NO KINGS: As many as 2500 “No Kings” rallies are planned for today in all 50 states in protest to the authoritarian Trump administration. It’s about 450 more than were held in June when millions of people turned out on the day of Trump’s sad sack military parade.

  With the President sending National Guard troops into city streets and masked ICE agents sweeping up both immigrants and natural born citizens, even more objectors are expected to turn out today.

  Some Republican politicians have branded the protests “Hate America” rallies. They won’t accept that millions of Americans are frightened and angry about how the country is being governed. Republican Sen. Roger Marshall claimed “professional protesters” and “agitators” will show up, and Speaker Mike Johnson suggested participants would be “pro-Hamas” and “Antifa people.” Antifa, of course, stands for “antifascist.”

THE WAR ROOM: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to the White House yesterday where President Trump flattered him on his suit … “stylish jacket” … and the President bragged about solving eight wars and complained about not being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

  “I’ve saved millions and millions of lives,” he claimed.

  Zelensky’s relations with Trump have improved since his first disastrous meeting. He has since learned to profusely thank Trump and wear a suit rather than combat clothes.

  Regarding the Ukraine war Trump said, “I think that things are coming along pretty well. It started with Alaska,” referring to his meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Trump yesterday, as he has previously, said Putin wants to end the war, but ending it is entirely in Putin’s hands and he hasn’t done it. 

VOTE REPUBLICAN: President Trump yesterday commuted the prison sentence of the disgraced … and admittedly criminal … former Long Island congressman George Santos, who began a seven year prison sentence in July. Trump excuses criminals who are his political supporters.

  Announcing his mercy for Santos, Trump posted, “At least Santos had the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!”

  Santos was freed at 10:00 last night. He will no longer be required to pay $370,000 in court-ordered restitution.

  Santos had lied about his resume and got caught stealing from his political donors. But Trump in an interview once said, “He lied like hell, and I didn’t know him, but he was 100 percent for Trump.”

  In a social media post, Trump said he believed that Santos’s sentence was excessive. He said he’d been moved by Santos’s accounts of being in solitary confinement, which was published in a local Long Island newspaper.

YOU’VE GOT MAIL: Former national security adviser John Bolton pleaded not guilty yesterday in a Maryland federal court to charges of mishandling government secrets.

 The 18-count indictment accuses Bolton of using personal email and a messaging app to share more than 1,000 pages of notes, which included national defense information, with his wife and daughter.  Bolton is 76 and each count carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

  The indictment says that someone associated with Iran hacked into Bolton’s personal email gaining access to secret information. 

  The indictment says, “BOLTON also unlawfully retained documents, writings, and notes relating to the national defense, including information classified up to the TOP SECRET/SCI level, in his home in Montgomery County, Maryland.”

P.O.W:  In a rare effort to stand up to President Trump, a coalition of Senators from both parties is planning to force a vote on legislation to bar the US from attacking inside Venezuela without explicit authorization by Congress.

  The Trump administration has been marshalling forces in the Caribbean while attacks on suspected drug boats continue … six so far. For the first time the US Navy captured two survivors of a strike on a semi-submersible boat suspected of smuggling drugs and is holding them on a Navy ship in international waters as if they were prisoners of war

THE REGIME: 

— A federal prosecutor who refused President Trump’s demands to bring an indictment against New York Attorney Gen. Letitia James was fired late yesterday along with her deputy. 

— The University of Virginia said it will not sign President Trump’s “compact” which would have given the school preferential funding in exchange for signing on to the Trump ideological agenda. That’s the fifth school to reject the compact.

— White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said this week on Fox News that, “The Democrat Party’s main constituency is made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.”

A ROYAL PAIN: Under pressure from his brother, King Charles, Britain’s Prince Andrew who was disgraced in the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal has agreed to stop using his royal titles, including the Duke of York.

  Andrew used his announcement to once again deny any wrongdoing, despite having paid out millions in a settlement to one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, who committed suicide in April at age 41.

THE OBIT PAGE: Former Japan Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, who went on television 50 years after World War II and apologized for his country’s aggression and atrocities, has died at age 101.

  “Our task is to convey to younger generations the horrors of war, so that we never repeat the errors in our history,” Murayama said in his address on August 15^th, 1995. His admission, though, was an understatement. He said: “Japan, following a mistaken national policy, advanced along the road to war, only to ensnare the Japanese people in a fateful crisis, and, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations.”

BELOW THE FOLD: Some sports writers have crowned the Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher/hitter Shohei Ohtani the greatest player the game has ever had and they might be right. Last night against the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, Ohtani pitched six scoreless innings with 10 strikeouts and hit three home runs in a 5-1 win for LA.

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