Written by 🏛️ THE REPUBLIC REPORT 🏛️
MIDDAY BRIEFING • SEPTEMBER 26, 2025 • DEFENDING DEMOCRACY
⚖️ CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENTS
Supreme Court to Review Trump’s Constitutional Power Grabs
Source: The Hill | Time: 2:00 PM ET
According to The Hill, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear appeals in three major cases involving President Trump’s “most outrageous power grabs.” Constitutional law expert Edward A. Purcell Jr. reports that these cases address Trump’s effort to seize control of the independent Federal Reserve System, his sweeping tariffs on Americans, and his arbitrary scheme to ignore congressional power by refusing to spend foreign aid funds. As Purcell notes, “The life-or-death question that now hangs over our constitutional republic is how many times the court can turn its head and pretend that it just does not see.” Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith warns that “An administration happy to downsize and to shed federal government employees has an asymmetric weapon against Congressional government shutdown threats.”
🏢 FEDERAL ACTIONS
White House Threatens Mass Federal Firings in Shutdown Standoff
Source: CNN | Time: 4:00 AM ET
CNN reports that a memo from the White House budget office telling federal agencies to prepare plans for mass firings should the government shut down “signaled a dramatic escalation in a funding staredown.” According to CNN’s analysis, OMB Director Russ Vought’s memo “tracks closely with something each agency has been navigating since Trump’s first day in office.” GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno warned that there could be “permanent cuts,” including the layoffs described in Vought’s memo, if a potential shutdown is dragged out. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries dismissed Vought’s memo as a scare tactic, stating “We will not be intimidated by Russ Vought, who is completely and totally out of control.”
Ex-FBI Director James Comey Indicted in Trump Retribution Campaign
Source: Democracy Now! | Time: 5 hours ago
Democracy Now! reports that “a federal grand jury has indicted former FBI Director James Comey on two criminal charges, which include making a false statement to Congress and the obstruction of a congressional proceeding.” According to the report, Thursday’s indictment comes “just days before a statute of limitations on the charges was due to expire and less than a week after President Trump installed Lindsey Halligan, his personal lawyer, as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.” Comey responded by stating, “My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way.” The New York Times reports that the Justice Department is also calling on federal prosecutors to investigate billionaire George Soros’s philanthropic group the Open Society Foundations.
🗳️ ELECTORAL INTEGRITY
Justice Department Sues Six States Over Voter Roll Access
Source: Los Angeles Times | Time: 4:09 PM PT
The Los Angeles Times reports that “The U.S. Justice Department sued California Secretary of State Shirley Weber on Thursday for failing to hand over the state’s voter rolls.” According to the report, the Justice Department also sued Weber’s counterparts in Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. Attorney General Pam Bondi stated, “Clean voter rolls are the foundation of free and fair elections.” Weber called the lawsuit “a fishing expedition and pretext for partisan policy objectives” and “an unprecedented intrusion unsupported by law or any previous practice or policy of the U.S. Department of Justice.” The lawsuit follows Trump’s March executive order that “purported to radically reshape voting rules nationwide,” as reported by the Los Angeles Times.
🇺🇸 DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS
ICE Agent Assaults Ecuadorian Mother at Federal Building
Source: Democracy Now! | Time: 5 hours ago
Democracy Now! reports that “outrage is mounting after a federal agent in plainclothes was caught on video shoving and pushing an Ecuadorian mother to the ground as her two young children watched and screamed in panic inside 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan.” According to the report, video shows the woman crying as she begs authorities not to take her husband, who was detained during the family’s asylum hearing. New York Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas stated, “We are done with this administration and their cruelty. We will demand that ICE is out of New York.” The incident occurred as protesters gathered outside the federal building, where immigrants have described being “imprisoned for days or weeks without due process in overcrowded cells,” as reported by Democracy Now!
TikTok Deal Raises National Security and Corporate Influence Concerns
Source: Democracy Now! | Time: 5 hours ago
According to Democracy Now!, “President Trump signed an executive order Thursday that would allow TikTok to keep operating in the U.S.” The report notes that Oracle’s co-founder Larry Ellison “has a decadeslong history with the Republican Party, has frequented Trump’s Mar-a-Lago for dinners and has met Trump in the Oval Office.” Additionally, Democracy Now! reports that “the United Arab Emirates-backed investment firm MGX is also reportedly set to win a major stake in TikTok’s U.S. business” and that “MGX made a $2 billion investment in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency business World Liberty Financial.” This arrangement raises questions about foreign influence and conflicts of interest in critical technology infrastructure decisions.
🗽 Vigilance is the price of liberty • Keeping watch over our republic 🗽
This report monitors the health of American democratic institutions
