President Trump and Erika Kirk at Sunday’s memorial for slain Turning Point USA leader Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
TUESDAY 9/23/25
Trump Speaks to UN General Assembly – President Trump has meetings scheduled with leaders from eight Middle Eastern allies at the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday along with leaders of Ukraine, Argentina and the European Union, according to NPR’s Morning Edition.
“I’m going to meet with lots of the leaders at the UN, probably 20 … everybody wants to meet. I’m only one person,” Trump told reporters.
Leaders from the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Portugal and other countries will use the General Assembly to call on Israel to recognize a Palestinian state and end its attacks on Gaza. Trump is not on board, as he wants Israeli hostages to be released first. The president plans to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next week, NPR says.
Estonia has called for an emergency meeting with NATO nations at the UN to talk about Russia’s incursion into its airspace last Friday.
•••
About Trump’s Autism Announcement – The Food and Drug Administration will soon notify physicians that use of the active ingredient in Tylenol, acetaminophen, is associated with increased risk of autism in newborns, USA Today reports.
“Don’t take Tylenol,” President Trump told a press conference attended with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Monday. “Fight like hell not to take it.”
Tylenol is used as a painkiller for pregnant women. Trump also advised mothers to avoid giving acetaminophen to newborns.
As with most any advice coming out of RFK Jr.’s HHS, the medical community has pushed back, citing numerous studies affirming Tylenol’s safety. This month ahead of Monday’s news conference, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have endorsed the use of acetaminophen during pregnancies, according to USA Today.
•••
Kimmel Live! Lives – After a week of ‘indefinite hold’ of ABC-TV’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! over the host’s comments about the MAGA response to the assassination of Turning Point USA CEO Charlie Kirk, the show returns to television Tuesday night. Except on Sinclair Broadcasting’s nearly 40 ABC affiliates. ABC runs eight of its own US stations and has 238 affiliates nationwide.
“We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after these conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday,” Disney said in a statement released first on ABC’s Good Morning America Monday.
After Jimmy Kimmel’s indefinite hold announced last Wednesday, various news outlets reported significant viewer cancellation of Disney’s Disney+ and Hulu streaming services. Just prior to the show’s reinstatement, some 400 actors, musicians and directors signed an open letter with the American Civil Liberties Union denouncing the show’s suspension, The Mercury News of San Jose reports.
On Comedy Central’s The Daily Show Monday night, host Jon Stewart played a clip of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) calling Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr’s threats against Disney over Kimmel’s monologue “dangerous as hell,” and on CBS-TV’s The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, the eponymous host said, “Our long national late-nightmare is over.”
Colbert, whose show CBS cancelled last summer – the final Late Show will be next May – said, holding his latest Emmy trophy, he is once again “the only martyr in late-night.”
While Jimmy Kimmel Live!’s return comes as something of a relief from fears that his now-temporary cancellation by MAGA was the ultimate sign President Trump is out to stifle First Amendment rights for anyone to the left of Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting, second-largest operator of US television stations according to Times World Now, and “known for conservative-leaning news,” says it will not run Kimmel’s shows.
–TL
_____________________________________________
MONDAY 9/22/25
Not This Week – Senate leaders gave the chamber “dual versions” from both parties of a stopgap funding bill passed earlier by the House that would fund the federal government through November, knowing neither had the 60 votes required to pass, CQ Roll Call reports. Sure enough, both were voted down both last Friday, with Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Rand Paul (R-KY) voting against both, while Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) casting the lone vote from his party for the GOP version.
The catch is that Congress is on recess this week, leaving next Monday and Tuesday for the Senate to sort this out and reach a compromise.
•••
About That Palestinian State – French President Emmanuel Macron is set to formally recognize Palestine at the United Nations in New York City Monday, joining the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Portugal and calling the move a “necessity” for his country, The Associated Press reports. Macron calls it the “beginning of a political process and a peace and a security plan for everybody,” while Israel calls it a “reward” for Hamas.
We’d call it an exercise in futility, as the Netanyahu government is as far from accepting a two-state solution as Israel has ever been.
•••
Kirk Memorial – Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika said this about the alleged assassin of her husband, at a rally/memorial attended by tens of thousands according to news reports, at State Fair Stadium in Glendale, Arizona: “I forgive him because it is what Christ did.”
Erika Kirk set a Christian nationalist tone, including the remarks from Vice President JD Vance, for the memorial to her husband, the hard MAGA-right CEO and co-founder of Turning Point USA.
President Trump, whose long speech ventured into many of his oft-stated grievances and the “success” of his policies these past eight months, said this: “I hate my opponents and I don’t want the best for them. I am sorry, Erika.”
Meanwhile, Tylenol … Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also attended, and Trump during his speech promoted a major breakthrough on childhood autism to be announced Monday. The breakthrough, according to scoopage by The Washington Post: That Tylenol causes autism and the drug leucovorin is believed to be its cure.
•••
Speaking of Trump Opponents – Law experts continue to warn of the Trump White House’s takeover of the Justice Department. Last Friday, Trump fired Erik S. Siebert, lead prosecutor for the US attorney’s office in the Eastern District of Virginia for dropping investigations into New York Attorney Gen. Letitia James – who in 2024 won a civil lawsuit against the Trump Organization – and former FBI Director James “Lordy, I hope there are tapes” Comey (from The New York Times' report).
“You know, that’s the stuff of banana republics,” Joyce Vance, who was US attorney for the Northern District of Alabama during the Obama administration, told NPR’s Morning Edition.
The judge in James’ lawsuit fined the Trump Organization $355 million and barred it from doing any business in New York City for three years. Trump has appealed, of course.
Meanwhile, the Trump White House reportedly has ramped up pressure on Kelly O. Hayes, the US attorney for Maryland, into Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Trump 45 former national security advisor John Bolton.Schiff – “shifty Schiff” in Trumpterms – has been accused of mortgage fraud (similar to the charge Trump has used, so far unsuccessfully, to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors) while Bolton’s Washington-area home was searched by the FBI over allegations the author of The Room Where It Happened, which was heavily critical of the first Trump administration, mishandled classified information.
--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa