Adam Lynch

Dispirited Trump knows Republicans are 'going to lose' in 2025: report

MAGA supporters and influencers may be hammering out optimism over 2025 elections, but President Donald Trump does not appear to be feeling it, reports the Washington Post.

“President Donald Trump has done little public campaigning in marquee races where Democrats are running heavily against him, keeping a distance from some Republican candidates and signaling some pessimism about next Tuesday’s elections,” said the Post.

In Virginia, Trump has tempered his enthusiasm for Republican Attorney General candidate Jason Miyares, who is viewed as the likeliest candidate on the GOP ticket to win. He’s also refused to officially endorse Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, that state’s nominee for governor.

Likewise, in New Jersey, Trump has “limited his engagement” on behalf of Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli,” to an endorsement and a video rally — despite MAGA influencers and cheerleaders inundating X with statements like: “This is how you win, meet Gov Jack Ciattarelli.”

Over in California, where Democrats are pressing a proposition vote to counter an extreme mid-decade Republican gerrymander in Texas, Trump has “mostly hung back,” having just this week preemptively tried to discredit the vote online without evidence. The Washington Post reports Trump’s people have worked with California allies to raise $25 million for voter turnout, but even Republican data suggests Californians are riled enough about the Texas gerrymander to pass Proposition 50.

This is not like Trump, who has “long shown an eagerness to put his stamp” on state elections. The Post reports that while he’s also fond of “jumping in at the last minute to claim credit,” a senior White House official tells the Post that Trump has no plans to rally voters in New Jersey or Virginia in the final days of the race.

“I don’t think he likes to back candidates he knows are going to lose,” said Chris Saxman, a former GOP state delegate in Virginia who ran Earle-Sears’s transition team after she was elected lieutenant governor in 2021.

Polls show Trump’s approval ratings have dropped since he took office in January, and some Trump allies are skeptical that the base that came out for him in November will be there Tuesday. Meanwhile, The Post reports Democrats are “betting that anger and disappointment over his second term will help turn around their party’s fortunes this November and beyond,” while Republican nominees’ ads are “far less likely to mention Trump as they fight for independent voters.”

Trump’s firing of federal workers hit especially hard In Virginia, and close to half of the Democratic ads in the gubernatorial race and 69 percent of Democratic ads in the attorney general’s race make a point to invoke Trump’s name, said the Post.

Trump may not be willing to endorse GOP candidate Winsome Earle-Sears because she is a likely loser, but Sears’ popularity could be taking a whack because she backs Trump policies, if ads for Sears’ Democratic opponent Abigail Spanberger are any indicator.

Read the Washington Post report at this link.

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Conservative magazine dismantles right-wing think tank's embrace of 'rank Jew hatred'

National Review Senior writer Noah Rothman blasted Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ embrace of MAGA influencer Tucker Carlson, and the alternative media host’s “friendly interview with avowed racist Nick Fuentes.”

After Carlson posted his interview with Fuentes Monday, conservatives urged the foundation to distance itself from Carlson due to Fuentes’s being the founder of a group of internet trolls that praise Hitler and white Christian nationalism.

But that’s not what Roberts did, said Rothman.

“My loyalty as a Christian and as an American is to Christ first and to America always,” Roberts said instead. “When it serves the United States to cooperate with Israel and other allies, we should do so with partnerships on security, intelligence, and technology. But when it doesn’t, conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington.”

Rothman called this a “strawman — and a familiar one, at that.”

“It gets a beating whenever rank Jew hatred encounters even the mildest dissent, allowing purveyors of the world’s oldest hate to retreat into a more defensible posture,” Rothman argued. “‘We were only critiquing the geopolitical entity of Israel, and your obsession with one of many nation-states marks YOU as the monomaniac here!’ The notion that those who object to anti-Jewish slurs insist upon ‘reflexive’ — read, thoughtless and tribalistic — support for the Israeli government’s every act is false.”

Additionally, said Rothman, Israel’s military policies did not inspire Roberts’s statement. It was “Carlson’s generous efforts to elevate the profile of an unapologetic racist and antisemite” that is the issue to which Roberts is responding.

Equally cowardly is Roberts’ attempt to “evade direct engagement with the subject he pretended to address” by swearing off “cancelling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians,” said Rothman.

“I disagree with, and even abhor, things that Nick Fuentes says. But cancelling him is not the answer either,” Roberts argued. “When we disagree with a person’s thoughts and opinions, we challenge those ideas in debate.”

Only there was no disagreement with Fuentes by Carson.

“This, too, is preposterous,” Rothman said. “… Carlson conspicuously declined to challenge Fuentes’s ideas on any substantive level,” as Carson has happily done for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

“As we wrote, amid the rise of right-wing antisemitism, it is ‘a time for choosing.’ This video suggests Roberts is making his choice,” said Rothman.

Read the National Review article at this link.

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Republicans asked where their 'backbone' is as they give more power to Trump

New York Times Editor Kathleen Kingsbury said a small minority of Republicans attempted to block President Donald Trump’s unilateral tariffs on Brazil (which are likely based on little more than that nation’s prosecution of Trump’s friend, Jair Bolsonaro, for attempting his own Jan. 6-style overthrow of Brazil’s democracy).

While the votes were not enough to successfully stymie Trump’s tariff — thanks to Republican leaders’ curtailing the power of that vote — Kingsbury said the move indicated the party’s first meager effort to control their party’s leader and his authoritarian-style push for more power.

Many Republicans oppose Trump’s brazen attempt to punish Brazil (and the price increase it forces upon American consumers for coffee, beef and bananas,) but they do so in silence, despite the law being on their side.

“The president doesn’t really have the power to declare tariffs. Trump made it happen by declaring a national emergency over the summer,” Kingsbury said.

“What do you think of when you think of an emergency? You think of a war, a tornado, a famine. You don’t think of trade policy,” argued Sen. Rand Paul, (R-Kent.), who was one of the voices voting to curtail Trump’s power grab.

But Kingsbury said what was remarkable about the Senate vote was how close it came to making a difference with its a razor thin 52-to-48 vote.

“That means five Republicans joined the Democrats to block Trump’s tariffs, which makes you wonder: If these Republicans can stand up to Trump’s tariffs, why aren’t they showing backbone on preventing millions of Americans from going hungry?” asked Kingsbury, referring to the threat of millions of Americans losing vital SNAP benefits and Trump’s health care budget threatening to spike healthcare costs for 20 million Americans by an average of 75 percent.

They could also stop the military from carrying out illegal international acts of blowing up Venezuelan boats and killing people without Congressional approval, said Kingbury, and they could use their power of oversight to prevent abuse by federal agencies as federal agents harass and descend upon Halloween parades in Chicago.

“The answer can only be that congressional Republicans are OK with such things, because they have the power to stop them and they just aren’t doing it,” said Kingsbury. “Remember, the founders gave Congress some of the most important powers of government, including the power of the purse, the power of war and the power to regulate foreign commerce. They wanted Congress to be the most dominant branch. Today, it’s the weakest.”

But it’s their choice, Kingbury argued, as a whole branch of government, under the thrall of one political party, surrenders its power.

“The fact that the Senate found enough of a spine to block Trump’s tariffs only shows how little they’ve done over the last nine months,” Kingsbury said. “It’s true that what we’re seeing from the executive branch can be shocking, but what we’re not seeing from Congress should be just as terrifying.”

Watch the New York Times presentation at this link.

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Supreme Court gave this 'dangerous tool' to a president bent on 'revenge': analysis

Former Acting Assistant AG Mary McCord and former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann said Chief Justice John Roberts appeared wary of a president being “free to prosecute his predecessors” when he helped extend absolute immunity to the president. But in the year since, rather than preventing the weaponization of prosecutions, “the court has unleashed it.”

“Trump’s direction of the prosecutions of his perceived enemies — notably James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, and Letitia James, the New York attorney general — has illustrated the folly of Chief Justice Roberts’s rationale,” they said. “Between the court’s dissolving potential liability for bogus fraud investigations and Mr. Trump’s neutering of executive branch rules governing the independence of the Justice Department, the court has seemingly left the president free to target anyone he wishes.”

During their tenure, McCord and Weissmann argue that “there were internal rules limiting the White House from communicating with department prosecutors about whom to investigate and prosecute criminally.” When Loretta Lynch, who was overseeing an investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email account and server, bumped into Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac in 2016, it caused an uproar among Republicans who now sit by as Trump openly calls for the prosecution of his perceived enemies and forces out his own appointed prosecutor “for standing in the way.”

“The Supreme Court’s immunity decision enabled [Trump’s] boldness on two fronts,” they said. “It perversely helped to legitimize the idea … that as president he can do pretty much anything he wants — even try to overturn the results of a free and fair election. It also signaled that the president need not fear criminal liability for charging a political enemy with a crime, even where the facts and law do not support it, in violation of that person’s constitutional rights.”

The Roberts court argued that “an astonishingly vast scope of immunity for all but purely unofficial acts” was necessary to avoid enfeebling presidents. But the court “brushed aside that for nearly all of our history, presidents have assumed themselves bound by criminal laws” and it gave “a dangerous tool to a president who clearly does not care about the evenhanded administration of justice.”

“By granting presidents absolute immunity to order the attorney general to do essentially anything, the court seemingly would permit Mr. Trump to go further than he has already, and command even a groundless case against former President Joe Biden — precisely the tit-for-tat factionalism that the majority decried,” they said. “Whatever the result in the Comey and James cases, the Supreme Court has ensured that Mr. Trump has no fear of being held accountable for dictating investigations and grand jury proceedings that carry an odor of retribution.”

Read the New York Times report at this link.

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'Stop reproducing': Republicans 'can’t seem to decide' how to treat hungry voters

With President Donald Trump proclaiming on Friday that “I do NOT want Americans to go hungry,” it appears that Trump’s Republican Party is indeed the party of the people.

But MSNBC producer Ja’han Jones said don’t be fooled. This is just one empathetic proclamation from one person at one particular moment. There’s still a whole party saying something else.

“Democrats have been in virtual lockstep in their support for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and the need to continue aid to its beneficiaries, which include millions of children and working-class Americans,” said Jones. “Republicans, on the other hand, can’t seem to decide whether their message should be that SNAP recipients are the [Democrats’] victims of a shutdown …, or that they are lazy grifters finally getting the harsh wakeup call they deserve.”

The Trump administration may post messages cooing over “mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us” falling victim to Democrats’ stubbornness, but the administration’s “performative compassion hasn’t been embraced across the Republican Party or among conservative influencers,” said Jones.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) ranted about “a lot of young men on SNAP that should be working,” despite data showing “39% of SNAP participants were children, 20% were elderly, and 10% were nonelderly individuals with a disability,” in 2023, and additional federal data confirming that millions of SNAP recipients are already working full time.

U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, (R-La.) posted on X that SNAP beneficiaries should have been stocking up for the shutdown in advance — so it’s on them.

“Any American who has been receiving $4,200 per year of free groceries and does NOT have at least 1 month of groceries stocked should never again receive SNAP, because wow, stop smoking crack,” Higgins said.

Jones said MAGA influencers are even more judgmental, with Trump ally Mike Davis, “who previously clerked for Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch and assisted Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh during their confirmation hearings” saying in a social media post that “it’s outrageous 40MM people get food stamps.”

“Get off your fat, ghetto a——,” wrote Davis. “Get a job. Stop reproducing. Change your s—— culture.”

Politifact debunked the argument, promoted by people like Davis, falsely claiming the bulk of SNAP benefits go to non-white people and immigrants, but that doesn’t stop MAGA types like Conservative podcaster Adam Carolla from blithely suggesting that “nobody could benefit from a nice fast more than the SNAP recipients.”

“While some conservatives want to use the potential of SNAP recipients going hungry as a cudgel to force Democrats to give up their demands and end the government shutdown, that messaging is being clouded by more vocal conservatives who seem perfectly fine with — if not giddy about — the suffering of SNAP recipients, said Jones.

Jones added that, so far, the public does not appear to be buying Trump’s sympathetic act over the braying of his fellow Republicans. Recent polling data shows that a plurality of the country blames Republicans, not Democrats, for the shutdown.

Read the MSNBC report at this link.

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'Art of the Deal' guy Trump suddenly can't make deals: NY Times

President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social Friday that he's asking "the Court to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP as soon as possible," after a federal judge ordered his administration to continue funding the program during the shutdown. But Trump already knows how to shuffle money, says the New York Times Editorial Board. He’s already been funneling it wherever he wants regardless of rules.

“President Trump has played fast and loose with federal law during the current government shutdown to fund the things he considers important,” the Board said. “He has found ways to pay military service members and F.B.I. agents. He has distributed tariff revenues to women with small children and arranged billions of dollars in financial support for Argentina. He has even ordered the Interior Department to keep federal lands open for hunting.”

But what Trump has refused to fund is as equally telling, said the Board.

“As the shutdown enters its second month, the president still will not agree to an extension of the federal tax credits that allow millions of Americans to afford health insurance,” said the Board. And up until Friday, the Trump administration declared it would stop distributing food stamps to more than 40 million lower-income families, declining to tap the program’s emergency reserve fund.

The government shutdown is causing Americans pain on many fronts, with more than a million federal workers going unpaid and the Small Business Administration not making loans. Additionally, regulators are not conducting many routine safety inspections of food processing plants.

Trump praises himself as the force behind the Art of the Deal, but the Board said Trump and his congressional allies “could end all of this by doing what they should have done months ago: making a deal.”

“Under current Senate rules, Republicans manifestly do not have enough votes to pass a funding bill on their own, and it is absurd that they continue to insist that Democrats should simply acquiesce. The hard work of governing in a democracy is hammering out a compromise.

Instead the Board said Trump has sought to heap pressure on Democrats to concede without compromise by suspending funding for projects in blue states, including the important Hudson River train tunnel between New Jersey and New York, and hie has targeted mass transit in Chicago for cuts and rescissions.

His most recent ploy to raise the stakes by suspending the distribution of food stamps “is unconscionable,” said the Board, however passionately he claims in his Truth Social post that “I do NOT want Americans to go hungry.”

“Republicans say their party has become the party of the American working class. But many working families rely on the tax credits to afford health insurance. And many of those same families rely on food stamps to put enough food on the table,” said the Board. “Mr. Trump can serve their needs by demonstrating his skills as a negotiator. It’s time to make a deal.”

Read the New York Times editorial at this link.

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'More bark than bite': Expert reveals how to dodge Trump DOJ's 'election observers'

On Tuesday, Slate writer Shirin Ali reports nearly half the country will head to the polls to cast ballots on a range of major questions and offices. However, “President Donald Trump just made a not-so-subtle power grab” to complicate that vote in some blue states.

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that federal monitors will be sent to California and New Jersey to ensure ‘ballot security,’ said Ali, adding that the move has “sparked fear on social media."

California, in particular, is set to vote on Proposition 50, which is Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) effort to hand control of the state’s congressional maps to Democratic lawmakers in response to Republican gerrymandering efforts in Texas and elsewhere. If the measure is successful, the state would likely get five additional congressional seats to counter Texas’ mid-decade gerrymander in an attempt to keep the U.S. House under Republican control.

Preeminent elections expert Rick Hasen assured Slate that Bondi’s observers “are more bark than bite, likely intended to 'trigger' Democrats during the lead-up to a critical vote.” However, this initial attempt to use federal officials to push unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud could lead to federal troops at polling places in the future.

“A few days after Bondi’s initial announcement, California countered with its own message to the Trump administration,” said Ali. “State Attorney General Rob Bonta announced that California would send its own state election watchers to watch Bondi’s watchers, while also calling out the Trump administration’s motives.

It’s a “nesting-doll” situation as watchers watch watchers, but Hasen said none of the election monitors will have much to do.

“I think there’ll be a lot of people standing around doing nothing,” he said, noting that of California’s 58 counties, only five are being targeted.

Thankfully, the same states that Bondi is careful to target have built-in freedoms that allow voters to duck her election monitors.

“This is not normal,” Hasen said, “I do think we have to take seriously the possibility that people are going to have to get around federal troops if they want to be able to vote, which would be a good reason to vote early and not have to deal with these things on Election Day.”

Read the Slate report at this link.

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Senate GOP leader slammed over 'performative outrage' after he blocked food stamp funding

Washington Monthly Editor Bill Scher recently deconstructed Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s (R-S.D.) explosion on the Senate floor last weekend as he labored to pin the shutdown of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food benefits on Democrats.

“SNAP recipients shouldn’t go without food. People should be getting paid in this country. And we’ve tried to do that thirteen times! You voted ‘no’ thirteen times!” Thune said. “This isn’t a political game. These are real people’s lives that we’re talking about!”

But it was all performance, according to Scher.

“Look, it’s fair to tag Democrats for being the instigators of the government shutdown, but not for President Donald Trump’s decisions that maximize the shutdown’s pain and hurt people who do not need to be hurt,” Scher wrote. “Before the shutdown began almost a month ago, the Department of Agriculture, led by Secretary Brooke Rollins, made clear that the delivery of SNAP … need not be impacted.”

The details of that reality were "available here at this URL until at least October 10, according to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine," said Scher. Additionally, Thune blocked legislation by Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) that would have funded SNAP benefits.

“But Trump’s USDA has memory-holed it,” Scher said, adding that when visitors now visit that URL, they get a Republican attack ad against Democrats that Scher said “almost surely” violates the Hatch Act: “Senate Democrats have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats. They can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive critical nutrition assistance.”

But the truth is that SNAP has never been disrupted during past shutdowns, either during Republican or Democratic administrations, said Scher. They’ve always been provided by officials using available funding sources to prevent a break in benefits.

“Democrats shoulder no responsibility for Trump and Rollins cutting off SNAP benefits from those who need them to survive,” said Scher. “You can’t even argue Democrats should have expected SNAP to be affected because USDA declared ahead of the shutdown that it wouldn’t.”

Furthermore, the number of SNAP beneficiaries tops 40 million, “more than a tenth of the U.S. population,” said Scher. So, at least until very recently, the program enjoyed bipartisan support.

“Thune can save his performative rage for the people playing political games with people’s lives: Donald Trump and Agriculture Secretary Rollins,” Scher said.

Read the Washington Monthly report at this link.

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Outrage as Trump demands Democrats fix a problem he and Republicans 'helped create'

MSNBC producer Steve Benen noticed President Donald Trump posting an exclamation point-laden demand on Truth Social for Democrats to “do something” about the state of U.S. healthcare.

“As I have said for years, [Obamacare is a disaster]! Rates are going through the roof for really bad healthcare!" Trump wrote.

"Do something Democrats!" he demanded.

“He managed to say quite a bit in three sentences, so let’s unpack this,” Benen wrote.

“First, [Trump] claimed that the Affordable Care Act is a ‘disaster.’ That’s plainly false: The ACA hasn’t just worked effectively for years, it also reached new levels of popularity with the American public over the summer,” Benen said, adding that support for Obama’s signature health reform law reached 66 percent in June, “making it more than 20 points more popular than the president who hates it, and raising the question of whether the president is just jealous.”

Second, Benen took issue with Trump’s complaint that coverage costs are “going through the roof for really bad healthcare.”

“The first part of this is true — consumers are facing sticker shock, though leading Republican officials have spent recent weeks suggesting this isn’t a big deal,” Benen said, referencing the frightening new prices for Obamacare health insurance plans after Republicans and Trump banned subsidies to keep the plans affordable.

“But the idea that the care itself is 'really bad' is baseless,” Benen argued. “People raise concerns all the time about costs and access, but there’s no evidence to suggest Americans are dissatisfied with the services provided by medical professionals themselves.

But at the center of Benen’s anger at Trump’s post was the president’s demand: “do something Democrats,” despite being out of power.

“Republicans control the White House, the Senate, the House, most of the nation’s gubernatorial offices, most of the nation’s state legislative chambers and the U.S. Supreme Court — but the president wants Democrats, who have minimal power and even less influence in the nation’s capital, to fix the health care problem that Trump and his GOP allies have helped create,” Benen said.

He added that Democrats are actually working to “do something” about the issue by refusing to sign onto a budget that blows up subsidized health insurance costs for millions of Americans.

“Democrats continue to show up for work on Capitol Hill, pleading with GOP officials to negotiate a bipartisan solution,” Benen said. “So it’s now up to Trump and his party to ‘do something.’”

Read the MSNBC report at this link.

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How close is Trump to full autocracy? New York Times examines 12 signs

Using case studies from dead democracies, the New York Times editorial board compiled a list of 12 markers of democratic erosion, with help from scholars who have studied the collapse of democracies. According to the board, under President Donald Trump the United States is staggeringly similar to such cases.

First, a modern authoritarian stifles dissent and speech. Like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Trump and his allies have pressured television stations to stop airing comedians who hurt his feelings. He has also revoked the visas of foreign students for sharing their views on the genocide in Gaza and ordered investigations of liberal nonprofit groups.

Second, autocrats use the power of law enforcement to investigate and imprison people who oppose them, similar to how Trump has ordered his Justice Department to target people who have made him angry with “dubious” accusations, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and former F.B.I. Director James Comey. And Trump has also ordered investigations of Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), among others.

Third, a modern autocrat finds ways to neuter their nation’s legislature, similar to the way Trump commands a legion of lockstep allies in the modern Republican Party, who rubber stamp his every decision.

Number 4, according to the Times, is an autocrat’s need to use the military to control opposition in dissent. Trump deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles, over the outcry of local leaders, and he has made similar attempts in Portland, Ore. and Chicago.

Likewise, the Editorial Board draws similarities to Trump’s defiance of national courts and his penchant for declaring national emergencies to a push his agenda. Like despots elsewhere, Trump has “vilified transgender Americans and barred them from military service,” said the Board. “He has fired women and people of color from leadership posts and ended programs that promote workplace diversity.”

He has also labored to erase Black history by removing books on slavery and segregation from military libraries and pressuring Smithsonian museums to minimize those subjects.

“At the same time, he has suggested that white people and Christians are victims, which echoes the autocratic habit of claiming that majority groups are in fact oppressed,” said the Board.

Also, like a despot, Trump rails against accurate information to guide decision-making, and he works to suppress inconvenient truths. He has already fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for truthfully reporting disappointing job growth, and he has shut down federal data collection efforts related to climate change.

Throw that in with No. 9: An authoritarian’s predictable effort to take over universities and suppress dissident scholars, which Trump has also begun to do by cutting millions of dollars in school grants and attempting to dictate hiring methods and school policies.

Nos. 10, 11, and 12 involve an authoritarian’s cult of personality; his effort to use government levers to personally enrich himself and his family; and his unending crusade to manipulate law to stay in power.

“Authoritarians change election rules to help their party, and they rewrite laws — or violate their spirit — to ignore term limits,” writes the Board, and although Trump’s biggest attempt to follow this playbook failed when he was “unable to undo his election defeat” in 2020, the Board says “he has shown worrisome signs of using his power to entrench the Republican Party’s hold on the government” through gerrymandering extremes and an executive order to interfere with state elections.

“These moves increase the chances that Republicans will keep control of Congress even if most voters want to oust them,” the Board writes, creating a one-party government similar to the single-party misery of the U.S.S.R, which eventually led to Putin.

“The clearest sign that a democracy has died is that a leader and his party make it impossible for their opponents to win an election and hold power. Once that stage is reached, however, the change is extremely difficult to reverse,” the Board said.

Read the New York Times report at this link.

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George Will warns Supreme Court not to fall for Trump’s 'doomsaying' — and claw back its power

Washington Post columnist and Never Trump conservatives George Will warns the Supreme Court that if it wants to leap headlong into irrelevance and undermine the Constitution, it should give President Donald Trump unfettered power to unilaterally impose taxes through tariffs.

Trump’s tariffs will be facing Supreme Court scrutiny in oral arguments next week as Trump seeks to use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs on U.S. consumers. But justices have already written that emergency powers can too easily be abused as presidents “tend to kindle emergencies” to more frequently use them.

Legal scholars and former government officials also argue that Congress never intended the IEEPA as a “backdoor” for turning the taxing power into “an executive instrument” that allows presidents to restructure the economy, said Will. A New York University School of Law brief argues that presidents must cite specific congressional language to use the IEEPA, and Cato Institute researchers refute Trump’s “extralegal doomsaying” of what will happen to the U.S. economy if his power is revoked — “perhaps to compensate for the weakness of its legal arguments,” according to Will.

Trump’s team is making some blustery arguments, to be sure, said Will. The administration says tariffs imposed under the IEEPA are indispensable for negotiating agreements with trading partners. But since the IEEPA’s 1977 enactment, 14 regional and bilateral agreements have been reached, without any IEEPA tariffs. And IEEPA tariffs were involved in none of the 538 treaties and thousands of other international agreements negotiated since 1977, said Will.

Also, total customs duties collected from May through September were just 6.4 percent of government revenue, despite Trump’s argument for their necessity.

“And if repeated in court, the president’s claim that America was a ‘dead country’ until his tariffs arrived eight months ago might cause the justices’ decorum to give way to more hilarity,” Will said.

But, additionally, how the court decides this case “will diminish either presidential power or the court’s stature,” Will warned.

“The court might flinch from impeding an elected executive’s core agenda. (It flinched regarding Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.) The court prudently husbands its perishable prestige, which undergirds its power,” Will said. “If, however, the court protects itself by protecting this president’s unexampled claim to uncircumscribed discretion, this question will linger: For what more momentous controversy might the court be hoarding the prestige that enables it to do its duty to police the excesses of the political branches?”

Read the Washington Post report at this link.

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Conservative warns Republicans: Trump’s 'own voters are literally going to go hungry'

Former Jeb Bush communication director Tim Miller said President Donald Trump’s willingness to starve families to force Democrats to approve a controversial budget will come back to haunt Trump and Republicans in the next few weeks.

Lawmakers say the SNAP benefits Trump is refusing to fund during the shutdown have already been paid for by taxpayers and that contingency language is in place to ensure payouts continue even in the event of a government shutdown. But the Trump administration deleted that language from the federal website.

Now, Miller says even red state governors with a hint of foresight are wringing their hands.

“Even red states like Louisiana are acting on this in large part because a lot of the people that receive SNAP assistance are Republicans, particularly in a state like Louisiana, because our economy sucks so bad. So, you know, this is just a real bind that Trump is putting Republican governors in,” Miller said. “And, more importantly, it's a bind that he's voluntarily putting Americans in, including a lot of people that vote for him, who need this assistance in order to have the groceries and the food that they and their families need, that their kids need.”

“They're f—— over a lot of kids,” Miller added. “[Sen.] John Thune is in South Dakota where it's like 70 percent of SNAP … money is going to families with kids. What do they do? It is an unbelievable stupid political policy. It is an unbelievably heartless policy. And it's all on Trump and the Trump administration.”

Miller said the administration has “made a decision on their own that they're OK with people not having food,” despite claiming to work for low-income voters.

“[There’s] this contradiction of MAGA-Trumpism, where Trump has done better with and worked for the votes of lower-income, working-class folks of all races, but particularly working-class whites in red states in America. … but the policies are harmful to them. The expiration of SNAP … is the most acute example of this,” Miller said. “If the party had fully switched to being a multiracial, multi-ethnic working-class party like they pay lip service to, this would be an emergency right now. They'd be like, ‘our own voters are literally going to go hungry. Beginning this weekend, we need to service them.’ And meanwhile, Donald Trump's in China, or in Korea, getting a Burger King Happy Meal crown from the head of South Korea, and Congress isn't even in session.”

But “this stuff is absolutely going to come to a head,” Miller said, predicting something would happen “sometime within the next week.”

Read and watch Miller’ report at this link.

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Conservative bashes Trump for conducting policy based on 'personal whims and preferences'

Traditional conservative and political columnist Max Boot recently railed against President Donald Trump's degeneration of complex U.S. foreign policy into his own erratic impulses.

Speaking on the “Politics War Room” podcast hosted by Democratic strategist James Carville, Boot pointed out that the U.S. spent decades building a multifaceted back-and-forth of sensitive foreign policy directives that served the nation well. That is, until Trump came along and the Republican Party handed him the sole reins as international arbiter.

“This is not the foreign policy of the United States. This is the personal whims and preferences of President Trump,” said Boot, a frequent Trump critic. “He basically rewards allies and punishes critics. You see him imposing these massive 50% tariffs on Brazil to punish Brazil for putting his buddy, former president Bolsinaro on trial for carrying out Brazil’s version of Jan. 6 [attacks] while rewarding Argentina, which has a MAGA friendly president, with a bailout of $40 billion.”

“It’s striking that while Trump is cutting off U.S. foreign aid — and a lot of people are going to die as a result — all of the sudden we have $40 billion just sitting around to bail out Argentina for the financial mess they’ve made of their own country,” Boot added. “When you lay it out like that, it’s hard to add it up logically from a policy standpoint.”

“Really this is the whims of President Trump because there’s nobody in the administration or outside of it who can contradict him, so he gets to do what he wants, even if that doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Boot went on to hammer Trump’s unilateral tariff with U.S. trade allies, and he called out Trump for overreacting to an ad produced by the Canadian territory of Ontario, pitting Trump against the more free-trade-oriented policies of former President Ronald Reagan — a longtime Republican icon.

“Donald Trump doesn’t want to hear [Canada’s argument on tariffs] because he has a big portrait of Ronald Reagan in his office. He doesn’t want to hear that his policies on trade are diametrically opposed to the Gipper’s, but that is the truth,” Boot said. “The Reagan Foundation somehow claimed this was misleading, but it wasn’t misleading, and then Trump used this as an excuse to add more tariffs on Canada.”

“It doesn’t make any sense but Reagan was right on tariffs and Trump is wrong,” Boot said.

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Ex-USDA official warns farmers the GOP 'will do nothing' about Trump's 'colossal blunder'

A Kansas farmer recently told reporters: "Nothing … is going to make money” this year in President Donald Trump’s economy. Former USDA official and ex-U.S Trade Representative Greg Frazier warned him to get used to that.

“If he wants to come out ahead this year, this eastern Kansas farmer should bet Republicans in the congressional delegation won’t help,” Frazier told the Kansas City Star. “If past performance indicates future results, it’s a sure thing.”

“As markets shriveled this year, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) claimed Trump gave ‘Kansas farmers and ranchers access to critically important export markets,’” according to Frazier. This fits what Marshall said during Trump’s first trade war with China years ago when he tried to claim Trump’s “policies are working.”

But they were a catastrophe, said Frazier. Kansas farmers lost $1 billion in exports. Farm bankruptcies doubled and they triggered bailouts that cost billions.

“Today’s farm trade collapse results from one of the most predictable policy failures in recent memory, a step-by-step replay of arbitrary … tariffs suffocating farm exports,” said Frazier, adding that “it’s inexplicable that those lessons are not being heeded by the president and the U.S. trade representative and the U.S. Department of Agriculture secretary — both of whom personally witnessed the destruction in Trump’s first term.

“The victims of this colossal blunder are relearning a painful lesson. Their lawmakers will do nothing,” Frazier said. “They support the tariffs. In March, Kansas Reps. Ron Estes, Tracey Mann and Derek Schmidt voted in favor of them, twice. It was a legislative sleight of hand, one sentence tucked into a procedural motion that stops the House from even considering legislation to repeal the tariffs. They did it again Sept. 16.”

In April, and again this week, Frazier said Sens. Marshall and Jerry Moran “could have repealed the tariffs,” but, they voted to keep them.

“Signals of an emerging crisis appeared almost immediately after the president’s April 2 tariff announcement. It was projected in the export outlook planned for release May 29. But USDA leaders spiked the report, then excised the expert-generated analysis,” said Frazier, who served as Chief of Staff for the USDA under Bill Clinton.

Meanwhile, Sens. Marshall and Mann tout trade announcements like Trump’s so-called move into the Australian beef market — which was already open to the U.S., and with U.S. beef processors lucky to move “$1-2 million worth of beef annually into Australia, compared to the $4 billion worth of beef Australia sent to the U.S. last year.”

And while Trump’s USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins “was boosting these phantom deals,” behind the scenes Frazier said Agriculture Department officials were “putting pencil to paper developing the completely predictable bailout from tariff carnage.”

The USDA paid U.S. farmers $28 billion during Trump’s first term trade war with China. Congress appropriated $10 billion in December for more emergency payments and Trump’s budget bill included $60 billion in new farm subsidies.

But the cost to repeal the tariffs: Zero dollars, said Frazier.

Read Frazier's Kansas City Star column at this link.

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White House points finger as Trump sets 'huge new precedent' that could come back to haunt GOP

Punchbowl News senior Congressional Reporter Andrew Desiderio reports some Republicans are pushing back against a move by President Donald Trump's administration to exclude Democrats from important military decisions.

The administration did not invite Democrats to a “boat strikes briefing” pertaining to a rash of Congressionally unauthorized bombings against Venezuelan outboard motor boats, which the Trump administration claims are transporting illegal drugs to the U.S.

“The 'boat strikes briefing' that [U.S. Sen. Mike] Warner (D-Va.) and top [Democrats] weren’t invited to was organized for GOP senators who were on the fence about the war powers resolution,” reported Desiderio on X. The meeting included U.S. Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) and Sen. Mike Lee R-Utah, who Desiderio said sought more info on the legal justification of the strikes as well as briefings from the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel.

NBC News Capitol Hill Correspondent Melanie Zanona posted on X that U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who was at the GOP-only briefing, told NBC News that he personally told “the Trump administration that those type of briefings should be bipartisan, and he called it ‘unfortunate’ that Dems weren’t there.”

Rounds added that the meeting was “initially just a smaller briefing that had been specifically requested by a select few members, who were not on the committee — and when other Republicans heard about the briefing, they decided to join.”

But other critics complained of exclusion, no matter how innocuously Trump administrators arranged it.

“Huge new precedent set here — future Dem admins will now be able to freeze out GOP members from classified briefings,” warned Huffpost Senior Political Reporter Igor Bobic on X.

Desiderio added in a followup post on X that the White House "is blaming GOP Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) for this because he provided the list of other Republican senators who were on the fence about the war powers resolution." Desiderio added further that the list was actually expanded beyond what Young sent, to include Intel Chair Cotton (R-Ark.) and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) and others.

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Trump officials move to military base housing designated for top uniformed officers

Stephen Miller, the architect behind President Donald Trump’s notorious immigration crackdown and the administration’s targeting of non-white people for arrest and deportation, is joining a growing list of senior Trump appointees shielded in military housing.

The Atlantic reports Miller, his wife Katie Miller, and their children fled to military housing after suffering protests and catcalls from voices in their affluent Washington, D.C. neighborhood and now benefit from U.S. military protection in addition to their personal security.

“Miller … who is known for his inflammatory political rhetoric, singled out the tactics that had victimized his family — what he called ‘organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting peoples’ addresses,’” reports the Nation.

Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem also moved out of her D.C. apartment building and into a home designated for the Coast Guard commandant on Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling after the Daily Mail described where she lived. And both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth live on “Generals’ Row” at Fort McNair, an Army enclave along the Anacostia River, according to officials from the State and Defense Departments.

Another anonymous senior White House official moved to a military community after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, according to Nation writer Michael Scherer. However, so many Trump officials have made the move that they are now straining the availability of housing for the nation’s top uniformed officers.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s request to move to McNair didn’t initially work out “for space reasons,” according to officials.

There is no record of this many political appointees living on military installations, and critics tell the Nation that it appears to be “blurring … traditional boundaries between the civilian and military worlds” as Trump makes “the military a far more visible element of domestic politics, deploying National Guard forces to Washington, Los Angeles, and other cities run by Democrats.”

John Hopkins University international studies associate professor Adria Lawrence told the Nation that housing political advisers on bases sends a message that one particular political party owns the military.

“In a robust democracy, what you want is the military to be for the defense of the country as a whole and not just one party,” Lawrence said.

University of Chicago political-science professor Robert Pape told the Nation that the threat of political violence “is real for figures in both major parties,” but noted that Trump has deliberately revoked the security details for several of his critics and adversaries, including former Vice President Kamala Harris and former national security adviser John Bolton — despite Bolton having been the target of an Iranian assassination plot.

Additionally, the isolation of sequestering yourself on a military base creates deep divisions between Trump’s advisers and the metropolitan area they govern.

“Trump-administration officials, who regularly mock the nation’s capital as a crime-ridden hellscape, now find themselves in a protected bubble, even farther removed from the city’s daily rhythms,” the Nation reports. “And they are even less likely to encounter a diverse mix of voters.”

Read the Nation report at this link.

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Ex-Trump official says ballroom a 'let them eat cake' moment as holidays near

Former Trump Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin warned the timing of President Donald Trump’s lavish ballroom could not have been worse with his government shutdown threatening employees’ food and rent this holiday season.

An ABC News and Washington Post survey revealed this morning that 56 percent of respondents opposed Trump’s destruction of the East Wing in the White House while 45 percent said they “strongly oppose” it.

“The results,” said CNN anchor John Berman, “were pretty glaring.”

“It's going to be leading in the midterms,” Griffin told Berman. “I was skeptical that this would stick because nothing really sticks in the era of Trump, but I think it was two things: It was the optics. It was the Donald Trump said that the East Wing would not be touched. And then we see it being bulldozed in a matter of days.”

“But then there’s the timing,” said Griffen. “We're in a government shutdown right now. You've got federal workers being laid off, you've got unemployment that's too high, you've got inflation ticking up to the point where the fed just gave us another rate cut. It is a moment that feels like ‘let them eat cake.’ He's getting a ballroom and Americans are struggling to make ends meet ahead of the holidays. The timing couldn't have been worse.”

Griffin said she was working for Vice President Mike Pence in the White House during the 2018 shutdown and reported a “sense of urgency in the West Wing” that does not appear to be there this time.

“We have to cut a deal, [they said.] We've got to be talking to Republicans in Congress. We've even got to talk to Democrats. You don't get that sense of urgency [now. The president's been abroad twice now. The vice president's been abroad. They are business as usual,” she said.

She added that she suspected the issue of evaporating SNAP benefits will put “a fire under everyone in D.C.”

“You just owe it to the public again ahead of the holidays. People who are relying on this to meet their basic food needs,” Griffin said.

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'Vitriolic online reaction' runs White House demolition contractors off the internet

CBS News reports some contractors are learning the downside of working for President Donald Trump.

Firms connected to Trump’s demolition of an iconic East Wing of the White House appear to be trying to lower their profiles on social media amid “vitriolic online reaction” from critics.

“EAI Rolloff, a Maryland-based hauling company, has advised visitors to its homepage that the site is ‘Undergoing Routine Maintenance.’ There are no links or contact information listed,” reports CBS News.

An archived version of the company’s site preceding the East Wing demolition and construction of the 90,000-square-foot ballroom carried customer reviews and site pages for learning the company's services, its history and its contact information for billing and services.

CBS News reports the company’s site claimed to be "honest, ethical, responsive, professional and diligent," before it stopped proclaiming anything at all.

The website of another demolition-based company involved in the tear down of a beloved Washington, D.C. architectural icon also went dark, according to CBS. Maryland-based ACECO's website is also unavailable.

"This Site Is Under Construction," it claims in bold lettering, but as recently as August, CBS reports ACECO's site “showed off the firm's work at the University of Maryland and heralded its clients, which included Clark Construction, the construction contractor hired to build the White House ballroom.”

Social media profiles for the company and its leadership were peppered with critics trashing its ratings on YELP. One heckler posted: "How do you sleep at night when all of America hates you?"

These two are not the end of the list, said CBS News.

“When President Trump announced the project this summer, he named McCrery Architects as the lead design firm. As recently as April, McCrery's site was robust, displaying the firm's prior design projects, its approach to architecture and staff biographies, according to an archived version of the page maintained by the Internet Archive,” said CBS News. “Now, McCrery's website is limited to a single page with a rotating photo, generic email address and phone number. Renderings of the White House ballroom are included in the photo carousel.”

When CBS News called the number still listed on the company’s site the phone rang without answer and then presented a voicemail that was full and inoperable.

Read the CBS report at this link.

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'Group of Republican senators' corners USDA chief over growing frustration with Trump policy

A combination of farm-state Republicans are beginning to break with Trump over his very un-“America First” generosity to a foreign nation and the threat it poses to American producers.

“GOP lawmakers in cattle-producing states unleashed a flurry of calls over the following days to the White House and Agriculture Department,” reports Politico. “A small group of Republican senators, including retiring Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, cornered USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins in a private meeting.

According to a letter sent to Rollins and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, U.S. Reps. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), Adrian Smith (R-Neb.), Greg Steube (R-Fla.) and 11 other House Republicans are warning Trump against moving forward with an import plan for Argentina beef after that nation’s Trump-like leader, President Javier Milei, won re-election. Trump officials claim the plan will lower steak and hamburger prices for American consumers, but growing Republican critics say it will also undercut U.S. producers’ sale prices at the market.

“We believe strongly that the path to lower prices and stronger competition lies in continued investment at home … rather than policies that advantage foreign competitors,” they wrote.

Politico reports frustrations are also roiling the Senate floor this week with a series of votes to undo some of Trump’s global tariffs. Five GOP senators recently joined Democrats to reverse 50 percent tariffs on Brazil and four Republicans voted Wednesday to cancel tariffs on Canada. House Republican leadership has preempted any challenges to Trump tariffs until February, but the votes were intended to send a message.

“Brazil had a trade surplus and the impetus behind it appears to be a disagreement with a judicial proceeding,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told Politico, referring to Trump’s ire at Brazil’s prosecution of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for his Trumplike attempt to undermine that nation’s elections. “I just don’t think that’s a strong basis for using the trade lever.”

“We want a level playing field. We want better terms for our exporters,” said Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who told Politico that he continues to be willing to give Trump “time” to strike badly needed trade deals.

Trump, however, appears confident in his unyielding control of wealthy farm country agribusinesses and small white farmers who voted for Trump in the last election despite catching the brunt of his soybean tariff war in his first term. Despite rising grumbles, Politico reports many Republican leaders are still afraid to counter Trump on the record.

“There was almost universal concern,” one GOP senator said only after being granted anonymity.

Read the Politico report at this link.

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'Insulting': Retired 3-star general says this Trump policy crosses 'constitutional line'

Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling (Ret.) tells the Bulwark he would not sign Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s demand that military serving in President Donald Trump’s violent campaign against so-called “narcoterrorists" sign non-disclosure agreements.

“Soldiers don’t serve individuals; they serve the Constitution,” Hertling said. “They don’t conceal truth from oversight; they protect truth from exploitation. There’s a difference between secrecy that saves lives and secrecy that is based on misplaced loyalty. Our system is designed to tell those apart.”

Hertling said he knows “why businesses need NDAs,” but argues NDAs “have no place in our government.”

“They belong in corporate boardrooms, not command tents. They substitute legal fear for professional trust, and in doing so they erode the very foundation on which military leadership stands.”

Senior military officers, he said, “have a statutory obligation, when requested, to appear before Congress and report honestly on the state of their forces and their missions.” Congressional oversight of the military isn’t optional, he argued. It is one of the pillars of civilian control.

“When generals testify before Congress, they do so under oath, not as political appointees defending an administration but as professionals describing the security of the country as they see it,” said Hertling, adding that he “watched that obligation tested in 2003,” when Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki testified before Congress with honest information that contradicted then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s claim of what it would take to stabilize Iraq following the U.S. invasion.

“Shinseki was publicly rebuked and then quietly sidelined. Yet history proved him right. His testimony remains a defining example of professional integrity: a senior officer fulfilling his duty to speak truth to power, even when it carried personal cost. That is what the system demands, and what democracy depends upon,” said Hertling. “If an NDA were to restrict that obligation — to limit what a commander can say to Congress or to the American people about operations, readiness, or the use of force — it would cross a constitutional line. It would turn a protective instrument into a political one. The goal of secrecy is to protect the nation, not to protect leaders from scrutiny.”

Beyond the problems of a politicized military, the NDA itself is “counterproductive and insulting,” said Hertling, and signals mistrust in a system that “already functions with rigor, gravity, and extreme disciplinary action if violated.”

It’s not supposed to be about secrecy, in the first place, said Hertling. It’s about trust in the laws that already govern classified information, as well as trust in the officers and NCOs who have spent their careers safeguarding it and trust in the system of checks and balances that keeps our military strong, apolitical, and accountable.

“That’s why, if asked to sign such an NDA, I’d respectfully decline. Because the duty of a commander or any military officer isn’t to protect a narrative — it’s to protect the truth, the troops, and the Constitution they serve,” said Hertling.

Read the Bulwark report at this link.

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'Something is rotten': Analyst calls for greater scrutiny of Trump's 'soupy brain'

Writer Rafi Schwartz is puzzled how President Donald Trump’s apparent mental deterioration isn’t ringing alarms and scaring people.

“Are we just going to sit around and pretend that the president isn’t having a lot of … questionable moments these days?” Schwartz told the Nation. “I’m saying that something is rotten in the fizzling neurons and squelching gray matter sluicing around Trump’s skull — you know, the stuff that is supposed to interpret the world around him, differentiating reality from whatever phantoms must haunt septuagenarian billionaires with lifelong daddy issues.”

But questions about the president’s mental state are largely absent from the public discourse during his second term. Schwartz argued that Trump is an increasingly senile president working to “consolidate fascistic power in the hands of an imperial executive branch.”

Trump recently let slip that he’d been given an MRI during his last doctor’s checkup without explaining why he’d been ordered to take the test to begin with.

“And … shortly after this admission, Trump was filmed meandering aimlessly beside an uncomfortable-looking Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s new prime minister, as if in search of an aide to place a ‘Caution: Wet Floor’ sign under the soupy brain dripping from his ears,” said Schwartz.

Trump’s first term contained plenty of “incoherent gibberish,” but Schwartz warns there’s been a big change in both the frequency of those upsetting moments and the relative “lack of cumulative accounting for their larger implications.”

Trump displayed a moment of self-reflection last month during a call with Oregon Governor Tina Kotek (D) over his claim of Portland being “war-ravaged.” He later admitted to the press that he’d asked Kotek: “Am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? … My people tell me different.”

That revelation, said Schwartz, looked like “an unexpected acknowledgement of decidedly un-MAGA vulnerability,” that “Trump is aware his relationship with reality may be more malleable than a ‘very good brain’ would have us believe.”

It also suggests that people around Trump know this and are manipulating his vulnerability.

“Is it so out of the realm of possibility to imagine Stephen Miller flashing Trump a Sora2-rendered fantasy on his phone to convince the president that fishing boats are full of drugs and the streets of Chicago are soaked with the blood of law-abiding white folks?” Schwartz asked. “More importantly, is it so out of the realm of possibility to imagine Trump actually buying it?”

“The dangers of an executive with degraded executive functions are not simply a question of what he might do but also of what others will try to get him to do on their behalf,” Schwartz said.

Schwartz said a decade’s worth of scandal and broken behavior “has turned most of us into frogs boiling in the waters of our national melting pot.”

“We’ve become helplessly inured to the odd and outrageous behavior from Trump that not too long ago may have prompted serious … questions about his cognition — and would have justifiably caused a national meltdown if another president were in charge,” Schwartz said.

Trump also has the advantage of swarming news watchers with government shutdowns, SNAP benefits, masked deportation squads and Trump personally “demolishing a third of the White House to make way for an oligarch-funded ballroom in his honor.”

“There are only so many hours in the day,” argued Schwartz, but with Trump’s advanced age, “the time may soon come when thinking about it becomes unavoidable.”

“And when that day comes, the question on everyone’s lips will be: What took us so long?”

Read the Slate report at this link.

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CNN host rolls the tape on Trump’s decade-long failure to fix healthcare

CNN anchor Dana Bash found it interesting that Republicans have managed to evade devising a replacement for The Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare) since President Obama signed the plan into existence in 2010.

“It's kind of amazing that we're still talking about Obamacare. And it is also amazing that Republicans still — even though they don't like it — don’t have an alternative. We're going to go to break. But before we do, I want to go in the CNN inside politics wayback machine. Ten years ago, it is the Republican primary, one of the Republican primary debates. I'm asking then candidate Donald Trump (for his first term run] about his health care plan.”

“Will you talk a little bit more about your plan [for replacing Obamacare]?” Bash asked candidate Trump in the old footage.

“There’s going to be many different plans, because there's going to be competition,” Trump answered.

“Can you get into anything specific?” Bash pressed.

“There's going to be competition. There is going to be competition among all of the states and the insurance companies,” Trump repeated. “They're going to have many, many different plans.”

Unconvinced, Bash asked Trump if “there anything else you would like to add to that?”

“No, there's nothing to add. What's to add?” Trump asked impatiently.

“He's not alone,” Bash told the CNN panel after ending the clip. “Republicans have not come up with an alternative for Obamacare in, what, 15 years? So that is part of the story here.”

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GOP leaders 'should get another job where they can be as powerless as they want': congressman

U.S. Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill) razed House Speaker Mile Johnson and veteran Sen. John Thune (R-N.D.) for abdicating Congressional power to the White House in the ongoing government shutdown.

Most Americans are aware the federal government is shut down and they expect it to hurt them personally. But they’re also blaming Republicans and President Donald Trump, according to multiple polls and surveys.

On a Politico panel, Casten suggested Republicans join Democrats in passing a simple bipartisan continuing resolution (CR) “that’s consistent with the funding levels that were set the last time Congress did a full appropriations process,” but he added that Johnson takes issue with the fact that the last time Congress passed a full appropriations package “Nancy Pelosi was House Speaker.”

“So, you’ve got this scenario where the Johnson and Thune Congress has completely abdicated any responsivity in funding by letting the Trump White House rescind funds, letting DOGE cut funds and is now saying we want to provide a continuing resolution where you will sign off on what we’ve done,” Casten said.

“That ain’t the way to get it done,” Caste said. “They’ve always known they needed 60 votes in the Senate and I, for one— there is no scenario where I say I would like to not only strip people’s healthcare away but also ignore any oath to the Constitution and any Congressional power over appropriations.”

“If Johnson and Thune want to do that, they should go get another job where they can be as powerless as they want to be,” Casten said. “But Congress is at an important place that demands serious people, and I am furious that there’s not a serious person in the Republican Party who gives a damn about defending Congress’ power of the purse.”

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Top GOP aide charged $44,000 to taxpayers for his commute in 'highly unusual' arrangement

Politico reports the top aide to Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) charged $44,000 to taxpayers over the past two years for commuting expenses between Washington and his home in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Most top aides reside either in Washington or the lawmaker’s home state, but Marshall bought a home roughly 200 miles from Washington early last year in what is not Marshall’s home state. Experts say this is “highly unusual and at odds with the intent behind [Senate] rules,” said Politico.

“Between April of that year and the following September, [Brent Robertson] took 11 trips labeled ‘Lynchburg VA to Washington DC and Return’ and got $16,000 back in expenses from the government,” Politico reports, quoting Senate expense records. Marshall’s expenses included “incidentals,” “transportation” and an untaxed “per diem.”

Between October of last year and this past March, Politico reports Robertson also took 15 trips under the same label and received an additional $28,000 and a per diem payment of $10,000 for one trip to D.C. between Jan. 14 and Jan. 23, which coincided with Trump’s inauguration.

Critics questioned the fiscal responsibility of the setup.

“What if everybody decided to do that, let their staff live far away from their location, and then just charge it off to the government?” said Stanley Brand, an attorney who served as House general counsel under Speaker Tip O’Neill.

Brand called the arrangement “a big, wide loophole” and said he had “never” heard of a similar setup.

Marshall’s spokesman Payton Fuller said the Republican Senator is permitted under Senate rules to designate a remote duty station for his employees and charge travel expenses to taxpayers. Fuller added that D.C. violence prompted the aid to flee 200 miles away.

“After a gang shooting struck his wife’s vehicle outside their D.C. condo, Brent and his family made the decision last year to move to Virginia,” Fuller said in a statement.

Robertson, reports Politico, is on track to earn more than $220,000 in salary this year.

Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, interim vice president of policy and government affairs at the nonprofit watchdog group Project on Government Oversight (POGO) told Politico that the scheme “appears as though it’s purely personal, which is not what those funds are supposed to be used for.”

Senate expense rules prohibit spending taxpayer funds for personal use, and Hedtler-Gaudette said the expenses “violate the spirit” of those guidelines.

“It would be one thing if he was traveling to Kansas because that’s the state that his boss is the senator from,” said Hedtler-Gaudette.

See the Politico report at this link.

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'Overly cautious' Garland made investigators wait 'months' to issue subpoenas in Trump probes

A new book by MSNBC investigative correspondent Carol Leonnig and Washington Post reporter Aaron C. Davis reveals Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department did indeed slow-walk investigations into President Donald Trump’s theft of classified documents and his role in the January 2020 attempt to overthrow a U.S. election.

“FBI and Justice Department officials chose to move cautiously and slowly over concerns about the implications of investigating a former and possibly future president, taking pains to insulate the probes from even the appearance of politics,” reports MSNBC, which got an early release of the book, “Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department.”

The book depicts one example after another of Garland’s department slow-walking the cases, according to MSNBC.

“For instance, it took more than a year after Trump was defeated for the Justice Department to convene a grand jury to hear evidence in the alleged criminal scheme by Trump to use fake electors to overturn the results of the 2020 election,” said MSNBC. “And even after that grand jury was launched in January 2022, the FBI debated another 10 weeks before approving a memo formally opening that investigation, further delaying the gathering of evidence. After much ‘hand wringing’ by FBI Director Chris Wray’s leadership team, the memo named the Trump campaign, but not Trump, as a subject of the investigation, the book says.”

And then, in 2022, just ahead of the midterm elections, Garland opted to freeze both the classified documents and election investigations because of what some officials believed was his “overly cautious reading of a DOJ policy not to take any public action close to an election.”

Trump was not even on the ballot and had not yet declared his presidential candidacy for 2024, but Garland nonetheless imposed the freeze, authors report.

“For months, investigators would have to wait to issue subpoenas or interview witnesses to gather new information,” the authors wrote, adding that Garland “had chosen to impose a very conservative interpretation of what DOJ officials called the 60-day rule,” urging prosecutors to avoid taking public investigative steps within two months of Election Day that involve candidates in that election.

Additionally, special counsel Jack Smith underestimated Florida federal District Judge Aileen Cannon’s loyalty to Trump over the law and made the blunder of moving the classified documents case to her Florida turf.

Leonnig and Davis write that Smith chose to bring the classified documents case to Florida in part because he believed more of the alleged criminal conduct happened in Florida. Smith did not envision Cannon, a Trump appointee, grinding the law to protect Trump — despite Cannon issuing a series of unusual rulings favorable to Trump in connection with the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, authors wrote.

Even after learning the odds of Cannon drawing the case were slim, Smith and his team stuck with their decision to indict Trump in Florida.

“Cannon eventually got the case, setting in motion a chain of events that led her to later dismiss it on what many legal experts say were highly questionable grounds,” MSNBC reports.

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'A huge mistake': Dems are ignoring a key voting bloc at their peril

Politics reporter Casey Quinlan tells the New Republic that major news media and political leaders are “very concerned about white men … holding onto their masculinity and status.” But when women struggle — especially women of color — it gets dismissed as an “inevitable part” of how the system works under capitalism.”

“In their analysis of how the economy has moved young men to the right, political pundits and leaders on the left shouldn’t forget that young women and mothers of all ages have also been unhappy with the state of affordability in this country,” Quinlan reports. There is no economic data making clear that men are doing a lot worse while women are “thriving,” as coverage suggests.

Quinlan acknowledges that men without a college degree have seen steeper falls in labor force participation, largely due to the decline in manufacturing and military jobs, complimented with mass incarceration and a rise in opioid use. Racism-fueled mass incarceration in the 1980s and 1990s hit Black men’s labor participation particularly hard.

“But it’s also true that labor force participation for men in total has rebounded a bit during stronger economic times,” said Quinlan, adding that political leaders and the media “should be wary” of ignoring women or throwing women under the bus while conducting the important work of communicating better with young men on economic issues.

“Women have already suffered under the economy Trump has helped build and are likely to continue to see major setbacks to their economic mobility,” Quinlan said. “They will be looking to Democrats to address it, and if they feel abandoned, it could derail the party’s goals.”

Celinda Lake, president of public opinion and political strategy firm Lake Research Partners, said young women who didn’t show up to vote back in November weren’t happy with Democrats, as Harris did not draw enough of a contrast with Biden as a candidate, and they were not convinced that the Democrats’ agenda was oriented toward them. A July Lake Research Partners report showed that among people who skipped voting in 2024, on economic issues, “the top two issues that most affected their decision not to vote for Harris were that she did not have a strong enough plan to get the cost of living down and that her economic plans mostly focused on the middle class and homeowners rather than poverty and inequality.”

“We have problems with men and women, and we have to be dealing with both. Our biggest opportunity for the long term is with younger women,” Lake reported. “We need to particularly improve our numbers with non–college educated women and our turnout of young women.”

Lake added that Democrats helped undo themselves last year when they dropped ambitious childcare proposals from Biden’s landmark legislation.

“That was a huge mistake,” said Lake. “The party is really divided on this. There are people who are saying just let the Republicans hang themselves, just let them do bad and stay out of the way. But that’s a profoundly flawed strategy when your own favorability is down to 35 percent, and when people can’t follow what your agenda is and think you have the wrong priorities.”

Read the New Republic report at this link.

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Trump fears Supreme Court may soon deal a 'seismic blow for his administration': analyst

Matt Ford tells the New Republic that Trump is furious at an anti-tariff ad from the Canadian province of Ontario because he knows his tariffs are on shaky ground.

Ontario aired a commercial during the games that used a 1987 speech by then-President Ronald Reagan to oppose Trump’s tariff-blasted trade policy.

“High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wars,” Reagan said in the ad. “The result is more and more tariffs, higher and higher trade barriers, and less and less competition. So, soon, because of the prices made artificially high by tariffs that subsidize inefficiency and poor management, people stop buying. Then the worst happens: Markets shrink and collapse; businesses and industries shut down; and millions of people lose their jobs.”

Trump, “who gets reliably worked up any time the television isn’t nice to him,” reacted accordingly, said Ford.

“The sole purpose of this FRAUD was Canada’s hope that the United States Supreme Court will come to their ‘rescue’ on Tariffs that they have used for years to hurt the United States,” Trump said on Truth Social. “Now the United States is able to defend itself against high and overbearing Canadian Tariffs (and those from the rest of the World as well!).”

Trump then threatened to arbitrarily increase his tariff on Canada by 10% over what they are paying now “Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act.”

Ford said Trump’s reference to the Supreme Court indicates his very real fear about the court’s impending decision on his power to levy tariff from the White House.

“Oral arguments in the tariffs case are scheduled for November 5, and their outcome is clearly on the president’s mind,” said Ford. “… But the ad made no mention of the court itself, nor did it appear to be directed toward the justices.”

There’s also no guarantee that justices were watching the game when Ontario aired the ad, said Ford, adding that they would have reached judges better by simply filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the case.

“If nothing else, Trump’s mention of the Supreme Court would seem to betray a churning sense of concern that the justices might rule against him,” said Ford. “That would be a seismic blow for his administration: Trump’s domestic economic agenda is built on the premise that he can impose trillions of dollars in tariffs on imported goods to punish foreign trade practices, stimulate domestic manufacturing, and raise revenues for the federal government. Without that freewheeling power, Trump would have to rely on Congress to pass new tariffs as he cajoles, bullies, threatens, and occasionally negotiates with foreign governments over new trade deals.”

Ford said “If it is willing to do so, the Supreme Court could easily end the tariff madness — and its ever-escalating costs to ordinary Americans,” but he does “not expect the court to curb its historic reluctance to second-guess executive and legislative decisions on foreign policy.”

Read the New Republic report at this link.

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Trump's Air Force One rant exposed his 'worsening mental unfitness': analyst

“Daily Blast” podcast host Greg Sargent and New Republic contributing editor Meredith Shiner on Tuesday discussed the apparent blind spot the media has for President Donald Trump’s rapidly failing mental faculties.

“On Air Force One, President Donald Trump unleashed a bizarre, angry, rambling rant about the cognitive test he supposedly aced this weekend,” Sargent said. “Worse, he compared himself cognitively to two Democrats who both happen to be nonwhite women. This rant backfired on itself: It revealed his worsening mental unfitness, his naked racism, his effort to normalize his belittling of nonwhite members of Congress and his ongoing attacks on democracy, and more.”

Trump told reporters recently that he aced an IQ test at Walter Reed hospital, which was more likely a test to determine the state of his cognitive decline. In his statement he debased the intelligence of U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas).

“AOC’s low IQ. You give her an IQ test — have her past the exams I decided to take while I was at Walter Reed. I took — that was a very hard, uh — that really — aptitude test, I guess, in a certain way — but they’re cognitive tests,” Trump said. “Let AOC go against Trump. Let Jasmine [Crockett] go against Trump.”

Trump then went on to describe the test, which does carry a resemblance to tests administered to nursing home residents or patients suffering the onset of Alzheimer’s.

“… [t]he first couple of questions are easy. A tiger, an elephant, a giraffe, you know. When you get up to about [Question] 5 or 6, when you get up to [Question 10, 30 and 35, [AOC and Crockett] couldn’t come close to answering any of those questions.”

“I’m reasonably sure AOC and Crockett could do much better on a cognitive test,” said Sargent.

“Donald Trump is a racist, so the idea of women of color being smart is unfathomable to him. … And it should be unacceptable to make that sort of assertion,” said Shiner. “… This is the state exercising racism to the extreme, but also we have to think about the fertile ground that created the condition where that’s OK,” she said, referencing Fox News and right-wing media’s coverage of non-white Americans.

Sargent was alarmed by the U.S. media’s blind spot of Trump’s obvious mental collapse, and what he called the “mad king gone amok” issue, noting Trump’s insane tweets about the city of Portland, Oregon burning down. He also cited Trump’s untrue stories about Tylenol and tales of cutting prescription drug prices “by 1,000 percent or more, which is mathematically impossible.” Not to mention Trump posting on Truth Social his command that his AG prosecute his enemies.

“The contrast between where we are right now, in October 2025, and where we were last year, in 2024, I think is really huge," said Shiner. “And when you think about someone like Jake Tapper, who tried to sell a book on this idea that the mainstream media overlooked his unfitness for office — but then now we’re in this place where you’re not exploring that with this president — you can’t really square that circle.”

But Sargent said he sees an opening for Trump’s opposition in his madness.

“Donald Trump is completely out to lunch — he’s indulging his craziest fantasies on a daily basis. And as a result of that fundamental unfitness, that has created this vacuum for really, really serious fascists — basically, authoritarians — to run the place. And I think there’s a way to connect those cases.”

Read and listen to the podcast at this link.

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'Delusional' Trump lacks ability to 'totally co-opt the criminal justice system': conservatives

Bulwark Editor Jonathan Last said President Donald Trump will soon learn there's one aspect of the U.S. criminal justice system that can't be corrupted.

“The criminal justice system is probably the least subject to total corruption,” Last told Former Jeb Bush speech writer Tim Miller on Tuesday’s Bulwark podcast. “The prosecutorial side of it can be corrupted. The Department of Justice can be corrupted. The FBI can be corrupted, but at the end of the day, they do have to get 12 normal Americans to sit together [and agree]. … We've seen this with grand juries and attempts to indict people in D.C., where the normal voters in D.C. who are sent to jury duty on this stuff look and say, F that. No, I'm not signing off on that.”

The statement arose from Trump’s “delusional rant” about the NBA scandal wherein Trump alleged that Democrats had stolen the 2020 election, in spite of a lack of evidence.

“The 2020 Presidential Election, being Rigged and Stolen, is a far bigger SCANDAL,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Look what happened to our Country when a Crooked Moron became our "President!" We now know everything. I hope the DOJ pursues this with as much "gusto" as befitting the biggest SCANDAL in American history! If not, it will happen again, including the upcoming Midterms.”

Miller raked Trump’s inability to convince his most dedicated allies to pursue his bogus claims of election theft in earnest.

“I thought this was the biggest scandal in American history if the election was stolen from Donald Trump,” said Miller. “He now has all of the power and resources of the government at his hands. Shouldn't they be using that to go after the perpetrators?”

Miller added he doubts Trump has the wherewithal "for a full effort to totally co-opt the criminal justice system by doing the things you would need to do, such as planting evidence."

Trump officials are already fabricating evidence “on the margins,” Miller assured, with officials like Bill Pulte “Googling every Democrat in the country on their mortgage history to … see if they’re claiming a second house as their [primary] residence."

“We'll see how the [Letitia] James case ends up shaking out, but your heart's not really in the game if that's all you're doing. If you really wanted to corrupt it, you got to be even more aggro. You got to give the same effort to it that Trump gave to the Stop the Steal effort, really.”

Last said while Trump “has found people to break the law on his behalf” like advisors Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani and 1,500 pardoned Jan. 6 rioters, “there is still a class of people,” like former VP Mike Pence, who are unwilling “do evidence-planting stuff.”

Still, 12 months out from the 2026 elections, both Last and Miller agreed Trump is “laying the groundwork for a second Stop the Steal effort” for the midterms, trying to sell the story of upcoming Democrat corruption and recruiting powerful allies to help press his effort in courts and on the ground.

Miller said Trump is already trashing the California proposition vote to counter his mid-decade gerrymander in Texas and attacking the state’s ballot process.

“So, that’s already happening,” Miller said.

Hear the podcast at this link.

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Conservative legal scholar sides with ex-cop after sheriff arrested him for anti-Kirk message

U.S. attorney and legal scholar Jonathan Turley said a free speech case is brewing in Tennessee over the arrest of a retired police officer for posting "anti-Charlie Kirk messages" on the Internet.

“Larry Bushart, 61, of Lexington, Tennessee, was arrested for threatening a mass shooting at a school, but the cited messages do not support such a claim. Indeed, his comments appear to be protected political speech under governing Supreme Court precedent,” said Turley. “Bushart is clearly one of the unhinged voices on the Internet who trolls and inflames others. At his arrest, even Bushart admitted that he is a bit of ‘an a——,’ but insisted that he is not a criminal. He appears correct on both counts.”

Bushart, a former cop with the Huntingdon Police Department, was arrested and charged Sept. 22 with making threats of mass violence after posting on a Perry County community Facebook group page. He is not scheduled for a preliminary and bond hearing until December 4, which Turley said is “troubling” considering his bond is set “at an astronomical $2 million.”

Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems accused Bushart of posting “hate memes” about Kirk’s death.

Bushart’s post consists of a meme depicting President Donald Trump saying “We have to get over it,” in reference to a direct quote Trump made after a January 2024 school shooting in Perry, Iowa that left one dead and seven wounded. Bushart’s photo is topped with the phrase "This seems relevant today.”

Weems said Bushart posted the picture “to indicate or make the audience think it was referencing our Perry High School,” which he claims “led teachers, parents and students to conclude [Bushart] was talking about a hypothetical shooting at our school.”

Bushart was later arrested on a charge of Threats of Mass Violence on School Property and Activities, a charge that could bring as much as six years in prison, if convicted.

But the Supreme Court has protected similar speech in the past, having sided with a draft protester claiming that, if drafted, “the first man I want to get in my sights is [President Lyndon Johnson].” The court insisted that it was not a “true threat” but rather “a kind of very crude offensive method of stating a political opposition to the President.”

Turley cites the Court ruling that “The speaker’s fear of mistaking whether a statement is a threat; his fear of the legal system getting that judgment wrong; his fear, in any event, of incurring legal costs — all those may lead him to swallow words that are in fact not true threats.”

And the argument of Bushart’s threat is spotty, even according to officers trying to explain it to him. Turley points to a video showing an officer telling “a confused Bushart” that he is being charged with: “Threatening Mass Violence at a School.”

“At a school?” Bushart responded.

The officer eventually said: “I ain’t got a clue. I just gotta do what I have to do.”

Turley said critics are seeing Bushart’s post as simply Bushart dismissing the killing of Kirk as something that we “should get over.”

“Bushart has a protected right to rail against Kirk and, in his words, be ‘an a——,’” Turley argued.

Read the full report at this link.

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How Trump 'hijacked the Republican Party' in a way that resembles communist China

President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping of China are meeting in South Korea this week in what analysts tell the New York Times is a sign of "the new strongman era."

“Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi, and the nations they lead, differ of course in myriad ways. Yet both men have sought to bend their political systems to their will,” said authors Erica Frantz and Andrea Kendall-Taylor tell the New York Times. “Trump has hijacked the Republican Party and made it into a personal political vehicle. Mr. Xi asserts a degree of control over China that Mao would have envied.”

The authors said Trump and Xi’s lack of domestic constraints gives them great latitude for deal-making, but it also makes their potential agreements "flimsy" and subject to change.

“Strongmen can be unreliable international partners. Surrounded by loyalists and weakened restraints on their power, they face few domestic consequences for reneging on promises or abruptly changing course,” they said. “We’ve seen this already from the two presidents: The Trump administration accuses China of failing to honor trade pledges made during Mr. Trump’s first term, and Mr. Trump himself has repeatedly announced tariffs on trade partners this year only to reverse himself soon after.”

The absence of constraints can work against global security “because strongmen are not held accountable,” they said. "... Amid the bluster, their counterparts find it difficult to gauge where the red lines truly are — Mr. Trump delivered multiple ultimatums to Mr. Putin for a cease-fire in Ukraine that he has systematically ignored."

“Whatever rhetoric or handshake deals come out of their planned encounter at a regional summit in South Korea, they are unlikely to signify more than a momentary truce between two leaders unchecked by domestic or institutional constraints and free to change course on a whim,” they said, adding that expectations fade in the environment of empty promises and threats because authoritarian leaders are more likely to take risks, start wars and escalate conflicts.

“Welcome to the new strongman era,” they said, where Russian leader Vladimir Putin, surrounded by his dedicated sycophants, invaded Ukraine on a whim and started a war that has mired his nation in new bills and rattled the world. It’s also a world where Trump can carry out extrajudicial killings of alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean and threaten to attack Venezuela. And it’s a world where Xi can threaten military action in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait.

It's the same world where strongmen “pad their pockets and those of their loyalists” while undermining their own economies by shifting assets offshore, like Xi’s family amassing more than $1 billion in assets despite Xi’s purported “anti-corruption campaign” to purge his rivals, they said. Meanwhile Trump’s family has involved themselves in lucrative deals in Middle East real estate, cryptocurrency and licensing fees.

Authors said international governments only recently became more democratic after World War II, with “solid institutions, alliances and rules” leading to an unprecedented era of global peace and prosperity.

“That era is fading,” they said.

Read the New York Times report at this link.

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