It’s been a hallmark of most of the noteworthy political movements that have emerged and risen to power in modern times that their leaders aspired to use government power to improve society. Plenty of these movements were deeply flawed or downright fraudulent, but virtually all – even some of the worst authoritarian parties and leaders –have at least professed to have a plan for using the levers of power in an intentional way to make life better for average people.

Here in the U.S., until recently, even archconservatives who opposed many social welfare programs were still committed to strengthening the national defense in order to help defend the nation and its allies against foreign adversaries, and to boosting basic components of societal infrastructure that they saw as aiding in that effort — like public education, transportation and public health.

Weirdly and disturbingly, however, this is not the case with the MAGA movement. While it’s true that Donald Trump regularly dispenses absurd and delusional promises to magically solve every societal ill – promises that not even his most ardent supporters take seriously – when it comes to fashioning a real agenda for getting things done, the modern right is consistently and harmfully silent.

Indeed, save for their efforts to: a) enhance state police power vis a vis immigrant communities and women seeking to control their own reproduction, and b) strengthen their own capacity to remain in power through gerrymandering and election-rigging tactics, it’s clear that the main objective of MAGA conservatives when it comes to public structures is tearing things down.

Nowhere is this better exemplified than in North Carolina where, after a decade and a half of conservative Republican dominance in state government, it’s virtually impossible to identify any public system or structure – public and higher education, public health, environmental protection, transportation, courts and corrections — in which things are demonstrably better than they were at the start of GOP rule.

And nowhere is this sad pattern better exemplified today in North Carolina than in the current destructive budget stalemate between conservative leaders at the General Assembly.

North Carolina is now almost five months into the 2025-26 fiscal year, and it continues to operate without a new state budget. As a result, numerous core public structures and systems – perhaps most notably, its already fragile and dramatically under-resourced Medicaid health insurance program – are operating under old law and old, inadequate appropriations.

Mind you, this is not – as an outsider might superficially surmise – the result of a conflict between the state’s Republican-controlled legislature and its Democratic governor.

No, in this case, GOP legislative leaders never even passed a comprehensive budget bill for Democratic Gov. Josh Stein to consider. Instead, the state is being held hostage to their internal disputes over how drastically and rapidly to further eviscerate the state’s regressive and inadequate income tax structure, as well as a series of other mostly petty matters – like Senate Leader Phil Berger’s need to appear sufficiently reactionary as he tries to fend off a far-right Republican primary challenger in 2026.

Gov. Stein has done his best to break the logjam and direct public attention to the destructive impact the stalemate is having – particularly on the Medicaid program, where the lack of funding certainty has forced his Health and Human Services department to slash reimbursements to providers to maintain program solvency. Earlier this month, he took the extraordinary step of calling lawmakers to Raleigh for a special legislative session to address the rapidly metastasizing problem that is likely to soon lead to preventable deaths of people no longer able to access health care.

It was precisely the kind of strong and common-sense leadership that North Carolinians undoubtedly expected when they elected Stein by a wide margin last November. The session was supposed to have commenced on Monday.

Unfortunately, legislative leaders were unmoved. Much like the Republicans in Washington who, despite their control of both Congress and the White House, allowed their own internal conflicts to translate into a record-breaking federal government shutdown and huge new health insurance rate hikes for millions of Americans, state Senate and House leaders have simply ignored Stein’s directive and, in true Trumpian fashion, tried to disavow blame for the Medicaid crisis that their own failure to act has created.

And so, it appears that, absent a hard-to-imagine political 180, Republican leaders will stick to their plan to hold no further votes during the on-again, off-again 2025 legislative session, thereby allowing the Medicaid program – and dozens of other vitally important public structures and services — to wither on the vine while thousands of North Carolinians needlessly suffer.

And once again, instead of coming together to intentionally use the levers of government power to make life better for the many, Republican leaders will, in true MAGA fashion, remain committed to a do-nothing agenda for which the only discernible unifying principles are dysfunction and cruelty.

Despite two federal judges ordering the Trump administration to fund food stamps for 42 million Americans whose payments were shut down on Saturday, President Donald Trump said he will not do so until the federal government is reopened.

SNAP benefits, Trump wrote on social media, “will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up government, which they can easily do, and not before!”

The New York Times reported that “Tens of millions of Americans will get only partial payments from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for this month, the Trump administration told a federal judge on Monday, and it was not clear when even those reduced benefits would be distributed.”

Critics were quick to respond.

“The president appears to be saying he will NOT abide by the court order to release SNAP benefits even though the WH said they would partially release them,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.

He added, “an hour ago Trump’s own Ag Sec was explaining that they’d given guidance to states about how to administer SNAP benefits from the emergency fund. Now Trump is saying he won’t pay those benefits until the government is reopened.”

“Trump is both defying a court order and taking ownership of the ending of food benefits for needy people all during a shutdown fight that polls show him losing,” Stein observed, “and doing this just days after his Great Gatsby party!”

Media Matters’ senior fellow Matthew Gertz wrote: “Since the ‘No Kings’ rallies, the president has launched an ill-defined bombing campaign without congressional sanction; orchestrated federal charges against his enemies; promised not to release appropriated funds to a jurisdiction if it elects someone he opposes.” He added, “and now” before pointing to Stein’s remarks on Trump’s refusal.

U.S. Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) remarked: “To be clear, Trump isn’t just trying to deny food from hungry American families. He’s breaking the law so he can deny food from hungry American families.”

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) observed, “The President is suggesting he will defy a court order so he can starve kids, seniors, veterans, and families.”

Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias wrote: “Of all the things to break the seal on defying court orders over, I thought Trump would pick something politically savvier than ‘make poor kids go hungry.'”

West Virginia House of Delegates Democratic Minority Whip Shawn Fluharty commented, “Not sure on the category we put this in … pro-life, family values, or compassionate conservatism?”

Former Obama and Biden official Alex Jacquez noted, “If anyone had any doubt as to who is responsible for SNAP benefits not going out to 42 million people.”

Five years after losing to Democrat Joe Biden, Donald Trump continues to claim that the United States' 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. That claim has been repeatedly debunked, yet Trump is calling for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to launch new 2020 investigations.

In an article published on November 11, Washington Post reporters Isaac Arnsdorf, Patrick Marley and Perry Stein describe the conflict between MAGA Republicans who remain obsessed with that election and Republicans who wish Trump would move on and abandon his "renewed focus on 2020."

"President Donald Trump is dialing up pressure on the Justice Department to freshly scrutinize ballots from the 2020 election, raising tensions with administration officials who think their time is better spent examining voter lists for future elections," the Post reporters explain. "In recent private meetings, public comments and social media posts, Trump has renewed demands that members of his administration find fraud in the five-year-old defeat that he never accepted. He recently hired at the White House a lawyer who worked on contesting the 2020 results."

Arnsdorf, Marley and Stein add, "Administration officials and allies have asked to inspect voting equipment in Colorado and Missouri. Others are seeking mail ballots from Atlanta in 2020, when Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to lose Georgia since 1992."

Rob Pitts, chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners in Georgia, believes that revisiting 2020 is a waste of time for Trump and his allies.

Pitts told the Post, "It makes no sense to me to continue to look at the 2020 elections,” Audit after audit, review after review, where does it end? One more time? Two more times?"

Read the full Washington Post article at this link (subscription required).

Cracks are appearing in the right-wing student organization Turning Point USA following the leak of texts from its founder, the late MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, in which he discussed Jewish donors pulling funding over his links to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, according to The Bulwark.

Screenshots of the texts were shared by far-right pundit Candace Owens, who, according to Newsweek, "has been criticized by some over what she has posted, which has been described as rumors and conspiracy theories.

In the texts, Kirk, who was a strong supporter of Israel, said that he had lost a $2 million donation from a Jewish donor over his refusal to disinvite Carlson from an upcoming event.

The authenticity of the texts, described as "unsavory" by The Bulwark's Sam Stein, was confirmed Tuesday by Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet, who shared the texts to government officials immediately following Kirk's assassination, Newsweek reports.

"I did share it with some people in government because it happened really quick," Kolvet said. "It was, you know, it took 33 hours for authorities to get their suspect. And in those first moments, we wanted no stone unturned."

These texts, Stein says, show "some broader significance," saying that since Kirk's death, "there has been a big fight over his legacy."

Journalist Will Sommer explains that Kirk's friend and former Turning Point employee Owens was floating conspiracies including one in which she said "Kirk was about to turn on Israel and there's kind of this implication that Israel committed the assassination."

"People were telling her, 'Candace, you don't have the goods, it's over for you,' and then she came out with this text message on Monday," Sommer says.

In the text message, Kirk said donors were getting mad at him for hanging out with Carlson, an outspoken critic on Israel.

"Jewish donors play into all the stereotypes," Kirk wrote. "I can not and will not be bullied like this."

In a following text, Kirk said recent events were "leaving me no choice but to leave the pro-Israel cause."

Stein says this text leak feeds into Owens' conspiracy theory that Israel killed Kirk, one that has been debunked by those close to him.

Sommer agrees, saying, "This gets to the larger issue. The right has realized they have a lot of political capital from this assassination. People like [President Donald Trump's deputy chief of staff] Stephen Miller said they were going to use this to crush the left."

Carlson and Owens, Sommer says, "are throwing up to more rational people on the right that it's kind of a smokescreen and they're distracting from what should be the big 'crush the left moment'. I think this is becoming a real issue for Turning Point USA. They're kind of being led around by Candace Owens here."

Stein agrees and says now people will be looking at Turning Point USA to see "what do they say about Israel?"

"There's a real divide in the ranks over the U.S. Israeli alliance here," Stein said.

A new billboard that popped up in Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-LA) Shreveport, Louisiana district calling for the release of the files on lJeffrey Epstein was put there by an advocacy group that wants to remind the Speaker of his promise, according to The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate.

"The billboards sort of speak for themselves. They say: 'Release all the Epstein Files,'" said Lauren Hersh, the national director of World Without Exploitation. "It's a clear message both to our elected officials and to their constituents that we, with survivors, are urging our government to do the right thing."

World Without Exploitation (WorldWE) is the country's largest national coalition dedicated to ending human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation (HT-CSE). WorldWE was founded in 2016 to challenge and change the policies and systems that perpetuate the commodification of women and girls.

Last month, the organization hosted a Washington D.C. rally with Epstein's victims in support of the "Epstein Files Transparency Act," which would require the Department of Justice to publish all documents related to the investigation and prosecution of Epstein.

"We made a promise to survivors that we wouldn't stop there," Hersh said. "The billboard campaign is a part of that keep-the-pressure-on campaign."

The billboards have also emerged in Colorado and Missouri, but Shreveport was specifically chosen because of Johnson, "who Hersh said promised justice and accountability to survivors of abuse at the hands of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's girlfriend and accomplice," the newspaper reports.

"We want to make sure that he is reminded of his promise to those survivors," Hersh said.

When the newspaper asked Johnson for comment on this and the Epstein files, they said the Speaker discussed the files "extensively", including on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

“The Epstein files are being released, 43,000 pages now. There was another batch of documents dumped on Friday of last week, which included Epstein's personal ledgers, his financial ledgers, his daily calendar, his flight logs, all the things that people have been saying they wanted. It's all coming out. Why? Because the House Oversight Committee has been working through this period, even when we're not on the House floor, to go through and dig through the Epstein Estate files and all the rest and get them out. These are all distractions from the main point. Democrats have shut the government down for political purposes and we got to get it reopened,” Johnson said on the program.

Liz Stein, one of Epstein's victims and now a WorldWE anti-trafficking expert says Johnson's words aren't enough.

""This is a crime. It's the crime of sex trafficking. We shouldn't be distracted by the people who might potentially be involved," Stein said. "When you bring this down to a human level and you look at it for what it is, it has the potential to be incredibly impactful when people think about this happening to their daughters, their sisters, their work colleagues. Anything that we can do to refocus and put attention on what this is and how it should be treated is important to me."

Many right-wing media figures, from Fox News' Jesse Watters to "War Room" host Steve Bannon, continue to blame liberals and progressives for the murder of MAGA activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk — even though Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and countless other Democrats vehemently condemned the murder in no uncertain times. But among themselves, right-wing media pundits are battling over the role that Kirk played in the MAGA movement.

In a video posted by the conservative website The Bulwark on September 18, two of their writers — Sam Stein and Will Sommer — examined the role religion plays in far-right MAGA influencer Candace Owens' efforts to exploit Kirk's "legacy."

Sommer told Stein, "She puts on a pretty good face about being this, like, aggrieved friend who's going to get to the bottom of this…. The fact is that Charlie Kirk's legacy is a very valuable thing — and in particular, the political capital that can be gained from it, and the money and the donors. And so, I think she is making a claim — and Tucker Carlson — to at least a slice of that legacy."

When Stein noted that "religion gets into this in a really profound way," Sommer elaborated on that point.

Sommer told Stein, "Religion here, I think, is something that is really volatile. And I think for some people in MAGA, what Candace Owens says about Charlie's religion is actually even more important than what she said about him and Israel. Because she says: So, Charlie was an evangelical Christian, and we've seen, in the aftermath of his murder, that there's this sense of, like, people saying, 'There's going to be a religious revival. The pews are going to be packed. Everyone's going to become Christian now.' But Candace says: Well, actually, Charlie…. was on the verge of converting to Catholicism."

Stein asked Sommer if there was "any evidence" of Kirk getting ready to become Catholic — to which he responded, "I believe his wife was originally Catholic, although she said, a year ago, she no longer was."