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Yesterday, Politico’s Meredith Lee Hill and Mia McCarthy stated that House Speaker Mike Johnson was trying to pressure Democrats by ruling out a standalone bill to pay US troops during the shutdown. It’s unclear how that is supposed to pressure them, as he would be the one blocking their pay. Today a Democratic bill to pay the troops was blocked by Republicans.

That Democrat effort gives lie to a claim made by an anonymous Trump administration official. Another Politico report from Diana Nerozzi, quoted the official as saying “[n]o bill at this time, unfortunately. No sense running legislation to a chamber the Democrats have shut down.” Democrats haven’t shut down either chamber of Congress and Democrats have actually put forward a bill to pay the troops.

There is another method pay them, tariff money. That would be one of the many things that tariff is money is supposed to be used for. The process of using that food aid seemed to be running into problems according to a report by Politico’s Marcia Brown. Diana Nerozzi’s story suggested that might be on the table for paying the troops. The top Senate Republican was expecting that this would happen, instead of putting forward a bill to address this. The next pay date is October 15, giving the Trump administration limited time to address this themselves.

Back in 2018, Donald Trump claimed that he kept more promises than he made, which isn’t possible, obviously. At the CPAC conference in February of that year, he claimed that somebody else had made the claim, not him:

somebody got on television recently and they said actually this is the first time I can remember, Trump made campaign promises, he may be the only person that actually fulfilled more promises that he made, I think that’s true. I fulfill more promises.

In November of that year, he didn’t attribute it someone else:

You know I have actually kept more promises than I made. When didn’t you ever hear that from a politician? Maybe never.

He had not actually kept all of his promises. Remember how Mexico was going to pay for a wall? That still hasn’t happened.

He came back to that this term in June of this year, when speaking a dinner with Republican Senators:

we’ve fulfilled so many of our promises. Uh in fact, somebody said today a person that’s not particularly good for us said that we actually fulfilled more promises than we promised, which is pretty nice statement. You don’t hear that very often, but it’s true by a lot actually.

His claim that someone “that’s not particularly good for us” said is probably made up, but the other possibility is that it was someone making fun of him and he didn’t realize it.

Once again, the claim isn’t true, as it isn’t hard to find a promise that he hasn’t kept.

While Donald Trump is claiming he had kept more promises made, among the promises he hasn’t kept so far is either the government or insurance paying for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment. It should be fairly obvious he wasn’t going to keep it considering he had this level information when proposed it:

what we’re going to do is for people that are using IVF, which is fertilization, we are govern the government is going to pay for it or we’re going to get or mandate your insurance company to pay for it, which is going to be great. We’re going to do that.

At a Friday press briefing with Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, she was asked about that by the Washington Examiners Christian Datoc this way: “Has the president abandoned his campaign pledge to mandate insurance coverage for IVF services?” Leavitt responded “no”. And then he followed up, “Was there any update on that? We flew by that May EO deadline for the White House to produce a plan.” Leavitt confusingly responded that “I literally just read a statement from the Health and Human Services on you uh for you for Libby at least as far as IVF goes.” The statement referenced there was about a generic version of the abortion drug mifepristone, which is not in any way connected to IVF. She then added “I’ll check in with our policy team and we’ll get you some updates.”

The “EO deadline” mentioned in the questioning was a reference to a February executive order instructed staff to come up policy recommendation that are short of the campaign promise:

Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy shall submit to the President a list of policy recommendations on protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment.

That was supposed to happen by May and it was reported at the time the recommendations had been provided. Those recommendations were not made public and nothing more seems to have been done since then.

There has been reporting that a Make American Healthy Again alternative was possibly impacting a change in policy.

In recent days the news media has been reporting on a 21-point peace plan for Gaza from the Trump administration. Earlier today, Donald Trump’s spokesperson said that “Ambassador Witkoff, special envoy Witkoff,sent a very detailed 21-point plan to both sides.” Later in the day, the White House released a 20-point plan. They did that in an odd way, through an X post from the account of the Official White House Rapid Response. So what happened to one of the points? News media coverage looks to have largely ignored the obvious discrepancy, so we investigated.

On Saturday, The Times of Israel claimed to have revealed the 21-point plan. Comparing that to plan released by the White House today, most of the points were largely the same. (There were some minor differences, for example, the timeline for releasing hostages went from 48 to 72 hours.) That would suggest that The Times of Israel reveal was real.

There was one point that was in the 21 -point plan that was missing in the 20-point plan:

Israel agrees not to carry out future strikes in Qatar. The US and the international community acknowledge Doha’s important mediating role in the Gaza conflict.

Presumably that was addressed by the call with Qatar’s leader during the Donald Trump’s meeting today with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As the US gets closer to a federal government shutdown, it is worth highlighting what Donald Trump was doing in the lead up.

Due to the filibuster in the Senate, he was going to need Democratic votes to get the 60 votes need to pass a bill to keep the government funded. Despite that, on September 15 he called Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer a name in a post on Truth Social:

Congressional Republicans, including Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson, are working on a short term “CLEAN” extension of Government Funding to stop Cryin’ Chuck Schumer from shutting down the Government.

He did it again three days later:

TOMORROW, House Republicans are taking a very important Vote to pass a CLEAN TEMPORARY FUNDING BILL. The Leader of the Democrats, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, wants to shut the Government down.

Why do that? A simple explanation is that he thought he only needed Republican votes to pass the bill. On September 3, when asked if a shutdown could be avoided, he told the press in the Oval Office that, “Yeah, I do. I think the Republicans will vote for an extension. We won’t have any Democrat votes.” He then proceeded to rant about Democrats for five minutes.

A similar thing happened when he appeared on Fox and Friends on September 12. When asked about avoiding a shutdown, he said, “we have to get Republican votes.” When one of the hosts referenced the filibuster by saying, “You have to get 60, don’t you?” Donald Trump responded, “No, we we we’re going to do a probably continuing resolution or we’re going do something.”

The day after his second post calling Chuck Schumer “cryin,” he read off prepared remarks and stated, “But in the Senate, we have 53 republicans total and we need 60 votes. That means we need Democrat votes.” So with less than two weeks to go, he finally presented as if he understood he needed Democratic votes.

The people running the Department of Homeland Security’s X account are frequently criticizing news outlets coverage. Considering DHS’ lack of concern for accuracy, the criticism rings hollow. Today, they criticized an AP story in this way:

This is truly vile, @AP.

Why would you minimize the fact that one of our brave @ICEgov law enforcement officers was dragged by the car by a criminal illegal alien, even as assaults on @ICEgov officers have increased by 1000%.

Stop writing pro-criminal propaganda. It’s pathetic.

That doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that should be coming from the US government.

Their post didn’t link the story, but did show the headline of the story, “Immigration agent who shot man in Chicago-area traffic stop says injuries were ‘nothing major’.” That headline is entirely accurate and simply factual. The headline could have been harsher, here is the Reuters headline from its story covering the situation, “Footage of deadly ICE shooting in Chicago suburb challenges official narrative.”

The AP story itself is equally focused on factual claims instead of a journalist’s opinion.

The story quotes from a Kristi Noem X post, where she wrote in part an ICE “officer was dragged many yards by a car after a criminal illegal alien resisted arrest. His life was put at risk and he sustained serious injuries.”

The story also noted that “Federal officials had previously said the agent suffered ‘multiple’ and ‘serious injuries.’”

Bodycam footage that the AP says was obtained from the Franklin Park police department through a Freedom of Information Act request tells a different story. Here is the story’s coverage:

“I got dragged a little bit,” said the injured agent, who can be seen walking and talking while wearing ripped jeans with blood on them.

The videos show the first agent saying his partner had suffered “a left knee injury and some lacerations to his hands” while speaking over a radio.

“Nothing major,” the injured officer says while putting his arms up to shrug off concerns.

Some of that footage that was included in local news reports shows that the description is accurate.

The AP noted that they didn’t get a response from DHS officials on this story. Which isn’t all that surprising considering the level of discrepancy.

The Trump administration has recently blown up an unclear number of boats in the Caribbean that they claimed were being used to traffic drugs. Apparently, killing all those on the boats. Contradicting the need to do that has been unlikely source, the Department of Homeland Security’s social media team.

On September 9, DHS’ X account was used to post this:

Over the weekend, as part of Operation Pacific Viper, the

@USCG Cutter Stone conducted three interdictions in a single night—seizing nearly 13,000 pounds of cocaine and apprehending seven suspected drug smugglers.

Today, the posted video of capturing another drug boast from the same operation while again not needing to blow up a boat with people on it.

They are probably not throwing shade at others in the administration, but it looks a lot like they are.