Mostly Monday Reads: Questioning Minds Want to Know

“Paging Elon! Paging ELON! PAGING ELON MUSK!!!” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Questions of the day:  Why are all Orange Caligula’s best foreign buddies Communists?  If so, why does he keep calling every Democratic Office Holder a Communist as if it’s something he despises?  Has anyone else noticed this?  Additionally, when did it become legal to bribe voters?  When did it become okay to do an Unconstitutional raid on a member of Congress’s home within 60 days of an election?  WTAF is going on in our country?  All he makes are bad decisions. Their results become exponentially worse by the minute.

I don’t even know where to start today. I assumed all hell would break loose once our stupid Speaker of the House sent the Congress Critters home for vacation, but I had no idea what on earth the minds of the madmen in the West Wing could come up with. The only positive finding I can see in all of this today is that  “Trump’s midterm road show reveals GOP troubles — and his own priorities. Republicans need the president to mobilize voters, but his low approval ratings limit where he can help.”  This is from the Washington Post. It’s reported by Natalie Allison and Isaac Arnsdorf.

“It’s the last time he’s really going to be able to do this in full force,” said Mark Mitchell, a politically independent pollster who previously supported Trump but is now critical of

Trump has at times been in high spirits while traveling and said he thinks campaigning is going well, one adviser said. But another person with knowledge of his behavior observed that Trump has been in a “foul mood.”

Trump’s advisers maintain that the rallies are the most effective thing Trump can do — short of lowering gas prices driven up by the war he started with Iran — to try to minimize Republican losses this fall. GOP officials say Trump showing up in the backyard of supporters who voted for him three times is the party’s best chance to turn out those voters this fall when he isn’t on the ballot. Republican enthusiasm is trailing that of Democrats. A recent survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that among those who say they are extremely motivated to vote, Democrats lead 59 percent to 35 percent. That’s a contrast with the 2022 midterms, when such extremely motivated voters were evenly divided between the two parties.

Be like #Susan

The article lists a number of places where Trump held his small rallies have shown exactly who shows up. They are Trump-friendly to start out with and generally accomplish nothing other thing collecting these folks’ names for GOTV activities.  However, a rally in Syracuse, New York turned out to show more about the opposition than the Trump Supporters.  This is from a local newspaper and I just had to share it before I dive into the list of evil I presented at the top. “Woman in yellow jacket fires middle fingers as she’s tossed from Trump’s Syracuse rally.” It was reported by Chris Baker at Syracuse.com. Susan has no become a poster Queen.

A woman in a yellow jacket and a Primus T-shirt is capturing the internet’s attention Friday after sheriff’s deputies removed her from a Donald Trump rally in Syracuse.

The woman was escorted out of the Oncenter in Syracuse as Trump spoke to a crowd of at least 2,500 supporters.

She fired middle fingers into the faces of nearby Trump supporters and shouted what seemed to be profanities at them. Many returned the gesture and shouted back. \

Video of the woman being removed immediately took off online. Hundreds of thousands of people had seen it by midnight Friday.

Susan appears to be the archetype for all the Trump resisters who showed up at the various Trump Rallies.

Okay. Now to the gloom and doom.  (sigh)  First, this extremely depressing event concerning Representative Ilhan Omar. We’re clearly in Banana Republic Territory now if this is what our Justice Department is doing.

This is from the AP.  “Agents search Rep. Omar’s Washington home in criminal probe as she vows she won’t ‘be silenced’.” Alanna Durkin Richer and Eric Tucker share the lede.

Federal agents on Monday searched the home of Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, a startling escalation in a criminal investigation that brings renewed scrutiny to the frequent target of Trump administration derision in the final weeks of her reelection bid.

The search of the Minnesota congresswoman’s home so close to next month’s midterm contests that will determine control of the House and the Senate was swiftly condemned by top Democrats in Congress, who raised questions about the timing given longstanding Justice Department protocol to avoid overt investigative steps involving political candidates in the direct run-up to an election.

The Justice Department confirmed in a statement that Homeland Security Investigations agents executed a judicially authorized search warrant in the Washington, D.C., area in connection with an ongoing federal criminal investigation but provided no other details.

The nature and scope of the investigation were unclear, though officials in President Donald Trump’s administration have repeatedly hinted at the existence of an inquiry targeting Omar, a Somali-born Democrat whose status as an immigrant to the U.S. and left-wing views have repeatedly drawn criticism from Republicans and senior Trump officials.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said last month that there was an “ongoing investigation” related in part to whether Omar lied on her immigration forms and that “something’s going to happen.”

Omar responded to the search with a statement on X that called it an “attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.”

“For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation,” she said. “I will not be silenced.”

Though the Republican focus on Omar’s background dates back years, the search of her home took place three weeks before the November midterms, in which Omar is on the ballot for reelection. The Justice Department has historically sought to avoid public investigative actions involving a candidate within 60 days of a primary or general election.

“For years, Donald Trump and far-right extremists have relentlessly targeted Congresswoman Omar with vile personal attacks and baseless accusations,” top House Democratic leaders said in a statement. “Now, less than 30 days until the midterm election, his violent mass deportation machine has descended upon the home of a duly elected Member of Congress and her family.”

This next article is from AXIOS’ Ben Berkowitz.  “Feds search Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home in immigration probe.”

Driving the news: Fox News first reported that Homeland Security Investigations agents conducted the search, citing a Justice Department statement.

• A DOJ spokesperson confirmed to Axios that DHS agents “executed a judicially authorized search warrant secured by the Department of Justice” as part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation.
• DHS referred Axios to the DOJ.

The other side: Omar’s office blasted the search.

• “This raid by Trump’s DHS is an outrageous abuse of power and an unprecedented escalation in the weaponization of federal law enforcement to target political enemies,” Omar spokesperson Jacklyn Rogers said in a statement.
• “The Congresswoman has done nothing wrong.”
• House Democratic leaders separately issued a joint statement calling the search “deeply disturbing” and part of a “rogue abuse of power” by the administration.

Last month, border czar Tom Homan confirmed an ongoing criminal probe into Omar, though he declined to offer details.

• Fox reported Monday that the search was tied to a fraud investigation into Omar’s immigration paperwork.
• The Somali native came to the U.S. in 1995 as a 12-year-old refugee.

This is a short snip from CNBC that may show the weird reasoning for the raid. “Rep. Ilhan Omar blasts federal criminal raid on home: ‘I will not be silenced’. Dan Mangan has the lede.

In September, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told right-wing commentator Benny Johnson at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas that DHS was investigating issues around Omar and her family’s immigration to the United States.

“There may be more to this, the whole family migration and possibly some illegal activity for them to come to the United States to begin with,” said Mullin. He said the investigation could end with deportations.

The DOJ, for years, has had a policy regarding the announcement and initiation of federal investigations and prosecutions close to elections. The policy discourages beginning an investigation, taking investigative steps, bringing criminal charges, or making public statements for the purpose of affecting an election or to give a candidate an advantage or disadvantage.

A person familiar with the raid on Omar’s home told CNBC on Monday that the DOJ does not consider that action to violate the policy because the raid was not meant to be public.

Now to Elon Musk and his re-entrance into the election bribing business. This is from Theodore Schleifer of the New York Times. “Inside Elon Musk’s $276 Million Midterm Rescue Mission for Republicans. The world’s richest person has quietly become by far the biggest known midterm donor, trying to save Republicans’ Senate majority with some of the largest donations in American political history.”

Elon Musk has quietly funneled more than $276 million into Republican groups and his super PAC since the start of July, building a huge turnout operation to help the party battle headwinds in the midterm elections.

The staggering amount of money makes Mr. Musk, the richest person in the world, by far the largest known donor in the midterms. Representatives for Mr. Musk supplied the previously unreported figures on his political giving to The New York Times before a federal filing deadline on Thursday.

In an effort to save Republicans’ Senate majority, he gave a total of $158 million this summer to the Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC backing the party’s candidates for the chamber, according to his team. In sum, that is one of the largest political donations in American history, and more than the group’s Democratic rival raised from all of its donors that quarter.

Mr. Musk has also built a major Republican turnout operation through a super PAC he founded in 2024, America PAC. He donated over $76 million this summer to the group, which in turn spent that much on building a sprawling canvassing program to try to turn out hard-to-reach Republican voters. The group is active in seven Senate battlegrounds and nearly three dozen House races.

Mr. Musk has already given far more money, about $366 million, to federal committees during the 2025-26 election cycle than he did during the 2024 election, when he laid out roughly $290 million to help return President Trump and Republicans to power. He has given even more in undisclosed donations during both elections, according to people briefed on the giving.

The latest torrent of spending has helped give the Republican Party a financial advantage in the midterms, as well-funded outside groups like Mr. Trump’s powerful super PAC flood the airwaves with advertising in the final weeks. No Democratic billionaire is spending nearly as much as Mr. Musk, and money remains a central worry for the party in an otherwise favorable political environment.

The donations also clear up the mystery of how much staying power Mr. Musk wants to have in American politics.

Here are a few good reads, and then I’ll sign off for the day.  This one is actually a few weeks old, but it’s worth the read. “How Trump keeps undercutting his anti-communist message.” The story comes from NPR’s Danielle Kurtzleben.

Speaking in the Oval Office this week, President Trump once again claimed he wanted to give $5,000 to every adult in the U.S. — but only if Republicans win the House and Senate in November.

It’s an idea he first proposed at the Republican midterm convention earlier this month. And from the moment he proposed it, even some of his allies were skeptical.

Broadcasting from the convention, Michael Duncan — one host of the conservative Ruthless podcast — said while the proposal might be politically smart, the better policy might be to instead “just cut taxes by $5,000.”

“We don’t need helicopter money,” he added.

His co-host Josh Holmes agreed: “Maybe we don’t have a bureaucrat who shuffles paper from the left side of his desk to the right and then sends you a check for your time.”

The right-leaning satire site the Babylon Bee was more pointed: “Trump Pledges That If Voters Defeat Socialism In November, They Will Each Get An Equal Redistribution Of Wealth From The Government,” read one of its headlines.

This is the contradiction that keeps arising in Trump’s second term, as the leader of the party that has often claimed to support free markets repeatedly tries to bend the economy to his will. But it’s especially striking as Trump continues to try to label Democrats as “communists.”

“We will defeat the communists, and that’s what they are. They’re not socialists, they’re not democrats, they’re communists,” Trump said at the Republicans’ midterm convention.

And millions heard the message in a TV ad that aired last week: “Together we will defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America,” says Trump in the ad, which states at the end that it was funded by the federal government. An ethics group has filed a lawsuit against taxpayer money being used for the overtly political advertisement.

The Trump administration has announced equity stakes in more than 30 private companies, imposed dozens of tariffs, and taken the unusual step of trying to lower interest rates via the Treasury Department.

These big, unorthodox policy moves are certainly not communism, but they’re also not typical Republican free-market capitalism. So what could you call it?

“I would say transactional interventionism,” says Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the libertarian Cato Institute.

To him, Trump has no set economic philosophy. Rather, many of Trump’s policy moves are aimed at achieving a specific outcome — like using a tariff to boost a particular industry or punish a foreign country … or suggesting a $5,000 check to reward votes.

So, really, who is the actual one with policies that look like the Soviet Union?  Who is buddies with Putin and and warms up to Xi Jinping? This is from Reuters. “What’s in the diesel deal between Putin and Trump?”

US President Donald Trump has stepped up his efforts to lower US diesel prices by lifting sanctions on Russian diesel exports and announcing a ceasefire on energy infrastructure between Russia and Ukraine.

Soaring US diesel prices are hurting US truckers and farmers, and are a concern for voters and political parties ahead of November 3 midterm elections.

There’s the bottom line right there. Trump is also pissed about Zelensky bombing those Russian Data Centers. This is a great headline from Newsweek. “How Ukraine Could Explode Trump’s ‘Deal With the Devil’,”  David Averre has the story.

Donald Trump likes to think of foreign policy as a business. Allies should earn their keep and adversaries should be made to pay, unless they can make an offer that leaves America better off than it was before.

The man who brought you The Art Of The Deal and a few too many seasons of The Apprentice should really know when he’s the one being taken for a ride.

Vladimir Putin is currently waging a war on Ukraine and threatening Washington’s historical allies across the pond, while the Kremlin’s digital operatives spread fabricated news and attempt to manipulate the American political conversation via extensive disinformation campaigns.

This, according to the White House, should not discount the Russian president from consideration as Washington’s best partner to help resolve America’s fuel crisis.

Trump’s Russian diesel import deal, hashed out over the phone to Moscow last week, is likely to leave Putin better off, Ukraine worse off, and Americans with little to show for it. But Kyiv‘s recent strikes on Russian data centers suggest it might’ve found another way to make life hard for Putin, and demonstrate why Ukraine, not Russia, could be the more valuable partner for Washington.

It’s really difficult to digest this kind of overt self-dealing in the globe’s first truly democratic republic. How dumb do you have to be to be a Trumper?

I’m still having trouble making comments on the blog for some reason. I have contacted WordPress, and they’re still out to lunch on this one. I think it likely has something to do with any upgrade they made, and AI is likely involved imho. I’ve seen this total loss for something that just popped up into a supposed update before.  It sucks when you don’t have actual programmers to find out who was in charge of that particular feature, when it was basically a rogue computer. Where have I heard that one before?

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?