Letters from an American - December 8, 2025

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

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December 8th, 2025. Last Wednesday, December 3rd, a reporter asked President Donald J. Trump if he would release the video of the September 2nd strike on a small boat off the coast of Venezuela that killed two survivors of a previous strike that had split their boat, capsized it, and set it on fire. answered, I don't know what they have, but whatever they have, we'd certainly release. No problem. Today, just five days later, a reporter began to ask Trump a question, beginning with the words, you said you would have no problem with releasing the full video of that strike on September 2nd off the coast of Venezuela. Secretary Hegesith announced that Trump interrupted her.

I didn't say that. You said that. I didn't say that. Turning slightly to make a side comment to someone else, he said, This is ABC fake news. As G. Eliot Morris of strengthened numbers estimates that 56.1% of Americans disapprove of the job Trump is doing as president, while only 39.7 approve. And as his agenda appears more unpopular by the day, Trump and his loyalists appear to be trying to cement his power over the United States of America. on sunday trump appeared to pressure the supreme court to let his tariff stand despite the fact that the constitution gives to congress alone the power to regulate tariffs trump's justification for seizing the power to impose them is the nineteen seventy seven international emergency economic powers act which permits a president to regulate financial transactions after declaring a national emergency

Trump declared a national economic emergency in April before launching his tariff war. Observers expect the Supreme Court to hand down a decision about the constitutionality of Trump's tariffs later this week, and the justices questioning during oral arguments suggests they are not inclined to accept Trump's assumption of such dramatic economic power over the U.S. Last night on social media, Trump tried to position tariffs as central to national security, an area where the right-wing justices on the Supreme Court have tended to uphold the president's authority. He posted, While the United States has other methods of charging tariffs against foreign countries, many of whom have for years taken advantage of our nation,

the current method of tariffing before the United States Supreme Court, court is far more direct, less cumbersome, and much faster, all ingredients necessary for a strong and decisive national security result. Speed, power, and certainty are at all times important factors in getting the job done in a lasting and victorious manner. Trump continued, I have settled eight wars in ten months because of the rights clearly given to the President of the United States, If countries didn't think these rights existed, they would have said so loud and clear. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump. Last Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC's Squawk Box

that the administration believes it can continue its tariff agenda using different laws, even if the Supreme Court strikes down its current policy. Trump's tariffs have hit farmers particularly hard, making imported goods like machinery and fertilizer more expensive, while destroying the markets for products like corn, soybeans, and wheat, to create what economists estimate could be losses of $44 billion in net cash income for farmers from their 2025-2020s crops. Today, Trump announced the administration intends to give farmers one-time payments total. $12 billion. At an event at the White House, Trump told reporters,

we love our farmers, and, as you know, the farmers like me, because, you know, based on voting trends, you could call it voting trends or anything else, but they're great people. Utah County Democratic Party Chair Darren Self commented, the President of the United States unilaterally levied a tax on all of us is redistributing our taxes to a core segment of his supporters. A bailout is like putting a

band-aid on a bullet wound, corn and soybean farmer John Bartman set on a press call for the Democratic National Committee in mid-October. Government bailouts do not make up for our loss of income. We don't want a bailout. We want markets for our crops. We want to be able to work hard every year and enjoy the fruits of our labor and know that we did it on our own. administration officials are calling the program the Farm Bridge Assistance Program, saying it is designed to help farmers until Trump's economic policies become successful. A promise agriculture secretary Brooke Rawlins echoed later in the day when she told Larry Kudlow of the Fox News Channel, the relief is coming. It really is a golden age just right

around the corner. But Trump spent $28 billion bailing out for. farmers during his first term, during his first trade war with China, without creating a golden age. And Matt Grossman of the Wall Street Journal reported today that the administration has announced it will not publish an already delayed October report on wholesale price inflation, saying it will roll those figures into another delayed report due in November and release them in mid-January. It's probably safe to assume those numbers will not tell a story the administration likes. The right-wing justices on the Supreme Court might refuse to support Trump's bid to take control of the country's economic system, but in arguments today, they appeared poised to give him

the power to take control of the modern American government by stacking the independent agencies that do much of the government's work with officials loyal to him. In March, Trump fired the last remaining Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, Rebellion. Becca Slaughter. Since 1935, the Supreme Court has said the president does not have the power to fire members of independent agencies created by Congress, except for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office. Although Trump himself initially appointed Slaughter, he claimed he fired her because her continued service on the independent commission was inconsistent with the administration's priorities, and that he had the right to do so under the authority granted to him by Article 2 of

the Constitution, despite the fact Congress set up the position in such a way that it would be shielded from presidential politics. This argument is an attempt to establish the idea of the unitary executive. A theory the right wing has pushed since the 1980s when it began to distrust the will of voters as they expressed it through Congress and thus tried to find ways to assert the power of the president and reduce the power of Congress. The theory of the Unitary Executive says that since the president is the head of one of the three independent branches of government, those are the legislative branch, the executive branch, and the judicial branch, he has sole authority over the executive branch and cannot be reined in by the other two

branches. Trump has leaned into this idea since 2019, when he told attendees at the Turning Point USA Teen Student Action Summit being held in Washington, D.C., I have an article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president. The Supreme Court's 2024 Donald J. Trump v. United States decision supported Trump's radical reading of the powers of the president, when it took the radical position that a president could not be prosecuted for crimes committed in the course of official presidential duties. In his second term, Trump has worked to fit his power grabs within the contours of that decision. Now, the Supreme Court appears primed to hand him another win by finding the president has complete control over the officers and the executive branch,

including the independent agencies established by Congress, but which Congress has been placing in the executive branch since the administration of President George Washington. Representing the government, Solicitor General John Sauer told the court that the president must be able to remove officials in the agencies because the president must have the power to control, and the one who has the power to remove is the one who is the person that they have to fear and obey.

Justice Katanji Brown Jackson suggested that this political destruction of the independent agencies Congress had established to provide non-partisan expertise on issues like how to regulate pollutants would hurt the country. Having a president come in and fire all the scientists and the doctors and the economists and the PhDs

and replacing them with loyalists and people who don't know anything is actually not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States, she said. Law professor Deborah Pearlstein wrote, it is really, really hard to get your head around the raw hubris of the majority. They really will be destabilizing the operating structure of the entire U.S. government. Why? Because they believe they have a better idea about how the past century should have been done. The court should decide the case in June. But there are signs that Republican lawmakers are finally joining the Democrats to push

back against Trump's quest for power. CNN's Natasha Bertrand reports that tomorrow, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, along with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Cain, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, will brief the Gang of Eight, presumably on the military strikes against small boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific, especially the strike of September 2nd. The Gang of Eight is made up of the leaders

from both parties in both chambers of Congress and the chair and ranking member of each chamber's intelligence committees. Bertrand also reports that the head of U.S. Southern Command, Admiral Alvin Halsey, who will retire two years ahead of schedule on December 12 after disagreements with Hegseth over the strikes, will meet virtually with members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees. Lawmakers will be voting this week on the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, that lays out priorities and funding authorization for the Defense Department,

funding that is then appropriated in different legislation. When the lawmakers released their final version of the bill on Sunday, they had put into it a measure to withhold 25% of Hegzitz travel budget until the Defense Department hands over the unedited video of strikes conducted against designated terrorist organizations in the area of responsibility, of the United States Southern Command to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.

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. Thank you.