Editorials from The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and others

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

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Sept. 26 – The New York Times on the indictment of James Comey

The events of the past week in Virginia mark a dark new stage in President Trump’s effort to turn federal law enforcement into a personal tool of oppression and vengeance. He is undermining a core promise of the American justice system: the fair and equal enforcement of the law.

On Thursday evening his handpicked federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of Virginia, Lindsey Halligan, obtained an indictment of the former F.B.I. director James Comey on highly dubious charges. The indictment came just four days after Mr. Trump installed her on an interim basis and just days before the statute of limitations on the charges would have expired.

He chose Ms. Halligan – his former personal attorney, who had no prosecutorial experience – for her willingness to be compliant. The president forced out her predecessor Erik Siebert after he refused to file charges in the Comey case and another one. Mr. Siebert’s staff spent months investigating before deciding there were no grounds for indictment. Mr. Trump responded with a social media post pronouncing Mr. Comey “guilty as hell” and vowed that Ms. Halligan would see to the prosecution of the cases in a way that her “woke” predecessor refused to do.

Long before this week, Mr. Trump crossed some of the clearest and most important lines in how justice is administered. He ran for office promising to prosecute his enemies and appointed loyalists who have ordered investigations of people the president does not like. On their own, those moves deserved to be the biggest law enforcement scandal of the past 50 years. Yet they turned out to be just a start. He has now gone beyond ordering investigations to dictating their outcome.

He has removed any pretense that the law is blind. As despots have done for centuries, he is persecuting people he considers his enemies, with little justification other than raw political power. It is reminiscent of the old royal notion “L’état, c’est moi”: I am the state.

This country’s founders recognized precisely this danger. In the Declaration of Independence, they excoriated the British king for prosecuting Americans for “pretended offenses.” Over time, their descendants created a legal system that became the envy of the world.

There were certainly lapses, including during the Red Scares and the surveillance of civil rights leaders, when the Justice Department targeted people for political reasons. Yet the Watergate scandal helped inspire a new era. Presidents of both parties wisely chose to give the Justice Department more independence than most other parts of the executive branch. Attorneys general, along with the prosecutors who reported to them, built a culture of independence supported by internal rules that made Justice Department officials, from both parties and from neither, justly proud. Over the past half-century, the department earned a reputation for fairness.

The system even held up during stresses. Almost 20 years ago, after President George W. Bush’s attorney general Alberto Gonzales dismissed nine federal prosecutors for political reasons, congressional pressure led to Mr. Gonzales’s resignation. His sins never approached Mr. Trump’s, but the principle was clear: Turning federal prosecutors into political hacks would cost an attorney general his job.

Mr. Trump is dismantling that system. He has installed cronies in top posts, demanded that prosecutors place ideology and loyalty above the law and dumped them if they dared point out that the imagined offenses would not hold up in court. By using the flimsiest pretexts to direct the prosecution of his perceived enemies, he is tearing at the basic notions of fairness that hold the country together.

His targeting of Mr. Comey is personal. The president despises Mr. Comey for refusing to pledge loyalty to him eight years ago and instead leading a criminal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Mr. Trump has long claimed that Mr. Comey helped illegally leak classified information about the investigation to the media and that he lied to Congress about doing so. Mr. Siebert evidently found that case to be lacking.

The new indictment, which is strikingly brief and thin, charges Mr. Comey with one count of making a false statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020 and a second count of obstructing a congressional proceeding in the same testimony. In an unusual move, the grand jury rejected a third false statement count that Ms. Halligan sought. Grand juries typically file the indictments that federal prosecutors ask for. Mr. Comey has repeatedly denied that he misled the Senate.

Mr. Comey is one person on a Trump enemies list. The president has also called for the prosecution of Letitia James, the New York attorney general who won a judgment against the Trump Organization for financial fraud, and Senator Adam Schiff of California, who led Mr. Trump’s first impeachment in the House of Representatives. Mr. Trump says they should be prosecuted for supposedly lying on mortgage applications, the same pretext he is using to attempt to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve’s board of governors. Mr. Trump has also pushed federal prosecutors in Pennsylvania to indict the former C.I.A. director John Brennan over his role in the Russia investigation. And a top Justice Department official recently ordered prosecutors to investigate George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, a liberal nonprofit group.

We know the response that Trump allies will offer, and it is wholly unpersuasive. They claim that the actions of Mr. Trump and his attorney general, Pam Bondi, are no worse than the Biden Justice Department’s decision to indict Mr. Trump. Those charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, along with the removal of sensitive documents from the White House. If one side can weaponize justice, the thinking seems to go, then every side can.

But that notion buys into a false equivalence. In the earlier cases, there is no doubt that laws were broken, and there is significant evidence that Mr. Trump was a part of it. No such evidence exists as yet about his current targets. His fundamental position is that the law itself has no meaning – that he should be able both to break it when he chooses and to use it as a partisan weapon.

The ruination of an independent justice system is merely one way in which Mr. Trump is abusing the power of the presidency, and some congressional Republicans have spoken out against other abuses. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said that the recent push by the F.C.C. chairman, Brendan Carr, to keep Jimmy Kimmel off the air was ” dangerous as hell ” and sounded like a Mafioso “right out of ‘Goodfellas.'” Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has criticized the administration’s destruction of boats in the Caribbean Sea as “killing someone without a trial.” Other Republicans have criticized the president’s move to cut spending without the approval of Congress.

Yet almost no elected Republicans have spoken out against Mr. Trump’s manipulation of prosecutorial power. Nor have they translated their expressions of concern in other areas into meaningful action. They need to do so. Because they control Congress, they alone have the power to hold investigative hearings and issue subpoenas, which would signal to all Americans that Mr. Trump is threatening the fabric of our society.

Misusing the power to imprison people is uniquely chilling in a free society. Our country has entered a grave new period of injustice.

ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/opinion/comey-indictment-justice-department.html

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Sept. 29 – The Washington Post on the expiration of the African Growth and Opportunity Act

One of the United States’ most successful regional trade pacts, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, expires at midnight on Tuesday, with no extension in sight. That’s a shame, because the 25-year-old trade deal has helped create jobs, reduce poverty and bolster the economies of some of the continent’s poorest countries.

But all is not yet lost. Some African leaders, who have been lobbying in Washington and on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, have returned home hopeful that Congress could pass a short extension of AGOA before the end of the year. “They promised us that by November or December (at) the latest, it will be extended by a year,” the trade minister of tiny Lesotho, one of the main beneficiaries of the act, said after meetings in Washington.

In Washington’s unpredictable budget negotiations, things can still go awry, even on issues with bipartisan support. Most worrying is that the White House has not said publicly whether it supports a renewal. That means it will be up to Africa’s friends in Congress, and the business community, to make the case that the pact is worth saving.

It should be an easy sell. AGOA grants duty-free access to the U.S. market for 32 African nations now qualifying. It is responsible for creating 300,000 jobs directly and roughly 1 million more indirectly. The program has boosted America’s image and influence across Africa at a time when China and Russia have increased their economic, diplomatic and military ties. It has allowed the U.S. to minimize financial aid handouts to Africa in favor of bolstering local industries and increasing countries’ self-reliance. And it is creating markets for American businesses on the world’s youngest and fastest-growing continent.

Critics rightly point out that AGOA’s benefits are concentrated among a few countries, but a short-term renewal would buy time for Congress to negotiate reforms that would broaden participation under a longer-term reauthorization. AGOA stands on its own merits. A short-term lapse, even by a few weeks, will cause uncertainty and chaos as exporters and importers are forced to adjust to new duties.

ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/09/29/agoa-africa-trade-expiring-extension/

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Sept. 29 – The Wall Street Journal says soybean farmers are feeling the effects of Trump’s trade war

Whoever claimed trade wars are easy to win clearly wasn’t an American farmer. Witness the enormous collateral damage America’s soybean producers are suffering amid President Trump’s trade war with China.

Exports of American soybeans to China have collapsed this year, with no new orders logged in recent months ahead of the prime autumn export season. Before Mr. Trump’s first round of tariffs on China in 2018, China was the largest export market for American soy. It typically bought about 30% of total U.S. soybean production and some 60% of American soybean exports. Those exports were worth $12.8 billion annually, the soybean farmers’ trade association reports.

Beijing has made a concerted effort to diversify its supply of soybeans and related products since the first Trump Administration. Brazil and, more recently, Argentina have been the big winners.

Beijing also has imposed a 23% retaliatory tariff on American soybeans in response to Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports this year. This adds some $2 per bushel to the cost of American soybeans sold in China, far outweighing an American production price advantage of 80 to 90 cents a bushel, Reuters reports. As a result, American farmers lose out on large advance orders since China buys from the U.S. only to fill gaps in South American and other production.

At least American soy farmers are in good company as China targets a range of American agricultural products for retaliation. Cattle ranchers are seeing Chinese demand for American beef dwindle as China shifts its consumption to imports from Australia.

The protectionists’ solution is to throw more subsidies at American farmers. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Mr. Trump this month floated plans to use a portion of tariff revenue to write checks to farmers.

Mr. Trump said the handouts to farmers might continue “until the tariffs kick in to their benefit,” in which case Treasury will be making payouts for a long time. And talk about blowing a hole in protectionists’ argument that tariffs are free money for the government that can be used for other purposes.

Don’t mistake any of this for a Chinese victory per se. Beijing is forcing Chinese consumers-who have much lower per-capita incomes than Americans-to pay more for soy products than they otherwise would. Most recent data point to a marked deterioration as the Trump tariffs weigh on an economy already struggling with a property-market deflation and a crushing debt burden.

But the plight of America’s farmers is a reminder that the destruction of a trade war is mutually assured, and not inflicted solely by one side on the other as Mr. Trump’s trade warriors so often claim. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said America holds all the cards in Mr. Trump’s tariff game because the rest of the world needs to sell us stuff. Tell that to America’s farmers.

ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-tariffs-china-american-soybean-farmers-6825a014?mod=editorials_article_pos3

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Sept. 28 – The St. Louis Post-Dispatch on food-program cuts and nixing of annual hunger survey

President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” is anything but for the nation’s poorest families. Among the numerous cruel elements to the new spending plan are food-program cuts that are expected to increase “food insecurity” – also known as hunger – for millions of Americans, including children.

What terrible optics going into the midterm election season. But no worries. Trump’s administration this month announced how it intends to address the politically inconvenient specter of coddling billionaires at the expense of impoverished Americans who will go hungry: It’s ending the longstanding hunger survey that counts them.

It’s part of a broader pattern on a wide array of issues on which this president – who routinely insists that reality is whatever clearly false thing he says it – has moved to make sure nobody can confront him with unpleasant facts.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Sept. 20 that it is ending its annual Household Food Security Report, which has been in place more than three decades to assess hunger in America. The yearly report, the agency alleges, was “redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous.”

The announcement offered no evidence that’s true. What’s definitely true is that the cessation of the annual report will make it more difficult for anyone to accurately quantify the approaching misery from Trump’s (and congressional Republicans’) cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

The cuts to what used to be called food stamps are expected to mean as many as 3 million adults will lose their benefits entirely to unnecessary and unworkable work requirements – benefit cuts that will inevitably impact those recipients’ children. Other reductions and changes to the way the program is administered could mean reduced benefits for millions more, according to various studies.

The administration’s move now to end a key source of data that would track the human impact of those lost benefits is hardly surprising. This is the president, after all, who shortly after returning to office in January (promising to “drain the swamp”) purged his administration of more than a dozen inspectors general – the independent watchdogs assigned to monitor various federal agencies for unethical activity.

In the months since, Trump’s see no evil approach to his own policies has played out again and again regarding an array of topics. Consider:

• Crime. Trump’s Department of Justice has removed from its websites data on hate crimes against LGBTQ+ Americans and nixed a database that used to track police misconduct.

And just days after the recent assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk – as Trump was publicly insisting without evidence that political violence is caused exclusively by those on the “radical left” – the DOJ took down a previously posted study that had concluded right-wing extremists have killed far more Americans in recent years than any other form of domestic terrorism.

• The environment. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency has ended emissions tracking of industry that has been conducted for more than a decade. It has effectively ended a congressionally mandated program that details the impact of climate change in the U.S. for use by local government planners. And it has scrubbed numerous federal websites that provided the public with the latest scientific data from NASA, the EPA and elsewhere regarding climate and the environment.

• Health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has deleted or altered thousands of documents on his websites related to COVID, HIV/AIDS and gun violence. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has fired mainstream disease experts throughout his departments, replacing them in many cases with fringe activists who reflect his own anti-vaccination zealotry.

• Gender. Agencies across Trump’s government have been ordered to purge all their sites and documents of any reference to transgender or LGBTQ+ Americans – a remarkable campaign to effectively erase an entire segment of the population that has chilling global precedence from the 20th century.

• Race. The administration’s order that departments scrub all materials of anything critical of America’s past has led to such Orwellian moves as removal of the famed ” Scourged Back ” photograph of a former slave’s whipping scars from a National Parks Service site (too negative). The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture has removed exhibits and artifacts related to slavery and the Civil Rights movement.

This administration’s nixing of the annual hunger survey won’t prevent one child from going hungry – it will merely make it more difficult to count up the ones who will be, because of Trump’s cuts. That, like these moves to erase urgent data regarding so many other facets of civic life, is by design. On that much, the data is clear.

ONLINE: https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/article_b4bbaa9c-2543-4450-9f3e-3d65d0eca9f3.html

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Sept. 25 – The Guardian says Russia is testing U.S. and allies with airspace incursions

The sheer volume of headlines tells its own tale. Russian drones over Poland and Romania. Russian fighter jets in Estonian airspace. Russian aircraft buzzing a German naval frigate in the Baltic Sea. Unidentified drones over Copenhagen and Oslo airports. Most recently, in the early hours of Thursday, further drones appearing at other Danish airports.

In just over a fortnight, European states have reported a striking spate of incursions into their airspace. Russia has repeatedly denied responsibility and questions remain over individual events: so far, Denmark has said only that a “professional actor” was at work in the airport incidents and that it can’t rule out Russia. But overall, there is a pattern which fits clearly into Moscow’s longer record of provocations and often implausible deniability – and which amounts to a notable escalation.

Such operations may distract from Russia’s slow progress on the battlefield in Ukraine. More obviously, they look like a test of both military responses and political will. On the first count, there is work to be done, judging from the reaction to the 19 drones in Polish airspace. On the second, Russia is testing whether Europe will hold its nerve in supporting Ukraine – and perhaps others in future – when faced with nuisance or worse. Drones come cheap, yet forced Denmark to suspend flights from its largest airport for four hours, and Poland to spend millions scrambling jets.

Most obviously, these incursions are also testing US intentions. Donald Trump suggested this week that Ukraine could win back its lost territory and that Nato countries should shoot down Russian aircraft entering their airspace. Yet that looks less like a reorientation of US policy than, in the words of one Nato official, “his hot take of the hour”. It is surely no coincidence that these events followed the red-carpet welcome that Mr Trump awarded Vladimir Putin in Alaska. An emboldened Russia is confident that the US intends to further disengage from European security, rather than to bolster support.

Nato members met this week at Estonia’s request, but there are marked differences between their positions as well as shared alarm. Though shooting down a Russian plane would not be unprecedented – Turkey did it in 2015 – there is a division between those who believe it would deter Moscow and those who fear it would escalate the dangers.

These incursions should not treated as a narrowly military affair, but seen within Russia’s multi-domain strategy. The broader picture of security risks covers civilian infrastructure, too, and may involve non-state agents either enlisted or enabled by Moscow. Incidents may be less attention-grabbing yet potentially more significant.

The past year has seen repeated damage to undersea communications cables in the Baltic Sea, with suspicion of Moscow’s involvement. Norway’s spy chief said recently that Russian hackers had taken control of a dam this spring, releasing water for four hours before their interference was noticed. Ken McCallum, head of MI5, warned last October that Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, was “on a sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets: we’ve seen arson, sabotage and more”. He stressed that businesses, as well as the state, must address their vulnerabilities. The difficulties of establishing a unified response to the last fortnight’s events are a reminder that a comprehensive and coherent response to these broader issues will be essential, and even more challenging.

ONLINE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/25/the-guardian-view-on-nato-airspace-incursions-russia-is-testing-european-and-us-will-it-wont-stop-here