16 Sep 2025

Recipes: Make these Rosh Hashanah dishes to usher in a sweet new year

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Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins on the evening of Monday, Sept. 22, and is celebrated for two days.

For the occasion, people wish each other a happy, healthy, sweet New Year. To highlight this wish, cooks in many households accent their holiday menus with sweet ingredients.

Apple slices dipped in honey are the traditional beginning to the Rosh Hashanah dinner. On the second day of the holiday, a popular custom is to serve seasonal or exotic fruits; this year we plan to embellish ours with a sprinkling of a sweet Middle Eastern mixture made of sesame seeds toasted with nuts.

In our menus we like to include touches of sweetness in every dish, such as our fruit cobbler dessert made with fresh and dried fruit. Our sweet flavorings are sometimes subtle, like the raisins in our picadillo and the pomegranate sauce that’s spooned into bowls of our noodle soup.

As an additional treat we are preparing sugar-free blueberry jam, which makes a deliciously sweet topping for yogurt, as well as a nutritious spread for our Rosh Hashanah challah.

Fruit salad is shown served with sweet dukkah, a mixture of toasted sesame seeds with nuts and sweet spices. (Photo by Yakir Levy)

Fruit Salad with Sweet Dukkah

We’re serving our Rosh Hashanah fruit platter this year with a special topping — sweet dukkah.

Sweet dukkah, a mixture of toasted sesame seeds with nuts and sweet spices is a great sprinkling for fruit. (Photo by Yakir Levy)

Dukkah is best known as a savory sprinkle made with sesame seeds and spices. Rachel Simons, author of “Sesame: Global Recipes + Stories of an Ancient Seed,” makes sweet dukkah as well. We love it sprinkled over mixtures of fresh fruit, including berries, tangerine segments, melon cubes, mango pieces and grapes.

Yield: 2 1/2 cups dukkah, 8 to 10 servings fruit

INGREDIENTS

1 cup sesame seeds

1/2 cup pistachios, coarsely chopped

1/2 cup almonds, coarsely chopped

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom

1/2 teaspoon flaky salt

1/2 cup unsweetened coconut flakes

2 tablespoons edible dried rose petals (optional)

Platter of 8 to 10 cups cut fruit (for serving)

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Spread sesame seeds, pistachios and almonds on prepared baking sheet. Sprinkle with cinnamon, cardamom and salt; toss to combine.

2. Bake for 6 minutes. Give baking sheet a vigorous shake to move nuts and seeds. Add coconut and shake baking sheet again. Return mixture to oven. Bake until coconut turns golden brown, 4 to 6 minutes more. Check regularly to make sure dukkah isn’t burning.

3. Cool completely in pan; add rose petals. Store in an airtight container up to 2 months. Serve with cut fruit.

Sugar-Free Blueberry Jam” is made from a recipe in the cookbook “Cold Canning: The Easy Way to Preserve the Seasons” by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough. (Photo by Yakir Levy)

Sugar-Free Blueberry Jam

We couldn’t believe this jam tastes so good without sugar. It’s from a recipe in “Cold Canning: The Easy Way to Preserve the Seasons” by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough.

Blueberries are high in pectin; this jam cooks long enough to set without additional pectin and gains a rich, almost caramelized flavor. It’s sweetened with a cup-for-cup white sugar substitute. I used monk fruit and erythritol sweetener.

Yield: About 2 cups

INGREDIENTS

1 pound 6 ounces fresh blueberries (about 4 cups)

3/4 to 1 cup (1-to-1) (by volume) granulated white sugar substitute

1/4 cup unsweetened apple juice

1 tablespoon lemon juice

DIRECTIONS

1. Combine ingredients in a large saucepan. Set it over medium-high heat. Stir constantly to dissolve sugar substitute. Bring mixture to a boil that you can’t stir down, stirring often.

2. Use back of a wooden spoon to mash about half of blueberries into simmering liquid. Reduce heat to low. Cook, stirring often, until thickened, 20 to 25 minutes.

3. Turn off heat and remove pan from burner. Let stand for 1 or 2 minutes; skim off any foamy impurities with a tablespoon.

4. Transfer to two clean 1/2-pint jars or other containers, leaving about 1/2 inch of headspace in each. Cover or seal. Cool at room temperature for no more than 1 hour, then refrigerate or freeze. In the fridge, the jam may take 24 hours to set. It keeps refrigerated up to 2 weeks or frozen up to 6 months.

Vegan fruit cobbler is made with almond flour and with fresh and dried mango and blueberries. (Photo by Yakir Levy)

Mango and Blueberry Cobbler

This light, delicately sweet pareve dessert is inspired by the summer fruit cobbler in Miami Vegan by Ellen Kanner.

To sweeten it, I replaced part of the sugar with dried blueberries and diced dried mango. Serve it with plant-based vanilla yogurt if you like.

Yield: 6 servings

INGREDIENTS

2 tablespoons coconut oil or vegan butter

5 tablespoons olive oil blend (olive oil, sunflower oil and avocado oil) or vegan butter

1/3 cup almond flour

1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup unsweetened almond milk

1/4 cup chopped dried mango

1/4 cup dried blueberries

1 cup blueberries

1 cup sliced mango

1 cup diced nectarine

Mango and nectarine cubes, blueberries and pecans (for garnish)

DIRECTIONS

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees, or convection or air fryer toaster oven to 325. Melt coconut oil and olive oil blend in 6-cup casserole in preheating oven.

2. In a medium bowl mix flour, baking powder and sugar. Add oat milk and stir until smooth. Stir in dried fruit.

3. Carefully pour about half of melted oil mixture into batter, leaving rest in baking dish. Stir batter together to incorporate; pour it into baking dish.

4. Spoon the fresh fruit on top, keeping it mostly toward the center. As the cobbler bakes, the batter rises to encase the fruit.

5. Bake for 40 to 60 minutes or until a tester inserted in batter comes out clean. Cool slightly. Serve garnished with fruit and pecans.

Noodle soup with roasted mushrooms is served with spicy pomegranate sauce. (Photo by Yakir Levy)

Noodle Soup with Spicy Pomegranate Sauce

This soup, inspired by a recipe in “Umma: A Korean Mom’s Kitchen Wisdom and 100 Family Recipes” by Sarah Ahn and Nam Soon Ahn, gains extra flavor from a generous amount of garlic, as well as ginger root, fish sauce and sesame oil. A hot pepper sauce flavored with tangy and sweet pomegranate molasses adds a lively finishing touch.

Yield: 4 servings

INGREDIENTS

2 cups shiitake mushrooms, stems reserved for stock

1 teaspoon vegetable oil

1 1/2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil

1 leek, trimmed, greens chopped, white part sliced

3/4 teaspoon black peppercorns, plus ground black pepper for serving

6 oz Korean radish or daikon, sliced

1 celery rib, chopped coarse

7 garlic cloves peeled plus 2 teaspoons minced garlic

2 1/2 teaspoons coarsely chopped peeled gingerroot

1 tablespoon fish sauce

1 small russet potato, peeled, halved lengthwise and sliced crosswise 1/8 inch thick

1/2 onion, sliced 1/2 inch thick

1/2 carrot, cut in 3-inch matchsticks

10 ounces noodles, cooked

2 ounces Korean summer squash or zucchini, cut in 3-inch matchsticks

2 green onions, chopped fine

Salt to taste

Spicy Sauce for Noodle Soup — See Note

DIRECTIONS

1. Quarter mushrooms; put them on a tray, sprinkle them with vegetable oil and roast at 400 degrees for 8 minutes per side. Toss mushrooms with sesame oil; cover and set aside.

2. Bring 6 cups water to a boil in a large pot. Add shiitake mushroom stems, leek greens and peppercorns; simmer for 15 minutes to make stock. Remove vegetables and peppercorns with a slotted spoon.

3. Add to broth: radish, leek slices, celery, garlic cloves and gingerroot and bring to a boil. Cook 10 minutes. Add fish sauce, potato, onion and carrot. Return to a boil. Simmer, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes or until vegetables are tender.

4. Add cooked noodles, squash matchsticks, minced garlic and green onions. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Top each serving with a spoonful of the sauce. Serve remaining sauce separately.

Note: Spicy Sauce for Noodle Soup:

Mix 2 tablespoons soy sauce with 2 tablespoons Korean or other pepper flakes, 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil, 1/2 tablespoon minced garlic, 3/4 teaspoon pomegranate molasses and 1/2 teaspoon sugar. Add 1/2 seeded finely chopped red Fresno chile, 1/2 seeded finely chopped jalapeño pepper, and 1 finely chopped green onion.

Picadillo made with lentils, walnuts, tomatoes, olives and capers is shown served with cauliflower rice. (Photo by Yakir Levy)

Lentil and Walnut Picadillo

Picadillo, a main course usually made with ground beef, tomatoes, olives and capers, could be described as a sloppy joe with a Spanish accent. Ellen Kanner, author of “Miami Vegan: Plant-Based Recipes from the Tropics to Your Table,” makes it with lentils and walnuts instead of beef. Serve it with cauliflower rice or brown rice. Raisins provide a touch of sweetness.

Yield: 4 servings

INGREDIENTS

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 onion, chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 sweet red pepper, chopped

3/4 pound tomatoes, chopped, or a 15-ounce can chopped tomatoes

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

3 cups cooked brown lentils (from 1 1/2 cup dried lentils), cooled

1 cup walnuts, chopped

1/3 cup pitted green olives, chopped

1/3 cup raisins

1 tablespoon capers, rinsed and drained

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large skillet heat oil over medium-high heat. When it starts to shimmer, add chopped onion, minced garlic and chopped red pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables soften and become slightly golden and fragrant, about 8 minutes.

2. Stir in tomato, cumin, oregano and smoked paprika. Add cooked lentils, walnuts, chopped olives, raisins and capers, taking care not to crush the lentils.

3. Cover and cook over low heat for 10 minutes or until heated through. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve.

Braised baby potatoes are served with a salty-sweet sauce, finished with sesame seeds, green onions and pepper flakes. (Photo by Yakir Levy)

Sesame Braised Baby Potatoes

These petite potatoes are boiled, then stir fried, tossed with a salty-sweet sauce and finished with sesame seeds, green onions and pepper flakes. Preparing them this way makes them creamy and tempting. The recipe is from “Umma” by Sarah Ahn and Nam Soon Ahn.

Yield: 4 servings

INGREDIENTS

2/3 cup water

2 tablespoons plus 1/2 teaspoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon corn syrup

12 ounces baby potatoes, unpeeled

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon neutral cooking oil

1 tablespoon sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons sesame seeds, toasted

1 green onion, sliced thin

1/2 teaspoon gochugaru (Korean red pepper) or crushed pepper flakes

DIRECTIONS

1. Whisk the water, soy sauce and corn syrup together in a small bowl.

2. Add potatoes and salt to a 14-inch flat bottomed wok or 12-inch nonstick skillet and cover with water by 1 inch. Bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes. Drain and pat dry with paper towels. Wipe pan dry.

3. Heat oil in pan over medium heat until shimmering. Add potatoes and cook, tossing occasionally, until nearly tender, about 8 minutes. Add sauce, toss to coat and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook for 1 minute. Uncover and cook, tossing occasionally, until potatoes are fully tender and well seasoned, about 6 minutes.

4. Increase heat to medium-high and add sugar. Cook, tossing, until sauce becomes thick, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in sesame seeds, green onion and red pepper, and serve.

Faye Levy is the author of “1,000 Jewish Recipes.”

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16 Sep 2025

Democrats plan to force Senate vote on Trump’s tariffs on Canada and Brazil

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By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats are planning to force two Senate votes on President Donald Trump’s tariffs in the coming weeks, keeping pressure on Senate Republicans as many of them have voiced frustration with the policies.

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine says he will introduce two separate bipartisan resolutions this week that would terminate the national emergencies that Trump declared to justify the tariffs he has imposed on Canada and Brazil. In April, four Republicans voted with Democrats to block Trump’s tariffs on Canada, but the House never took it up.

Kaine said it’s common for Republican senators to express concerns about the tariffs, but he wants to put them on the record as often as he can.

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Republicans can “vote with your constituents or vote with President Trump,” Kaine said. “Over time, the instability is creating huge concerns.”

Kaine is introducing the two resolutions with a group of Democrats and Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, an outspoken opponent of Trump’s tariffs. By introducing the measures, the group is triggering a decades-old law that allows Congress to block a president’s emergency powers and force votes on Trump’s declarations, whether majority Republicans want to hold the votes or not.

The law allows lawmakers to reintroduce the legislation and force new votes every six months — something Kaine says he will do until the policy is changed.

The votes will come at a time of turmoil for the economy. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said last week that Trump’s tariff policy is one of several factors that are expected to increase jobless rates and inflation and lower overall growth this year. Republicans from farm states and beyond, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota, have expressed wariness about some of the sweeping tariffs and concerns about the effects on businesses that depend on Canadian trade.

Still, Republicans have mostly deferred to Trump on his administration’s trade policy, so far declining to block it and arguing that the president needs time to work on deals with individual countries.

“I think everybody kind of knows my views on tariffs, but the fact of the matter is, the president ran on this,” Thune said earlier this year.

The resolution to block the Canadian tariffs would end the emergency declaration that Trump signed in February to implement tariffs on Canada as punishment for not doing enough to halt the flow of illegal drugs into the U.S. The Senate passed the same resolution in April with support from Paul and three other Republicans — Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Trump called out the four on social media at the time, encouraging them to “get on the Republican bandwagon.”

The second resolution would block Trump’s 50% tariffs on Brazil, ending an emergency that Trump linked to Brazil’s policies and criminal prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro.

In addition to oil, Brazil sells orange juice, coffee, iron and steel to the U.S., among other products. The U.S. ran a $6.8 billion trade surplus with Brazil last year, according to the Census Bureau.

Democrats hope that more Republicans will vote against the tariffs as effects on the economy become more clear.

Kaine says his hope is that Republicans will support the measure because “now it’s real,” when the tariffs hadn’t been implemented yet last spring. “It’s not theoretical,” he said.

Kaine also forced a separate vote on the broader global tariffs Trump announced in early April, but that was voted down 49-49. The resolution potentially could have passed, though, if Republican Sen. McConnell and Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island had not been absent.

16 Sep 2025

‘I Am Not Your Enemy’

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The following is excerpted from I Am Not Your Enemy: A Memoir, out September 16 from Spiegel & Grau. It is reprinted with permission of the publisher, © 2025.

It began like any other day. I woke around 4:30 a.m., took Mickey outside for a few minutes, and, no later than 5:30, drove to work from my rental house in Augusta, Georgia, while listening to a podcast about national security called Intercepted. I arrived at work around 6:00, and several hours later, I had a coffee mixed with protein powder. It was my usual morning routine. But on this day, I took fateful steps to share some of America’s classified national security secrets with the public. 

Why that day? Why that document? I spent years in a prison cell asking myself that question. And the truth is, I don’t know. Everything that has happened because of and since that action, the trauma and upheaval and melodrama, has merged to make some of my reasoning mysterious to me. A blank spot exists where my precise motivations should be. I wish I could say that my actions were grandly deliberate and thoughtfully strategic. But my plan wasn’t even really a plan. My actions were more spontaneous and poorly organized than your average trip to the grocery store. 

That’s one of the many sad ironies of the government’s portrayal of me as a calculating criminal mastermind, intent on doing whatever she could to reveal America’s most vital information to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. If only I had been that careful and farsighted! Rather, my crime proceeded in disconnected stages. I took small actions, each one seemingly harmless on its own, that added up to something appearing coherent and dramatic—and that was irreversible when all the elements were combined, like ingredients that only when mixed in exact quantities can produce a bomb. Except that my explosion never endangered, let alone hurt, anyone but myself. Not even close. 

Before that day, I had not planned to leak a classified report or do anything else out of the ordinary. I was working as a contractor for the National Security Agency, the Defense Department’s arm tasked with monitoring and processing information for foreign and domestic intelligence purposes. The NSA is a behemoth that vacuums email, text, and phone conversations from around the world. Its budget is so big, its eavesdropping capabilities so vast, that if it were a corporation, it would be one of the biggest in the world, up there with Apple, Microsoft, Walmart, and Amazon. As with those businesses, hundreds of millions of Americans come into frequent contact with the NSA. 

Unlike with those companies, Americans don’t much know about when, how, and why the NSA is involved in their lives. 

I liked getting to work early, and on the morning of May 9, 2017, I enjoyed the quiet and solitude. Then I opened a news website, the top-secret one available to people working in intelligence, and found a bombshell: a five-page document, listed as the most read “article” on the site, about an enormously controversial subject of public interest. The document contained newly uncovered details about events that had taken place a year earlier. I stared at it, stunned that such a thing existed. By that point, I was jaded, but this jolted me out of my seat. This will be leaked by Friday, I thought. It’s too damning to stay secret. Everything leaks. 

The media then was filled with leaks, as though the American government was a broken pipe and information was dripping right to newspapers and journalists. Soon, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions would say in a press briefing that “in the first six months of this administration, [the Department of Justice] has already received nearly as many criminal referrals involving unauthorized disclosures of classified information as we received in the last three years combined.” A study by the Federation of American Scientists found that the astounding numbers of secrets being published in the press showed that “leaks of classified information are a ‘normal,’ predictable occurrence.” And the New York Times observed, “Journalism in the Trump era has featured a staggering number of leaks from sources across the federal government.” 

A July 2017 report by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs found that a majority of the leaks “concerned the Russia probes, with many revealing closely-held information such as intelligence community intercepts, FBI interviews and intelligence, grand jury subpoenas, and even the workings of a secret surveillance court.

I believed that these leaks were an inevitable response to an undeniable crisis: American institutions were collapsing. I was twenty-five years old and had already spent five years of my life at the NSA in various roles, and I angrily wondered why the agency had not delivered any public response to the Trump administration, which had been constantly disparaging us. When he wasn’t ignoring our work, the president denigrated the intelligence community as being part of “the deep state” intent on subverting the will of the public. Far worse, the administration lied daily with impunity, and the heads of our institutions responded publicly with only silence. Public life then was surreal. Just hours later that day, Trump would fire FBI director James Comey, who was heading the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. It seemed like an attempt to silence anyone looking into what had happened. Trump seemed capable of virtually anything. Envisioning him ordering that an NSA report be disappeared was not difficult.

If it vanished, I thought, people would wonder whether it had existed at all, or if they had just imagined it, an example of the Mandela effect, a phenomenon in which false memories are shared by large groups of people. I decided to print the article so that at least one copy would be preserved, even if Trump’s henchmen otherwise eliminated it. 

But when I went to print it, my nonexistent tech skills proved problematic. This was one of the many ways in which I differed from Edward Snowden, the NSA employee who had handed over thousands of pages of documents to reporters at the Guardian, a news website specializing in national security issues. “If you see something,” the publication posted on their web page detailing how to contact them, “leak something.” Later, Snowden and I were often grouped together, but our motivations, our methods, and the consequences of our actions were very different. He planned his leaking months and possibly a year in advance. He contacted journalists before he leaked anything, to gain their assurances, guidance, and cooperation. He was a tech wizard who used encrypted emails and a code name. He was intent on bringing down the out-of-control national security state. He saved an estimated 1.5 million documents on a thumb drive. 

By contrast, I spontaneously tapped the print button on a five-page document involving intelligence from the previous year without giving the whole thing much thought. And, like an actor in some slapstick comedy, I immediately realized that I didn’t know where in the office the report would be printed out. I began a frantic search, hoping to hear some noises reassuringly indicating that a printer was spitting out the pages. There was no legitimate work reason for me to be looking at that document, let alone printing it out. As boring as my job was, I didn’t want to lose it. If a security supervisor grilled me, I would not be able to explain the reasons for my actions, because even I was unsure of them. Despite what the FBI would later claim, I am a terrible liar, unskilled in the arts of deception. My anxiety usually leads me to drop my poker face, after which someone takes all my chips. 

Before I was unable to locate the printer, I had not been nervous about what I was doing. At the time, I was emotionally numb, mourning my father’s recent death and suffering from general loneliness and spiraling despair about the state of the country and the world. Trump had been sworn into office in January and already was wreaking havoc. He severely restricted immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. His national security adviser, Michael Flynn, stepped down after just twenty-two days when it was revealed that he had lied about his paid lobbying work on behalf of Turkey. Trump also was threatening to destroy North Korea. And that’s just a short list. 

Or perhaps I wasn’t nervous simply because I knew that the NSA was filled with other bored introverts who spent much of the time goofing off—we weren’t going around glancing at one another’s computer screens. 

With faux casualness, I walked from printer to printer looking for my papers. Nope, not that one. Nope, not that one either. Jesus, I’m an idiot. After checking three printers, I returned to the first one and found the report lying there.I snatched up the pages, placed them face down on my desk, and reassured myself that the problem had been averted. 

And with that, I went on with my day. Nobody would know or care that the report was on my desk. I left it there when work ended and I departed for the gym. That evening, I checked the news to see if the report had been leaked, if any policymakers were talking about its contents—it was, I believed, crucial information that could further illuminate the accumulating understanding of the president’s ties to Russia. Everyone at work had been discussing it, saying it would pop up in the news sooner rather than later. But no.

The reader should know that my plea deal prevents me from verifying the report’s contents. But you can find the entire thing online with a simple Google search, and it was later summarized by the New York Times as “describ[ing] two cyberattacks by Russia’s military intelligence unit, the G.R.U.—one in August against a company that sells voter registration-related software and another, a few days before the election, against 122 local election officials.”

To be honest, I don’t think I knew what I was going to do with the document before I did it. But around 2:00 p.m. on the day after I printed it out, I folded it in half and placed it in my lunch box. Later I took the folded document from my lunch box and slipped it into my pantyhose. 

Normally, at the end of my shift, getting out of the building through security wasn’t hard. And sure enough, that afternoon was no different: they let me leave through the door after doing the routine bag checks. I walked straight to my car, relieved. My common sense was strong enough to discourage me from removing the document from my pantyhose in the parking lot. Instead, I drove to the gym, parked, took out the pages, and wedged them between the seat and the center console. I went to exercise and thought more about the guy I was breaking up with than the top-secret document in my car. 

Two days later, I bought a white envelope, scribbled the Intercept’s New York City address on it, placed the report inside, and stuck a stamp on it. I drove to yoga, where I taught a class as a substitute teacher, after which I dropped the envelope into a mailbox across the street. No return address anywhere, no name or any other identifying details. What mattered were the contents. This is going to be big. Maybe help save this country. And nobody will ever know it was me. Or if they do find out, everyone will be grateful.

Things didn’t go exactly as I had hoped. Instead of being the public’s anonymous good Samaritan, I spent more time in prison than any whistleblower in American history. 

Sometimes people like to group me with other individuals who have leaked classified national security information. Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, John Kiriakou, Thomas Drake, and Chelsea Manning are the best known. Often, these comparisons are unflattering. According to analyst Tom Nichols at the Atlantic, “All of these cases . . . are bound by the thread of narcissism,” the product of “a protracted epidemic,” which “is on the rise, in the United States and around the world.” Diagnosing people with personality disorders on the basis of their portrayals in the press is a curious thing. Actual mental health professionals refrain from such diagnoses because they understand that any person is far more complicated than a context-free sound bite. Unlike Nichols and uncurious keyboard psychologists like him, I have spoken with Ellsberg, Drake, Manning, and other whistle-blowers at various points in my post-leak life. The leakers I have spoken with have different personality types and come from radically diverse backgrounds. There are only two things we have in common. The first is that we revealed secrets, but we have plenty of company in that. The other thing uniting us, which is far less common, is that we got caught. 

One of the first whistleblowers to step forward in support was Thomas Drake, who had been a top official at the NSA and served in the Air Force and Navy. Like him, I deeply believed in America’s national security system; I never wanted to destroy it. Following my six years in the military, I received the Air Force Commendation Medal for “provid[ing] over 1,900 hours of enemy intelligence exploitation and assist[ing] in geolocating 120 enemy combatants during 734 airborne sorties [air missions].” 

Exactly what I did to earn that commendation is something I am unable to reveal for legal reasons. I can only quote this NSA-approved Commendation Medal certificate: “She facilitated 816 intelligence missions, 3,236 time sensitive reports, and removing more than 100 enemies from the battlefield. Furthermore, while deployed to support Combatant Commander’s requirements, Airman Winner was appointed as the lead deployment language analyst, producing 2,500 reports, aiding in 650 enemy captures, 600 enemies killed in action and identifying 900 high value targets.” 

That’s a lot of military-speak, so I’ll translate: I helped kill a lot of human beings. Hundreds, possibly thousands. I developed post-traumatic stress disorder doing it. As a child and young adult, I dreamed of receiving awards for helping people, or saving them. But that wasn’t how it turned out. I helped the United States government kill people. I was good at it. So good that they gave me an award for it. But then I shared some information with the American people, and the U.S. government felt that was a much worse thing to do than killing scores of people. They decided I was an enemy.

My Pokémon-loving, yoga-practicing, vegetable-subsisting complex personality got erased. To quote my mother’s sardonic comment to a reporter about the chasm separating who I really am from the traitor the government claimed I was: “The world’s biggest terrorist has a Pikachu bedspread.” Well put, Momface.

The post ‘I Am Not Your Enemy’ appeared first on The Texas Observer.

16 Sep 2025

Watch live: Patel faces Senate amid questions over probe into Charlie Kirk’s killing and internal FBI upheaval

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By ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Kash Patel will confront skeptical Senate Democrats at a congressional hearing Tuesday likely to be dominated by questions about the investigation into Charlie Kirk’s killing as well as the recent firings of senior officials who have accused the FBI director of illegal political retribution.

The appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee represents the first oversight hearing of Patel’s young but tumultuous tenure and provides a high-stakes platform for him to try to reassure wary lawmakers that he is the right person for the job at a time of internal upheaval and mounting concerns about political violence inside the U.S.

Patel will be returning to the committee for the first time since his confirmation hearing in January, when he sought to reassure Democrats that he would not pursue retribution as director. He’ll face questions Tuesday about whether he did exactly that when the FBI last month fired five agents and senior officials in a purge that current and former officials say weakened morale and contributed to unease inside the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency.

Three of those officials sued last week in a federal complaint that says Patel knew the firings were likely illegal but carried them out anyway to protect his job. One of the officials helped oversee investigations into the Jan. 6 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and another clashed with Justice Department leadership while serving as acting director in the early days of the Trump administration. The FBI has declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Republican lawmakers who make up the majority in the committee are expected to show solidarity for Patel, a close ally of President Donald Trump, and are likely to praise the director for his focus on violent crime and illegal immigration. They are also likely to try to elicit from Patel fresh details about the investigation into Kirk’s assassination at a Utah college campus last week, which authorities have said was carried out by a 22-year-old man who had grown more political in recent years and ascribed to a “leftist ideology.”

Patel drew scrutiny when, hours after the killing, he posted on social media that “the subject” was in custody even though the actual suspected shooter remained on the loose and was not arrested until he turned himself in late the following night.

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Patel has not explained that post but has pointed to his decision to authorize the release of photographs of the suspect, Tyler Robinson, while he was on the run as a key development that helped facilitate an arrest. A Fox News Channel journalist reported Saturday that Trump had told her that Patel and the FBI have “done a great job.”

Robinson is due to make his first court appearance in Utah.

Another line of questioning may involve Democratic concerns that Patel is politicizing the FBI through politically charged investigations, including into longstanding Trump grievances. Agents and prosecutors, for instance, have been seeking interviews and information as they reexamine aspects of the years-old FBI investigation into potential coordination between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Patel has repeatedly said his predecessors at the FBI and Justice Department who investigated and prosecuted Trump were the ones who weaponized the institutions.