I was going to write about how the Democrats actually won the government shutdown. But bigger news has broken. I’ll get to the shutdown story after that and then some news about Kash Patel, Trump’s incompetent FBI director.
It looks like the Epstein shit is about to hit the fan.
Sex offender Jeffrey Epstein referred to Donald Trump as the “dog that hasn’t barked” and told his former companion Ghislaine Maxwell that an alleged victim had “spent hours at my house” with Trump, according to email correspondence released Wednesday by Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
“I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump,” Epstein wrote in a typo-riddled message to Maxwell in April 2011. “[Victim] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned.”
“I have been thinking about that … ” Maxwell replied.
That email exchange — which came just weeks after a British newspaper published a series of stories about Epstein, Maxwell and their powerful associates — was one of three released by the Democrats from a batch of more than 23,000 documents the committee recently received from the Epstein Estate in response to a subpoena.
The other messages are between Epstein and author Michael Wolff.
“I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you–either on air or in scrum afterwards,” Wolff wrote to Epstein in December 2015, six months after Trump had officially entered the race for the White House.
“Trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever,” Epstein wrote, “Of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop” [….]
Wolff in a phone interview on Wednesday said of the 2015 exchange that he couldn’t remember “the specific emails or the context, but I was in an in-depth conversation with Epstein at that time about his relationship with Donald Trump. So I think this reflects that.”
“I was trying at that time to get Epstein to talk about his relationship with Trump, and actually, he proved to be an enormously valuable source to me,” Wolff said. “Part of the context of this is that I was pushing Epstein at that point to go public with what he knew about Trump.”
You can read the original emails along with more context at the ABC link.
Also in the emails released by Oversight Democrats Wednesday, Wolff wrote in a 2015 message to Epstein that he heard Trump – then a presidential candidate – would be asked by CNN about the convicted sex offender. Epstein asked Wolff what he thought an ideal response from Trump would be.
Michael Wolff
“I think you should let him hang himself,” Wolff responded. If [Trump] says he hasn’t been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency.
“You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you,” Wolff continued, “or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt.”
Wolff added that Trump could potentially praise Epstein when asked. Wolff’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The materials were received by the House Oversight Committee last Thursday, meaning the move by Democrats to release the materials was likely timed to coincide with the House’s return from a lengthy recess to vote Wednesday evening on ending the prolonged government shutdown.
House Democrats on Wednesday released emails in which Jeffrey Epstein wrote that President Trump had “spent hours at my house” with one of Mr. Epstein’s victims, among other messages that suggested that the convicted sex offender believed Mr. Trump knew more about his abuse than he has acknowledged….
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA)
…Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said the emails, which they selected from thousands of pages of documents received by their panel, raised new questions about the relationship between the two men. In one of the messages, Mr. Epstein flatly asserted that Mr. Trump “knew about the girls,” many of whom were later found by investigators to have been underage. In another, Mr. Epstein pondered how to address questions from the news media about their relationship as Mr. Trump was becoming a national political figure….
“These latest emails and correspondence raise glaring questions about what else the White House is hiding and the nature of the relationship between Epstein and the president,” Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said in a statement.
The three separate email exchanges released on Wednesday were all from after Mr. Epstein’s 2008 plea deal in Florida on state charges of soliciting prostitution, in which federal prosecutors agreed not to pursue charges. They came years after Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein had a reported falling out in the early 2000s.
See the ABC story above for descriptions of the emails.
House Democrats, citing an unnamed whistle-blower, said this week that Ms. Maxwell was preparing to formally ask Mr. Trump to commute her federal prison sentence.
The emails were provided to the Oversight Committee along with a larger tranche of documents from Mr. Epstein’s estate that the panel requested as part of its investigation into Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence on sex-trafficking charges.
Republicans argued that Democrats omitted context from the emails they released.
Republicans on the Oversight Committee accused Democrats of politicizing the investigation. “Democrats continue to carelessly cherry-pick documents to generate clickbait that is not grounded in the facts,” a committee spokeswoman said. “The Epstein Estate has produced over 20,000 pages of documents on Thursday, yet Democrats are once again intentionally withholding records that name Democrat officials.”
The Republicans also identified the victim whose name was redacted in the emails as Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide in April. Ms. Giuffre had said that Ms. Maxwell recruited her into Mr. Epstein’s sex ring while she was working at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Palm Beach, as a teenager.
In a 2016 deposition for a civil case, Ms. Giuffre was asked if she believed Mr. Trump had witnessed the sexual abuse of minors in Mr. Epstein’s home. “I don’t think Donald Trump participated in anything,” she said.
“I never saw or witnessed Donald Trump participate in those acts, but was he in the house of Jeffrey Epstein,” Ms. Giuffre added. “I’ve heard he has been, but I haven’t seen him myself so I don’t know.”
Use the gift link to read the whole article.
This afternoon at 4:00, Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) will finally be sworn in. She will then sign the discharge petition to require the DOJ to release all of the Epstein files.
Arizona Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, who is set to be sworn in on Wednesday, said she will confront House Speaker Mike Johnson after waiting nearly 50 days to be seated as a member of Congress.
“I won’t be able to like sort of move on if I don’t address it personally and we’ll see what kind of reaction he has,” Grijalva, a Democrat, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on “The Source” Tuesday.
Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.)
“I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to say,” Grijalva added but said she will stress that Johnson refusing to swear her in for over a month is “undemocratic.”
“It’s unconstitutional. It’s illegal. Should never happen — this kind of obstruction cannot happen again,” Grijalva said.
The monthslong bipartisan effort to sidestep Speaker Mike Johnson and force the release of all Justice Department files on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein is kicking into high gear this week, setting up a December floor battle that President Donald Trump has sought to avoid….
The process of doing so will begin around 4 p.m., when Johnson swears in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva right before the House votes to end the government shutdown — ending a 50-day wait following the Arizona Democrat’s election. Shortly afterward, Grijalva says she will affix the 218th and final signature to the discharge petition led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to force a vote on the full release of DOJ’s Epstein files.
That in itself will be the culmination of months of drama that blew up into a full crisis for Johnson this summer, with a GOP mutiny grinding the floor to a halt and forcing leaders to send the House home early for August recess. The uproar over a possible Epstein cover-up faded but never disappeared entirely.
The completion of the discharge petition, a rarely used mechanism to sidestep the majority party leadership, will trigger a countdown for the bill to hit the House floor. It will still take seven legislative days for the petition to ripen, after which Johnson will have two legislative days to schedule a vote. Senior Republican and Democratic aides estimate a floor vote will come the first week of December, after the Thanksgiving recess.
The discharge petition tees up a “rule,” a procedural measure setting the terms of debate for the Epstein bill’s consideration on the House floor. This gives the effort’s leaders greater control over the bill, which will still require Senate approval if it passes the House.
Senate Republican leaders haven’t publicly committed to bringing up the Epstein measure if the House passes it. Republicans expect it will die in the Senate, but not before a contentious House fight.
Could Johnson stop the petition from getting a vote in the House?
While Johnson has options to short-circuit the effort before it gets to the floor, he said in an interview last month he would not seek to do so. Republicans on the Rules Committee have also warned Johnson they will not help him kill the bill in the panel, and he’s in turn privately assured some of them the Epstein measure will get floor consideration if the petition reaches 218 signatures.
At that point, the speaker can only defeat it if he siphons away enough Republican votes — a tall order in a majority where Johnson has only a two-vote margin after Grijalva is sworn in. GOP leaders don’t plan to formally whip against the Epstein vote when it gets to the floor, according to three people granted anonymity to describe internal deliberations.
“I’m certain the House vote will succeed,” Massie said in an interview. “Some Republican members who are not signers of the petition have told me they will vote for the measure when the vote is called. I suspect there will be many more.”
Read about which members might end up voting for the release of the files at the link.
Like Dr. Strange, I have seen all six possible endgames from the shutdown fight and I’m here to tell you that yes, Democrats could have done better. They probably should have done better. But they exit this event in a stronger position than they entered. And also: They could have done much worse.
We’re going to rank the shutdown endgames from best to worst and then I’m going to make the case simultaneously that (a) Democrats played their hand poorly from the start, but that (b) they were ultimately bailed out by Trump’s obsession with dominance, and (c) we ought to appreciate the bad stuff that didn’t happen here.
You’ll need to go to the link to read the possible endgames; I can’t copy that much from the post. But here’s the final argument:
Here’s what Democrats should have said from the start:
Republicans control the White House, the House, and the Senate. They have the votes to pass this budget any time they want. They do not need a single Democratic vote.
All Republicans have to do is repeal the filibuster.
If Republicans are so inept that they can’t find the votes to repeal the filibuster or to pass their legislation, then they should feel free to come to the minority and ask for help.
But the Democrats have no offer. The voters gave Republicans unified control of government. If Republicans are incapable of governing, voters deserve to see that.
The problem isn’t that Democrats caved on the shutdown. Just objectively speaking, they emerge from this fight in a slightly better position than they entered it.
They prolonged the longest government shutdown in history.
This shutdown damaged Trump politically. (Just look at the polling.
They centered health care costs as a major issue for 2026.
The fake concession they got from Senate Republicans—a meaningless future vote on extending the ACA subsidies—will (a) put Republican senators on the spot and (b) create a point of vulnerability for House Republicans when they refuse to take up the bill.
They avoided the worst-case outcome. Which is not nothing.
At first blush, the deal that paved the way to end the government shutdown this week looked exactly like the kind of feeble outcome many Democrats have come to expect from their leaders in Washington.
After waging a 40-day fight to protect Americans’ access to health care — one they framed as existential — their side folded after eight defectors struck a deal that would allow President Trump and Republicans to reopen the government this week without doing anything about health coverage or costs, enraging all corners of the party.
But even some of the Democrats most outraged by the outcome are not so certain that their party’s aborted fight was all for naught.
It may turn out that the long-term outcome of the longest government shutdown in history will be a grand-scale political and policy defeat for Democrats. The head-scratching end to a fight they were not willing to see through to victory deflated the party and deepened long-simmering divisions ahead of next year’s critical midterm elections. But in the shorter term, there could be benefits.
Senate Democrats believe that they held together long enough for Mr. Trump to reveal a new level of callousness in his refusal to fund food stamps for 42 million Americans who rely on the nation’s largest anti-hunger program. And they believe all of that helped contribute to a mini-blue wave last week, one that could continue if Democrats can keep the right issues at the forefront.
In my opinion, the shutdown fight demonstrated to many voters who don’t usually pay attention to politics that Trump doesn’t care one bit about their concerns.
On Halloween morning, FBI Director Kash Patel had a big announcement to make: “The FBI thwarted a potential terrorist attack,” he said in a 7:32 a.m. social-media post that referenced arrests in Michigan.
There was one problem: No criminal charges had yet been filed and local police weren’t aware of the details. Two friends of the alleged terrorists in New Jersey and Washington state caught wind of the arrests and moved up plans to leave the country, according to court documents and law-enforcement officials familiar with the investigation.
Justice Department leaders complained to the White House about Patel’s premature post, saying it had disrupted the investigation, administration officials said.
In his nine months on the job, Patel has drawn flak from his bosses in the Justice Department and from his underlings at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he has fired dozens of agents deemed hostile to Donald Trump or to conservative ideals.
But the Halloween announcement wasn’t the biggest controversy to envelop the director that week. Patel hit the news for taking an FBI plane to attend a wrestling event where his girlfriend, a country western singer, performed, and then to her home in Nashville. A former FBI agent, Kyle Seraphin, publicized the trip and called the taxpayer funded travel in the middle of a shutdown “pathetic.”
After that, Patel visited a Texas hunting resort called the Boondoggle Ranch, according to flight records and people familiar with the trip, which hasn’t been previously reported.
Patel’s travel has frustrated both Justice Department officials, who complained to the White House about it, and the White House itself, which had told cabinet officials months ago in writing to limit their travel, particularly if it was overseas or unrelated to Trump’s agenda, according to an administration official. Details about Patel’s trips to visit his girlfriend and an August trip to Scotland have been passed around the White House in recent days, officials said.
The FBI director is required by law to take the bureau’s private plane instead of commercial flights in order to have access to secure communications. If the travel is personal, the director is required to reimburse the government for the cost of a commercial flight—typically far less than the actual costs of private-jet use.
A bit more:
Last month, Patel gave Trump an unusual public presentation in the Oval Office, where he credited the president for the bureau’s successes on everything from drug seizures to the arrests of several most-wanted fugitives.
“We are absolutely crushing violent crime like never before and defending this homeland, sir,” Patel said, gesturing toward large poster boards showing a surge in arrests this summer.
Patel’s presence at the bureau has been something of a culture shock for a buttoned-up workforce, used to wearing suits and ties. Instead, Patel has appeared at events in hooded sweatshirts, jeans or hunting vests, and often speaks colloquially, calling agents “cops,” and telling podcaster Joe Rogan that the job of FBI director was “effin wild.”
He has also handed out an oversize commemorative coin to colleagues resembling the logo of the Marvel “Punisher” character, who came to embody a general distrust of the U.S. justice system. The coin also has a large number nine on it, in a reference to himself as the FBI’s ninth director.
Patel’s supporters say he is trying to present himself as down-to-earth and accessible to the workforce. He “wants the Bureau to get back to focusing on field and agent work vs. an elitist D.C. culture,” FBI spokesman Ben Williamson said. The FBI declined to discuss Patel’s plane travel, citing safety concerns. Justice Department and FBI representatives said the two agencies closely coordinated plans for the terrorism operation in advance.
The story is behind a paywall, but I was able to get through by clicking the link at Memeorandum.
At a secret gathering in May, south of London, the head of Britain’s domestic security service asked Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, for help.
British security officials rely on the bureau for high-tech surveillance tools — the kind they might need to monitor a new embassy that China wants to build near the Tower of London. The head of MI5, Ken McCallum, asked Mr. Patel to protect the job of an F.B.I. agent based in London who dealt with that technology, according to several current and former U.S. officials with knowledge of the episode.
Kash Patel and girlfriend Alexis Wilkins
Mr. Patel agreed to find funding to keep the posting, the officials said. But the job had already been slated to disappear as the White House moved to slash the F.B.I. budget. The agent moved to a different job back in the United States, saving the F.B.I. money but leaving MI5 officials incredulous.
It was a jarring introduction to Mr. Patel’s leadership style for British officials. They had long forged personal ties with their U.S. counterparts, as well as with three other close allies, in an intelligence partnership known as the Five Eyes.
The relationships among the organizations matter because many top national security officials view trust and reliability as paramount to sharing critical information with allies — vital for communication between agency directors, and hard to restore once lost.
On the same day in 1946 that Winston Churchill delivered his Iron Curtain speech in the United States, Britain and the United States secretly signed the pact that formed the basis for their intelligence alliance. It was an outgrowth of their collaboration during World War II. The partnership expanded during the advent of the Cold War to include other countries — Australia, Canada and New Zealand — earning it the name Five Eyes.
All rely heavily on American intelligence to help keep their countries safe. Though the F.B.I. is a criminal investigation agency, it is also a major part of the Western intelligence-gathering community. Alongside other U.S. agencies like the C.I.A., the F.B.I. has offices in embassies around the globe.
Mr. Patel’s inexperience, his dismissals of top F.B.I. officials and his shift of bureau resources from thwarting spies and terrorism have heightened concerns among the other Five Eyes nations that the bureau is adrift, according to the former U.S. officials and other people familiar with allies’ reactions to the bureau changes.
Five Eyes officials have watched with alarm as Mr. Patel has fired agents who investigated President Trump and invoked his powers to investigate the president’s perceived enemies. The officials and others spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
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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It seems there’s no end in sight for the government shutdown. The House is on a long paid vacation, and the Senate keeps voting again and again on the House Republican plan.
The government shutdown, which started on October 1, is entering its third week. As Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) explained this morning, the Senate is in session, and it keeps voting on two bills to reopen the government. Majority leader John Thune (R-SD) keeps having the Senate vote on the measure passed by Republicans in the House. That measure funds the government until November 21. It has failed repeatedly to get past the 60 votes necessary to avoid a filibuster. The Democrats have offered an alternative measure, which extends the healthcare premium tax credit—without which health insurance costs on the Affordable Care Act market will skyrocket—and restores nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid. That measure, too, has repeatedly failed to pass.
Murphy notes that normally the two sides would negotiate. But, he says, President Donald J. Trump is telling Republican senators to “BOYCOTT NEGOTIATING,” and they are “following orders.”
The House of Representatives is even more dysfunctional. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) pushed the continuing resolution through the chamber on September 19, the Friday before leaving town for a week. Then Johnson canceled the House sessions on Monday and Tuesday, September 29 and 30, both to jam the Senate into having to accept the House measure and to avoid swearing in Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ), who was elected on September 23. Grijalva will provide the 218th signature on a discharge petition to force a vote on the release of the files collected during the federal investigation into the crimes of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump and his officials promised to release those files, but have tried to avoid doing so since news broke that Trump, who was a close friend of Epstein, is named in them.
I really think the Epstein issue is the reason for the Republican resistance to compromise. Trump really really doesn’t want the Epstein files to be released. There must be some terrible stuff about him in those records.
Emily Brooks of The Hill notes that jamming the Senate as Johnson tried to do was a tactic employed by the far-right Freedom Caucus, and they are cheering him on. But Democratic senators refused to vote in favor of the House measure, standing firm on extending the premium tax credits before their loss decimates the healthcare markets. Now, although Democrats are in Washington, D.C., ready to negotiate, Johnson says he will not call House members back to work until the Senate passes the House measure.
Brooks notes that not all Republicans are keen on the optics of staying out of session during a shutdown. Mike Lillis of The Hill reported on Sunday that the cancellation of all House votes since late September has some Republicans warning that the tactic will backfire. In addition to the question of healthcare premiums, there is the issue of military pay stalled by the shutdown, and the fact that, by law, Congress was supposed to deliver its 2026 budget by September 30.
Over the weekend, the administration tried to ratchet up the pressure on Democratic senators to cave when it announced it would fire about 4,200 federal employees. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo notes that the threat seemed at least in part to be designed to follow through on a threat Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought had made to pressure Democrats before the shutdown. When those layoffs didn’t happen, the administration then suggested it would not pay furloughed workers after the shutdown ends. After backlash, they walked that threat back. The new announcement seemed in part an attempt to prove they would do something.
I’m glad the Democrats are standing firm on their insistence that the cuts to health care be restored. Read more from Richardson at the substack link.
Today the Supreme Court is going to hear a case that could allow John Roberts to achieve his lifelong goal of completely destroy the Voting Rights Act.
The conservative-majority Supreme Court on Wednesday will consider whether to eviscerate a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act in a congressional redistricting case from Louisiana.
The justices, who expanded the scope of the case over the summer, will hear oral arguments on whether states can ever consider race in drawing new districts while seeking to comply with Section 2 of the 1965 law, which was enacted against a backdrop of historic racial discrimination to protect minority voters.
The long-running dispute concerns the congressional map that Louisiana was required to redraw last year after being sued under the Voting Rights Act to ensure that there were two majority-Black districts. The original map only had one such district in a state where a third of the population is Black.
The Supreme Court originally heard the case earlier this year on a narrower set of legal issues but, in a rare move, it asked in June for the parties to reargue it. The court then raised the stakes by asking the lawyers to focus on a larger constitutional issue.
Now, the justices will be deciding whether drawing a map to ensure there are majority-Black districts violates the Constitution’s 14th and 15th amendments, which were both enacted after the Civil War to ensure equal rights for former slaves, including the right to vote.
This is interesting:
Conservatives argue that both constitutional amendments prohibit consideration of race at any time. The Supreme Court has previously embraced this “colorblind” interpretation of the Constitution, most notably in its 2023 ruling that ended the consideration of race in college admissions.
Louisiana, which initially defended its new map, has switched sides and joined a group of self-identified “non-African-American” voters who sued to block it on constitutional grounds. The Trump administration also backs the state’s new position.
The map is being defended by civil rights groups that challenged the original map.
A major redistricting case returning to the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday could not only determine the fate of the federal Voting Rights Act, but also unlock a path for Republicans to pick up a slew of additional congressional seats.
If the high court overturns the act’s Section 2 — a provision that bans racial discrimination in voting — GOP-controlled states could redraw at least 19 more voting districts for the House of Representatives in favor of Republicans, according to a recent report by the voting rights advocacy groups Black Voters Matter Fund and Fair Fight Action.
And depending on when the court rules in the case, known as Louisiana v. Callais, some number of the seats could be redistricted prior to next year’s midterm election.
The analysis comes as President Trump continues to lead a GOP push for new maps in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and other states that could help Republicans preserve their slim House majority after the 2026 election.
The GOP effort could be bolstered by a Supreme Court ruling that eliminates longstanding Section 2 protections against the dilution of the collective power of racial minority voters.
Many of the landmark law’s supporters fear such an outcome after the conservative-majority court didn’t rule last term on the Louisiana case, and instead scheduled a rare second round of oral arguments, which is expected to focus on the constitutionality of Section 2’s redistricting requirements.
A ruling gutting Section 2 could have a cascading effect on congressional maps in mostly Southern states where Republicans either control both legislative chambers and the governor’s office or have a veto-proof majority in the legislature — and where voting is racially polarized, with Black voters tending to vote Democratic and white voters tending to vote Republican.
On Monday, Dakinikat posted a story about a 13-year-old Massachusetts boy who was arrested and then taken by ICE to a facility in Virginia. After many people reacted in shock, ICE claimed the boy had a knife and a gun when he was arrested. The local police say he had a knife but no gun.
A vigil was held outside City Hall Tuesday night for a 13-year-old boy who is being held in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Virginia after police arrested the armed teen at a bus stop last week while following up on a credible tip about a violent threat against another student.
Officers recovered a 6- to 7-inch, double-sided knife, Everett Mayor Carlo DeMaria said at a news conference earlier Tuesday. He said, however, that the teenager did not have a gun, contradicting a report by a Department of Homeland Security official.
In response to questions about how the teenager was handed over to ICE, the mayor also said the Everett Police Department did not contact ICE about the juvenile’s arrest.
“Everett police does not make arrests based on immigration status,” DeMaria said.
Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security, posted on social media Monday that the juvenile posed a “public safety threat” and was in possession of a firearm and a large knife when arrested. Everett Police Chief Paul Strong said Tuesday that no firearm was recovered….
The juvenile was booked at the police station on Thursday and then was detained by ICE at the station. He is now being held at the Northwestern Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Winchester, Va., according to his family.
A 13-year-old Massachusetts boy is in ICE custody hundreds of miles from home, and trying to figure out how this was allowed to happen has been challenging. A local news story about the ordeal went viral on Sunday, prompting more questions than answers about the conduct of local police, their relationship to federal immigration enforcement and whether the boy’s family even knew he was being taken out of state. While we have some new information, the cloud of confusion remains.
A 13-year-old boy was arrested by ICE in Everett and sent to a juvenile detention facility in Virginia. (Photo from The Boston Globe)
Here’s what we know at this point: Last Thursday, police in Everett, Massachusetts say the boy made a credible threat of violence against another student in the school district. When officers picked him up at a bus stop outside his school, they allegedly found a knife in his possession. Once the boy was fingerprinted, ICE became aware of the case. According to the Boston Globe, the boy’s mother was called to pick him up after he was arrested, waited for about an hour and a half, and was then told her son was taken by ICE. He was held overnight in a Massachusetts ICE facility and then taken Friday to one in Virginia. We know he came to the US from Brazil and, along with his family, has a pending asylum case.
“I’ve never done a bond or a habeas for a kid this young, ever,” US District Judge Richard G. Stearns said during an emergency habeas corpus hearing Friday filed by a lawyer on behalf of the boy. “This is the youngest.”
Everett is a city of nearly 50,000 people that borders Boston directly to the north. According to the 2010 Census, 33% of residents were born outside of the US. Per the 2020 Census, the city is a little more than 50% white, with a big Hispanic and Latino community, as well as large Italian and Brazilian populations. As people at a city council meeting testified Tuesday night, ICE has had a bombastic presence in the community since the start of the second Trump administration.
Here’s what Kabas was told by a DHS spokesperson:
After I reached out to ICE spokesperson Casey Latimer on Monday regarding the boy taken from Everett, I received a reply from a different spokesperson named James Covington. He wrote “Please see the below from DHS on the 13-year-old alien. Please feel free to direct any questions to them.”
The “below” Covington was referring to was—and bear with me here—a screenshot of an X post from DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin who had quote posted Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council. Reichlin-Melnick had posted about the story, writing “This makes NO SENSE. A 13-year-old was arrested by local police for unknown reasons, and then turned over to ICE, which is detaining him far away from his mother — who is going through immigration court, has an asylum application on file, and is legally authorized to work.”
Latimer went on to accuse the boy of “an extensive rap sheet” and possessing a gun,” which the local authorities say is not true. So maybe this is a troubled kid, but the local police should be dealing with that, not DHS, especially since his family has an active asylum case.
The Young Republicans are in the news and not in a good way.
Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.
They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.
William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n–ga” and “n–guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”
Giunta was referring to an upcoming vote on whether he should become chair of the Young Republican National Federation, the GOP’s 15,000-member political organization for Republicans between 18 and 40 years old.
“Im going to create some of the greatest physiological torture methods known to man. We only want true believers,” he continued.
Two more members of a Young Republican group chat strewn with racist epithets and hateful jokes stepped down from their jobs Tuesday after POLITICO published an exclusive report on the Telegram exchanges.
Bobby Walker and other young Republicans who took part in an epithet-filled Telegram chat are out of jobs after POLITICO began asking questions about their statements.
Peter Giunta’s time working with New York Assemblymember Mike Reilly “has ended,” the Republican lawmaker said. Giunta served as chair of the New York State Young Republicans when the chat took place. Joseph Maligno, who previously identified himself as the general counsel for that group, is no longer an employee of the New York State Unified Court System, a courts spokesperson confirmed.
Another chat member, Vermont state Senator Sam Douglass, faced mounting calls for his resignation as well, including from the state’s Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, and Douglass’ fellow Republican lawmakers, who called his statements “deeply disturbing.”
POLITICO’s in-depth look into how one group of Young Republicans spoke privately was met Tuesday with widespread condemnation in New York, Washington and beyond. The members of the chat — 2,900 pages of which were leaked and reviewed by POLITICO — called Black people monkeys, repeatedly used slurs for gay, Black, Latino and Asian people, and jokingly celebrated Adolf Hitler.
In a bipartisan outcry, members of Congress and other political leaders from around the country said they were appalled by the contents of the group chat. The board of directors of the National Young Republicans said every member of the chat “must immediately resign” their state organization.
Trump is destroying the White House. The mess in the oval office can be fixed by a new president and the giant flagpoles could be removed, but what about the huge ballroom he’s building and the proposed Nazi-style victory arch? What about the ruined rose garden? He’s turning the people’s house into Mar-a-Lago north.
Donald Trump is obsessing over remodeling the White House like no other president.
— He has gilded the Oval Office, replaced trees, paved the Rose Garden lawn,hung art and mirrors all over, erected flagpoles and begun work on a $250 million ballroom.
— He’s not done: Trump has had models and dioramas built for other projects he’s considering, and even directed how and where new marble-tiled floors are laid….
Long after Trump has exited the presidency, his imprint will be on the executive mansion in an unprecedented scope and scale — even if a successor removes the Oval Office gold leaf.
What’s next: The president’s wandering architectural eye is now gazing southwest from the White House to land around the Memorial Bridge. He wants to erect a giant arch as a grand entrance into Washington from Arlington National Cemetery.
— “Let’s build something like the Arc de Triomphe in that space, it would be beautiful when you drive or fly in,” Trump told a White House visitor a few weeks ago.
— Trump has three differently sized models of the “Arc de Trump” that he’s been positioning on a map of D.C. to determine the right scale.
— On Saturday, Trump posted on Truth Social a rendition of the arch by Washington architect Nicolas Leo Charbonneau.
The models for the arch were 3D printed on Trump’s orders by the architects involved in designing the new ballroom. He says it’d be privately funded, along with some of the other projects. The total cost is unclear.
There’s much more horrifying stuff to read at Axios, if you stomach it.
Look inside the Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom at Mar-a-Lago in 2005 (from The Palm Beach Post)
Eric Trump is sharing how renovations to the White House are a nod to Mar-a-Lago.
Trump gave a tour to Fox News anchor Steve Doocy of his family’s Florida golf club as he promotes his new book, “Under Siege,” which is out Tuesday. It offers an unfiltered look into the Trump world and criticism against his father, according to the memoir’s synopsis.
Moving throughout the patio and home of the Palm Beach estate, Doocy later admired the “fantastic view” of the beach, while pointing to how the resort displays the same umbrellas from the new Rose Garden.
“Exact same umbrellas as the Rose Garden,” Trump responded on “Fox & Friends.”
He added: “And by the way, that beautiful flag pole right there — the exact same flag pole that we have at the White House. I got a call from my father. He goes, “Honey, I need two great flag poles. I want to donate them to the White House.”
Trump went on to say that “we’re very happy to have the same Mar-a-Lago flagpole on the south and north grounds now.”
It’s finally starting to feel like Autumn here. Leaves are starting to change color and temperatures are dropping into the 50s and 60s. We’re expecting a Nor’easter over the long weekend, with rain, high winds, and coastal flooding.
I’m still having trouble dealing with the news; it has just gotten to be too painful watching Trump and his thugs destroy my country. But the horror continues, whether I’m paying attention or not. Of course, the top story is the effects of the government shutdown.
The promised layoffs and firings of government workers have begun.
Beth Willwerth, a federal employee at the Andover IRS office, learned she had been furloughed 15 minutes before she spoke to the Globe on Friday.
Willwerth, who is also the chapter president of the National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 68,has been with the IRS since 2009. This is her fourth shutdown.
“This is far different than anything I have ever seen,” she said. “I have never seen anything like this in my 16 years here. I have never hugged so many people coming into my office crying.”
As the government shutdown entered its 11th day, with no sign of a deal in sight, government workers are seeing their paychecks shrink or cut entirely, learning they are newly furloughed, or facing layoffs, as President Trump had promised. They’re dipping into savings and taking side hustles to make ends meet. Federal workers tell the Globe it’s more than just about finances. They’ve never seen a shutdown this chaotic, or this seemingly vindictive.
Many are continuously, unpleasantly surprised by breaking developments, particularly news of an increasing number of federal workers getting fired. By Friday afternoon, federal health, homeland security, education, energy, and Treasury Department employees had been laid off.
Mere hours later, 98 field staff working at the Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity offices at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development across the nation had been notified they’d be laid off effective Dec. 9, a representative from local 3258 of the American Federation of Government Employees told the Globe. The office helps enforce the Fair Housing Act by investigating housing discrimination complaints and mediating cases.
The number of laid-off field staff includes all 11 field staff from the Boston Regional HUD Office.
More than 4,000 federal employees receivedlayoff notices Friday as part of the Trump administration’s broad effort to reshape the government while it remains shutdown, according to a court filing Friday.
The filing provides greater insight into an announcement from President Donald Trump’s budget chief earlier in the day that the administration had begun government-wide reductions in force that had been anticipated since federal funding lapsed on October 1.
“The RIFs have begun,” Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought posted on X, without elaborating on how many federal workers had received RIF – or reduction in force – notices.
As of Friday evening, RIF notices had gone out to employees at the departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security and Treasury, according to department spokespeople, union representatives and sources directly impacted.
Treasury and HHS saw the highest number of reductions, with more than 1,000 workers laid off at each department, according to the filing in a lawsuit brought by two federal employee unions seeking to stop the layoffs.
Also, the US Patent and Trademark Office, which is part of the Commerce Department, issued lapse-related RIF notices to employees last week, according to the filing. And the Environmental Protection Agency sent “intent to RIF” notices to 20 to 30 employees, though it hasn’t made a final decision on whether or when it would lay off those workers.
Other agencies are “actively considering” whether to conduct additional RIFs related to the shutdown, the filing said.
Trump said late Friday afternoon that he plans to fire “a lot” of federal workers in retaliation for the government shutdown, vowing to target those deemed to be aligned with the Democratic Party.
Dozens of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — including “disease detectives,” high-ranking scientists and the entire Washington office — were notified late Friday that they were losing their jobs as part of the Trump administration’s latest round of federal layoffs.
It was unclear on Friday how many C.D.C. workers were affected. But it was the latest blow to an agency that has been wracked by mass resignations, a shooting at its Atlanta headquarters in August and the firing of its director under pressure from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Portrait by Naomi Jenkin
Layoff notices landed in the email inboxes of C.D.C. employees shortly before 9 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, notifying employees that their duties had been deemed unnecessary or “virtually identical” to those being performed elsewhere in the agency. Scientists, including leaders, in offices addressing respiratory diseases, chronic diseases, injury prevention and global health were among those affected.
The staff of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the journal that reports on health trends and emerging infectious threats, was also laid off. The publication’s storied history includes a June 1981 report that five previously healthy gay men were treated for an unusual pneumonia — the first hint of the AIDS epidemic.
Roughly 70 Epidemic Intelligence Service officers — the so-called “disease detectives” who respond to outbreaks around the globe — received layoff notices, according to a person familiar with them. The service was spared during an earlier round of layoffs in February.
An officer at an American Federation of Government Employees local union representing C.D.C. employees said that the agency’s human resources staff, which had been furloughed as part of the government shutdown, had been called back to work to send out layoff notices to their colleagues.
In almost any other government shutdown, Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, both of Virginia, would probably top the list of Democrats most likely to try to find a quick off ramp.
They represent the state with the second-highest concentration of federal employees in the nation. Both have historically been eager to join the so-called bipartisan gangs of senators who try to negotiate their way through partisan gridlock.
Instead, the two have appeared remarkably dug in, even as President Trump and his top lieutenants have threatened to use the shutdown to drastically accelerate their campaign to reduce the size of the government. They say they are channeling federal workers who are furious at the White House’s ongoing assault on the bureaucracy and are urging their representatives in Congress to keep up the fight.
“I’ve heard that sentiment more loudly than I thought, because in Virginia, we have an awful lot at stake,” Mr. Kaine said in a recent interview. “We suffer more in a shutdown scenario than anybody else. But I think they feel like, ‘You’re threatening to hurt us. You’ve been hurting us since Jan. 20.’ In some ways, it’s kind of not a credible threat, because you’ll do it anyway, whatever happens.”
The dynamic has fueled Democrats’ resolve not to back down as the shutdown impasse drags into its second week. Democrats representing large populations of federal workers have for months heard from livid employees about the Department of Government Efficiency emails they received asking them to provide a list of accomplishments; the chaos and upheaval at their agencies; and the fears of retaliation.
A bit more:
Mr. Trump has stepped up the threats in recent days, saying that he would deny furloughed workers back pay earned during the shutdown, and promising that he would seize the opportunity to slash programs and projects Democrats care about.
So far that has only fueled Democrats’ outrage, strengthening their determination to continue demanding health care concessions as a condition of any deal to fund the government. But that determination will be tested in the days ahead.
Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, announced on Friday that the administration was beginning another round of federal worker layoffs, fulfilling Mr. Trump’s threats. And many federal employees, including military personnel, are set to miss their first paycheck next week.
“To their credit, the White House has now for 10 days laid off doing anything in hopes that enough Senate Democrats would come to their senses and do the right thing and fund the government,” Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, said at a news conference on Friday, minutes before Mr. Vought’s announcement. “But now where we’re getting to is where people are going to start missing paychecks. This gets real.”
Democrats on Friday gave few indications that they would be swayed.
“This latest round of federal firings is not an unfortunate byproduct of the government shutdown, but a deliberate choice,” Mr. Warner wrote on social media. “Republicans are intentionally holding federal workers hostage to force through their agenda driving up health care costs for millions.”
Good! I hope the Democrats stay angry.
On the shutdown fight:
Republicans are beginning to realize that they are losing the shutdown PR war.
Republicans are on the defensive as Democrats have successfully made the shutdown fight about health care.
Most Republicans said they don’t want to see insurance premiums spike, but neither are they willing to openly support the extension of the enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits Democrats are asking for.
Portrait by Rachel Stibbling
While the GOP has remained united in refusing to even entertain the idea of an extension in the context of ending the shutdown, Republicans don’t appear to have an alternate plan for what happens next….
Democrats are feeling increasingly emboldened about their position and have made it clear they do not intend to back off their health care funding demands. If Congress doesn’t act in the next three weeks, Americans across the country will see major increases in their insurance premiums when open enrollment begins in November.
While Republicans insist that Democrats vote to fund the government before any talks on health care begin, GOP leaders have been forced to engage on an issue that’s long been a political vulnerability for the party.
“They’re trying to make this about health care. It’s not. It’s about keeping Congress operating so we can get to health care. We always were going to. They’re lying to you,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters Thursday. “The health care issues were always going to be something discussed and deliberated and contemplated and debated in October and November.”
Congress has extended the enhanced subsidies twice, and Democrats insist they need to do so again, citing estimates that premiums for tens of millions of people will more than double next year.
I remember when pundits were claiming that health care was too boring an issue to get serious traction. It looks like they were wrong.
Mike Johnson is keeping the House shut down for the third week. I’m not sure if it’s because he’s afraid of a vote on releasing the Epstein files or that some of his members may want to work with Democrats to end the government shutdown. And now he’s attacking the upcoming No Kings demonstrations.
Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday slammed the No Kings protest march scheduled to take place at the National Mall next week, describing the planned protest as the “hate America rally” that would draw “the pro-Hamas wing” and “the antifa people.” His characterizations, however, drew condemnation from some Democrats who defended the protest movement, whose first big demonstration was overwhelmingly peaceful.
“They’re all coming out,” Johnson said Friday in an interview on Fox News. “Some of the House Democrats are selling t-shirts for the event. And it’s being told to us that they won’t be able to reopen the government until after that rally because they can’t face their rabid base.”
Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), another senior House Republican, also criticized the planned demonstration and blamed it for prolonging the shutdown. Telling reporters Democrats had caved to the “terrorist wing of their party,” Emmer alluded to a “hate America rally in D.C. next week.”
Painting by Lissette Aguirre Buendia
The No Kings movement first sprang up as counter-programming to a military parade spearheaded by the White House in June, leading to the largest coordinated demonstration against Trump to date since his return to the Oval Office. The protests were overwhelmingly peaceful, and organizers at the time said they specifically did not plan an event in Washington to avoid a conflict.
The coast-to-coast protests went on almost entirely without incident, with one notable act of violence — when rally “peacekeepers” in Salt Lake City shot and killed a bystander because they believed another man with a gun was about to fire on the crowd.
The organizers of the upcoming rally largely brushed off House GOP leaders’ characterization. In a joint, unsigned statement, which they said they issued “after a few moments of laughter,” they pressured Johnson over the government shutdown.
“Speaker Johnson is running out of excuses for keeping the government shut down,” the No Kings coalition wrote. “Instead of reopening the government, preserving affordable healthcare, or lowering costs for working families, he’s attacking millions of Americans who are peacefully coming together to say that America belongs to its people, not to kings.”
Non-shutdown news and comment:
Trump and his puppet at the Department of Defense are allowing a foreign country to have a military base in the United States. WTF?!
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday announced a finalized agreement that will allow the Qatari Emiri Air Force to build a facility at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho.
The agreement, which Hegseth announced alongside Qatari Minister of Defense Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani at the Pentagon, will allow Qatari pilots to receive training alongside U.S. soldiers. There are no foreign military bases in the U.S., but some foreign militaries do maintain a presence for training. The Singaporean Air Force also has a presence at the Mountain Home base.
Hegseth said he is “proud that today we’re signing a letter of acceptance to build a Qatari Emiri Air Force Facility at the Mountain Home Air Base in Idaho.”
“The location will host a contingent of Qatari F-15’s and pilots to enhance our combined training, increase lethality, interoperability, it’s just another example of our partnership,” Hegseth said. “And I hope you know, your excellency, that you can count on us.”
Later Friday, Hegseth clarified that Qatar would not have its own base in the U.S., writing on X: “The U.S. military has a long-standing partnership w/ Qatar, including today’s announced cooperation w/ F-15QA aircraft. However, to be clear, Qatar will not have their own base in the United States-nor anything like a base. We control the existing base, like we do with all partners.”
Whatever. It’s creepy, IMO.
The move is another demonstration of the Trump administration’s increasingly close relationship with Qatar.
President Trump signed an executive order last month “assuring the security of the state of Qatar,” following Israel’s decision to carry out a military strike in Qatar’s capital city of Doha, where the vast majority of Qataris live. “The United States shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty, or critical infrastructure of the State of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States,” the executive order reads.
First Lady Melania Trump made a rare formal announcement from the White House on Friday where she revealed that she has been engaged in secret talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The first lady said that due to ongoing efforts eight children separated during the war in Ukraine have now been reunited with their families, and she said the work continues.
Cornilis Visscher, The Large Cat, etching-and-engraving-circa-1657-145×188-mm-5_651360851dc7f-thumb-36144200_1695768710Cornelis-Visscher, The
Trump said that her dialogue with Putin has been ongoing since she sent him a letter in August. The president first revealed the letter she had written to the Russian leader on Truth Social, which was hand-delivered to Putin during his summit with Trump in Alaska.
“Since President Putin received my letter last August, he responded in writing, signaling a willingness to engage with me directly, and outlining details regarding the Ukrainian children residing in Russia,” the first lady said Friday.
“Since then, President Putin and I have had an open channel of communications regarding the welfare of these children,” she continued….
The first lady, who spends most of her time in New York, made her roughly five-minute speech from a podium at the White House before turning around and exiting the room without taking any questions.
Melania has been a quiet adviser to her husband on the war in Ukraine since he took office. The president has said on numerous occasions that the first lady has been quick to point out to her husband that Putin had not been negotiating with him in good faith as the war dragged on.
I hope this does some good, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
More than three dozen federal judges have told The New York Times that the Supreme Court’s flurry of brief, opaque emergency orders in cases related to the Trump administration have left them confused about how to proceed in those matters and are hurting the judiciary’s image with the public.
At issue are the quick-turn orders the Supreme Court has issued dictating whether Trump administration policies should be left in place while they are litigated through the lower courts. That emergency docket, a growing part of the Supreme Court’s work in recent years, has taken on greater importance amid the flood of litigation challenging President Trump’s efforts to expand executive power.
While the orders are technically temporary, they have had broad practical affects, allowing the administration to deport tens of thousands of people, discharge transgender military service members, fire thousands of government workers and slash federal spending.
The striking and highly unusual critique of the nation’s highest court from lower court judges reveals the degree to which litigation over Mr. Trump’s agenda has created strains in the federal judicial system.
White Angora Cat by Jean-Jacques Bachelier, 1761
Sixty-five judges responded to a Times questionnaire sent to hundreds of federal judges across the country. Of those, 47 said the Supreme Court had been mishandling its emergency docket since Mr. Trump returned to office.
The judges responded to the questionnaire and spoke in interviews on the condition of anonymity so they could share their views candidly, as lower court judges are governed by a complex set of rules that include limitations on their public statements.
Of the judges who responded, 28 were nominated by Republican presidents, including 10 by Mr. Trump; 37 were nominated by Democrats. While those nominated by Democrats were more critical of the Supreme Court, judges nominated by presidents of both parties expressed concerns.
In interviews, federal judges called the Supreme Court’s emergency orders “mystical,” “overly blunt,” “incredibly demoralizing and troubling” and “a slap in the face to the district courts.” One judge compared their district’s current relationship with the Supreme Court to “a war zone.” Another said the courts were in the midst of a “judicial crisis.”
Beijing shattered a fragile trade truce with Washington this week, announcing sweeping restrictions on exports that contain even trace amounts of Chinese rare earth.
An irate President Donald Trump is threatening to retaliate with 100 percent tariffs and new restrictions on exports of critical software — and said there’s “no reason” to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping later this month.
The rupture marks the sharpest escalation in tensions between Washington and Beijing since the two countries slapped triple-digit tariffs on each other this spring and threatens to derail months of quiet efforts to stabilize the relationship. It also underscores how delicate the two sides’ uneasy economic peace has been and raises fresh doubts about whether Trump, operating with a hollowed-out national security team and a fragmented China strategy, is prepared for Beijing’s latest power play.
It’s also the clearest test yet of Trump’s ability to translate his transactional approach to trade into a coherent China strategy — one that can withstand Beijing’s deliberate and long-term economic warfare. Most of China’s new restrictions will take effect Dec. 1, while the U.S.’s retaliatory measures are set to kick in Nov. 1.
“China’s actions are being viewed by the administration as a major escalation in U.S.-China trade tensions,” said Everett Eissenstat, deputy assistant to the president for international economic affairs and deputy director of the White House’s National Economic Council during Trump’s first term. “China is flexing its power and trying to show the world that it has the ability to act as a major choke point for global trade.”
China’s Ministry of Commerce on Thursday unveiled its most expansive rare earth export controls to date, allowing Beijing not only to restrict shipments of raw materials and magnets — as it has in the past — but also any devices that incorporate those elements. Because Chinese rare earths are embedded in everything from iPhones and electric vehicle motors to fighter-jet sensors, the rules effectively give Beijing potential veto power over vast swaths of global manufacturing.
Across from the Lincoln Memorial, barely inside the boundaries of Washington, sits a traffic roundabout known as Memorial Circle — familiar to commuters primarily as a major entryway to the city from Virginia.
But if President Donald Trump and his advisers have their way, the small patch of federal land will soon host a new monument — a triumphal arch to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary next year, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.
Portrait by Diego Fernández
Justin Shubow, president of the National Civic Art Society, who has advised the Trump administration on its architectural plans, presented the idea to Trump and other officials earlier this year, and they were enthusiastic about the concept, the people said.
Photos of a model for the proposed arch in the Oval Office emerged this week, with Trump displaying it to Canadian officials on Tuesday. A mock-up again appeared on Trump’s desk on Thursday, according to photos by Agence-France Presse….
The arch initially was intended to be temporary and require expedited construction to coincide with next year’s anniversary, the people said. Now White House officials are considering plans for a permanent arch, according to a person who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations.
Nicolas Charbonneau, a D.C.-based architect at the firm Harrison Design, last month shared images of the planned arch on social media, writing that it represented a “closer study of what the #America250 arch could be.”
A bit more:
Construction of a triumphal arch to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary, which was first publicly suggested by art critic Catesby Leigh in an article last year, would represent the president’s most audacious effort to remake the landscape of D.C.
Trump has installed a stone patio in the White House Rose Garden, begun construction on a vast, new White House ballroom that would significantly change the footprint of the historic mansion, and pledged to clean up parks and streets across the nation’s capital. The president in August also signed an executive order titled “Making Federal Architecture Beautiful Again,” which called for new federal buildings to be constructed in a “classical and traditional” style, in the spirit of the Capitol building or the White House, rather than the brutalist or modern styles that became widely used over the past half century.
“We want to see beautiful buildings,” Trump said in the Oval Office last month, touting his own expertise as a real estate tycoon. Administration officials have highlighted buildings such as the headquarters of the Departments of Energy, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development as eyesores that they would prefer to replace….
Triumphal arches were widely used by the Romans to commemorate victories. Those Roman arches inspired more recent structures in Europe, most notably the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, which was constructed in the first part of the 19th century. The models displayed in the Oval Office closely resemble those structures, inspiring some online commentators to joke that the new monument would be “the Arc de Trump.”
I guess the Trump arch will “celebrate” his planned victory over American democracy after 250 years?
That’s it for me today. Take care everyone!
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I’ve been avoiding the news for the past few days, so I’m kind of catching up on the what’s happening. And what’s going on in this country is just unbelievable. In about 8 months, Trump–with the help of the Supreme Court–has nearly destroyed the country. It’s difficult to believe it has happened so quickly. Can our democracy somehow still be saved? I don’t know.
Here the stories I’m going to cover today: the Comey prosecution; the ongoing government shutdown; and Trump’s war on Chicago.
Trump’s revenge prosecutions are beginning. James Comey was arraigned this morning on *trumped* up charges.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Former FBI Director James Comey pleaded not guilty Wednesday to face a criminal case that has thrown a spotlight on the Justice Department’s efforts to target adversaries of President Donald Trump.
The arraignment is expected to be brief, but the moment is nonetheless loaded with significance given that the case has amplified concerns the Justice Department is being weaponized in pursuit of Trump’s political enemies and is operating at the behest of a White House determined to seek retribution for perceived wrongs against the president.
Comey entered a not guilty plea through his lawyer at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, to allegations that he lied to Congress five years go. The plea kick-starts a process of legal wrangling in which defense lawyers will almost certainly move to get the indictment dismissed before trial, possibly by arguing the case amounts to a selective or vindictive prosecution.
The indictment two weeks ago followed an extraordinary chain of events that saw Trump publicly implore Attorney General Pam Bondi to take action against Comey and other perceived adversaries. The Republican president also replaced the veteran attorney who had been overseeing the investigation with Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide who had never previously served as a federal prosecutor. Halligan rushed to file charges before a legal deadline lapsed despite warnings from other lawyers in the office that the evidence was insufficient for an indictment.
The two-count indictment alleges that Comey made a false statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, 2020, by denying he had authorized an associate to serve as an anonymous source to the news media and that he obstructed a congressional proceeding. Comey has denied any wrongdoing and has said he was looking forward to a trial. The indictment does not identify the associate or say what information may have been discussed with the media, making it challenging to assess the strength of the evidence or to even fully parse the allegations.
Though an indictment is typically just the start of a protracted court process, the Justice Department has trumpeted the development itself as something of a win, regardless of the outcome. Trump administration officials are likely to point to any conviction as proof the case was well-justified, but an acquittal or even dismissal may also be held up as further support for their long-running contention the criminal justice system is stacked against them.
Former FBI Director James Comey pleaded not guilty Wednesday to federal charges demanded by President Donald Trump as part of his crusade for retribution….
Comey is facing two felony charges stemming from his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020, when he discussed leading the FBI amid an investigation into ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. The charges, approved by an Alexandria grand jury, were brought by Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s former personal attorney who was installed — at Trump’s direction — as the U.S. attorney for eastern Virginia last month after veteran Justice Department lawyers resisted bringing the case.
Near the outset of the hearing, Comey’s defense attorney and longtime friend, Patrick Fitzgerald, entered the not guilty plea on behalf of his client.
After the arraignment, Comey was released on his own recognizance….
Fitzgerald said he will argue that Halligan acted improperly before the grand jury and that she should be disqualified due to the circumstances of her appointment. Fitzgerald also said he will seek to have the case thrown out as a vindictive and selective prosecution, as well as on the grounds of outrageous government conduct.
Nachmanoff, a Biden appointee, presided over the 30-minute arraignment. Comey intends to ask the judge to toss the charges on grounds that the former FBI director is being vindictively prosecuted by Trump over a personal grudge stemming from the 2016 probe.
Halligan nodded along with the proceedings — her first ever as a prosecutor in front of a federal judge. Before being named as the U.S. attorney days before Comey was indicted, her legal background was as an insurance lawyer. She tapped two relatively junior prosecutors from North Carolina — rather than her office in the Eastern District of Virginia — to lead the case.
Halligan did not speak during the hearing, except to identify herself. One of the prosecutors from North Carolina, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tyler Lemons, did the talking for the government. When the judge posed questions, he often deferred to Fitzgerald to speak first.
Federal prosecutors investigating former FBI Director James Comey for allegedly making false statements to Congress determined that a central witness in their probe would prove “problematic” and likely prevent them from establishing their case to a jury, sources familiar with their findings told ABC News.
Comey, who pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Wednesday, was indicted last month on charges of making a false statement and obstruction related to 2020 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee — but Justice Department officials have privately expressed that the case could quickly unravel under the scrutiny of a federal judge and defense lawyers.
Daniel Richman — a law professor who prosecutors allege Comey authorized to leak information to the press — told investigators that the former FBI director instructed him not to engage with the media on at least two occasions and unequivocally said Comey never authorized him to provide information to a reporter anonymously ahead of the 2016 election, the sources said.
According to prosecutors who investigated the circumstances surrounding Comey’s 2020 testimony for two months, using Richman’s testimony to prove that Comey knowingly provided false statements to Congress would result in “likely insurmountable problems” for the prosecution.
Investigators detailed those conclusions in a lengthy memo last month recommending that the office not move forward in charging Comey, according to sources familiar with the memo’s contents.
Read the rest at ABC News. Of course the point is not necessarily to convict Comey. Trump just wants him to go though the process of dealing with the courts and paying attorney fees.
The government shutdown continues. Here’s the latest:
– Republicans and Democrats remain at an impasse over how to end the government shutdown, now on its eighth day.
– For the sixth time, the Senate is set to consider dueling measures to fund the government around midday Wednesday. The bills fell short of the 60 votes needed for a fifth time on Monday.
– On Tuesday, confusion spread over whether the 750,000 furloughed federal workers would receive back pay, after a memo from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget suggested they might not. Congressional leaders have pushed back, insisting that furloughed workers would be made whole.
– At the Capitol, House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters he would not call back the House to vote on a separate bill to pay members of the military, saying Senate Democrats should support the GOP bill to reopen the government: “The House is done. The ball is now in the Senate’s court.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune reiterated to reporters Wednesday morning that Republicans are “happy to sit down with a group and figure out what the path forward might look like” on Democrats’ push to address health care issues, but “we’ve got to open up the government” first.”The conversation will happen when we open up the government,” Thune said. “Nothing’s changed. We all understand what they want to do, and we’re not averse, as I’ve said repeatedly, to having that conversation. At some point, they have to take yes for an answer.”
Democrats have insisted that they need more than assurances on their demands to extend health insurance tax credits.
One week into the government shutdown, top Republican leaders appear to have lost the plot.
President Donald Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune are straining to project a united front against Democrats, just barely concealing tensions over strategy that have snowballed behind the scenes since agencies closed last week.
Speaker Mike Johnson
In one stark example, Trump scrambled the congressional leaders’ messaging Monday when he told reporters in the Oval Office he would “like to see a deal made for great health care” and that he was “talking to Democrats about it,”
Within hours, Trump walked it back: “I am happy to work with the Democrats on their Failed Healthcare Policies, or anything else, but first they must allow our Government to re-open,” he wrote on Truth Social hours after his initial comments.
Johnson said Tuesday he “spoke with the president at length yesterday” about the need to reopen agencies first, while Thune told reporters there have been “ongoing conversations” about strategy between the top Republicans.
A White House official granted anonymity to speak about the circumstances behind the president’s statements said the Truth post was “issued to make clear that the [administration] position has not changed” and was not done at the behest of the two leaders.
But tensions surfaced again Tuesday after a White House budget office memo raised questions about a federal law guaranteeing back pay for furloughed federal workers — one that Johnson and Thune both voted for in 2019.
That’s what happens when you have a senile “president.” It does seem as if Democrats are winning the shutdown public relations war.
There would not be enough air traffic controllers in the tower at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport Tuesday night, the Federal Aviation Administration warned. In Nashville, so many controllers have stayed home, the facility – which guides planes into and out of the airport – is closing.
Now, after more than a week of the government shutdown, same scenarios are unfolding at FAA offices across the country, with ripple effects hitting flights almost everywhere.
The approach and departure facilities for Houston, Newark and Las Vegas did not have enough controllers working for at least part of Tuesday evening, along with the facilities that handle planes in the Boston, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Dallas areas, FAA operations plans noted.
Houston’s two major airports, Hobby and George Bush Intercontinental Airport, were both expected to see ground delays due to staffing shortage.
The aviation problems come as Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says more controllers are calling out sick. Like Transportation Security Administration officers, air traffic controllers are considered essential employees and must work without pay during the shutdown.
Organized job actions like strikes or sickouts are prohibited by federal law, but since air traffic control staffing is so tight, a small number of employees taking unscheduled time off can be enough to cause problems.
The Trump administration’s strategy to swiftly roll out mass layoffs of federal workers during the government shutdown has shifted in recent days, administration officials familiar with the talks told CNN, as an increasing number of Republican lawmakers and Trump administration officials acknowledge the potential political perils of the move.
With Democrats having shown no signs of budging in their opposition to a stopgap funding measure that doesn’t address their health care demands and a growing number of Republican lawmakers warning about potential blowback, the White House is now planning to hold off at least a little longer on sending out notices of Reductions in Force (RIFs, as the government firings are typically referred to), despite hoping the threat will still motivate Democrats.
“There’s an increasing acknowledgment within the West Wing that the politics of RIFs, at a moment when we know our message on the shutdown is the better one, would be better later,” one of the officials said. It’s “the idea that if we give it more time, it’ll be because the Democrats truly forced our hand and left us no choice.”
“And we do not want to appear gleeful about people losing their jobs, of course,” they added.
Too late. They already appear gleeful. But their threats aren’t working.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t backing down from her very public break with fellow Republicans on health care that shook up Washington.
In an extensive interview Tuesday, Greene, R-Ga., accused her party of not having a plan on health care and made the case that it should be working to fix the problem now.
Marjorie Taylor Greene
“When it comes to the point where families are spending anywhere from $1,500 to $2,000 a month and looking at hikes coming on their insurance premiums, I think that’s unforgivable,” she said.
GOP leaders in Congress are desperately working to keep their ranks unified amid Republican efforts to reopen the federal government without making any concessions to Democrats.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., forcefully pushed back against Greene’s argument, saying she isn’t informed on the topic….
Instead of backing down in face of criticism from party leadership, Greene decided to go all in.
“The reality is they never talk about it. And that committee working on, say, health insurance and the industry, that doesn’t happen in a [secure facility]. It’s not a major secret,” Greene said, adding that Johnson hasn’t reached out to discuss her concerns….
“What I am upset over is my party has no solution,” Green said. “It’s not something that we talk about frequently, but it is a reality for Americans, and it’s something that I don’t think we can ignore. I want, I really want to fix it.”
My final topic is Trump’s attack on Chicago. The shit is getting real, folks.
I don’t like sending out “emergency” newsletters, but I’ve had my eye on the situation in Chicago all day and tonight Texas National Guard troops arrived on Illinois soil, in defiance of the wishes of the Illinois governor and the Illinois National Guard’s adjutant general.
This moment has elevated the crisis so that it is no longer just a conflict between the federal government and a state, but between two states. We now have armed soldiers from the state of Texas eagerly volunteered by their governor to impose the president’s will on the citizens of Illinois.
I don’t want to be alarmist, but this is an emergency. It is incumbent on us to name the thing we are seeing and be unflinching as we describe it.
Military personnel in uniforms with the Texas National Guard patch are seen at the US Army Reserve Center in Elwood, Illinois, on Tuesday. Erin HooleyAP
That’s not a lot of power; but it’s the only power we have in this moment.
This newsletter relies on critical reporting being done by local journalists in Chicago. Please click on the links, follow these publications, and support them.
Today President Trump’s military invasion of Chicago crossed another Rubicon. He not only activated and took command of the Illinois National Guard, but just in case the hometown troops are not willing to do his bidding, he has shipped in National Guard troops from a politically reliable territory….
We should be exceedingly clear:
There is no crisis in Chicago that requires the National Guard. To the extent that there is civil instability in Chicago it has been caused by Trump’s surge of federal agents into the city and their lawless assault on the citizens of Chicago.
Examples of Trump’s hostile military activity in Chicago
September 12: ICE agents shoot and kill Chicago resident Silverio Villegas González in Franklin Park. ICE claimed that González was shot after he “seriously injured” an ICE agent. But bodycam footage shows the same agent immediately after the encounter describing his injuries as “nothing major.”
September 30: Some 300 federal agents raid an apartment building in the dead of night. Some rappel from a Black Hawk helicopter positioned over the building. They ransack apartments and detain not only children but several U.S. citizens, including one Rodrick Johnson, who spoke with Block Club Chicago:
Rodrick Johnson, who lives in the building and is a U.S. citizen, said he heard “people dropping on the roof” before FBI agents kicked in his door. He was stuffed inside a van with his neighbors for what felt like several hours until agents told them the building was clear, he said.
“They didn’t tell me why I was being detained,” Johnson said. “They left people’s doors open, firearms, money, whatever, right there in the open.”
October 4: CPB agents shoot an unarmed woman, Marimar Martinez. They claim that she provoked them by ramming their vehicle with her car. Martinez’s lawyer tells the Chicago Sun-Times that there is bodycam footage that shows an agent turning left into Martinez’s vehicle, after which an agent says, “Do something, bitch.” The agent then gets out of the vehicle and shoots Martinez.
October 7: A masked federal agent is caught on camera aiming a weapon at a resident who is reportedly doing nothing more than documenting his activity.
Please read the rest at The Bulwark link. it’s a very important post.
In a scathing critique of President Donald Trump, Gov. JB Pritzker on Tuesday accused the Republican president of deploying National Guard troops to the Democratic cities of Chicago and Portland based on fixations that stem in part from his being mentally impaired.
“This is a man who’s suffering dementia,” Pritzker said in a telephone interview with the Tribune. “This is a man who has something stuck in his head. He can’t get it out of his head. He doesn’t read. He doesn’t know anything that’s up to date. It’s just something in the recesses of his brain that is effectuating to have him call out these cities.
“And then, unfortunately, he has the power of the military, the power of the federal government to do his bidding, and that’s what he’s doing.”
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker
The governor’s comments came as National Guard troops from Texas were assembling at a U.S. Army Reserve training center in far southwest suburban Elwood and Trump’s administration was moving forward with deploying 300 members of the Illinois National Guard for at least 60 days over the vocal and legal objections of Pritzker and other local elected leaders.
The Trump administration has said the troops are needed to protect federal agents and facilities involved in its ongoing deportation surge and has sought to do much the same in Portland, Oregon, though those efforts have been stymied so far by temporary court rulings. A federal judge in Chicago is expected to hold a hearing this week over the legal effort by Illinois and Chicago to block the deployments, which Pritzker and other local officials say is not only unnecessary but a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act that prohibits the use of U.S. military assets from taking part in law enforcement actions on domestic soil.
During the interview, Pritzker — who has been one of Trump’s harshest critics and is a potential 2028 presidential Democratic candidate — said the courts will play an integral role in challenging Trump’s efforts in Illinois and across the nation.
“We’re not going to go to war between the state of Illinois and the federal government, not taking up arms against the federal government,” Pritzker said. “But we are monitoring everything they’re doing, and using that monitoring to win in court.”
While many families prepared their children for school Monday morning, Sept. 29, I woke up to calls from parents in Chicago too afraid to leave their homes. Rumors of immigration enforcement were spreading, and the simple act of walking a child to school felt like too much of a risk. I am a mother and an Illinois state representative, and these calls hit me in two places at once: as a parent who wants my child to grow up free from fear and as an elected official entrusted to protect the rights and dignity of my community.
Some of our worst fears were realized the next day when, as NBC Chicago reported, ICE agents rappelled from helicopters onto a housing complexduring a 1 a.m. raid and zip-tied people, including U.S. citizens and children, in the South Shore neighborhood. That’s near where my family has lived for decades. By all accounts the federal administration has used this exaggerated staging as a media opportunity without producing a shred of evidence that its use of excessive force was justified.
That is what makes President Donald Trump’s latest threat, that Chicago is one of the cities he wants to use as a “training ground” for the military, even more chilling. Trump is not only scapegoating our city and other cities for political gain; he is openly plotting to experiment on working families, immigrants and communities of color by turning our neighborhoods into staging grounds for authoritarian force. We must not turn away at this moment.
I know what militarization looks like, and it is not safety, it is fear. It looks like children crying when their parents don’t come home. It looks like families going underground, skipping school or work, because they are terrified of who might be waiting outside their doors. Militarization leads to trauma that lingers long after the raids end.
I know how this feels because I grew up with a mother who was undocumented. I grew up not knowing whether my mother would be there when I came home from school. I also know what real safety looks like. It looks like parents walking their kids to school. It’s stable housing, a living wage, health care and classrooms where children can learn without fear.
The running battle between President Donald Trump and Democratic-led cities is nearing a new inflection point, as National Guard troops gather near Chicago while lawyers prepare for critical court hearings 2,000 miles away from each other.
The Trump administration is tying planned deployments in Chicago and Portland, Oregon, to increasingly tense protests outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, as well as citing the shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas. Two ICE detainees were killed there. Trump has called it an attack on law enforcement.
The president ramped up his criticism Wednesday of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, who called the Guard call-up “Trump’s invasion” over the weekend.
“Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
To capture a democratic nation, authoritarians must control three sources of power: the intelligence agencies, the justice system, and the military. President Donald Trump and his circle of would-be autocrats have made rapid progress toward seizing these institutions and detaching them from the Constitution and rule of law. The intelligence community has effectively been muzzled, and the nation’s top lawyers and cops are being purged and replaced with loyalist hacks.
Only the military remains outside Trump’s grip. Despite the firing of several top officers—and Trump’s threat to fire more—the U.S. armed forces are still led by generals and admirals whose oath is to the Constitution, not the commander in chief. But for how long?
Trump and his valet at the Defense Department, Secretary of Physical Training Pete Hegseth, are now making a dedicated run at turning the men and women of the armed forces into Trump’s personal and partisan army. In his first term, Trump regularly violated the sacred American tradition of the military’s political neutrality, but people around him—including retired and active-duty generals such as James Mattis, John Kelly, and Mark Milley—restrained some of his worst impulses. Now no one is left to stop him: The president learned from his first-term struggles and this time has surrounded himself with a Cabinet of sycophants and ideologues rather than advisers, especially those at the Pentagon. He has declared war on Chicago; called Portland, Oregon, a “war zone”; and referred to his political opponents as “the enemy from within.” Trump clearly wants to use military power to exert more control over the American people, and soon, top U.S.-military commanders may have to decide whether they will refuse such orders from the commander in chief. The greatest crisis of American civil-military relations in modern history is now under way.
I write these words with great trepidation. When I was a professor at the Naval War College, I gave lectures to American military officers about the sturdiness of civil-military relations in the United States, a remarkable historical achievement that has allowed the most powerful military in the world to serve democracy without being a threat to it. I so revered this system that I went to Moscow just before the fall of the U.S.S.R. and told an audience of Soviet military officers that they should look to the American military as a model for how to disentangle themselves from the Communist Party and Kremlin politics. I regularly reminded both my military students and civilian audiences that they had good reason to have faith in American institutions and the constitutional loyalty of U.S. civilian and military leaders.
This new and dangerous moment has arrived for many reasons, including Trump’s antics in front of young soldiers and sailors, through which he has succeeded in pulling many of them into displays of partisan behavior that are both an insult to American civil-military traditions and a violation of military regulations. Senior military leaders should have stepped in to prevent Trump from turning addresses at Fort Bragg and Naval Station Norfolk into political rallies; the silence of the Army and Navy secretaries, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and some top generals and admirals is appalling. To their credit, those same officers listened impassively as Trump and Hegseth subjected them to political rants during a meeting at Quantico last week. But young enlisted people and their immediate superiors take their cues from the top, and one day of decorum from the high command cannot reverse Trump’s influence on the rank and file.
Please use the gift link to read the rest. We are in deep deep trouble, folks.
That’s it for me today. Please take care of yourselves, and don’t give up!
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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.
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.
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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