Letters from an American - A Hard Sell

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

Early today, US District Judge Timothy Kelly granted the request of media outlets to stop Trump’s order banning members of their organizations from the White House, Kelly ordered the credentials of 78 journalists restored immediately but the White House continued to deny White House access to reporters from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, While they were allowed in after the judge ordered the administration to respond, CNN and MS NOW were then blocked from access to the White House state dinner with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Trump’s response was to issue claims to try to convince voters he is winning but that is a hard sell, The Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants was stopped by a federal appeals court, whereupon Solicitor General Sauer asked the Supreme Court to step in to permit renditions to third countries, A GAO report found that ICE had not figured out how to spend the $45 billion that Congress gave it last year and it has wasted tens of millions of taxpayer dollars, In California, 650,000 ballots were confiscated by Republican sheriff Chad Bianco, The California Supreme Court ordered him to return the ballots, Trump’s claims of voter fraud took a hit as the claim that almost 16,000 noncitizens were on the voter roles in Nevada proved to be completely false, Trump’s approval rating continues to drop, Trump is running an ad, which was paid for by the US government, Democratic lawmakers are demanding that it be taken down, and that it is government propaganda more fitting for North Korea than the US.To read this letter, click here:Listen on Apple PodcastsListen on SpotifyYou can also find Heather at:YouTubeBlueskyInstagramFacebookThreadsTikTok Get full access to Letters from an American at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/subscribe

September 24th, 2026. After a hearing yesterday about Trump's Friday ban of CNN, MS Now, and Politico from the White House campus, very early this morning, I was still awake writing yesterday's letter. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly granted the request of the media outlets to stop Trump's order banning members of their organizations from the White House complex. Kelly, whom Trump appointed to the bench in 2017, challenged the argument of the White House that it had banned the journalists because they had endangered national security, noting that the stories to which administration lawyers claimed to object were routine. In fact, one of the stories the White House claimed endangered national security was based on a press call from the White House itself. According to Oliver Darcy, who writes the media newsletter status, the anonymous senior administration official, provided the quotations on the call, was none other than Vice President J.D. Vance. Kelly ordered the credentials of 78 journalists restored immediately. This morning, the White House continued to deny reporters from CNN, Politico, and MS Now access

to the White House campus. Their lawyers asked for an emergency hearing because the administration had already repeatedly violated the court's order. And soon after the judge ordered the administration to respond, the reporters were once again allowed into the area. And then, tonight, at least CNN and MS Now were blocked from access to the White House state dinner with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. After Trump posted on social media that CNN and MS Now, he called it MSDNC, were refusing to cover Xi's visit because they knew how good it would be, they didn't want to be. credit to be given to Trump. The White House told CNN it could send only an audio producer

and a cameraman to the event, not a reporter or producer. Senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes said, they again said that we were specifically denied access and that they were not letting in the CNN editorial presence. This morning, Trump complained on social media that the media is trying to cover up how well things are going before the midterms just to help Democrats. And that's the gist of Trump's attacks on media outlets. Maggot is falling apart and he either lives in a fantasy world or hopes to stem that collapse by issuing propaganda that will convince voters he is actually winning. The fantasy world thesis has supporting evidence in an image posted on Trump's social media account this morning, showing Trump and Xi standing together on a red carpet in front of an airplane

apparently labeled Air China. There is a military aircraft flying over a circle of stars with the words only Trump superimposed in a German-style black-letter font. Behind Trump to his right is a young woman who looks like Trump's loyal aide Natalie Harp standing with her hand over her heart. Journalist Aaron Rupar of public notice noted that the image was a digitally altered photo in which the image of the chief officer of protocol of the United States, Monica Crowley, had been replaced by an image that appears to be harp. Convincing voters he is winning is an even harder sell.

The Trump administration's crackdown on immigration is its signature policy and last week a federal appeals court stopped the Trump administration from sending migrants to third countries, finding that the short timeline for those renditions stripped deportees of their right to do process. The administration appears to have continued the renditions, arguing that the court had not officially notified a lower court of its decision, and thus it was not yet in effect, prompting an appeals court to clarify that the flights must stop. Today, Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the Supreme Court to step in to permit those renditions to third countries. He said that the disruption of the administration's plans imposes massive costs on the government

and invariably requires new rounds of diplomatic engagement with countries who may be all the more skeptical of our removal efforts, given the disruption. Also today, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, for ignoring his previous orders and continuing to hold people in inhumane and unconstitutional conditions at Manhattan's 26 Federal Plaza, depriving detainees of sleep, sanitary living conditions, basic personal hygiene needs, sufficient food and water, and adequate medical care. Although, as Josephine Walker of Axios points out, the administration likely sees the appalling conditions of its prisons as a way to induce migrants to leave.

The judge required ICE to provide adequate space and humane conditions for detainees. Meanwhile, as Ryan J. Foley of the Associated Press reported today, a report from the non-partisan government accountability office, or GAO, found that ICE had no strategic plan for spending the unprecedented $45 billion Congress gave it in Trump's so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, and it's wasted tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on slapdash plans for mass detention. It spent nearly $3 million for tents at Guantanamo Bay that were never used, $20 million for maintaining warehouses that were never used to house detainees and are now being sold, and excessive rates to lock people up. Foley reports that the Department of Homeland Security told the GAO

that it would have a plan for spending its windfall by August 31, 2027, nearly a year from now. After Trump announced the U.S. would accept meat from other countries in order to lower food prices, on September 22nd, the Department of Agriculture announced the recall of more than 167,000 pounds, or 75,750 kilograms of raw pork, beef, and goat. The items were produced without federal inspection, but carried false marks claiming they had been inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency said the food should be considered misbranded and unsafe to eat. Trump's insistence that the country suffers from voter fraud isn't going well either. In California, Republican Sheriff Chad Bianco and the Riverside County Sheriff's Department

confiscated more than 650,000 ballots after California voters agreed to redistrict the state to offset the Republican mid-decade redistricting of Texas. The state's Democratic Attorney General immediately ordered him to return the ballots, saying he had no authority to confiscate them and that the seizure was intended to make people distrust elections. As Ua Eda Acefo of the Guardian reported, the California Supreme Court today ordered Bianco to return the ballots, saying that it was Bianco rather than voters who was endangering elections. allowing law enforcement unfettered access to ballots or the ability to handle and count them in secret, based on unregulated protocols, itself creates a substantial risk to election integrity, it said.

On Saturday, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that makes it a felony to seize ballots from a county elections office. Trump's own claims of voter fraud also took a hit this week. As Nick Corrissiniti of the New York Times reported today, in July, Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Mark Wayne Mullen claimed they had found more than 270,000 non-citizens on voter rolls in California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Mullen stated that there were as many as 15,903 non-citizens on the voter rolls in Nevada. But when officials from the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, met with Nevada election officials in August, they admitted Mullen's number was inflated. After the meeting, one wrote to say that the department had confirmed just 185 people on the voter rolls were not citizens. They sent Nevada officials a list of those 185 names. On Tuesday, Nevada told the federal government that the 185 people on the government's

list are all citizens. Our records do not support DHS's claims, and DHS has still not provided evidence to change that, said Francisco Aguilar, Nevada's Democratic Secretary of State. Instead, DHS officials continue their attempts to intimidate election officials into compliance and deter voters with huge claims of fraud with no evidence. repeating unsupported claims does not make them true. Trump's job approval rating continues to drop. 50 plus one aggregated new polls today and found that only 34.7% of Americans approve of Trump's handling of the presidency,

while 62.1% disapprove. Meredith McGraw, Maggie Severin's, and Suzanne Vranica of the Wall Street Journal reported today that an ad airing in major U.S. markets shows Trump promising to defeat communism, Marxism in America once and for all, before showing images of Trump at White House events as a choir sings, Love Me. At the end of the ad, the screen reads, paid for by the U.S. government. Former campaign finance official Daniel Weiner called the ad an astonishing misuse of public resources in the campaign context, one of the most blatant I've ever seen. Democratic lawmakers wrote to the White House, demanding the ad be taken down,

calling it government propaganda more fitting for North Korea than the U.S., and an egregious and illegal misuse of Americans' hard-earned tax dollars. According to the Wall Street Journal reporters, the White House says the ad is a public service announcement, reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending at home, at our borders, and abroad. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts, recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.