Good morning. It is October 3rd. It is sunny and warming up some 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. 

This is far from the biggest news story of the morning, but it gets right to the heart of things. CBS, following a news story broken by the independent newsletter, The Last Campaign, writes that the director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum, and Boyhood Home was forced out of his job this week under pressure from the Trump administration. Harrington's departure, CBS writes, came after he resisted taking an original Eisenhower sword out of the library's collection to give to King Charles last month during President Trump's unprecedented second state visit to the United Kingdom. The story goes on to say it is not clear who specifically requested the sword, First Lady Melania Trump personally decided which gifts to give Queen Camilla, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and their children, a senior administration official said. Officials at the State Department who compiled an array of gift options for the first couple sought an Eisenhower sword to reiterate the significance of the US-UK relationship since World War II, sources said. But Arrington argued against giving away an artifact that had been accepted as a donation and had become the property of the American people. As with the gigantic ballroom, that he's attaching to the White House and continuing to have constructed during the government shutdown. Trump's presumption that he can just take Dwight Eisenhower's sword and give it away to whomever he pleases, is the essence of his conception of himself as not just the supreme and unchecked present day authority in the United States, and living avatar of the American people, whose desires must be identical to his own personal desires, but also the culmination of history, such that all previous presidents are subordinated to him, whether it's treating the library and museum of the vastly more popular Dwight Eisenhower as his personal gift shop, or replacing Joe Biden's presidential portrait in the row of presidents in the White House with a picture of an auto pen as a smirking gag.

The other thing that makes the episode consummate Trumpism, naturally, is that some regular person who just had a job to do and who was apparently well qualified to do the job, is now unemployed for having followed his professional responsibilities and for refusing to break the law. 

There is no job report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning. The numbers were reportedly compiled but are not being released, due to the government shutdown. Surely this is a neutral logistical decision on the bureau's part, and the numbers would stay in a file drawer even if they were positive for the Trump administration's economic performance, which most forecasters expected they would not be, or are not. Not sure what tense to use for data that exists but can't be seen. 

On the front of this morning's print edition of the New York Times, he big picture across the top is of congregants and police separated by police tape in Manchester at the Heaton Park Synagogue. Underneath the one column headline is, “Attacker Kills 2 At British Shul On Yom Kippur. An attacker,” the Times writes, “rammed a car into people outside a synagogue in Manchester, England, then went on a stabbing spree on Thursday, killing two people in what the police called an attack of terrorism on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.” 

Follow-up reporting after the print deadline has established that the attacker in his capacity as an attacker only killed one person. The other victim was apparently shot and killed by the police. 

The lead news column at the top right side of the page is a fairly terribly executed news story in the Times' previously well-done coverage of Donald Trump's campaign of murder in the Caribbean. The headline is “TRUMP DECLARES FORMAL CONFLICT AGAINST CARTELS / IN NOTICE TO CONGRESS / Stretch of Wartime Rules That Govern Killing, Law Experts Say.” There's a real tension between that second subhead and the Times's willingness to declare in the headline that Donald Trump has “declared” a formal conflict. A formal declaration would mean that the president is operating within some known and generally accepted legal framework when in fact he's just making stuff up and asserting powers he doesn't legally have over a set of targets he hasn't actually identified. “President Trump,” the Times writes, “has decided that the United States is engaged in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels his team has labeled terrorist organizations and that suspected smugglers for such groups are unlawful combatants administration said in a confidential notice to Congress this week. The notice was sent to several congressional committees and obtained by the New York Times. It adds new detail to the administration's thinly articulated legal rationale for why three U.S. military strikes the president ordered on boats in the Caribbean Sea last month, killing all 17 people aboard them, should be seen as lawful rather than murder. Mr. Trump's move to formally deem his campaign against drug cartels as an active armed conflict means he is cementing his claim to extraordinary wartime powers, legal specialists said.” 

Again, “cementing” is categorically not the word for what he's doing with his claims. And that's not what the legal specialists told the Times he was doing. Quite to the contrary, the Times then turns to one of those legal authorities. “Geoffrey S. Korn,” the Times writes, “a retired judge advocate general lawyer who was formerly the Army's senior advisor for law of war issues, said drug cartels were not engaged in hostilities, the standard for when there is an armed conflict for legal purposes against the United States because selling a dangerous product is different from an armed attack. Noting that it is illegal for the military to deliberately target civilians who are not directly participating in hostilities, even suspected criminals, Mr. Corn called the president's move an abuse that crossed a major legal line. This is not stretching the envelope. He said this is shredding it. This is tearing it apart. That's not cementing his claim. That's spitting on his claim and hoping the spit makes it stick together. The story goes on to describe how the administration has run away with the existing terminology of calling something a non-international armed conflict, which was originally meant to refer to a civil war in another country and was then expanded by the George W. Bush administration to cover its conflict with the non-state actors of al-Qaeda after they attacked the United States and is now being invoked by Trump in the absence of any attack against no one in particular.

The story goes on to say, “notice to Congress did not specifically name any of the drug cartels with which Mr. Trump claims the United States is engaged in an armed conflict. It also did not specify any standards the administration is using to determine whether particular suspects have sufficient links to such groups for the military to kill them.” Seems like if you want to get credit for declaring a formal conflict, you need to, at a minimum, say who it is that you're claiming the power to kill.

On the left-hand side of page one, there's a poll story. “Voters Believe U.S. Can’t Heal Deep Divisions / Poll Shows a Shift Even Before the Shutdown. Americans,” the Times writes, “have markedly less faith in the ability of the country's political system to solve problems than they had five years ago, with a large majority now believing that the country is incapable of overcoming its deep divisions, according to a poll by the New York Times and Sienna University. Even in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, when the country was fighting over mask mandates and forced to reckon with questions about racial inequality, a majority of voters still agreed that the country was capable of solving its political problems.” Okay, one of the bylines on this piece is Jeremy W. Peters, and it seems safe to go ahead and credit him with the idea that millions and millions of people across the country pouring out into the streets in 2020 to collectively demand an end to various forms of racist injustice should have caused Americans to lose confidence in the nation's ability to fix its problems. Anyway, a majority did think that. A majority of 51%, according to the little chart that goes with the story. Today, the Times writes, just 33 % of voters feel the same. 

“The steep rise in pessimism reflects a striking shift in the public's perceptions about what ails the country. After The Economy, the poll found that Americans were most likely to point to problems in the political culture as the most urgent. They named polarization and the state of democracy more often than immigration, inflation or crime.” Is that a shift in the public's perceptions about what ails the country or is that a shift in what ails the country? 

Let's just speed through the headlines inside the paper in the national section. “In Chicago, drones, copters and hundreds of arrests.”

Next to that, “Trump warns top colleges funding tied to compact.” 

Then comes “Trump's military goals contradict nonpartisan roots.” 

“Migrant courts cancel hearings amid shutdown.” 

“Judge rejects asylum request by Abrago Garcia.” 

“Uncertainty for major rail projects in New York.” 

“Blue states bear brunt of cuts by Energy Department.” 

“Trump eyes Democrat agencies for deep cuts to the federal workforce.” 
“Republicans propose clean extension, but Democrats want something more.”

“EPA staff is confused about pay and furlough status.”

“Trump halts broadcasting of U.S. voice to the world.”

Whatever could have changed the perceptions that all those people in the poll have about how this country's working? 

Here's one way down the bottom of A-19. “Two Delta planes collide on taxiway at LaGuardia. Two regional flights operated by a subsidiary of Delta Airlines collided on a LaGuardia airport taxiway on Wednesday evening, injuring one person, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said.” OK, so there was a little mix up, a little bump. “Videos and photos,” the story says, “posted on social media showed one of the planes apparently missing a wing. A Delta spokesman said on Thursday that the company was aware of the photos showing components of wings and fuselage on the ground, but he did not describe the damage to the planes.” The accident involved two bombardier jets, one of them trying to get to the terminal, the other trying to take off. The Times writes “Delta said that its preliminary information suggested that the wing of the departing jet operating as Endeavor Air Flight 5155 had made contact with the fuselage of the arriving jet, Flight 5047.” The story goes on to say that, “though there is a government shutdown underway, air traffic controllers are working through the shutdown because they are considered essential workers, and the spending impasse was not expected to have a major immediate effect on air travel.” But then it says, “because about a quarter of the nearly 45,000 people who work at the Federal Aviation Administration are being furloughed during the shutdown, some air services related to air traffic safety will be put on hold. And the FAA said in August that it expected to hire at least 8,900 air traffic controllers by 2028, an effort that would be stalled by the government shutdown. A critical shortage of air traffic controllers has contributed to aviation accidents and near misses at several U.S. airports in recent years. In May, flights at Newark Airport were delayed for up to seven hours because there were not enough air traffic controllers scheduled to work.” 

Yeah, given that, it seems like an airplane ripping its own wing off colliding with another airplane at LaGuardia just might belong somewhere a little more prominent than the bottom of A-19. 

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 on Monday.