An Immediate Calamity

October 1st, 2026. John Hudson of the Washington Post reported this evening that the Trump administration is openly defying Congress, taking $52 million in military assistance lawmakers appropriated for European and Middle Eastern countries hurt by Russia's war in Ukraine, and diverting it to right-wing governments in Panama, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. When the State Department notified Congress last month that it intended to make the switch, Senator Jean Shaheen, a Democrat of New Hampshire, and Representative Gregory Meeks, a Democrat of New York, put a hold on the funds. Late yesterday, the administration told Congress it is defying the hold and moving forward. Shaheen and Meeks objected, warning the White House that Congress had provided the money for a specific purpose, and that the executive branch does not have unlimited discretion to redirect these funds toward unrelated administration policy priorities or countries. The State Department told Hudson that Trump is prioritizing the Western hemisphere, and that the money would be better spent in Latin America than where Congress wanted it. The U.S. Constitution is clear that only Congress can appropriate money, and that the president must execute the laws as Congress passes them. But the Trump administration has been aggressive about its intention to take control of the power of the purse from Congress. Yesterday, Torini Party, Marianne Levine, and Michelle Hackman of the Wall Street Journal reported that the administration appears to have taken $20 million from the funds Congress appropriated for the Department of Homeland Security to pay for the ads boosting Trump before the midterms. That destruction of the fundamental separation of powers at the heart of our government has gotten very little pushback from Republican lawmakers, and senators left Washington, D.C. today for a recess until after the midterms. The House is already in recess. The White House has made very little secret of its determination to abandon the international order the U.S. helped to put in place after World War II. In its place, Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared to embrace the idea that major powers should exercise influence over the countries around them, as Russia's president Vladimir Putin believes. Yesterday, Paul McCleary, Stephanie Boulson and Jack Deach of Politico reported that the Trump administration had not invited the United Kingdom, France, the Baltic countries, or other U.S. allies to a meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO members next month in Poland. The meeting is being directed by Defense Department policy chief Elbridge Colby, and is designed to discuss NATO's future. The exclusion of traditional U.S. allies has raised concerns that the U.S. is continuing to try to splinter NATO, according to those Trump considers loyal and those whose actions he dislikes. Earlier this week, Putin warned NATO that he might use nuclear weapons against NATO countries. German Chancellor Friedrich Murz said Putin's threats are a sign of his desperation over the Ukraine invasion and that Europe expects Russia to launch severe hybrid attacks, sabotage, cyberattacks, and destabilizing disinformation. Should such attacks come, Murz said, we would respond quickly and very clearly. The fact that the United States Constitution and Foreign Affairs appears to be at the mercy of one man and the loyalists he has around him undermines the principles at the heart of our democracy. The fact that that one man's mental acuity has collapsed is an immediate calamity. Time magazine today released a lightly edited transcript of an interview their senior political correspondent, Eric Cordelesa, an editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs, conducted with Trump at the White House on September 28th. The interview reveals a man unable to answer questions coherently, obsessed with his architectural projects, consumed by his own fantasy of himself, and angry at the media that he feels mistreats him. He does not appear to be a well-man. He complained bitterly that the three Supreme Court justices he appointed voted against me too often and suggested he expects loyalty from them. Asked about the national debt which just passed $40 trillion, he blamed Biden for it, although Trump by himself has added $11 trillion to the debt in his time in office. He insisted he will change the name of artificial intelligence to superintelligence. Once again he claimed that the economic growth created by AI will pay off the debt. Trump refused to rule out using the Insurrection Act before the midterms, demolishing the Kennedy Center, or annihilating Iran. He talked about designating the Oval Office a national landmark so no one can alter the changes he's made to it, covering it in gold flippery. Despite having hit new lows in his job approval ratings, he claimed, "I would beat anybody running today by 20 points, your numbers that you have are fake, the posters are corrupt, they're almost as corrupt as the writers. I have the highest of IQs, I have the highest, I'm fine and I understand that stuff." You know my uncle was at MIT for 41 years and you know I'm a, I believe in genetics frankly and I understand. I understand it much more than I think any president would because I do have an ability on this. I have an ability on those things that were the new frontiers. Here we are doing this. You haven't asked me one f***ing positive question. All of this. What about this? What about that? What about that? What about this? All negative. Aaron Rupert of Public Notice recommended people read this to get a sense of the president's grave cognitive impairment. Trump's inability to tell the difference between his fantasies and reality was on display Wednesday. When, as Timothy W. Martin and Gavin Bade of the Wall Street Journal explained, Trump announced that the South Korean government had agreed to invest $50 billion in a liquefied natural gas or LNG pipeline in Alaska. With him was Senator Dan Sullivan, a Republican of Alaska who's seat is in danger from democratic candidate Mary Peltola. This one is huge for Alaska, Sullivan said, and his office later celebrated the historic $54 billion Korean investment into Alaska's LNG pipeline. In fact, the Commerce Department and South Korea's industry ministry had simply agreed to commence working on such a project. The South Korean government disagreed with Trump's statement. Putting out figures or using definitive language goes far beyond what was agreed. South Korea's industry minister Kim Jong-Kwon said. South Korea's president Lee Jae-miung took to social media to emphasize that the plan will proceed only if it turns out to be financially viable and meets legal requirements in South Korea. Trump on Monday announced a deal to build a $15 billion steel plant in Lee County, Iowa. As Stephanie Calloy of Mediaite reported, at the announcement, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik told him the plant came from "your 232 tariffs, the steel tariffs at work." Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the plant "is the Trump re-industrialization of America, hitting the ground at a serious scale." Lutnik said, "I think this deal is done. This deal is done. They've already worked it out. That's why we're all together with the president. The president doesn't bring people together unless it's a done deal. You guys know that already." To that, Trump added, "they've already started building." But when Matt Christensen of KWQC in Davenport, Iowa went to look, he found no major property purchases tied to the project this year. Company officials say they don't have details about its plans and no permits have been filed. "The financial side isn't settled either," he said. The Iowa legislature will meet Friday in a special session to debate incentives for the company to build an Iowa. Meanwhile, Trump and lawmakers still haven't disclosed exactly where in Lee County the plant would go. For residents here, that's left more questions than answers about a project the White House is calling a "sure thing." This afternoon, as he set off for Denton, Texas, before a rally in Durant, Oklahoma, Trump told reporters about Iran, "Now I have to make a decision. They'll either sign a very fair deal. or they won't exist any longer." In Texas, he told the crowd the U.S. would "win very easily," right after the election. Although the outrageous chaos of the Trump years has numbed us, it is not acceptable for the President of the United States to threaten another nation with annihilation. Lara Seligman and Shelby Holiday of the Wall Street Journal reported today that the United States will send a third aircraft carrier strike group to the Middle East. The USS Theodore Roosevelt will join the USS George H.W. Bush and the USS George Washington, adding 9,000 to 10,000 troops to the more than 50,000 U.S. troops already in the region. The Roosevelt left San Diego on Sunday, while a group of three amphibious ships and Marines from the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit left Monday. They will arrive at their destination by the end of November. Meanwhile, here at home, Judge Todd E. Aylman today dismissed the government's case against David Hurn, with prejudice, meaning it cannot be resurrected. Hurn is the Olympian the government accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, although the contractors themselves acknowledged they were responsible for its torn lining. After the government acknowledged that there was no merit in its prosecution of Hurn, Trump continued to insist that Hurn should be prosecuted. Because the government's legitimate interest in maintaining the possibility of a future prosecution seems so marginal and because of the extraordinary possibility that Mr. Hurn will nonetheless face a meritless, politically motivated prosecution, the judge said. The court must protect him from uncertainty and from what objectively would be harassment from his own government. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, "Death of Massachusetts," recorded with music composed by Michael Mons.