I’m heartsick about what Trump is doing to the White House. The White House belongs to the American people, not to the current president. But Trump is doing whatever he wants to our government and to “the people’s house.”
Yesterday, at his substack, Law Dork, Chris Geidner posted the clearest photos of Trump’s demolition I have seen so far. From the photos, it’s clear that either the entire East Wing or most of it will be destroyed. The first photo shows the destruction of the front of the building, and the second shows the damage from above, show how far back the damage to the roof goes. I can’t post the photos here–they are protected–but you can see them at the link.
Photos obtained exclusively by Law Dork on Tuesday show that President Donald Trump is completely demolishing the East Wing of the White House as part of his stated plan to build a ballroom befitting his standards on the White House grounds.
Although Trump earlier had said the ballroom “won’t interfere with the current building,“ this week it became abundantly clear that was a lie. And, this dramatic change to the governmental building, Trump says, is happening care of private money and outside of any governmental — and transparent — funding process.
After The Washington Post first reported on Monday that demolition had begun, The Wall Street Journalreported on Monday night that Treasury Department employees next door to the demolition were told to “refrain from taking and sharing photographs of the grounds, to include the East Wing, without prior approval from the Office of Public Affairs.“
On Tuesday, Law Dork obtained these photographs taken of the ongoing demolition.
Although the Post’s initial story detailed the “East Wing facade“ being demolished and that teams on Monday were “demolishing a portion ofthe East Wing,“ the Tuesday photograph obtained by Law Dork makes clear that most if not all of the entirety of the East Wing is being demolished.
A second photo obtained by Law Dork from another angle shows the extent of the demolition has already reached all but the western and northern walls of the East Wing.
Demolition crews began work Oct. 20 on the East Wing of the White House to clear space for a privately funded 90,000-sq-ft ballroom addition valued at roughly $200 million at the behest of President Donald Trump
The project, announced July 31 by the White House, will be built by Clark Construction Group with AECOM as engineer and McCrery Architects as designer.
Officials said it will create a larger venue for state and ceremonial events, financed entirely by the president and “patriot donors.”
The addition marks the most substantial change to the Executive Residence since the Truman reconstruction of 1948-52. Renderings depict a limestone-clad structure with tall arched windows, ballistic-resistant glazing and interiors described by the White House as “ornately designed.” [….]
The design calls for the addition to remain structurally distinct from the residence while echoing its neoclassical form. The press office said the ballroom “will be substantially separated from the main building… but its theme and architectural heritage will be almost identical.”
As for Trump gaining approval for the project, he took care of that by appointing a sycophant.
Regulatory filings show that as of Sept. 4 no submission had been made to the National Capital Planning Commission, which reviews major federal projects in the capital region.
Commission Chairman Will Scharf, who also serves as White House staff secretary, said during a public meeting that “what we deal with is essentially construction, vertical build,” explaining why demolition and site-preparation work began before commission review. The interpretation leaves design oversight unresolved, even as groundwork proceeds.
Under the Presidential Residence Act, the White House is managed by the National Park Service and operated by the Executive Office of the President’s Facilities Management Division.
While Section 107 of the act exempts the executive residence from mandatory review, Executive Order 11593, issued in 1971, directs federal agencies to consult with the U.S. Interior Dept. before altering historic structures.
Past administrations have voluntarily submitted major projects for review by the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts. These measures, while not legally binding, form the preservation framework that has guided White House alterations for decades and remains relevant even for privately funded work.
A demolition job that began Monday with the disappearance of the White House’s eastern entrance advanced Tuesday with the destruction of much of the East Wing, according to a photograph obtained by The Washington Post and two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the scene.
Photos of construction teams knocking down parts of the East Wing, first revealed by The Washington Post on Monday, shocked preservationists, raised questions about White House overreach and lack of transparency, and sparked complaints from Democrats that President Donald Trump was damaging “the People’s House” to pursue a personal priority.
“They’re wrecking it,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist and professor emeritus at Towson University in Maryland. “And these are changes that can’t be undone. They’re destroying that history forever.”
A White House spokesman said that the “entirety” of the East Wing would eventually be “modernized and rebuilt.”
WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 20: Workers demolish the facade of the East Wing of the White House on October 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit created by Congress to help preserve historic buildings, sent a letter Tuesday to administration officials, warning that the planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom “will overwhelm the White House itself,” which is about 55,000 square feet.
“We respectfully urge the Administration and the National Park Service to pause demolition until plans for the proposed ballroom go through the legally required public review processes,” Carol Quillen, National Trust’s CEO, said in a statement, citing two federal commissions that have traditionally reviewed White House additions.
White House officials dismissed the criticism as “manufactured outrage,” arguing that past presidents had pursued their own changes to the executive campus as necessary. They said that the privately funded ballroom will be a “bold, necessary addition” to the presidential grounds.
You can read more using the gift link.
After the backlash, Trump has decided to submit his plans for review–now that the work is in progress.
The White House said on Tuesday it will submit plans for President Donald Trump’s $250 million White House ballroom project to a body that oversees federal building construction, even though demolition work began earlier this week.
Trump reveled on Tuesday in the demolition sounds by construction workers for the ballroom addition to the White House, the first major change to the historic property in decades.
But critics, aghast about images of the White House walls crumbling after Trump had pledged the project would not interfere with the existing landmark, said a review process should have taken place before the work began.
This schematic from the Washington Post article shows the planned layout of the new White House complex.
The White House still intends to submit those plans to the National Capital Planning Commission, which oversees federal construction in Washington and neighboring states, a White House official told Reuters
“Construction plans have not yet been submitted to the National Capital Planning Commission but will be soon,” the official said, adding that the NCPC does not have jurisdiction over demolition work.
The commission is now led by Will Scharf, a White House aide.
Asked why the demolition of East Wing walls was occurring despite Trump’s promise that it would not affect the existing building, the official said modernization work was required in the East Wing and changes had always been a possibility.
“The scope and size was always subject to vary as the project developed,” he said.
Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt thinks the critics of the East Wing teardown are just jealous.
Karoline Leavitt thinks Democrats are just jealous that Donald Trump is building a swanky $250 million ballroom at the White House.
The White House press secretary says that’s the only way to explain the “fake outrage” after part of the White House’s iconic East Wing was demolished to make way for the 90,000-square-foot structure.
The Trump administration has received widespread backlash for starting work on the event space that will eventually dwarf the White House itself. “It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it,” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton posted on X.
But Trump officials have attempted to convince the public that it’s what presidents, administrations, and White House staff have longed for, for 150 years.
“Are the Democrats jealous that Trump is building this big beautiful ballroom?” Fox News host Jesse Watters asked Leavitt on Tuesday.
Leavitt replied that it “certainly appears that way.”
“I believe there’s a lot of fake outrage right now because nearly every single president who has lived in this beautiful White House behind me has made modernizations and renovations of their own,” she added.
I’m speechless at this point.
Another Trump outrage from yesterday: Trump is demanding that he be paid $230 million for the prosecutions against him.
President Trump is demanding that the Justice Department pay him about $230 million in compensation for the federal investigations into him, according to people familiar with the matter, who added that any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit.
The situation has no parallel in American history, as Mr. Trump, a presidential candidate, was pursued by federal law enforcement and eventually won the election, taking over the very government that must now review his claims. It is also the starkest example yet of potential ethical conflicts created by installing the president’s former lawyers atop the Justice Department.
Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general; Attorney General Pam Bondi; and Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, with President Trump in the Oval Office last week.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
Mr. Trump submitted complaints through an administrative claim process that often is the precursor to lawsuits. The first claim, lodged in late 2023, seeks damages for a number of purported violations of his rights, including the F.B.I. and special counsel investigation into Russian election tampering and possible connections to the 2016 Trump campaign, according to people familiar with the matter. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the claim has not been made public.
The second complaint, filed in the summer of 2024, accuses the F.B.I. of violating Mr. Trump’s privacy by searching Mar-a-Lago, his club and residence in Florida, in 2022 for classified documents. It also accuses the Justice Department of malicious prosecution in charging him with mishandling sensitive records after he left office.
Asked about the issue at the White House after this article published, the president said, “I was damaged very greatly and any money I would get, I would give to charity.”
He added, “I’m the one that makes the decision and that decision would have to go across my desk and it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself.”
A bit more:
Lawyers said the nature of the president’s legal claims poses undeniable ethics challenges.
“What a travesty,” said Bennett L. Gershman, an ethics professor at Pace University. “The ethical conflict is just so basic and fundamental, you don’t need a law professor to explain it.”
He added: “And then to have people in the Justice Department decide whether his claim should be successful or not, and these are the people who serve him deciding whether he wins or loses. It’s bizarre and almost too outlandish to believe.”
The president also seemed to acknowledge that point in the Oval Office last week, when he alluded vaguely to the situation while standing next to the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and her deputy, Todd Blanche. According to Justice Department regulations, the deputy attorney general — in this case, Mr. Blanche — is one of two people eligible to sign off on such a settlement.
Unbelievable.
Arizona’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against House Speaker Mike Johnson yesterday.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes on Tuesday filed a lawsuit to try to force House Speaker Mike Johnson to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat who won her late father’s seat in a special election nearly one month ago.
Johnson, R-La., has said he will seat Grijalva once Senate Democrats agree to reopen the government. But the two parties haven’t been talking for weeks, and there is no indication when the shutdown might end.
The lawsuit, which Mayes threatened in a letter to Johnson last week, argues that the speaker’s delay is depriving the 813,000 residents living in Arizona’s 7th District of congressional representation. It lists the state of Arizona and Grijalva herself as plaintiffs and the U.S. House, as well as the House clerk and sergeant at arms, as defendants.
“Speaker Mike Johnson is actively stripping the people of Arizona of one of their seats in Congress and disenfranchising the voters of Arizona’s seventh Congressional district in the process,” Mayes said in a statement. “By blocking Adelita Grijalva from taking her rightful oath of office, he is subjecting Arizona’s seventh Congressional district to taxation without representation. I will not allow Arizonans to be silenced or treated as second-class citizens in their own democracy.”
As he left the Capitol on Tuesday evening, Johnson blasted the Arizona lawsuit as “patently absurd.”
Mayes, he said, has “no jurisdiction.”
We’ll see what the judge has to say about it.
At the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth (Secretary of War) tells military officials they can’t talk to Congress without his approval.
Leaders at the Pentagon have significantly altered how military officials will speak with Congress after a pair of new memos issued last week.
In an Oct. 15 memo, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his deputy, Steve Feinberg, ordered Pentagon officials — including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — to obtain permission from the department’s main legislative affairs office before they have any communication with Capitol Hill.
The memo was issued the same day the vast majority of Pentagon reporters exited the building rather than agree to the Defense Department’s new restrictions on their work, and it appears to be part of a broader effort by Hegseth to exert tighter control over what the department communicates to the outside world.
According to the memo, a copy of which was authenticated by a Pentagon official, “unauthorized engagements with Congress by (Pentagon) personnel acting in their official capacity, no matter how well-intentioned, may undermine Department-wide priorities critical to achieving our legislative objectives.”
It’s a departure from current practice; previously, Defense Department agencies were free to manage their own interactions with Capitol Hill.
But under Hegseth, the department has sought stricter control over messaging coming out of the Pentagon. Dozens of reporters turned in their badges and left the building last week, when most news agencies refused to sign unprecedented restrictions Hegseth imposed that threatened consequences for journalists who reported information he had not approved for release, even if it was unclassified.
The new directive, which would further curb information flow from the Pentagon to Congress, is designed “to achieve our legislative goals,” Hegseth and his deputy wrote in the memo.
“Unauthorized engagements with Congress by DoW personnel acting in their official capacity, no matter how well-intentioned, may undermine Department-wide priorities critical to achieving our legislative objectives,” the memo says, using the initialism for the “Department of War,” the Defense Department’s secondary but unofficial name used by the Trump administration.
Why is Hegseth so paranoid? Is it because he’s incompetent and realizes the competent DOD people know that?
Millions of Americans are already seeing their health insurance costs soar for 2026 as Congress remains deadlocked over extending covid-era subsidies for premiums.
The bitter fight sparked a government shutdown at the start of October. Democrats refuse to vote on government-funding legislation unless it extends the subsidies, while Republicans insist on separate negotiations after reopening the government. Now lawmakers face greater pressure to act as Americans who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act are seeing, or about to see, the consequences of enhanced subsidies expiring at the end of the year.
Healthcare.gov — the federal website used by 28 states — is expected to post plan offerings early next week ahead of the start of open enrollment in November. But window shopping has already begun in most of the 22 states that run their own marketplaces, offering a preview of the sticker shock to come.
Premiums nationwide are set to rise by 18 percent on average, according to an analysis of preliminary rate filings by the nonpartisan health policy group KFF. That, combined with the loss of extra subsidies, have left Americans with the worst year-over-year price hikes in the 12 years since the marketplaces launched.
Nationally, the average marketplace consumer will pay $1,904 in annual premiums next year, up from $888 in 2025, according to KFF.
The situation is particularly acute in Georgia, which recorded the second-highest enrollment of any state-run marketplace this year and posted prices for 2026 earlier in October. About 96 percent of marketplace enrollees in Georgia received subsidies this year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank that supports extending the subsidies.
Now Georgians browsing the state website are seeing estimated monthly costs double or even triple, depending on their incomes, as lower subsidy thresholds resume.
Sen. Jeff Merkley has been speaking on the Senate floor for more than 12 hours after announcing he would protest what he called President Donald Trump’s “grave threats to democracy.”
The Oregon Democrat began his remarks at 6:24 p.m. ET Tuesday and was still speaking as of Wednesday morning.
Senator Jeff Merkley
“I’ve come to the Senate floor tonight to ring the alarm bells. We’re in the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our republic since the Civil War. President Trump is shredding our Constitution,” he said at the start of his remarks.
The senator’s marathon speech stands as a symbolic show of Democratic resistance as his party remains in a standoff with Republicans over health care subsidies amid the government shutdown. The shutdown is expected to drag on with the impasse entering a fourth week Wednesday. Democrats have so far held their position, blocking the GOP stopgap bill to reopen the government 11 times until their demands are met.
Merkley in his speech pointed to the Trump administration’s previous halting of research grants for universities in its battle over campus oversight as well as the recent indictments of several of the president’s political opponents as well as his push to deploy National Guard troops to Portland.
“President Trump wants us to believe that Portland, Oregon, in my home state, is full of chaos and riots. Because if he can say to the American people that there are riots, he can say there’s a rebellion. And if there’s a rebellion, he can use that to strengthen his authoritarian grip on our nation,” he said.
Read the rest at CNN.
Those are my offerings for today. Sorry there’s not more good news.
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Guys, I don’t mean to sound like this but there is a felon down the street making AI videos of himself as a king shitting on Americans and the American flag and he is literally tearing down the White House as we speak
JUST IN: The White House has begun DEMOLISHING portions of the East Wing of the White House to build Trump’s $250 million ballroom — despite earlier claiming it wouldn’t “interfere” with the existing White House structure. (Washington Post)
This is a desecration and an abomination. First he posts an AI video of himself wearing a crown dumping shit on the heads of Americans, then he starts tearing down part of the White House for his Mar-a-Lago style ballroom.
Yeah. So The White House is designated a National Historic Landmark. That means:It’s formally recognized as having exceptional national historical significance.Any substantial changes, demolitions, or new construction affecting it are tightly restricted.It’s not his house! WTF.
What? You mean the guy who lies constantly about literally everything and destroys everything he touches lied about not destroying our iconic and historic building?And he couldn't care less what we think about it.Will a single reporter ask him why he lied about this?
White House begins demolishing East Wing facade to build Trump’s ballroomThe president had claimed construction of the $250 million ballroom wouldn’t ‘interfere’ with the existing White House structure.wapo.st/4hqBNiU
The White House has begun removing the East Wing facade to make room for Trump’s new $300B ballroom, a large project unlikely to wrap up long before he’s due to leave office.
Although the U.S. government has been shut down now for 20 days, leaving vital public servants without pay, work on Trump’s 90,000-square-foot ballroom has continued. In July, when he announced the project, Trump said: “It won’t interfere with the current building. It won’t be. It’ll be near it but not touching it—and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of. It’s my favorite. It’s my favorite place. I love it.”
Trump’s promise notwithstanding, demolition crews have begun to tear down the East Wing of the White House, the “People’s House.” Jonathan Edward and Dan Diamond of the Washington Post noted that today a backhoe began ripping through the structure. The National Capital Planning Commission, which approves construction of federal buildings, has not signed off on the destruction, but in September, Will Weissert of the Associated Press reported that the Trump-appointed head of the commission, Will Scharf, who is also the White House staff secretary, said the board has no jurisdiction over demolition or site preparation. “What we deal with is essentially construction, vertical build,” Sharf said during the only public meeting about the ballroom.
But White House officials do not appear to want to advertise their destruction of part of the historic building. Natalie Andrews and Alex Leary of the Wall Street Journal reported that officials at the Treasury Department, which has a front-row seat to the demolition, have told employees not to share photos of the grounds. According to Trump, funding for his ballroom has been provided by dozens of companies, including Apple, Amazon, Lockheed Martin, and Coinbase. As of September, the White House had not yet submitted building plans to the National Capital Planning Commission.
The first president to live in the White House after its construction was a contemporary of Thomas Paine, John Adams. When he moved into the house in 1800, Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail: “I Pray Heaven To Bestow The Best Of Blessings On This House And All that shall hereafter Inhabit it. May none but Honest and Wise Men ever rule under This Roof.”
I don’t have the strength to deal with this shit anymore.
Cartoons via Cagle:
It is enough to send me to the looney bin!
Stay safe out there…
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“Pfft… don’t tell me chemtrails aren’t real.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
All you have to do is to take a look at Orange Caligula’s response to the 7 million plus Americans letting them know how much he sucks to figure out how deeply we owned his thoughts on Saturday. He had no fake military birthday parade to distract him for this one. The headlines in the legacy media were so overtly blasé that you got a true sense of how deeply they’ve sucked the last decade. The problem is we might be living rentfree in his mind, but he’s still held up in the White House turning it into a mid-century modern whore house.
So, let’s go find the consensus among the public intellectuals who don’t worry about the threats of law suits and shutdowns to their bottom lines. Paul Waldman provides this analysis over at Public Notice. “No Kings was a huge success. Just look at Trump’s response. Turnout was enormous. There was no violence. And the wannabe king is triggered.”
There were some immediate attempts to simply dismiss the No Kings protests; White House spokespeople asked by journalists about the event responded “Who cares?” But President Trump cares very, very much.
The Republican Party has increasingly come to define itself by what and whom it hates. If some new issue bursts into public awareness, they won’t know what they think until they find out what position Democrats were taking so they can take the opposite one. They’re anti-anti-racism, and anti-anti-climate change, and all it takes to get them to denounce something is to tell them liberals like it. They’ll even get worked up about a corporate logo if a bunch of bots tell them it’s woke, apparently because the Founding Fathers would never have stood for sans serif fonts.
So calling this event (and the larger movement it seeks to create) “No Kings” turns out to have been a stroke of genius, because Trump’s response was to essentially say Yeah, I’m the king — and because I’m the king, I can poop on people!
After so many years one would think he had lost the ability to shock, but no — generative AI slop tools give Trump a whole new way to act like a petulant toddler:
Trump posts AI video showing him literally dumping shit on America
Yes, the president of the United States posted a video showing him wearing a crown and pooping on crowds of Americans. Whether you think this is evidence of rapidly advancing dementia or just a new expression of the same vulgar and juvenile impulses Trump has always had, there is no universe in which posting a video like that one is politically beneficial for him.
“The rule of kings is bad and just what America was created to reject” is a pretty fundamental American idea. But in the world of today’s Republican Party, if Donald Trump says kings are good and it’s good that he’s a king, everyone else in the party is required to agree.
Economist and former NYT’s columnist Dr. Paul Krugman had similar thoughts. He freely writes them now on his SubStack. “Civil Resistance Confronts the Autocracy. While MAGA’s spin was both insane and revealing, the No Kings Day 2 Marches were a major step towards taking our country back.”
Last Saturday’s No Kings Day 2 was awesome to behold. The very best of America shone through. From coast to coast, in big cities and small, in red states as well as blue states, Americans peacefully marched to uphold our humanity as a country and to show our solidarity against autocracy and lawlessness.
And also awesome were the right-wing attacks on Kings Day 2 participants in the days before the rallies. They were so extreme and so unhinged, so utterly disconnected from reality, that they defeated their ostensible purpose of intimidating the marchers into silence. While the rest of us saw families, old people, young people, folks in funny costumes, many of them waving the Stars and Stripes, MAGA saw criminals and America-haters.
But I have a theory about the deeper purpose of the MAGA attacks on No Kings Day 2. America, I’d argue, is currently operating in a strange condition — what I would call a “bubble autocracy.” Donald Trump has not yet consolidated anything like absolute political power. But parts of our society — the Republican Party and a number of supposedly independent institutions like, say, CBS — are in effect living inside a bubble in which they operate as if he has. Within that bubble, a cult of personality around Trump has been built, a cult of personality worthy of Kim Jong Un. And to show their fealty to Dear Leader, Republicans must engage in bizarre rhetoric.
Before I explain my theory of how the right lost its mind, some personal observations.
I attended Saturday’s No Kings Day march in Manhattan, for several reasons. As a citizen, I felt it was my duty. As a journalist, I wanted to see with my own eyes the mood, and whether there was violence either by or, far more likely, against the protestors. And I was, to be honest, feeling some anxiety about crowd size: a disappointing turnout would have been a significant blow to our chances of saving American democracy. No surprise that Trump attempted to discourage participation by declaring in advance that “I hear that very few people are going to be there,” while his lackeys spouted insane conspiracy theories.
I needn’t have worried. The march I joined was immense. G. Elliott Morris and the independent science newsroom Xylon estimate that 320,000 people protested in New York, and their median estimate is that more than 5 million protested nationwide. As Morris says, Saturday’s events were very likely “the biggest single-day protest since 1970.” Furthermore, the event was completely nonviolent: The New York Police Department reported zero arrests.
As for me, I’ll stop wearing my No Kings T-shirt when some one pries it from my cold back or when Heather Cox Richardson tells me I can retire it. This is from her Sunday Substack, Letters from an American.”
A video of Trump in a bomber attacking American cities carries an implied threat that the disdain of throwing excrement doesn’t erase. This morning, Trump reinforced that threat when he reminded Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo: “Don’t forget I can use the Insurrection Act. Fifty percent of the presidents almost have used that. And that’s unquestioned power. I choose not to, I’d rather do this, but I’m met constantly by fake politicians, politicians that think that, that you know they it’s not like a part of the radical left movement to have safety. These cities have to be safe.”
That “safety” apparently involves detaining U.S. citizens without due process. On Thursday, Nicole Foy of ProPublica reported that more than 170 U.S. citizens have been detained by immigration agents. She reports they “have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched.”
On Friday, the Trump administration pushed its attempt to use the military in Democratic-led cities, asking the Supreme Court to let it deploy troops in Chicago immediately. Chris Geidner of Law Dork notes that four judges, two appointed by Democrats and two appointed by Republicans, have rejected the administration’s arguments for why they must send in troops. Now the Department of Justice has appealed to the Supreme Court, asking for a decision on the so-called shadow docket, which would provide a fast response, but one without any hearings or explanation.
The administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court warned that there was “pressing risk of violence” in Chicago—a premise the judges rejected—and said preventing Trump from going into the city “improperly impinges on the President’s authority.”
How much difference will the No Kings Day protests, even as big as they were, make in the face of the administration’s attempt to get rid of our democratic political system and replace it with authoritarianism? What good is an inflatable frog against federal agents?
Scholar of social movements Lisa Corrigan noted that large, fun marches full of art and music expand connections and make people more willing to take risks against growing state power. They build larger communities by creating new images that bring together recognizable images from the past in new ways, helping more people see themselves in such an opposition. The community and good feelings those gatherings develop help carry opposition through hard moments. Corrigan notes, too, that yesterday “every single rally (including in the small towns) was bigger than the surrounding police force available. That kind of image event is VERY IMPORTANT if you’re…demonstrating social coherence AGAINST a fascist government and its makeshift gestapo.”
It’s funny how that AI-generated Trump video had nothing intelligent but everything artificial in it. Notice that he gets to reach altitude with nothing covering his face,nose, and barely his mouth. He managed to look like a toddly with a sippy cup urinal. Alan Elrod–writing for Liberal Currents–has this to say about the increasingly isolated Republican Party. He presents an analsyis of what we’ve learned about those gross Young Republican chat logs. We always knew the incels would be the last to leave and failures with the lead. “Sex Is Gay, Rape Is Epic, No Fatties: Young Right-Wing Men Are Obsessed With Male Power and Male Bodies. The group chat leak reveals what over a decade of incel messaging and Bronze Age Pervert have done to Young Republicans.”
It’s tempting to shrug off the language in the Young Republicans’ group chat as the pathetic humor of pasty losers. But the danger is real. As Bates stresses, we have seen incel ideology drive heinous acts of public violence, most notably in the cases of Elliot Rodger in Isla Vista and the Toronto van attack committed by Alek Minassian. As Cynthia Miller-Idriss, an expert on right-wing extremism and terroristic violence, argues in her new bookMan Up: The New Misogyny & The Rise of Violent Extremism:
Such violence is also fueled by the constant dehumanization of women online, along with the casual celebration of violence and harassment directed toward them. One of the neo-Nazi men arrested for plotting an antisemitic attack in New York City in 2022 had previously shared online that he had violently attacked a transgender person and described himself as “most proud of being ‘good at raping women,’ ” according to an assistant district attorney on the case.
In other cases, women are not just targeted with rage as a means of punishment; they are attacked violently as a strategy of elimination. The six Asian women and two others gunned down in a rampage at three Atlanta massage parlors in the spring of 2021 were killed because the 21-year-old gunman believed he deserved to live in a world without the sexual temptation he believed they created for him. It’s hard to think of a clearer example of how mass violence can be generated from a sense of entitlement and male supremacist reasoning. Violent attacks against women in cases like these—as well as in domestic and intimate partner violence and misogynist incel attacks—are not only or even primarily about sex. Rather, they are rooted in what Kate Manne describes as “some men’s toxic sense of entitlement to have people look up to them steadfastly, with a loving gaze, admiringly-and to target and even destroy those who fail, or refuse, to do so.”Supremacy is an all-consuming logic on the MAGA right today. Christian supremacy, white supremacy, male supremacy, almost every corner of MAGA is marked by one or some combination of supremacist logic and a desire to subjugate some other group. This fixation on domination is precisely why I argued back in March that Andrew Tate has natural appeal to many younger Republicans and that rape as an ordering principle defines MAGA politics.
The federal agency responsible for overseeing and modernizing the US nuclear stockpile will furlough the vast majority of its staff Monday as the government shutdown drags on, according to the Department of Energy.
About 1,400 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration, or NNSA, will receive furlough notices Monday, while fewer than 400 employees will remain on the job to safeguard the stockpile, Energy Department spokesperson Ben Dietderich told CNN.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright will speak about the shutdown’s impact on the US’ nuclear deterrent efforts Monday while visiting the Nevada National Security Site.
The NNSA Office of Secure Transportation, which oversees the transportation of nuclear weapons around the country, will be funded through October 27.
And remember all that talk of Peace before some one else got the Nobel Prize? This is from the Washington Post. “In tense meeting, Trump told Zelensky to concede land, meet Putin’s demands. Following the trip to Washington, Zelensky has set up a series of calls and meetings with his main European backers.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is rallying the support of his European partners after a bruising meeting with President Donald Trump, in which he was told to make concessions to end the war or risk facing destruction at the hands of Russia.
In a tense meeting at the White House on Friday, Trump tossed aside maps of the front line and urged Kyiv to concede its entire Donbas region to Russia to clinch a deal, according to people familiar with the exchange who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive diplomacy.
“He said [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will destroy you if you don’t agree now,” one of the people said. “Zelensky had his maps and everything, and he was explaining it to him but [Trump] wanted nothing to do with it.”
Trump listened but was not responsive to the Ukrainian message, the person said. “It was pretty much like ‘No, look guys, you can’t possibly win back any territory. … There is nothing we can do to save you. You should try to give diplomacy another chance.’”
So much success! So much winning! How can we even wrap our minds around it? And what about this story on Justice Bondi-style? This is from CBS’ Scott Pelley. The interview came from Sixty Minutes last night.
Erez Reuveni, a fired Department of Justice lawyer who’s now blowing the whistle, says he witnessed a disregard of due process and for the rule of law at the DOJ.
Reuveni previously won commendations for his work and was so effective defending President Trump’s first-term immigration policy that he was promoted quickly in Mr. Trump’s second term. But he says he was put on leave and then fired after refusing to sign a brief in the mistaken deportation case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Reuveni’s whistleblower disclosure helped highlight a growing concern in many courts across the country that the Justice Department is allegedly abusing the limits of the law.
“I took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. And my view of that oath is that I need to speak up and draw attention to what has happened to the department, what is happening to the rule of law,” Reuveni said. “I would not be faithfully abiding by my oath if I stayed silent right now.”
…
When more facts were known about the weekend flights, it turned out a Salvadoran man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, had been deported by mistake.
While people deported in error are normally returned, Reuveni said that in a phone call from a superior, he was ordered to argue that Abrego Garcia was an MS-13 member and a terrorist to prevent his return.
“I respond up the chain of command, no way. That is not correct. That is not factually correct. It is not legally correct. That is, that is a lie. And I cannot sign my name to that brief,” Reuveni said.
Reuveni said what was important was not whether or not Abrego Garcia was a member of MS-13 or a terrorist, but whether or not he received due process.
“What’s to stop them if they decide they don’t like you anymore, to say you’re a criminal, you’re a member of MS-13, you’re a terrorist,” Reuveni said. “What’s to stop them from sending in some DOJ attorney at the direction of DOJ leadership to delay, to filibuster, and if necessary, to lie? And now that’s you gone and your liberties changed.”
Reuveni was fired after refusing to sign a brief that called Abrego Garcia a terrorist. In June, he filed a whistleblower complaint with the help of attorneys from the Government Accountability Project.
While, the news still doesn’t feel like we’re living in America, the streets are begining to fill with enough Americans dedicated to truth, justice, and our evolving society, I have hope.
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Americans across all 50 states will march in protests against the Trump administration on Saturday, aligning behind a message that the country is sliding into authoritarianism and there should be no kings in the US.
Millions are expected to turn out for the No Kings protests, the second iteration of a coalition that marched in June in one of the largest days of protest in US history. Events are scheduled for more than 2,700 locations, from small towns to large cities.
Donald Trump has cracked down on US cities, attempting to send in federal troops and adding more immigration agents. He is seeking to criminalize dissent, going after left-leaning organizations that he claims are supporting terrorism or political violence. Cities have largely fought back, suing to prevent national guard infusions, and residents have taken to the streets to speak out against the militarization of their communities.
Trump’s allies have sought to cast the No Kings protests as anti-American and led by antifa, the decentralized anti-fascist movement, while also claiming that the protests are prolonging the government shutdown. Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, has said he will send the state’s national guard to Austin, the state’s capital, in advance of the protests….
“What’s most important as a message for people to carry is that the president wants us to be scared, but we will not be bullied into fear and silence,” said Lisa Gilbert, the co-president of Public Citizen, one of the protest organizers. “And it’s incredibly important for people to remain peaceful, to stand proud and to say what they care about, and not to be cowed by that fear.”
The simple framing of the protests is that the US has no kings, a dig at Trump’s increasing authoritarianism. Among the themes the organizers have pointed to: Trump is using taxpayer money for power grabs, sending in federal forces to take over US cities; Trump has said he wants a third term and “is already acting like a monarch”; the Trump administration has taken its agenda too far, defying the courts and slashing services while deporting people without due process.
I expect that some Republicans will try to spark violence at these protest rallies. I hope people will remain peaceful no matter what.
The nationwide “No Kings” protest movement is back for round two — and after avoiding Washington during the summer, protesters are expected to descend on the nation’s capital Saturday amid an 18-day government shutdown that has no end in sight.
The demonstrations are part of the second national day of action, organized by dozens of liberal advocacy groups to protest what they call “authoritarian power grabs” on the part of President Donald Trump.
Organizers said they expect the more than 2,600 events across all 50 states to surpass the more than 5 million people who attended the first wave of “No Kings” rallies in June. The marches come amid heightened criticism from Republicans about this weekend’s rallies.
“They might try to paint this weekend’s events as something dangerous to our society, but the reality is there is nothing unlawful or unsafe about organizing and attending peaceful protests,” said Deirdre Schifeling of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s the most patriotic and American thing you can do, and we have a 250-year-old history of disagreeing in public.”
Amid the heightened tensions of the shutdown, Republicans have repeatedly sought to vilify the planned protests. House Speaker Mike Johnson and other leading Republicans have referred to the protests as a “hate America rally” and sought to tie it to Hamas and antifa. And Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also announced Thursday that he would be sending members of the state’s National Guard — as well as state troopers, Texas Rangers and Department of Public Safety personnel — to Austin on Saturday in response to the planned demonstrations.
In an interview with Fox News earlier this week, Trump said “some people say [Democrats] want to delay” ending the government shutdown because of the rallies.
The Marines plan to fire 155-millimeter artillery shells over a major freeway in Southern California on Saturday as part of a demonstration at Camp Pendleton to celebrate the Marine Corps’ 250th anniversary.
The plans to fire over the freeway triggered outrage by Gov. Gavin Newsom late Friday night after his office had been informed days earlier that the celebration would not involve firing munitions across Interstate 5, a heavily traveled corridor between Los Angeles and San Diego.
Early Saturday, Mr. Newsom said the state would shut a 17-mile section of the freeway from noon to 3 p.m. Pacific time because of potential hazards posed by the military’s plans.
“This is a profoundly absurd show of force that could put Californians directly in harm’s way,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement to The New York Times.
He criticized President Trump and said the lack of coordination among state, federal and local officials was creating a dangerous situation. The artillery demonstration, to be attended by Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and military officials, will take place on the same day that anti-Trump activists plan to hold “No Kings” protests across the country, including in Southern California.
“Using our military to intimidate people you disagree with isn’t strength — it’s reckless, it’s disrespectful, and it’s beneath the office the president holds,” Mr. Newsom said.
I hope no one gets hurt. As I said earlier, I would not be at all surprised to see efforts by right wingers to spark violence at the demonstrations.
In Ukraine war news, Trump met with Ukraine president Vladimir Zelensky yesterday, and he refused Zelensky’s request for Tomahawk cruise missiles, seemingly based on a phone conversation with Vladimir Putin.
Russian President Vladimir Putin put his relationship with President Donald Trump back on track with a phone call just ahead of Trump’s crucial Friday meeting with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, that was meant to include discussions of providing Ukraine with powerful new long range weapons.
Up until the Thursday phone call, Trump had seemed ready to boost Ukraine’s arsenal and negotiating position with Tomahawk cruise missiles. But in its wake and after the subsequent meeting with Zelensky, Trump played down all talk of the missiles and instead focused on yet another summit with Putin.
It was the latest swing in Trump’s back and forth positions on the Russia-Ukraine war that often change following contact with Putin, who has shown a great deal of skill in persuading the U.S. president to his view of the conflict.
“Hopefully we’ll be able to get the war over with without thinking about Tomahawks. I think we’re fairly close to that,” Trump said to journalists as he began his meeting with Zelensky. “We don’t want to be giving away things that we need to protect our country.”
Instead of new support for Ukraine or sanctions on Russia, Trump announced a new summit with Putin — a bonus for the Russian leader — “to see if we can bring this ‘inglorious’ War, between Russia and Ukraine, to an end.” There was no talk of Russia curtailing its ongoing bombardment of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure ahead of winter.
So far, Russia has succeeded in deterring Trump from imposing further sanctions — or sending more powerful weapons to Ukraine — by continually dangling hopes of a peace deal, while it ramps up attacks.
President Donald Trump on Friday called on Kyiv and Moscow to “stop where they are” and end their brutal war following a lengthy White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Trump’s frustration with the conflict has surfaced repeatedly in the nine months since he returned to office, but with his latest comments he edged back in the direction of pressing Ukraine to give up on retaking land it has lost to Russia.
“Enough blood has been shed, with property lines being defined by War and Guts,” Trump said in a Truth Social post not long after hosting Zelenskyy and his team for more than two hours of talks. “They should stop where they are. Let both claim Victory, let History decide!”
Later, soon after arriving in Florida, where he’s spending the weekend, Trump urged both sides to “stop the war immediately” and implied that Moscow keep territory it’s taken from Kyiv.
“You go by the battle line wherever it is — otherwise it’s too complicated,” Trump told reporters. “You stop at the battle line and both sides should go home, go to their families, stop the killing, and that should be it.”
So Trump is hanging out at Mar-a-Lago as the government shutdown continues.
President Trump has repurposed money to fund military salaries during the government shutdown. He has pledged to find ways to make sure many in law enforcement get paid. He has used the fiscal impasse to halt funding to Democratic jurisdictions, and is trying to lay off thousands of federal workers.
Government shutdowns are usually resolved only after the pain they inflict on everyday Americans forces elected officials in Washington to come to an agreement. But as the shutdown nears a fourth week, Mr. Trump’s actions have instead reduced the pressure for an immediate resolution and pushed his political opponents to further dig in.
“We’re not going to bend,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said on Friday, the 17th day of the shutdown. “We’re not going to break.” He added: “All of these efforts to try to intimidate Democratic members of the House and the Senate are not going to work.”
Unlike past presidents, Mr. Trump appears to feel little urgency to strike a deal to reopen the government. Instead, he has used the shutdown, which began Oct. 1, as an opportunity to further remake the federal bureaucracy and jettison programs he does not like, seizing on unorthodox budgetary maneuvers that some have called illegal.
Administration officials appear undaunted by the criticism, even after a federal judge temporarily blocked their efforts to conduct mass firings. On Friday, some agencies indicated in court filings that they might proceed with layoffs that officials suggested were not covered by the order.
Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget and the architect of the effort to remake the government, has pledged to “stay on offense” throughout the shutdown.
“He now has this cover for doing what at least Russ Vought and that coalition has wanted to do all along,” Sarah Binder, a political science professor at George Washington University, said of Mr. Trump.
Trump claims to be working on making health care more affordable.
Asked in the Oval Office this week whether he would use his deal-making skills to bring the shutdown to an end, Mr. Trump said that he was instead working to lower health care costs without the help of Congress, by negotiating agreements directly with pharmaceutical companies for lower prescription costs.
“We have to take care of our health care,” he said.
White House officials say that the administration’s moves are meant to send the message that it is Mr. Trump, not congressional Democrats, who is helping Americans when government funding has lapsed.
“Any negative impacts felt by the American people have purely been caused by the Democrats,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman.
Use the gift link to read more if you’re interested. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump lets the shutdown go on until next year and beyond. We’ll see if the Republicans fight back after hearing from their constituents.
An eminent ER doctor and health policy expert has warned that President Donald Trump’s government shutdown talk about “deserving” patients mirrors a “eugenics” policy adopted by the Nazis.
The shutdown is about to enter its fourth week after Congress failed to pass full-year funding. The White House and Speaker Mike Johnson are demanding spending cuts and immigration concessions, while Senate Democrats insist on extending ACA subsidies and undoing the summer healthcare cuts before reopening agencies.
Dr. Craig Spencer, who lectures on the history of health and eugenics at Brown University and is one of the country’s most influential clinician voices on emergency care, said the administration’s framing echoes America’s 1920s policy of sorting people by “worthiness… cloaked in what’s ‘acceptable’ by the state.
Spencer warns that President Donald Trump and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are pursuing eugenics with their health policies.Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
“It’s not a stretch to say this administration is touting a eugenics agenda, which was perfected by the U.S. in the 1920s and 1930s and later adopted by the Nazis. People don’t want to call it that because it feels unsayable. But it’s real,” Spencer told the Daily Beast.
In 1920s America, eugenics was a mainstream policy movement that used bogus “race science” to justify restrictive immigration laws and state-mandated sterilization of people labeled “unfit.”
The language of Trump’s government, Spencer said, is “almost the same on immigration, access to healthcare, and who deserves the fruits of government,” and its “logical conclusion—while they won’t say it out loud—is letting certain people die.”
“I’ve been reluctant to compare what’s happening now to the eugenics movement 100 years ago, but as every new day goes by I’m less reluctant,” he added.]
There’s more at the link.
Meanwhile, some people will soon learn what their health insurance is going to cost them next year and what will happen to their food stamp benefits.
Health insurance prices for next year under the Affordable Care Act are now available in about a dozen states, giving Americans their first look at the sharp increases many will pay for coverage if Congress does not extend subsidies that have made some plans more affordable.
The annual enrollment period for Obamacare is expected to begin Nov. 1, but the costs for some Americans are becoming publicly available piecemeal through some state marketplaces. The federal website healthcare.gov, which includes 28 other state marketplaces, is slated to post prices before the end of October.
People shopping for coverage can now preview the costs they face from potentially expiring subsidies and sharply rising premiums in many markets, including California, New York, Nevada, Maryland and Idaho. Some consumers also found out that they would have fewer choices because their insurers dropped out of some markets for 2026.
Based on the newly posted information, a family of four making $130,000 in Maine would face an increase of $16,100 in annual premiums next year because they would no longer qualify for more generous subsidies, said Gideon Lukens, a health policy researcher for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which supports extending the subsidies.
Older people will also see sharp increases, according to his calculations. In Kentucky, a 60-year-old couple making $85,000 per year could face an increase of $23,700 in annual premiums. In Nevada, a similar couple could pay an additional $18,100 in annual premiums, while in Minnesota, the cost might be $15,500 more and, in Maryland, an additional $13,700.
The government shutdown has already amplified the potential for higher health insurance costs for millions of Americans if the subsidies are not continued. Democrats have demanded that Republicans extend the more generous subsidies in any deal to reopen the federal government, which has been closed for 17 days over a spending impasse.
If the government shutdown continues into November, about 42 million low-income people could face severe disruptions to their food stamp benefits, the Agriculture Department warned in a letter to state agencies last week, saying that the federal government would have “insufficient funds.”
More than a dozen states have since warned that food stamp recipients may experience significant delays in obtaining benefits next month, see their aid reduced or not receive assistance at all.
The letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, said that the Agriculture Department’s Food and Nutrition Service, which operates the food stamp program, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, was exploring contingency plans. But it directed state agencies to pause sending vendors the electronic files typically used to load the benefits for November.
“We’re going to run out of money in two weeks,” Brooke L. Rollins, the agriculture secretary, told reporters at the White House on Thursday. “So you’re talking about millions and millions of vulnerable families, of hungry families that are not going to have access to these programs because of this shutdown.”
In a statement, a White House official said that Democrats “chose to shut down the government knowing that programs like SNAP would soon run out of funds.”
Such a disruption would be the first in recent decades. Benefits have remained available through every shutdown in the last 20 years, said Carolyn Vega, the associate director of policy analysis for Share Our Strength, a nonprofit that supports antipoverty programs.
The Department of Homeland Security has purchased two Gulfstream private jets for Kristi Noem, the secretary, and other top department officials at a cost of $172 million, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The jets, which a department official said were needed for safety, are the latest expenditures on behalf of Ms. Noem to draw scrutiny from Democrats and other critics who have noted her lavish spending on living and other expenses during her time in public life.
The Coast Guard put in its budget earlier this year a request to purchase a new long-range Gulfstream V jet, estimated to cost $50 million, to replace an aging one used by Ms. Noem.
“The avionics are increasingly obsolete, the communications are increasingly unreliable and it’s in need of recapitalization, like much of the rest of the fleet,” Kevin Lunday, the acting commandant of the Coast Guard, told members of Congress at a hearing in May.
He said a new aircraft was necessary to provide agency leaders with “secure, reliable, on-demand communications and movement to go forward, visit our operating forces, conducting the missions and then come back here to Washington and make sure we can work together to get them what they need.”
Documents that were posted to a public government procurement website and reviewed by The Times show that the department has since signed a contract with Gulfstream to buy not one but two “used” G700 jets, touted by the company as having the “most spacious cabin in the industry.” The total contract value is listed as a little over $172 million.
It was not immediately clear where the funding for the jets came from.
Only the best for the puppy killer.
That’s it for me today. If you are going to a No Kings protest, have fun and stay safe.
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
Economist and former NYT’s columnist Dr. Paul Krugman had similar thoughts. He freely writes them now on his 
As for me, I’ll stop wearing my No Kings T-shirt when some one pries it from my cold back or when Heather Cox Richardson tells me I can retire it. This is from her Sunday 
It’s funny how that AI-generated Trump video had nothing intelligent but everything artificial in it. Notice that he gets to reach altitude with nothing covering his face,nose, and barely his mouth. He managed to look like a toddly with a sippy cup urinal. Alan Elrod–writing for 
Here’s something scary from CNN to think on with Halloween on the Horizon. 
So much success! So much winning! How can we even wrap our minds around it? And what about this story on Justice Bondi-style? This is from CBS’ Scott Pelley. The interview came from 
Spencer warns that President Donald Trump and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are pursuing eugenics with their health policies.Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
Based on the newly posted information, a family of four making $130,000 in Maine would face an increase of $16,100 in annual premiums next year because they would no longer qualify for more generous subsidies, said Gideon Lukens, a health policy researcher for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which supports extending the subsidies.
The Coast Guard put in its budget earlier this year a request to purchase a new long-range Gulfstream V jet, estimated to cost $50 million, to replace an aging one used by Ms. Noem.
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