November 21st, fell short of the 60 needed for passage, all but assuring a shutdown at 12.01 a.m. on Wednesday that would furlough workers and disrupt federal services. Republicans also blocked the Democrats’ plan, which would extend funding through the end of October and add more than $1 trillion in health care spending in a 53 to 47 vote. Senate Republican leaders held the votes as a part of what they promised would be a daily effort to force Democrats to go on the record against extending government funding. “An effort which the Times Politics Desk rewarded by handing the Democrats the first share of the blame. 

Beyond that one column at the top of page one, the shutdown rates a single full page inside the paper with the jump of the lead story accompanied by a chart showing where the furloughs were expected to fall as of Tuesday at 2.30 p.m. Eastern with the EPA set to have 89 % of its workforce sent home, the most on the chart. The Department of Defense's civilian workforce and the Department of Health and Human Services landing in the middle with 45 and 41 % and Veterans Affairs bringing up the bottom of the dozen listed departments with 3 % of the staff due for furloughs. 

Below that, the headline is “Gridlock may expose Americans to flood losses. The National Flood Insurance Program,” the Times writes, “the main source of coverage against flood damage for most Americans is set to lapse at midnight Wednesday. At the same time, a funding gap is expected to shut down the federal government. The program provides more than $1 trillion in coverage to about 4.5 million homeowners, renters and businesses. If Congress lets its authorization lapse,” the story says, “homeowners would be unable to renew existing policies, leaving them vulnerable in the event of a flood and new policies which are required for federally backed mortgages for properties and floodplains could not be issued. When the program lapsed for one month in 2010,” the story continues, “sales of more than 40,000 properties were frozen, according to the National Association of Realtors. 

Further down, the story says, “as hurricane activity stirs in the Atlantic and wildfires smolder in the Northwest, the government account that pays for disaster response and recovery is running out. Its balance projected to drop to $2.3 billion by the end of September, according to a federal emergency management agency report released two weeks ago, when its funding runs low, federal disaster spending is typically limited to life saving and life sustaining activities.” On that note, hurricanes Humberto and Imelda are spinning along unusually close to one another in the Atlantic. Although Humberto is fading to a tropical depression, Imelda seems to be heading northeast away from the United States and on toward Bermuda.

Below the big Senate photo on page one, the Times has part of its coverage of yesterday's speeches to assembled generals and admirals in Quantico by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Donald Trump. “Top Military Leaders Told U.S. Cities Could Be ‘Training Grounds’ /  A Rare Gathering Hears Partisan Complaints.” The very opening of the story is the deadliest kind of fake savviness. “In the end,” the Times writes, “it was just another campaign-style presentation. President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were cited a familiar litany of partisan culture war talking points in their highly anticipated call up of several hundred military officers on Tuesday.” After that weary, deflated gesture of knowingness, then the Times writes that it was not at all, in the end, just another campaign style presentation. “In a rambling and sometimes incoherent speech, in which he praised his own tariffs and insulted former president, Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Mr. Trump disclosed that he had told Mr. Hegseth to use American cities as training grounds for the military. It was an evolution of one of Mr. Trump's favorite themes that cities run by Democrats are lawless urban hellscapes. But now he was telling military commanders charged with waging war his thinking on where their next deployments could be.” The story goes on to say “it was unclear why with a shutdown of the federal government looming, Mr. Trump and his defense secretary decided to gather the country's senior military leaders from deployments in the United States, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific to tell them face to face that they were ‘straight out of central casting,’ as Mr. Trump said. ‘I’m thrilled to be here this morning to address the senior leadership of what is once again known around the world as the Department of War,’ Mr. Trump said. Though Mr. Trump has renamed the Defense Department, Congress has not yet approved the change.” The story then goes on to quote various critics of the event, but the real knife work comes in on the jump page for that story, which is where the Times chose to put its other dispatch on the speeches. 

This one written not by the Times politics desk, but by military affairs reporter Greg Jaffe, who placed Pete Hegseth's comments about what he wants to see from the military in the context of Hegseth's stature as a totally unqualified lightweight. “Mr. Hegseth's vision of the military and what it should be,” the story says, “was almost entirely defined by his 12 months of service in Iraq and his experience as a major in the Army National Guard. Much of his address focused on the kinds of issues he would have dealt with as a young platoon leader in the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq or as a company commander in the Guard. He talked about grooming standards. ‘No more beards, long hair, superficial individual expression,’ he told the brass. We're going to cut our hair, shave. Shave our beards and adhere to standards.’ He preached the importance of physical fitness. ‘Frankly, it's tiring to look out at combat formations or really any formation and see fat troops,’ he said. ‘Likewise, it's completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon.’ He maintained without presenting any evidence that standards had been lowered across the force over the last decade to meet arbitrary racial and gender quotas.” Jaffe then writes “To some Mr. Hegseth's speech was poorly matched to his audience of senior officers who in most cases are responsible for complex military operations such as the maintenance of nuclear submarines, the management of America's global alliances, or the development of complex air tasking orders such as the one needed for the strikes on Iran's nuclear program earlier this year.” 

He then quotes a Marine combat veteran as calling the speech “an insane insult” and saying “those guys have got a lot more dust on their boots than he does.” 

“Mr. Hegseth's speech,” Jaffe continues, “mirrored his leadership style over his first eight months in office, during which he has focused less on meeting with his foreign counterparts around the world and more on doing pull-ups and early morning runs with troops that are posted on the Pentagon's social media feed.” He then brings in Elliot Cohen, a military historian who served in the State Department under President George W. Bush, to say, “he views the world from the point of view of a not terribly successful major in the National Guard. For him, it's push-ups, pull-ups, and pugil sticks. It's aggressiveness.” 

And down at the bottom of that page, the Times breaks out a little seven paragraph story about one other aspect of Trump's speech. “Trump refers to racial slur in address to the military.” That was the part where Trump referred to the word “nuclear” as the N-word and then said, “‘there are two N-words and you can't use either of them. You can't use either of them,’ he said again,” the Times added. “It was not the first time,” the Times writes, “Mr. Trump has played with this formulation. In past interviews and in his social media post, he has referred to nuclear as the N-word. But in those instances, he did not go so far as to refer to the other more commonly understood usage of the phrase. The context and setting for the remark was also striking. During the gathering on Tuesday,” the Times writes, “Mr. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke about getting rid of political correctness in the military. Mr. Hegseth defended his firing of more than a dozen military leaders, many of them people of color and women.” 

Back on page one, at the top left of the page, the headline is, “Comey Is Stuck In Long Feud With President / A Bad Start Escalated Into an Indictment.” The bad start was James Comey as FBI director telling Donald Trump in their first meeting when Trump was president-elect that there were allegations circulating about Trump and Russia. And so after that meeting, the Times writes, “the two men would be set on a path of escalating conflict and mutual loathing that led last week to a prosecutor handpicked for the task by Mr. Trump, securing an indictment of Mr. Comey.” Sorry, but no, this ain't a feud. This is the president of the United States using all of his available powers and then some to persecute somebody. As the story notes in Trump's first term, Comey got hit with a “highly invasive and unusual IRS audit,” as the Times describes it. It ultimately led to his being given a refund, the paper adds in a parenthetical, and with multiple criminal investigations and inspector general investigations. Surely this has all made James Comey pretty mad at Donald Trump, but it's not exactly two guys going tit for tat there. 

Down at the bottom of the page. “Can College Students Mingle For an Hour Without Phones?” Yeah, probably. I don't care. 

And next to that, “Trump’s Poll Rating Is Low but Stable After a Summer of Turmoil. President Trump's efforts to send National Guard troops to big cities, punish media organizations, and pressure universities and private businesses are all unpopular with voters. But the continued torrent of policies and tactics has not further weakened Mr. Trump's overall standing, according to a new poll from the New York Times and CNU University. Instead, Mr. Trump continues to retain the support of roughly nine out of 10 Republican voters. The net result? An unpopular president with an unchanged approval rating of 43 percent. At the start of his term,” the Times continues, “Mr. Trump's approval rating fell from its post-election highs, and it remains weak compared with his predecessors at this point in their presidencies. But over the last several months, his rating has been resilient and stable, reflecting that most voters' opinions on him have hardened.” Consistent weakness, could be a form of resiliency or it could just be weakness. 

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.