The Trump Administration Works to Rehabilitate Richard Nixon’s Rep; the Governor Signs a Bill to Help News Orgs–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Oct. 1, 2026

Indy Digest: Oct. 1, 2026

The nation’s news sources today are filled with headlines that make it very clear that in the United States, things are not quite right.

Here are just three of them, in no particular order.

First, from The Associated Press: “Christa Pike is in critical condition after Tennessee’s failed execution attempt, her lawyers say.”

Christa Pike was in critical condition Thursday and receiving “lifesaving care” at a hospital, her lawyers said, a day after a failed attempt to execute her pushed Tennessee’s governor to halt further executions this year and order an independent review.

Pike, who was sentenced to death for a 1995 murder, was taken to a hospital Wednesday night after surviving a double dose of the drug Tennessee uses to execute prisoners.

“We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment,” attorney Randy Spivey said during a news conference. “But we know she is alive right now.”

The failed execution, which one death penalty expert described as unprecedented, led Republican Gov. Bill Lee to order a review, calling what happened “deeply disturbing” and indefinitely postponing Pike’s execution and another one that had been scheduled for this year. It also reignited the debate over the state’s execution procedures, including its single-drug lethal injections.

Spivey called the process cruel and torturous, saying he was “haunted” by watching and hearing Pike talking, singing and then snoring loudly during her more than 90 minutes in the death chamber. Her attorneys also said it was unclear if she might have suffered brain damage from being deprived of oxygen.

Awful. So awful.

Next up, from Politico: “Vance’s red-state swing hits Florida as polls tighten in Sunshine State.”

Vice President JD Vance rallied the MAGA base in Central Florida on Thursday, urging them to turn out for Republicans as polling suggests the state’s races for governor, Senate and redrawn House districts could be tighter than expected.

“It seems very obvious that Florida is MAGA country,” said Vance, who received raucous applause from the GOP-friendly audience when he walked onstage under a banner that read “Defend our Future.” …

Vance, who is one of the White House’s top midterm surrogates and has embarked on a red-state swing, pressed the base assembled at an aircraft hangar and events venue to turn out in November to “send a message to the far-left radicals.” He accused Democrats of wanting to make Florida “less free, less safe and more poor.” He repeatedly referred to the state as “the free state of Florida,” a slogan popularized by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Vance talked up the GOP candidate for governor, Rep. Byron Donalds, as well as GOP Sen. Ashley Moody, who DeSantis appointed and has been running a cautious campaign to keep her seat. The duo, Vance said, “want the same things that President Trump and I want” regarding safety, healthy food and “happy families.”

He took aim at Moody’s progressive Democratic rival, state Rep. Angie Nixon, saying it was “almost too easy to make fun of her.” “When Angie Nixon calls herself a socialist,” he said, “I think the right response is to say, ‘Then get the hell out of here. You don’t belong in America.’”

“You don’t belong in America?” Awful. It’s also worth noting that Rep. Nixon is Black.

Last, and far from least, from The Wall Street Journal (gift link) comes news about an unrelated Nixon: “Decades After Watergate, Justice Department Reviews Whether Nixon Got a Raw Deal.”

For nearly two years, the Justice Department has made it a priority to investigate people who previously investigated President Trump. Now it is reaching back in history to consider whether prosecutors mistreated an earlier Republican president: Richard Nixon.

The department is reviewing whether the special prosecutor’s office that investigated the famed Watergate break-in committed misconduct, according to people familiar with the matter, more than half a century after that scandal led to Nixon’s resignation. 

Geoff Shepard, a former Nixon aide turned Watergate historian and revisionist, recently gave a two-hour presentation at Justice Department headquarters that laid out his theory that the deep state took Nixon down. The title of his 78-page slide deck: “Watergate As Lawfare.”

The review comes at a moment of renewed interest in the Nixon legacy. Republicans see in the combative former president, who was loathed by the press and besieged by investigations, a historical analogue for Trump. During remarks at the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, Calif., this summer, Vice President JD Vance made the comparison explicit.

“If you look at the story of how the deep state took down Richard Nixon, it’s not all that different from what the same groups of people—the same institutions—tried to do to Donald Trump in the first Trump administration,” Vance said. “There is a parallel.”

Sigh. Things are definitely amiss in these United States.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• A huge round of applause, please, for the student journalists at The Cornell Daily Sun, for breaking what became big national news. The New York Times (gift link) says: “Editors of The Cornell Daily Sun clustered around their computers late Monday night, getting ready to send out a letter from the editor. They looked bleary-eyed, and one reporter confessed she had skipped her class on Nietzsche that day. These student journalists at Cornell University were pressing through a dizzying two weeks following the story of a student’s allegation that she was raped on campus in 2024. The case had long had their attention; now it had burst into the national spotlight, and their high-risk decision to publish the names of the accused was being discussed not only in Cornell’s libraries and walkways but in the national media. Back in November 2024, students at Cornell were shaken by an alert they received over email: ‘Crime ALERT: Sexual Assault,’ the email read, referring to the case of a woman who told the Cornell police she had been assaulted at a fraternity house. There was outrage on campus. Students threw eggs at the fraternity house, Chi Phi, that the woman named. The university convened a sexual assault task force, which compiled a series of recommendations for teaching students about consent and the processes for reporting assault. Then much of the campus attention moved on. But Cereese Qusba, 22, a senior and reporter for The Sun, couldn’t shake her concerned curiosity about the case.”

• A round of applause, please, for Gov. Gavin Newsom, who signed a bill that will be a big help to journalism organizations statewide. The Santa Barbara Independent reports: “In a historic victory for California’s local newsrooms, Governor Gavin Newsom passed a new piece of legislation, Assembly Bill 2222 also known as the Community NEWS Act, on Wednesday which aims to revitalize journalism in the state. The act, introduced by Assemblymember Christopher M. Ward of San Diego and co-sponsored by the coalition Rebuild Local News, secured five years of uncapped funding for local news outlets through refundable tax credits that go toward retaining reporters and expanding newsrooms across the state. Newsrooms will receive $20,000 for up to five full-time journalists, but bigger newsrooms don’t have to fear; the act promises $15,000 credits for each additional full-time journalist on staff, and adds another $15,000 on top of that for new hires. For part-time journalists, $7,500 credits are available to outlets.”

• The Washington Post’s headline: “Campaign-style Trump ads use money meant for border security, memorials.” Ugh. Details (gift link): “The Trump administration is airing campaign-style television ads using money Congress approved for border security upgrades, efforts to combat drug trafficking and memorials for officers killed in the line of duty, according to federal spending records. Democrats say the ads break multiple federal laws by using taxpayer money for political purposes that Congress never authorized. The White House defends the ads as public service announcements. One of the spots closely resembles a 30-second video produced by the Trump campaign in 2024. The latest ad features President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth advocating for the Iran war. They feature disclosures saying they are ‘Paid for by the U.S. Government. … A White House spokesperson, who did not identify themself, described the ads as educational and patriotic and referred questions to OMB and DHS. A DHS spokesperson said the agency makes contracting decisions in accordance with applicable laws.”

• Likely related: Wired magazine reports that the people at the White House are feeling pretty pessimistic about the upcoming election: “President Donald Trump has told aides that he thinks Republicans could still outperform expectations in the midterm elections this November, seemingly unwilling to confront the worsening political climate for the GOP. But aides acknowledge privately that the national polling for Trump is shockingly bad, and the White House, in recent weeks, has begun to contemplate for the first time losing both the House and Senate majorities. One longtime Trumpworld operative, who correctly predicted weeks before the 2024 presidential election that Trump was on course to win every battleground state, summed it up for Inner Loop: ‘Oh, yeah, we’re going to get creamed.’ Trump’s approval rating recently dropped to 37 percent in a Wall Street Journal poll, the lowest of any president heading into a midterm election dating back to 1990, when these polls first began. Trump’s more positive outlook has been informed in part by internal polling that shows Republicans down by less in individual House races, the sources say.”

• The CNN headline says “Over 90% of common household items contain hazardous plastic chemicals.” Ugh! Details: “Nearly 93% of known plastic chemicals used to wrap food and make clothes, toys, and other common household and personal care products pose a high risk to human health, according to a new investigation provided exclusively to CNN. Potential health harms include cancer, genetic changes, and endocrine, reproductive and organ toxicity, said Naima Fenderl, lead author of ‘Poison Plastics: How Chemicals in Everyday Plastics are Harming Your Health,’ released Wednesday. ‘We looked at what these plastic chemicals can do to the body along with exposure levels to calculate overall health risk,’ said Fenderl, a researcher at the Environmental Justice Foundation, or EJF, a London-based environmental nonprofit which produced the report.”

• And finally … today’s recall news involves … peperoncini! This one is both really gross and of questionable origin. SFGate reports: “Mezzetta recalled its 32-ounce jars of Golden Greek Peperoncini on Saturday following a TikTok post that has garnered more than 467,000 views since it was shared on Sept. 17. In the video, a woman is seen holding a jar of peperoncini, which appears to include a dead rodent inside. ‘Public service announcement. Don’t buy this brand of peperoncini. I have a dead mouse in mine,’ the poster said. Mezzetta issued a statement with the Food and Drug Administration stating that it has contacted the consumer and is working on an investigation. Mezzetta did not respond to questions regarding what specific grocery stores or states are affected by the recall, which only applies to the 32-ounce jars of Golden Greek Peperoncini. At this time, the recall is limited to one product from a single production lot. No illnesses have been reported.”

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