Good morning, AlterNet America family.
Welcome to the Saturday Wrapup, where I give you my thoughts on the week’s biggest news as I consume my caffeine with you.
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Trump Is the Only Living President Skipping the 9/11 Ceremony
The president has decided that a day about 2,977 people who died is not worth attending if he can’t be the 2,978th person everyone has to listen to.
Since 2012, politicians have been barred from giving speeches at the annual Ground Zero commemoration by the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, to keep the focus on the victims and their families. When organizers reminded the White House of that rule, Trump decided not to attend.
All four living former presidents have confirmed they will attend the ceremony in New York. Joe Biden, who is currently undergoing treatment for an aggressive prostate cancer that has spread to his bones, will be there alongside Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. Hillary Clinton, who was a New York senator at the time of the attacks, is also expected to attend, as are former first ladies Jill Biden and Laura Bush.
At the Pentagon ceremony last year, Trump began his remarks by memorializing Charlie Kirk, a longtime political ally who had been assassinated the day before, and announced he would award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously.
Even Republicans Are Now Asking Trump to Fire Pete Hegseth
Hegseth has turned the Department of Defense into a department that can’t defend its own staffing decisions.
On Wednesday, Republican Senator Thom Tillis publicly urged Trump to replace Pete Hegseth, accusing the defense secretary of creating a “leadership void” at the top of the U.S. military. Tillis said he has never witnessed more poorly managed leadership of the country’s service members.
His comments came after Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned on Monday, the latest high-ranking official to leave the Pentagon amid reported tensions with Hegseth. Previous fired military leaders include Navy Admiral Lisa Franchetti, Coastguard Commandant Linda Fagan, and Charles Q. Brown, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Hegseth cited Fagan’s “excessive focus” on diversity as justification for her termination. He’s also removed as many as 80 names from military promotion lists, virtually all of whom are Black or women.
All of this is happening in the seventh month of a war that has already cost $37.5 billion and depleted stockpiles of key munitions. At this rate, the Pentagon will run out of people to run it before it runs out of things to fire.
House Speaker Mike Johnson Just Put Sexual Misconduct Reform on Ice
Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to cancel the last two weeks of the House’s session in September is threatening to delay a bipartisan push to crack down on sexual misconduct in Congress.
The House task force created to address the issue had hoped to unveil legislation this month, after already pushing back its original goal of releasing a bill before the August recess. Johnson’s new schedule means the House will be in session for just one more week before lawmakers leave Washington to campaign ahead of the November midterms.
The task force was created earlier this year after a series of misconduct allegations involving sitting members of Congress. The House Ethics Committee recommended censure for Rep. Chuck Edwards of North Carolina after reviewing approximately 1,500 pages of evidence that he had sent romantic text messages to young employees and given them expensive gifts. One of the alleged victims was 19 years old when the conduct began.
Johnson’s decision also came after Rep. Thomas Massie filed a new discharge petition on Monday for the Epstein Files Transparency Act II, which would add enforcement mechanisms to the original act, as the DOJ still hasn’t released the full Epstein files.
Johnson denied that the canceled workdays had anything to do with the petition, which is exactly what he said last July before sending the House home early to avoid a vote on the original bill.
CBS Used 9/11 Anniversary to Smear Muslim Senate Candidate
Luckily for Abdul El-Sayed, still being a child at the time is a pretty solid alibi.
CBS News published a story last week headlined “Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s deleted tweets on Sept. 11 attacks invite scrutiny of past remarks.” The article’s opening line suggested that El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, was somehow connected to the September 11 attacks.
El-Sayed had posted tweets during the Covid-19 pandemic contrasting the early death toll with that of 9/11, a comparison made by countless officials and media outlets at the time. He didn’t delete them because he no longer agrees with them — El-Sayed’s campaign has been open about the fact that he deleted all posts prior to 2023.
CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss personally directed the framing of the story, reportedly praising the piece during a daily editorial meeting. Sources present said she urged that the headline be changed to specifically mention that El-Sayed had deleted tweets referencing September 11.
Senior CBS News staff brought the story to the network’s standards department, but nothing was done because of Weiss’s personal involvement. A former senior CBS News staffer called the article “shameful” and said the racism was overt.
Since Weiss took over as editor in chief late last year, CBS News has lost a number of veteran journalists, including 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens, Anderson Cooper, and the network’s longtime anchor, Scott Pelley, who was fired after refusing one of Weiss’s orders.
Progressives are used to smears from rags like Fox News and the New York Post, but to see the same kind of story from the network that was once home to Walter Cronkite is a new low. This is exactly what happens when billionaire oligarchs are given control of our media. The truth will never matter more than their bottom line.
At AlterNet America, we put the facts first. And right now, the fact is the only truly independent media is the kind entirely funded by the people who read it.
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—Ryan Rose, Co-Founder & Managing Editor, AlterNet America