Yesterday the FAA had to ground all air traffic for only the second time since 9/11. Apparently, the reality TV guy who serves as transportation secretary and the former plumber with no college degree who is in charge of homeland security ordered the installation some kind of AI technology that quickly ended up “overwhelming the older system.” At least that was the explanation given by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
Trump administration officials said Friday that new technology being added to the nation’s air traffic control system overloaded antiquated parts of it and caused “intermittent” communications and radar gaps, leading to the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years.
It was lifted in the evening after a five-hour stretch when most flights were not allowed to take off from airports in the U.S.
Thousands of flights and potentially over a million travelers were affected. Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House that no one was in any danger as more than 3,000 flights were safely landed. But Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said he could not guarantee it wouldn’t happen again.
Mullin said the FAA was installing “new equipment, new technology” and “it was overwhelming the older system.” There appeared to be no indication of a cyberattack, he said.
A limited number of domestic flights began departing late Friday after the ground stop was lifted, but it will likely take days for airlines to fully recover because so many planes and crews were out of position. Officials said they think the system will be back to normal in time to handle the Thanksgiving travel rush.
The nationwide ground stop was the first since January 2023, when another key FAA computer system that sends notices to pilots malfunctioned, and the second since the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Gina Lollobrigida
Mullin said there was no sign that the technology problems were caused by a “nefarious act.”
Asked whether he could rule out a cyberattack or rogue artificial intelligence incident, Mullin said there are no “footprints” showing an attack and that the problem appears to be “mechanically driven.” He said officials were still looking for the cause.
At least 827 flights had been diverted. By 7:05 p.m. EST, 670 flights were sent back to the airport from where they originally took off, while 157 were redirected to a different airport, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics company.
Duffy was defensive, blaming Congress for failing to approve more funding for new technology, while downplaying the fact that trying to implement new fixes overtaxed the system. He implored lawmakers to act.
This morning, CNN reported that Duffy is now blaming “contractor error.” Frankly, it sounds like he doesn’t really have a clue.
• What went wrong: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said it’s still unclear if aging equipment or contractor error was at the root of telecommunication outages that forced a rare nationwide ground stop. Duffy has criticized a key contractor, L3Harris, and blamed dated air traffic control technology, but the Trump administration has not yet provided a clear explanation for how yesterday’s airspace meltdown unfolded.
• Travel misery: Thousands of travelers face lingering delays and cancellations today. Here’s a look at some of the most affected airports, and what to do if your flight is impacted.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy escalated his calls for for tens of billions of dollars from Congress to upgrade the nation’s rickety air traffic system — a plea that came Friday night after an hourslong, nationwide halt to aviation sparked passenger disruptions around the country.
Duffy had been seeking $30 billion from Congress to upgrade the system. On Friday he upped that ask to $50 billion.
Peter O’Toole
The ground stop, which was ordered in the late afternoon, rippled across the country, disrupting flights at airports nationwide and leaving airlines facing a backlog of delays as they worked to get operations back on schedule.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Friday that there was “zero evidence” that the grounding of passenger planes was due to a cyberattack or artificial intelligence incursion, though he said “we’re still looking” at the possibility. Instead, Duffy said that facilities that route flights began to experience “instability” in radar data and communications with aircraft, leading to inconsistent information between pilots and controllers.
Duffy blamed the “legacy” air traffic system without providing many specifics, all the while beseeching Congress for more money.
“I’ve asked — the president’s asked — for $30 billion. I want $50 billion,” he said. “What’s more important than having an air traffic control system that actually works? … I want Congress to give us emergency funding. This is bipartisan. This is American. I want $50 billion.”
Prior to Friday’s ground stop, Congress had been lukewarm to granting additional funding. The FAA received $12.5 billion in last year’s GOP megalaw to jump-start its air traffic control overhaul.
While Duffy tries to blame the old contractor L3Harris, it turns out that the new contractor, Air Space Intelligence, donated to Duffy’s son-in-law’s campaign for a Wisconsin House seat.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blamed a “legacy provider” for Friday’s widespread ground stop that impacted more than 1 million travelers across the country.
Duffy blamed telecom provider L3Harris for the outage, though he admitted the Department of Transportation is continuing its root-cause analysis. He claimed that the contractor was updating a router at a remote location that injected instability into the system.
Clara Bow
“This is L3Harris,” Duffy said. “It’s our legacy telecom network. It’s owned by L3Harris. With our new architecture, with the money that we’re requesting, we will work with the greatest telecom companies in the world, which will be AT&T, Verizon, and Lumen. They’re all working with us on the new architecture. But in the meantime, until I can build that, I’m stuck with L3Harris, which owns this network.”
Speculation swirled on Friday that the DOT’s new SMART weather system could have caused the outage. The company that installed that system, Air Space Intelligence, had previously donated to Duffy’s son-in-law’s political campaign.
Duffy speaks about what happened ahead of the mass grounding yesterday, reiterating that the US has “an incredibly old telecommunications system”.
He explains that maintenance was being carried out to switch from copper wire to fibre by a contractor called L3Harris – a technology provider company.
“It was such an old wire that it was being discontinued,” he says, adding this work has been going on over many years.
Duffy goes on to say that the government is trying to find out whether the problem was caused by “incompetence” on the part of L3Harris, or by a faulty piece of equipment.
The router that was being worked on started flooding other air traffic control systems, he says, which created communication issues with planes that led the government to shut down the airspace for safety reasons.
This is a clown show. I just hope there won’t be any plane crashes.
The Nvidia spy scandal is still in the news, despite Jensen Huang resigning as CEO.
Jensen Huang’s resignation from Nvidia after reports of an affair with an alleged Chinese spy is being treated as a one-off scandal. But it’s not. In the past year, my private security firm, which is staffed largely by former intelligence and law enforcement officers, has handled a number of cases in which senior executives at U.S. technology companies had relationships with women who we came to believe were working for Chinese intelligence.
The artificial intelligence industry has a security problem that it does not yet fully understand. U.S. companies are building technology with massive commercial and national security value, but their defenses against foreign intelligence are, in most cases, nowhere near good enough. At the same time, the FBI counterintelligence squads that should help protect these companies are badly understaffed; some agents have been reassigned to focus on the administration’s(opens in new tab) political priorities, while others have been purged(opens in new tab). The result is a widening gap between how much the technology matters and how well it’s being protected.
Jerry Seinfeld
The FBI’s counterintelligence posture is an important part of this picture. NPR(opens in new tab)reported in October(opens in new tab) that in many of the bureau’s 56 field offices, counterintelligence squads are only 50%-60% staffed, as agents and analysts have been shifted toward fighting violent crime and enforcing immigration laws. The FBI disputes that this has weakened its counterintelligence operation. But it’s hard to believe these kinds of cuts haven’t affected China-focused efforts — and they come at a time when U.S. AI and AI-adjacent firms are more at risk from foreign interference than ever.
Investigating crime is important, but moving experienced personnel away from counterintelligence is a dangerous trade. Counterintelligence investigations are exceedingly complex and depend on accumulated knowledge and specialized judgment built over decades. That expertise is easy to lose and slow to rebuild. The history of intelligence shows that political purges take years to recover from.
After 9/11, for example, the FBI redirected large numbers of agents away from white-collar crime to counterterrorism. By the time the 2008 financial crisis hit, the bureau had fewer people to investigate mortgage and securities fraud — one reason so few of the people responsible ever faced charges.
Read the rest at the link. I have zero faith that Trump and his goons will be able to deal with this. Trump doesn’t seem to care at all about China’s spying.
Headquartered in a curved glass skyscraper that boasts commanding views over Singapore’s Marina Bay district, Megaspeed International is just the type of fast-growing tech start-up that Asia’s wealthy city-state has been keen to attract.
In three years, the corporate entity has gone from an inactive Chinese gaming subsidiary to one of Asia’s biggest buyers of cutting-edge semiconductors from the US.
But its rapid rise has also propelled it to the center of an alleged spy scandal that’s now engulfing Nvidia, the $4 trillion company behind the world’s most advanced chips.
At the same time, suspicions that Megaspeed may be exploiting a loophole in US export controls is exacerbating a rift within the US government on how to best keep China from accessing its most sensitive technologies.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigned on Thursday after admitting to having an affair. Congress has also called on him to testify behind closed doors about his romantic relationship with Alice Huang, no relation, whom US officials believe to be a Chinese intelligence asset. Beijing has said the claim is a “groundless” attempt to smear China.
Also known as Huang Le, the 43-year-old Chinese executive played an integral role in establishing Megaspeed, according to corporate documents and media reports. CNN has made continued efforts to reach her for comment.
Elizabeth Taylor
But as Megaspeed quietly instilled billions of dollars of Nvidia chips in data centers across Southeast Asia, it came under the scrutiny of the Singaporean government, as well as US officials concerned that the company was passing those chips on to unauthorized Chinese buyers.
“Chips are the absolute ground-zero of all other technology,” said Alex Capri, a senior lecturer in the business school at the National University of Singapore. “The appetite for Nvidia’s chips in China is absolutely insatiable… Nvidia chips are still far and away the best.”
But US export controls have fettered Chinese access to its most advanced semiconductor technology, spawning a shadow industry of complex transactions, shell companies and chip smuggling – of which Megaspeed is now under suspicion by US authorities and lawmakers of helping enable.
In late September, Cantor Fitzgerald hosted Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and other top executives from the chipmaker for investor meetings in New York, according to a Cantor research report reviewed by CNBC.
The Wall Street firm liked what it heard.
“We continue to view NVDA as the best risk/reward in our coverage,” Cantor analyst C.J. Muse and his colleagues wrote in a research report dated Oct. 3 that maintained a $350 price target and overweight rating on the stock.
Yet the firm, formerly run by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and now led by his sons, Brandon and Kyle, reported a nearly 50% decline in the number of Nvidia shares it held between September 2025 and March 2026, according to a CNBC analysis of securities filings that excludes options. Nvidia had been one of the largest stock positions reported in Cantor’s filings.
The decline coincided with White House and U.S. intelligence officials pressing Lutnick to crack down on Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company suspected of funneling Nvidia’s advanced artificial intelligence chips to China. Lutnick repeatedly resisted those efforts, Axios reported Nov. 11.
By the time Cantor hosted Huang in New York, Lutnick had also received a classified intelligence warning, according to a Nov. 10 Axios report, about Huang’s ties to a suspected Chinese spy and had appeared alongside the CEO at a G20 technology summit in North Carolina.
Even as Cantor pared back its Nvidia stake, it continued doing business across the chipmaker’s AI empire. A CNBC review of securities filings, corporate announcements and Wall Street research found the firm has helped arrange billions of dollars in financing for Nvidia’s business partners while maintaining close ties to the chipmaker’s leadership.
Those ties have drawn fresh scrutiny following Huang’s resignation Thursday and Axios’ reporting that Lutnick repeatedly resisted a crackdown on companies suspected of smuggling Nvidia chips to China, despite President Donald Trump authorizing new export restrictions on those companies for a third time on Nov. 5.
Read more at CNBC.
Former National Security Council member Chris McGuire at The New York Times (gift link): Howard Lutnick Has Got to Go.
Jensen Huang, until Thursday the head of Nvidia, one of the world’s most valuable corporations, abruptly resigned his post following his admission of an extramarital affair with an alleged Chinese spy. Now an even bigger scandal is developing at the Department of Commerce, whose secretary, Howard Lutnick, bears almost as much responsibility for this brewing crisis as Mr. Huang.
Rutger Hauer
Nvidia dominates the market for chips needed to drive artificial intelligence. Its cutting-edge chips have been deemed so critical to our national security that they cannot be sold to Chinese companies. Clearly,
Mr. Huang demonstrated terrible judgment in being intimate with a woman who is not only suspected of working for China’s intelligence apparatus but whose firm is believed to be diverting banned Nvidia chips to China. But it was Mr. Lutnick who made the decision not to enforce export controls designed to counter chip smuggling, making Mr. Huang a potential target. (China has rejected the espionage claims.)
It is largely Mr. Lutnick’s fault that Megaspeed, the company that employed the alleged spy, successfully smuggled a reported $7 billion of Nvidia chips into China (a number that no doubt represents the tip of the iceberg). His actions created the conditions for this crisis to occur, conditions that have allowed China to remain competitive with the United States in the race for A.I. supremacy.
Mr. Lutnick must resign his post so the cleanup can commence.
In January 2025, the Biden administration imposed new export controls expressly to combat Chinese chip smuggling. These controls required unvetted companies in most countries to receive an export license from the Commerce Department before making any large A.I. chip purchase. Mr. Lutnick, who took his post the following month, never allowed these controls to go into effect. Mr. Huang was already building what would become a close relationship with the new president and Mr. Lutnick, and Nvidia long maintained that there was “no evidence” that restricted chips were being diverted to China. In May of that year, the Commerce Department announced that it would not enforce the controls, saying it would eventually replace them with other anti-smuggling measures.
The department never published a replacement rule. It didn’t even bother to officially rescind the Biden administration’s controls. Instead, Mr. Lutnick effectively outsourced the job of vetting whether a given company posed a risk of diversion to China to the private sector, for example to Nvidia and to A.I. server suppliers such as Supermicro.
The consequences of his decision have been catastrophic. Chip smuggling is running rampant. Taiwanese customs data shows that from 2025 to 2026, over $60 billion worth of A.I. chips were most likely shipped to Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, making these three relatively small countries among the largest importers of A.I. chips in the world.
Trump has a meeting scheduled with both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. What could possibly go wrong? Well, Trump has already said he won’t confront Xi about the Nvidia spy scandal and he will not bring up Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are planning to meet on the sidelines of a summit in China next week, the White House has said.
The historic meeting between the respective leaders of the US, Russia and China will take place as Trump attends the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) summit in the southern city of Shenzhen, spokeswoman Olivia Wales told reporters.
John Oliver
“The president has made it clear that, among other topics, he will discuss the reduction of nuclear weapons in the world, whose proliferation President Trump believes is very dangerous,” she said.
It is understood Iran may also be discussed during the meeting of the world’s biggest nuclear powers, but not Ukraine. Russia has confirmed the meeting. China has yet to react.
No agreement was expected to follow the talks, an unnamed, senior US official said, according to news agencies AP and Reuters.
Trump will arrive in Shenzhen late on Wednesday for the two-day summit between the 21 member states. He will also take part in bilateral talks with Xi on Thursday – their fourth meeting since the US president returned to office in 2025.
“President Trump will conclude his visit to China with a trilateral meeting between the president of the United States, the president of the People’s Republic of China, and the president of the Russian Federation,” Wales said.
US President Donald Trump, China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin will hold their first trilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in China’s Shenzhen, the White House has confirmed….
Talks will focus on nuclear proliferation, the White House said. But they come amid significant global turbulence: Russia’s war in Ukraine, the US-Israeli war on Iran and ongoing trade tensions between Washington and Beijing.
“I think what we’ll see is some pretty impressive photo-ops with a lot of really bombastic rhetoric from Trump,” Simon Mabon, a professor of international politics at the UK’s Lancaster University, told Al Jazeera. However, he added, the three “collectively or unilaterally, are not able to bring about an end to the conflict in Iran or Ukraine”.
So what does each side want and what will be the likely outcome? [….]
A top issue for Russia and the US is the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which lapsed in February. The treaty was first signed in 2010 and caps US and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals.
Russia currently possesses the largest number of warheads, followed by the US and then China, which is rapidly building up its own arsenal.
Trump previously rejected Russia’s proposal to extend the treaty after it expired, demanding instead a “new, improved and modernised” deal that includes Beijing.
China is understood, however, to be reluctant to join an agreement it was not involved in forming.
A senior Trump administration official told Reuters this topic will start the conversation but that “we do not expect to get any kind of agreement”.
The United States floated the idea of Ukraine ceding the eastern Donbas region to Russia in exchange for NATO membership during recent talks, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
David Bowie
Zelensky told journalists that US negotiators had put the question and that it was the “first time” such a proposal has been raised. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has long coveted the region, while he has cited possible NATO membership for Ukraine as a reason for launching his full-scale invasion in 2022.
Much of the Donbas is controlled by Russia, although Moscow’s grinding ground offensive in the region has largely stalled.
“The Americans raised a question: ‘What if Ukraine joins NATO? Would Ukraine withdraw from Donbas?’ This was the first time this had been raised,” said Zelensky.
He stressed that Ukraine would not give up territory but said if he received a “comprehensive security package” – which would include a strong Ukrainian army and guarantees from NATO and the European Union – he would put a proposal to the public.
“If the American side confirms precisely this to us, together with other NATO partners, then I will ask our Ukrainian society what it thinks: do we accept it or not? I have no right to make that decision on my own. But we need specifics, and we don’t have them yet.”
US-brokered peace talks between Ukraine and Russia took place in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday and Wednesday. The trilateral discussions were mediated by Trump administration envoys – US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff – and marked the first talks involving both parties in months, although they ended without a breakthrough.
Those are the top stories today. There’s a lot happening. What do you think? What else is on your mind?
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The election results are clearly bringing a type of musical chairs to the District. What we don’t know is whether this means real policy change or the kind of kick-some-ass moves we need. I’m not making any predictions given that Hegseth escaped his duly earned boot out the door. I’m hoping we get more than a change of faces. The real change may come at the state level. That’s worth investigating, as it may signal how things progress at the national level.
This is an interesting look at the drastic changes in some states. Michael Grunwald has this Guest Opinion piece in The New York Times. “The Swingiest State Has Gone Very Red.”
Democrats around the country are now asking the question weird-crime aficionados and real estate analysts have been asking for years: What is happening in Florida?
The anti-Trump stampede that trampled Republicans in blood-red bastions like Kansas, South Carolina and Texas on Nov. 3 somehow missed President Trump’s adopted state, where Republicans held on to a U.S. Senate seat, the governor’s mansion and every other statewide office. The Democratic candidate for governor, David Jolly, came just over one heartbreaking percentage point of breaking the G.O.P.’s 27-yearlock on Tallahassee.
Now the finger-pointing has begun, with Florida Democrats blaming suboptimal candidates, dubious strategies and especially the national donors who in recent years stopped investing in this former super-swing state. Florida was once the ultimate expression of America’s 50-50 politics, with eight races for governor, Senate and the presidency decided by roughly a point or less from 2000 to 2018, and frustrated Democrats believe their latest razor-thin losses prove that it can be again.
But that deep-purple Florida is gone, and it isn’t coming back anytime soon. The simple reason Democrats lost here last week is that an awful lot of Republicans have moved to Florida since the Covid pandemic, and those newcomers really like the way Republicans are running it. Gov. Ron DeSantis has remained quite popular, despite Mr. Trump’s struggles, and his vision of a “Free State of Florida” — where taxes are low, vaccines should be optional and masks are for woke losers — has become a magnet for some of the nation’s most reliable G.O.P. voters.
Does this imply there will be a flight of Republicans or Democrats in to once what were traditionally swing states but now seem to be firmly rooted in one party or the other? Will there be new states, once reliably one party or the other, that now become the new swing states? It seems like we’ve entered a timeline where old predictions and assumptions may have changed. I think it might be interesting to figure out why. The idea that Republicans are now flooding Florida is an interest one. I’d like to see similar analysis of Georgia. Will it become reliably blue? I know that many of the Hurricane Katrina Diaspora wound up in Texas and Georgia and stayed put. Are there other diasporas that may be changing those states or is it just an overall evolution? Will all this settle down or will it represent another example of “It’s the economy stupid.” Oh well, too early to tell but I’m going to keep my ears and eyes open as the patterns of the Blue Tsunami become more statistically significant.
Well, let’s catch up with what’s been happening with the musical chairs game. It definitely will be a catch-up for me as I’ve had a rough few days. First, I get this double whammy of my hands burning and my feet itching for several days and all day yesterday I had to fight off a weird attack on my computer and phone which really crippled my ability to communicate on line and otherwise. I spent the morning cleaning things out since I was having to do work arounds to get student time functional.
I still believe that AI is about the worst thing that could ever happen to us. But, my question is what will the decision-makers do as Hal continues to rewrite algorithms and reality? Jensen Huang has resigned as Nvidia CEO despite Orange Caligula’s fulsome begging for him to ride it out. This crystal ball peering is from CNN’s John Towfighi. “The AI boom was built around Jensen Huang. Now what?” Oh, and the stock market is down today. Let’s see if Trump’s stock goes down too.
Jensen Huang’s resignation from Nvidia in scandal leaves the company without its visionary leader. It also leaves a major void for the AI industry, where Huang was kingmaker in inking deals to support the tech boom.
Under Huang’s leadership, Nvidia became more than a chipmaker: It guaranteed deals for data centers, invested heavily in AI startups and even backed the companies that bought its products.
Huang put Nvidia at the core of AI financing, and the CEO himself championed some of the industry’s biggest deals. His departure puts a spotlight on whether the ecosystem he crafted could fracture — and whether that would spell trouble for the AI boom that has helped prop up the US stock market and become a driving force of economic growth.
“It’s hard to overstate his personal role in all of this,” said Neil Wilson, a strategist at investment bank Saxo.
“Huang was key in Nvidia being the backer of last resort across the AI ecosystem, really underpinning a lot of the financing and infrastructure guarantees,” he said.
Nvidia backstopped deals, like committing $105 billion in August for an OpenAI data center. The company has a major equity stake in the neocloud CoreWeave, emerging as an important financial backer and confidence booster. Nvidia is expected to take a $10 billion stake in Anthropic’s initial public offering.
Nvidia makes the graphics processing units that power AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. But the company has also been “the central bank of AI,” Jay Goldberg, senior analyst at Seaport Research Partners, told CNN.
The company also functions like a venture capitalist, Goldberg noted, investing in companies to fuel their growth and help them get ahead in an industry that requires massive amounts of capital.
“Circular financing” has emerged as a term to describe Nvidia’s financial agreements, because the company is backing the companies that, in turn, buy its products. Goldberg said a more accurate term would be “very aggressive vendor financing.”
I have to say I see research possibilities in that last bit. Guess it’s time to search out the data and boot up my statistics programs. This might be another “Greed is Good” moment in the making accompanied by a sizable market correction. Most of us always called this another bubble. I guess we will all see that and if the entire industry can actually prove it has merits other than financing tricks.
Sally Jenkins, writing for The New Republic, shows just what a grifter Little Marco has been. It’s nothing knew in the Orange One’s administration but this one may sink any future dreams of greatness for him. “The Shamelessness of Marco Rubio. The secretary of state has spent more than $1.2 million in taxpayer funds on personal flights—including taking military jets to football games.” We have a lot of reconstruction to do on oversight in the Executive Branch.
Next to all of the take-Americans-for-nitwits scams perpetrated by the Trump administration, the news that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been using taxpayer-funded military jets to fly to college-football games doesn’t amount to that much. Still, as evidence of degraded ethics and an emperor-like feed-me-another-grape sensibility, it holds its own. Rubio has defended his flights by saying that the events are important to his family—his son is a senior running back for the Gators. But he’s really Saturday joyriding to big-ticket events, and the message he’s sending is This administration doesn’t serve you. You serve it.
Rubio’s son Anthony may be a very nice young man. What he isn’t, arguably, is a college-football player worth flying in to watch—because he barely ever plays. He is a walk-on, a scout-teamer, which means that his primary role is not to play in games but to be a body for his teammates to scrimmage against during practice. It’s a valuable job, from which he’s no doubt learned a lot. But he has made it onto the field for exactly three rushing attempts this season. Yet Rubio, a Florida alum, has flown to at least 10 Gators games. The cost of his personal flights since he became secretary of state, according to reporting by The Washington Post, has been more than $1.2 million.
When asked about the trips, Rubio said, “I have and will continue to try and make it to as many events that are important to me personally and to my family as possible,” implying that he just wants to encourage his kid. Now, Anthony’s last appearance was for one carry in a 52–3 hammering of the Campbell University Fighting Camels, back in mid-September. He has not set foot on a game-day field since. And still, Rubio flew in for the October 31 marquee matchup with top-ranked Georgia, and for a game on November 7 against Oklahoma. Both were broadcast live on national TV. Apparently, it is personally important to Rubio to use Americans’ tax dollars to wave school colors while watching his kid’s back as he wears a numeral on the sideline.
“Flying by pricey military jet, Rubio rarely misses a Florida football game.” Noah White and Rick Maese share the lede.
Rubio’s personal travel, through nearly two years on the job, appears to significantly outpace that of his predecessors, former State Department officials said. And it’s adding up: The flights have cost the government more than $1.2 million, The Post found, using rates published by the Defense Department.
Like the defense secretary and the directors of the FBI and CIA, Rubio is barred from flying commercially for security reasons and is required, when traveling for personal reasons, to reimburse the government the equivalent of an economy-fare ticket. Officials’ reimbursements are rarely made
Rubio and the State Department declined to say how much he has reimbursed the government, but they defended the trips.
“I have and will continue to try and make it to as many events that are important to me personally and to my family as possible,” Rubio said in a statement, in response to questions from The Post.
Assistant Secretary of State Dylan Johnson said Rubio uses military aircraft to “ensure continuity of operations, continuity of government and access to secure communications at all times. And he will continue to do so.”
Government ethics experts said that while Rubio’s travel complies with federal rules, it raises a question about stewardship of public money. The handful of government officials who aren’t allowed to fly commercially have little choice in how they travel, they said, but they retain control over how frequently they take personal trips.
Let’s see if this influence his little Marco wet dream of being President. I can’t help but think that the Taxpayers have had it with corruption and he’ll be retired to Florida where he can watch as many football games that hey can still afford the tickets for. Meanwhile, Aaron Rupar has this tasty interview with Tim Snyder published at Public Noticeon the Grifter-in-Chief. ‘In conversation with Tim Snyder. “It’s important to think not about what he’s going to do to us, but what we’re going to do to him”.’ This interview came before the elections so it’s excellent insight on both prediction and results level.
Aaron Rupar
One of the reasons the midterms that are coming up are so important is because it gives Americans an opportunity to register their dissatisfaction with things like the trade war with Canada. I sometimes think about this election as being possibly our last chance to pull the emergency brake on the GOP’s drive toward authoritarianism. Do you agree with that characterization, and how are you thinking about the stakes?
Tim Snyder
My general view about this is the opposition party, the Democrats, has a once in a lifetime chance to claim both houses of Congress and to begin transformative systemic change. If they lose — which they won’t — but if they do, this opportunity won’t come around again.
Right now we’re in this unusual situation where corruption is very salient and also people think Trump is more corrupt than other presidents. And that’s really important because we’re in a country where basically everybody thinks the system is broken, but now people think, “Yeah, it’s broken, but Trump is worse.” That means the Democrats, when they win, have an opportunity to get on the right side of that issue.
They have to make the most of that opportunity because if they don’t come out in November and January and do serious things — have ostentatious investigations, pass laws to get money out of politics — then by next spring, we’ll be back in a country where people say, “Everybody is corrupt.” In that environment, Trump can survive. His whole thing is, “Yeah, everybody lies, everybody’s corrupt, but look at me — I’m better at it. I’m more charming about it.”
As far as an emergency brake, I agree with you. I would just say you pull the emergency brake and then you jump out of the car and you get another one because the task is not fixing what we have at this point. The task is building something different.
I’m thinking a lot on this statement. ” If they lose — which they won’t — but if they do, this opportunity won’t come around again.” I do wonder if this is a one in a lifetime opportunity to just clean up a lot of things. Of course, there’s talk of eliminating the Electoral College again and other drastic changes. But, what if, we could actually do it? But more importantly, what if we don’t?
People don't want data centers polluting their cities.They don't want masked thugs terrorizing their neighbors.They don't want more forever wars.They want a living wage. They want healthcare. They want to be able to afford a home. They want their basic needs met.Dems must seize this moment.
The latest exhibition from Hegseth and his buddies is just yet another example of the level of dickhead these assholes fuckwads will stoop to…
wow — CNN broadcast footage of an Arlington guard yelling at a group with Pete Hegseth to "MAINTAIN SILENCE … PAY RESPECT!" after someone in his entourage started laughing at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
That makes me so mad. If anyone has been to this part of Arlington, the area is so solemn. You can’t help but feel sadness. For these idiots to begin laughing like they do in the video is beyond disgusting and so disrespectful.
It is like a cherry turd on a huge sundae of shit that is the Trump administration.
In yet another attempt at intimidation:
The warning is rich, considering how the Trump administration has pushed sham prosecutions against members of Congress who told military and intelligence personnel not to follow illegal orders or who protested against ICE. https://mrf.lu/27Rbv
The White House is threatening Democrats in Congress, warning them that investigating President Donald Trump could cross the line into criminal action.
Punchbowl News reports that White House counsel Will Scharf sent a letter on Monday to Democratic Representative Robert Garcia, the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee, saying that congressional investigations “must further a legitimate executive task; Congress cannot employ them to exercise powers of criminal prosecution assigned to the Executive and the Judiciary.”
Garcia and his fellow Democrats have made “it abundantly clear that any forthcoming investigative processes will be deployed to harass and aggrandize, rather than to advance any legitimate legislative end,” Scharf claims, citing statements by incoming Democrats calling for the prosecution of ICE agents, trials for tech executives, and hearings for Cabinet secretaries like embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The letter is an extreme attempt to intimidate House Democrats into backing off Trump and his legally questionable actions, and it makes a mockery of the constitutional separation of powers, as well as checks and balances between the three branches of government. Scharf is taking a questionable Republican position that effectively says that Congress has no critical oversight over the executive branch.
They have finally called it:
It’s incredible. Black representation in the Senate (7) and in governor’s houses (5) today exceeds all of Reconstruction and the 20th century.
Colom: "For months and months, I've been telling everybody everywhere I go, that we're going to win this election. But every time I said it, I pointed out that people were going to give me too much credit for it. Because it's not something that I did, y'all. It's something that we did."
Decades of immunization progress is backsliding, a continuing NBC News data investigation reveals, threatening the safety of children in America, burdening schools and hindering public health.Read more: nbcnews.to/4BMNObY
We have to survive two more years of Trump’s presidency (unless he’s impeached or or otherwise removed.) Meanwhile, he has blithely been allowing China to steal America’s chip secrets to China. It’s the oldest trick in the book–an egotistical man fell for a honey trap. Trump himself was warned about this and ignored all the warnings.
At The Bulwark, William Kristol has an excellent summary of what happened. He summarizes the latest articles, so you don’t have to read them individually: The Chips Are Falling Into China’s Lap.
Let’s take a quick look at what we’ve learned, or what’s been confirmed, in just the past couple of days. (And I’ll note that all of this is before any congressional investigations have begun, before there’s been sworn testimony from administration officials and others, before further other investigations into Nvidia and other actors, before lawsuits, before the deluge of leaks we’re likely to get from people within the Trump administration.)
Donald Trump Knew. The New York Times reported yesterday that President Trump was told directly by Marco Rubio aboard Air Force One en route to China in May that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was in a relationship with a Chinese spy. “It marked at least the second time in seven months that the president had been told of intelligence about Mr. Huang’s involvement with the woman.”
So for the last six months at least, Trump has been palling around with Huang, praising Huang, presumably sharing information and thoughts with Huang, and taking counsel and advice from Huang, all the while knowing it was very possible that everything he said was being passed on to the government of China and much of what he was hearing had been shaped by the government China.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang with girlfriend Alice Huang
Jensen Huang lied. The Times report also reminds us that in response to earlier reports that Alice Huang was a Chinese intelligence asset and in a relationship with Jensen Huang,
Nvidia executives and Mr. Huang both insisted that the relationship was a routine engagement with a customer. On Sunday, Mr. Huang admitted to a romantic relationship with Ms. Huang. Soon after, Nvidia announced that the company would conduct an independent investigation.
So Huang lied to others in the company, and the company dutifully lied to the rest of us. And there are some indications we’ll discover much more lying about various business matters and corporate relationships, not just personal ones.
Howard Lutnick Obstructed. Politico reports that officials in the Bureau of Industry and Security, the office that oversees tech exports, had warned in dozens of reports of the risk of Nvidia’s advanced chips being diverted to China. But the higher-ups in the Commerce Department, run by Trump’s buddy and business partner Howard Lutnick, chose not to impose meaningful new restrictions on the company.
And the Financial Timesreported yesterday that several U.S. government agencies pushed for Alice Huang’s company, Megaspeed, to be included on the so-called entity list of groups connected to China that posed national security risks. But again, the Commerce Department refused to act. The FT quotes Chris McGuire, a former senior U.S. government export controls official: “It is mind-boggling that [Commerce] knew months ago that Megaspeed is being run by a Chinese spy but did nothing to stop them from buying $4.8 billion worth of Nvidia chips.”
Keith Riggin, a former CIA station chief in Beijing who later advised U.S. companies on the Chinese intelligence threat, says he gave American executives a simple warning about beautiful women who might approach them in Beijing: “You don’t get any better-looking when you go to a place like China.”
But top American executives and government officials are often arrogant, says Riggin. They overlook warnings, and they sometimes think security rules don’t apply to them. That can make them easy marks for the increasingly sophisticated tradecraft of China’s spy service, the Ministry of State Security.
Jensen Huang with wife Lori
Jensen Huang, co-founder of the multitrillion-dollar chipmaker Nvidia, appears to be the most prominent American yet to fall into an MSS honey trap. At least two years ago, he was drawn into what became a sexual relationship with an alleged MSS contact named Alice Huang. But he’s hardly the first. Riggin told me that he knows of at least 20 others who were victims of similar operations.
The Nvidia case has rocked the intelligence world for several reasons. U.S. officials have been investigating Chinese dealings with the company for at least two years, according to an official who has been briefed on the case. President Donald Trump was personally advised about Jensen Huang’s vulnerability about a year ago, according to the New York Times. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio helped circulate an interagency warning about the case this past spring.
Why the slow roll? That’s the haunting question. Why wasn’t more done sooner to check what intelligence veterans tell me appears to have been a double-barreled Chinese intelligence exploitation of Alice Huang’s involvement with Jensen Huang? The evidence suggests the MSS was running both a supply-chain operation to obtain precious Nvidia chips and an influence operation to shape administration tech policy.
The closer you examine the case, the more puzzling the riddles become. Why did Trump continue his close relationship with Huang even after he was warned? Why wasn’t Huang given an FBI “defensive briefing” about his girlfriend’s intelligence ties if, as published reports say, he didn’t know about her MSS connection? Was Kash Patel’s FBI so busy with Trump’s political agenda that it failed to pursue Chinese spy operations aggressively?
Here’s the question that vexes CIA and FBI China hands: An intelligence investigation gathered information that a powerful friend of Trump was having an affair with a suspected Chinese agent, but the probe stalled. Why?
Trump is backing Jensen Huang in the spy scandal
Has it occurred to any of these “investigators” that the reason could be that Trump doesn’t want to stand up to China or Russia? Ignatius alludes to that fact:
Huang seemed to imagine that he was untouchable. More than a year ago, the New York Times published a photo of him with Alice Huang in a Taipei, Taiwan, bar in June 2024 and another of them together the following May at a Taipei trade show. Both photos had been posted on the internet. Nvidia was then selling advanced chips to a Singapore-based company named Megaspeed, where Alice Huang worked and which had been spun off from a Chinese gaming firm. But the alarm bells apparently didn’t ring in the Nvidia executive suite.
The public loves a good spy scandal, especially when it’s linked with sex. “Huang Huang Bang Bang” headlined the New York Post on Monday, after the Nvidia chief issued a public apology to his wife, family and company. But this one goes much deeper, because it involves artificial intelligence technology that is among America’s most precious national-security secrets, and a president who has pushed for closer ties with Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he habitually describes as “my friend,” at a time when China poses a growing military and intelligence threat.
Trump also claims he doesn’t recall being warned a year ago. There’s more at the WaPo link. You can use the gift link to read the rest.
Exactly how Nvidia’s powerful chief, Jensen Huang, a married man and father of three, fell into the clutches of Alice Huang (no relation), a tech executive that U.S. intelligence identified last year as an agent of China’s MSS intelligence agency, has yet to be revealed. Nor has a coherent explanation from President Trump of why he continued to embrace the Nvidia boss long after U.S. intelligence came to suspect that Megaspeed, Alice Huang’s Singapore-based firm, was diverting restricted advanced AI chips to China. But if the affair goes to prove anything, it’s that—as Lawler said–even the most brilliant mind of a generation can lose its senses when targeted by a highly trained and sexy intelligence agent….
Imagine Alice Huang being left alone in Jensen’s bedroom with access to his phone and laptop, former China resident and expert Bill Bishop commented in his Sinocism Substack. “On the Jensen Huang-Alice Huang affair, you have to give the MSS credit for running another successful op. They are good and getting better…”
The Nvidia CEO “is (was?) text and phone buddies with President Trump,” Bishop added, “so if he divulged anything about his conversations with Trump to her, or his thoughts about Trump or chatter about China policy or frankly anything from Trump, that would be valuable to any foreign intelligence service, and especially to the MSS…”
“Alice was supposedly a media executive at Hunan TV and CCTV, but initial media checks reveal no such evidence,” Kenneth Decleva, a former State Department psychiatrist and intelligence analyst,” says. “And her social media including WeChat has been scrubbed. She has vanished. She will now be promoted by the MSS and further, honored by Xi.”
“Jensen and any company strategy/secrets have to be considered compromised until proven otherwise,” he added. “The FBI should seize his passport(s). He’s a huge flight risk.”
Please go read the whole thing. Trump is giving away our most valuable secrets.
Yesterday, KY Rep. Thomas Massie presented articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth on the House floor. Unfortunately the effort failed, thanks to 11 Democrats who didn’t make it to work on time.
The House has voted 211 to 204 to refer the articles of impeachment filed against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to committee, effectively killing the impeachment effort spearheaded by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.
Tuesday’s vote short-circuits any potential floor vote on the articles of impeachment, and virtually guarantees the measure will not be taken up before the current session of Congress expires.
Rep. Thomas Massie
The vote provided a surprise reprieve for President Trump’s embattled Defense Secretary, who was facing an impeachment vote by the full House as early as Wednesday.
Massie reintroduced the articles of impeachment on Monday, accusing Hegseth of high crimes and misdemeanors in connection to the war with Iran and U.S. strikes against Iran and on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean.
Massie’s impeachment resolution sought to oust Hegseth over the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro without congressional authorization, and the effort to punish Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., for a video telling service members they can refuse illegal orders.
The impeachment measure was Massie’s second attempt against Hegseth. He first sought to bring the impeachment resolution to the floor before the midterm elections, prompting Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to call an early recess to avoid the vote. That caused the resolution to expire, which is why Massie reintroduced the resolution again this week.
While the impeachment push may be quelled for now, Hegseth’s troubles on Capitol Hill are not over. Democrats have promised vigorous investigations into Hegseth’s Pentagon once they assume the majority in January.
House Republicans came together Tuesday to shelve a measure to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, thanks largely to almost a dozen Democrats failing to show up for the early evening vote.
Pete Hegseth
Some of the Democrats who did cast a vote did not even try to hide their frustration.
“The people send us here to do a job. I don’t know if anyone had any real health issues or anything significant. So I want to leave room for that,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.) told CNN’s Manu Raju. “But that being said, at the end of the day, we’re here to do a job. And the same way I had to clock in when I worked at a restaurant, we got to clock in and do our work here.”
Some of the members missed the vote, which ended around 6 p.m. EST, due to gridlock on Pennsylvania Ave., caused by a traffic accident.
“Like other Members of Congress, Rep. Stansbury was blocked from entering the Capitol to vote due a traffic incident and a police escort of a bus during the vote,” Rep. Melanie Stansbury‘s (D-N.M.) office said in a statement on the social platform X. “When she reached the chamber, the vote had just gaveled out.”
“The Congresswoman was stuck behind a motorcade and missed the vote by 1 minute. She would have voted against the motion to refer,” Rep. Marilyn Strickland‘s (D-Wash.) chief of staff said….
The 11 Democrats who missed the vote were Stansbury, Strickland and Reps. Julia Brownley (Calif.) Lou Correa (Calif.), Laura Gillen (N.Y.), Steven Horsford (Nev.), Jonathan Jackson (Ill.), Nancy Pelosi, (Calif.), Brittany Pettersen (Colo.), Haley Stevens (Mich.) and Frederica Wilson (Fla.).
I don’t normally tell you to drop what you’re doing and watch a video. But tonight, I’m insisting.
My plan for the evening had been to write about the articles of impeachment against self-styled “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth and analyze the process we could expect going forward. Then, despite the absolute shellacking they took Tuesday night, Republicans voted to send the resolution brought by Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie to committee, a parliamentary device for burying it. “At least for now,” says my guest tonight, Representative Dan Goldman. Dan knows a thing or two about impeachment. Before his election to Congress, he served as the lead counsel for the House Intelligence Committee investigation that led to Donald Trump’s first impeachment. Senate Republicans ultimately declined to convict.
Dan Goldman
“At least for now” is the text balloon that hangs over all of this, as Democrats prepare to take control of both the House and the Senate in January. The articles include eight charges against Hegseth, including violating the War Powers Resolution of 1973, dismantling protections against civilian casualties, extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and the Pacific, retaliating against Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona for participating with other members of Congress who made a video reminding service members of their duty to refuse unlawful orders, unauthorized military action in Venezuela, and conducting an unauthorized military campaign in Yemen.
You may recall that Senator Kelly was censured, threatened with military prosecution and loss of rank and pension for exercising his First Amendment rights. This morning, when Hegseth took to the podium to reiterate that he’d engage in the conduct the articles specify all over again, and was proud of it, NBC reports that “Two Pentagon officials, including a member of Hegseth’s security detail, approached reporters while they were waiting for him to appear at the lectern … They said that if any reporters behave in a manner that is ‘not professional’ or ‘get out of line’ or ‘get out of hand,’ they would be ‘physically removed’ from the room.” Hegseth doesn’t want you to know what he’s doing, which is precisely why we have a First Amendment. The allegations in the articles of impeachment, even though well known, are still shocking, at least in the sense that it’s shocking that the supposedly pro-military Republican Party would tolerate them—they’ve just set a precedent for what behavior is tolerable if a Hegseth-like figure arises during a Democratic administration (unlikely, since today’s Democrats aren’t hardwired like that). All of the conduct described in the articles of impeachment is awful, but the First Amendment allegations sting to the core of our democracy.
Today is Veterans Day, and Trump visited the hallowed cemetery today, but don’t expect him to learn anything from the experience. He is still fighting to build a “triumphal arch” that will interfere with views of Arlington Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial.
President Trump traveled to Arlington National Cemetery on Wednesday to lay a wreath in honor of fallen service members, a time-honored presidential tradition on Veterans Day at a site that could be dramatically reshaped by his proposal to build a 250-foot triumphal arch in a traffic circle just outside the cemetery’s main entrance.
A common thread throughout the suits is the contention that the giant arch, which would loom over the nearly 640-acre military cemetery in Virginia, would have a negative effect on it.
The planned site of the arch holds “symbolic significance as the physical and ceremonial connection between Washington, D.C. and Arlington National Cemetery — the final resting place of more than 400,000 active-duty service members, veterans, and their family members,” Virginia and the District of Columbia contended in their joint lawsuit.
A view along Memorial Bridge toward Arlington Cemetery, which would be blocked by Mr. Trump’s planned arch. Credit Eric Lee for the NYT.
“For more than a century, that direct sight line has stood as a testament to the reunification of the nation after the Civil War and a point of reflection for visitors,” Arlington County said in a legal filing.
For months, Mr. Trump has vowed to push forward and celebrated the proposed arch as one of his grandest contributions to the city, dwarfing similar triumphal arches around the world. The administration has argued that aesthetic concerns about the area are not enough to win a federal lawsuit, and that various historical proposals for the bridge linking Virginia to Washington at the entrance to the cemetery included proposals for an arch built in the same corridor.
But as plans to break ground have accelerated, government bodies on both sides of the Potomac River have said the idea would bring unwelcome service interruptions to the region — and overshadow the solemn site.
On the Lincoln Memorial issue:
The arch would sit on an island in the Potomac River at the southwestern boundary of the District of Columbia, just across a 2,100-foot bridge. The bridge was designed to trace a vista to the Lincoln Memorial from the Robert E. Lee Memorial, also known as Arlington House, which sits atop a hill in the cemetery.
There’s much more information about the Arch battle at the gift link.
President Trump’s planned 250-foot triumphal arch has come under legal fire on multiple fronts: from veterans, a historian and the governments of the District of Columbia, Virginia and Arlington County.
Now comes another legal challenge, from the storied Kennedy family.
John F. Kennedy’s grave site with the eternnal flame.
Arguing that the arch, with its golden angels and flame on top, would cast a shadow on their relatives’ graves in Arlington National Cemetery, nine members of the Kennedy family moved to join existing litigation in Washington on Tuesday seeking to block the project. They also say the arch would obstruct the intended sightline from the eternal flame at President John F. Kennedy’s gravesite, “destroying an essential element of the gravesite’s design.”
Construction of the arch, one of Mr. Trump’s favorite projects, has been temporarily paused by a judge in another case. If allowed to proceed, it would rise between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. The filing claims that the placement would obstruct “a line of sight that was designed to represent the unification of the nation following the Civil War and that has existed for nearly a century.”
The arch “will permanently cast a shadow over plaintiffs’ parents’ graves and the graves of servicemen and -women who made the ultimate sacrifice for this country,” the filing added.
The plaintiffs are children or grandchildren of Senators Robert F. Kennedy and Edward M. Kennedy, the former president’s brothers, who are buried near him.
“A towering arch casting shadows across the graves of our father, mother and uncles, as well as the graves of so many who have served our country, would also cast a shadow over our democratic principles, undermining the safeguards established by our elected representatives to protect this hallowed ground for generations to come,” two of the plaintiffs, Rory Kennedy and Maxwell Kennedy, who are children of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, said in a statement.
Read more at the gift link.
That’s all I have for today. What do you think? What else is on your mind?
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Does this imply there will be a flight of Republicans or Democrats in to once what were traditionally swing states but now seem to be firmly rooted in one party or the other? Will there be new states, once reliably one party or the other, that now become the new swing states? It seems like we’ve entered a timeline where old predictions and assumptions may have changed. I think it might be interesting to figure out why. The idea that Republicans are now flooding Florida is an interest one. I’d like to see similar analysis of Georgia. Will it become reliably blue? I know that many of the Hurricane Katrina Diaspora wound up in Texas and Georgia and stayed put. Are there other diasporas that may be changing those states or is it just an overall evolution? Will all this settle down or will it represent another example of “It’s the economy stupid.” Oh well, too early to tell but I’m going to keep my ears and eyes open as the patterns of the Blue Tsunami become more statistically significant.
Let’s see if this influence his little Marco wet dream of being President. I can’t help but think that the Taxpayers have had it with corruption and he’ll be retired to Florida where he can watch as many football games that hey can still afford the tickets for. Meanwhile, Aaron Rupar has this tasty interview with Tim Snyder published at 
