Trump

Trump says he's obsessed with the plight of workers — but his actions say otherwise: analysis

Political correspondent Robert Tait reports President Donald Trump’s “pro-worker” claims are running up against his actual behavior 10 months into his second term.

“Unpaid forced leave and mass firings are hardly the first things to spring to mind as hallmarks of a golden age of the American worker. Yet these were the possibilities floated by Donald Trump this week as he addressed a government shutdown … in a dispute over funding priorities.”

As reports emerge of a White House memorandum proposing furloughed federal workers not receive back pay, Trump “was quick to twist the knife,” said Tait, despite posing “as the champion of American workers” during his campaign.

“I would say it depends on who we’re talking about,” Trump told reporters, speaking of American workers impacted by furloughs and firings. “There are some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of, and we’ll take care of them in a different way.”

That quote tells “the true story of the US worker’s plight under Trump 2.0,” reports Tait, citing analysts who say Trump has enacted policies that have worsened the economic realities of the working person while parading “blue-collar solidarity” rhetoric.

“His tax-and-spending provisions in Trump’s flagship ‘big beautiful bill’, tariffs and the administration’s agenda of mass deportation of undocumented people are all taking a toll on workers’ living conditions, by raising costs and driving down wages,” said Tait.

Economic Policy Institute government affairs Director Samantha Sanders said Trump’s April appearance at the White House in the company of coal miners and a giant banner of Trump’s face handing from the Department of Labor building in Washington DC means nothing in the face of his policies.

“When it comes down to actual actions, we know, from his personal life to his policy life, he just does not deliver on those things,” said Sanders.

Trump’s big talk of “bringing back manufacturing,” is hard to accept when “tens of thousands of jobs have gone from manufacturing in the past couple of months and a lot of it is because of increased costs from tariffs,” said Gbenga Ajilore, chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “When businesses make adjustments to maintain their margin, labor is always the first to go.”

And while manufacturing workers took a hit, Ajilore pointed out that Trump granted a tariff exemption to Apple, who produces many of its computer products in China and other Asian countries.

And under Trump, the 2025 labor market has frozen with very little hiring.

“The long-term unemployment, people who have been out of work for more than 27 weeks, has gone up from 20 percent to 25 percent of the jobless,” Ajilore added. “And a larger share of them are college graduates, who would normally be able to get jobs. So workers aren’t able to experience mobility or progress — and at the same time, costs are going up.”

Read the Guardian report at this link.

The jaw-dropping irony behind Trump's worry about a 'communist' threat in America

Donald Trump and Stephen Miller say they’re coming for the “communists” in America, and they need the military on the streets of our cities to do it. Here’s what they’ve said recently on the topic:

Trump
  • “We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” (Rally)
  • “The communists attempting to destroy the American human spirit will fail in their dirty deeds.” (Threatening to use National Guard)
  • “It is the enemy from within, and they’re very dangerous. They’re Marxists and communists and fascists, and they’re sick.” (Fox “News” appearance)
  • “If the communists get away with this, it won’t stop with me. They will not hesitate to ramp up their persecution of Christians, pro-life activists, parents attending school board meetings, and even future Republican candidates.” (Miami speech)
Stephen 'Pee Wee German' Miller:
  • “We are not going to let the communists destroy a great American city, let alone the nation’s capital. Most of the citizens who live in Washington, DC, are Black.” (Speech to troops in DC)
  • “President Trump will make this nation safer than ever before, and he’ll do it over the fighting and opposition of the Democrat party, over the fighting and opposition of the communist left-wing judges.” (Fox “News” appearance)

Trump even included “anti-capitalism” as one of the “indica” (indicators) of “potential terror activities” that should cause the 200-plus Joint Terrorism Task Forces — set up in every major American city between local police, state police, and the FBI — to begin tapping your phone, reading your email, and surveilling your activities if they determine you’re an “anti-capitalist.”

So, what the hell are these guys talking about? What do Americans think of all this rhetoric, and what does that tell us about the future of the GOP and the Democratic Party? And the American middle class, for that matter?

After all, capitalism can’t exist without a little bit of socialism, and a middle class can’t exist in a meaningful way without a lot of socialism, as the New Deal and Great Society proved. But only Donald Trump is actually pursuing communism (more on that in a moment).

Gallup recently released a new poll showing that Americans’ support for capitalism has crashed from 60 percent as recently as 2021 to a mere 54 percent this year, the lowest recorded level in the history of their tracking. Big business is also sharply less popular: only 37 percent rate it favorably, the lowest since Gallup started asking.

For the first time, Democrats favor socialism over capitalism (66 percent vs. 42 percent), highlighting a dramatic shift and partisan gap. Republicans, on the other hand, are 74 percent to 14 percent in favor of capitalism over socialism.

Capitalism, simply, is a system that allows people with money (capital) to invest that money in ways that produce more money for them. The two most common ways that happens is by starting a business or buying stock in an existing company.

Most Americans will tell you they’re capitalists, but they’re not; real capitalists make the majority of their money not by working with their minds or hands in an office or factory but, instead, by putting their money (capital) to work via investment vehicles.

But capitalism — as Adam Smith pointed out back in the 18th century in Wealth of Nations and A Theory of Moral Sentiments — can’t exist without a “socialist” government providing guardrails, incentives, and systems for keeping people honest.

From laws against fraud and stock manipulation, to courts and jails to enforce those laws, to public roads and airways to facilitate commerce, a little bit of socialism (government using some of the money produced by capitalism and extracted from it by taxes) is necessary for capitalism to exist.

In fact, Americans have vigorously embraced socialism ever since the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s woke us all up to the dangers of raw, unregulated capitalism. We have literally hundreds of socialist institutions all across our various government agencies that not only support capitalism but also built the nation’s first more-than-half-of-us middle class in the middle of the 20th century.

From fire departments to banking and insurance regulators to programs like Social Security and Medicare, socialism has built a massive edifice of American prosperity over the past century. Here’s a list of the top 50 socialist programs or agencies:

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program, Unemployment Insurance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Women Infants and Children (WIC), Housing and Urban Development, Earned Income Tax Credit, Public Schools, State Universities, Community Colleges, Minimum Wage Laws, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Environmental Protection Agency, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Public Health Departments, Federal Emergency Management Agency, Public Libraries, Fire Departments, Police Departments, Public Water Utilities, Public Sewer Systems, U.S. Postal Service, Public Transportation, Veterans Health Administration, Head Start, Federal Student Aid, Public Housing Authorities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Aging, Health Resources and Services Administration, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, State-Produced Insulin Initiatives, State Disability Insurance Programs, Small Business Administration, National Science Foundation, AmeriCorps, U.S. Agency for International Development, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Affordable Care Act Exchanges, Child Care & Development Block Grant, Green Energy Subsidies, National Endowment for the Arts, Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, National Park Service, Community Health Centers.

Rightwing billionaires — who are true capitalists, since they make most of their money with their money — hate the fact that these programs mostly help average working people and smaller businesses, and the rest of us want billionaires to pay their damn income taxes to help fund them.

So, they finance and elevate politicians and ideologues who use their positions and power to try to gut these agencies, while supporting think tanks and media stars who trash-talk socialism and deify capitalism to keep billionaire taxes low.

The most obvious recent examples are Elon Musk and Russell Vought taking chainsaws to the federal government, and red state governors who keep their people in poverty by gutting social programs along with holding down taxes on their richest citizens.

The simple reality, first identified by Adam Smith in 1776, amplified by David Ricardo in the early 19th century, and now understood by most economists, is that without these “socialist” programs, predominantly capitalist societies will revert to their natural state: a tiny 1 percent of the morbidly rich; a sliver of around 5 percent of a middle class made of doctors, lawyers, and other professionals who serve the rich; and a groaning, toiling 94 percent of the working poor who provide the labor to make the rich even richer.

Read any book by Charles Dickens and you’ll get the picture; his father was dragged off to debtors’ prison and most of his books accurately depict how capitalism ravaged working class people for a thousand years leading up to and including the Victorian era.

In A Christmas Carol, in fact, the morbidly rich don’t even make an appearance; Scrooge was that era’s middle class, owning a small (one employee plus himself) business, and Bob Cratchit was the working poor who couldn’t even afford healthcare for his disabled son.

This is the world that Trump, Vance, Musk, Vought, and their GOP lackeys want to take us back to: they’re committed to undoing virtually every one of the agencies and programs listed above, along with at least a hundred others.

At the same time, the Overton window for how much socialism Americans want has been steadily shifting to the left.

The majority of Americans today want what other “socialist” developed countries (like most of free Europe, Asia, and Costa Rica) have: free or cheap healthcare and college, top-flight public schools, an end to widespread homelessness, action against climate change and toward green energy independence, and higher taxes on billionaires to pay for it.

Which finally brings us to the real outliers: the communists.

Communism is generally defined as an economic system in which the means of production, distribution, and exchange are collectively owned — typically by the state — rather than by individuals or corporations. The government, in other words, owns the companies that generate wealth, create goods and services, and employs the people.

Which, weirdly, is where Trump is taking us as he demonstrates his total lack of economic understanding. He’s now had the federal government buy or otherwise acquire stock in multiple companies, including Intel, MP Materials, Lithium Americas, Trilogy Metals, and the US Steel Corporation.

As a recent contrarian article in Current Affairs points out:

“Since the Intel deal was announced on August 22, making the U.S. government a significant stakeholder in the tech company, there’s been a slew of news articles and op-eds solemnly warning about the rise of an orange-hued Trumpian communism. Variations on this theme have appeared in Fortune, the New York Times (twice!), the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, Vox, Axios, Yale Insights, the Atlantic, the Free Press, Reason, and even regional newspapers like Indiana’s Indy Star.”

While Trump is shifting our political system toward the single-party strongman authoritarianism (sometimes called fascism) of his heroes who run Russia and Hungary, he’s pushing our economy in the direction of communist countries like Cuba, Vietnam, and China.

Which just makes sense. Because pure communism only works in small societies like Jesus and his disciples (with “a common purse”) or ancient tribal societies, when it’s tempered with a bit of capitalism the strongman types who run those “communist” countries get to skim massive wealth off the top of the businesses they allow to function.

This is today’s Trump-grift 101, whether it’s his brand-new $5 billion crypto fortune (with government support) or his recent real estate deals around the world cut based on his power in DC.

Republicans are racing toward a billionaire-friendly, every-man-for-himself version of capitalism, while Trump pushes a strongman, one-party communist model of top-down control of the economy (tariffs by fiat, politicize the Fed, have government own companies) that puts political power over markets.

Democrats, by contrast, are trying to restore the healthy mix that once worked here: private enterprise policed by real rules, paired with public investments that serve the common good, the balance that built the mid-century American middle class before Reagan took an ax to it by destroying “socialist” high taxes on rich people and gutting “socialist” labor unions.

Whether America can put its middle class back together will depend on how simply and forcefully Democrats can explain it in the face of Trump’s and Miller’s “communist Democrats” scare talk.

The stakes are enormous. In 1981, roughly 65 percent of households could live solidly in the middle class on a single paycheck. Today, after the Reagan-era shift to “reject socialism” and cut taxes on the morbidly rich, only about 47 percent manage that even with two incomes. Rebuilding a broad middle class is not nostalgia; it’s the foundation of a functioning democracy.

Reviving the once-great American middle class is vital for democracy to thrive, and only progressives within the Democratic Party are working for the modest amount of government socialism that history proves will produce that outcome.

If they fail and Trump and his Republicans succeed in making the entire American economy subservient to this country’s billionaires, we’ll all become Bob Cratchits and our children will all become tiny Tims.

'He’ll have autism by Sunday': Trump busted for medical 'hypocrisy'

President Donald Trump got his COVID booster shot weeks after demanding pharmaceutical companies provide proof of their effectiveness.

"Many people think they are a miracle that saved Millions of lives. Others disagree!" Trump said of COVID-19 medications such as vaccines made by Pfizer, Moderna and other pharmaceutical firms. "With CDC being ripped apart over this question, I want the answer, and I want it NOW."

Trump may have been working to rile the anti-vaxx wing of his supporters, many of whom — like his appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services — argue that vaccines cause autism.

Regardless of whether vaccine makers made a convincing case, the president appeared to have settled the question with his own behavior.

Social media reacted to the news with animosity and disdain.

“He’ll have autism by Sunday,” announced one commenter on X.

“Talk to your doctor and see if ignoring RFK Jr is right for you,” said another.

Still another critic posted: “a White House source speaking on condition of anonymity said President Trump has been vaccinated against hypocrisy since he contracted bone spurs as a young adult.”

Doug Saunders, International Affairs columnist with The Globe, pointed out on X that Trump got his shot “On the same day his administration sacked dozens of staff at Centers for Disease Control after their ability to require life-saving vaccines was ended.”

“Sure would be nice if the rest of us were allowed to get one,” argued one particularly bitter critic on X, referring to a CDC decision forcing people to pay a health professional for a consultation before getting a COVID shot.

Acting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Jim O'Neill agreed to the new recommendations for the COVID shots from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s handpicked Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which met in September.

“Informed consent is back," O'Neill said in a statement announcing the new requirement. “CDC's 2022 blanket recommendation for perpetual COVID-19 boosters deterred health care providers from talking about the risks and benefits of vaccination for the individual patient or parent. That changes today."

NPR reports independent vaccine experts challenged that claim.

"There is no basis to claim that routine recommendations prevent doctors from discussing risks and benefits with patients," said Dorit Reiss, who studies vaccine policies at the University of California, San Francisco. "Doctors [have always been] required to get informed consent. Shared clinical decision-making simply signals the vaccine is not routinely recommended and decreases uptake."

Trump indictments slammed for lacking 'anything close' to 'reasonable' standards

On Friday afternoon, October 10, MSNBC reported that former National Security Adviser John Bolton is likely to become the next Donald Trump foe indicted on federal charges by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

MSNBC's reporting follows the indictments of two other Trump foes — New York State Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey — by Trump loyalist Lindsey Halligan in DOJ's Eastern District of Virginia.

Law professor and ex-DOJ prosecutor Joyce White Vance discussed the merits of Halligan's prosecutors during a Friday-night appearance on MSNBC's "The Last Word."

Vance aggressively prosecuted her share of federal cases during her years at DOJ, and she emphasized to host Stephanie Ruhle that the meticulous standards DOJ should apply in a federal case are nowhere to be found in Halligan's James indictment.

When Ruhle asked Vance if she was "surprised" that a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia indicted James for bank fraud, the MSNBC legal analyst responded, "Well, look, I think what we're seeing is a prosecutor who is willing to go into the grand jury and ask for an indictment in cases where cooler prosecutorial heads would fear to tread. This is an indictment that charges bank fraud and false statements, and it's awfully slim when it comes to facts."

Vance continued, "I have to say it's really surprising to see, for instance, an indictment that says that that the defendant, Tish James, made multiple false statements but doesn't bother to specify any of them. And when you come to bank fraud, the essence of a bank fraud case is a scheme to defraud the banks. So, the misrepresentations that she makes have to be material to getting the loan. And importantly, she has to know that they're not true at the time that she's making them. We don't see any indication in this indictment that the government has anything close to the evidence it would need to prove any of this to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

Republicans just announced their intention to cheat — but there's still a way to fight back

This week, House Speaker Mike Johnson said there would be no votes next week. (That’s after canceling votes this week.) The White House, meanwhile, said it has begun mass firings of federal workers because the congressional Democrats haven’t caved to reopen the government.

The combined news is being reported as a “leverage,” as if these were normal rounds of negotiation between equal sides. The AP said it was an “attempt to exert more pressure on Democratic lawmakers” — the blandest possible way of saying coercion. “Take the deal or else” isn’t a reason for anyone to say yes. It’s the best reason in the world to say no.

But coercion isn’t the Republicans’ only tool.

In a call with the House Freedom Caucus, Johnson said, "we worked on rescissions, and there'll be more of that, we expect, in the days ahead." And: "Now, we would like to do another reconciliation bill this fall, before the end of the calendar year, and potentially, a third one in the spring, where we will also show more and more fiscal responsibility."

Translation: if the president has to give in to the Democrats’ demand for renewing health insurance subsidies, don’t worry. We can come back later with clawbacks (“rescissions”) that require a simple majority (“reconciliation bill”) to pass a Republican-controlled Congress.

In other words, Johnson is announcing his intention to cheat.

The Democrats are demanding a suite of concessions related to the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid (namely, restoring cuts made to it under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act). But their demands will mean nothing if the Republicans can steal back money after promising it.

The Democrats’ demands will also mean nothing if Donald Trump later finds a way to send some healthcare money to people who voted for him but not to people who didn’t. This is called impoundment and impoundment is illegal. The regime, even now, is impounding money intended for cities and states run by Democrats. It’s yet another bid to extort the Democrats in the Congress into accepting Trump’s terms.

(The Republicans on the US Supreme Court know impoundment is illegal but have occasionally ruled that it’s legal if a Republican does it.)

Any deal involving the Democrats’ demands on healthcare must have reassurances that Trump and the GOP won’t go back on their word. I don’t see how that’s possible with the speaker of the House saying out loud that Hell will freeze over before the Democrats can trust him.

Indeed, during a presser today, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was asked: “If Republicans were to commit to putting forward a vote on extending the ACA subsidies, would that bring Democrats to the negotiating table?” His reply: "Republicans have zero credibility, zero."

I don’t know how this is going to end. Neither does Tiffany Carlock. She’s an activist who uses her newsletter, Candidly Tiff, to educate people about civics, strategy and what’s really happening in politics.

In this brief interview, we touch on whether the Democrats are “winning” the shutdown fight, the role of “the Epstein files” in their thinking, how they are breaking through a media landscape coded in Trump’s favor, and what to do in this age of rampant lawlessness.

“Democrats have truth on their side and are using it,” Tiff said.



First, are the Democrats winning the fight over the government shutdown? I'm skeptical, but what do you think? And why?

Democrats are “winning” on the messaging front but personally, I don’t think anyone wins when the government shuts down. Republicans went into the fight thinking Democrats would cave, but they have held strong. This has stunned the legacy media as well as some Democrats.

House Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to keep his caucus home is a very poor strategy and he looks weak. Refusing to negotiate and swear-in Adelita Grijalva looks so bad on his part. Johnson has proven he has no idea how to govern. Even Majorie Taylor Greene, of all people, has called Johnson and John Thune out. The “clean CR” framing did not work for Republicans like they thought it would.

What do you think of the role of the Epstein files? Some Democrats are making the case that Johnson is keeping the government closed to protect Trump. How does that fit into your thinking?

I think it’s a legitimate talking point considering Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva is the 218th vote needed for the Epstein file petition to make it to the House floor. Sometimes 1 + 1 = 2, so why not use Mike Johnson’s weakness to create a Democratic advantage? This issue has been a major point of contention since right before the August recess.

Is it being done to protect Donald Trump? I doubt it. I think Mike Johnson is just scared of losing control of his conference and leadership. A vote on the files will be embarrassing for him. Trump has the Department of Justice to protect him, so he seems unbothered.

As you know, the mainstream news is coded in ways favorable to the Republicans. And yet the Democrats' messaging seems to be getting through to people. What's going on? How do you explain that?

Two things that are working:

One, Democrats are calling lies LIES! This is something they have never been good at because they like to play nice. But the gloves are off. Finally!

Two, the messaging is simple: healthcare costs will rise. In this economy, that message resonates and people will get premium increases in the mail soon enough. Democrats have truth on their side and are using it as leverage. Repetition matters and they are marching to the same beat. Unity is important.

How does this end? If Trump caves, what have the Democrats accomplished – protecting GOP voters from their choices?

I have no idea how this ends, but I have a few guesses. Marjorie Taylor Greene putting pressure on Mike Johnson is a significant development. Trump will never admit to caving and even if did, he is Trump.

Letting the credits expire would hurt Republicans, but do we want to dismantle the healthcare system to get a win? I am conflicted on this.

The most likely outcome is Democrats back off the immigration language changes and get an extension of Affordable Care Act premiums for one year. That would be a win for the American people. Trump can pretend to work on a new fabulous concept of a plan.

Eventually Republicans will need to negotiate or kill the filibuster to pass a continuing resolution. This is on them.

My theory is that the Democrats should reclaim law and order, and perhaps use the lessons of the shutdown as a foundation for that. This president is lawless. His party is lawless. You want to heal our divisions? Well, enforce the law! Thoughts?

My rebuttal to that is: Who is going to enforce the law? The DOJ? They are compromised. The judiciary branch for the most part is seemingly the only non-compromised check and balance we have left. While slow, the courts are holding up the law for the most part.

Congress cannot enforce the law. Its role is to legislate. So now we have to rely on states to sue and win in court to stop the lawlessness of the DOJ, the FBI and the White House. This is why democracy is dying. The legislative branch has mostly ceded its Article 1 power. We are in hell, as I like to say, and it will take the courts and the American people to save what little of our democracy is left.

'Terrorist wing': GOP links Democrats to antifa ahead of 'No Kings Day'

As the nationwide anti-authoritarian “No Kings Day” protests approach, Republicans are attempting to link “Antifa” — which President Donald Trump has claimed to have designated a “domestic terrorist organization” — to Democrats, and are even claiming there is a “terrorist wing” of the Democratic Party. The apparently coordinated messaging, likely an effort to shift the national conversation, comes amid mounting anger toward the GOP over the federal government shutdown.

“The theory we have right now,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told Fox News on Friday, “they have a hate-America rally that’s scheduled for October 18 on the National Mall. It’s the pro-Hamas wing and Antifa people, they’re all coming out. Some of the House Democrats are selling T-shirts for the event.”

Later, speaking at a press conference, Johnson doubled down, saying, “this hate-America rally that they have coming up for October 18th, the Antifa crowd, and the pro-Hamas crowd, and the Marxists, they’re all gonna gather on the mall.”

“It is an outrageous gathering for outrageous purposes,” he said, calling participants “an angry mob that’s a big chunk of their base.”

READ MORE: ‘I Know People. They Don’t Believe That’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Scorches Johnson

Antifa, as former FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress in 2020, is “not a group or an organization. It’s a movement or an ideology.” Antifa stands for “anti-fascist.”

Yet, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has gone even further, calling the entire Democratic Party a “domestic extremist organization.”

“There is a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country,” Miller also claimed last weekend. “It is well organized and funded. And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.”

U.S. Senator Roger Marshall (R-KS) on Friday told Newsmax, “October 18th is when the protest gets here, this will be a Soros paid for protest where his professional protestors show up, the agitators show up. We’ll have to get the National Guard out. Hopefully, it’ll be peaceful. I doubt it as well.”

Like Speaker Johnson, Marshall — without offering any proof — claimed that the “No Kings” protests are a prerequisite for Democrats to vote to end the federal government shutdown. He did not explain why the National Guard would be required to be deployed for First Amendment-protected speech events.

READ MORE: ‘Angry’ Johnson Lashes Out — Says Dems Need to Be ‘Physically Separated’ From Republicans

“So I think that they have to get that march done,” he said. “They have to show their protests. They have to fight like they’re saying here. This is all a political show. It’s all a political scam right now.”

House Republican Majority Whip Tom Emmer baselessly invoked the “terrorist” claim.

“This is about one thing and one thing alone — to score political points with the terrorist wing of their party, which is set to hold … a hate-America rally in D.C. next week.”

Responding to Emmer, U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) wrote: “The very people who were loudest in lecturing us on political rhetoric now label millions of Americans peacefully exercising their constitutional right to free speech ‘terrorist’ because they don’t hold conservative views. Disgraceful and unacceptable.”

Semafor’s David Weigel added: “Republicans getting very comfortable accusing nonviolent liberal groups of being ‘terrorist.'”

On Thursday, Patrick Jaicomo, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice wrote: “Less than a year in, and almost everybody is already a terrorist?”

He listed: Illegal Immigrants, Drug Dealers, Muslims, Democrats, Antifa, Palestinians, and Federal Judges.

Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh, responding to Emmer’s remarks, wrote: “Looks like everyone in my former political party has signed on to the Donald Trump/Stephen Miller game plan, which means calling Democrats ‘terrorists.’ Terrorists? Despicable. Shameful.”

“Very straightforward, they’re portraying all dissent as inherently illegitimate protest by terrorists and criminals,” observed Media Matters’ senior fellow Matthew Gertz. “What this means is that No Kings rally attendees need to triple down on being disciplined. They’re going to paint you as America-hating terrorists anyway, but don’t make it easy for them.”

“The plan seems very obvious,” Gertz added. “Find some violence anywhere near any of the No Kings protests and use it to go after the organizers and their funders.”

'Inconsistent with our core belief': This university is the first to reject Trump’s 'compact'

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology became the first school to publicly reject President Donald Trump's “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education," which offered "preferential access to federal funds in exchange for agreeing to a set of demands," reports NBC News.

In a letter written to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon and shared with members of the MIT community, the school's president Sally Kornbluth wrote, "In our view, America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence."

She continued, saying "In that free marketplace of ideas, the people of MIT gladly compete with the very best, without preferences. Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education."

Kornbluth argued that the "compact" would restrict the lauded institution’s freedom of expression and independence, saying "fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone."

Sent to nine universities — Vanderbilt University, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, the University of Arizona, Brown University and the University of Virginia — the compact asked them to agree to conditions including freezing tuition, barring transgender people from using restrooms or playing in sports that align with their gender identities and capping international undergraduate student enrollment.

Kornbluth, the first of the nine presidents to formally reject Trump's proposal , wrote, “We must hear facts and opinions we don’t like — and engage respectfully with those with whom we disagree."

'Angry' Johnson lashes out — says Dems need to be 'physically separated' from Republicans

Facing growing backlash from Democrats and even lawmakers from his own party — as well as GOP voters — for sending the House into recess during the shutdown, Speaker Mike Johnson is turning his anger toward Democrats and the broader left.

As Politico reported on Friday, Johnson is “dead set on keeping the House out of session as long as it takes to pressure Senate Democrats” on the shutdown, to pass the House’s continuing resolution to fund the government.

The Speaker suggested tensions are so high in the halls of Congress right now that he thinks Democrats need to be “physically separated” from Republicans.

“Emotions are high. People are upset — I’m upset,” Johnson said on Thursday. “Is it better for them, probably, to be physically separated right now? Yeah, it probably is, frankly.”

Johnson, who was set to host a now-postponed private Palm Beach, Florida “retreat” and fundraiser this weekend, went even further on Friday morning.

“We’re so angry about it,” he told Fox News. “I mean, I’m a very patient guy, but I have had it with these people,” the Speaker said, emphatically, of Democrats. “They’re playing games with real people’s lives.”

“The theory we have right now — they have a hate-America rally that’s scheduled for October 18 on the National Mall. It’s the pro-Hamas wing and Antifa people, they’re all coming out. 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 re-open the government until after that rally, ’cause they can’t face their rabid base,” Johnson said, adding that he is “beyond words.”

Johnson appeared to be referring to the “No Kings” rally, a protest against authoritarianism, which is not only being held in Washington, D.C. on October 18, but nationwide.

'I’ve never seen anything like this before': US-bound packages pile up amid tariff nightmare

NBC News reports President Donald Trump’s chaotic tariffs are pushing UPS to toss U.S.-bound packages with customs paperwork issues.

“Thousands of U.S.-bound packages shipped by UPS are trapped at hubs across the country, unable to clear the maze of new customs requirements imposed by the Trump administration,” NBC reports. “As packages flagged for customs issues pile up in UPS warehouses, the company told NBC News it has begun ‘disposing of’ some shipments.”

NBC News also reports frustrated UPS customers are claiming to wait for weeks while navigating UPS’ conflicted tracking updates.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Matthew Wasserbach, brokerage manager of Express Customs Clearance, which helps clients move shipments through customs. “It’s totally unprecedented.”

Wasserbach said his company has seen a spike in inquiries for help with UPS customs clearance as the UPS backlog grows.

Ashley Freberg told NBC she is missing several boxes of journals, records and books she shipped through UPS from England in September. The documents left their point of origin on Sept. 18, according to tracking documents she shared with NBC News. She has since received two separate notifications from UPS that her personal mementos had not cleared customs and as a result had been “disposed of” by UPS.

“It’s almost impossible to get through to anybody to figure out what is happening,” said Freberg. “Are my packages actually being destroyed or not?”

NBC reports Trump threw international shipping “into chaos” after he revoked the long-standing “de minimis” tariff exemption for low-value packages ended on Aug. 29.

“Packages with values of $800 or less, which were previously allowed to enter the United States duty-free, are now subject to a range of tariffs and fees,” NBC reports. “They include hundreds of country-specific rates, or President Donald Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs, as well as new levies on certain products and materials."

International shipping to the United States today is “far more complex and costly than it was even two months ago,” NBC said, catching private individuals and veteran exporters alike in a “customs conundrum.”

Commenters on X claim “non-commercial packages are being held,” as well as “commercial packages that recipients won't pay the tariff charges for.”

Other X users say the complicated system under Trump makes them leery of certain purchases: “Almost bought on an item on eBay for $75. Sports equipment. Noticed in the notes it was shipping from Japan and the buyer was responsible for all import duties, taxes, etc. Lol, nope. Not getting involved in that s—— show for something I really don’t even need,” one commenter said. “[I] would have definitely bought it in an alternate universe where the government understands economics.”

Red the full NBC News report at this link.

Trump is raging against the Nobel Peace Prize winner. His own secretary of state endorsed her

As MAGA raged over the fact that President Donald Trump was passed up for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, a letter from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other MAGA lawmakers showed they endorsed this year's winner for the Nobel in a letter written in 2024.

The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to María Corina Machado "for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy."

Reposting White House director of communications Steven Cheung's X complaint that "The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace," CNN's senior political reporter Aaron Blake pointed out on X that the winner has a tie to Rubio.

"The person who won the Nobel prize happens to align with a major and very current Trump administration initiative — dislodging [Venezuelan leader Nicolás] Maduro. But the White House is criticizing the choice as 'politics over peace,' because Trump didn't win," Blake wrote.

Blake posted a link to the letter sent to the Nobel committee and signed by a slew of Florida Republicans including then Senator Rubio, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), then Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL), who is now the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL), Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), and Rep. Neal Dunn (R-FL).

In it, they wrote that Machado, "has risked everything to rally the previously flagging spirits of the Venezuelan people. They have suffered 25 years of oppression, torture, murder, and economic deprivation at the hands of the Chavez-Maduro regime who has systematically undermined democratic institutions and perpetuated a regional crisis of monumental proportions. Machado stands as a beacon of hope and resilience."

The Florida Republicans concluded their letter, saying "We hope that the Nobel Committee will recognize María Corina Machado’s remarkable contributions and grant her the distinction she so rightly deserves."

But that letter wasn't all Rubio did to endorse Machado. In April, he wrote a glowing endorsement of her in Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2025 issue, calling her "The Venezeuelan Iron Lady," and saying, "she has never backed down from her mission of fighting for a free, fair, and democratic Venezuela."


Trump team resorts to usual playbook after AP photo reveals 'embarrassing' slip-up

After an AP photo of a note handed to President Donald Trump by Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the impending peace deal in Gaza went viral, Trump was mocked ruthlessly on social media, and in response to it, "the White House meme machine went into overdrive," reports The Daily Beast.

Resorting to its usual playbook, the Trump camp "celebrated a potentially historic Middle East peace deal — by trolling Joe Biden," The Daily Beast says.

The note Rubio handed Trump Wednesday in the Oval Office told him that a social media post had been written in his name so he could claim credit for the deal between Israel and Hamas.

First caught by AP’s chief photographer, Evan Vucci, it read, “We need you to approve a Truth Social post soon so you can announce deal first.”

Social media lit up immediately, with critics calling the president out for the awkward exchange.

"What a childish clowns. The note Marco Rubio handed to Trump was caught on camera and reads: 'We need you to approve a post on Truth Social soon, so you can announce the deal first.' Trump doesn’t write his own posts," wrote Mario Pawlowski on X.

Firing back on Thursday, the White House posted a picture of the moment on its official X account, alongside a photograph of then-President Joe Biden being handed a note during a 2021 meeting that read, “Sir, there is something on your chin.”

The snarky caption, writes The Daily Beast, read: “We are not the same.”

The post shows a picture of Biden in July 2021 reading a card an aide slipped him during a meeting on wildfires. Photographers captured the card’s text at the time, in an embarrassing moment that made headlines of its own.

Cracks start to show in the MAGA cult — even in Montana

Late-night comic Jimmy Kimmel could barely get the words out of his mouth when he had to say: “I agree with Marjorie Taylor Greene.”

It was his second time this month, he noted, and added “I need something to wash out my mouth.” But in truth, the issue at hand, which is access to health care, is no laughing matter.

Greene’s latest defection from the MAGA cult of loyalty for which she has been a leading figure popped up in an exclusive interview with CNN in which she didn’t beat around the bush concerning the effect of the House-passed budget bill that, due to not reauthorizing Affordable Care Act subsidies, has caused the shutdown of the federal government.

“Everybody is just getting destroyed” Greene told reporters. “This cliff is coming for millions and millions of Americans where their health insurance premiums are about to skyrocket. Republicans, you have no solutions. You haven’t come up with a new plan in place, and we’re not even talking about it, and it is hurting so many people.”

Greene’s concerns are at odds with the narrative the GOP is trying to spin on the shutdown — namely that it’s all the fault of Senate Democrats. Instead, Greene says the healthcare crisis now facing millions of Americans, including her kids and constituents, is a direct threat to Republicans in the polls and voting booths.

It’s worth noting Greene is also one of four Republican House members who signed the discharge petition to force the release of the Epstein files, telling The Hill: “I think when it comes to women being raped, especially when they were 14 years old, that’s pretty black and white.” Moreover, she said Speaker Johnson’s attempts to keep the House shut down was “wrong” and they should reconvene to take care of the vast spectrum of Congressional business.

For his part, Johnson doesn’t want to reconvene the House due to the recent election of a Democrat who, when sworn in, will provide the final signature to force Johnson to deal with the “Epstein bomb”.

What could this MAGA rebellion by Greene have to do with Montana? Well, it’s not so dissimilar from a group of nine Republicans who broke with their own leadership over any number of issues. Chief among them was health care, and support for a bill by fellow Republican Ed Buttrey to lift the pending expiration of Medicaid expansion for low income people that the Senate’s GOP President, Matt Regier, opposed.

Like Greene, Buttrey noted that healthcare was critical and Republicans had no other plan: “We have 10 years’ worth of data that shows that the program we designed is working and working well. There’s no need to change it, it’s a savings to our budget, it is providing help for people all across the state, it’s helping save our rural health care facilities. Why would you want to change that or come up with another plan?”

It’s fair to say the GOP tends to “keep its soldiers in line” when it comes to supporting or opposing leadership positions. Yet, just as Greene defied Johnson on Medicare funding and Trump on the Epstein files, Buttrey and his nine “rebels” defied their own leadership and governor to support Medicaid expansion.

None of this spells the end of MAGA, of course. But it shows that when it comes down to the critical issues that affect the citizens of our nation and state, party affiliation is not and should not be the determining factor — especially when it comes to taking care of each other.

'His own personal fiefdom': Trump slammed following 'Crooked Cops' report

The Not Above the Law Coalition on Thursday released a report documenting how President Donald Trump’s administration has been corrupting every aspect of federal law enforcement.

The report, titled Trump’s “Crooked Cops”: The Corruption of Federal Law Enforcement, said that the president has “gone to extreme lengths to appoint top officials with no compunction about abusing their power to pervert justice to punish political enemies and favor political friends,” before showing how these appointees have swiftly eliminated their agencies’ independence from White House political pressure.

“Law enforcement that serves the political interests of the president rather than the public eliminates a core tenet of democracy, namely that we are a country of laws, not of men,” the report emphasizes.

The report begins by recounting how Attorney General Pam Bondi followed direct orders from the president to file criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey, while at the same time noting that she has overseen “a department-wide purge of career officials who were assigned to Trump’s criminal cases or who were suspected to be insufficiently loyal to Trump personally.”

Other Trump officials who feature prominently in the report include FBI Director Kash Patel, who is facing a lawsuit from former agents who have alleged they were fired as part of a “campaign of retribution”; Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who conducted an interview with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, and then moved her “to more comfortable, low-security accommodations” after she told him that Trump had no involvement in her former partner Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal activities; and White House border czar Tom Homan, who was allegedly caught on video accepting a $50,000 cash bribe from undercover FBI agents.

The report also takes a swipe at Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, who publicly pressured ABC to take late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel off the air mere hours before the network decided to suspend him.

“This was by no means the first instance of Carr weaponizing his regulatory enforcement power for political ends,” the report says. “His threats have been all the more significant as many media companies have business interests pending before the administration.

During a conference call announcing the report, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) described the Trump administration’s actions as ”so distressing and so disturbing,“ and vowed that he was ”not going to stand by while the Department of Justice is used to subvert the rule of law.“

Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY), a former federal prosecutor, said on the call that it was ”personally devastating“ to watch the corruption of the Justice Department, and he vowed that House Democrats would be ready to go with oversight investigations should they return to the majority after the 2026 midterm elections.

”Trump is trying to turn this government into his own personal fiefdom,“ said Goldman, who later described the weaponization of the Department of Homeland Security as ”downright scary.“

”We’re losing the fabric of our country,“ he said.

'Nerve-racking': CEOs fear demise as they accuse Trump of launching 'global war on talent'

Flanked by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump hosted a White House dinner with some of the richest and most powerful leaders of the world’s tech giants.

To Fraser Patterson, CEO and founder of Skillit, an AI-powered construction hiring platform, it was no coincidence that after the meeting last month of more than 30 Silicon Valley power players and Trump advisers, the administration unveiled a plan to charge $100,000 one-time application fees for H-1B visas, which tech companies typically use to employ highly skilled foreign workers.

“It can appear as though, rather than it being an improvement to immigration policy, it feels a little more like a labor war strategy,” Patterson said.

“Isn't one of the great tenets of the American way of life and Constitution the separation of church and state? Wouldn't that extend to business, too, between business and state?”

Patterson’s New York-based company employs eight — an infinitesimal fraction of the workforce at giants like Amazon, with more than a million employees and nearly 15,000 H-1B visa holders.

“The largest technology companies are going to be able to hoard the best global talent, and I think it's easy to be able to draw a straight line between that and shutting out the smaller startups and the smaller firms that can’t enforce that price tag,” Patterson said.

“I think it scales back the competitiveness of the technology industry, broadly speaking.”

‘Global war on talent’

The Trump administration says the current H-1B visa program allows employers “to hire foreign workers at a significant discount to American workers,” and the program has been “abused.”

Last week Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) reintroduced bipartisan legislation, The H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act, to close loopholes in programs they say tech giants have used while laying off Americans.

But, Patterson said, limiting H-1B visas will effectively end up “closing the door on skilled workers” and “gift Europe the best possible opportunity to label itself as the tech talent hub.

“The general consensus is this is going to narrow the pool,” Patterson said.

“There's going to be just fewer nationalities represented, fewer ideas. The U.S. becomes less of a magnet.”

Rich Pleeth, CEO and founder of Finmile, an AI-powered logistics and delivery software, agreed that the fee might tilt the scales of tech dominance away from the U.S., where places like San Francisco and New York have long been considered global hubs for innovation.

“The global war on talent is real,” Pleeth said. “Europe has a golden opportunity … Canada, Singapore, Berlin, they're all going to benefit.”

Finmile employs 15 people in the U.K., seven in Romania and two in the U.S.

“It's very challenging for smaller companies like us,” Pleeth said.

“Talent is everything, and if the U.S. makes it harder to bring in the world's best talent, where do you set up headquarters?”

While the Trump administration says the new H1-B fee will help American workers, particularly recent college graduates seeking IT jobs, Patterson said it would have the opposite effect, likely leading to “greater offshoring.”

Thanks to Trump’s array of trade tariffs, which he says will bring jobs back to the U.S., many American small businesses are already struggling to survive as they face increased costs.

“In reality, it's probably going to lead to labor shortages,” Patterson said. “You can't just turn on a faucet overnight to really highly skilled local workers.”

Nicole Whitaker, an immigration attorney in Towson, Md., said the proposed $100,000 fee sends the message to foreign workers seeking job opportunities in the U.S. that "our doors are closed ... find another country."

"This is a part of a bigger and broader push by this administration — even if things don't go into effect— to make it look like we are shutting down our borders. We are not open, and we're not welcoming toward immigrants," Whitaker said.

‘The next Googles’

Pleeth, a former marketing manager at Google, pointed to tech leaders including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who were born in India but came to the U.S. for college and to work.

“If you suddenly make it hard for talented people to come in, the next Googles are not going to be built in the U.S.,” Pleeth said.

“Talent is the oxygen for the tech industry. For decades the U.S. had an open pipeline … we don't expect the $100K toll to hit the tech companies who are the ones who can afford it the most.”

Skillit currently does not have any employees sponsored through the H-1B visa program but Patterson said he had used it when the fees were more reasonable, around $2,500.

Patterson, who was born in Scotland, came to the U.S. on an O-1 visa for foreign workers of “extraordinary talent.” He is now close to becoming a U.S. citizen.

“Very onerous, nerve-racking, even to get here … but I would say it wasn't disproportional to the value of coming here,” he said.

Pleeth wants to move from the U.K. to the U.S. with his wife, two daughters and dog, a process he expects some challenges with but is hopeful will “eventually move forward.”

“It's just going to become a lot harder for junior people who can share cultures, can come in with new ideas,” Pleeth said.

“It's a talent tax.”

'MTG was right': More Republicans break party ranks

WASHINGTON — In the unusual world of Congress during a shutdown, far-right firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has emerged as an unlikely ally of Democrats, seeking to save millions of Americans from spiraling health care costs. And she's not the only Republican making such an admission.

The government shutdown comes as Republicans call for a "clean" continuing resolution that funds the government as it stands. However, at the end of 2025, the subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, will expire.

Democrats want a deal to continue the subsidies, but according to Punchbowl News founder Jake Sherman, "Republicans do not want to extend these Obamacare premium tax credits at all, period."

Democrats may agree with Greene that subsidies help fund costly healthcare premiums, but they aren't welcoming her with open arms quite yet, with Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) making a dig at her online, writing, "Even a broken clock is right twice a day."

"Nothing she does surprises me," Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) told Raw Story on Thursday. "For a change, she's using common sense."

Some Republicans, too, agree with Greene and the Democrats on extending the subsidies.

When speaking to Senate Republicans who remain on Capitol Hill during the shutdown, Raw Story found more strange bedfellows generated by increasing voter support for tax breaks on healthcare costs.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said that the Affordable Care Act is "important to a lot of us, not just to Democrats." She agreed that the subsidies should be extended, though she would like to see some reform. She didn't specify what.

"But the sooner we can get an appropriations bill through, the better off we're going to be," she said. "There are many discussions going on, and I have been in very close contact with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), who is very constructive and is trying to find a path forward.

Collins refused to answer about being in a coalition with Greene.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told Raw Story that he became the second Republican speaker of the North Carolina state House since the Civil War because he "was convinced" that former President Barack Obama "was going to make a bad healthcare decision."

Now, he appears to have evolved.

"We will be making a bad healthcare decision if we don't help — all we're really trying to do is reduce the waste and abuse," he told Raw Story, noting that it should be a tax cut that nixes high-income wage earners. "I do think there should be skin in the game for people that have means."

Ultimately, he confessed that "MTG is right" and noted that only "a handful of members" want to see the subsidies expire. That isn't what reporters are hearing on the House side, however.

One of those who opposes the subsidies is Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who told Raw Story that "Obamacare totally failed" and Republicans want to "fix it," but "the way to fix it is not to throw more money at it." He went on to call the subsidies "a massive fraud" that "won't fix the problem."

The Kaiser Family Foundation reported that in 2025, "18.7 million (77%) of the total 24.3 million ACA Marketplace enrollees live in states President Trump won in the 2024 election."

'Not someone worth looking up to': Psychologists fear Trump is normalizing 'bad behavior'

Psychologist Mary Trump, Donald Trump's niece and a vehement critic of the U.S. president, often describes her uncle as a "narcissist" whose poor mental health is reflected in his combative style of politics.

In an article published by HuffPost on October 9, journalist Jillian Wilson takes a look at what others in the mental health field have to say about Trump's volatile personality. And some of them argue that Trump's admirers view him as a blueprint and a green light for "bad behavior."

"Should President Donald Trump's campaign slogan be 'Make America Mean Again?' It turns out, maybe," Wilson explains. "Many people in the United States are only learning to get meaner as Trump continues to name-call, disparage, mock and intimidate his opposers. He regularly calls other political figures 'nasty' or 'low-IQ,' and has referred to the entire population of Democrats in this country as 'gnats.'"

Wilson adds, "He isn't afraid to insult and belittle citizens and politicians alike, which teaches people that treating others badly is actually acceptable, contradicting every 'treat others as you want to be treated' life lesson."

Kristen Gingrich, a clinic social worker in Maine, argues that President Trump is "not someone worth looking up to."

Gingrich told HuffPost, "I would not want my child looking up to someone who calls people 'crazy,' or makes fun of them, or any of that, because that's not the person that I want my child to be…. At the end of the day, at the core of it all, we are normalizing bullying…. We are normalizing that it’s OK that you are mean to the people you don't like or have different beliefs than you."

Similarly, Brittany Escuriex — a licensed psychologist and co-owner of Empowered Healing Dallas — told HuffPost, "For me, what's concerning is when it becomes commonplace for the president of the United States to insult, belittle, mock and threaten other people, it's not surprising that we're also going to see that behavior become more widespread."

Read the full HuffPost article at this link.

'Have to be prepared for anything':  Norway braces for Trump’s reaction to a Nobel snub

Hours before the official announcement of the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize — and smack in the middle of an alleged deal between Israel and Hamas — Norway is bracing itself for a potential President Donald Trump Nobel Peace Prize snub, the Guardian reports.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said they reached their peace prize decision on Thursday, and "observers believe it is highly unlikely that Trump will be awarded the prize, leading to fears in the country over how he will react to being overlooked so publicly," the Guardian says.

Oslo must be “prepared for anything," said Kirsti Bergstø, leader of Norway’s Socialist Left party.

“Donald Trump is taking the US in an extreme direction, attacking freedom of speech, having masked secret police kidnapping people in broad daylight and cracking down on institutions and the courts. When the president is this volatile and authoritarian, of course we have to be prepared for anything,” Bergstø told the Guardian.

Noting that the Norwegian government has nothing to do with the prizes, Bergstø said, “The Nobel Committee is an independent body and the Norwegian government has no involvement in determining the prizes. But I’m not sure Trump knows that. We have to be prepared for anything from him.”

Trump has relentlessly campaigned for the prize, insisting last year, "If I were named [former President Barack] Obama, I would have had the Nobel prize given to me in 10 seconds."

In July, Trump reportedly called Jens Stoltenberg, Norway’s finance minister and the former North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) secretary general, to ask about the prize. And at the United Nations last month, Trump claimed he's ended seven “unendable wars”, telling world leaders: “Everyone says I should get the Nobel peace prize.”

Norway's Green Party leader Arild Hermstad, disagrees, saying, "It’s good that Trump supported the recent ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. Any step toward ending the suffering in Gaza is welcome. But one late contribution does not erase years of enabling violence and division.”

Newspaper columnist and analyst Harald Stanghelle said that Trump retribution could come in many forms — tariffs, demands for higher NATO contributions, or even "declaring Norway an enemy."

Nobel snubbing Trump, Stanghelle says, could present "a challenging situation."

“It’s very very difficult to explain to Donald Trump or to many other countries in the world that it is a totally independent committee because they do not respect this kind of independence," he said.

But he still thinks Trump will be snubbed.

He said that if Trump were to win it, it would be the “biggest surprise in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize.”

Nina Græger, director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, agrees, saying, “Trump’s retreat from international institutions, and his wish to take over Greenland from The Kingdom of Denmark, a NATO ally, as well as infringements on basic democratic rights within his own country, do not align well with Nobel’s will.”

Ex-federal prosecutor details intense struggles within Trump’s DOJ

When U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi angrily lashed out at Democratic lawmakers during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, October 7 — even implying, without any evidence, that Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), might be part of the militant far-left Antifa movement — she made it clear that she remains fully devoted to President Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda.

Yet within DOJ, not everyone is obediently going out of their way to please Trump. Some DOJ prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia made it clear that they saw no merit in the federal indictment of former FBI Director James Coney — a case that is being prosecuted by Trump loyalist Lindsay Halligan because others in the Eastern District want nothing to do with it.

Kristy Parker, a former federal prosecutor who is now serving as counsel for the group Protect Democracy, discussed the conflicts within DOJ during an appearance on The New Republic's podcast "The Daily Blast" posted on October 9.

Parker told host Greg Sargent, "(Trump) threatens somebody on a nearly daily basis with some form of retribution for opposing him — whether it's a person, whether it's an organization, whether it's a powerful person, whether it is an undocumented immigrant. He does it all the time, to the point where people become used to hearing it. And I think what's really important to do is to take a step back and ground ourselves in the fact that this is the United States of America."

Parker continued, "We have a Constitution. We have a democratic form of government based on the rule of law. And central to all of that has always been that people have a right to criticize their government, have a right to criticize the policies of the president. And even government officials have a right to push back and resist certain policies within the legal system. And the manner for the president to respond to that is through the legal system — and not by extrajudicial threats to just summarily put people in jail."

When Sargent noted that Trump chose "handpicked stooge Lindsay Halligan" for the Eastern District of Virginia, she noted that "nothing about" the Comey indictment "has any appearance of anything other than corruption."

"I mean, all the reporting that we have gotten, assuming that it is true, is that career professionals and political appointees alike looked at the evidence in this case and concluded that it was not sufficient to meet DOJ standards for bringing an indictment," Parker told Sargent. "Trump then publicly forced out that U.S. attorney and then, whether it was meant to be public or not, in a statement on his social media account that was published to the entire country, he made it very clear to the attorney general, (Bondi), that he wanted Comey, (New York State Attorney General) Letitia James, and various other people prosecuted — that it needed to be done, that it needed to be done because he had been himself indicted by these people and that his credibility was being destroyed as a result of all of it."

Parker, however, said that resistance to Trump in the Eastern District of Virginia is a positive sign.

The former DOJ prosecutor told Sargent, "You know, I think we can take some heart. I frankly was someone who was very concerned about, you know, Mr. Trump's agenda with respect to the DOJ and his desire to use the levers of law enforcement to retaliate against people is so clear that I have been a little bit concerned that people willing to stay and work on cases that involve these individuals that Mr. Trump has targeted, you know, might result in some people being willing to carry his water."

Parker continued, "But I do think we can take heart that people are paying attention to the fact that they have to protect themselves. Like, they have to think about whether what they are doing is legal and whether or not it is ethical. And they have to be willing to sacrifice their own careers and possibly put their own liberty in future jeopardy if they’re going to go forward with cases for which they just can’t find the evidence to prove a charge."

Listen to the full New Republic podcast at this link or read the transcript here.

'Respectfully disagree': MAGA loyalist 'not a fan' of key Trump policy push

Trump loyalist Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) went on "Fox & Friends" Thursday where, according to Mediate, he "dumped on the Israel-Hamas deal being promoted by President Donald Trump."

The deal, which includes an agreement between both parties and includes the return of all Israeli hostages taken during the October 7 attack, was the product of "negotiating with terrorists," Van Orden told host Brian Kilmeade.

Kilmeade asked Van Orden about prominent Palestinian prisoner Marwan Barghouti, jailed in 2002 for planning attacks that killed five civilians during the Second Palestinian Intifada. CNN said Barghouti's release "could be a red line for Israel."

"The Israelis are reluctant to let him out. Do you have a sense of of what we should do or what they should do there?" Kilmeade asked.

Van Orden replied, "I think what the Israeli government needs to do is make sure that the members of Hamas adhere to these provisions. It’s pretty simple. So the amount of people that the Israelis are going to have to release to get their hostages back is just remarkable. And this is their decision–"

Kilmeade interjected with the number of prisoners expected to be released at "1,975, including 250 on death row," to which Van Orden balked.

"That’s correct. And Brian, honestly, I disagree with this strategy, but this is the Israeli government’s decision to get their people back. I am not a fan of negotiating with terrorists. These people are terrorists. That’s who they are yesterday. That’s who they are going to be today and tomorrow. So the Israeli government collectively has made a decision to give their people backing. I can respect that, but I respectfully disagree with it," he said.

VP 'waiting in the wings': Trump’s second check-up this year raises red flags about declining health

Just six months after having his annual physical at Walter Reed Medical Center, President Donald Trump is headed back to the hospital Friday for what the White House is calling a "routine yearly checkup," prompting critics to ask just how healthy he reall is Newsweek reports.

Trump, who went to Walter Reed for his physical on April 11, is the oldest sitting president in U.S. history at 79 years old. His upcoming visit there comes among public scrutiny of his health, ranging from questions about cognitive issues to bruising on his hands (the White House doctor has attributed the latter to deep vein thrombosis).

"But despite persistently questioning Biden’s physical and mental capacity, Trump has long kept basic details about his own health secret," Newsweek says.

Following his April physical, Trump's doctor said he “remains in excellent health, exhibiting robust cardiac, pulmonary, neurological, and general physical function” and that his “active lifestyle continues to contribute significantly to his well-being.”

A recent poll by YouGov showed 49 percent of Americans think Trump is too old to be president, 63 percent believe his health and age affect his ability to perform his job. Forty-nine percent believe he is suffering a cognitive decline.

Over 8,000 people signed a petition in July calling for Trump to release his full medical records, something he has yet to do.

Following White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt's announcement that Trump would be visiting troops and stopping by Walter Reed "for his routine yearly check up," social media sleuths raised red flags.

Journalist Prem Thakker wrote on X: “White House says Donald Trump will visit Walter Reed Medical Center on Friday. While there, he will ‘stop by for his routine yearly check up.’ But…Trump had his annual check up already. 5 months ago. On April 11.”

Cardiologist Dr. Jonathan Reiner wrote on X: “The White House announced that the president will go to Walter Reed on Fri for his ‘yearly check up’. It’s a bit early, as he’s not due for his annual exam until April.”

Liberal influencer Brian Krassenstein wrote on X: "BREAKING: Donald Trump Visiting Walter Reed Medical Center Tomorrow for what the WH says is "an annual checkup". Problem... He had his annual checkup on April 11th, less than 6 months ago. What is going on?"

Time wrote on X: "Trump to get second ‘yearly’ health screening in months"

Geoff Brown wrote on X: "Cankles is heading back to Walter Reed. JD and the tech bros are waiting in the wings."

Policy advisor Adam Cochran had the most questions, asking, "Why is the White House lying and when will the press push on it? They claim Trump is having his “annual checkup” at Walter Reed Friday. The problem is that he already had that back in April which they released results for. The annual checkup is a long set of tests and so takes significant time - what will Trump actually be doing at that time at Walter Reed? -Increasing droop face -increasing memory problems -randomly missing from camera for up to a week at a time And now: -lying about hospital visits. How the HELL isn’t the press pool pushing on these obvious lies?!"

'There’s something rotten there': 'Darker' more 'sinister' reason for Trump’s shutdown revealed

There's a simple reason President Donald Trump and the Republicans are keeping the government shut down, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) says: To block the release of the files of the late convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, reports The Daily Beast.

"This House is shut down because they don’t want to have the release of the Epstein files,” Khanna, who filed the discharge petition to release the files along with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), told The Daily Beast podcast host Joanna Coles.

“Every time [Republicans] take these extraordinary measures, like shutting down the Congress — not even having votes out of fear of releasing these files — it adds to the skepticism and anger of the American public who think that there’s something rotten there," he said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-LA) refusal to swear in Arizona Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat who pledged to cast the 218th vote needed on a discharge petition that would compel a floor vote on the release of the Epstein files, has also contributed to Khanna's theory.

Despite Johnson's claims that Grijalva's swearing-in delay is due to the House being in “pro forma” session amid the ongoing government shutdown, Democrats have pointed out that he swore in two Republican lawmakers during a pro forma session in April.

"Can you imagine this? I mean, people want to have a vote today, tomorrow to pay our troops during the shutdown. The speaker and Republican leadership were saying, no, we can’t have a vote,” Khanna, 49, said. “Why? Because Adelita Grijalva will be sworn in — 218th person — and they’re going to have a vote on the Epstein files.”

Khanna says that the “sense is that there are powerful people and powerful forces that don’t want these files out," adding that "The Epstein saga is exhibit one for a government that has been corrupted."

One of the four Republicans to sign the discharge petition, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), claims a White House aide told her that pushing for the further disclosure of Epstein files would be received as a “very hostile act.”

Khanna says the push to release the files is about “standing up for survivors and protecting children,” rather than a political ploy to attack Trump, The Daily Beast reports.

Trump, he says, “could have been seen as a hero” to survivors had he committed to releasing all of the files, which many MAGA figures had long advocated for.

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