STANDING DOWN: Authorities in England have already released on bail five men who were the subject of a terrorism alert outside a major air base used by the American bomber fleet that has hit targets in Iran.

  The men … all British nationals  in their 20s … had been stopped in the early hours of Sunday in their three white vans outside RAF Fairford, which is used exclusively by the US. A bomb disposal robot spent most of the day examining the three vehicles. Presumably, if explosives were found, the men would not have been released.

  The release of the men swiped the legs out from under President Trump, who told reporters thatthe suspects had intended to do “big damage” to the air base and that, “We had them under view for a long time and we got them.”

  What the men were up to, if anything, remains murky.

DEEP POCKET: Under the guidance of Budget Director Russell Vogt … who in many ways runs the US government … president Trump is cancelling $810 million in spending  on “services to refugees, asylees, and other non-citizens,” according to a memo from the White House.

  This is what’s called a “pocket recission” in which the executive branch cancels spending approved by Congress. It’s illegal but probably too late in the fiscal year for Congress to do anything about it. The Trump administration knows how to skirt the law.

MISINFORMATION: One thing is certain. There is “misinformation” coming out of Washington.

  Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that “one-sided” news is a national security issue that justifies banning the press from gaining access to the White House and Air Force One. Even after a court order restoring the White House credentials of CNN, MSNBC, and Politico, CNN is still banned from representing television news in the press pool. 

  Blanche said, “At some point, the complete misinformation and the inaccuracy and the one-sided news out of certain organizations does become a national security issue, and it’s not right for the people of the United States to have to put up with it.” 

  For one thing, when the press is on Air Force One, everything the reported comes directly from the president or his aides. The press reports what they are fed. One of the  stories the government has complained about was a rep[ort about munitions shortages resulting from the Iran war that was actually sourced from an inspector general’s report. 

  The attorney general’s definition of what constitutes a national security risk elaborates on a government claim made in a court filing seeking to justify President Trump’s effort to implement such a ban against CNN, MSNOW and Politico, which a federal judge overseeing that case has greeted with skepticism.

HOW LOW HE CAN GO: A New poll from the Wall Street Journal has President Donald Trump’s approval rating at 37 percent, the lowest of a president this close to a midterm in the newspaper’s polling going back to former President George HW Bush.

  The WSJ poll found that 60 percent of respondents said Trump’s handling of the economy has made it worse, while 25 percent said he has made it better and 10 percent said he has made no difference.

  Trump has called on voters to vote as if he’s on the ballot and the danger for Republicans might be that voters will actually do that. Even polling by the generally conservative Rasmussen reports gives Democrats a 48-43 edge to take the House with 58 percent of those polled saying the country is on the wrong track.

IVY LEAGUE: A district attorney in upstate New York has re-opened an investigation in the case of a woman who now says she was gang raped in a Cornell University frat house the night of October 19, 2024. The DA’s office said that at the time they were not given the same information now laid out in “Jane Doe’s” 101 page lawsuit against the fraternity and university.

SURVEILLANCE PRICING: The Walmart retail giant is trying to assuage the fears of customers as they convert from paper price tags on the shelves to digital.

The digital labels allow the retailer to change prices from a central computer rather than have employees do it by hand.

 But what that leads to is the growing fear of what’s called “surveillance pricing,” changing the price based on the customer’s location, spending history, and other personal information. In particular it would be much easier to do with online shopping.

  Walmart says they won’t do that and the Federal Trade Commission has warned retailers that surveillance pricing could violate consumer protection laws.

INFINITE SCROLL: 

— While Americans shoulder ever-higher prices, President Trump is campaigning this fall to tell voters how great he is for the economy. The President yesterday announced plans for a new steel mill in Iowa that would bring 6,000 new construction jobs and 1,750 permanent jobs when the mill goes to work in 2030.

— 

THE SPIN RACK: Following multiple incidents in which artificial intreloigence models have hacked into systems outside their own domain, Open AI says safety concerns have forced it to withhold release of its newest model. Microsoft founder Bill Gates said in an interview that if AI goes rogue it could. Cause a billion deaths. “There’s never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools,” he said.—  The rich opponents of California’s proposed one-time 5% tax on billionaire assets have $187 million to campaign against it.

BELOW THE FOLD: The powerful Nor’easter that pounded the East Coast over the weekend brought wind, waves, flooding, and history. Wreckage from what is believed to be the Warren Sawyer, a three-masted wooden ship that wrecked on the shores of Nantucket Island in 1884 washed up on the beach during the storm.