What just happened? President Donald Trump’s greatest bug—or feature—might be his flightiness, coupled with a certain showmanship, a bit of flair. What holds one day may not hold the next. This results in chaotic whiplash, like with tariffs and “Liberation Day” rates that, in many cases, did not end up holding. It results in executive orders that make news cycles but don’t actually change all that much, like this week’s executive order classifying antifa a domestic terrorist group. It makes it hard for firms and individuals to plan ahead, to know what type of workers they’ll be hiring and how expensive materials will be and what the law permits.
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In foreign policy, it means a longstanding approach might not in fact be so. Like Trump’s reversal, yesterday afternoon, on Ukraine, following a meeting with that country’s president:
“After getting to know and fully understand the Ukraine/Russia Military and Economic situation and, after seeing the Economic trouble it is causing Russia, I think Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form,” wrote the president on Truth Social:
“With time, patience, and the financial support of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original Borders from where this War started, is very much an option. Why not? Russia has been fighting aimlessly for three and a half years a War that should have taken a Real Military Power less than a week to win. This is not distinguishing Russia. In fact, it is very much making them look like ‘a paper tiger.’ When the people living in Moscow, and all of the Great Cities, Towns, and Districts all throughout Russia, find out what is really going on with this War, the fact that it’s almost impossible for them to get Gasoline through the long lines that are being formed, and all of the other things that are taking place in their War Economy, where most of their money is being spent on fighting Ukraine, which has Great Spirit, and only getting better, Ukraine would be able to take back their Country in its original form and, who knows, maybe even go further than that! Putin and Russia are in BIG Economic trouble, and this is the time for Ukraine to act. In any event, I wish both Countries well. We will continue to supply weapons to NATO for NATO to do what they want with them. Good luck to all!”
(Does Trump mean the February 2022 borders, before the current iteration of the war, or does he also mean the return of Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014? It’s not totally clear.)
It’s possible this is a tactic to try to get Russian President Vladimir Putin to come to the negotiating table. It’s possible it’s a tactic to get NATO to step up its commitments—the timing of which would make sense, as NATO has been issuing forceful rebukes to Putin following Russian drones entering Polish airspace (and being shot down) and Russian fighter jets entering Estonian airspace two weeks ago and now drones over Copenhagen Airport yesterday that might be linked to Russia—and to take Article 5 more seriously. It’s also possible, since it’s Trump, that it’s a genuine reversal of his own beliefs and his administration’s approach, which would be quite a shift given Vice President J.D. Vance’s aggressive tack taken with Volodymyr Zelenskyy back in February (described by Politico as “the stunning humiliation of Zelenskyy”).
Then again, is it a true reversal? Trump said, back in March following the spat, that he’s “not aligned with anybody.” “I’m aligned with the United States of America,” he added. The only commitment Trump is making now is the continuation of U.S. weapons support for NATO. It’s possible Trump is trying to exert more influence over how NATO handles territorial incursions. It’s possible Trump learned new information over the course of his meeting with Zelenskyy. But this might also be a somewhat toothless pronouncement from Trump, or, possibly, some sort of foreign-policy 4D chess move that will reveal itself prudent in time. With Trump, it’s very hard to say.
Scenes from New York: “The Secret Service found and seized an illicit network of sophisticated equipment in the New York region that was capable of shutting down the cellular network as foreign leaders prepared to gather nearby for the annual U.N. General Assembly, the agency announced on Tuesday,” reports The New York Times. “Officials said the anonymous communications network, which included more than 100,000 SIM cards and 300 servers, could interfere with emergency response services and could be used to conduct encrypted communication. One official said the network was capable of sending 30 million text messages per minute, anonymously. The official said the agency had never before seen such an extensive operation.” The Secret Service is in charge of security for U.N. meetings held in New York. There’s not yet information on a specific plot that had been planned to put these devices to use, but “initial analysis of the data on some of the SIM cards has identified ties to at least one foreign nation, as well as links to criminals already known to U.S. law enforcement officials, including cartel members.” President Donald Trump has taken this and run with it, naturally. But there’s also some early indicators coming out that the Secret Service is not being totally truthful here, so take it all with grains of salt.
QUICK HITS
- “Three people were shot at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Dallas on Wednesday morning, ICE officials said,” per The New York Times. “Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, said there were ‘multiple injuries and fatalities’ and the shooter was found dead of a ‘self-inflicted gunshot wound.'”
- “If over time, desistance becomes more common, ‘that might be a good argument for why social transition at a young age should be done cautiously,’ said Dr. Laura Edwards-Leeper, a psychologist who also worked at the Boston clinic and who has become a critic of what she sees as reckless approaches to youth transition,” writes Jesse Singal, covering the findings of The TransYouth Project, the longitudinal effort to track children who transition genders very early in life. Singal reports that the study found that 18.4 percent of the early-transitioning children had not stuck to their new identity, either reverting to their birth sex or coming out as a category that’s neither cisgender nor transgender. “Edwards-Leeper also noted that a nonbinary gender identity might just be a way station, of sorts, on the way toward some of these kids reidentifying with their birth sex. ‘It might be easier for them to admit to themselves and everyone in their lives that they are JUST shifting to nonbinary, rather than back to cis—as a first step,’ she said. ‘This is definitely the way it often goes with transitioning from cis to trans—it feels safer to try out nonbinary first. I would suspect that some of those nonbinary kids will shift to cis as they get a bit older.'” Singal also grapples with social contagion as a very plausible explanation for why we’ve seen an explosion in youth transgender identification over the last decade, and critiques some researchers’ inability to make sense of this.
- In case you’re interested in why there’s lotsa GOD in this newsletter these days.
- Inside Los Angeles’ Tesla Diner: “Early visitors to the diner were greeted by robots, but on the day I came, none was to be found, disappointing the many, many people I heard ask about them. No roller skates, either. And although it is ostensibly a diner, it has no table service; this is more like a fast-food joint with higher prices and extra seating. The menu has also shrunk considerably since opening day: When I visited, the only options were a burger, a grilled-cheese sandwich, a tuna melt, a fried-chicken sandwich, a hot dog, chili, fries, and apple pie. Most of these dishes were served in a cute cardboard container made to look like a Cybertruck, and had been made fancier in ways nobody asked for,” writes Ellen Cushing for The Atlantic.
- “Trads believe women shouldn’t work” is pretty much entirely made up by the haters, not endorsed by traditionalists themselves, points out New Hampshire woodsman/thinker Simon Sarris:
“trad” isn’t even an anachronism, its just made up. Even ancient texts glorify wives working (as we see it).
more importantly there’s a lot more to “work” than “do thing for someone else for money” which is strangely implicit in even trad assumptions https://t.co/Lmb3TPV66Y pic.twitter.com/qxamiAoTfA
— Simon Sarris (@simonsarris) September 23, 2025
