NBC News told you the Trump administration “approves sending” the bombs. The Associated Press copy under that headline said the package “is not yet final.” Congress, said the same story, “has been informally notified about the pending deal.”

I used to proofread for a living. You read the headline standing up. The rest you catch if you catch it.

Representative Gregory Meeks, ranking Democrat on House Foreign Affairs, spoke on September 16. He called the package a “proposed sale.” He said, “I therefore will not clear this sale at this time.”

You do not hold a truck that has left.

Foreign Military Sales run on paperwork. The State Department first sends a package to a few ranking members of the foreign-affairs committees. Informal notice. Those members can clear it or hold it. Formal notification comes after that, under the Arms Export Control Act, and State posts it. Then a waiting period. The Secretary of State can declare an emergency and skip the wait. Marco Rubio did that for a similar load in February 2025. Transmittal 25-34. $2.04 billion. 35,529 bomb bodies and 4,000 penetrators. The notice is public because someone finished the course.

This package: about $2.8 billion. 20,000 MK-84 bodies. 20,000 BLU-117s. Two thousand pounds each. The money is largely Foreign Military Financing, American grants buying American inventory. The Washington Post reported a plan on September 15. Reuters said the administration was “planning to sell.” AP said not yet final.

The State Department said in a statement, quoted by the Times, that as a matter of policy it would not confirm or comment on a proposed arms sale that has not been formally notified to Congress.

Proposed. Not formally notified. The Times printed both in the story that led with “has approved.”

State’s posted notices for September 2026, as extracted, show Argentina helicopters and no Israel $2.8 billion one-ton package. People inside buildings talk about weapons. The board where finished notifications hang does not show this one.

Meeks cannot kill the package by himself. Rubio can use an emergency determination after a hold. None of that is a completed, notified sale.

The Times did not print a transmittal number. The paper may have heard that someone decided to start the courtesy calls. Courtesy calls are how a proposed sale begins. “Trump Approves” is how a reader files it under done.

Forty thousand one-ton bombs can sit in a sentence like weather. Informal notice is a man who has not put his name on a clearance. Meeks left the name off. He called the sale proposed.