Speaking yesterday before a fairly staid crowd of high-ranking admirals and generals hastily ordered stateside to be in attendance, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth offered the most concrete look yet at their plans for the military during the administration’s ongoing consolidation of executive power. After a lengthy presentation by Hegseth denouncing much of the military’s diversity efforts, the president delivered a “rambling address” featuring “familiar talking points and critiques” and the “revelation” that he had instructed Hegseth to treat “dangerous cities” as military “training grounds” for domestic deployments, said The New York Times. 

“I say they spit, we hit. Is that OK?” Trump said during his hour-plus speech, outlining his policy toward protesters. “I think so, they spit — it’s a new thing. They spit, we hit.” Trump also directed the assembled military leaders to “handle” what he deemed the “enemy within” and said troops whose vehicles are hit with bricks or other objects should “do whatever the hell” they want in response. 

The president wants to “use the American military to kill American citizens on American soil,” said New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie on Bluesky. “That’s the whole story!” 

The “deeply political address” comes as the White House has launched a “widespread crackdown” on what it describes as “left-wing terrorism” in the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing, said Time magazine. It was “priming the top brass to conceive of forthcoming military operations” in American cities as wartime actions, said The New Republic. Trump also used the speech to “highlight his peacemaking prowess around the world (though the record has been mixed),” said NPR.

Congressional Democrats, known for their “pro-government posture and defense of the federal workforce,” find themselves in an “unusual position these days,” said The Washington Post, “cheering on a government shutdown.” With an ideological center that has “shifted left” since the 2018 shutdown, Democrats are now “bracing for an extended confrontation” with the Republican majorities and Trump White House “despite the clear political risks,” said The New York Times. 

Democrats have made health care, and in particular codifying permanent Affordable Care Act extensions passed under the Biden administration, a “sticking point in the shutdown debate,” said Geoff Bennett on “PBS NewsHour.” In past government shutdowns, “whoever’s on the wrong side of the health care debate has lost,” said Rep. Glenn Ivey. 

But Democrats also have “another motivation for not backing down” from their health care demands, said Politico. For the past eight months, Democrats, and some congressional Republicans, have rankled at the White House’s “snowballing efforts to scrap congressionally approved spending,” even as the effort has been “eclipsed by Democrats’ larger push to extend expanded Affordable Care Act tax credits” as a shutdown sticking point. 

The president has made clear that he refuses to accept any responsibility for the shutdown, suggesting that it could be an opportunity to purge political opposition from the federal ranks. ”When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs,“ Trump said yesterday. ”We would be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected, and they are Democrats.”

Drought, tariffs and consumer demand all play a role