Latest / The Agora / September 28, 2026 — Blockades, Ballots, and Bald Eagles

Transcript

September 28, 2026 — Blockades, Ballots, and Bald Eagles · The Agora

• 0:18
  Arthur Kline: Good evening.
• 0:19
  Welcome to THE AGORA.
• 0:21
  Tonight — Trump spurns Iran's seven-day Hormuz offer,
• 0:25
  skittish Republicans break with him on Iran,
• 0:29
  and an $810 million pocket rescission Susan Collins calls lawbreaking.
• 0:35
  Plus two lightning rounds.
• 0:37
  I'm Arthur Kline.
• 0:39
  It's Monday, September 28th, 2026.
• 0:42
  Let's go.
• 0:45
  Arthur Kline: ISSUE ONE — Trump rejects Iran's offer.
• 0:48
  On September 26, 2026, the president told reporters, "I reject their proposal."
• 0:54
  Iran's terms called for lifting the U.S.
• 0:58
  naval blockade of Iranian ports, waiving sanctions on oil sales,
• 1:03
  and a ceasefire that includes Lebanon.
• 1:06
  Under Tehran's timetable the strait reopens on day six and nuclear talks begin on
• 1:12
  day seven.
• 1:13
  Eli, seven days to reopen Hormuz and restart nuclear talks —
• 1:18
  did the president just walk away from a deal, or from a trap?
• 1:23
  Eli Navarro: Arthur, that's a false dichotomy — and the president swallowed it whole.
• 1:27
  A proposal is neither a deal nor a trap; it's an opening bid,
• 1:31
  and the answer to an opening bid is a counteroffer, not a press-gaggle "I reject."
• 1:35
  Tehran put something on the table: reopen the Strait of Hormuz,
• 1:39
  restart nuclear talks, inside a week.
• 1:41
  Were their asks steep?
• 1:43
  Absolutely — the blockade, the oil sanctions, Lebanon,
• 1:46
  plus they want their frozen assets back,
• 1:48
  at least twelve billion dollars by one estimate.
• 1:51
  So negotiate the price DOWN.
• 1:53
  Yogi said when you come to a fork in the road, take it.
• 1:56
  Trump came to the fork, refused both roads, and called it strength.
• 2:00
  Every tanker idling outside Hormuz is now paying to watch him stand still.
• 2:04
  Nora Kessler: Right, but Eli— a counteroffer only works if you fix the sequencing first.
• 2:09
  Tehran's timetable has us lifting the blockade and waiving oil sanctions before the
• 2:14
  strait reopens on day six.
• 2:16
  That's paying the closer before he throws a pitch.
• 2:20
  Sloane Barrett: Nora's sequencing point is right, and it's the smaller problem.
• 2:24
  Arthur, look at the structure of Tehran's ask: waive sanctions Congress enacted,
• 2:30
  lift a blockade Congress never authorized,
• 2:32
  and do it in the four-to-five days their foreign minister says the initial steps
• 2:38
  require.
• 2:38
  Every concession is ours, every deliverable is theirs,
• 2:42
  and Article I appears nowhere in the sequence.
• 2:45
  Eli wants a counteroffer — a counteroffer to what?
• 2:49
  This is a regime under blockade asking for its frozen assets back.
• 2:53
  Rakim described that posture nearly forty years ago:
• 2:57
  Thinkin' of a master plan / 'Cause ain't nothin' but sweat inside my hand / So I dig
• 3:03
  into my pocket,
• 3:04
  all my money is spent / So I dig deeper but still comin' up with lint.
• 3:08
  That's Tehran's balance sheet,
• 3:10
  which is precisely why the president should be squeezing, not signing.
• 3:15
  Rejecting it was correct.
• 3:17
  Rejecting it from a press gaggle, backed by a blockade no Congress voted on,
• 3:22
  is the part I can't defend.
• 3:24
  Grant Mercer: Arthur, I'm going to get yelled at by my own side for this,
• 3:28
  but Sloane just made the strongest case at the table —
• 3:31
  and then talked herself past it.
• 3:33
  She's right on Article I.
• 3:34
  Nora's right on sequencing.
• 3:36
  Neither objection requires the word "reject."
• 3:39
  They require a counter: strait first, then the blockade, frozen assets dead last,
• 3:43
  and Congress in the room.
• 3:45
  Instead we got four words at a gaggle and a shrug.
• 3:48
  The blockade is the president's boat,
• 3:50
  and every tanker idling outside Hormuz is telling him he's gonna need a bigger one.
• 3:55
  Our allies in the Gulf and Europe are paying for oil at whatever price Tehran's
• 4:00
  closed strait sets.
• 4:01
  Standing still is a policy.
• 4:02
  It's just not a strategy.
• 4:04
  Nora Kessler: Grant, sure, but— your counter still trusts Tehran's day-six promise.
• 4:09
  Strait-first only works if it's verified transit, ships actually moving,
• 4:14
  not a foreign minister's calendar.
• 4:16
  Otherwise you've bought the bigger boat and they still own the water.
• 4:21
  Grant Mercer: Nora, granted— verified transit is the whole point of a counter.
• 4:25
  "Show us hulls clearing Hormuz, then we talk blockade" is a sentence.
• 4:29
  The president had it available and chose four words instead.
• 4:33
  Arthur Kline: Grant's right —
• 4:35
  "I reject their proposal" is four words where a counteroffer belonged.
• 4:41
  Nora, defend the brevity.
• 4:43
  Nora Kessler: Defending brevity is a novel assignment for someone who reads CBO footnotes for
• 4:48
  pleasure,
• 4:49
  Arthur, but here goes.
• 4:50
  Four words is not the problem.
• 4:52
  Public rejections are cheap and sometimes correct:
• 4:55
  Reagan walked out of Reykjavik and got an arms treaty anyway.
• 4:59
  A short "no" only becomes malpractice if nothing is happening behind it.
• 5:04
  If a back channel is carrying the sequenced counter Grant described,
• 5:08
  verified hulls first, blockade second, frozen assets last,
• 5:12
  then the gaggle is theater, and I can live with theater.
• 5:16
  If there is no back channel, that's not brevity, that's a vacancy.
• 5:20
  And Sloane's lint-in-the-pocket read is exactly why you counter quietly:
• 5:25
  a broke regime is a regime that takes a worse deal.
• 5:28
  Walkouts work when a phone is ringing somewhere.
• 5:31
  I have no evidence the phone exists.
• 5:33
  Sloane Barrett: Nora, hold on— the phone isn't the vacancy that worries me.
• 5:38
  Whether a back channel exists or not,
• 5:40
  the blockade Tehran wants lifted has zero votes behind it.
• 5:44
  Reagan at Reykjavik had a Senate that would ratify.
• 5:48
  Who ratifies this?
• 5:50
  Arthur Kline: Reykjavik had a Senate; this has a Truth Social account.
• 5:55
  Zero votes is the whole story.
• 5:57
  Eli — rebut.
• 5:59
  Eli Navarro: Zero votes isn't the whole story, Arthur — it's the setup.
• 6:02
  Sloane has Article I exactly right and the conclusion exactly backwards.
• 6:06
  A blockade Congress never authorized isn't a reason to reject Tehran's bid;
• 6:10
  it's a reason to cash it in before the courts or the caucus take the leverage away.
• 6:14
  The president is holding chips he has no constitutional title to,
• 6:18
  and when offered a chance to convert them into something a Senate could actually
• 6:22
  ratify,
• 6:22
  he spent four words at a gaggle.
• 6:24
  Reagan left Reykjavik carrying a treaty draft and a Senate.
• 6:27
  This president left a driveway carrying a character limit.
• 6:30
  Nora's phone that isn't ringing and Sloane's Senate that isn't voting are the same
• 6:34
  vacancy:
• 6:35
  nobody is building the thing that would make "no" mean anything.
• 6:38
  Grant Mercer: Eli, come on— "cash in chips you don't own before the courts notice" is a heist,
• 6:43
  not a strategy.
• 6:44
  The fix for an unauthorized blockade isn't spending it faster.
• 6:48
  It's a vote — then my counter has a Senate behind it.
• 6:51
  Eli Navarro: Hold on, Grant— heists take what isn't yours.
• 6:54
  This leverage exists whether Congress blessed it or not.
• 6:56
  Send the counter today, hold the vote tomorrow; they aren't rivals.
• 7:00
  Waiting on a Senate calendar while tankers idle isn't constitutionalism,
• 7:03
  it's procrastination.
• 7:05
  Arthur Kline: Leverage nobody authorized is leverage nobody can call back.
• 7:10
  Sloane — is Eli right that the vote and the counter can coexist?
• 7:15
  Sloane Barrett: They can coexist on a calendar, Arthur.
• 7:18
  They cannot coexist in Tehran's head.
• 7:21
  Eli's sequence is send the counter today, hold the vote tomorrow,
• 7:26
  and in Washington "tomorrow" is the most durable word in the language.
• 7:31
  And leverage nobody authorized isn't leverage nobody can call back,
• 7:36
  it's leverage ANYBODY can: the blockade rests on nothing but the president's say-so,
• 7:43
  and Tehran knows it.
• 7:44
  A counter backed by leverage the next court ruling or caucus revolt can erase is an
• 7:50
  offer written in disappearing ink.
• 7:53
  Tehran reads it, waits, and prices in the fade.
• 7:56
  Take the vote FIRST.
• 7:58
  A blockade Congress authorized is one Tehran can't outlast,
• 8:02
  and that counter has teeth.
• 8:04
  Eli's version isn't constitutionalism deferred, it's leverage discounted.
• 8:10
  Arthur Kline: Seven days to reopen a strait, forty years to remember Reykjavik.
• 8:16
  The panel managed both.
• 8:18
  Barely.
• 8:20
  Arthur Kline: ISSUE TWO — Republicans break on Iran.
• 8:23
  On September 15 the House passed an Iran war-powers resolution 220 to 204,
• 8:29
  with seven Republicans joining Democrats.
• 8:32
  Two Republican Senate candidates, Ashley Hinson of Iowa and Mike Rogers of Michigan,
• 8:38
  have since called for the war to end.
• 8:41
  And on September 26 Trump amplified more than a dozen posts attacking Florida
• 8:47
  Republican Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar over an ad faulting his immigration
• 8:54
  enforcement
• 8:54
  — one demanding a "NEW Republican to Replace Salazar."
• 8:59
  Grant, seven House Republicans and two Senate candidates heading for the exits —
• 9:05
  is this a caucus revolt or a campaign season?
• 9:09
  Grant Mercer: Arthur, it's campaign season — and that's the worse answer.
• 9:12
  Revolts get whipped; campaigns get polled.
• 9:15
  Seven House Republicans on one vote is a rounding error leadership can absorb.
• 9:20
  Ashley Hinson in Iowa and Mike Rogers in Michigan reading the same script — end it,
• 9:25
  end it quickly — is a market signal from two states the president needs.
• 9:29
  "Successful and immediate end" is a Senate candidate's version of "Houston,
• 9:33
  we have a problem": maximally calm, unmistakably a crisis.
• 9:37
  And Maria Elvira Salazar's September 17 ad said Trump's immigration enforcement had
• 9:42
  gone too far and Hispanic voters who backed him felt betrayed.
• 9:45
  That's a Miami Republican reporting from inside the coalition.
• 9:49
  The president's answer was a dozen posts demanding a new Republican.
• 9:53
  You don't primary the smoke detector.
• 9:55
  Nora Kessler: Grant, sure, but—
• 9:57
  seven stops being a rounding error when two of them are Nunn and Miller-Meeks,
• 10:02
  both Iowa, the state Hinson's running in.
• 10:04
  That's not scattered defections.
• 10:07
  That's one state's Republicans reading one poll.
• 10:10
  Sloane Barrett: Arthur, both frames miss it.
• 10:12
  A war-powers resolution passing the House isn't a revolt,
• 10:16
  it's Article I remembering it exists.
• 10:19
  Grant's right that campaigns get polled, Nora's right that Iowa is reading one poll,
• 10:25
  and I could not care less about either motive.
• 10:29
  Madison didn't build the separation of powers on virtue;
• 10:33
  he built it on self-interest.
• 10:35
  Federalist 51: ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
• 10:40
  Seven Republicans discovering their oath because their districts discovered the war
• 10:46
  is the design WORKING,
• 10:47
  not failing.
• 10:48
  What should alarm conservatives isn't Nunn and Miller-Meeks voting their polling.
• 10:54
  It's a president answering a war-powers vote and a Miami colleague's dissent with a
• 11:00
  dozen posts demanding replacement Republicans.
• 11:04
  That's not a caucus.
• 11:05
  That's a casting call.
• 11:07
  Eli Navarro: Right, but Sloane— Madison's design only works if ambition survives the primary.
• 11:11
  Seven Republicans voting their oath means nothing when the sequel is a president
• 11:16
  casting their replacements.
• 11:17
  That's not Federalist 51 working.
• 11:19
  That's Federalist 51 getting fired.
• 11:21
  Sloane Barrett: Hold on, Eli— the president can cast the replacements, but Iowa voters hire them.
• 11:26
  Any primary challenger to Nunn runs in the same district that soured on this war.
• 11:32
  Madison's ambition didn't get fired.
• 11:35
  It got a mandate.
• 11:36
  Nora Kessler: Sloane's right that Iowa voters hire them.
• 11:39
  She's wrong about which Iowa voters sit on the hiring committee.
• 11:43
  The general electorate that soured on this war and a Republican primary electorate
• 11:48
  are two different rooms,
• 11:50
  and the smaller room is the one the president addresses when he posts.
• 11:54
  That's the entire leverage of a primary threat: you don't need the district,
• 11:59
  only the fraction that shows up for a primary.
• 12:02
  Salazar reported that Hispanic voters who backed him felt betrayed,
• 12:07
  and his answer was a replacement Republican.
• 12:09
  That's the 1997 Marlins: win the World Series, then sell off the roster by spring.
• 12:15
  Madison assumed ambition wanted to keep its seat.
• 12:18
  He never budgeted for a president who'd rather lose it than read the polling.
• 12:23
  Eli Navarro: Nora, exactly— and notice whose seat he's gambling.
• 12:26
  Not his.
• 12:26
  Nunn loses the general, Iowa loses the vote, and the president loses nothing.
• 12:31
  Madison assumed ambition paid its own bills.
• 12:34
  This ambition bills the caucus.
• 12:35
  Arthur Kline: Stop moralizing, Eli.
• 12:37
  Who wins Nunn's primary?
• 12:40
  Eli Navarro: The president wins it, Arthur, and he isn't on the ballot.
• 12:43
  That's the trick.
• 12:44
  A primary threat doesn't need a challenger who actually beats Zach Nunn;
• 12:48
  it needs Nunn spending next spring explaining a war-powers vote to the smallest room
• 12:53
  in Iowa politics,
• 12:54
  the primary electorate Nora described,
• 12:56
  while the six Republicans who voted alongside him watch and take notes.
• 13:00
  The challenger is a prop.
• 13:02
  The lesson is the product.
• 13:03
  My own Yogi-ism on this: the president can't lose a primary he isn't in,
• 13:07
  which is exactly why he keeps entering them.
• 13:10
  If Nunn survives, he survives chastened.
• 13:12
  If he loses,
• 13:13
  Iowa nominates someone who's never had to explain anything to a general electorate,
• 13:18
  and Democrats send a thank-you note.
• 13:20
  Either way, dissent gets more expensive.
• 13:22
  Nora Kessler: Eli's Yogi-ism finally produced a testable claim, Arthur, so let me be precise.
• 13:27
  The lesson-as-product theory works only if the six Republicans watching Nunn
• 13:32
  conclude that obedience is cheaper than dissent.
• 13:35
  Ashley Hinson is running statewide in Iowa,
• 13:38
  and she's already told the general electorate she wants this war ended.
• 13:43
  So the president would be disciplining Iowa House Republicans in the smaller room
• 13:48
  while his own Senate candidate campaigns in the larger one on the position he's
• 13:53
  punishing.
• 13:54
  That's not a coherent lesson, it's a mixed signal with a primary attached.
• 13:58
  Dissent gets more expensive, yes.
• 14:01
  But so does loyalty:
• 14:02
  a nominee chastened into backing the war runs on the same ticket as Hinson running
• 14:07
  against it.
• 14:08
  The six watching can count to two.
• 14:10
  Grant Mercer: Nora, fair, but— the two bills come due in different months.
• 14:14
  Dissent gets invoiced in a spring primary; loyalty gets invoiced in November.
• 14:19
  The six watching can count to two — they can also read a calendar.
• 14:23
  Nunn opens the spring envelope first.
• 14:25
  Sloane Barrett: Arthur, Grant's calendar is correct, and it's the wrong ledger.
• 14:30
  Spring invoices Zach Nunn, November invoices Ashley Hinson,
• 14:35
  but the bill nobody's tallying is Article I's.
• 14:38
  The House passed a war-powers resolution,
• 14:41
  and the president's response wasn't a veto message or a legal argument.
• 14:46
  It was a help-wanted ad.
• 14:48
  Compare our first issue: a naval blockade of Iranian ports no Congress authorized,
• 14:54
  resting on the president's say-so alone.
• 14:57
  Same method here:
• 14:59
  make the cost of a vote personal so nobody ever tests whether the vote binds.
• 15:04
  Madison's ambition wanted to keep its seat.
• 15:07
  This is a different ambition entirely, the Tupac kind: I won't deny it,
• 15:13
  I'm a straight ridah / You don't wanna you-know-what with me / Got the police
• 15:19
  bustin' at me / But they can't do nothin' to a G.
• 15:22
  Seven Republicans firing, and he's certain none of it touches him.
• 15:27
  A president who never pays for a war vote is exactly the officer the structure was
• 15:33
  built to bill.
• 15:34
  Nora Kessler: Right, but Sloane— Article I doesn't bill anyone at 220 to 204.
• 15:39
  A war-powers resolution that can't survive a veto is an invoice with no collections
• 15:44
  department.
• 15:45
  He isn't certain nothing touches him.
• 15:48
  He's counted.
• 15:49
  Sloane Barrett: Wait, no, Nora— you're reading the wrong ledger line.
• 15:52
  The override isn't Article I's collections department.
• 15:56
  The purse is.
• 15:57
  That blockade runs on fuel that the next spending bill has to fund.
• 16:01
  He counted votes.
• 16:02
  He hasn't counted appropriators.
• 16:05
  Arthur Kline: Seven Republicans found their oath, the president posted a help-wanted ad,
• 16:11
  and Madison got quoted by everyone.
• 16:14
  Ambition counteracts ambition.
• 16:16
  Primaries counteract both.
• 16:20
  Arthur Kline: ISSUE THREE — Collins cries lawbreaking.
• 16:23
  On Friday, September 25,
• 16:25
  the White House announced it would withhold $810 million Congress had appropriated.
• 16:32
  The fiscal year ends September 30,
• 16:34
  and the Impoundment Control Act gives Congress 45 legislative days to act.
• 16:40
  Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins called it "a clear violation of the law,"
• 16:47
  citing GAO's finding that pocket rescissions aren't permitted.
• 16:52
  Nora, an $810 million pocket rescission dropped on a Friday night —
• 16:57
  is this executive discretion or theft from Article I?
• 17:02
  Nora Kessler: Executive discretion means choosing among options Congress gave you, Arthur.
• 17:07
  Running the clock so appropriated money simply lapses is inventing an option
• 17:12
  Congress withheld,
• 17:13
  and the Government Accountability Office has already said as much.
• 17:17
  Forty-five legislative days cannot elapse in the five calendar days left in this
• 17:23
  fiscal year,
• 17:23
  so Congress's review period expires after the money does.
• 17:27
  That's the Holy Roller.
• 17:29
  Ken Stabler fumbled the ball forward on purpose against the Chargers in 1978,
• 17:34
  the Raiders scored, and the league rewrote the rule the next season.
• 17:38
  Collins says OMB had been sitting on these funds for months.
• 17:42
  So this isn't a Friday-night decision;
• 17:45
  it's a fumble they've been rehearsing since spring.
• 17:48
  The "pocket" in pocket rescission is where Article I's money ends up.
• 17:53
  Arthur Kline: Nora just accused the White House of a Holy Roller with the Treasury —
• 17:58
  fumble forward, let the clock expire.
• 18:01
  Defend the play, Grant.
• 18:03
  Grant Mercer: Arthur, I'd love to defend it — I'm a fiscal conservative,
• 18:06
  rescissions are my love language.
• 18:08
  And the Impoundment Control Act hands the president a perfectly legal one:
• 18:13
  propose the cut, Congress votes inside forty-five legislative days,
• 18:16
  and the money's gone if the votes are there.
• 18:19
  Instead,
• 18:19
  the White House timed the proposal so the vote can't happen before the money
• 18:24
  expires.
• 18:24
  That's not asking permission;
• 18:26
  that's asking permission on a form that self-destructs.
• 18:29
  Nora's Holy Roller is generous — Stabler at least fumbled in front of the referees.
• 18:34
  And look at what's being pocketed:
• 18:36
  five hundred sixty-seven million dollars for Health and Human Services refugee and
• 18:41
  asylee programs.
• 18:42
  That's not thrift.
• 18:43
  That's culture war wearing a green eyeshade.
• 18:45
  If the cut is right, win the vote.
• 18:47
  Eli Navarro: Grant, exactly— and they skipped the vote because they counted it.
• 18:51
  Susan Collins chairs Appropriations; she's the referee.
• 18:53
  A pocket rescission isn't a bet the cut is right.
• 18:56
  It's a confession the votes aren't there.
• 18:58
  Grant Mercer: Eli, fair, but— it's worse than a confession.
• 19:01
  Collins is a Republican.
• 19:02
  When your own party's appropriations chair calls it lawbreaking,
• 19:06
  you didn't lose the vote count.
• 19:08
  You lost the argument, and skipped the vote to hide it.
• 19:11
  Arthur Kline: Collins isn't outraged — she's outflanked, and she knows it.
• 19:17
  Lawbreaking with no cop is called policy.
• 19:20
  Eli — rebut.
• 19:21
  Eli Navarro: No cop is the wrong diagnosis, Arthur —
• 19:24
  the cop is standing right there with a Maine lapel pin.
• 19:27
  The Impoundment Control Act exists because Nixon impounded money,
• 19:30
  and Congress remembered the purse sits in Article I.
• 19:33
  Susan Collins holds that purse as Appropriations chair.
• 19:36
  A pocket rescission works once, in the last week of one fiscal year,
• 19:40
  against money OMB sat on for months.
• 19:42
  Then Thursday arrives, a new fiscal year begins,
• 19:45
  and every dollar this administration wants runs through her committee.
• 19:49
  She can fence every account, mandate obligation deadlines,
• 19:52
  and write "shall be spent" in letters even OMB can read.
• 19:55
  Lawbreaking with no cop is policy.
• 19:57
  Lawbreaking in front of the person who writes your next budget is a very short-term
• 20:02
  strategy.
• 20:03
  Arthur Kline: A cop with a lapel pin and no handcuffs.
• 20:06
  Collins objects; the fiscal year doesn't care.
• 20:10
  Grant — rebut.
• 20:12
  Grant Mercer: Arthur, "no handcuffs" — she chairs the committee that funds the handcuffs.
• 20:16
  The fiscal year does care: it ends Wednesday,
• 20:19
  and on Thursday every agency that just watched appropriated money lapse comes back
• 20:24
  to Collins asking for next year's.
• 20:26
  Eli's right that she can write "shall be spent";
• 20:29
  I'd add she can write "shall be spent by March" and make OMB certify it monthly.
• 20:34
  And she says Congress received this package "without warning or consultation."
• 20:39
  That's not a policy dispute;
• 20:41
  that's the executive telling the appropriator she's a formality.
• 20:45
  Every conservative cheering the impoundment of refugee money should ask what a
• 20:49
  Democratic OMB pockets next time
• 20:51
  — border enforcement, maybe.
• 20:53
  A precedent you'd hate your opponent using isn't a principle.
• 20:57
  It's a mistake with your name on it.
• 21:00
  Arthur Kline: Collins funds the handcuffs; OMB holds the clock.
• 21:04
  The Holy Roller worked, Grant — they changed the rule afterward.
• 21:10
  Sloane — rebut.
• 21:11
  Sloane Barrett: Arthur, the Holy Roller worked because there was no rule against it.
• 21:16
  Here the rule already exists.
• 21:18
  Nixon fumbled forward, Congress wrote the Impoundment Control Act,
• 21:23
  and the Supreme Court in Train v.
• 21:25
  City of New York upheld the call: the president spends what Congress appropriates.
• 21:31
  This isn't Stabler improvising.
• 21:33
  It's Stabler running the play the season AFTER the rewrite and betting the officials
• 21:39
  won't reach for the flag.
• 21:41
  Grant and Eli describe Collins's leverage as next year's budget language,
• 21:46
  which is a referee promising to be stricter next game.
• 21:50
  Article I, Section 9 doesn't need stricter language.
• 21:54
  It needs someone to blow the whistle before Wednesday, in court if necessary.
• 21:59
  A rule nobody enforces isn't a rule.
• 22:02
  It's a suggestion with a lapel pin.
• 22:05
  Arthur Kline: A rule nobody enforces is just the Holy Roller with better paperwork.
• 22:11
  Nora — rebut.
• 22:12
  Nora Kessler: Arthur, that's the case for a whistle, not against the rule.
• 22:16
  The Impoundment Control Act isn't a suggestion with a lapel pin;
• 22:20
  it gives the Comptroller General standing to sue when appropriated money is
• 22:25
  withheld,
• 22:25
  and GAO has already written the opinion that becomes the complaint.
• 22:30
  What Sloane's stricter-next-season worry misses is that the clock hasn't expired.
• 22:35
  Five days is an eternity to a lawyer holding an injunction motion.
• 22:39
  Detroit thought Game 5 of the 1987 Eastern Conference Finals was over too,
• 22:43
  one-point lead, ball in Isiah Thomas's hands,
• 22:46
  until Larry Bird read the inbound and stole it.
• 22:49
  OMB is inbounding as if nobody's watching.
• 22:52
  Grant's "win the vote" is next year's remedy.
• 22:55
  This week's remedy is a docket number.
• 22:57
  Eli Navarro: Nora, sure, and— docket number today, budget language Thursday.
• 23:01
  Those aren't rival remedies; they're the same whistle blown twice.
• 23:05
  Yogi said it gets late early out there.
• 23:07
  Wednesday is early.
• 23:08
  OMB's counting on nobody filing before it gets late.
• 23:11
  Nora Kessler: Eli, agreed, mostly— but only one of those whistles stops the play.
• 23:16
  Budget language Thursday can't resurrect money that lapsed Wednesday.
• 23:21
  The docket is the remedy; the appropriations rider is the memorial service.
• 23:27
  Arthur Kline: And now, The Herald — with Simone Hargrove.
• 23:32
  Simone Hargrove: This is The Herald — the week beyond the table.
• 23:35
  On September 25,
• 23:37
  the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to resume using an overhauled
• 23:43
  data system for checking citizenship.
• 23:46
  The system has mistakenly flagged U.S.
• 23:49
  citizens, and a lower court had found its use violated federal privacy protections.
• 23:55
  Along the East Coast, a powerful nor'easter brought flooding, heavy rain,
• 24:01
  strong winds and dangerous surf on September 26, from Maine to the Mid-Atlantic.
• 24:07
  New York and New Jersey had declared states of emergency the day before in the
• 24:13
  counties expected to face the worst,
• 24:16
  including New York City; about seventy thousand customers lost power,
• 24:21
  and some New Jersey roads flooded.
• 24:23
  In Washington, on September 25 the U.S.
• 24:26
  Senate approved bipartisan legislation to modernize mental-health guidance for
• 24:32
  pilots and air-traffic controllers.
• 24:35
  In remembrance: James Copenhaver,
• 24:38
  one of three people shot during the 2024 assassination attempt at Donald Trump's
• 24:44
  campaign rally in Butler,
• 24:46
  Pennsylvania, died September 23 in Pittsburgh,
• 24:49
  at Allegheny Health Network's West Penn Hospital.
• 24:53
  He was seventy-six.
• 24:55
  And also on September 25, the U.S.
• 24:57
  Supreme Court blocked a Republican-drawn congressional map in Missouri,
• 25:03
  for the third time.
• 25:04
  From beyond the table — I'm Simone Hargrove.
• 25:07
  The Agora continues.
• 25:11
  Arthur Kline: ISSUE FOUR — LIGHTNING ROUND — the fuel economy rollback.
• 25:15
  The Trump administration is finalizing its rollback of the federal fuel economy
• 25:21
  rules for new cars and light trucks.
• 25:24
  Its proposal sets fleetwide fuel economy at 34.5 miles per gallon by model year
• 25:30
  2031,
• 25:31
  down from 50.4 under the Biden-era standard,
• 25:34
  and its own estimate puts the trade at a $930 average cut in new-vehicle cost
• 25:40
  against about 100 billion additional gallons of fuel consumed through 2050
• 25:46
  — with regular gasoline at a national average of four forty-eight a gallon.
• 25:52
  Sloane, thirty-four and a half miles per gallon with gas at four forty-eight —
• 25:58
  cheaper cars or a costlier fill-up?
• 26:01
  Sloane Barrett: Arthur, the question offers two prices and skips the one that matters:
• 26:07
  who sets them.
• 26:08
  Fifty point four by rulemaking, now 34.5 by rulemaking,
• 26:12
  with a detailed text nobody's even seen yet.
• 26:16
  A standard that swings that far on one signature was never law, it was MOOD.
• 26:22
  Congress handed the Transportation Department a blank check marked "maximum
• 26:28
  feasible," and every administration fills in a different number.
• 26:33
  Cheaper sticker, costlier tank: drivers can weigh that themselves.
• 26:38
  What they can't do is vote on it.
• 26:41
  That's the defect.
• 26:43
  Eli Navarro: Arthur, Sloane wants a vote — Congress already held one.
• 26:46
  "Maximum feasible" is the statute,
• 26:48
  and this administration just read it as "minimum tolerable."
• 26:51
  That's not delegation failing;
• 26:53
  that's a president failing a reading comprehension test.
• 26:56
  Nine hundred thirty dollars off the sticker,
• 26:59
  then a hundred billion extra gallons at four forty-eight a pound of flesh.
• 27:03
  Detroit hands you the rebate;
• 27:04
  the oil companies collect the balance every week through 2050.
• 27:08
  This isn't ideology, this is arithmetic.
• 27:10
  Cheaper car, costlier fill-up isn't a choice.
• 27:13
  It's a layaway plan.
• 27:14
  Grant Mercer: Eli, close, but— your arithmetic's right and your instrument's wrong.
• 27:18
  Fleet mandates hide the fuel bill inside the sticker either way.
• 27:21
  Price carbon at the pump instead, and drivers run your layaway math themselves —
• 27:26
  no reading test required.
• 27:27
  Eli Navarro: Grant, fair, but—
• 27:28
  name the Republican who votes for a carbon fee with gas at four forty-eight.
• 27:32
  You can't.
• 27:33
  The mandate is the only pricing tool Congress passed.
• 27:36
  Trade what exists for what won't, and Big Oil keeps the layaway.
• 27:40
  Sloane Barrett: Arthur, Eli says Congress already voted.
• 27:43
  It voted for two words: "maximum feasible."
• 27:46
  A phrase that means 50.4 under one president and 34.5 under the next isn't a
• 27:52
  standard,
• 27:52
  it's a pen handed to whoever wins.
• 27:55
  And "name the Republican who votes for a carbon fee" isn't a constitutional
• 28:01
  argument,
• 28:01
  it's a whip count.
• 28:03
  If no majority will vote for a number,
• 28:06
  the answer isn't letting the Transportation Secretary guess one every four years.
• 28:12
  It's Congress writing the number, owning it,
• 28:15
  and answering for it at four forty-eight a gallon.
• 28:19
  Grant Mercer: Arthur, Sloane's right that "maximum feasible" is a blank check,
• 28:23
  and Eli's right it's the only tool Congress passed.
• 28:26
  Neither fixes the trick:
• 28:28
  a $930 sticker discount against $185 billion in extra fuel spending through 2050
• 28:33
  isn't a rollback,
• 28:34
  it's a loan Detroit originates and drivers repay at the pump.
• 28:37
  I want to like the cheaper car.
• 28:39
  But letting the Transportation Secretary pick a new number every four years isn't
• 28:44
  smaller government,
• 28:45
  it's smaller accountability.
• 28:47
  Congress writes the number, or the market prices it.
• 28:50
  Pick one.
• 28:51
  Eli Navarro: Grant, that's a false dichotomy—
• 28:53
  Congress writing a number and the market pricing it aren't rivals,
• 28:56
  they're both waiting on votes nobody has.
• 28:58
  Meanwhile the real number lands tomorrow by signature.
• 29:01
  Your "pick one" menu has zero items in stock.
• 29:03
  Grant Mercer: Wait, no, Eli— "lands tomorrow by signature" isn't a rebuttal, it's my complaint.
• 29:08
  When the only item in stock is one man's pen, that's not a menu,
• 29:12
  it's a vending machine — and every administration brings different coins.
• 29:17
  Arthur Kline: Cheaper sticker, costlier tank,
• 29:19
  and a vending machine that takes every administration's coins.
• 29:24
  Congress wrote two words.
• 29:26
  The rest is layaway.
• 29:29
  Arthur Kline: ISSUE FIVE — LIGHTNING ROUND — Xi comes to Washington.
• 29:34
  Xi Jinping's three-day state visit ran September 23 to 25,
• 29:39
  with a White House meeting on September 24.
• 29:42
  The trade truce was extended two months, from November 10, 2026, to January 10,
• 29:49
  2027.
• 29:50
  Nora, two pandas and a two-month truce extension —
• 29:54
  was this summitry or a petting zoo with tariffs?
• 29:59
  Nora Kessler: Summitry, Arthur, the modest kind: extending a truce two months moves a deadline,
• 30:04
  it doesn't settle a dispute.
• 30:06
  Three hours at the White House bought sixty days, plus Ping Ping and Fu Shuang,
• 30:12
  now at Zoo Atlanta, the only deliverable with a pulse.
• 30:15
  The president will narrate this as Babe Ruth's Called Shot in the 1932 World Series,
• 30:21
  pointing to the bleachers before swinging.
• 30:24
  The film never confirmed Ruth pointed; the legend hardened anyway.
• 30:28
  This box score is unambiguous: a bunt single.
• 30:31
  The pandas have the longer contract.
• 30:34
  Arthur Kline: Sixty days and two pandas — that's not diplomacy, that's a layaway plan.
• 30:40
  Grant — is Nora underselling it or was that the whole deal?
• 30:46
  Grant Mercer: Arthur, that was the whole deal, and Nora's box score is right —
• 30:49
  I'd add one footnote.
• 30:50
  Pushing the truce deadline into January carries importers through the holiday
• 30:54
  shipping season without a tariff cliff,
• 30:56
  which matters.
• 30:57
  But you don't get credit for extending a truce in a trade war you started;
• 31:00
  the cliff was homemade.
• 31:02
  And when the showpiece of a state visit is a tour of the new helipad and a look
• 31:06
  inside Marine One,
• 31:07
  the summit was the photo op.
• 31:08
  The pandas came with a contract.
• 31:10
  Arthur Kline: Footnotes are for lawyers, Grant.
• 31:12
  Verdict: win or stall?
• 31:15
  Grant Mercer: Stall, Arthur — and you can measure it in one word.
• 31:17
  A win changes the terms; a stall changes the date.
• 31:21
  We got the date.
• 31:22
  The dispute that existed on September 23 exists intact today,
• 31:25
  sixty days further down the road,
• 31:27
  with a tariff cliff now waiting in January instead of November.
• 31:31
  Nora's bunt single is generous — a bunt at least advances a runner.
• 31:35
  This advanced the calendar.
• 31:36
  When the only commitment outlasting the truce is two pandas in Atlanta,
• 31:40
  the zoo negotiated better than the trade desk.
• 31:43
  Arthur Kline: Sixty days to relitigate the same fight —
• 31:47
  the pandas got a better deal than the negotiators.
• 31:51
  Eli — rebut.
• 31:52
  Eli Navarro: A stall is too generous, Arthur, because a stall means both sides stopped moving.
• 31:57
  Only one did.
• 31:57
  Xi Jinping leaves with sixty more days of truce, a look inside Marine One,
• 32:02
  and two pandas doing his public relations in Atlanta for years.
• 32:05
  American importers and farmers leave with the same tariff bill and a later due date.
• 32:10
  Grant's right that the cliff was homemade — so was the truce.
• 32:14
  The president manufactured the deadline, then billed the country to move it.
• 32:18
  That isn't a stall.
• 32:19
  That's Beijing running out the clock while Washington calls timeouts.
• 32:23
  Arthur Kline: Enough.
• 32:24
  You've all had your say — now the part where you say something checkable.
• 32:31
  Arthur Kline: Predictions.
• 32:32
  One apiece — a name, a number, a date,
• 32:35
  something a fact-checker can hold against you later.
• 32:39
  "Possibly" and "perhaps" are fortune cookies, not forecasts. Go.
• 32:44
  Arthur Kline: Eli Navarro.
• 32:46
  Eli Navarro: Here's mine, Arthur:
• 32:47
  no judge enjoins the eight hundred ten million dollar pocket rescission before the
• 32:52
  fiscal year ends Wednesday,
• 32:54
  September thirtieth.
• 32:55
  Nora's docket stays empty.
• 32:57
  The money lapses.
• 32:58
  Then Susan Collins writes obligation deadlines on refugee accounts into her
• 33:02
  committee's next appropriations bill before Thanksgiving.
• 33:06
  Arthur Kline: Nora Kessler.
• 33:08
  Nora Kessler: Back to Hormuz, Arthur.
• 33:09
  By October 31st, the strait is still closed to verified commercial tanker traffic,
• 33:15
  no U.S.
• 33:15
  counteroffer has been publicly acknowledged by either Washington or Tehran,
• 33:20
  and the Senate has held no vote authorizing the blockade.
• 33:24
  The four words stand.
• 33:25
  The phone never rings.
• 33:27
  Arthur Kline: Grant Mercer.
• 33:29
  Grant Mercer: Let me take Iowa, Arthur.
• 33:30
  Before March 1st, 2027,
• 33:32
  the president endorses a named primary challenger to Zach Nunn over that war-powers
• 33:37
  vote.
• 33:37
  Nunn wins the June 2027 primary anyway —
• 33:39
  and the six Republicans who voted with him learn the smoke detector survives being
• 33:44
  kicked.
• 33:45
  Arthur Kline: Sloane Barrett.
• 33:47
  Sloane Barrett: Sticking with Beijing, Arthur.
• 33:49
  Before January 10th, 2027, the White House extends the trade truce a second time,
• 33:54
  at least sixty more days.
• 33:56
  Not one tariff rate changes in the text.
• 33:59
  Another date, same terms.
• 34:01
  Article I never sees a vote, and the pandas remain the only binding contract.
• 34:07
  Arthur Kline: Nora's phone never rings, Eli's docket stays empty,
• 34:11
  Sloane's truce gets another sixty days —
• 34:15
  this panel has bet heavily on nothing happening.
• 34:19
  I'm Arthur Kline.
• 34:20
  THE AGORA IS ADJOURNED.