Latest / The Agora / September 24, 2026 — Deals, Data Centers, and Due Process

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September 24, 2026 — Deals, Data Centers, and Due Process · The Agora

• 0:15
  Arthur Kline: Good evening.
• 0:16
  Welcome to THE AGORA.
• 0:18
  Tonight — Trump's deal-or-annihilation ultimatum to Iran,
• 0:23
  the press corps suing its way back into the White House,
• 0:27
  and Greg Abbott pulling the plug on Texas data centers.
• 0:31
  Plus two lightning rounds.
• 0:33
  I'm Arthur Kline.
• 0:35
  It's Thursday, September 24th, 2026.
• 0:37
  Let's go.
• 0:42
  Arthur Kline: ISSUE ONE — deal or annihilate.
• 0:45
  Trump told the General Assembly Tuesday he was deciding whether to deal with Iran or
• 0:51
  "annihilate" it if the seven-month war continues.
• 0:54
  Witkoff and Kushner sat roughly three hours with Iranian officials on the sidelines,
• 1:00
  through mediators.
• 1:02
  Wednesday,
• 1:02
  Pezeshkian rejected surrender but said Iran is ready for talks "without accepting
• 1:08
  the language of force."
• 1:10
  Grant, is Trump negotiating with Iran or threatening it —
• 1:14
  and does he know the difference?
• 1:17
  Grant Mercer: Arthur, the honest answer is the threat is the negotiation.
• 1:21
  Coercive diplomacy is a tradition;
• 1:23
  nobody gets Tehran to the table with a strongly worded statement.
• 1:27
  Where Trump loses me is the vocabulary.
• 1:29
  "Deal or annihilate" isn't a strategy — it's a menu with two items and no prices.
• 1:35
  A credible ultimatum specifies what the deal is,
• 1:38
  and after seven months of war nobody could tell you.
• 1:41
  Pezeshkian's "without the language of force" is the same move from the other
• 1:46
  direction:
• 1:46
  both presidents are negotiating with their hardliners in public while Witkoff and
• 1:51
  Kushner do the actual work through mediators.
• 1:54
  It's The Hunt for Red October:
• 1:56
  the hard part about playing chicken is knowing when to flinch —
• 2:00
  and I'm not sure either capital knows.
• 2:02
  Eli Navarro: Hold on, Grant— "coercive diplomacy" presumes there's a destination.
• 2:06
  Seven months in, nobody at the table can name the deal.
• 2:09
  That's Yogi: we're lost, but we're making good time.
• 2:12
  And Congress still hasn't voted on this war.
• 2:15
  Arthur Kline: Yogi Berra as grand strategist — and Eli's right, nobody can name the destination.
• 2:22
  "Annihilate or deal" isn't a policy, it's a coin flip.
• 2:26
  Nora — rebut.
• 2:27
  Nora Kessler: Actually, Arthur, it isn't a coin flip,
• 2:30
  because one side has already published its terms.
• 2:33
  Iranian officials have told the mediators what reopening the Strait of Hormuz costs:
• 2:38
  lift the U.S.
• 2:39
  naval blockade, release frozen Iranian assets,
• 2:42
  and end the war on every so-called resistance front,
• 2:46
  meaning Iran's proxies across the region.
• 2:48
  That's a price list.
• 2:49
  Grant says the menu has no prices; it does,
• 2:52
  they're just written in Farsi and nobody in the West Wing has read them.
• 2:57
  Tehran is negotiating in specifics, Washington in adjectives.
• 3:01
  "Annihilate" is a two-minute drill with no play called.
• 3:04
  Eli's right about Congress,
• 3:06
  but the sharper question is which of those three conditions the administration can
• 3:11
  live with,
• 3:12
  because the Strait doesn't reopen on vibes.
• 3:15
  Arthur Kline: Terms already on the table, Nora.
• 3:17
  What does WASHINGTON want?
• 3:19
  Nora Kessler: That's the problem, Arthur: nobody can answer that,
• 3:22
  and the people who should be answering it are the ones who launched the war.
• 3:27
  Tehran's three conditions are a price list; Washington's demand is a verb.
• 3:32
  Presumably the administration wants the Strait of Hormuz reopened,
• 3:36
  some ceiling on the nuclear program, and Iran's proxies leashed,
• 3:41
  but "presumably" is me doing the White House's homework,
• 3:44
  and I don't recall being hired.
• 3:46
  Pezeshkian saying "dialogue without the language of force" tells you exactly what
• 3:52
  Tehran wants:
• 3:53
  talks that don't look like capitulation at home.
• 3:56
  Trump's "deal or annihilate" tells you what Washington wants to look like,
• 4:01
  not what it wants to get.
• 4:03
  You can't negotiate an end state you haven't defined.
• 4:07
  Arthur Kline: A price list from Tehran, a threat from Washington, and Congress AWOL.
• 4:13
  Somebody here is bluffing.
• 4:15
  Sloane — who?
• 4:16
  Sloane Barrett: The bluffer, Arthur, is Congress.
• 4:19
  Trump says "annihilate," Tehran publishes a price list, as Nora laid out,
• 4:24
  and everyone treats those two as the only players.
• 4:28
  But the one party with a cards-on-the-table obligation is the one pretending it
• 4:34
  has no hand.
• 4:35
  Article I, Section 8: Congress declares war, Congress funds it.
• 4:40
  Seven months in, it has done neither, and the Treasury keeps paying anyway.
• 4:45
  That's the bluff: insisting there's no game while the pot drains on your watch.
• 4:51
  As for the envoys, Witkoff and Kushner logged three hours abroad through mediators,
• 4:57
  and Drake and Future filed the intelligence assessment years early: Jumpman,
• 5:03
  Jumpman, Jumpman,
• 5:04
  them boys up to something / They just spent like two or three weeks out the country
• 5:10
  / Them boys up to something,
• 5:12
  they just not just bluffing.
• 5:14
  Fine.
• 5:15
  "Up to something" is not a war power.
• 5:18
  Show me the authorization, and THEN we can argue about the adjectives.
• 5:23
  Eli Navarro: Right, but Sloane: Congress abdicating doesn't launder the President's part.
• 5:27
  Nobody in Congress fired the first shot; he did.
• 5:29
  And the cure isn't a resolution, it's the purse.
• 5:31
  Defund it.
• 5:32
  Article I has teeth if anyone bites.
• 5:34
  Sloane Barrett: Eli, sure, but— nobody said abdication launders him.
• 5:38
  You heard me: Congress funds it.
• 5:40
  Defunding IS a vote, and they won't cast it.
• 5:44
  Article I's teeth don't bite on their own; somebody has to open the jaw.
• 5:49
  Same bluff.
• 5:50
  Grant Mercer: Arthur, I'm going to get yelled at by my own side for this,
• 5:53
  but Sloane and Eli are having the right argument and it still doesn't reach the
• 5:58
  problem.
• 5:58
  Congress could defund the war tomorrow and Washington would still not know what it
• 6:03
  wants from Iran.
• 6:04
  Nora's point is the one that bites:
• 6:06
  Tehran wrote down three conditions and Washington, as she put it,
• 6:09
  answered with a verb.
• 6:10
  Here's what bothers me as a conservative.
• 6:13
  Every time Trump says "annihilate" at a podium,
• 6:15
  Pezeshkian's "no language of force" line gets cheaper to say at home,
• 6:19
  and Iran's price list gets a fourth item.
• 6:21
  Threats are supposed to lower the other side's asking price, not pad it.
• 6:25
  That's not toughness; that's shopping without a list.
• 6:29
  Arthur Kline: Grant, that's the loneliest sentence in the Republican Party — and it's right.
• 6:34
  Defunding is theater if nobody's willing to be the villain.
• 6:39
  Eli — rebut.
• 6:40
  Eli Navarro: Theater, Arthur?
• 6:41
  Cooper-Church cutting off money for American ground troops in Cambodia wasn't
• 6:45
  theater
• 6:46
  — it worked.
• 6:46
  The Boland Amendment wasn't theater;
• 6:48
  it forced a president to fund his proxy war through arms sales to Iran,
• 6:53
  which tells you how hard the purse bites.
• 6:55
  Grant's right that Washington can't name what it wants from Tehran,
• 6:59
  but that's the argument FOR defunding, not against it.
• 7:02
  You don't need a defined end state to stop writing checks for a war that has no end
• 7:07
  state.
• 7:07
  That's not villainy, it's bookkeeping.
• 7:09
  The Framers put the purse in Article I precisely because a president with a blank
• 7:14
  check and an adjective will always choose the adjective.
• 7:17
  Nora's price list exists because somebody in Tehran did the arithmetic.
• 7:21
  Congress could try that.
• 7:23
  Arthur Kline: Deal or annihilation.
• 7:25
  Diplomacy conducted at the volume of a threat,
• 7:28
  and Congress still hasn't found its voice.
• 7:33
  Arthur Kline: ISSUE TWO — the press corps sues.
• 7:36
  CNN, MS NOW and Politico sued in D.C.
• 7:39
  federal court September 21, 2026,
• 7:42
  seeking a temporary restraining order restoring their access.
• 7:47
  The same day,
• 7:48
  the White House launched "Trump TV," a 24-hour livestream on its website and
• 7:54
  YouTube.
• 7:55
  ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN have suspended the White House television pool.
• 8:01
  Sloane,
• 8:02
  when three networks haul the White House into court for a seat in the briefing
• 8:09
  room,
• 8:09
  is that the First Amendment or a hall pass?
• 8:13
  Sloane Barrett: Neither, Arthur.
• 8:14
  The First Amendment forbids government from abridging the press;
• 8:19
  it does NOT issue chairs.
• 8:20
  Nobody has a constitutional right to a seat in the Brady briefing room,
• 8:25
  and the Framers did not enumerate briefing-room parking.
• 8:29
  But, and this is the part the administration keeps forgetting,
• 8:33
  once government opens a door, it cannot slam it on viewpoint.
• 8:37
  Sherrill v.
• 8:38
  Knight settled that: access can be denied,
• 8:41
  but not arbitrarily and not for the coverage.
• 8:44
  So the networks have a real claim on the narrow point and a hall pass on the broad
• 8:50
  one.
• 8:50
  As for Trump TV, a government livestreaming itself isn't censorship,
• 8:54
  it's a vanity project with a YouTube channel.
• 8:57
  The pool walking out is the First Amendment working, not failing.
• 9:02
  Eli Navarro: Arthur, "the Framers did not enumerate briefing-room parking" — Sloane's right,
• 9:07
  and it's beside the point, because nobody is suing for parking.
• 9:11
  Sherrill v.
• 9:11
  Knight is the whole case: access can't be denied for the coverage.
• 9:16
  So what did the White House do the SAME DAY it locked out CNN, MS NOW and Politico?
• 9:21
  It launched a 24-hour channel of itself.
• 9:23
  That's not a vanity project, that's a confession filed as a press release —
• 9:28
  the government announcing in real time that the problem was who held the camera.
• 9:32
  Madison warned that popular government without popular information is a prologue to
• 9:37
  a farce or a tragedy.
• 9:39
  Trump TV is both, and it runs without commercials.
• 9:42
  Judge Kelly hears the restraining-order request at 3:30 Eastern.
• 9:46
  I'd bet on Sherrill.
• 9:47
  Nora Kessler: Right, but Eli— timing isn't a confession, it's circumstantial.
• 9:51
  Sherrill doesn't ask why the door closed;
• 9:53
  it asks whether the White House wrote down a reason and let them answer it.
• 9:58
  If it didn't, Judge Kelly never needs Trump TV.
• 10:02
  Eli Navarro: Arthur, Nora's procedural point is fair as far as it goes,
• 10:05
  and it goes exactly one step.
• 10:07
  Yes, Sherrill demands a written reason and a chance to answer.
• 10:10
  But the same case says the reason can't be the coverage —
• 10:13
  and no White House lawyer has ever drafted a memo reading "banned for unflattering
• 10:18
  questions."
• 10:19
  Viewpoint discrimination is proven circumstantially or it's never proven at all.
• 10:23
  So the timing isn't decoration; it's the only evidence there is.
• 10:27
  Channeling my inner Yogi:
• 10:29
  the reason they can't write down the reason is the reason.
• 10:32
  And when Fox News walks out of the pool alongside CNN, that's not a media conspiracy
• 10:37
  — that's the defendant's own witnesses declining to testify.
• 10:40
  Judge Kelly can take notice.
• 10:42
  Arthur Kline: Eli's halfway through a sentence and already winning on points —
• 10:47
  the reason can't be the coverage, everyone agrees.
• 10:50
  Sloane, is that actually the fight?
• 10:53
  Sloane Barrett: No, Arthur, it isn't, which is why Eli is winning on points and losing the case.
• 10:59
  Everyone agrees the reason can't be the coverage; the fight is remedy.
• 11:04
  Sherrill v.
• 11:05
  Knight hands Judge Kelly a procedural checklist, not a seating chart.
• 11:10
  A temporary restraining order telling the President which reporters stand in his own
• 11:17
  house is an Article III judge running an Article II building,
• 11:21
  and I'd like the networks to win without minting that precedent.
• 11:26
  As for Trump TV, Eli calls it a confession.
• 11:29
  It's closer to a government interviewing its own reflection,
• 11:34
  and De La Soul filed the diagnosis decades ago:
• 11:38
  Mirror mirror on the wall / Tell me mirror, what is wrong?
• 11:42
  / Can it be my De La clothes / Or is it just my De La song?.
• 11:46
  Nothing's wrong with the song.
• 11:49
  They just evicted the audience.
• 11:51
  Grant Mercer: Hold on, Sloane— restoring access isn't running the building,
• 11:54
  it's freezing the status quo until the White House writes the memo Sherrill
• 11:58
  already requires.
• 11:59
  Judges order agencies to follow procedure every week.
• 12:02
  That's not a seating chart; it's homework.
• 12:04
  Arthur Kline: Freezing the status quo IS running the building —
• 12:08
  especially when the building now has its own network.
• 12:11
  Nora — rebut.
• 12:13
  Nora Kessler: Arthur, that's a category error.
• 12:15
  A temporary restraining order restores the seating chart that existed before the
• 12:20
  lockout;
• 12:20
  it doesn't draft a new one.
• 12:22
  The White House still decides who gets a hard pass.
• 12:25
  It just has to write down why, and let CNN answer,
• 12:28
  which is the entire holding of Sherrill v.
• 12:31
  Knight.
• 12:32
  Sloane's worry about an Article III judge running an Article II building assumes the
• 12:37
  judge picks the reporters.
• 12:39
  He doesn't.
• 12:40
  Deflategate:
• 12:40
  a federal judge vacated Tom Brady's suspension without ever ruling on whether the
• 12:46
  footballs were soft.
• 12:47
  He ruled the league skipped its own process.
• 12:50
  That's all Judge Kelly would be doing at 3:30.
• 12:53
  Trump TV owns a camera; it still owes a memo.
• 12:56
  Broadcasting isn't paperwork.
• 12:58
  Arthur Kline: Fine, Nora — the TRO restores the chairs.
• 13:01
  But who's sitting in them Thursday morning?
• 13:04
  Grant — answer that.
• 13:06
  Grant Mercer: Arthur, the honest answer is: whoever the White House lets through the gate,
• 13:10
  with a memo attached.
• 13:11
  The chairs come back Thursday morning; nobody's guaranteed to fill them,
• 13:15
  because a temporary restraining order restores the process, not the roster.
• 13:20
  But notice the irony.
• 13:21
  The White House locked out three outlets and got five networks to walk out of the
• 13:25
  pool voluntarily.
• 13:26
  It set out to remove CNN and ended up with an empty room and a livestream of itself.
• 13:31
  That's The Graduate bus scene: they got exactly what they were chasing,
• 13:35
  and now they're sitting there with no idea where it's going.
• 13:38
  Sloane's Article III worry is real, and I'd still take the order,
• 13:42
  because otherwise Thursday's briefing room has one camera,
• 13:45
  and it works for the podium.
• 13:47
  Sloane Barrett: Wait, no, Grant— you just conceded it.
• 13:49
  If the order restores process, not roster,
• 13:52
  Thursday's chairs are still the White House's call.
• 13:56
  The one camera is a boycott, not a ban; the pool chose it.
• 14:00
  Judges don't cure walkouts.
• 14:04
  Arthur Kline: ISSUE THREE — Abbott freezes the data centers.
• 14:07
  September 21, 2026 —
• 14:09
  Abbott ordered the TCEQ to halt all data-center permits until ERCOT finishes its
• 14:16
  grid audit.
• 14:17
  The audit may run through December,
• 14:20
  and the directive sets no date for permits to resume.
• 14:24
  An August UT/Texas Politics Project poll found 57 percent of Texas voters opposed a
• 14:31
  data center in their community
• 14:34
  — including 43 percent of Republicans.
• 14:37
  Nora, is the governor of Texas protecting the grid,
• 14:41
  or reading a poll and calling it energy policy?
• 14:46
  Nora Kessler: Arthur, those aren't alternatives.
• 14:48
  Reading a poll and protecting the grid are the same activity here,
• 14:52
  because the voters are right about the physics.
• 14:55
  Data centers draw enormous power,
• 14:58
  and ERCOT's interconnection queue is the one place in Texas where nobody's checked
• 15:03
  whether the wiring can take it.
• 15:05
  So a pause is defensible.
• 15:07
  What isn't defensible is a pause with no end date.
• 15:10
  Abbott's directive also blocks every state agency's approvals until ERCOT,
• 15:15
  the Public Utility Commission,
• 15:17
  and the Texas Water Development Board hand over grid- and water-use data,
• 15:21
  with no deadline attached.
• 15:23
  That's not an audit; it's a moratorium filed as a fact-finding mission.
• 15:28
  I just want to know when the precaution ends, because "until December,
• 15:32
  maybe" isn't a plan, it's a shrug with letterhead.
• 15:36
  Grant Mercer: Nora, hold on— the poll isn't physics.
• 15:38
  Fifty-seven percent opposing a data center in their community is NIMBYism with a
• 15:43
  barbecue smoker.
• 15:43
  ERCOT should audit wiring, sure;
• 15:45
  Abbott's freezing an industry because Texas Republicans just discovered they're
• 15:50
  Californians.
• 15:51
  Arthur Kline: NIMBYism with a smoker is still a voting bloc, Grant.
• 15:56
  Abbott read the poll, not the grid.
• 15:59
  Eli — rebut.
• 16:00
  Eli Navarro: Arthur, "NIMBYism with a smoker" gets the diagnosis backwards.
• 16:04
  A homeowner objecting to a warehouse of servers next door isn't being provincial —
• 16:08
  she's noticed that her electric bill pays for the transmission upgrades and Amazon
• 16:13
  pays for the ribbon-cutting.
• 16:15
  Sixty percent of rural Texans oppose these projects because rural Texas is where the
• 16:19
  water table and the substation live.
• 16:21
  And the grid IS the story:
• 16:23
  ERCOT is the only grid in the country that walled itself off from federal oversight,
• 16:28
  and Texans remember Uri.
• 16:29
  Yogi had the interconnection queue nailed: nobody goes there anymore,
• 16:33
  it's too crowded.
• 16:34
  Abbott didn't read a poll — he read a meter.
• 16:36
  He skipped the end date,
• 16:38
  and a deregulator discovering regulation mid-boom deserves a deadline, not applause.
• 16:42
  Sloane Barrett: Eli, come on—
• 16:43
  a governor halting permits by fiat with no end date isn't reading a meter,
• 16:49
  it's reading a poll and calling it statute.
• 16:52
  Show me where the Texas Constitution lets him freeze an industry until "December,
• 16:58
  maybe."
• 16:58
  Eli Navarro: Wait, no, Sloane— TCEQ is an executive agency and permits are executive discretion.
• 17:03
  He's not writing statute, he's declining to sign.
• 17:06
  You'd call that restraint if it were a refinery.
• 17:09
  The end date's the problem, not the authority.
• 17:12
  Arthur Kline: Executive discretion, Professor — or an indefinite pocket veto by press release.
• 17:19
  Grant, adjudicate.
• 17:21
  Grant Mercer: Arthur, it's discretion the way a pocket veto is a signature:
• 17:25
  technically the pen never moved.
• 17:27
  Eli's right that TCEQ can decline to sign a permit — a permit.
• 17:31
  Declining to sign every permit from one industry, indefinitely,
• 17:34
  isn't reviewing applications;
• 17:36
  it's writing policy without the inconvenience of a legislature,
• 17:40
  and Texas actually has one.
• 17:41
  Here's the conservative answer nobody in Austin wants:
• 17:45
  if data centers strain the grid, make them pay for it.
• 17:48
  Interconnection fees, transmission upgrades, water pricing —
• 17:51
  send the bill to the servers, not the ratepayer.
• 17:54
  That's a market, not a moratorium.
• 17:56
  Instead Abbott spent years telling these companies Texas was open for business,
• 18:01
  then locked the door with them halfway through it.
• 18:04
  Capital doesn't wait for "December, maybe."
• 18:07
  Sloane Barrett: Fair, Grant, but— "make them pay" needs somebody to write the bill,
• 18:11
  and the Public Utility Commission is Abbott's appointees.
• 18:15
  You've swapped one governor's fiat for another's.
• 18:19
  The Legislature sets the price, or it's the same moratorium with an invoice.
• 18:24
  Arthur Kline: Counselor, cite the statute or concede the point.
• 18:28
  Sloane Barrett: The statute, Arthur, is the one Abbott forgot to cite.
• 18:32
  His directive names three agencies and zero enabling provisions,
• 18:37
  which is quite an omission for a document freezing an industry.
• 18:42
  Texas Constitution, Article II, Section 1: the powers are divided,
• 18:47
  and no department exercises another's.
• 18:50
  TCEQ permits under standards the Legislature wrote;
• 18:53
  that's a duty to process applications,
• 18:56
  not a license to shelve a sector until the polling improves.
• 19:01
  Eli's refinery analogy fails on its own terms.
• 19:05
  Denying one refinery on the record is discretion.
• 19:08
  Denying every refinery until further notice is a rule,
• 19:12
  and rules in Texas come out of the other building in Austin.
• 19:17
  Grant's invoice has the same defect; appointees aren't legislators.
• 19:22
  "December, maybe" isn't a statute.
• 19:25
  It's a mood.
• 19:26
  Concession declined.
• 19:28
  Nora Kessler: Arthur,
• 19:28
  Sloane's separation-of-powers point is right on paper and irrelevant to the servers.
• 19:33
  Nobody at Amazon is going to sue the governor of Texas;
• 19:37
  they're going to build in Oklahoma, which is the cost of a freeze with no calendar.
• 19:42
  She's wrong about Grant's invoice.
• 19:45
  Ratemaking is what the Legislature delegated to the Public Utility Commission;
• 19:50
  appointees setting interconnection tariffs isn't fiat, it's the job description.
• 19:55
  So the fix is boring: give ERCOT a deadline,
• 19:58
  have the Commission price large-load hookups so the servers pay for the substation
• 20:03
  instead of the ratepayer,
• 20:05
  and reopen the window.
• 20:06
  Right now Abbott is running the Sixers' Process: lose on purpose,
• 20:10
  trust the draft picks arrive eventually.
• 20:13
  Sam Hinkie at least had a draft calendar.
• 20:16
  Austin has "December, maybe."
• 20:17
  Arthur Kline: Oklahoma is a threat, Nora, not an answer.
• 20:22
  Nora Kessler: Arthur, Oklahoma isn't my answer, it's Abbott's consequence.
• 20:25
  My answer is a calendar, so I'll add the part nobody in Austin wants to hear:
• 20:30
  the audit and the freeze don't have to be the same length.
• 20:33
  ERCOT can study the interconnection queue through December while TCEQ keeps
• 20:38
  processing permits with a large-load condition attached,
• 20:41
  meaning no hookup until the grid check clears.
• 20:44
  That's ordinary conditional permitting.
• 20:46
  Abbott chose the version where the study halts the building instead of the building
• 20:51
  waiting for the study.
• 20:53
  Fifty-seven percent of Texans don't want a data center next door;
• 20:57
  zero percent voted for an economy that pauses whenever the governor wants to think.
• 21:01
  Precaution needs a stopping rule, or it's just fear with a signature block.
• 21:06
  Arthur Kline: And now, The Herald — with Simone Hargrove.
• 21:11
  Simone Hargrove: This is The Herald — the week beyond the table.
• 21:15
  On September 22,
• 21:16
  the United States announced about thirty-one million dollars in additional flood
• 21:22
  assistance for Nepal.
• 21:24
  Recovery there continues, and about seventy Americans remain unaccounted for.
• 21:29
  On September 20,
• 21:31
  a Venezuelan man making deliveries in Austin was shot by Immigration and Customs
• 21:37
  Enforcement officers.
• 21:38
  Homeland Security Investigations is investigating,
• 21:42
  one of several recent confrontations involving ICE operations.
• 21:47
  That same day, in the Chicago suburb of Evanston,
• 21:51
  ICE officers mistakenly targeted a U.S.
• 21:54
  citizen, leaving the person injured on the ground.
• 21:58
  The incident has brought fresh scrutiny of the agency's enforcement practices.
• 22:04
  The Texas Rangers are seeking evidence of manslaughter and other crimes over
• 22:09
  twenty-seven flood deaths at Camp Mystic amid devastating flooding in Texas last
• 22:16
  year.
• 22:16
  Brant Johnston, with the Texas Rangers,
• 22:19
  wrote in an affidavit that Camp Mystic had inadequate emergency plans,
• 22:24
  failed to conduct emergency drills or training,
• 22:28
  and in some cabins did not have enough adult counselors.
• 22:32
  In remembrance:
• 22:33
  actor Hayden Panettiere died August 16 of an accidental overdose of drugs,
• 22:39
  including fentanyl, at an apartment in Greenville, South Carolina,
• 22:44
  weeks after being released from a drug rehabilitation facility in Malibu,
• 22:50
  California, the coroner's office found in a ruling released September 22.
• 22:55
  She was thirty-six, known for television roles, including "Heroes" and "Nashville".
• 23:02
  And in health policy: on September 22,
• 23:05
  the Trump administration removed more than seven hundred fifty thousand people from
• 23:11
  Affordable Care Act marketplaces,
• 23:13
  saying many received subsidies improperly or were not real enrollees.
• 23:19
  Vice President JD Vance and CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz called it an anti-fraud
• 23:25
  measure.
• 23:25
  From beyond the table — I'm Simone Hargrove.
• 23:29
  The Agora continues.
• 23:32
  Arthur Kline: ISSUE FOUR — LIGHTNING ROUND — Paramount swallows Warner Bros.
• 23:37
  On September 21, 2026,
• 23:39
  Paramount Skydance settled with 12 state attorneys general and the Writers Guild,
• 23:46
  clearing its roughly $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros.
• 23:51
  Discovery.
• 23:52
  The states did not obtain the full divestiture of CNN and CBS News they had
• 23:58
  requested.
• 23:59
  Grant, CNN and CBS News under one landlord —
• 24:03
  is that editorial independence or a monopoly with a chaperone?
• 24:08
  Grant Mercer: A chaperone, Arthur — hired by the date.
• 24:10
  The states asked for divestiture and settled for a board and a trustee,
• 24:14
  both existing at the pleasure of the company they're supposedly watching.
• 24:18
  I'm a market guy; studios merging is Hollywood arithmetic.
• 24:21
  But an editorial-independence board has never survived its first budget meeting,
• 24:26
  and a trustee monitors compliance, not courage.
• 24:28
  Twelve attorneys general walked in demanding a firewall and walked out with a memo.
• 24:33
  That's not antitrust;
• 24:34
  it's a hall monitor for a hundred-and-ten-billion-dollar hallway.
• 24:38
  Sloane Barrett: Right, but Grant—
• 24:39
  twelve attorneys general demanding a news divestiture were never doing antitrust;
• 24:44
  that's government deciding who may own a newsroom.
• 24:48
  A chaperone answering to the company beats one answering to twelve state capitals.
• 24:53
  Grant Mercer: Sloane, sure, but— divestiture doesn't pick a newsroom's owner;
• 24:57
  it says one owner can't hold two.
• 24:59
  That's antitrust, not curation.
• 25:01
  And a board answering to the company it watches isn't a chaperone.
• 25:05
  It's a hostage with a title.
• 25:07
  Sloane Barrett: Grant's hostage has it backwards, Arthur.
• 25:09
  The hostage-takers were twelve attorneys general demanding a company sell its
• 25:14
  newsrooms as the price of buying its studios.
• 25:17
  That isn't antitrust;
• 25:19
  the relevant market for news isn't two networks under one roof,
• 25:23
  it's every outlet in the country and a phone.
• 25:26
  Salt-N-Pepa drafted the First Amendment brief:
• 25:29
  If I wanna take a guy home with me tonight / It's none of your business / And if she
• 25:34
  wanna be a freak and sell it on the weekend / It's none of your business.
• 25:39
  The board is toothless, granted.
• 25:41
  But a toothless chaperone beats a state with its teeth in the newsroom.
• 25:46
  Eli Navarro: Arthur, Sloane's "every outlet and a phone" is how every merger gets blessed:
• 25:50
  define the market as the universe and nobody owns too much of it.
• 25:53
  The Writers Guild got something enforceable —
• 25:55
  seventeen and a half million dollars into its health fund and a five-year ban on
• 26:00
  laying off CBS News broadcast writers.
• 26:02
  Twelve attorneys general got a board.
• 26:04
  Labor protected the newsroom's people; the states protected its stationery.
• 26:08
  When a union out-negotiates twelve governments on antitrust, that's not a chaperone.
• 26:12
  That's the chaperone riding home with the date.
• 26:15
  Arthur Kline: Define the market wide enough and nobody's a monopolist —
• 26:19
  Eli's right about that much.
• 26:21
  Grant — is the board a shield or a fig leaf?
• 26:25
  Grant Mercer: A fig leaf, Arthur — and Eli, annoyingly, is right about why.
• 26:28
  The Writers Guild got a five-year layoff ban a judge can enforce;
• 26:32
  the states got a board with no budget, no veto, and a landlord who signs its checks.
• 26:36
  David Ellison is already claiming "complete clearance" and penciling in a close in
• 26:40
  about two weeks
• 26:41
  — that's how seriously the watchdog is being taken.
• 26:44
  The states' firewall is the Maltese Falcon: they fought for it,
• 26:47
  carried it out of the room, and it's painted lead.
• 26:50
  Sloane Barrett: Wait, no, Grant— painted lead because it was never the states' falcon to carry.
• 26:56
  And Ellison's "complete clearance" is premature;
• 26:59
  the settlement still needs a judge's signature.
• 27:03
  THAT'S the real watchdog: Article III, not a board with a title.
• 27:07
  Grant Mercer: Fair, Sloane, but— a judge approving a settlement signs what the parties bring him;
• 27:13
  he doesn't redraft the board's powers.
• 27:15
  Approving a toothless deal isn't a watchdog.
• 27:18
  It's a notary.
• 27:19
  The states negotiated the fig leaf; the court laminates it.
• 27:24
  Arthur Kline: ISSUE FIVE — LIGHTNING ROUND — Trump meets Mamdani.
• 27:28
  Trump and Mamdani met at Gracie Mansion on September 21st for roughly one hour.
• 27:34
  The Sunnyside Yard proposal covers approximately 12,000 homes and 30,000 jobs,
• 27:41
  and Mamdani says it needs at least 21 billion dollars in federal grants.
• 27:46
  Eli,
• 27:46
  the president and the socialist mayor of New York spend an hour at Gracie Mansion —
• 27:53
  genuine détente, or two showmen splitting one stage?
• 27:58
  Eli Navarro: Détente, Arthur, and I'll take it.
• 28:00
  New York mayors have always cashed federal checks —
• 28:03
  La Guardia built half the city on FDR's money, and nobody called it a stage act.
• 28:07
  Twenty-one billion in grants for housing is a housing program, not a photo op.
• 28:12
  But watch the stagecraft anyway:
• 28:13
  Mamdani opened the Gracie Mansion lawn to every reporter,
• 28:17
  including the three outlets the White House locked out that same week.
• 28:21
  The socialist ran the more American press operation.
• 28:24
  That's not two showmen splitting a stage.
• 28:26
  That's the mayor grading the President's homework in public.
• 28:30
  Nora Kessler: Détente needs deliverables, Arthur, and Eli's tally is zero.
• 28:34
  They "agreed to continue discussions" about twenty-one billion dollars,
• 28:39
  which is a promise to schedule a meeting.
• 28:42
  Mamdani raised the termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians;
• 28:47
  Trump acknowledged it and changed nothing.
• 28:50
  Eli's cheering the open lawn while the real game goes unwatched.
• 28:55
  That's the Heidi Game:
• 28:56
  in 1968 NBC cut from Jets-Raiders to a children's movie and missed two Raiders
• 29:02
  touchdowns.
• 29:02
  The press access was the movie.
• 29:04
  The policy was the game, and New York lost it.
• 29:08
  Eli Navarro: Arthur, Nora's Heidi Game cuts the other way: NBC cut to the movie,
• 29:12
  and the Raiders still scored — the game happened whether anyone watched.
• 29:15
  Sunnyside Yard isn't dead because it lacks a signed check on day one;
• 29:19
  La Guardia didn't get the Triborough Bridge in an hour either.
• 29:22
  And the open lawn isn't the sideshow.
• 29:24
  Who holds the camera decides whether twenty-one billion dollars gets scrutinized or
• 29:28
  laundered through a livestream.
• 29:30
  Zero deliverables?
• 29:31
  The mayor delivered the press corps back.
• 29:33
  That's one.
• 29:34
  Sloane Barrett: No, but Eli— a lawn isn't a deliverable, it's landscaping.
• 29:37
  Twenty-one billion dollars in federal grants doesn't come from Gracie Mansion or the
• 29:43
  White House;
• 29:44
  it comes from Congress.
• 29:45
  Show me the line item, then count your deliverables.
• 29:49
  Eli Navarro: Sure, Sloane, but—
• 29:50
  every federal housing dollar starts as a mayor's ask and a president's blessing
• 29:54
  before Congress writes the line.
• 29:56
  La Guardia didn't get a line item first either.
• 29:59
  The meeting is the application; you're grading the check.
• 30:02
  Arthur Kline: La Guardia had FDR and a Depression.
• 30:05
  Mamdani has a handshake and a press-lawn grievance.
• 30:10
  Grant — is that enough?
• 30:12
  Grant Mercer: Not remotely, Arthur.
• 30:14
  Eli's right that the meeting is the application — and applications get denied,
• 30:18
  usually by a Republican Congress that just spent a year campaigning against the man
• 30:23
  who filed it.
• 30:23
  Twenty-one billion dollars for a rail-yard deck is a rounding error to nobody.
• 30:28
  And notice the tell Nora flagged: Mamdani raised Haitian TPS,
• 30:31
  Trump nodded and moved nothing.
• 30:33
  That's the exchange rate here — an hour of listening, zero policy.
• 30:37
  Mamdani won the press lawn.
• 30:38
  Trump won a photo with the socialist mayor his party wants in every attack ad.
• 30:42
  Only one of those cashes.
• 30:44
  Sloane Barrett: Grant, fair enough, but— neither one cashes.
• 30:47
  Twenty-one billion in grants is an appropriation,
• 30:51
  and the mayor of New York doesn't hold a committee gavel.
• 30:55
  Trump's photo and Mamdani's lawn are both press strategy.
• 30:59
  Article I doesn't fund press strategy.
• 31:01
  Grant Mercer: See, Sloane— the photo cashes.
• 31:03
  Attack ads don't need an appropriation; they need footage,
• 31:06
  and Trump just filmed his.
• 31:08
  Mamdani's lawn needs Congress.
• 31:09
  Trump's picture needs a Super PAC.
• 31:11
  Only one of those has a budget this fall.
• 31:15
  Arthur Kline: Predictions.
• 31:16
  One each — a date, a number, a name, something that can actually turn out wrong.
• 31:22
  "Possibly" and "perhaps" are weather reports for people afraid of rain;
• 31:28
  leave them at the door. Go.
• 31:30
  Arthur Kline: Eli Navarro.
• 31:32
  Eli Navarro: Here's mine, Arthur:
• 31:33
  Judge Kelly grants the temporary restraining order within forty-eight hours, CNN,
• 31:37
  MS NOW and Politico are back in the briefing room by Monday,
• 31:41
  and the White House still never produces the written reason Sherrill v.
• 31:45
  Knight requires — it appeals instead.
• 31:47
  Process wins; paperwork never arrives.
• 31:49
  Arthur Kline: Nora Kessler.
• 31:51
  Nora Kessler: Sticking with Texas, Arthur.
• 31:53
  ERCOT's grid audit misses December,
• 31:56
  TCEQ issues zero new data-center permits before January 1st,
• 32:00
  and Abbott's directive still has no resumption date when the Legislature gavels in.
• 32:06
  The precaution outlives the study, and the servers outlive Texas.
• 32:11
  Arthur Kline: Grant Mercer.
• 32:12
  Grant Mercer: Let me take Iran, Arthur.
• 32:14
  No agreement by Thanksgiving.
• 32:15
  The Strait of Hormuz stays closed,
• 32:17
  Witkoff and Kushner log more hours through mediators,
• 32:20
  Trump says "annihilate" from another podium before Halloween —
• 32:24
  and Washington still hasn't written down a single term it would accept.
• 32:28
  The price list stays one-sided.
• 32:30
  Arthur Kline: Sloane Barrett.
• 32:32
  Sloane Barrett: The merger's mine, Arthur.
• 32:33
  The court signs the Paramount settlement and the deal closes before October 15th.
• 32:39
  The editorial-independence board holds zero public meetings before January 1st,
• 32:45
  and CNN loses at least one anchor to a "restructuring" by Thanksgiving.
• 32:51
  Grant's notary stamps it; nobody watches the dog.
• 32:55
  Arthur Kline: Four predictions,
• 32:56
  and not one of them requires anyone in Washington or Austin to write anything down —
• 33:02
  which is why they'll all hold.
• 33:04
  I'm Arthur Kline.
• 33:06
  THE AGORA IS ADJOURNED.