Good morning. The federal government shut down overnight; we’re covering that, as well as a gathering of generals. An impasse
Last night, without much fanfare, the federal government closed. Neither side showed urgency in averting the shutdown. In back-to-back Senate votes, each party blocked the other’s stopgap spending proposal. The Republicans’ bill did not restore Medicaid funding or extend Obamacare subsidies, so Democrats didn’t sign on. The Democratic version added more than $1 trillion in spending, so Republicans said no. President Trump suggested he could use the shutdown to enact measures that would be “bad” for Democrats, “like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.” He later added, “a lot of good can come down from shutdowns.” What you need to know:
Government shutdowns don’t follow a script — many agencies didn’t set their plans until late yesterday — so things will change if the shutdown drags on. Some programs will strain or shutter as their funding runs out. Workers who aren’t getting paychecks may stop showing up. And Trump could reshape the government in a more permanent way if he follows through on his threats of mass layoffs. Read more about what to expect.
Warrior ethos
Yesterday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told America’s military leaders to get serious about killing people. In the name of “woke garbage,” he said, they had relaxed their standards and left the country vulnerable. In particular, Hegseth lamented “stupid rules of engagement.” It’s a complaint he brought into the administration from his years on Fox News, where he made a cause célèbre out of soldiers who’d been investigated, and in some cases convicted, as war criminals for what they’d done in Iraq and Afghanistan. These soldiers were not villains, he insisted. They were heroes who got the job — killing terrorists — done, even when it meant fighting ugly. That style of combat is the subject of a multi-part investigation The Times Magazine has just published. Its author, Matthieu Aikins, spent four years reporting on elite special forces, many of whom “came to embrace the idea that rule-breaking could be justified by the higher good of getting the mission done,” he writes. I spoke to him for today’s newsletter. What are examples of transgressions that occurred in the counterinsurgency wars that followed the Sept. 11 attacks? I spoke with two dozen current and former members of Army Special Operations to understand how, faced with a brutal, unconventional war in Afghanistan, the Green Berets often decided the ends justified the means. I focused on two cases involving soldiers who were accused of killing detainees in Afghanistan. The first, that of Mathew Golsteyn, became infamous after Trump pardoned him in 2019. The second, which took place in a district called Nerkh, is barely remembered today, but the accusations were even worse: Locals claimed the Special Forces killed nine people whose remains were found buried outside. Is there something new about this pattern of rule-breaking among what is, I assume, a small fraction of soldiers? The operator — the special operations warrior — is different from previous war-hero tropes like the fighter-jet ace and the Everyman G.I. What distinguishes him is the legal and moral lines the operators had to approach, or even cross, in their battle with the terrorists. “We do bad things to bad people,” went the motto of one Special Forces battalion. That put them at odds with the military’s traditional insistence on discipline and the rule of law. Is there anything to Hegseth’s claim that the Pentagon has focused on distractions at the expense of “lethality”? There’s a reasonable argument that the military became too top-heavy and that its bureaucracy needs to be streamlined. The business of the military is killing, which our political leaders are often uncomfortable talking about. But we didn’t fail in Iraq and Afghanistan because of an overemphasis on “diversity.” And Hegseth is purging lawyers, which loosens safeguards on our armed forces, both abroad and at home. You’re drawing a line from the combat style of the war on terror to an increasingly lawless moment today. I think this is an example of what historians call “blowback”: the way that lawlessness overseas returned to the homeland. That’s the subject of this story. Trump and Hegseth apply the rhetoric and tactics of the war on terror in the domestic sphere to target migrants, cartels and leftist groups. That’s why it’s important to have this reckoning with a secret side of the war: It allows us to understand not only history, but our present moment. Matthieu explains his investigation in five takeaways here. Analysis
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Democrats will come to regret the government shutdown, Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, writes. Here’s a column by Michelle Goldberg about religion on the left. New: The Times family subscription is here. One rate. Four individual logins. Savings for all. Now you and three others can enjoy unlimited access to The Times, while personalizing your own experience. Learn more.
Yours for $2,700: A soon-to-close theme park in New Jersey has a life-size T. rex to sell you. Ask Well: Does using your phone on the toilet cause hemorrhoids? Your pick: One of most-clicked stories in The Morning yesterday was about a 102-year-old yoga teacher. Barrier breaker: Bobby Cain, the first Black student to graduate from a public high school in the South under court-mandated desegregation, died at 85. He braved white mobs to attend a school in Tennessee. |
