We begin with words from Jeffrey Schaub, the Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Grand Blanc Ward.
The Angel Moroni atop the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints temple in Monticello, Utah. Photo credit: Kara Laws/Shutterstock
News roundup:
* We begin with the government shutdown that began on Wednesday at 12:01 a.m. Although the House majority was able to pass the continuing resolution without Democratic votes, but Senate Republicans are four votes short of a super-majority. They picked up three centrist Democrats but lost Republican, budget-hawk Rand Paul of Kentucky. In a sign that the government is battered and leaderless, the shutdown plan was radically incomplete. Some workers did not know whether they were furloughed, fired, or should report to work. It is unclear what Trump will do next: he met on Director of OMB Russell Vought met Thursday to discuss firing thousands of federal workers. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) told Fox News that Vought has been “waiting for this moment since puberty,” but some government officials are warning the White House to back off.
* On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and President Donald J. Trump summoned hundreds of top military officers to Marine Base Quantico in Virginia to lecture them about their appearance. In a particularly disturbing Trump announced expanded plans to station federal troops in American cities, a training exercise to fight the “war from within.” Hegseth leaned in on abandoning legal and moral restraints to the “warrior ethos,” and is particularly concerning, given a recent report about the lawlessness of special forces troops.
* Primate scientist Jane Goodall has died at 91. In her twenties, Goodall began working among chimpanzees in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, a project run by paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey. She earned a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, and became a leading advocate for land conservation and the ethical treatment of wildlife.
Your hosts:
Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.
Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).
Our news focus:
* On Sunday, 40-year-old former Marine Thomas Jacob Sanford rammed his truck into the Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints chapel in Grand Blanc, MI, set it on fire, and began shooting at the congregants as they tried to escape. Four are dead, and eight still critically injured, and Sanford was killed in a shootout with police. Investigators have not discerned a motive, but Sanford appears to have been a Trump supporter. Some friends say that he believed that Mormons were the `Antichrist,’” others say that he had struggled with drug abuse and financial problems, and had been behaving erratically.
* This came the day after Russell M. Nelson, a physician and reform-minded President of the Church died at the age of 101.
* Sanford was the second former Marine to be charged with a mass shooting this week. The day before, Nigel Edge fired into a waterfront bar in Southport, North Carolina,, killing three and wounding eight.
* As neighbors moved to comfort each other and collect money for the injured, one LDS member based in Utah has set up a GoFundMe for Sanford’s family that has collected over $200,000.
* Although homicides at houses of worship are rare, so far this year there have been six targeted religious attacks, three attacks on places of worship or religious schools. There have been 16 such attacks since Donald Trump first became President in 2017. By comparison, there were only 25 between 2000 and 2017, only 5 in the 1990s, and 2 in the 1980s. In two-thirds of these cases, the perpetrator appeared to have no connection to the church.
* Only three targeted attacks have been against LDS Churches. However, there is a long history of violence against the Church since its founding in upstate New York in 1830. A recent poll showed that 39% of Americans hold unfavorable views of the LDS Church, and much of that animus comes from other Christians.
* How is such violence linked to our political divisions, if at all? A New York Times/Siena Poll this week reveals that only 33% of the American public believes that the nation can overcome its political divisions; 52% of Democrats and 40% of independents said they no longer lived in a Democratic country. And in a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, 30% of Americans now believe that violence may be necessary to get the country “back on track,” up 11 points since April 2024, and an increase largely driven by Democrats.
What we want to go viral:
* Neil wants you to read historian Nicole Hemmer’s long history of the “woke Right.” Today’s conservative speech warriors “did not learn cancel culture from the left,” Hemmer argues; “the modern right in America emerged as a censorious movement. It took decades for its free-speech faction to develop, and even then, it has only ever been a minority part of the coalition.” (New York Times, September 30, 2025)
* Speaking of the woke Right—Claire is immersed in Sam Tannenhaus’s Buckley: The Life and Revolution That Changed America (Random House, 2025), a biography that reveals Donald Trump’s America as McCarthyism’s vengeful return.
Short takes:
* Secretary of HSS Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s false claim that pediatricians profit from childhood vaccines covers up an ugly reality for this ill-paid subspecialty. “Health-care providers purchase roughly half of the vaccines given to children in the United States directly from manufacturers, sometimes paying hundreds of dollars per dose,” Katherine J. Wu writes at The Atlantic. “They don’t recoup any costs until they administer those vaccines to privately insured patients, and bill the companies.” Doctor’s offices “must then shoulder the costs of storage and administration: specialized refrigerators, alarms to monitor for temperature issues, highly trained staff,” Wu writes. “Insurers generally reimburse for some of those costs, but not for unexpected problems—a refrigerator failure, a dropped vial, a dose drawn into a syringe and then declined by a patient’s family. Lose just one vaccine, and providers may have to administer dozens more to break even.” (October 3, 2025)
* At The Amsterdam News, Carl E. Douglas reflects on the 30th anniversary of O.J. Simpson’s acquittal in the criminal case brought against him in the murder of his wife, Nicole Brown. “Back then, as contentious and polarizing as the Simpson case was, our nation’s leadership set a tone of restraint and respect,” Douglas recalls. “President Bill Clinton, who almost certainly disagreed with the jury’s decision, did not attack the jurors, question their intelligence, or undermine their legitimacy. He did not label the verdict a miscarriage of justice. He respected the process, and in doing so, set an example for the country.” Three decades later, it’s hard to imagine that same scenario. “The Simpson verdict tested America’s nerves and America passed that test,” Douglas writes. “Today, I’m not sure we would.” (October 2, 2025)
* Katha Pollitt isn’t surprised that the Trump administration is blaming women who take Tylenol while pregnant for autism, a link that is wholly and completely unproven. “There is virtually no aspect of women’s lives that the culture does not manage to infuse with doubt and fear and guilt,” Pollitt writes at The Nation. “And that goes double for motherhood. Just ask any middle-class woman who doesn’t breastfeed her baby. It doesn’t matter if she knows intellectually that the baby will be fine, the way boomer babies like me were fine on formula; she’ll still feel selfish if she chooses not to breastfeed, and like a failure if she can’t. As a mom she is supposed to do everything humanly possible and then some to produce a perfect child.” (September 30, 2025)
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