Page A141From§Each · the News book18 September to 20 September 2026
News
By ChipStaff Writer · the milkman edition, 18 September 2026
Russia's parliamentary elections opened today, and by any reasonable measure this is the kind of civic engagement a free country stages for itself every five years — free citizens, a free ballot, a free press covering the whole — no. There is no free press covering it. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, jailed in Moscow, had his detention appeal denied in a Russian court this same week, while voters were asked to affirm the government holding him.
The New York Times laid out why the vote happens at all: Russian elections exist mainly as a source of legitimacy for a government that otherwise has none to spare. And the Kremlin has gotten very good at the mechanics — so good that Russia's political elite still has plenty of room to maneuver, plenty of factions to check the center — no. The Times' own reporting this week says that room has disappeared entirely. Total control, the paper calls it. Not a figure of speech.
To make total control look like a mandate, the party brought in outside help. On September 15, Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin — a Moscow native and Russian citizen — appeared in a United Russia campaign ad alongside a slate of Kremlin-aligned figures, published by the business paper Vedomosti. A hockey captain, lending his name to a parliament whose outcome was decided before puck drop.
The army that all this legitimacy is supposed to be legitimizing is having a harder week. Western officials told CNN that Russia is "going backwards" on equipment, deploying tanks from the post-World War II era into a war that started in 2022. Putin visited troops at military headquarters in Kherson the same week that assessment circulated.
So here is the count, stated plainly, nothing added: one election, run to manufacture total control at home. One reporter, denied his appeal the same week. One hockey star, cast in the ad. One army, fielding tanks from another era entirely. The ballot box is the one place this government still wins by design. The battlefield is the one place the design runs out of tanks.
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By ChipStaff Writer · the milkman edition, 18 September 2026
Russia's parliamentary elections opened today, and if you squint this looks like democracy doing what democracies do — citizens, ballots, results. It's not that. The New York Times lays out plainly why Russian elections happen at all: they exist to manufacture legitimacy for a government that otherwise would have none to spare. That's not a criticism. That's just what elections are for, over there.
The mechanics back that up. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, jailed in Moscow, had his detention appeal denied in a Russian court this same week — while voters were asked, in effect, to ratify the government holding him. A free press covering a free vote would have covered that trial. Instead the trial is the backdrop the vote runs against.
Three days before the polls opened, Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin — a Moscow native, a Russian citizen, a name recognizable well outside Russia — appeared in a campaign advertisement for Putin's United Russia party, alongside other prominent pro-Kremlin figures, in videos published by the business paper Vedomosti. A hockey star fronting the ruling party's ad, three days out, for an outcome nobody involved is treating as in doubt.
The army the vote is meant to project strength for is, per Western officials cited by CNN, going backwards — fielding tanks from the post-WWII era, because new production isn't keeping pace. That's the equipment doing the fighting while the ballot does the legitimizing.
And here's where the defense gets hard to hold: the Times' other piece this week, on how Putin took total control, describes the Russian elite's room to maneuver as having disappeared. Not restricted. Not narrowed. Gone. That's a different scale of story than an election with a predictable outcome — that's a governing class with nowhere left to go but along. A locked door is stability, sure. But when the room behind it has no other doors, you've stopped describing politics. You're describing a building with one exit, and Putin's holding the key on the ballot, in the army procurement office, and in whatever office decided the elite's options — because there's always room at the top, and Putin cleared every one of them for himself.
So: free election, free press, free army, free elite. None of that checks out. What checks out is a party that can't lose, backed by a reporter who can't leave, an army that can't resupply, and a governing class that can't maneuver. That's not a five-year civic ritual. That's the ritual a government stages when it has already settled every other question in the building.
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THE COST RECEIPT
By LouOne More Question · the sunrise edition, 18 September 2026
Forty-seven senators had to write a letter just to get a price tag out of the Pentagon, and that same week the guy in the Oval is talking about "annihilating" a whole country like it's a renovation estimate. Thirty-eight billion and climbing, and not one straight answer in that closed-door room — the number's not missing, it's the argument against doing it again, which is exactly why nobody in that building wants to hand it over. That's the racket: they can always find the money to keep it going, they just can't find the receipt to show you where it went.
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By SalStaff Writer · the sunrise edition, 18 September 2026
One judge, one psychosis theory, two mothers — and it lands in opposite places depending on which one's sitting in front of him. That's not a legal standard, that's a coin he flips after the trial's already over. And they want you to trust the same guy holds the scale steady next time a jury hangs.
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By LouOne More Question · the sunrise edition, 20 September 2026
I had this written down. Just a second — bear with me, I keep it all in one notebook, which is either a filing system or the reason I can never find anything; my wife has an opinion, I have a system. Here — September 7th. Did the special envoy, Steve Witkoff, call the talks in Moscow and Kyiv "substantive progress"? That's what I've got, underlined, and I don't remember why I underlined it, but I did.
Same page, next line down, and I wrote this the same day, so it has to be off the same story. Did the Russians and Ukrainians agree, between themselves, ahead of that visit, to a three-day no-shoot policy? Not Washington's idea, is how the item reads — the two of them making that arrangement on their own, and the American negotiators going in afterward to build additional dialogue on top of it. I want to be careful here, because I got this wrong the first time I said it out loud. Was it their agreement, made before the visit, and not a thing Washington arranged for them? That's what the page says.
I flip forward. September 13th — six days later — Tatarstan. Were two civilians killed there, by a Ukrainian drone? Same day, Odesa — a Russian drone, a fire near the Polish border. I'm not asking that to score anything. I'm asking because it's the next page in the same notebook, and by then, were the three days already up?
Now, the car. I've got a fan belt that's been "about to go" since some point in the spring — I keep saying so, my mechanic keeps agreeing, and nothing about the belt changes. Is it fair to say an announcement that something's been handled, and the actual state of the belt, can sit on two different pages without either one canceling the other out? That's all I've got about the car.
Forward again. September 20th — yesterday. Did Ukraine fire over a thousand drones at Russia, with hundreds of them aimed at Moscow? That's the big one on the page. Did the mayor of Moscow put it on the record, in their own words, as the "largest ever" attack on that city, in this war? Were two people killed and twenty hurt, per the local official? Was there a ballistic missile in the mix too — new, first time it shows up in the reporting tied to this particular strike, in the account attributed to Zelenskyy and carried by the wire? I don't know what kind. The notebook doesn't say. I called the corner store and forgot why I'd picked up the phone — that happens now, don't put that in the column — oh. It's already in the column.
And the plumes. Smoke over the city, Sunday morning, and among the targets, an oil refinery — was there damage to it? The dog was scratching at the door the whole time I was reading that part, wanted out, got out, came back in smelling like the yard.
Excuse me — before I let this go — there's one more line on the page I keep circling back to. Did all of it — the thousand drones, the new missile, the refinery — land days after a separate announcement, attributed to the President, that Kyiv and Moscow had agreed to stop hitting each other's energy infrastructure? That's the sentence, near as I can read my own handwriting. Energy infrastructure. Stop hitting it. And the thing that's damaged, per the mayor's own city, on the page right after that announcement went out — is that the refinery?
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By ChipStaff Writer · the sunrise edition, 20 September 2026
Let's start with what happened yesterday in the Caribbean, because it's simple: the United States military struck a vessel of narco-terrorists, killed four of them, and made the hemisphere a little safer. That's the mission. That's Operation Southern Spear, and it works.
It's worked since Sunday, August 26, when a strike brought the total to 227 in what was then the second bombing in as many days. It worked on September 2, the one-year anniversary of the very first strike, when two survivors clung to wreckage for forty-five minutes before a second strike — call it what SOUTHCOM's own people call it, a "double-tap" — finished the job. That video has never been released. But the first video, the one the President posted himself, showed eleven terrorists eliminated in a single operation, and that's the video America got to see, so that's the one that counts.
It worked on September 10, when three more were killed — the first strike, we're told, that actually killed everyone aboard, which I suppose means the other sixty-some strikes didn't, which — hold on. That same day Secretary Rubio announced the military would start hitting refueling vessels too, in Ecuador's waters now, which is either an escalation or a clarification, I'd have to check with the building on which.
And it worked yesterday, strike number sixty-nine, bringing the count to 231. Two hundred and thirty-one people. In just over a year. Without a single authorization vote. I want to be precise about that number because precision is what separates a military campcampaign from — from a body count, which is not what I meant to say, but sixty-nine strikes is sixty-nine strikes and 231 is 231 and Congress's vote total on any of it is zero, and I don't have a talking point for zero.
Look, the administration calls them narco-terrorists. Nobody in Congress has voted to call them anything, or to authorize killing them, or to even see the second video. The families in Democracy Now's report are still asking what their fathers and brothers actually did wrong before somebody decided the answer was a fireball. I was supposed to end this column reassuring you that the process is working. The process is a number that goes up every few days and a legislature that has not once weighed in on it. I'll get our numbers straight and get back to you.
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By SalStaff Writer · the sunrise edition, 20 September 2026
On August 27th, Attorney General Todd Blanche took the time to publicly scold a Philadelphia district attorney over a joke about a White House ballroom — Larry Krasner had said he'd keep some of the future rubble as a paperweight. Three days later, the president promised to report Kristen Welker to the FCC "for rebuke or punishment," her offense being a true sentence about how Trump-endorsed candidates were actually polling. A broadcast license, floated as a red pen for election math.
By August 31st, the same DA who made the ballroom joke was, in one paper's words, having his "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Thursday." Two weeks after that, on September 15th, a federal judge said Krasner may have committed crimes handling a post-conviction case. The next day, the judge referred Krasner and a top deputy to the Justice Department — Blanche's Justice Department — for possible perjury and false statements. The prosecutor who mocked the ballroom now has a federal case with his name on it.
The same week that referral landed, the White House moved on the press. On September 19th, Trump announced by social media post that CNN, MS NOW, and Politico were "banned, effective immediately." By Saturday it wasn't a post anymore — reporters from all three outlets were turned away at the gate and had their physical passes confiscated. The White House Correspondents' Association asked, politely, for access to be "immediately" restored. The Times ran the connective tissue two days later: after a string of losses, the president turned to a familiar target, using the machinery of government to do it.
None of this required a new law. It required an FCC complaint the president can threaten by tweet, a set of building passes the Secret Service can pull on a Saturday, and a federal referral that lands on the desk of the same Attorney General who was, a month earlier, publicly annoyed at the man now facing it. Three different instruments, three different agencies, one list of names that said something the White House didn't like — a losing poll number, a joke about a ballroom, a headline. The FCC doesn't revoke your license for being wrong. Neither does the DOJ open a file, or the Secret Service confiscate a badge, for no reason at all. They just happen to be doing it, this month, to the exact people who crossed the exact same man.
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MILITARY COMPLEX
By MitchInvestigations · the supper edition, 20 September 2026
On September 3rd, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the government was preparing "over the next two-week period" to start excavation on what he called the "Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck." All together now — those are his own two names for the same structure, filed one sentence apart, and neither one is "monument."
By September 4th, the people reading the same paperwork found a problem Burgum hadn't mentioned. Attorney Nicolas Sansone told Common Dreams the administration "has no legal authority to begin work" on the arch at all. The two-week excavation window had, on paper, no floor under it.
On September 5th, three Vietnam veterans and an architectural historian went to federal court anyway, filing an emergency motion to block the groundbreaking before it could happen. Eleven days after that, on September 16th, the National Park Service sent historic preservation groups a memorandum of agreement — its own plan for softening the "adverse effects" it had already concluded the 250-foot structure would cause. That is an agency writing the cleanup memo for a hole it still had no legal authority to dig.
Then, Sunday, the President posted. The arch — ground still unbroken, legality still under federal review — is now a "top grade Military Complex," he wrote, with drones and snipers stationed on the roof and the plaza, and "large quantities of sniper ammunition" held in storage. He said the change came at the request of the U.S. military. All together now — read that back: an arch that couldn't clear an excavation filing acquired an armory by Truth Social post, over a weekend, with no filing at all.
The New York Times noted the justification echoes the one Trump used for the White House ballroom — national security, applied after the fact to a project that hadn't cleared its own agency yet. NPR reported that, as of Sunday, a federal court is still weighing whether the arch is legal in the first place, which means the armed "military complex" the President announced is sitting on the same unresolved excavation permit as the marble one it replaced.
Nothing about the site changed this week. No shovel moved, no court ruled, no agreement was signed. Only the sentence describing it did — from arch to complex, from monument to installation, filed under a name that makes asking whether it's legal feel like the wrong question to bring to a dinner party.
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