“Pentagon No. 3 frustrates senators in closed-door briefing on Iran war, Trump defense strategy”, 17 September 2026 (Photo via The Hill — the original report)
As it ran on the front
The record stands, and anyone treating this week's website business as new is running the story past its dateline. On September 9th, before any of this started, the Washington Examiner had already filed the ledger on the president's 2026 endorsements: Senate seats, House seats, governors' mansions, state offices, most of them holding. Five of the marquee governor's races — Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota, South Carolina, Wyoming — came up short. Five races is a count, and the count is five.
Then the websites. Byron Donalds relaunched his campaign site on September 22nd. The old banner read, "Chip in to Support Trump Endorsed Byron Donalds," with "TRUMP-ENDORSED" printed beneath it. The new layout doesn't carry that banner. Redesigns happen. That this particular redesign removed the particular words "Trump" and "Endorsed" is, this column would like to note, a coincidence of information architecture, and I would stand on that if I weren't already hearing how it sounds.…
…(cont) Because the next day, September 23rd, it happened again, somewhere else. Charlie Hatcher, who won Tennessee's August primary against the candidate the president had actually endorsed, changed his own campaign slogan. He had been running as "Pro-Trump." The president endorsed Hatcher after the primary anyway. The slogan lost the word regardless. Two candidates, two different phrases, one gone from a website, one gone from a slogan, inside a single week — that pattern is the wire's, filed twice, before the president said a word about either one.
Which is how we get to Saturday. The president called the reporting "Another Fake Story" on Truth Social, citing his own election wins in Florida across three presidential campaigns. The wins are real; the wire never claimed they weren't. Calling that account fake does not put the banner back up. It just moves the fake story from the website to the column defending it.
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“He's not mad they got it wrong, he's mad they got it right. The banner said Trump-endorsed, then it didn't, and instead of asking why his own guys keep scrubbing his name off their own websites, he's calling the people who noticed liars. Two candidates in one week hid the same fact and he wants us mad at the reporters — that's not a defense, that's a tell.”
“This is a nothing story, a website redesign, people update their sites all the time, it's just modern web design and the media's turned it into some conspiracy — okay, the banner specifically said Trump-Endorsed and now it doesn't, so I get why that reads a certain way. But the president's win record in Florida speaks for itself, that's not fake, that's — I mean, the removal part, that's real too. I should stop talking.”
Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike emerged Thursday from a closed-door briefing frustrated by what they said was a lack of clear answers from Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby on the Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy and the ongoing Iran war. The briefing with the Senate Armed Services Committee started off…
The fossil fuel industry is raking in big profits thanks to President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran, and a new analysis finds that it's plugging a sizable chunk of these gains into propaganda. A report published by Clean Creatives on Wednesday reveals that fossil fuel firms across the world have "engaged 802 advertising and PR…
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fl.), the GOP's gubernatorial nominee in Florida and a close ally of President Trump, has removed certain mentions of the president's name on his website's new layout. In the old layout, a banner at the top of Donalds web page said: “Chip in to Support Trump Endorsed Byron Donalds”
U.N.-commissioned rights experts say there are "reasonable grounds" to believe the U.S. committed war crimes with strikes that killed scores of Iranian civilians.
A recently published economic analysis estimates that President Donald Trump’s illegal war with Iran has cost US consumers an average of $1,760 per household—including a total of $121 billion in extra spending on energy alone—since the conflict began less than 8 months ago. The war, which Trump launched without congressional…
A UN fact-finding mission has reported that two US airstrikes which killed at least 178 civilians in Iran constitute war crimes. Plus: Andy Burnham says he is “determined” to hit net zero by 2050, Sweden’s left-of-centre coalition wins the general election, Netanyahu is pushing to strip IDF critics of their citizenship, and the…
President Donald Trump on Thursday said he is weighing whether or not to "annihilate" Iran in a renewed effort to end the illegal 201-day US-Israeli war of choice, musings that came on the heels of a report by United Nations experts who said the United States likely committed war crimes during earlier attacks on the Middle East nation.…
US House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday that with seven weeks to go until Election Day, it was time for lawmakers to "go home to their districts and make the case to the American people"—a day earlier than scheduled. But with the US public overwhelmingly disapproving of President Donald Trump's war in Iran and demanding…
President Trump criticized the media on Saturday following reports that GOP Rep. Byron Donalds (Fla.) removed several references to the president’s endorsement of his gubernatorial bid from his campaign website. The president slammed this reporting as “Another Fake Story”
Matt Bell said he initially supported Trump's policies but now feels he and other farmers were "sold a bill of goods" that there was a plan to "put America's farmers and ranchers first."
Matt Bell has been farming in North Carolina for more than half his life. He voted for President Trump but said farmers are "fighting for survival" as they combat rising prices.
EXCLUSIVE — Former Tennessee Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Hatcher has changed his campaign slogan to remove a reference to President Donald Trump. Hatcher, who ousted incumbent Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) in Tennessee’s August primary, ran as a “Pro-Trump”
The Pentagon has failed its audit eight years running - the only major federal agency never to pass one Military Times, 19 December 2025
All of the Democrats in the Senate — excluding Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman — signed an open letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, pressing him to give Congress a cost breakdown of the war in Iran. The letter, although largely symbolic, reflects the frustration of many Democrats in Congress over what they perceive as a...
The Pentagon has failed its audit eight years running - the only major federal agency never to pass one Military Times, 19 December 2025
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who voted to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, is renewing his call for President Trump to fire the Pentagon chief after Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned. “He needs to go, whether it’s impeachment or the most expedient route — just the president to replace him — would be great,”
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) announced Thursday that four Republicans, including him, have signed the Epstein Files II discharge petition and expressed confidence it will pass the House. The news comes after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) sent lawmakers home for a seven-week recess ahead of the midterm elections.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.
