SHUTDOWN, DAY TWO: President Trump started moving quickly yesterday to punish the states of Democratic senators who forced the funding cutoff and government shutdown. The administration is cutting off billions of dollars in funding for projects across the country while also preparing to fire tens of thousands of government employees in retribution.

  Trump posted on his Truth Social: “Republicans must use this opportunity of Democrat forced closure to clear out dead wood, waste, and fraud. Billions of Dollars can be saved. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

  Exercising what little power they have, the Democrats forced the shutdown of a government Trump would like to be rid of. His answer to the shutdown is shutting down and cutting even more of what the Democrats would preserve. What this is about is the effort by President Trump and the Republicans to deny healthcare to millions of Americans and the Democrats’ last stand to stop them.

  But Trump and the administration are making it about something else. The administration, for example, is cancelling expenditure of $8 billion in 16 states because it was “Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda.” 

  Russell Vought, the White House budget director, said the administration is pausing or cancelling delivery of about $26 billion in congressionally approved spending, describing the money as wasteful or in need of further review.

  It’s no coincidence that these announcements came on the day of the shutdown. The Trump administration announced that it will withhold $18 billion in federal funds for two major New York City transportation projects while the Transportation department investigates what Secretary Sean Duffy described as “discriminatory, unconstitutional contracting processes.” Read that to mean Diversity, Equity initiatives, which President Trump has vowed to eradicate.

  The two projects that will be defunded are  expansion of the Second Avenue subway line and new commuter train tunnels under the Hudson River. Duffy said the DOT now has a rule that forbids recipients of federal transit funds from having race and sex-based contracting requirements. 

  Already the administration has furloughed tens of thousands of federal employees; 89 percent at the EPA; 87 percent, Department of Education; 81 percent Commerce; 76 percent, Labor; and 71 percent Housing and Urban Development.

THE REGIME:

— The Supreme Court declined to let President Trump immediately fire Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook, saying it will hear oral arguments on the issue in January. Trump is trying to take over the Fed so he can control interest rates.

— The White House sent letters to nine top public and private universities asking them to sign a 10-page “compact” in which they would pledge to freeze tuition for five years, cap enrollment of international students, and commit to strict definitions of gender. The Universities would also be required to change policy to prohibit anything in their governance that would “punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”

  The letters were sent to the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Virginia.

— The White House eliminated the National Council on the Humanities, a 26-member group that advises the national Endowment for the Humanities on grant awards and promotes the arts.

  Earlier this year the Trump administration fired half the endowment’s staff and said cited plans to redirect the agency to furthering “the president’s agenda.”

THE POPE AND POLITICS: Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope,  weighed in on the politics of his home country saying that Catholic politicians must be judged on the full range of their policy positions and suggested that the country’s treatment of immigrants is “inhuman.”

  “Someone who says I’m against abortion but is in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life,” Leo said. “And someone who says I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s pro-life.”

THE OBIT PAGE: Jane Goodall, the primatologist who studied and loved chimpanzees in East Africa, revealing their tribal social structure, ability to make and use tools, engage in rain dances, and make organized warfare, died in Los Angeles at age 91. She died while on a speaking tour.

  Born in England, Goodall was 29 when she published her first groundbreaking study on the chimps along the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika. In a rudimentary camp in the African rainforest, she braved the risks of malaria, leopards, crocodiles, and cobras. 

  Although she was a familiar figure to the chimps, she had to be careful with them as well. She largely studied a troop of 30 to 40 chimps, getting to know each of them like a friend as she watched their courtship and mating, birth, and parenting. Goodall was married twice and had one son.

THE SPIN RACK: At least two people are dead today in an attack at a synagogue in Manchester, England, when a man rammed a car into some victims and stabbed others outside the synagogue. Police shot and killed him. Today is Yom Kippur, the Jewish high holiday. — A portion of brick façade collapsed from a roughly 20 story Bronx apartment building yesterday following an explosion. The gap is about the width of an elevator shaft. No one was injured. —  Two regional passenger jets operated by Endeavor Air, a subsidiary of Delta, collided on a taxiway at New York’s LaGuardia Airport last night. The wing of one jet hit the nose of the other.

BELOW THE FOLD: Late night host Stephen Colbert suggested a fix for the government shutdown: “Let’s unplug it for a while, plug it back in, see if it reboots. If that doesn’t work, maybe toss it in a bag of rice. Leave it there for a couple hours. If that doesn’t work, we’ll just throw it away and buy a new one with a better camera and a functioning president.” 

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