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Top Dem Reveals How JPMorgan Chase Helped Epstein Hide His Crimes - 2025-11-20T22:19:42Z

A report released by Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden on Thursday called for Congress to further investigate JP Morgan Chase over its ties to Jeffrey Epstein, one of the bank’s biggest clients, and his alleged sex-trafficking organization.

Before Epstein was arrested in September 2019, JPMorgan Chase reported only a handful of “suspicious activity reports” documenting roughly $4.3 million worth of transactions from his accounts between 2002 and 2016. After he was arrested, and subsequently died in prison, JPMorgan Chase filed “far more comprehensive” reports documenting an additional 5,000 wire transfers moving $1.3 billion in and out of Epstein’s accounts—a total that was 300 times greater than what was previously disclosed.

The report suggests that JPMorgan Chase executives waited to disclose his suspicious transactions to regulators in order “to continue working with Epstein,” even after he was terminated as a client in 2013 over money-laundering concerns. Citing newly unsealed emails, the report indicated this was done because of Epstein’s influence over billionaire Leon Black.

The report implicates multiple JPMorgan Chase executives, who apparently closely monitored the alleged sex trafficker’s accounts, reporting to CEO Jamie Dimon.

In March 2012, John Duffy, the former CEO of JPMorgan’s U.S. Private Bank, instructed Epstein on how to make large withdrawals from his account without raising alarms at the bank, newly unsealed emails showed. In August 2013, Mary Erdoes, the CEO of the wealth and asset management division of JPMorgan who remained in near constant contact with the alleged sex trafficker, “blessed” efforts to continue doing business with Epstein, according to the report.

Wyden said that the extent of the bank’s underreporting went “beyond a total compliance breakdown.”

“It’s impossible to believe the decisions that led to the coverup of Epstein’s financial transactions regarding his sex trafficking never reached the very top,” he wrote in a series of posts on X. “Given the scale of Epstein’s trafficking operation, it’s clear that many more powerful people were involved. My staff have seen a paper trail with their own eyes. Banks that helped enable him should be investigated. As should anybody involved in Epstein’s trafficking ring.”

Earlier this week, House Oversight Committee Chair Jamer Comer subpoenaed JPMorgan Chase for access to some of Epstein’s financial records.

Democrats Who Sent Message to Troops Respond to Trump’s Hanging Threat - 2025-11-20T21:42:19Z

On Tuesday, multiple congressional Democrats made a video reminding members of the military and intelligence community of their duty to the Constitution, not to President Trump.

The comments—made by military and intelligence veterans Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, and Representatives Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, and Chrissy Houlahan—set the MAGAverse off. By Thursday, President Trump suggested they be charged with sedition and executed. And yet the Democratic lawmakers remained unfazed.

“We are veterans and national security professionals who love this country and swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. That oath lasts a lifetime, and we intend to keep it. No threat, intimidation, or call for violence will deter us from that sacred obligation,” they wrote in a joint statement posted by Kelly. “What’s most telling is that the President considers it punishable by death for us to restate the law. Our servicemembers should know that we have their backs as they fulfill their oath to the Constitution and obligation to follow only lawful orders. It is not only the right thing to do, but also our duty.” They signed it with a reminder: “Don’t Give Up the Ship!”

Kelly later responded personally to Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s claim that their comments are part of an “insurrection” and “a general call for rebellion.”

“I got shot at serving our country in combat, and I was there when your boss sent a violent mob to attack the Capitol,” Kelly wrote. “I know the difference between defending our Constitution and an insurrection, even if you don’t.”

Slotkin posted her own response.

“Earlier today President Trump threatened myself and a number of other service and veteran lawmakers with arrest, trial, and death, because he didn’t agree with a video we put out this week,” Slotkin said. “I swore an oath to the Constitution many times, most recently less than a year ago as a senator. To the Constitution—not to any one man, not to any one president.”

Here is their original message to troops:

We want to speak directly to members of the Military and the Intelligence Community.

The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution.

Don’t give up the ship. pic.twitter.com/N8lW0EpQ7r

— Sen. Elissa Slotkin (@SenatorSlotkin) November 18, 2025

ICE Suddenly Loses Key Evidence One Day After Being Sued - 2025-11-20T21:30:06Z

ICE is claiming the computer ate its records the day after it was sued for abuse.

404 Media reports that after ICE’s Bridgeview Detention Center outside Chicago was sued October 30 for allegedly abusing detainees, the agency said that two weeks of video footage that could have shown how immigration detainees are treated in the facility was lost in a “system crash” on October 31.

“The government has said that the data for that period was lost in a system crash apparently on the day after the lawsuit was filed,” one of the lawyers representing detainees, Alec Solotorovsky, said in a Thursday hearing about the footage, according to 404 Media. “That period we think is going to be critical … because that’s the period right before the lawsuit was filed.”

Earlier this week, the Department of Homeland Security said in court that the video footage was “irretrievably destroyed,” and on Thursday, government lawyers said that “we don’t have the resources” to keep preserving surveillance footage from the detention facility. In a seemingly flippant remark, the government’s attorneys suggested if the detainees’ lawyers provide “endless hard drives where we could save the information, that might be one solution.”

The idea that ICE doesn’t have resources to preserve video footage is absurd on its face, as the agency is receiving an astronomical amount of funding thanks to President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” Some $200 billion has been allocated to immigration enforcement, more than some countries allocate to their entire militaries, and at least some of that should be allocated to data preservation and I.T. maintenance.

Also, it seems too convenient for ICE to have had a system crash the day after they were sued. The detainees who filed the lawsuit claim that the ICE facility is rife with abusive treatment and poor living conditions. In response, the government hasn’t provided much information on the footage, directing attorneys to a company called Five by Five Management “that appears to be based out of a house,” said Solotorovsky.

“We tried to engage with the government through our IT specialist, and we hired a video forensic specialist,” he said, adding that the government specialist attorneys spoke to “didn’t really know anything beyond the basic specifications of the system. He wasn’t able to answer any questions about preservation or attempts to recover the data.”

Immigration enforcement under Trump seems to continuously flout the law, with little recourse available except for lawsuits. At best, legal action seems to only slow the Trump administration’s actions. Will the detainees in Bridgeview be able to overcome what looks like a government cover-up?

Trump Suffers Massive Loss Over National Guard Deployment to D.C. - 2025-11-20T20:12:38Z

Is This Finally and Blessedly the End of the Larry Summers Era? - 2025-11-20T20:09:47Z

It seems Jeffrey Epstein’s tentacles reached much further than any of us could have imagined, with Larry Summers, one of the nation’s most prominent economists, being caught in the web. I have nothing to add to the specifics of his involvement with Epstein. It would have been better if his removal from public life had been caused by his more than three decades of wrongheaded policy advice. 

Larry Summers has been at the center of economic policy debates since the early 1990s, when he took a top position in the Clinton Treasury Department after a brief stint as the chief economist at the World Bank. There, he was one of the architects of Clinton’s economic policy, from which we are still seeing the fallout today.

Clinton did have some progressive wins, such as expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and raising taxes on the rich. And of course, the general economic indicators, especially during his second term, were impressive: Median household income shot up, as did median wages. And for deficit hawks, we got the first budget surpluses in three decades. But he was also responsible for trade policy that ultimately cost millions of manufacturing jobs, financial deregulation, and a boneheaded effort to cut Social Security that fortunately never got liftoff.

On trade, Clinton first pushed through the North American Free Trade Agreement, over the objection of the vast majority of Democrats in Congress. In his last year in office, he got Congress to admit China to the World Trade Organization, again over the objection of the vast majority of Democratic members of Congress.

China’s admission to the WTO, along with the high dollar policy pushed by the Clinton Treasury Department, led to a massive loss of manufacturing jobs over the next decade. In the 10 years from December 1999 to December 2009, we lost 5.8 million manufacturing jobs, more than one-third of the country’s total. These job losses devasted whole communities, where one or two factories were the major employers. Many have not recovered even today.

It’s also important to point out this massive job loss was a new story. There was only a modest drop in manufacturing employment in the three decades from 1969 to 1999.

It’s also wrong to call these deals “free trade” agreements. A key component of the trade deals negotiated in that era, especially the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS, provisions of the WTO, signed in 1994, was making patent and copyrights longer and stronger. These government-granted monopolies are 180 degrees at odds with free trade. However, they do redistribute a huge amount of income upward.

We will spend over $700 billion this year on pharmaceuticals that would likely cost around $150 billion in a free market without patent monopolies. The difference of $550 billion comes to $4,000 per household.

Intellectual property was not the only mechanism for redistributing income upward under Clinton. He also pushed through measures that gave the financial industry less oversight. Most notable in this respect was the repeal of the Glass-Steagall legislation, which removed barriers to the merger of investment and commercial banks. From numerous accounts, Summers was at the center of all this. And he was happy to take credit when Glass-Steagall was repealed and replaced by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

Summers was also instrumental in nixing an effort by Brooksley Born, who was head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to regulate credit default swaps. Credit default swaps subsequently played an important role in helping to further inflate the housing bubble in the 2000s, which in turn led to the Great Meltdown of 2008 and a worldwide recession.

The Clinton administration was also interested in cutting the annual Social Security cost-of-living adjustment, based on the claim that the consumer price index overstated the true rate of inflation. However, under pressure from unions and other progressive groups, it backed away from this position and never publicly advocated it.

After leaving the Clinton administration, Summers became president of Harvard but still remained very much involved in economic policy debates. He had dismissed any concerns about the stock bubble that was driving the economy in the Clinton years. The bubble’s collapse in 2000–2002 gave us a recession with the longest period without job growth since the Great Depression.

Summers was also dismissive of concerns about the growing housing bubble that drove the recovery from the 2001 recession onward. At an economics conference in 2005, Summers famously criticized Raghuram Rajan, who subsequently became head of the Central Bank of India, as a “financial Luddite” for raising questions about the complex financial instruments that were being used to support the housing market. As noted, the collapse of the housing bubble and the resulting financial crisis gave us the Great Recession, the worst downturn since the Great Depression.

But Summers wasn’t done. He was appointed to head the National Economic Council under Obama. The NEC is supposed to compile views on economic issues from various corners of the administration and present them to the president. Summers made the position the main focal point for policy under Obama.

There he played a key role in supporting the bailout of the banks, rather than letting the free market work its magic and downsize an incredibly bloated financial sector. In fact, he pushed for a bank bailout even before he joined the administration, pressing Democrats in Congress to support George W. Bush’s TARP bill, the $700 billion financial rescue bill, before the November 2008 election.

Once in office, Summers helped to engineer a grossly inadequate stimulus bill. He argued, plausibly, that it wasn’t possible to get a larger stimulus through Congress. But rather than trying to set the stage for further stimulus, Summers joined the team in proclaiming the success of the recovery, even as job growth remained anemic. The slow recovery, and the resulting weakness of the labor market, was undoubtedly a key factor in the economic discontent that fueled support for Trump in 2016.

Summers also wasn’t done on the trade front. A major initiative of the Obama administration was the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would have locked in industry-friendly rules in a variety of areas, most notably protection for pharmaceuticals.

Summers was not considered for a top slot in the Biden administration, either by his choice or by Biden’s. But that didn’t keep him from sharing his opinions. He was a harsh critic of Biden’s recovery package. He denounced the bill, as well as the low interest-rate policy of the “woke Fed,” as the most irresponsible macroeconomic policy in 40 years.   

Summers’s criticism carried special weight given his status as a top official in the prior two Democratic presidencies. It was often cited not only by Republicans but also by Democratic holdouts like West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. This helped to undermine efforts to add in parts of Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, such as expanded childcare subsidies, that were separated from the infrastructure bill that did pass.

For a time when inflation accelerated in 2021–2022, it looked as though Summers could have a point. But as inflation started to slow without the big jump in unemployment Summers said would be necessary, Summers argued that the consumer price index understated inflation, reversing his position from the late 1990s.

With inflation having fallen back almost to the Fed’s 2 percent target by the election, there seems little doubt that Summers was wrong in his assessment of Biden’s recovery package. There is even less doubt that Summers’s criticisms were not helpful in promoting a progressive agenda in the Biden years. For this reason, and his long prior history of misguided policy recommendations, Summers’s voice in policy debates will not be missed.

Of course, it may still be too soon to count Summers out. He has come back from the seeming political dead several times in the past, so we should not take for granted that Epstein’s ghost put a stake through his heart. But those of us who care about progressive economic policy can hope that we’ve seen the last time Summers will be calling the shots in a Democratic administration.

U.S. Coast Guard Will No Longer Consider Swastika a Hate Symbol - 2025-11-20T20:09:17Z

The U.S. Coast Guard is no longer going to consider the swastika a hate symbol. 

The Washington Post reports that a new policy will take effect next month at the military branch that will reclassify the swastika, used by the German Nazi Party and adopted as a global symbol of fascism and white supremacy, as “potentially divisive.” Other symbols being reclassified include the Confederate flag and nooses, although displaying the flag will still be banned.

Some historic displays or art with the Confederate flag will still be permitted, the Post reports. The new policy comes even though the Coast Guard isn’t part of the Department of Defense, under which Secretary Pete Hegseth has sought to overhaul standards on harassment and hazing. 

Instead, the Coast Guard falls under the Department of Homeland Security, but that hasn’t shielded the military branch from the Trump administration’s attempts to change military culture. On Donald Trump’s first day as president, he fired the first woman commandant at the Coast Guard, Admiral Linda Fagan, ostensibly for focusing too much on diversity initiatives. 

Days later, the new acting commandant, Admiral Kevin Lunday, suspended the Coast Guard’s hazing and harassment policy, which included the swastika in a “list of symbols whose display, presentation, creation, or depiction would constitute a potential hate incident.”

Both in his first and second terms, Trump has trafficked in racist tropes, and reclassifying the swastika may be an attempt to retain and attract people the military would have previously turned away. In any case, racism is becoming less and less of a dealbreaker for national service under Trump.  

Trump Prosecutor Attacks Judge After He Questions if She’s a “Puppet” - 2025-11-20T20:07:02Z

Drama continues to follow interim U.S. Attorney and former Trump defense lawyer Lindsey Halligan, as she had a heated exchange with a federal judge who suggested she may be the president’s “puppet.”

Halligan spoke to the New York Post exclusively about the spat, which occurred during a hearing for former FBI Director and Trump administration legal target James Comey.

“Personal attacks—like Judge Nachmanoff referring to me as a ‘puppet’—don’t change the facts or the law,” she said. “The Judicial Canons require judges to be ‘patient, dignified, respectful, and courteous to litigants, jurors, witnesses, lawyers, and others with whom the judge deals in an official capacity’ … and to ‘act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.’”

For what it’s worth, Judge Michael Nachmanoff never called her a puppet, and was asking the defense for clarification on their argument.

“So your view is that Ms. Halligan is a stalking horse or a puppet, for want of a better word, doing the president’s bidding,” he said, according to court files.

“Well, I don’t want to use language about Ms. Halligan that suggests anything other than she did what she was told to do,” the defense lawyer replied. Nachmanoff did not object.

Still, that was enough to set Halligan off, leading her to do a sit-down with a right-wing newspaper to speak directly about the judge presiding over the case she was actively prosecuting.

“Never have I ever … seen a sitting U.S. Attorney give an interview and make extrajudicial statements about a pending case,” Reuters’s Sarah Lynch wrote on X. “This is not customary for federal prosecutors. Usually DOJ only speaks through court filings.”

This isn’t the first issue Halligan has faced in the early days of her prosecution of Comey. On Monday, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick said she made two “fundamental misstatements of law” to the grand jury, putting the entire case in jeopardy. And on Wednesday, Halligan told the court that only two grand jurors reviewed the Comey indictment before it was presented.

Aside from these flubs and unconventional media decisions, calling Halligan a “puppet,” even indirectly, isn’t too far off. The only reason the president’s former lawyer was awarded this position is because her predecessor, Erik Siebert, refused to indict Comey due to a lack of evidence.

Leavitt Says She’s Not a Lawyer, But Dems’ Video Is “Punishable” - 2025-11-20T19:48:10Z

The White House is falling neatly in line behind Donald Trump’s call to execute half a dozen Democratic lawmakers.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt practically snapped Thursday under a massive public backlash to the president’s dangerous language, accusing reporters during a press conference of inappropriately focusing on Trump’s comments instead of what made him upset. It wasn’t clear, however, if Leavitt was fully informed on the controversy, getting basic details about the situation incorrect.

“Let’s be clear about what the president is responding to, because many in this room want to talk about the president’s response but not what brought the president to respond in this way,” Leavitt said. “You have sitting members of the United States Congress who conspired together to orchestrate a video message to members of the United States military, to active-duty service members, to members of the National Security apparatus, encouraging them to defy the president’s lawful orders.”

Leavitt went on to accuse “three” members of Congress of having participated in the protest, though her count was wrong.

Six Democratic members of the House and Senate—a coalition of veterans and former national security professionals—posted a video on Facebook Tuesday, repeating the message to America’s military and intelligence communities that they “can” and “must … refuse illegal orders.” They made no reference to disobeying Trump directly, only reminding people to uphold the Constitution.

Those lawmakers were Representatives Jason Crow of Colorado, Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, as well as Senators Mark Kelly of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan.

“The sanctity of our military rests on the chain of command, and if that chain of command is broken, it can lead to people getting killed, it can lead to chaos, and that’s what these members of Congress—who swore an oath to abide by the Constitution—are essentially encouraging,” Leavitt continued.

“These members knew what they were doing. They were leaning into their credentials … to signal to people serving under this commander in chief, Donald Trump, that you can defy him and you can betray your oath of office. That is a very, very dangerous message, and it perhaps is punishable by law.”

She then added, “I’m not a lawyer.”

Trump responded to the video Thursday by warning that “their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???” He followed up on that Truth Social post an hour later by calling for their “DEATH.”

Despite the executive pressure, Democrats have refused to back down. In a joint statement Thursday, the same coalition of Democratic lawmakers reiterated that there was nothing illegal about reminding service members to “follow only lawful orders.”

“It is not only the right thing to do, but also our duty,” they wrote. “In these moments, fear is contagious, but so is courage. We will continue to lead and will not be intimidated.”

Karoline Leavitt Says Trump’s “Piggy” Insult Is a Sign of Respect - 2025-11-20T19:36:27Z

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt offered a truly pathetic defense Thursday for President Donald Trump calling a female reporter “piggy.”

During a press briefing, Leavitt was asked to explain what the president meant when he said, “Quiet, piggy” to Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey earlier this week. Lucey had asked him a question about Jeffrey Epstein while on Air Force One.

Presenting her own wild spin, Leavitt claimed Trump’s crude and sexist comment was him being “frank and open” with the press, and an example of behavior that was “a lot more respectful” than that of the previous administration.

“So, I think the president being frank and open and honest to your faces, rather than hiding behind your backs, is frankly a lot more respectful than what you saw in the last administration, when you had a president that lied to your face and then didn’t speak to you for weeks, and hid upstairs and didn’t take your questions,” Leavitt said. “So I think everyone in this room should appreciate the frankness and the openness that you get from President Trump on a near daily basis.”  

Leavitt’s right about one thing: This is completely normal behavior for Trump. The president has a well-documented history of berating female reporters who ask him tough questions, calling them “the worst” and “second-rate,” telling them “to be quiet” and that they “know nothing about nothing,” and saying that he doesn’t like their “attitude.”

A White House official responded earlier this week to the incident with Lucey, claiming that she had “behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional way towards her colleagues on the plane.” When pressed on what specifically Lucey had done wrong, the White House did not respond.

“Insanity”: House in Total Chaos After Shutdown - 2025-11-20T17:49:30Z

Bedlam has consumed the House of Representatives since the end of the government shutdown.

Lawmakers don’t seem to remember how to get along with one another after a whopping 54-day recess. Instead, they’re practically at each other’s throats, with several major intra- and interparty clashes taking center stage in the lower chamber.

On Tuesday, Democratic Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s resolution to rebuke her liberal colleague Representative Chuy Garcia passed the House, formally reprimanding the Chicago-area politico for attempting to handpick his successor.

Hours later, the House deliberated on censuring Virgin Islands Delegate Stacey Plaskett. Documents released from the Epstein estate revealed Plaskett had texted with Jeffrey Epstein during a 2019 Oversight Committee hearing, using his answers to craft questions for the president’s former fixer Michael Cohen.

After that vote failed, Representative Lauren Boebert—a member of the conservative coalition that penned the censure—practically exploded at her fellow Republicans, torching them for failing to act while they hold majorities in both chambers of Congress.

“It was multiple F-bombs,” one Republican who witnessed the tirade told NBC News. “At least one of them that I heard clearly was, ‘What the f--- am I doing here?’”

But wait, there’s more! Representative Nancy Mace moved Wednesday to force a vote on censuring embattled Florida Representative Cory Mills. The effort would strip Mills from his committee appointments, potentially removing him from the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees.

Last month, a judge granted a restraining order against Mills after his ex-girlfriend accused him of “harassment, threatening to release sexual videos, and to harm future boyfriends.” It’s hard to imagine that didn’t catch Mace’s attention, since she has spent the better part of the year working to introduce legislation to curb revenge porn.

The House Ethics Committee announced Wednesday that it would open an investigation into Mills, but Mace’s attempt to censure him before that investigation has even begun rubbed one of her fellow Republicans the wrong way.

“It’s insanity. They want to convict and sentence people, and then send it to Ethics for investigation. Ass backwards,” one lawmaker told NBC.

Mike Johnson Justifies Trump Threatening to Execute Democrats - 2025-11-20T17:44:49Z

House Speaker Mike Johnson thinks it’s “wildly inappropriate” for Democrats to tell troops to obey the U.S. Constitution, but he wasn’t the slightest bit concerned about President Donald Trump’s threat to execute Democratic lawmakers.

Speaking to the press Thursday, Johnson was asked to respond to Trump’s claim that a group of Democratic lawmakers had committed “seditious behavior punishable by death” by posting a video reminding members of the military and intelligence community not to obey illegal orders.

Johnson fumed about the message these lawmakers were sending to impressionable “young troops,” but he did not address the president’s own violent rhetoric. “I mean think of what the threat that is to our national security and what it means to our institutions,” the speaker said. 

“We have got to raise the bar in Congress, this is out of control, and it is wildly inappropriate. And for a senator like Mark Kelly or any member of congress in the House or Senate to be engaged in that kind of talk is to me just so beyond the pale,” Johnson said. 

What was beyond the pale was Trump’s fury at lawmakers reminding troops and intelligence officials  that they’d sworn an oath to defend and obey the U.S. Constitution—not the president or his administration. 

Senator Marsha Blackburn also defended Trump’s outrageous response during an appearance on Newsmax Thursday, claiming that members of the military were simply “there to carry out their orders.”

Both Johnson and Blackburn seem to think that diminishing the agency and intelligence of servicemembers is the best way to justify the president’s outrageous response. 

While the lawmakers didn’t get specific about what orders were unconstitutional, there have been major legal concerns about a number of the president’s actions. A recent report revealed that the top military lawyer for the command overseeing Trump’s strikes on alleged “drug boats” thought they were illegal—but the Pentagon ignored him. Additionally, the Trump administration’s federal law enforcement takeover of American cities has also been challenged in courts around the country.

Feds Drop Case After Border Patrol Bragged About Shooting Defendant - 2025-11-20T17:43:47Z

Federal prosecutors are seeking to dismiss charges against a woman shot by Border Patrol last month.

Marimar Martinez and her co-defendant, Anthony Ruiz, were charged with impeding a federal officer with a deadly weapon when her car collided with a Border Patrol vehicle in Chicago’s Brighton Park neighborhood on October 4. But Martinez has argued the opposite: Border Patrol agent Charles Exum crashed into her car, and then shot her.

On Thursday, prosecutors moved to dismiss the charges just before a new hearing in federal court, where Martinez and Ruiz’s attorneys were going to reveal new text messages from Exum that have not yet been made public. Exum has already gotten in trouble for Signal texts bragging about the shooting to his fellow agents, saying, “I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.” Exum also sent a news article to another recipient saying, “Read it. 5 shots, 7 holes.”

The move to dismiss charges suggests damaging material was going to be revealed in the new texts. Already, the facts in the case reflected poorly on Exum, as he quickly drove his government-issued Chevrolet Tahoe to a Border Patrol mechanic in Maine for repairs before any investigation could examine the damage. Also, video from the incident allegedly shows Exum saying, “Do something, bitch,” before getting out of his car and shooting Martinez.

President Trump’s “Operation Midway Blitz,” ostensibly to enforce immigration law, has resulted in brutality against protesters and multiple court rulings against Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino left Chicago after being rebuked by a federal judge for using tear gas and other riot-prevention methods against protesters.

Martinez was a victim of this half-baked operation, along with countless immigrants in Chicago. But the White House is doing the same thing in other cities across the U.S., such as Charlotte, North Carolina. How will the government be held accountable?

Trump Plans Shocking Order Banning States From Regulating AI - 2025-11-20T17:33:18Z

President Trump is so devoted to protecting the artificial intelligence industry that he is preparing to sign an executive order attacking states’ rights to regulate it.

The order would direct the Justice Department to sue states that pass AI regulation laws. It would also have Attorney General Pam Bondi create an “AI Litigation Task Force” to “challenge state AI laws, including on grounds that such laws unconstitutionally regulate interstate commerce, are preempted by existing federal regulations, or are otherwise unlawful.” The order would also have the Commerce Department withholding federal funding from states that didn’t fall in line with Trump on AI.

Trump could issue the executive order as soon as Friday, according to reports.

This summer, the Senate voted overwhelmingly against an effort to restrict AI regulation on the state level. Many of Trump’s own party members disagreed with the legislation on the grounds that it would protect an industry that may cut jobs, hurt children, and drive up utility prices. Those same issues—along with the erosion of states’ rights at the center of the effort—are still prevalent.

“There should not be a moratorium on states rights for AI,” MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X Thursday. “States must retain the right to regulate and make laws on AI and anything else for the benefit of their state. Federalism must be preserved.”

MTG is unfortunately correct here. States should play a large role in determining the extent to which they want AI active within their borders. Trump using an executive order with the Justice and Commerce departments to prioritize AI companies over real people feels like a shrewd, neoliberal move—not very small government or antifederalist for a Republican president.

“Preemption is a question for Congress, which they have considered and rejected, and should continue to reject,” Center for Democracy and Technology director Travis Hall told The Washington Post. “This proposal is shocking in its disregard for the democratic processes of state governments in their work to address the real and documented harms arising from AI tools.”

Top Military Lawyer Says Trump Ignored His Advice on Boat Strikes - 2025-11-20T16:50:02Z

Even the top military lawyer for the command overseeing President Donald Trump’s strikes on alleged “drug boats” thought they were illegal—but the Pentagon ignored him.

Senior government officials reportedly dismissed legal concerns raised by the senior judge advocate general at the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, who warned against the Trump administration’s plan to bomb foreign vessels the government claims are transporting drugs. He warned that the strikes could be considered extrajudicial killings, according to two senior U.S. officials, two senior congressional aides, and two former senior U.S. officials who spoke with NBC News.

Among those senior officials were members of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the six sources said.

Three people familiar with the matter identified the senior judge advocate general as Marine Col. Paul Meagher, who is the top lawyer overseeing command for military operations in the Caribbean.

In a statement to NBC News, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell denied that anyone had “raised concerns to any attorneys in the chain of command regarding the legality of the strikes conducted thus far.”

Historically, the U.S. would use intelligence to stop vessels that could be involved in drug trafficking, and then board and search them. But starting in September, Trump has opted to just blow them up, killing dozens of crew members, violating international law, and costing the U.S. valuable intelligence allies.

The Trump administration has claimed that its military strikes on these foreign vessels have targeted “unlawful combatants” engaged in an “armed conflict.” But a closer look at some of the men killed in these strikes revealed that they were not so-called “narco-terrorists” or members of criminal gangs or cartels. Crucially, they weren’t all smuggling drugs. Those that were were smuggling cocaine, not synthetic opioids responsible for killing tens of thousands of Americans every year.

Zohran Mamdani Reveals What He Plans to Talk to Trump About - 2025-11-20T15:58:56Z

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is meeting with President Trump at the White House on Friday, where he plans to discuss how New Yorkers are struggling to afford to live in their city.

Mamdani spoke to MS NOW’s Chris Hayes Wednesday night, saying that his office reached out to the president “because of a commitment that I made to New Yorkers that I would be willing to meet with anyone and everyone so long as it was to the benefit of eight and a half million people who call the city home and their struggle to afford the most expensive city in the United States.”

“I want to just speak plainly to the president about what it means to actually stand up for New Yorkers and the way in which New Yorkers are struggling to afford this city,” Mamdani added. “Frankly, cost of living is something that I heard time and time again from New Yorkers about why they voted for Donald Trump.”

A few days after Trump won the presidential election in 2024, Mamdani, then a New York state assemblyman, took to New York’s streets to ask people why they voted for Trump. What he found was that they were upset with politics, angry about Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and feeling squeezed by the city’s high cost of living.

One year later, Mamdani defeated a well-funded opponent, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, to be elected mayor, despite facing multiple attacks on his agenda of affordability and policy items such as free city buses and childcare. Right-wing figures, including Cuomo, made bigoted remarks about Mamdani’s Muslim faith and support for Palestine.

Trump was no exception, urging New Yorkers to vote for Cuomo and continuously calling Mamdani a Communist, even in his announcement on Truth Social of Friday’s meeting. What happens in that meeting will preview how Mamdani will handle a president who has already sent the National Guard into cities he doesn’t like and threatened to revoke all federal funding to New York.

Trump Called Epstein Right After Winning 2016 Election - 2025-11-20T15:56:30Z

Donald Trump was reportedly still in contact with Jeffrey Epstein as he ascended to public office.

Trump has claimed he cut off contact with Epstein after the financier was convicted in 2009 for soliciting underage prostitutes, referring to Epstein as a “creep.” But he rang his old “pal” in 2016, shortly after he won the presidential election, according to one of the sex trafficker’s closest confidants.

“After the election—you know I used to speak to Jeffrey regularly—and one of the calls we spoke, Jeffrey told me that Trump, it was after the election that Trump called him,” Epstein’s brother Mark told CNN Wednesday.

“And it was sort of like, can you believe this? Because nobody believed Trump was going to win. Trump was very surprised himself that he won, so Jeffrey said he called him like, ‘Can you believe this?’” Epstein continued, specifying that Trump had called his brother and not the other way around.

Trump and Epstein were friends for decades before their relationship reportedly dissolved over a real estate dispute in Palm Beach, Florida. Prior to his death, the child rapist described himself as one of Trump’s “closest friends.” The socialites were named and photographed together on several occasions and were caught partying with underage girls in New Jersey casinos. Epstein was invited to attend Trump’s wedding to Marla Maples in 1993, and in 2002, Trump told New York magazine that Epstein was a “terrific guy.”

“He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” Trump told the magazine at the time.

But the pair weren’t always simpatico, especially in the years leading up to Epstein’s death. In the same interview with CNN, Mark Epstein recalled a documented conversation between his brother and former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon, in which the New York financier said he “stopped hanging out with Trump when he realized Trump was a crook.”

“That’s a direct quote from Jeffrey,” Epstein told the network.

Bannon assisted Epstein in navigating the political and legal quagmire that was the last year of his life. As part of that, Bannon conducted a series of interviews with Epstein between 2018 and early 2019, totaling about 15 hours of unseen footage.

“Crook” wasn’t the only bad word that Epstein shared about his longtime friend. In a 2017 exchange with Larry Summers, the former treasury secretary and president of Harvard University, Epstein said that Trump was “dangerous” and was one of the worst people he’d ever met. “Not one decent cell in his body,” Epstein wrote to Summers.

Todd Blanche Is Pissed Dems Want People to … Obey Constitution - 2025-11-20T15:44:31Z

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wants to investigate a group of Democratic lawmakers who made a video warning members of the military and intelligence community about the Trump administration, but he doesn’t even know what they were trying to instruct them to do.

In a video released Tuesday titled “Don’t Give Up the Ship,” a group of Democratic lawmakers with backgrounds in the armed forces and intelligence warned that the Trump administration was “pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.” They reminded government officers that they swore an oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution. 

The participating lawmakers were Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst; Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and naval officer; as well as Representatives Chrissy Houlahan, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, and Jason Crow.

“Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home. Our laws are clear, you can refuse illegal orders,” the lawmakers said. “You must refuse illegal orders.”

During an appearance on Fox News’s Hannity Wednesday night, Blanche was pressed on how he might investigate the video, which has riled Trump officials and the president himself. Blanche fumed that the lawmakers hadn’t actually specified which “court orders” ought to be violated. “You cannot do that in this country, especially if you’re a leader,” he said.  

Of course, the lawmakers hadn’t said anything about defying court orders, rather the orders they were given by the administration that defied the Constitution or federal law.

“I think they should be held to account,” Blanche continued. “I think that those congressmen should be required to answer questions about why they did what they did. And the American people deserve that, and so does President Trump.”

Despite lawmakers making only a vague reference to unconstitutional orders, Trump accused the lawmakers Thursday of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

In a series of posts on social media, Trump flew into a fury. “Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand—We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET,” he wrote on Truth Social.

“This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country,” he wrote in another post. “Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???”

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller claimed Tuesday that “Democrat lawmakers are now openly calling for insurrection,” while in fact, they were calling for the opposite.

Trump Suggests Executing Democrats Over Message to Troops - 2025-11-20T15:31:52Z

On Tuesday, multiple congressional Democrats made a video reminding the members of the military and intelligence community of their duty to the Constitution, not to President Trump. On Thursday, Trump called them “TRAITORS” and shared a post calling for them to be executed. 

The fairly milquetoast video that drew Trump’s outrage featured Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, and Representatives Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, and Chrissy Houlahan—all former military or intelligence veterans. 

“This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens. Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend this Constitution. Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home,” the Democrats said. “Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders.”

We want to speak directly to members of the Military and the Intelligence Community.

The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution.

Don’t give up the ship. pic.twitter.com/N8lW0EpQ7r

— Sen. Elissa Slotkin (@SenatorSlotkin) November 18, 2025

The clip set Trump and MAGA off. 

“This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP??? President DJT.” 

“HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!” read another post retruthed by Trump.

The person who posted that had a “deus vult” profile picture, a symbol commonly associated with the neo-Nazi movement.

“Get these people out of office!!  They aren’t doing their jobs, they are looking for ways to be rebels, and take others with them.  They need to go!!!” yet another said.

“Why aren’t they under arrest for sedition......thrown out of their offices...ENOUGH IS ENOUGH…” read another.

It’s rich to hear the January 6 crowd who wanted to hang Mike Pence now whine about sedition, treason, and conspiracy. Trump absolutely has pitted the military against normal American citizens. From releasing them into the streets of American cities, to the possibility of sending them to polling stations in blue districts to “monitor” elections, there is a clear attempt from Trump here to make the military his personal army rather than a body beholden to the rules of the Constitution he has so much disdain for. 

This story has been updated.

Here’s the Data Showing Why Dems Must Keep Talking About Climate - 2025-11-20T15:17:50Z

Over the last several months, reports from billionaire-funded centrist advocacy groups, like WelcomePAC and Searchlight Institute, have insisted that Democrats stop talking about climate change—either in their campaigns or while governing. Climate change has little resonance for voters, they claim, comparing the polling on reliably unpopular policies like “create a carbon tax” with reliably popular policies like “lower the gas tax.”

Unfortunately, this message appears to be reaching its intended audience. In just the last week, New York Governor Kathy Hochul approved a new gas pipeline that President Donald Trump has been championing, while Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro dropped his state’s effort to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

The idea that Democrats should abandon the most existential fight human civilization has ever faced is a particularly bizarre lesson to draw following Democrats’ huge wins this November, when many of the party’s victorious candidates explicitly championed clean energy investments and accountability for fossil fuel company profiteering as solutions to rising energy costs.

A memo published Wednesday by Data for Progress and Fossil Free Media therefore makes the exact opposite argument: Democrats shouldn’t run from climate. Instead, they should translate both the impact of climate change and the benefits of climate action for voters. The new memo, which I participated in drafting, points to evidence showing that, contrary to WelcomePAC’s and Searchlight’s portrayal of climate change as a niche social issue, climate-related costs already are top-of-mind, pocketbook concerns for most Americans.

A majority of voters say they believe climate change will have a direct financial impact on their families. Millions of voters are already feeling the pain of skyrocketing home insurance rates, which are driven by the increased risk of severe weather from climate change. Millions more are confronted each year with the staggering costs of disaster recovery from extreme weather events exacerbated by the climate crisis. And a strong majority of Americans are struggling with rising electricity prices, a problem that just 5 percent of voters blame on renewables versus corporate profits (38 percent), data centers (14 percent), and grid pressures from extreme weather (11 percent). On the flip side, expanding clean energy is the fastest way to produce cheap electricity needed to lower utility rates—and Democrats hold a massive trust advantage over Republicans when it comes to clean power.

This trust gap is a key part of the argument that Data for Progress and Fossil Free Media are making. Their memo points to findings that, right now, neither party has a significant trust advantage on “electric utility bills” (D+1) or “the cost of living” (R+1). But Democrats do have major trust advantages on “climate change” (D+14) and “renewable energy development” (D+6). By articulating how their climate and clean energy agenda can address these bread-and-butter concerns, Democrats can leverage their advantage on climate to win voters’ trust on what will likely be the most significant issues in 2026 and 2028.

The formula for doing this is pretty simple: First, explain why bills are rising and who’s to blame (utilities, fossil fuel volatility, data-center demand, climate disasters); second, commit to implementing visible cost relief (rate freezes, clean energy buildout); and third, name who will pay (polluters and profiteers, not regular people). Or, to simplify all this into one clear campaign-ready sentence: “We’ll take on rising electricity bills by building the cheapest power and stopping monopoly price-gouging, all while making polluters, not families, pay their fair share.”

The best part about this populist approach to climate is how obviously it contrasts with Trump and the Republicans. Imagine being able to tout this contrast in every stump speech in 2026: Democrats are trying to expand cheap, clean energy to secure lower rates, while Trump is trying to keep outdated coal plants running, forcing ratepayers to shoulder billions in extra costs. Democrats are getting tough on price-gouging utilities, while Republicans are giving these corporations free rein. Democrats are fighting to make polluters pay for increasingly costly climate disasters; Republicans want all of us to pay for the damage Big Oil caused.

Abandoning the climate fight would be a profoundly morally reprehensible course of action. (It’s a particularly unforgivable message when it comes from billionaires like Reid Hoffman, who are funding the groups telling Democrats to forget about climate while building their own luxury bunkers for “apocalypse insurance.”) It’s also a huge political mistake. To give up on climate, an issue that Democrats are trusted on, is to throw away a tool that Democrats can use to offer credible solutions to the cost-of-living crises affecting working people throughout the country.

“Heading into 2026,” the memo reads, “Democrats have a chance to define themselves as the party that will build the cheapest energy, crack down on profiteering, and make polluters, not families, pay for the climate damage they’ve caused.” That is, substantively, a great climate agenda. It’s also a winning electoral message, and one Democrats should be running on, not from.

Trump Signs Bill to Release Epstein Files—and Immediately Freaks Out - 2025-11-20T15:12:55Z

The public is on the verge of accessing the Epstein files, and Donald Trump is not happy about it.

After fighting for months to keep the files under lock and key, Trump expediently signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act Wednesday evening, hours after the Senate advanced it to his desk. Then, he went on a sprawling rant on social media in an apparent effort to twist his public image away from the longtime cozy relationship he maintained with the child sex trafficker and refocus on Democrats in the scandal that he has long branded as a “hoax.”

“Perhaps the truth about these Democrats, and their associations with Jeffrey Epstein, will soon be revealed, because I HAVE JUST SIGNED THE BILL TO RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!” Trump posted after accusing a slew of high-profile Democrats of financially benefiting from their own relationships with the deceased financier.

“As everyone knows, I asked Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, to pass this Bill in the House and Senate, respectively,” Trump said, referring to a missive he gave to Congress mere days ago.

At the time, that directive seemed to be little more than an effort to save face. House Republicans were lining up alongside Democrats to release the files, despite private meetings with Trump in which the president (unsuccessfully) begged his congressional allies to change their minds.

“At my direction, the Department of Justice has already turned over close to fifty thousand pages of documents to Congress. Do not forget—The Biden Administration did not turn over a SINGLE file or page related to Democrat Epstein, nor did they ever even speak about him,” Trump continued.

“Democrats have used the ‘Epstein’ issue, which affects them far more than the Republican Party, in order to try and distract from our AMAZING Victories, including THE GREAT BIG BEAUTIFUL TAX CUT BILL, Strong Borders, No Men in Women’s Sports or Transgender for Everyone, ending DEI, stopping Biden’s Record Setting Inflation, lowering Prices, Biggest Tax and Regulation Cuts in History, ending EIGHT Wars, rebuilding our Military, knocking out Iran’s Nuclear capability, getting Trillions of Dollars INVESTED in the U.S.A., creating the ‘HOTTEST’ Country anywhere in the World, and even delivering a HUGE DEFEAT to the Democrats on the recent Shutdown Disaster.”

Epstein, a New York socialite who orchestrated an international child sex trafficking ring to service the sick desires of the ultra wealthy, is believed to have abused hundreds of young girls.

The Trump administration first bungled the release of the files in July, when the Justice Department issued a memo that contradicted Attorney General Pam Bondi on the alleged existence of Epstein’s so-called “client list.” Since then, Trump has attempted to brush off the scandal, repeatedly referring to it as a Democrat-invented “hoax.”

“For years our Great Nation has had to endure RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, UKRAINE, IMPEACHMENT HOAX #1, IMPEACHMENT HOAX #2, and many other Democrat created Witch Hunts and Scams, all of which have been so terrible and divisive for our Country, and have been done to confuse, deflect, and distract from the GREAT JOB that Republicans, and the Trump Administration, are doing,” Trump concluded. “This latest Hoax will backfire on the Democrats just as all of the rest have! Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Trump has claimed he cut off contact with Epstein after the financier was convicted in 2009 for soliciting underage prostitutes, referring to Epstein as a “creep.” But recent releases from the Epstein estate indicate that Epstein was still hypervigilant of his old pal even as Trump ascended to the White House.

The House Oversight Committee released more than 20,000 emails last week that they had obtained from Epstein’s estate. The documents included multiple mentions of Trump, such as in a 2011 email, when Epstein expressed he was grateful Trump had stayed quiet about details of Epstein’s life. The “dog that hasn’t barked is Trump,” Epstein wrote, despite the fact that Trump had spent hours at one of Epstein’s properties with a known victim.

In a 2017 exchange with former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Epstein said that Trump was the worst individual he knew.

“I have met some very bad people, none as bad as Trump,” he wrote. “Not one decent cell in his body.”

When queried by Trump biographer Michael Wolff in 2019 about the extent of the president’s knowledge of abductions of young girls, Epstein remarked: “Of course he knew about the girls he asked Ghislaine to stop.”

Trump Discussed Taking Over CNN With Larry Ellison - 2025-11-20T14:28:40Z

President Trump and Larry Ellison—the conservative billionaire behind Oracle who wants to “retrain” the TikTok algorithm to be more pro-Israel—met to discuss which CNN hosts to fire if Ellison acquired the media company in a Paramount Warner Bros. Discovery deal, according to a Guardian report.

The two discussed firing Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar (both of whom Trump has issues with) and putting CBS’s 60 Minutes—now controlled by another Zionist, Bari Weiss—on CNN. While Paramount is run by Ellison’s son David, the senior Ellison owns the biggest share of the company.

This casual conversation shows that billionaires with agendas and a direct line to Trump have the power to change what Americans are seeing in the entire media landscape—from their TikTok for You page to their television. But FCC Chair Brendan Carr, who made news earlier this fall for his active muzzling of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, doesn’t foresee any antitrust or corruption problems.

“I’d be very surprised if there was an FCC role at all in that type of transaction,” Carr previously told The Guardian, also mentioning that he was “not focused on the rumor mills around those transactions.”

Paramount’s initial bid for Warner Bros. is due Thursday, November 20.

The Comey Hearing: This Would Be Hilarious If It Weren’t So Scandalous - 2025-11-20T14:24:35Z

Two days ago on my Talking Feds Substack, I wrote that Monday of this week was Lindsey Halligan’s worst day to date—which was already saying something—and that it pointed to far worse ones still to come. I could not have anticipated that the first of those far worse days would arrive quite so soon—yesterday, to be precise.

I was in the northern Virginia courtroom Wednesday for the argument before Judge Michael Nachmanoff on former FBI Director James Comey’s motion to dismiss the case Halligan brought against him because it was a reprisal prosecution brought at President Trump’s command out of personal antagonism toward Comey.

As Halligan looked on from counsel table, one of her assistants, Tyler Lemons, tried his best to argue that whatever incendiary rhetoric Trump served up against Comey, the actual decision to indict was made by Halligan and the grand jury. In legal terms, the administration was opposing Comey’s motion by arguing that Trump’s obvious animus was not the cause of the indictment.

Nachmanoff pressed the government lawyer about how Halligan could have been the decision-maker when she came to the case only a few days before she sought the indictment.

It was in chasing down the implausible timeline that Nachmanoff cornered the government into conceding that the grand jury had not even reviewed the actual indictment in the case.

It was a gobsmacking, Perry Mason moment of the sort that doesn’t happen in actual hearings; except it did. The spectators emitted a kind of silent gasp while Judge Nachmanoff pursed his lips and remained silent for several seconds.

The bizarre and unprecedented chain of events happened because the grand jury declined to return the first of three charges in the government’s proposed indictment (and it approved charges two and three by reportedly very narrow margins). But instead of presenting to the grand jury a new indictment with the two approved counts—not only standard procedure but the only conceivable one—Halligan and her colleagues simply cut and pasted the original indictment, removing the first charge and renumbering the remaining two.

That’s how it came to pass that the grand jury did not even review the supposed operative indictment. Michael Dreeben, Comey’s counsel, was quick to argue that “there is no indictment” because the charging document now before the court was never seen by the full panel.

It’s hard to convey how consummately boneheaded it was to try to slip a revised indictment past the court rather than presenting it to the grand jury. Earlier in the week, Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick had referred to the situation as “uncharted territory.”

As this all spilled out, Nachmanoff summoned Halligan to the podium to confirm that when the second indictment was presented, the full grand jury wasn’t in the courtroom. Halligan acknowledged it, and Nachmanoff curtly dismissed her.

The revelation changed the entire character of the hearing, adding a coda of total ridicule for Halligan. Halligan already had egg on her face for a series of blunders. This was more like an entire omelet.

Nachmanoff, who was exceptionally well prepared and even-tempered, may have been the only person in the courtroom who anticipated the possibility that the government had not presented the indictment to the grand jury at all. He was ready with a 1969 case, Gaither v. United States, from the D.C. Circuit—a case that did not present this particular set of facts (it’s not clear any case ever has) but was highly relevant in its emphasis on the grand jury’s independent constitutional role.

That case rejected the idea that similar irregularities were mere clerical errors and applied a test focused on the grand jury’s actual intention. If Nachmanoff applies that framework, there is at least a colorable argument that the grand jury, despite the comedy of errors, intended to green-light the two charges that appeared in the indictment it never actually saw.

But that alone wouldn’t rescue the government. Recall that Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick found no fewer than 11 instances of serious misconduct, justifying, among other things, the production to the Comey team of grand jury materials. This latest screw-up is yet another basis for disclosure: It goes directly to whether there was ever a valid grand jury vote on the actual charges.

The more important point is that at least two of these instances of misconduct look to present serious arguments for dismissal with prejudice, which would bring to a close the prosecution that I have called “the single most shameful act in the Department of Justice’s history.”

The government was required to file objections to the magistrate’s opinion by Wednesday at 5 p.m. It did so, with a flurry of demurrers arguing that even if the case has been one long skein of blunders, they were all small-bore and don’t require dismissal.

The first issue is the “vindictive prosecution” motion itself. Before the hearing lurched into the absurd, Dreeben was making significant headway persuading the court that Trump’s retribution commands were the “but-for cause” of the indictment—the standard the law prescribes. The government’s anemic response was that Halligan independently evaluated the case and that the grand jury’s vote broke the causal chain. In a fairly embarrassing formulation that landed flat, Lemons told the court that “Halligan was not a puppet.”

As Dreeben emphasized—and Lemons ultimately conceded—if Trump’s commands caused the prosecution, it would be a grave violation of the due process clause. It’s hard to see the court giving the government a second shot, particularly since any new indictment would now be time-barred: The five-year statute of limitations has expired.

Perhaps more seriously, the magistrate’s opinion outlined two fundamental misstatements of law that Halligan made to the grand jury, each in response to juror questions. The opinion redacted the statements but described them sufficiently to reveal more breathtaking prosecutorial malpractice.

Halligan mischaracterized Comey’s Fifth Amendment right to remain silent in a way that could have suggested to jurors that the burden of proof lay with him. And she told them that if the government’s evidence appeared thin, they need not worry—additional evidence would come out at trial.

In its filing yesterday, the government did little to dispute the facts, arguing instead that if Halligan misled the jury, dismissal would be inappropriate unless the court found prejudice. That may be true in the abstract, but nothing about these errors feels harmless: The misstatements were grave, fundamental, and, given the grand jury’s already narrow votes, plainly consequential.

And on this score, another malefactor surfaces: Attorney General Pam Bondi. DOJ filings assert that Bondi reviewed the grand jury proceedings and materials and, on that basis, ratified both the indictment and Halligan’s authority. If so, she necessarily signed off on the very misstatements Judge Fitzpatrick highlighted. Her willingness to act as a shill for Halligan implicates her directly in the ethical and constitutional violations.

In short, and remarkably, the case looks even more ill fated, bungled, and corrupt than it did two short days ago. And that’s without accounting for the separate motion to dismiss on the grounds that Halligan’s appointment was invalid. The judge in that matter has said she will rule within the week.

The case now seems to be in a kind of death spiral—so riddled with independently fatal flaws that the only real question is how, not whether, it will crash and burn.

Ex-GOP Aide Charged With Faking Violent Leftist Attack on Herself - 2025-11-20T14:13:36Z

A former congressional aide to a Republican congressman staged a fake anti-Trump attack against her over the summer and is now facing federal charges.

Natalie Greene, who used to work for Representative Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, allegedly paid a body modification artist $500 to physically wound her, tie her up with zip ties, and write “Trump Whore” on her stomach and “Van Drew is a racist” on her back, the New Jersey Globe reports.

All of this took place in July, with Greene’s friend calling 911 claiming the two had been ambushed by three men on a hiking trail in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey. When police arrived, they found Greene with her shirt pulled over her head, bound with black zip ties, and the words written on her body. She also said the attackers threatened her with a gun.

According to federal prosecutors, Greene, a Rutgers law student, was lying about nearly everything. She drove to Pennsylvania to hire the modification artist, providing a pattern she had already made. Greene had matching zip ties in her car, and according to cellphone records, and her friend had searched for “zip ties near me” two days before the supposed attack.

Days after the incident, while Greene was getting treated for her wounds, FBI investigators interviewed her and her friend, and their stories did not match. She has been charged with one count of conspiracy to convey false statements and hoaxes and one count of making false statements to federal law enforcement.

In a statement, Drew’s congressional office said they were “deeply saddened by today’s news,” adding, “While Natalie is no longer associated with the congressman’s government office, our thoughts and prayers are with her and hope she’s getting the care she needs.”

Transcript: Trump’s Anti-Affordability Agenda Hits Colleges - 2025-11-20T13:22:07Z

This is a lightly edited transcript of the November 18 edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch the video here or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.

Perry Bacon: I’m Perry Bacon. I’m the host of the New Republic show Right Now. I’m joined by the University of Iowa professor of sociology and African American studies Louise Seamster. Thanks for joining me.

Louise Seamster: Thanks for having me.

Bacon: And so, I want to talk— you write a lot about education, about a lot about policy, a lot about how our society works. You’re a sociologist. So I want to talk about, first of all, we’ve had a lot of focus on what the Trump administration has done to universities and focus on the university as an institution.

We’re trying to defund this part of Harvard or get rid of UVA’s program. That stuff’s all very important, but I think a lot of your work has been about students. There’s a lot of policies that affect students, in terms of how they’re changing financial aid and so on—can you talk about how they’re trying to change the student experience, the paying-for-college experience, and maybe the kind of demographics of who’s in college?

Seamster: Yeah. I mean, all of these things are happening at once. Well, I’ll start by saying it’s hard to even track because a lot of the policies that are launched are floated and then you’re not sure which actually take place, or they’re issued in a declaration and you’re not sure what is mobilized behind it.

But as a whole, we can see that at the same time that there’s a lot of active investigations into universities and, as you said, attempts to bring various universities to heel or under control of the Trump administration and exerting both present-day and future financial control over these universities.

There’s also a lot going on, at the same time, that you could argue is either trying to unwind Biden administration policies that were attempting to address a student debt crisis and actually make good on promises around debt forgiveness for existing programs or improve them. That also goes against a lot of the attempts of the past couple decades about making college more affordable.

What I also think is important to track is how a lot of the same narratives that people have been using up until recently are getting twisted against them. So where people like me were arguing that student debt had become a crisis, that’s now getting twisted to say things like, Oh, well, these schools aren’t worth it, and that people are acquiring all this debt for programs that aren’t worth it, so that we should do things like create caps on student loans that you can take out. Or I’ve seen proposed on the table that you should take those income-derived programs that already displace hope of debt forgiveness for 20 or 25 years, and what was problematic—according to the Trump administration—is the debt forgiveness at the end of it.

So already very, very few people are even going to get that debt forgiveness prior to Biden’s temporary waivers and fixes. But this is saying that what was problematic was the fact that people at least had the hope of having loan forgiveness at the end. This is going to make—and it’s already making—a lot of either current or prospective students very concerned, including my own students.

They talk about their concerns with me and their uncertainty, and I don’t know what to tell them anymore about what is going to happen. A student yesterday I was talking to was expressing concern about the changes potentially to the professional degrees qualifications, such that it might limit how much debt you can take out for a graduate degree, especially for programs like public health or, I believe, nursing.

So that would have … all of these things together are going to negatively affect the same students who are already the most affected by the student loan crisis, which is students of color and women and people who have been targeted by colleges in a lot of different ways. And we—we should definitely be concerned about that as well.

Bacon: So in the “big beautiful bill,” there actually are some changes of student aid policy themselves, right? It makes it harder to take out loans and so on.

Seamster: Yes, I believe so. I will say I have not looked too deeply into those, but things like shifting the way Pell grants work—I believe trying to name, rename Pell grants, Trump grants—is one of the plans on deck.

But also making it harder for people to take out loans. And then we’ve also been trying to reckon with a proposal from the Department of Education to privatize or sell off the portfolio of existing student loans. And it seems, given recent announcements, the Department of Education may still be trying to get out of the business of providing federal student loans altogether.

Bacon: There was a discourse in 2021, 2024—that was in the Biden years—there were a couple arguments. One is too many people are going to college. And this was at times Democrats, say, What do we think about that as an argument, as a point of a comment?

Seamster: Yeah. So many things were going on. To one degree, the narrative about college affordability—there was a discourse that was sending people to college as the American dream and a promise that was not necessarily going to pay out the same way for different people.

And there were some people who said that no matter the cost, this is worth it. There were other people who said you shouldn’t have to do that to make it worth it. And what I think is really important is—I’m thinking of another sociologist, Tressie McMillan Cottom’s work on this—talking about the education gospel, which kind of covers up a multitude of other problems with society, where education is being made to try and cover for the fact that we have a poor labor market, that people aren’t sure of what life chances they’re going to have without college. That it becomes kind of the floor that you require, and that people are doing worse and worse without that floor.

So a lot of the gains that people have from graduating from college are only relative to people who don’t have a college degree. It’s only because of the sliding fortunes of people without a college degree. And so I have been interested in the argument …

Bacon: Kind of hints that it’s less that a college degree is a credential and more that not having a college degree—it’s almost a decredential, is what she’s getting at.

Seamster: Right, a negative credential basically. And so I have been among those pushing for a robust reinvestment in public higher education such that everybody who wants to go can go and major in the things they want to major in because I think that promotes a healthy society.

And also we’re going to need teachers and nurses and doctors and engineers, and we need people who are not just chasing that one major that this year they promised is going to get them the career that can repay the investment. So I think that the push of saying too many people are attending college is coming alongside the last few decades’ opening up of universities to a more diverse student body.

And as I and others have found, that has accompanied a major shift in how we think of the provision—especially public higher education—from this collective-good model to an individual-good model that you have to pay for individually, often through loans. And so I don’t think you should have to go to college in order to do well in your career or to have a fulfilling career if you don’t want to go.

But I also think you shouldn’t be pressured to attend as a kind of do-or-die. But I also think that goes alongside, in my ideal world, everybody who wants to go and spend time reading about what’s our society, what are we doing, what do we owe to each other, can do that and spend a few years without this incurring a major cost on their lives.

And so I think sometimes this Well, it’s not for everybody push can be this conservative—I mean small-c conservative—type of vision of We want to keep this an elite playground and that only certain people should be allowed to have those conversations.

Bacon: I think part of what I want to make sure I understand for people is, part of it, there’s a disagreement among people who probably voted for Harris on higher education. I think it’s worth starting there because then the Trump fight on some level makes more sense.

The other thing I wanted to ask you about was, you were involved in writing some proposals about student debt cancellation. And I guess I remember 2022 and ’23, in which lots of liberal—reading, liberal—graduates of Princeton and University of Michigan, whose parents paid for it, [were] very, very outraged that there was student debt cancellation.

Help me explain why student debt cancellation was worthwhile? Not just for teachers, not just for these certain jobs, but for the broad public. Why was that a useful goal?

Seamster: It feels like a definite moment in time that was so far away, but I do think it’s an important predecessor to getting here because the education gospel framework was very dominant, especially in the early 2000s and the 2010s.

And as McMillan pointed out, she was very early in pointing out how predatory components of this industry—and the for-profit colleges—were taking advantage of the weak job market and pressures to improve your credentials after the Great Recession by taking in this onslaught of people who’d been forced out of the job market or [were] otherwise vulnerable, and pointing out that their industry really feeds off of economic uncertainty.

And one thing that McMillan warned that really made me uncomfortable at the time was how higher ed had this identity as, We are not like that, we are all good; we’re only benevolent. Take on any amount of debt and come join us, because it’ll always be good for you. And she was pointing to what at the time were early trends, and I think has really blossomed into a much more developed component of the nonprofit higher-education institutions, which is coming to look more like the allegedly “lower ed” colleges that they were differentiating themselves from.

So the same strategies of who they’re recruiting, of policies, of partnerships—public-private partnerships—going in a much more career-focused direction of saying, Oh, we could be doing mini-credentials, we could be targeting people coming back to school and older adults, we should be doing online programs, and that a lot of this is hinging around bringing in more revenue.

So anyway, that’s a bit off of what you were asking for, but I think that there is still a group that has an older model of an older conversation about higher-ed policy that was predicated on a different group of people attending and a different model of higher education, which was more like: College is always the key to economic mobility.

And where I and others came in, in the late 2010s, was in looking at the data in terms of what was showing up in terms of outcomes for assuming student loans, in particular, and the racial disparities in student loans. So my group, working with Chénier, our first piece found that Black student debt had tripled in just 12 years at the household level, and that already by then a third of Black households were holding student debt, and that this was going up much faster than white households.

And we saw this as the outcome of what Tressie McMillan Cottom and others had been pointing to as this—what we called predatory inclusion—that you got access to an institution you’d been denied previously but on terms that negated the benefit of access.

Bacon: The terms both being the cost was going to be much higher than you expected and much higher than the white students paid a couple of generations ago. And also that the expansion was that you were supposed to foot the bill on your own, and this is the way we were going to solve racial inequality through education—right, on your back basically.

Seamster: Yes. And then what other people were finding at the same time was that these racial debt disparities were growing over time. So the Black and white graduates leave school, with Black graduates leaving school with more debt, and then that gap is growing over time.

That was extremely concerning to us, in looking at how that claim that you were just laying out then compounds inequality, when we add in racial job discrimination and all the other factors that are differences in wealth in your family and your ability to pay down your debt.

And so what we were realizing was that not only was there a student debt crisis but this was heavily racialized, and that we needed to rethink—we needed to use that data about what had transpired over the last 10 years, like after Obama federalized student loans, for instance—and to rethink, yes, that was Obama; there were good intentions behind this, and a lot of people thought this would work, but we needed to look at what the outcomes were from this project that had drastically driven up student loans very quickly.

Bacon: One other thing that happened in the Biden years that’s worth noting is that there’s evidence of growing education polarization, meaning college graduates are voting more Democratic, non-college are voting more Republican.

My sense is this also made the Democrats nervous about defending higher education. That was my impression: They’re worried that by defending the university, you are alienating the people who are not part of the university, essentially.

Seamster: Yeah, that’s interesting. I think Democrats in general are afraid of embracing any statement made about them. They’re like, We’re not like that. And so I think that’s a part of this. And I think also then they kind of buy into that stereotype of because they’re college graduates, they must be also white, cosmopolitan, wealthy elites, instead of being; no, that’s a sign of how to be part of the working class these days often still requires some form of college education.

And it may not look like going to Harvard—it probably doesn’t. It may be that you went into the community college and that you were getting your nursing assistant’s certification. And—

Bacon: So higher education is required for a lot of jobs. And it’s not being on campus for four years at Yale, right?

Seamster: Yes, and very few students are going to Yale, right? Seventy-five percent of students even now go to public universities, and community colleges are always underused in these debates. So that’s another element of how the debate that people were having was—especially about student debt cancellation—premised on this image they had in their head of a college student from maybe the 1990s, who was either going to the Ivy League or a flagship, sports-focused institution like my own. But even that—

Bacon: Whose parents are middle class and whose parents probably did pay for a lot and could.

Seamster: Yeah. Who’s not working to pay their way through school, and that does not reflect the reality of the students at the public institutions I have worked at, where the white students are also working class. They’re working up to full-time, often, and they are taking class overloads to try to graduate as fast as possible and minimize their debt load.

They’re living governed by this economic pressure because they’ve been told you have to do this to get a job. And then they’re also having to make decisions about their major not based on their interests but what they think maybe kind of has a chance of getting them a job after this. So that was, I think, a big part of the disconnect in the discussion about what made student debt cancellation allegedly regressive or not.

And what we were looking at—what our analysis showed when we were working on Warren’s student debt cancellation plan—was that the people who would be most benefiting from up to $50,000 of cancellation were people who’d been to community college, people who hadn’t graduated, people with lower wealth, and people of color were more likely to have all of their debt canceled than white folks were. But that it benefited—it was very universally benefiting to a significant proportion of the 40-plus million Americans who held student debt, and think about all their families who basically hold that debt with them, [who] would’ve benefited from this.

And I will just say because I was part of that debate for so long, you put that to 2023 … I feel like it was most active in 2020 or so, but 2023 was when the Supreme Court overturned Biden’s debt relief plan.

And by then I heard nary a word from all those people who’d been saying student debt was regressive. Instead, the groups that were coming out to say, Let’s get rid of Biden’s debt relief plan were people who either said this would harm the military’s ability to recruit—which used the pressure of college debt to recruit—[or] it would harm public defenders who were reliant on underpaid lawyers needing student debt relief to continue, or even a group from Wisconsin claiming that this plan had the goal of racial equity and therefore they took issue with it.

So I thought it was really interesting that nobody out of all those groups said this is regressive. They were showing, to me, the true colors of the people pushing for the status quo, which is like: This debt is an instrument of control, and it leads people to live their lives governed by the discipline that student debt creates, and that there are a lot of people who benefit from that.

Bacon: So I wanted to lead up to the Biden part, in part because I think now we entered an administration where higher education was under all these discourses and divides; that it was not like a unified Democratic stand—we love, we defend higher education. It was competing views of that.

This administration has come in with a very unified stand, which is that the current colleges are liberal and woke and annoying and full of annoying professors teaching Marxism, and also too many people are going to college, and we are going to sort of destroy all of this.

So how does that feel? Like, you’re at a college—you’re not at one of the colleges that they … these people are snobs, so they’re very obsessed with seven or eight schools, and Harvard and so on. So what’s happening—how do you feel the sort of anti-education agenda of the Trump administration?

Seamster: I’ve been thinking about this, in that there’s contradictions. It is a unified stance in some ways in terms of coming after higher education as a symbol of all the things they hate.

And I think in some ways it is quite simple in that these institutions are the places of production of knowledge that would be able to help people identify and analyze and undermine their statements of what is true. And we are the primary places where that could happen.

And when you look at the first things that they’ve been doing—both through actions and through people self-censoring—is censoring our ability to discuss what they are doing.

Bacon: Let me be clear about this. So they are nervous about higher education for— they’re right to be nervous. Higher education is a thing authoritarians attack.

And they’re probably smart to do that on some level, although that makes sense. They do that, and you’re challenging their authority in a certain—

Seamster: Yeah. I don’t want to spin.

Bacon: Not defending it, I’m not praising it.

Seamster: But it is a common tactic, as you said, among authoritarian governments.

Because if the whole—if your world relies on the production of propaganda—then having an educated popula­tion, specifically, who can analyze and identify propaganda as such, that is going to be a problem. And I also think this, to me, is a plug for the humanities. As an English major, we’ve done so much dismissal of the value of a humanities major, but when you think about what texts you are reading and learning how to critically analyze and how to think about language and not just on this superficial level—I actually want to make a plug for it. It’s not just doctors and teachers that I think I’m standing up for.

But even, being able to read a novel requires … like, what are novels about? They’re often about authoritarian governments and what happens next. And for us to read history. And I spend so much time with my students just talking about history.

The administration has said that what they’re banning is faculty talking about ideology. I spend all of my time in classes just talking about historical facts—things that occurred that they had no idea had happened, or even recent past events that they weren’t tracking—because I just feel like we need to build up a bigger knowledge base for students.

And so, I think that is a major part of the intellectual project of attacking higher education, in terms of generating alternative sources of information. but you said that they’re obsessed with those Ivy League places. There’s a lot of competing elements that they both want to destroy these places, and they know that these places confer status and that they want to control them.

Bacon: And they want to destroy them. That’s what they want. To destroy them or just control them. And maybe a little bit of both.

Seamster: I think it’s both. And we need to understand that tension when we’re trying to say, is it really this or is it really that? It’s really both. It doesn’t all make sense put together. They are dismantling higher education, the Department of Education, at the same time that they’re weaponizing it to control universities, and it’s not just one or the other. What they do want is to transform these spaces so that they’re unrecognizable.

And I think that is already happening. And similarly to how they want these spaces of education to be more exclusive—with a student body that better represents what it used to and [is] likely to be whiter and male and better off—but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they want the resources of all the knowledge and education to come with it.

I think there’s an element of that scamification of higher education that I was talking about, with the growth towards “lower ed” that is going to stay. That you don’t want to just eliminate these institutions. You want them to be singing your song. So they want all of these places to be on board with saying the same statements that reflect and validate what they’ve been claiming about the world and—

Bacon: And a school like yours … I can’t tell what the University of Iowa is, which is a state school, flagship school, good school, but not as expensive and elite as the Dukes. So I guess—just following the news—it seems like the red states, and not just Trump, they want the professors to be nervous about talking.

They definitely want you to feel nervous about speaking your truth, right?

Seamster: Right. Yes.

Bacon: And do you feel nervous about it? I mean you’re here, so you’re not too nervous, but do you feel nervous?

Seamster: Well, it helps that I, for now, I’m still allowed to speak as myself, as I am doing, and not as a representative of the university.

And this is based on my research. So there’s all the—for now we … there’s some red lines that are being crossed in places like Texas, where I’m referring, where the rules are explicitly coming for curriculum, or in places like Florida, where classes are having very, very close-grained oversight about what you can and can’t even say.

Different states are at different places in that timeline, which has been true since I worked at Tennessee in 2016. And then Iowa. So this has been happening for a long time. And so I think a lot of faculty are concerned, and yet they also really know these things are important, and they also know that what is happening in classes is not indoctrination.

And that this is not a good-faith critique—that faculty want classes to feel vibrant and intellectually engaging and have people debating one another and bringing in ideas. And the, I would say, the chilling effect is not just on faculty; it’s definitely on students, as well.

One way that I work on myself to feel comfortable walking into a classroom of strangers and talk about these things that are so charged right now is I make them write a lot so I can hear what they’re thinking if they’re not willing to say it in class. And so many of them express concern or just generalized anxiety about talking, but I can tell that they are on board with the ideas and that they’re learning a lot and that they are wanting to know more.

I have so many students write, These should be required courses for everybody to take at the end of every semester. And so I know that it is important, and that there’s … we see so many examples of people anticipating in advance and changing their language. But I also know that it’s because it’s important to talk about that people are coming after this.

And I also feel like the hammer’s coming down everywhere. We wouldn’t have thought before this year that cancer research would be one of the targets.

And so this is not just about us. This is a really collective problem, and it requires solidarity across a lot of different areas. Instead of being like, Oh, well, the problem is the people who teach about race, like me, or, The problem is just this language or environmental justice, and if we just cut that out … I really want to bring attention to the many groups who’ve been pushing back, like my professional organization, American Sociological Association, which worked with the American Federation of Teachers to sue Trump over their Dear Colleague letter back in February that was trying to negate or prevent teaching of language about race and gender and sociology generally—and they won.

So I think that when we see that this is not just about certain words or phrases that are problematic now, but that this is a threat to the whole institution, that opens up new possibilities for solidarity and working together to fight these things, because we’ve seen when unions and affiliated groups are fighting, that they’re winning.

Bacon: Let me close with two questions, or two topics I’m talking about. The first is, I think Pete Buttigieg over the weekend said something—he was interviewed somewhere—along the lines of, Democrats were only talking about identity issues and that turned off people, and that’s why we lost.

And so I guess I have two feelings about the comment I wanted to give you. The one is, no, that’s actually not what happened. Did you know that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden were leading the Democratic Party? Joe Biden talked about infrastructure every day, and what are you talking about?

The other was to lean into what he’s saying and really probe it, is: If you mean Black Lives Matter and Me Too and trying to solve the racial wealth gap are identity issues, I guess that’s true. But I don’t think those are frivolous and silly and not worth discussing.

So how do you, when you read it … I’m not quoting this right, but just in general: Democrats are too woke and too into identity issues. How do you hear that?

Seamster: Yeah, I think, firstly, to—as a scholar of racial inequality and who’s addressed and written a lot about ideas of racial progress, for instance—is that our linear myth of how progress works is not how society works.

And instead, we often have a backlash. When we see social progress in things like recognizing that Black lives matter as this very, very basic fact, or recognizing that the racial wealth gap exists—not even saying we’re going to fix it—

Bacon: Even if we said we were going to fix it, we didn’t fix it at all.

Seamster: Just mentioning it.

Bacon: Just mentioning, yes.

Seamster: And so we are living through a period of backlash, as we have before, which is the reason why—being of historical facts—I always teach about Redemption as the period following Black Reconstruction, to say, look, there are periods where society moves forward and then people work on recreating all of the structures, but even more violently in a different way, with a new form of violence than previously.

And I think you can say we’re living through that now. So it makes sense that a lot of people will look at that and be like, Oh, we went too far, because now look what happened. That’s why we need scholars of history to be like, that’s not how that works. I’ve known plenty of people who’ve pointed out that what we’re living through right now is a form of identity politics in terms of grievance politics around what they perceive as the assertion that equality should be possible is offensive to people who have benefited so long from hoarding resources.

And so I think that there is a way to … I was also just teaching about intersectionality this past week and talking about Crenshaw’s point that identity politics, as she was framing them, were not about dividing groups and comparing them. It was about building solidarity across groups and coalition building specifically. And I would hope that Pete Buttigieg could just realize that you can be part of a very large coalition, and that identity politics is about recognizing the commonalities across different forms of problems and what you do with that together.

And it’s really not about people as individuals and their specific issues, except insofar as they become political when they’re shared together. And it’s a way to demean and devalue a really important movement. It’s also a way to try and put that behind us in the same way that Susan Faludi in her book Backlash was saying that after every advance for women’s rights, people would come back and smooth all that history away and be like, yeah, that never happened—like, that went way too far, and yet it never happened, and now where we are is good.

And I’ve just been thinking about that—how often she identified people being like, oh, has feminism gone too far? And I think we’re living through the exact same thing now, where one step forward is, wow, we were not ready for that.

Bacon: And I’ll close with—you had a Bluesky note, this is on January 19th, 2025. So early on, very early on, but time-stamped and proven as very prescient: “the attack on humanities/social education courses, departments, the removal of books from K–12 libraries, and the rush to AI-ified higher ed all have the same outcome. It’s different ways to neutralize knowledge, whether by erasing it or turning it into bland porridge.”

And I think it’s brilliant that you got AI in there, before AI turned into what it is on some level, but I think you really got there. So what is it—why is it important for someone like Donald Trump to neutralize knowledge?

Seamster: So that then whatever he says is correct, because knowledge is about that multiplicity of ideas, and it is about being able to learn what is happening.

Like, we’re losing our ability as social scientists to even measure what is happening, and that’s not by accident. So our ability to name, to compare, to use theories to make predictions—like I was doing on January 19th—to be able to look at a system like AI and be like, what is this for? That’s the type of thing that we do as scholars, and which I think… which I really enjoy getting to teach students who may not have thought of themselves as deep thinkers, to start asking questions that they can’t answer and be really excited for them, and know that I’ve now troubled them for the rest of their lives—that they’re going to realize that there are things that we don’t know the answer to and that they might need to figure it out or live with contradictions.

Just the ability to remember what was happening last week is eroding out from under us. And so just being able to anchor ourselves to this infrastructure that we have built—as elitist and problematic as it has been—as the ability to record facts and track what’s happening and stay true to our values, is going to be all the more important. And we know that because they are attacking it. We know that from the empty bookshelves—that those books mattered.

And so, yeah, I think the more that they come for this specific area is the way I know that it matters.

Bacon: They’re attacking higher education for reason.

Seamster: Yes.

Bacon: That’s a great way to end. Professor, thank you so much for joining me. Good to see you.

Trump’s Anti-Affordability Agenda Has a New Target: College - 2025-11-20T13:21:22Z

You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.

President Trump and his administration are cracking down on universities, trying to force schools to drop inclusive policies if they want to continue to receive federal funding. But there is a separate effort targeting students. As University of Iowa sociology professor Louise Seamster explains in the latest edition of Right Now, the administration is cutting financial aid and slowing programs to cancel student debt that the Biden administration had ramped up. If these changes continue, colleges will gradually start enrolling fewer students of color and fewer students from low-income families, Seamster says. That may be Trump’s intention. With college graduates increasingly voting for Democrats, the GOP fears universities and higher education.

Transcript: Trump’s Fury at Prices Goes Wild as Crushing New Polls Hit - 2025-11-20T12:10:27Z

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the November 19 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Two high-quality polls just came out, and they both have President Trump cratering. His general approval rating is dropping, and so is approval of his handling of the economy. He’s in real trouble. Trump and his advisors don’t have much of an answer to this problem. Trump just unleashed a long rambling rant insisting that prices are really going down, not up. And his agriculture secretary followed suit with a set of claims that were even more ludicrous. So what happens if the economy really starts to dip? New Republic staff writer Timothy Noah has been writing well about this question. So today we’re talking with him about how much lower Trump could actually go here and what happens if the bottom falls out. Tim, good to have you on.

Timothy Noah: Thanks for having me, Greg.

Sargent: So let’s start with what Trump said in a speech on Wednesday. Listen to this.

President Donald Trump (voiceover): We’re also making incredible strides to make America affordable again. That’s a new word that they’re using. Affordability, they talk. They had the worst inflation in history. They had the highest prices in history. The country was going to hell. The only thing that we’re going up in is our stock market, okay? The only price that we really have. I mean, we’re bringing prices down. But they came up with a new word, affordability. And they look at the... We were all about affordability and everyone assumes that that meant that no, their prices were high.

Sargent: So the thing about this is that a lot of costs have gone up under Trump, but more to the point, to a greater degree than usual, Trump’s policies are to blame for what’s happening with prices. Can you explain all that for us and respond to what Trump said there?

Noah: Yes. I mean, this is a guy slapping tariffs on everything, and mostly imposing them on countries, not on goods. And of course that’s going to drive up the price of everything. He is now attempting to reverse the impact on groceries by removing tariffs on a few items like bananas and coffee, which—it was insane ever to put tariffs on bananas and coffee, because the United States does not have a domestic coffee industry or a domestic banana industry. We cannot grow coffee beans or bananas in the United States. So we’re never going to have parity with other countries on that.

He’s trying to address this affordability crisis, but at the same time making fun of it. And I really don’t think it comes off very well when a billionaire president is using the term affordability in a mocking way.

Sargent: The funny thing about Trump is that he’s incapable of admitting that something might be going the wrong direction under his presidency. So it makes him unusually badly equipped to handle a political crisis like this, doesn’t it?

Noah: Yes, exactly. I mean, he’s trying to blame it on Joe Biden, but of course Joe Biden isn’t president right now—he is. And he has now been president for almost a year. So it’s possible to track how things are going over the course of his second term thus far. And prices have been going up. Inflation has been on the rise. And we are now seeing that his favorability ratings are—I was just looking at a CNN poll from a couple of weeks ago—that had his favorability at its lowest point ever except in the immediate aftermath of January 6, 2021.

Sargent: Well, we have two new polls, and they’re really bad. A new Marist poll finds Trump’s overall approval rating at 39% with 56% disapproving. That’s bad. A new Marquette poll finds Trump’s overall approval slightly higher at 43%. But listen to this: Marquette has his approval on the economy at 36% to 64%, his approval on tariffs at 37% to 63%, and his approval on inflation and cost of living at 28% to 72% disapproving. That’s absolutely abysmal, and we need to remember that cost of living and inflation—those are the absolutely central concerns of voters right now.

What do you make of all these numbers?

Noah: Well, this is what got Trump elected. Trump would not be president if it weren’t for people being upset about the economy in November 2024. And they are still upset about the economy, arguably more upset about the economy. Look, inflation is going to continue with these tariffs. The only thing likely to bring prices down is a recession, which we could be on the verge of. So that would be a good news, bad news situation. The good news would be that, yes, prices would finally come down or at least stop rising. And the bad news would be we are in a recession.

Sargent: I just want to dwell on this one number. Cost of living was his central promise, the reason he got elected. As you say, now down to 28% approval. That is real dangerous territory for him, I think.

Noah: Absolutely. And the funny thing is presidents don’t usually have a lot of impact on inflation. It’s usually mostly up to the Fed Chairman, who Trump, of course, reviles and blames for what inflation there is. But Trump is an exception among presidents because of his tariff policy. So you can draw a direct line between Trump’s economic policy and rising prices.

Sargent: Well, since you brought up the Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, I just want to cite a rant that Trump unleashed about him as well.

President Trump (voiceover): I’d love to fire his ass. He should be fired. Guy’s grossly incompetent. You gotta work on him, The only thing Scott’s blowing it on is the Fed. Because the Fed, the rates are too high, Scott. And if you don’t get it fixed fast, I’m gonna fire your ass, okay?

Sargent: I mean, he’s, you know, he’s really in charge of the situation, isn’t he? He’s going to fire people. He’s going to get this fixed fast. He’s on top of everything. It’s the apprentice guy all over again.

Noah: It reminds me of 20-odd years ago when—remember when Trump tried to actually patent the expression you’re fired, which he used to say on his TV show?

Sargent: Right. He’s still on TV: He’s still back in that mental universe, I think. But the funny thing is, if you want to fix prices, this isn’t the way to do it, is it?

Noah: No, it’s not. Bessent, who has the reputation of being one of the more rational members of Trump’s administration, had this sort of pathetic performance on one of the Sunday talk shows where he was asked about beef prices—which shot up—and he blamed it on New World screwworm. He said migrants were coming across the border and they were bringing New World screwworm, which was killing our cattle.

This is completely ridiculous. Try and get a mental picture of this. New World screwworm—every once in a blue moon, a human gets it. I think we had the first case where a human got it last August; it was the first case observed in 50 years. This is a disease that spreads from cattle to cattle. What he seems to be suggesting is that migrants are sneaking across the Rio Grande with cattle, where they’re sure not to get noticed, right? It’s absurd.

Sargent: It actually occurs to me: If they’re actually going to say that, he’s basically saying that our border is so porous that you can just walk in with a herd of cattle and not get noticed. Doesn’t seem like a good argument to me. Well, let’s listen to a little more of some of these bad arguments. The message blaring forth from the administration right now is that everything’s just fine. Prices are falling everywhere. Listen to this from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. She admits beef prices are a problem, but then says this.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins (voiceover): In the larger context, almost everything else is coming down. Dairy, eggs, cheese, turkey for Thanksgiving next year. I think the basket is about 17 percent lower this year than it was last year.

Sargent: So Tim, that thing about the Thanksgiving meal is just BS. It’s based on a comparison of Walmart Thanksgiving packages. And this year’s is smaller with fewer goods than last year’s. That’s why it’s cheaper. But they’re really sticking with that one. They just can’t stop talking about it. Trump brought it up yet again in the speech. And on those specifics about prices, broadly speaking, grocery prices are up.

Noah: No, broadly speaking, I think the actual turkeys themselves may have come down a little bit, but I think the rest of it is wrong. Milk prices certainly are up.

Sargent: And groceries across the board, right?

Noah: And groceries across the board are up. Look, you want to be careful about what you wish for when you’re talking about prices. Nobody really wants prices to come down across the board. When that happens, you’re in a depression. What people really want is for prices to rise more slowly and for certain commodities, certain commodities that shoot up and down like oil, obviously, to come down. yeah, they are denying reality. They think people are stupid and will believe what they say and will not check. And the polls suggest that that strategy is not working.

Sargent: It certainly isn’t. There’s something about this that interests me as well. It’s kind of well understood as a political rule that you’re not supposed to tell people that the economy is just fine or getting better if they don’t feel it. Under the pundit rules of engagement, this gets you automatically tagged as out of touch with what real people are feeling. But Trump is not usually described as out of touch in that way. And I’m kind of curious as to why. It’s almost as if he’s understood to be such a relentless liar that he almost gets a weird pass on this type of lying about the economy. And yet the funny thing is that here’s a case where Trump really is out of touch with what ordinary people are going through. What do you make of this weird disconnect?

Noah: I think that he just he has never been able to handle adverse news. He makes a point. He has said that you You never say you’re sorry. You never admit fault. And he doesn’t have a playbook for dealing with bad developments. He didn’t during COVID and he doesn’t now. Remember, during COVID he spent half the time pretending that it wasn’t happening.

Sargent: Yeah, I think you get at a really essential point, which kind of gets back to what we talked about earlier, which is that Trump is uniquely badly equipped to handle serious crises because those require acknowledging that things aren’t going well and he can’t do that.

Noah: He can’t do that and on top of that people are afraid of giving him bad news. mean which is the my mentor Charlie Peters the founding editor of the Washington Monthly always said this was the central problem in government is that people at the agencies live in abject terror of passing on bad news, and it has to be overcome because if the people at the top don’t get the bad news, they lose their sense of reality and they can’t govern properly. I think Charlie would be absolutely astonished at the degree to which this is happening today in Washington.

Sargent: Well, and there’s another area where he’s uniquely poorly equipped because he’s particularly scary to people who would deliver bad news.

Noah: Yeah. I mean, if you’re a prosecutor and you’re to prosecute somebody and you say we don’t have a case, you get fired. We’ve seen that. So instead we see him pursuing really sort of dubious prosecutions of his enemies. And they’re not going to go anywhere. They’re going to get thrown out.

Sargent: So Trump makes it very clear with these kind of rituals of public humiliation that are designed as control devices. He lets people know very clearly that if you don’t carry out his bidding, you’re going to get publicly castigated in a really terrible way. And so he’s surrounded, particularly in a second term, by people who are in even more abject terror of not doing his bidding or telling the truth.

Noah: That’s right. And there are two things about that. One is he has has gotten further with that strategy than I ever would have imagined in my wildest dreams. But at the same time, it doesn’t work. He doesn’t know how to gauge the probability of success. He’s not interested in that. So, for example, on tariffs, the betting now is heavy that he’s going to lose his court case on tariffs and he’s going to have to replace hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue. He just didn’t sort of take into account the possibility of losing.

Sargent: In fact, he’s out there saying that it’s going to be trillions of dollars, which is false.

Noah: Which is not true.

Sargent: Right. But so now we get to the fun part. You had this very good piece recently gaming out what a downturn, a serious downturn could look like. How much lower could this go, Tim? And where do you think we are right now? How precarious is all of it?

Noah: We’re on track to have the worst November in the stock market since 2008, which was two months after the crash in 2008. And that’s not good. We’ve seen a lot of volatility, but the direction in November has mostly been down.

Look, I don’t know whether there’s going to be an outright stock crash. I certainly hope there isn’t. But there are a lot of people who are predicting that there will be. And at the very least, we are going to have a bear market, which could easily induce a recession.

A lot of people are observing that it’s a tiny handful of stocks that’s driving the entire stock market—a handful of tech stocks, of which the biggest is Nvidia, which is the wildly successful AI chip manufacturer. And that’s a perilous situation, to be that dependent on these individual stocks.

So that’s the picture for the stock market. The rest of the other companies in the S&P 500 aren’t doing that well. Then you have consumer sentiment, which is still propping up the economy. If the stock market comes down, then the top 10% in the income distribution—which is basically, these are the people who are driving consumer purchases right now because we have such a grotesquely unequal economy—if they get hit with stock losses, then their consumption is going to go down. And at this point, that is the main thing that’s keeping the economy in good health.

So I think a recession is very likely in the next two or three months.

Sargent: And my God, if Trump is down in the 20s and 30s on some of these economic metrics now, it’s going to get even blacker for him.

Noah: It’s going to get blacker for him. He’s going to deny it’s happening, which is going to make it worse. I think we’re looking at a really grim downward spiral for Trump. I only hope that this economic downturn, which is likely, is a mild one.

Sargent: Well, unfortunately, we’re all hitched to Trump. So if he’s going to go on a downward spiral, all of us are. Timothy Noah, always great to talk to you, man. Thank you for all that. We really appreciate it.

Noah: Thank you, Greg.

Season in the Dark - 2025-11-20T11:00:00Z

A stone-faced man sits in a folding chair
at the edge of his lawn. He’s facing out
toward the street, where the threat awaits.

He glares at me as if I am the threat, or
the promise of the war he will be forced
to wage. The war he has been promised

to win. He resembles the old man who sat
behind the wheel of my sons’ school bus
for a time. Inscrutable what he held in mind,

in check, to himself and beneath the effort
of words. Everyone—everyone—is a slick
seed dropped in the earth and left for a season

in the dark. I want to tell him: Sleep well, brother.
Soon we will be weeds or flowers together.

Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly Is a Cautionary Tale - 2025-11-20T11:00:00Z

Noah Baumbach first made a name for himself 30 years ago, writing and directing intelligent dark comedies about sad boys and angry men staring down the barrel of adulthood and all the difficulties that come with it: failure, resentment, isolation, remorse, aging, irrelevance, and death. In this respect, his latest film, Jay Kelly, presents more of the same, as Hollywood icon George Clooney hams it up in a thinly veiled performance of himself, glancing back at his own life beneath Sharpie-dark eyebrows. In the light of a Tuscan summer, he looks like Marcello Mastroianni if Federico Fellini had shot 8½ in color. From the portraits of Mastroianni and his frequent co-star Sophia Loren, pinned up around Jay’s green room in the film’s penultimate scene, it’s easy to conclude that the homage is self-conscious.

Baumbach has long borne the influence of other filmmakers with apparent satisfaction: Since his earliest work, he has drawn on Éric Rohmer (his eldest son’s namesake), Woody Allen, and Ingmar Bergman, and he still has not shaken comparisons to contemporaries Whit Stillman and Wes Anderson, an occasional collaborator. In its better moments, Jay Kelly’s overlapping fast talk and half-checked sentimentality call to mind Robert Altman; in its worst, Robert Zemeckis. As the son of two film critics, Baumbach pairs cinephilia with literary sensibility in a voice that has been, from the beginning, verbose and referential. Clooney’s suave delivery of ambitious mouthfuls in films by Anderson, Steven Soderbergh, and the Coen brothers, in particular, is a perfect fit for Baumbach, who has earned his reputation as an actor’s director. The star-studded cast of Jay Kelly is a far cry from the company of journeyman actors he directed in his youth, but Baumbach hasn’t stopped writing for the ensemble: Here, Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson, Isla Fisher, Riley Keough, and Emily Mortimer, who co-wrote the screenplay, join the more familiar veterans of Baumbach’s recent work, including Adam Sandler, Laura Dern, and collaborator Greta Gerwig, to whom he is married.

Still, more than anything, Jay Kelly is a George Clooney movie. For one, it’s almost impossible to imagine anyone else playing the title role: a solitary man who has built his empire on charisma more than talent, floating wanly toward Olympus as his friends, family, and lackeys walk away relieved. Maybe Brad Pitt could have done it, had his temples been a little more preternaturally gray. Clooney reportedly accepted the part immediately, only expressing reservations about a man of his age filming the number of takes for which Baumbach is notorious—a 28-second bathroom sequence in Frances Ha required an excessive 42—an insecurity that the director worked, ironically, into the script. Baumbach opens his film with the finale of another, behind the scenes: When the camera rolls, the star, in character, comforts his dog while cradling a fatal bullet wound. It should be a wrap, but Jay insists on another try; the director talks him out of it.

In a flashback later on, Baumbach himself luridly encourages an aroused, younger Jay to give the sex scene they are shooting one more go. Were it not for this extra take, Jay admits in one of several George Bailey–esque soliloquies, he may not have abandoned his wife and infant child for his co-star, Daphne (Eve Hewson). That take, Baumbach implies, might have precluded the possibility of self-actualization, the life of a family man, or lasting peace. But the alternative—artistic resolve, ethical restraint—would have been bad for business: as it goes in Hollywood, career suicide.

The cost of fame is the central tension of Baumbach’s film: whether it is better to claim one’s place in the dramatic pantheon or to be a faithful husband and a present father. This is a tightrope that Adam Driver’s Charlie Barber walked gingerly in Marriage Story, an obvious fictionalization of Baumbach’s divorce from Jennifer Jason Leigh. But whereas Charlie’s domestic failings are tempered by an unerring commitment to art—his theatre company in New York is the family that comes first—Jay’s passion for the limelight, dimmed by time, is wavering.

Jay owes his initial success to the misfortune of his then-roommate, Timothy (Billy Crudup), who flubbed his audition for a movie called Cranberry Street; Jay got the part instead. Decades later, the wound is still raw, and when the two old friends reunite—at Chez Jay, the Beach Boys’ haunt in Santa Monica—after the funeral of the director, Peter Schneider (Jim Broadbent), Timothy’s tearful rendition of the menu (“Truffle parmesan fries … wedge of iceberg lettuce … shrimp cocktail”) makes clear which actor really deserved the role. Eventually Timothy, now a child therapist, confesses to despising Jay, and the two come to blows in the parking lot.

It is for this reason, perhaps, that a black-eyed Jay assembles his staff at his mansion in the Hills the next morning, announcing that he intends to back out of his next project and stalk his youngest daughter, Daisy (Grace Edwards), through her grand tour of Europe instead, in the hope that she will accompany him to accept an award in Italy that he had previously declined. The emergency meeting forces Ron Sukenick (Adam Sandler), Jay’s right-hand man, to forfeit a father-daughter tennis match; the consequences of Ron’s professional loyalty plague him across the Atlantic, and his daughter’s mysterious foot swelling seems to mirror the trauma that Jay’s eldest, Jessie (Riley Keough), has undergone due to her own father’s absence.

Ron does his best to talk “Puppy,” as he calls Jay, out of it: “You walking alone through Europe is like a gazelle walking through the Serengeti, but not a gazelle, a cocker spaniel,” he admonishes. Still, the team dutifully boards Jay’s private jet, their oblivious employer crooning “We’re Going to Paris” astride a piano. The publicist, Liz (Laura Dern, playing a toned-down version of the divorce lawyer she perfected in Marriage Story), provides a voice of reason, tempting Ron to quit working for Jay. She’s Ron’s former girlfriend, we learn; his obeisance to their mutual client ruined their engagement, at the Eiffel Tower of all places. Once again, Ron can’t muster the determination to stop working, and their rom-com reunion fizzles out with a kiss goodbye. “Save yourself,” she tells him, but Ron is a husband and father now, and he knows enough to avoid repeating Jay’s mistakes: His family depends on him, and so does his best friend.

Are they friends, though? Ron certainly thinks so, and Jay appears to confirm as much, but only to the extent that one man’s business is performing fealty and the other’s is feigning sincerity. Sandler’s earnest portrayal, stripped of the manic outbursts that proliferate in even his serious roles, elevates this subplot to the film’s emotional core. Those of us who fail to identify with a megarich deadbeat will likely find it harder to resist feeling for a working man, however well compensated, who dreads saying “no” to an over-demanding boss.

Jay’s daughters too are victims of his success. While Daisy eludes detection by paparazzi aboard the train to Italy, her dad does not (his pseudonym, when met by a chauffeur upon arrival, is “Caterpillar Brown”), and Baumbach relies on starstruck recognition from fellow passengers to cement the leading man’s esteem in the Hollywood economy of the film. His heroism in saving an elderly woman’s handbag from thieves upends the potential tabloid scandal of his brawl with Timothy, but the bitter discovery that the German cyclist (Lars Eidinger) who snatched it was in the midst of an under-medicated psychotic episode reveals to Jay that life is not an action movie, and in this script, he is just an average Joe, drowning in credit from all but his loved ones. When Jay’s life flashes before his eyes in the Italian cinema, what he sees is Clooney’s highlights reel: moments from The Thin Red Line; Goodnight, and Good Luck; Michael Clayton; and more. Can these performances seriously merit loves lost, or real human pain? Jay’s famous last words—“Can I go again? I’d like another one”—suggest reservations.

Jay Kelly marks a new stage—commercially ambitious, artistically lightweight—in Baumbach’s filmography. Would Jay have been better off—happier—struggling in obscurity, playing house? It’s hard to say. But for Baumbach, whose prestige is the result of swinging big in a small market, it can’t be too late to scale back and embrace his strengths. This tale of hubris that leads the protagonist to derail his chances at personal fulfillment in favor of universal adoration and monumental wealth could be an exercise in critical self-analysis—no question, Baumbach’s done it before. But Jay Kelly, a minor film with delusions of grandeur, lacks the unvarnished middle-aged pathos of Greenberg or the raw emotion of Marriage Story. Playing back his own reel, Baumbach may very well see progress, even continuity, in his climb toward A-list budgets. Success is a hell of a drug, after all.

Visions of Byzantine Hell - 2025-11-20T11:00:00Z

They were just following orders, the angels,
when they shoved sinners into the River of Fire,
or boiled them alive in cauldrons. It’s the economy,
stupid. The frescoes in the Byzantine churches

of Crete left little to the imagination. To the Greeks,
Hell was like the headquarters of a multinational corporation:
a large building with endless rooms and hordes
of faceless bureaucrats. Alongside the usual suspects—

the Thief, the Murderer, the Rich Man, and the Farmer
Who Ploughs over the Boundary Line—a few surprises,
including Those Who Sleep on Sundays and Women
Who Use Contraception. In the mountains above us

where Zeus was said to have hidden so that his father
wouldn’t eat him, there is a plant called eronda,
or love, and those who brave steep rock faces
to fetch it, erondades, or love-seekers. The herb’s

moniker was due to its use as an aphrodisiac, or to ease
the pain of childbirth, or to induce an abortion, I forget
which, but it was likely all three. Most frighteningly,
Cretan Hell, unlike Dante’s crowded design, appeared

to have limitless capacity; no doubt it was what the priests
had intended when they commissioned the frescoes, a way
to keep illiterate peasants in line, or to promise them vengeance
in the next life, since there would certainly be none in this one.

MAGA’s State-by-State Plot to Butcher Democracy - 2025-11-20T11:00:00Z

“Are you looking for something?”

The homeless man, kindly yet befuddled, stands underneath the awning of a long-abandoned Kansas City storefront and searches his shopping cart for an umbrella.

This desolate stretch of road not far from the I-70 interchange doesn’t get much foot traffic, especially amid a September downpour, but he’s right. I am looking for something. I’m hunting for a specific yet invisible spot that will help decide which party controls the closely divided U.S. House after the 2026 midterms.

Hours earlier, Missouri state legislators smashed norms and acceded to President Donald Trump’s demands for a brazen mid-decade redistricting that would award the GOP seven of the state’s eight seats in the House. The gerrymander shattered Kansas City’s 5th Congressional District, long a bastion of Black political power, and scattered the city among three different districts, one of them stretching some 220 miles east to Hannibal and the Illinois border.

All three of those districts intersect at just one Kansas City street corner. Missouri is the Show Me state. I want to see what’s there. Which is to say: I’m walking Independence Avenue in search of a location where our democracy has come to die.

Earlier this summer, the playing field for the 2026 midterms seemed set. Republicans held a slender three-seat edge in the House. Democrats looked like favorites to win control, with a small edge on the generic congressional ballot; in addition, the midterm momentum usually gathers behind the opposition party, especially given a president with an approval rating that dipped into the high 30s this fall. The stakes are frighteningly high. A peaceful transition of power in 2029 might rest upon it. With a punishing Senate map that will require Democrats to hold Michigan, Georgia, and New Hampshire, flip Maine and North Carolina, then find two more seats somewhere from Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, Texas, and Nebraska, winning the House provides the easiest path to checking an authoritarian, anti-democratic GOP.

Then came the Gerrymander Armageddon. Unwilling to risk Democrats holding any power in Washington—let alone subpoena and investigatory power—Trump struck back, beginning in Texas. The president insisted that Republicans were “entitled” to five additional seats, and pressured lawmakers to strengthen an already gerrymandered map by eviscerating Democratic districts in Dallas, Houston, and the Rio Grande Valley. “We have never had the president of the United States call a state legislature, let alone many of them, and dictate a gerrymander … someone with such immense power determined to cheat their way into holding onto it through sheer fear,” said John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

California responded with a nervy play: Governor Gavin Newsom asked voters to enact a retaliatory 48–4 Democratic gerrymander that erases five GOP seats (and strengthens several incumbents), which passed in November. While the proposal insists on maintaining the independent California Citizens Redistricting Commission, it’s hard to imagine Democrats ever returning to a nonpartisan process after suspending the commission’s map. Enthusiastic Democrats, unaccustomed to playing by GOP rules, certain that five seats in Texas would tip the national map indelibly toward Republicans, encouraged Newsom. His cheerleaders included Democratic and nonpartisan groups that have spent the last decade fighting in favor of commissions and more balanced maps.

“Newsom gets that this is not four years ago or six years ago. We’re living in potentially the last 14 months of the republic unless we save it,” said Beto O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman. “We were like, ‘Hey, you clearly have to color within these lines.’ And the other side was like, ‘Fuck the lines, fuck the rules, fuck the law, fuck the Constitution.’ All they care about is power, and all we care about is being right. When those two ideas conflict, power wins every time.”

The redistricting wars will remain fluid. In mid-November, a federal court in Texas blocked, at least for the moment, the state’s newly redrawn maps from going into effect for the 2026 midterms. Still, those seats can’t be returned to the Democratic column yet. That will require making it past the conservative U.S. Supreme Court. Texas has already filed an appeal straight to the court; the decision on whether to issue an administrative stay, and much of the road from there, rests with Justice Samuel A. Alito. For the moment, let’s presume that power plays in Texas and California (approved by voters in November) will continue to counteract each other. (The new California map must clear a legal hurdle similar to the one in Texas: Republicans have filed litigation calling it an illegal racial gerrymander; that case will begin in early December.)

The simple truth: Even if you pull Texas off the table—which requires believing that, perhaps for the first time, Alito won’t decide a crucial voting rights question in favor of the GOP—Democrats could struggle to win this battle before the midterms. Republicans might not move to redistrict everywhere that they can. But if they do, their playing field is vastly larger than the Democrats’. Nearly all of the estimates of the seats Republicans can steal through partisan gerrymandering before the midterms remain too low. Estimates say seven to 10; the reality, in my view, is 11 to 14, depending on Florida. Two in Ohio, one in Missouri, and one in North Carolina is a solid start.

Trump and the right are exerting maximum pressure. Indiana Governor Mike Braun believes that Trump will threaten the state’s federal funding if he and the legislature don’t agree to a new map that pushes the competitive 1st District, in northwest Indiana, into the safely red column. Braun called a special session in late October; the Republicans might even be able to imagine a 9–0 map with two new GOP seats. (In mid-November, the state Senate president pro tem announced the chamber will not seek to redraw the maps this year after all.) North Carolina enacted an 11–3 GOP map in October, intensifying an already gerrymandered map, as lawmakers hoping for Trump’s endorsement in next year’s U.S. Senate race jumped to give him an extra U.S. House seat. The Club for Growth, the conservative economics-focused PAC, invested megabucks, running digital ads to encourage Tar Heel lawmakers to jump in, which they did within weeks. The group is doing the same in Kansas and planning an aggressive push in Kentucky, Florida, and elsewhere.

When Trump demanded a new map in Missouri, GOP lawmakers quickly fractured Kansas City. In Ohio, GOP hardball secured a new map that could turn two competitive districts currently held by Democrats into Republican seats. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has eagerly pronounced that he’d extend his blatantly unconstitutional gerrymander by targeting as many as five Democratic seats.

At this point, it would be surprising if Kentucky didn’t scribble out the one blue dot on its red map, and if Nebraska didn’t consider making the blue oasis in Omaha more challenging for Democrats as well. In Kansas, which once looked unlikely to attempt a mid-decade redistricting, GOP legislators in the state Senate gathered the signatures in October needed to call a special session to order. In early November, lawmakers in the state House suggested they would not go ahead, a sign that public outrage can still work. However, the Republican state Senate president insisted that the legislature would pursue redistricting next year. New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte has resisted, so far, but lawmakers are eager, and a potential primary challenge from Corey Lewandowski might get her attention. “They can’t win if they don’t cheat,” said Kansas Representative Sharice Davids. Her district in fast-growing Johnson County, which was already gerrymandered in 2022, is in the crosshairs again and could be shattered in half and stretched all the way to the Colorado border.

Those states alone could produce the 11 to 14 additional seats for the likely GOP column. The variation depends on how aggressively DeSantis acts. All this before anyone casts a vote.

Democrats will push back: Litigation is already underway in Texas and Missouri. Missouri voters are circulating petitions to override the legislature’s map. Florida’s state Constitution bars political gerrymandering. The National Redistricting Foundation is preparing to sue in many of these states. “All of them are presenting totally unique opportunities,” Bisognano said. “As soon as [DeSantis’s] fingerprint is on a pen to draw a map, it’s going to be political gerrymandering, and that’s going to get litigated at the state Supreme Court immediately.... He would be asking the state Supreme Court to say that the Florida Constitution is unconstitutional.”

Yet litigation takes time, could extend beyond the midterms, and Republicans have appointed most of the judges. Also, the partisan gerrymandering piece is just Act One.

In October, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Louisiana v. Callais, a racial gerrymandering case that has the potential to upend the remaining tattered pieces of Section Two of the Voting Rights Act. It’s a challenge that Justice Brett Kavanaugh invited, and a case that the GOP supermajority expanded to take on larger constitutional questions that several conservatives have long hoped to decide. If the Roberts court finds that the VRA requires lawmakers to be too conscious of race, and if it reaches a decision in time for Southern states to remap immediately, it could spell the end for majority Black seats in Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, and elsewhere. States across the South would be liberated to draw partisan gerrymanders, effectively at will.

That’s when the math would get brutal. Assume the worst from the Roberts court in a VRA case—usually a safe bet. That’s a potential gift of anywhere from a half-dozen to as many as 19 seats. Then take the under, and estimate the GOP settles on eight seats collectively from Ohio (two), Florida (two), Missouri, North Carolina, and some combination of Indiana, Kentucky, and Nebraska. Suddenly, Democrats need nearly two dozen seats to reclaim the House.

Gerrymandering has been a scourge on our politics for as long as we have had politicians. Much of the extreme right’s takeover of the Republican Party, its dominance of state legislatures, its outsize advantage and influence in Congress has been built via the gerrymander. But we have never seen anything quite like this: maximally gerrymandered maps nationwide, crafted with ever more sophisticated software with volumes of voter data; blue seats in red states, and red seats in blue states, all but zeroed-out; the number of competitive districts in line with the dwindling number of presidential swing states.

How did we get here? It begins with an audacious GOP strategy during the 2010 midterms, executed by an entity called the Republican State Leadership Committee, that remade American politics. It’s boosted by Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court, who slammed the door on voters, crushed a growing nonpartisan movement, and incentivized extreme gerrymanders everywhere, all to the structural benefit of the GOP. It’s also plagued by the anti-democratic filibuster, which blocks Democratic (and democratic) reforms in Congress, including a popular voting rights package that was stymied in 2022 and that would have prevented this.

We’re here because Republicans found a political advantage, then exploited and protected it at every possible turn, no matter the cost, the Constitution, or the courts. And we’re here because Democrats were caught unawares first by GOP cunning, then by the Republicans’ creative and determined ruthlessness.

“Trump’s penchant for chaos can distract attention from the methodical, ingenious, and complex multistep plans that are unfolding as we speak to subvert democracy from the ground up at the state level, driven by the anti-democratic faction of the far right,” said Ben Wikler, who fought these efforts better than anyone as Wisconsin state Democratic chairman. “All that is not something that just popped into an autocrat’s mind. It reflects a deep dive into state statutes and electoral calendars. It’s real attention to the levers of power: how you win them, how you hold onto them, and how you ensure no one else can ever take them away from you.”

It is a microcosm for our problems. Problems that will be with us after Donald Trump. And which began before he arrived. 

Barack Obama delivered his 2008 victory speech wearing a resplendent red tie, a sartorial metaphor that suggested this young, Black president sought a nation beyond partisan polarization. On cable news, pundits and politicians marveled at Obama’s wins in Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, and Ohio, as well as the Democrat’s near filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate, and pronounced an ascendant Democratic coalition that could govern for a generation.

“It’s a bad thing for Republicans when you drill down into these states,” said National Review editor Rich Lowry. “Where did all the Republicans go? Did they all move to Utah?” What only a handful of GOP strategists dared imagine was that the truly transformative election was two years away. It would not be celebrated live around the world from Grant Park, but in VFW halls and Holiday Inn ballrooms as hundreds of new Republican state legislators claimed victories.

The light bulb moment occurred at the Republican State Leadership Committee. The RSLC worked to build Republican power down-ballot, in state legislatures, state courts, and other elections that too often fly under the radar. But the RSLC’s leadership—former party chair Ed Gillespie and visionary executive director Chris Jankowski—understood their far-reaching impact. The 2010 midterms would coincide with the census. Redistricting would follow. In most states, state legislatures drew the congressional map. What if Republicans bought themselves time to fix their demographic problems by dominating redistricting?

The RSLC would call this the Redistricting Majority Project. REDMAP, for short. Had Democrats been paying attention, they might have noticed that Karl Rove published the entire playbook for the Redistricting Majority Project in The Wall Street Journal on March 4, 2010, down to the specific districts in Ohio, Texas, Indiana, and Pennsylvania where Republicans would focus. “These are state legislative races that will determine who redraws congressional district lines after this year’s census,” he wrote, “a process that could determine which party controls upwards of 20 seats and whether many other seats will be competitive.”

Republicans, Rove revealed, would target 107 state legislative seats in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Alabama, and other states where Democrats controlled at least one chamber. Then, with trifecta control of state government, the GOP would redraw competitive seats to their advantage. “It could end up costing Democrats congressional seats for a decade to come,” Rove suggested.

Maybe Democrats only picked up The New York Times that morning. As the RSLC’s Jankowski directed the group’s millions across swing states, Democrats seemed shockingly invisible. “October. October, I was like, why aren’t they out here? We were pummeling them,” he said. “Overall, they were nonexistent.” That November, over a dozen state legislative chambers shifted into the GOP column. Republicans would control redistricting in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Florida, Texas, Alabama, and Indiana. Those lines were invisible until election night 2012. And then everyone would see their impact in the races for Congress and state legislatures.

While the nation celebrated the reelection of its first Black president, Obama summoned Eric Holder to the White House after hours to puzzle through those conflicting results. Iowa, Ohio, and Florida stayed blue. Democratic governors won in Montana, West Virginia, and Missouri. Obama had coattails in the Senate, where Democrats picked up Indiana and held North Dakota, Ohio, West Virginia, Missouri, and Florida.

The U.S. House and state legislatures, though, were a different story. Republicans not only held the House; they commanded it by 33 seats, even though Democrats won 1.4 million more House votes. Obama carried Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida. Somehow, the GOP claimed 64 of those 94 congressional seats. An even split in states they won would have handed Democrats the House. How did they lose two-thirds instead?

“We thought we had done well in terms of the raw vote, but it wasn’t at all reflected in the number of representatives we had at both the state and federal level,” Holder told me. “REDMAP had been a small part of my consciousness before the 2012 election.... Then we saw the election results.”

No one inside the Democratic National Committee focused on redistricting the same way that Republicans did. “I always say that Washington is essentially middle school on steroids. They’re smart, they work hard, and it’s all about them,” said Howard Dean, who chaired the DNC from 2005 until 2009. “They don’t really give much attention to the state legislators and city councilors. But that’s where the action is, and that’s what the Republicans did. They understood grassroots politics a lot better than the Democrats. We haven’t gotten around to it.”

This summer, after Texas announced its plans, Democrats insisted that they knew the stakes and vowed to fight fire with fire. In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul declared, “we are at war,” but she lacked any ammo to fire. Maryland Governor Wes Moore insisted “all options need to be on the table” but waited until November to order a redistricting commission that could grab Maryland’s remaining GOP seat (the Democratic state Senate leader has opposed the idea of mid-decade redistricting). Oregon Governor Tina Kotek passed, because “redistricting is a once-a-decade process.” New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy paraphrased a Sean Connery line from The Untouchables, saying, “Never bring a knife to a gunfight”; then vowed, “we’re from Jersey, baby, and we won’t be laying down”; then took a nice, long nap.

The governors must have known they were cosplaying action heroes for MSNBC viewers. In Illinois, Governor JB Pritzker squeezed everything possible from the Illinois map in 2021. Hochul had no options, given the state Constitution. Murphy never intended to ask his legislature to gerrymander during an election year. Yet by declaring wars they could not fight, the governors created a false expectation that Democrats could escape this mess by acting like Republicans.

But the best way to have matched a high-tech redistricting firefight was by winning elections before the maps were drawn. Otherwise, these gerrymanders remain practically undefeated. Yes, Democrats won the House in 2018—but along with claiming a seat each in Kansas, Utah, South Carolina, and Oklahoma, they won almost entirely seats drawn by commissions, courts, or on new maps that replaced unconstitutional gerrymanders. Pennsylvania, Florida, and Virginia gerrymanders were upended, in part by state courts. Michigan returned to parity after citizens launched a ballot initiative process and created an independent commission via the state Constitution. Ohio, Missouri, Colorado, and Utah joined them in constitutional reforms to the redistricting process that year. Virginia followed in 2020.

By 2021, the situation had improved enough that some observers suggested Democrats had evened the national congressional map. If you squinted closely and believed deeply in political science metrics, it almost looked good on paper. Reality was something else entirely.

Republicans had such a big advantage built in from the previous decade that they could play it safe. They went big in Florida and shored up Tennessee, South Carolina, Utah, Texas, and Oklahoma. They left some seats in case a mid-decade redistricting became necessary. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Republicans had an answer for every reform. Some they repealed. Some they subverted. Some they just ignored. When state Supreme Court elections became proxy fights over gerrymandered maps, Republicans had a decade’s head start. And a Democratic Party that never saw these gerrymanders coming was left flabbergasted by the deviousness, and even lawlessness, that the GOP would embrace to protect them.

How determined were the Republicans? Consider this story from Arizona, where a commission of five—two nonelected Democrats, two nonelected Republicans, and an independent chair—draw the state’s maps. The nonpartisan Commission on Appellate Court Appointments, or CACA, vets the independent, and the four partisans select the chair from five finalists.

In August 2020, more than 100 Trump supporters gathered in front of Timberline Firearms and Training in Flagstaff for a rally. Representative Andy Biggs, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus at the time, spoke. Trump backers gathered again in September, this time for a “shooting day” to support the president.

A few weeks later, CACA selected the store’s owner as one of the five finalists. Any sense that CACA may have gone a little overboard in this move disappeared with a look at the other finalists, a group that mysteriously included registered independents with deep ties to the state’s GOP power structure. There was the utility lobbyist whose sister ran a “dark money” operation against Democrats. And a Scottsdale psychologist and American Israel Public Affairs Committee board member who had been a prolific donor to Arizona’s former Governor Doug Ducey and many Arizona congressmen. Hmm …

The process was fixed from the beginning, agreed Shereen Lerner, one of two Democratic commissioners. Do you want the gun store owner or the utility lobbyist?

A veteran Republican strategist hears this and chuckles. “Yep! That’s your choice!” says Sean Noble. Noble and his fellow Republicans began planning for 2021 years ahead of time. Ducey thought through redistricting step by step, determined to control the details and not get caught unawares. Step one: Stop appointing Democrats to CACA. “We got our butts handed to us last time because we were not prepared,” Noble told me. “When we did the most recent round, there was a significant process in place. We wanted to have things lined up on the commission as much as we could.”

They sure did. With their “independent chair” in place (they went with the dedicated Ducey donor), the commission hired a mapmaker who, critics charged, specialized in dividing Latino communities to benefit white conservatives. The congressional map has two districts that look competitive but lean consistently Republican. It had its first test in 2022. Democrats captured the U.S. Senate race and nearly every statewide office. Republicans won six of nine U.S. House seats. “We had a crappy top of the ticket, and in the two hardest districts, we prevailed,” said Noble, a knowing uptick in his voice. 

Lerner sees those two pseudo-competitive seats as proof that the GOP captured the commission. Both could have been truly competitive. One could have leaned blue, the other red. The “independent chair” would have none of it. How good a job did they do delivering neutral, nonpartisan maps for Arizona? “I don’t think we did deliver that,” Lerner said.

The GOP play in Arizona was so well-planned and creative that you almost need to tip your cap. Others preferred pure power politics. Missouri lawmakers duped voters into repealing the 2018 redistricting initiative before it could be used. In Utah, where voters amended the state Constitution in 2018 to establish an advisory commission for the legislature, lawmakers simply repealed it, then enacted a 4–0 GOP map (Salt Lake City is both liberal enough and large enough to anchor one Democratic district). When a state court found the legislature’s actions unlawful and ordered a new map, lawmakers passed another all-red map in October. (A state judge tossed the GOP map in November and adopted a more balanced one.)

In Ohio, Republicans simply shoved state courts out of the way. GOP lawmakers on the state’s redistricting commission ignored partisan fairness provisions enacted by almost 75 percent of the voters in 2018 and then lawlessly brushed the state Supreme Court aside when it tried to uphold the state Constitution—not just once, but seven times. “We were the preview to what you see now happening with this administration,” said Allison Russo, a Democratic state House member who served on the commission and is now running for secretary of state. “This was going on in Ohio back in 2022, and very few people were paying attention. I think just the violation of the norm of not following a court order from the Ohio Supreme Court, which was and is the highest authority on this redistricting process, was significant. Now we’re seeing that play out on the national stage by this administration.”

GOP Governor Mike DeWine, one of the commission members, pronounced himself “very, very sorry” and conceded that the maps and the process could have been “more clearly constitutional.” That made Maureen O’Connor, the former GOP lieutenant governor and brave chief justice who repeatedly found the maps unconstitutional, snort. “More clearly constitutional! It’s constitutional or it’s not constitutional. It’s like a little bit pregnant.”

Ohio Republicans could get away with this because a handful of GOP voters, including the president of Ohio Right to Life, found two federal judges—Trump appointees, favorites of Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo—to deliver a curious ruling that allowed the GOP to run out the clock. The bad behavior won them a four-year map—which they can now gerrymander again mid-decade. Meanwhile, lawmakers fixed their state Supreme Court problem: Starting in 2022, having begun to lose statewide court races, the gerrymandered legislature turned state Supreme Court elections into partisan contests. “The cake was baked,” said Russo. “Now they have a court that will rubber-stamp whatever they send over.”

When O’Connor retired in 2022, she was replaced by a Republican who wouldn’t dare cross the party line. “This was the plan all along,” O’Connor told me. “We soundly criticize elections that happen in Russia or other countries. They have elections. But they’re not meaningful elections. There’s no choice. Are we far from that?”

There’s even less choice in Florida, where Republicans ran a similar play to take over the courts in order to flout constitutional language ratified by more than 62 percent of voters in 2010 that bans partisan gerrymandering. State courts saw through the ruse. In 2015, justices agreed with a lower court’s ruling that struck down eight congressional districts, and delivered a fairer map.

DeSantis, however, demanded the legislature deliver a congressional map with an additional four GOP seats after the 2020 census—and promised to claim even more via a mid-decade gerrymander. His map survived an initial state Supreme Court challenge. The Constitution didn’t change. The judges did. The new court had been carefully vetted by DeSantis and court whisperer Leo, in part for this very purpose.

“We don’t know what this court will do next,” said former Chief Justice Barbara Pariente. But she doesn’t sound optimistic. “We had a system of merit selection and retention for the appellate courts, but the governor changed the way the courts and the commissions were composed. Really, these are now his commissions, essentially, and his courts.” The current courts, she said, has some judges who “would never have passed muster before this and have opinions that are not rooted in the law.… Whether they feel beholden to the governor? Only they know.”

In North Carolina, meanwhile, everyone understands that the state Supreme Court is beholden to the legislature—especially since one justice is the Senate president’s son. A Democratic court looked to end gerrymandering in 2022. It found that maps tilted for either side violated the state Constitution and ordered a map that favored no one. That map elected seven Dems and seven Republicans in 2022. But that fall, Republicans—culminating a decade-long RSLC effort—captured the majority. They overturned that decision and allowed fellow partisans a free hand to gerrymander. The map, used for the first time in 2024, shifted three seats. It produced 10 Republicans and four Democrats.

The GOP majority in the House at the start of this session? Three seats.

The RSLC and Leo’s work backstopping GOP gerrymanders via hijacked state supreme courts became all the more important after Leo’s handpicked majority on the U.S. Supreme Court shuttered the federal courts to partisan gerrymandering claims in 2019’s party-line decision in Rucho v. Common Cause.

The decision was pivotal. It incentivized extreme gerrymanders nationwide and left voters all but powerless to challenge them. Rucho arrived after federal judges nationwide, appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents, examined maps drawn by both parties during the 2011 cycle. Many of those judges recognized that modern gerrymanders, devised on sophisticated software with the help of voluminous voter data, were a serious threat to fair elections, and that the federal courts had a unique responsibility to protect voters. Judges tossed plans drawn by Democrats in Maryland and Republicans in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina.

But Chief Justice John Roberts insisted otherwise. In one move, he ended the momentum toward reform both in the courts and in the states. The chief feigned ignorance of the effects, concluding that voters could solve this at the ballot box, and he pretended Congress might fix it. This pushed an issue he had no interest in solving toward a body he knew never would. Roberts praised the winning 2018 nonpartisan movements while ensuring no future state need reform itself. By ending hopes of a national judicial standard, he signaled that states could gerrymander at will, especially those with reliably partisan courts. Once Texas, Florida, and North Carolina were free to do their worst—at any time during the decade—it made no sense for California or others to behave. This summer’s redistricting apocalypse belongs to him.

“The Supreme Court understood the partisan implications and then essentially withdrew from the field and prevented us from making any progress,” said Maryland Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin, who was a constitutional law professor before joining Congress.

Four years later, in a racial gerrymandering case from Alabama, Allen v. Milligan (formerly Merrill v. Milligan), Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh worked together to invite the Voting Rights Act case they really wanted. Roberts and Kavanaugh sided with the liberals to order an Alabama map that created two Black opportunity districts, while patiently teeing up the challenge they desired to Section Two of the VRA. It’s a patient two-step Roberts has long mastered to get his desired results, while maintaining his unearned reputation as an institutionalist. In a brief concurrence, Kavanaugh suggested that he wanted to consider the bigger question and find that the nation no longer needed to take race into account at all. But, he noted, he could not, because that had not been part of the arguments. It did not take long for Louisiana to notice this exaggerated wink—or for the court to order Louisiana v. Callais reargued around those larger constitutional issues. Depending on the nature of the decision and the speed with which it arrives, it’s possible that state legislatures across the South could remap next year, erase once-protected majority-Black seats once and for all, and make both partisan and racial gerrymanders all but impossible to challenge.

Congress did take up John Roberts’s challenge. It ran aground, precisely as the chief justice must have known it would.

When Democrats claimed a Washington trifecta in 2021, their top congressional priority was a collection of clean-government reforms called the For the People Act. It would have overhauled campaign finance, protected voting rights, and ended partisan gerrymandering (both after the census and in the middle of the decade). Democrats couldn’t get it done. New reporting suggests they came far closer than anyone believed.

“It’s two things,” one prominent member told me. “How close we got, which most people don’t know.… How transformative it was. How responsive to the threats at this moment. All of it.” This member continued: “We got so tantalizingly close. Were it not for Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema …”

Every Democrat but one in the House backed HR1. Every Republican lined up to oppose it. (“A lot of people on our side didn’t appreciate how big this was,” the member told me. “But someone who did was Mitch McConnell.”) Without any Senate Republican support, it couldn’t survive the filibuster. Democrats needed Manchin and Sinema’s support to reform the filibuster so that the bill could pass the Senate with a simple majority instead of needing to clear the cloture hurdle of 60 votes; otherwise, a minority of a minority would kill far-reaching reforms to safeguard democracy.

In public, Manchin said consistently that he would not touch the filibuster. But behind closed doors, Democrats believed they had convinced him. Congressional leaders framed the filibuster reform as a return to its original conception, not a permanent minority veto, and they fed Manchin’s considerable ego: He would be the one who fixed the Senate. He would be the leader who made it work again. He would be the Robert Byrd of his generation. After months of hand-holding, Manchin understood the stakes and seemed to signal he would go along.

But under intense pressure from the White House to enact President Joe Biden’s signature Build Back Better program, an embittered Manchin broke away from the party and said he would vote no, effectively killing the stimulus package. All the progress that had been made on voting rights disappeared. Biden had lost Manchin entirely. Manchin declined to comment. “Of all of Manchin’s transgressions against the democracy,” said Raskin, “this might be the most severe sin of them all.”

The For the People Act was dead. Could Democrats have broken the bill apart and worked to get a handful of Senate Republicans onboard for a stand-alone gerrymandering bill? Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi scoffed at that idea. “And you think the Republicans would give us 60 votes for that?” she asked me. “Which one would they give us? Independent commissions?” She ran through a number of reforms. “They would not go for that…. They’re not interested in any of that.”

Perhaps not. But another trifecta window—with Democrats controlling the White House, Senate, and House—closed without electoral reform. It’s hard to imagine when the next might arrive.

If you think the 2026 maps present challenges, however, just wait. A potentially devastating reapportionment looms after the 2030 census. If Democrats were once out-strategized on redistricting because they believed demographics were destiny, well, now redistricting and demographics are aligned against them. Population shifts could send a dozen House seats from blue states to red ones. A Brennan Center study, based on Census Bureau projections, suggests that California could lose four seats, New York two, and Oregon, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin one each. Texas and Florida would each pick up four. North Carolina, Idaho, Utah, and Arizona would gain one each.

As those House seats shift, Electoral College power moves with them. Kamala Harris would have won in 2024 had she held the Midwestern “blue wall” along with Nebraska’s “blue dot.” In 2032, that won’t add up to 270 electoral votes.

Which is to say: If Democrats lack control of enough states to gerrymander their way out of their gerrymandering problem in 2026, it will be even harder come 2032. The bonus five seats Democrats claimed in California essentially head to Texas anyway at decade’s end. Anything New York might do by 2028 will go to Florida.

Are Democrats thinking about this? I asked Pelosi. “Apportionment? I’m just thinking about now. I’ve got November 4th. OK? I’ll get by November 4th and get by next year. And then you’re going to see something quite remarkable happen.”

Such fanciful thinking is no match for math. There will never ever be enough seats in Illinois, Maryland, or New York to compensate for states where Republicans dominate and paint delegations entirely, or nearly entirely, red. That means that the road to the House in 2026 requires a clean sweep by Democrats of competitive districts in some tough territory: Iowa, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York (outside the city), Virginia, and Arizona.

Come 2032? Even if California later moves to permanently suspend its commission, for Democrats to overcome an exodus from Minnesota, Oregon, and Rhode Island to states where Republicans draw the lines and adeptly “pack and crack” Democrats (stuffing as many Democrats as possible into a handful of seats they win easily, then dispersing the rest in numbers insufficient to win) might be asking too much. Might Democrats move to suspend commissions in Colorado, Washington, and New Jersey? In Michigan, if they win a trifecta? Would voters in states that earned hard-won reforms hand power back to the Democrats?

“We have been trying to act on this, and they’re the ones who insist on a race to the bottom,” said Raskin. “Our people just feel like we can’t engage in unilateral political disarmament, and we also understand that they control a lot more state legislatures than we do.”

All is not lost. There will be fierce efforts to fight back. In Kansas City, the same week that lawmakers passed that new gerrymandered map that cracked the city in thirds, I spent a Saturday morning in a church basement packed with volunteers learning how to collect signatures for a statewide ballot initiative that would effectively veto the legislature’s rigged map. “We are a lot of pissed off white people,” said the woman next to me. Maybe in some state, a Republican Supreme Court justice will prove to be as brave as Ohio’s Maureen O’Connor.

The long-term struggle to secure something closer to a representative democracy, however, will require a different strategy. The time has come to fight fire with water. Any fix must be a national one that’s fair everywhere. The best way to end gerrymandering—and the extremism and polarization that runs hand in hand—would be for the nation to adopt a more proportional House of Representatives. 

Here’s how it would work. Every state would have the same number of members as they do now. But instead of electing them from single-member districts—easily gerrymandered so that the district lines determine winners and losers—a nonpartisan commission would draw larger, multimember districts of three, four, and five members, who would be elected with a proportional form of ranked-choice voting. Every district, everywhere, would elect Democrats, Republicans, and maybe even independents. (Nothing would change in states with only one or two members.) Every voter would cast a ballot that matters. Urban Republicans, rural Democrats, and independents everywhere would know that someone from their district represented them. Congress could make this change simply by passing a law; a really strong version called the Fair Representation Act is regularly introduced by Raskin and fellow Representative Don Beyer of Virginia.

“I want to advocate the reforms that could get us through this, the For the People Act, ranked-choice voting and multimember districts,” said Raskin. “But at the same time, we have to be utterly engaged in the process of figuring out how to win within the gerrymandered rules…. We are eventually going to need structural reform to get out of this nightmare. But in order to get there, we are going to have to play like home run champs to get through the system as it exists.”

Like any national reform in a polarized era, or anything that requires getting through the Senate filibuster, this would be a heavy lift. It won’t happen before the 2026 midterms, or even the 2030 census. But before you insist this could never pass, the beauty of a more proportional plan is that it solves everyone’s problems with the current system. Trump and Republicans howl that the Massachusetts delegation is unfair because it produces a 9–0 Democratic map when Trump won around 36 percent of the vote in 2024. Democrats have similar complaints about Tennessee and Oklahoma. A proportional system addresses both concerns. Independents, who often outnumber at least one major party in a state, feel shut out of primaries and have no say in selecting general election candidates. Their voices would matter. 

Minority voters, fearful that the Voting Rights Act will be gutted so that they cannot win representation, would maintain their voice. Republicans in California would not be punished for the sins of Republicans in Texas. Democrats in Florida would not be underrepresented to compensate for gerrymanders in Maryland. In 2024, only 37 of 435 U.S. House election results were within 5 percentage points. Others had the choice made for them—often in a low-turnout closed primary that selects someone far to the left or the right of the district itself. All those voters who feel as if no one is listening to them are right. No one needs to listen to them. A proportional House would put voters, not district lines, in charge again.

Congress could transform our politics in this way via statute. No constitutional amendment is required. We are not limited to a system of winner-takes-all districts, drawn by politicians. And while proportional systems are used in modern democracies around the world, it also fits squarely into the American tradition of full and fair representation. Congress passed a law mandating single-member districts in 1967. Nothing else stands in the way. Reform might not be easy, but it is possible. 

Back in Kansas City, where banks and developers perfected redlining to keep Blacks who migrated here after the Civil War out of their communities, Troost Avenue became a racial divide known as the Troost Wall. Now, in 2025, Troost is a dividing line again, this time between two of the three new districts that cleave this city apart, old poison in a new bottle. Troost intersects with Independence Avenue, and as I head toward that one point where all three new districts come together, a fascinating melting pot emerges: multiple markets dedicated to Middle Eastern, African, Mexican, and Somali foods.

As I approach the intersection of Independence and Gladstone avenues, the new 6th District is to my north. That’s the one that stretches along the entire top half of the state, several hundred miles to the Illinois border. The new 4th is to my left. It attaches a small slice of the city onto a much larger swath of rural, southwest Missouri. To my right is the 5th, which zigzags its way up to the college town of Columbia, then veers southeast toward Jefferson City.

At the very place where all three districts coalesce sits the Independence Boulevard Christian Church. Three homeless people sit on the front steps. I walk through the parking lot toward a side door, crossing in and out of the districts, and look inside. The church’s gargantuan bottom floor houses a major food kitchen in Kansas City. Every Monday night, hundreds of hot meals are served. Hygiene kits are stacked high. There are shelves of children’s books for families. Pamphlets offer advice for dealing with immigration authorities in several different languages. Here, the hard work of caring for one other—of acting out the rituals of compassion and civic faith that we need to sustain a democracy—goes on; precisely where that democracy is being carved beyond recognition, sliced and diced for partisan gain.  

Trump’s Case Against James Comey Is Crashing and Burning - 2025-11-20T11:00:00Z

The Trump administration’s campaign to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey is going about as badly as it can for the Justice Department. At a hearing on Wednesday, prosecutors admitted that a federal grand jury had never actually voted on the indictment against one of Trump’s top political adversaries before it was filed with the court by federal prosecutors in Virginia in September. The revelation could potentially result in dismissal of all charges against Comey.

Judge Michael Nachmanoff, the presiding trial judge in the case, questioned prosecutors intensely at the hearing about the timeline of events leading up to Comey’s indictment on September 25. According to prosecutors, they had initially presented a three-charge indictment to the grand jury, which declined to approve one of the false-statement charges against Comey.

This was already an unusual move on the grand jury’s part; the cliché is that a decent prosecutor could get one to indict a ham sandwich. (Well, with some notable exceptions.) Prosecutors then revised the indictment to only include the other two charges. Instead of properly submitting that indictment to the grand jury again, they instead submitted the revised version to the court.

Lindsey Halligan, the rookie interim U.S. attorney for eastern Virginia, confirmed that the final indictment was only seen by the grand jury’s foreperson and another member when it was finalized on September 25. Federal prosecutors argued that it wasn’t a new indictment and that the charges were still valid. Comey’s lawyers, as you might imagine, took a much less forgiving view of the matter.

“There is no indictment,” Michael Dreeben, one of Comey’s lawyers, reportedly told Nachmanoff after the Justice Department’s admission. Though it might seem like a technicality, it is a huge one. The Fifth Amendment prohibits felony prosecutions “unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury.” As Comey’s legal team explained to the judge, the former FBI director was essentially being prosecuted under a new indictment that no grand jury had approved.

To understand how things got to this point, we must travel back in time to this summer. Trump had repeatedly pressured officials to bring criminal charges against figures like Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, the latter of whom was also indicted over dubious allegations of mortgage fraud in recent months. California Senator Adam Schiff and Representative Eric Swalwell, who both played a key role in Trump’s first-term impeachments, are facing similar investigations that have not yet resulted in charges.

The president had already demolished the Justice Department’s post-Watergate tradition of independence, soon after returning to office in January, by appointing his former personal attorneys, including Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, to oversee the department. Those officials have carried out sweeping ideological purges of career department employees for their perceived disloyalty to Trump; hundreds of others have left for work in the private sector amid the tumult.

In Comey’s case, matters came to a head in late September when ABC News reported on September 19 that Eric Siebert, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was resisting demands to prosecute Comey and James because he thought the cases against them lacked merit. For Trump, who faced two impeachments and four criminal prosecutors over the last decade, the goal is personal revenge.

“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump wrote in a post on his personal social media website on September 20. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” (It is not clear what he considered to be the fifth indictment.) The post was addressed directly to “Pam,” leading some to initially believe it had been meant as a private message to Bondi.

Siebert resigned on September 20 after Trump publicly demanded his removal. In his place, Trump installed Halligan as the new acting U.S. attorney. The Eastern District of Virginia is among the most important federal-prosecutor offices in the nation in normal times. Since the Pentagon and the CIA’s headquarters are located in its territory, it often oversees complex and sensitive national security cases.

Halligan, for her part, had no prosecutorial experience at all before taking the job two months ago. The 36-year-old attorney is an insurance lawyer by trade and largely worked as one of Trump’s many personal lawyers in recent years. By comparison, Dreeben, who represented Comey at Wednesday’s hearing, argued more than 100 criminal cases before the Supreme Court when he worked in the solicitor general’s office. What Halligan lacked in experience, she made up for with personal loyalty to Trump: The Comey and James prosecutions moved forward despite objections from career prosecutors in the office.

At issue in Comey’s case was a ticking clock: Trump officials wanted to charge him with lying to Congress during a September 30, 2020, hearing on the Russia investigation. Comey told lawmakers that day that he had not authorized anyone at the FBI to leak information to news organizations. At the same time, Trump allies faulted him for leaking information to the press through a non-FBI intermediary after Trump fired him and for allegedly knowing that Andrew McCabe, his former deputy director, had himself authorized leaks to reporters. Comey denied that he had lied to Congress or committed any other wrongdoing.

The two charges—making a false statement to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation—had a five-year statute of limitations attached to them. As a result, the newly appointed Halligan had only 10 days to bring charges before the opportunity was lost forever. She submitted them to the court on September 25 with only five days to spare.

Comey immediately responded by asking the court to dismiss the charges against him, arguing that he was targeted by a “selective” and “vindictive” prosecution because he had previously criticized Trump. He cited the basic nature of the case—Trump’s public demands, his ouster of hesitant prosecutors, and so on—to support his claim. Comey also alleged that Halligan had been improperly appointed to her post: Federal law imposes unique conditions for interim U.S. attorney appointments, which Comey claimed had been disregarded by Trump and Halligan.

In addition to those claims, Comey also asked a judge to compel the Justice Department to provide him with more documentation about the grand jury proceedings against him. He hinted that an FBI witness may have improperly relied upon information that was protected by attorney-client privilege, as well as other aforementioned grounds. (The non-FBI intermediary, Daniel Richman, is a Columbia University law professor.)

One unspoken but subtextual concern was that federal prosecutors had initially filed two different indictments against Comey on the publicly accessible docket on September 25. One of them contained the two charges against Comey that were running up against the statute of limitations. The other included a third charge. Both had been signed by the grand jury foreperson, at the prompting of a federal magistrate judge during a September 26 hearing.

“So this has never happened before,” Judge Lindseey Vaala told Halligan during the hearing, according to a transcript obtained by CBS News. “I’ve been handed two documents that are in the Mr. Comey case that are inconsistent with one another. There seems to be a discrepancy. They’re both signed by the foreperson.

“The one that says it’s a failure to concur in an indictment, it doesn’t say with respect to one count,” Vaala continued. “It looks like they failed to concur across all three counts, so I’m a little confused as to why I was handed two things with the same case number that are inconsistent.”

Halligan professed ignorance. “So I only reviewed the one with the two counts that our office redrafted when we found out about the two counts that were true billed, and I signed that one,” she claimed. “I did not see the other one. I don’t know where that came from.” Vaala expressed surprise at that claim since Halligan had actually signed both of them.

Comey’s motion and the court’s review culminated in a bombshell November 17 order by Judge William Fitzpatrick, another magistrate judge later assigned to the case, where he granted Comey’s request to review the grand jury materials against him. While this request is “rarely granted,” Fitzpatrick explained, “the record points to a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps” that had potentially “undermine[d] the integrity of the grand jury proceeding.”

Fitzpatrick laid out the sequence of events as he understood them. First, prosecutors presented a three-count indictment to the grand jury. The grand jury then rejected one count and found probable cause to support the other two. Prosecutors then prepared a second indictment that omitted the rejected count. Finally, prosecutors submitted both indictments to the court via a magistrate judge, who accepted the revised one after some questioning.

What happened in the time period between when prosecutors prepared the second indictment and when they submitted it to the court? One might assume under normal circumstances that prosecutors simply redid the process. But Fitzpatrick expressed some doubt that this had actually happened, based on the transcript that he had reviewed of the grand jury proceedings. It showed that there was only a seven-minute gap between when prosecutors learned that the first indictment had only been true-billed on two of the three counts and when they submitted a second indictment to the court.

“The short time span between” these two moments, Fitzpatrick noted, “could not have been sufficient to draft the second indictment, sign the second indictment, present it to the grand jury, provide legal instructions to the grand jury, and give them an opportunity to deliberate and render a decision on the new indictment.” He suggested that it was possible that the transcript and audio recordings were “incomplete,” which would raise a host of other concerns.

Alternatively, he noted, “if this procedure did not take place, then the court is in uncharted legal territory in that the indictment returned in open court was not the same charging document presented to and deliberated upon by the grand jury.” This “unusual series of events,” Fitzpatrick concluded, “calls into question the presumption of regularity” that courts normally use for grand jury proceedings and “provides another genuine issue the defense may raise to challenge the manner in which the government obtained the indictment.”

Halligan’s bombshell admissions at Wednesday’s hearing appear to have now solved the mystery: Her office did not actually present the second indictment to the grand jury, and instead obtained the grand jury foreperson’s signature anyway. This gave the second indictment the appearance of approval by the entire grand jury, even though it technically hadn’t approved it, and allowed the case to move forward on schedule.

So what happens now? Comey’s lawyers will undoubtedly call for the case to be dismissed for the glaring procedural error in an upcoming motion. If Nachmanoff grants the dismissal, the question will turn to whether he does so with or without prejudice. While the statute of limitations has technically passed, federal law allows prosecutors to refile charges in dismissed cases for up to six months after the dismissal. Given the Justice Department’s overall conduct in this case (and its alleged misconduct), however, Nachmanoff may instead opt to dismiss the case with prejudice and bring the entire matter to a close.

That would be a fitting end for a case brought by an unqualified and potentially illegal appointee in an apparently vindictive prosecution that had been publicly demanded by the president out of a sense of personal revenge. Trump has long wanted to wield the American criminal justice system as a hammer against his political enemies. In this case, he and his allies can’t stop hitting themselves with it by accident.

How Mikie Sherrill Won Latino Voters Back for Democrats - 2025-11-20T11:00:00Z

When Mikie Sherrill was elected to be the next governor of New Jersey earlier this month, her success was due in no small part to support from the Garden State’s Latino voters. Although Latinos in New Jersey swung to the right in 2024, a trend that mirrored the drift away from Democrats nationally, Sherrill’s ability to recapture Latino support has Democrats hopeful that President Donald Trump’s appeal is fading for these voters.

It was one of election night’s most eye-popping results. Sherrill won by a wide margin, defying preelection stories about lagging enthusiasm for her campaign. That she improved significantly upon Vice President Kamala Harris’s performance in New Jersey among Latino voters was a big reason why. Union City and Perth Amboy, the two cities with the greatest percentage of Hispanic voters in the state, swung dramatically back to the left after shifting toward Republicans in 2024. In Passaic County, which has a population that is 43 percent Hispanic, Sherrill beat Republican Jack Ciattarelli by roughly 15 points; in 2024, Trump had won the county by three percentage points.

Although turnout in Passaic County, which includes Passaic and Paterson, was relatively low compared to other counties—and significantly lower than in the 2024 elections—the share of voters casting ballots increased significantly from the last gubernatorial election in 2021. After Democratic support in Passaic declined sharply between the 2017 and 2021 elections, it jumped significantly in 2025—the single greatest improvement in Democratic margin of any county, according to analysis by Solidarity Strategies, a Democratic consulting group that worked with the Sherrill campaign and state party ahead of the election.

Patricia Campos-Medina, a progressive Latina organizer who advised Sherrill’s campaign, credited Sherrill’s success in large part to the candidate’s emphasis on building infrastructure in heavily Hispanic communities.

“There wasn’t enough of a field operation targeting voters, talking to voters early, knocking on doors, and we set out to build a volunteer canvassing operation and a paid canvassing operation,” she said.

Campos-Medina continued that Sherrill’s campaign ticked several boxes in ensuring success with Latino communities: an effective message, a candidate that is “out there making local alliances,” and a field operation that is bolstered by outside support. The campaign was supported by the state party and the Democratic National Committee, which had conducted polling that helped identify top issues for Latino voters in the state. She also noted that outside groups such as Unidos US Action PAC and Latino Victory invested in the race, and praised Sherrill’s work with a “new set of field consultants that were focused on Latino get out the vote operations.”

“We didn’t rely on one field consultant to do a general operation. We actually broke it down into different expertise, and were able to get rooted in the community,” she said.

The Sherrill campaign launched a bilingual paid media campaign between Labor Day and Election Day, which specifically targeted Latino voters with advertising on broadcast, cable, radio, and digital platforms. Chuck Rocha, the founder of Solidarity Strategies, also noted that there was an “intentional investment” not only from the Sherrill campaign but from the state party and the Democratic National Committee, as well.

Sherrill’s campaign was not the only organization engaging with Latino voters. Make the Road Action New Jersey, an advocacy group that encourages Latino civic participation, engaged with voters in Elizabeth, Perth Amboy, and the city of Passaic to ensure that they were aware of the stakes of the election. The political arm of Make the Road Action NJ joined other progressive organizations in endorsing Newark Mayor Ras Baraka in the primary, but continued its outreach efforts in the lead-up to the general election. This was accomplished through a “layered program,” said Nedia Morsy, the organization’s director, reaching voters through seven million digital ad impressions, 260,000 calls, 130,000 text messages, and knocking on 60,000 doors.

This electoral effort bloomed from deep roots. Well before becoming involved in election activities, the nonprofit arm of Make the Road participated in a nonpartisan campaign to engage with voters year-round and encourage civic participation. Morsy said that the canvassing effort reached Latino voters who admitted to voting for Trump but felt betrayed by his administration’s actions on immigration.

“It was such an important year to launch a year-round canvassing program because of how quickly the administration operated,” said Morsy. “You wanted to be there with people to help make meaning, and also to connect the dots that what is happening out there is actually connected to a gubernatorial race.”

She added that even though Latino voters swung to the right in 2024, their priorities have not changed—it is a matter of who they believe has their best interests at heart, rather than a shifting in their actual positions. She noted that although Passaic County supported Trump in 2024, it voted for Baraka in the gubernatorial primary.

“The idea is that Latinos have left the party, but the actual, truer story is that Latinos have actually been the most consistent. They’ve said that they are concerned about keeping their family safe [and] being able to provide a roof over their head,” Morsy said. “It’s not that Black and brown voters are going through an identity crisis. It really is that we know we have parties and candidates who unfortunately have not been able to deliver on their promises.”

The results in New Jersey were, in part, a rejection of Trump’s seeming lack of action on the economy. Recent polling of Latino voters nationwide has shown widespread disapproval of his approach to the economy, as well as opposition to his immigration policies; an October poll by Equis found that 68 percent of Latino voters disapprove of how Trump is handling the cost of living. Another survey by Somos Votantes and Somos PAC released this week found that 36 percent of Latino voters who supported Trump in 2024 now say that they are disappointed or regret their decision.

Indeed, Sherrill’s campaign has credited much of her success to her messaging focus on “affordability.” Rocha said that Democrats as a whole have often erred in a lack of specificity, saying that they want to keep costs down without providing concrete examples of what that means. By focusing specifically on high utility costs, and promising to freeze energy rates for a year—a proposal that may be easier said than done—Sherrill offered a tangible example of her goals as governor.

“If you think about the last few elections, you haven’t heard anybody talk about utility costs. You hear about, oh, inflation or jobs or the economy—these words that aren’t really hyper-focused on what your problem is,” said Rocha.

While a secondary priority, immigration was also top of mind for Latino voters in New Jersey. Campos-Medina said that Latino immigrants who have become citizens and are able to vote are often “separated from the real crisis of immigration enforcement for about 10 to 15 years.” These voters may have been swayed to support Trump because of his promises to deport undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes. But Trump’s immigration policies have resulted in the detention of citizens and the deportation of undocumented immigrants who are not criminal offenders.

“The underlying theme everywhere was this anxiety in the community of the overreach of this administration. People don’t like seeing masked agents in their neighborhoods. They don’t like seeing law-abiding grandmothers and grandfathers getting picked up,” Rocha said.

Exit polling from the New Jersey gubernatorial race found that a majority of Latino voters believe the Trump administration’s immigration policies have “gone too far,” and that the next governor should not cooperate with the president on immigration enforcement.

“It’s clear that Latino voters are rejecting what Trump is selling,” said Vanessa Cardenas, executive director of immigration rights organization America’s Voice.

But Cardenas also said that Democrats needed to come up with an “affirmative agenda” if they wanted to appeal to Latino voters across the country going forward, rather than simply relying on opposition to Trump. If Democrats want to build on their gains among Latino voters in the midterm election, both in New Jersey and across the country, they will need to give them something to vote for—and keep up the mobilization efforts that contributed to a decisive win in New Jersey.

“This kind of rejection for Trump doesn’t necessarily translate to the level of support that Democrats are going to need,” said Cardenas. “As we look to the midterms, Democrats really investing and engaging in having a policy platform that speaks to the concerns of Latinos, both on the economy but also on immigration, is going to be key.”

* This article originally misidentified Perth Amboy in Passaic County. The article has also been updated to reflect the correct name of Make the Road Action New Jersey and Nedia Morsy’s title.

Trump’s Anger Over Prices Goes Nuclear as Fresh Polls Show Him Tanking - 2025-11-20T10:00:00Z

President Trump is cratering in two new polls. A Marist survey has his overall approval rating at 39 percent, and a Marquette poll has his approval plunging on the economy (36–64), tariffs (37–63), and inflation (28–72). Yet Trump and his advisers don’t have much of an answer to this problem. Trump just unleashed a long, rambling tirade angrily insisting that prices are really going down, not up. And he ranted bizarrely about Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, saying of the latter, “I’d love to fire his ass,” another sign of his anger over inflation. So what happens if the economy really dips? We talked to New Republic staff writer Timothy Noah, who has been writing well on this question. He explains what’s going on with the gathering economic storm clouds, why Trump is uniquely ill suited to handle a worsening economic crisis, and what things might look like for Trump if the bottom falls out. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.

MAGA Is Livid Ted Cruz Accidentally Helped Block Texas Redistricting - 2025-11-19T21:49:07Z

Donald Trump’s major electoral setback in Texas is thanks, in no small part, to Ted Cruz.

A three-judge panel ruled against the Lone Star State’s gerrymandering effort Tuesday, ordering Texas to return to its 2021 maps for the upcoming midterm elections. The decision was written by Judge Jeffrey V. Brown, whom Cruz recommended to the bench in 2019.

That realization has enraged some members of Trump’s base, who have questioned how the Houston native could have recommended someone who would rule against the president’s agenda.

“Brown was a clear miss by Ted Cruz,” argued conservative political strategist Mike Davis in a Fox News op-ed Wednesday.

Brown wrote in the Tuesday ruling that “substantial evidence” proved Texas had “racially gerrymandered” its latest districts.

Trump suggested in July that Texas could give Republicans five more House seats by flipping a handful of blue districts next year via “a very simple redrawing.” The Justice Department then threatened to take legal action on the matter, asserting that at least four Texas congressional districts were “unconstitutional” since the presence of multiple racial groups had made white people the regional electoral minority.

Redistricting is perfectly legal—so long as it complies with federal law. Trump’s directive for Texas forced the state to focus on race rather than politics, in defiance of national nondiscrimination laws. Brown noted in the legal opinion that if the effort had intended to thwart Democratic strongholds in the state, it would have also targeted majority white Democrat districts,” but those were “conspicuously absent.”

Brown determined that reverting to the 2021 map was a more adequate solution than providing Texas with the opportunity to draw up another plan, since not only was the 2021 iteration developed by the state legislature (as opposed to the state judiciary) but it has successfully been used in two previous congressional elections, as well as an ongoing special election. The judicial ruling effectively crushed Trump’s dream to reshape Texas to help Republicans in Washington.

Meanwhile, Cruz is laying the groundwork to run for president in 2028, though it’s unclear who in the MAGA movement will rally to his side.

White House Celebrates as International Student Enrollment Plummets - 2025-11-19T21:23:58Z

The White House is so desperate to scrape together some “good news” that it’s trying to tout a decline in the number of new international students enrolling at American universities. That would actually be really bad—if it were the whole story, that is.

The number of new international students enrolling at American universities has decreased 17 percent since last year, according to the White House’s Wednesday “good news” roundup, which cited a recent survey from the Institute of International Education. The Trump administration celebrated the dip, claiming it was “reclaiming spots for American students on college campuses.”

But there’s more to this number than meets the eye. In fall 2025, 29 percent of institutions reported an increase in the number of new international students enrolling, 14 percent said the number was stable, and 57 percent said there was a decrease, according to the IIE study. However, the total number of international students only declined by 1 percent, and the number of international undergraduates actually increased by 2 percent. So it doesn’t look like too many spots were actually “reclaimed.”

The high percentage drop of enrollment can be explained by a significant drop in the number of students signed up for Optional Practical Training programs, which allow students to remain in the United States after they have completed their studies—a program that the State Department is planning to gut. It seems that international students are still studying in the United States; they’re simply taking their newfound knowledge with them after they finish school to make their home countries great instead of ours.

An enrollment dip is still not good news, however. International students paying full tuition and higher fees can help to cross-subsidize lower in-state tuition for American citizens. Outside of the financial incentive, involving international students in U.S. higher education has had tremendous positive outcomes for American society and higher education.

This study comes after the Trump administration revoked more than 6,000 student visas in August and arrested multiple foreign-born students and faculty over their speech or political affiliation, making clear that international students are not safe to remain in the United States. Ninety-six percent of institutions said that the dip was the result of concerns about visa applications, and 68 percent said it was due to travel restrictions, according to the study.

At the same time, the Trump administration has moved to increase the cost of an H-1B temporary visa by a factor of more than 10,000 percent, creating a sky-high financial barrier to those wishing to come to the United States for work.

Dem Demands Transcript of Trump-MBS Call After Khashoggi Killing - 2025-11-19T21:02:44Z

Donald Trump’s claim Tuesday that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “knew nothing about” the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi may be undercut by a phone call he had with the monarch.

Democratic Representative Eugene Vindman said in a speech on the House floor Tuesday night that he reviewed the phone call at the time when he was a staffer on the National Security Council during Trump’s first term, calling it as problematic as the one between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Trump that led to the president’s impeachment in 2019.

“After the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, I reviewed a call between the president and the Saudi crown prince. The American people and the Khashoggi family deserve to know what was said on that call. If history is any guide, the receipts will be shocking,” the Virginia congressman said, calling for the president to release the full transcript of the call.

You know about Trump and Zelesnky’s call, but have you heard about the call between Trump and the Saudi Crown Prince?

Watch my statement below. @POTUS, release the transcript. pic.twitter.com/UHltH8srdO

— Congressman Eugene Vindman (@RepVindman) November 19, 2025

The phone call Vindman is referring to is suspected to be from June 2019, when the White House reported that a call took place.

On Tuesday, when a reporter asked bin Salman and Trump about the U.S. intelligence conclusion that the crown prince personally ordered Khashoggi’s killing, Trump rushed to bin Salman’s defense.

“You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking something like that,” Trump snapped. He added, “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about, whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.”

Based on Trump’s close ties with MBS, as the crown prince is commonly known, the phone call may be damaging to the president, especially considering that Trump claims to have protected MBS from congressional action over Khashoggi’s murder during his first term.

“I saved his ass,” Trump said to reporter Bob Woodward for his 2020 book Rage. “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop.”

Trump Guts Federal Protections for Whistleblowers - 2025-11-19T20:51:02Z

The White House is close to implementing a new rule that would effectively eradicate congressionally approved whistleblower protections.

Congress has passed several laws since the 1970s extending protections to federal workers who call out governmental wrongdoing. But the Trump administration is planning on chipping away at that by updating its policy on accountability, which would “exclude senior employees from legal protections that prohibit U.S. government agencies from retaliating against whistleblowers,” reported Reuters Tuesday.

Federal employment attorneys noted that the new policy would make targets out of the people most likely to find themselves in positions to uncover serious corruption.

“Translation: Trump can fire federal employees who point out that he’s broken the law. That’s pretty damn dark,” wrote Miles Taylor, an ex–Homeland Security official who drew national attention in 2018 when he anonymously penned an op-ed for The New York Times claiming to be part of the internal “resistance” against Trump’s first-term agenda.

It would follow through on Donald Trump’s April proposal to create a new federal employee category to “enhance accountability.”

“This rule empowers federal agencies to swiftly remove employees in policy-influencing roles for poor performance, misconduct, corruption, or subversion of Presidential directives, without lengthy procedural hurdles,” reads a White House fact sheet from the time on the proposed changes.

The Office of Personnel Management estimated at the time that the switch-up could affect as many as 50,000 positions across government agencies.

The Trump administration told Reuters Tuesday that the new rule would not strip employees of their current protections but would “put individual federal agencies in charge of enforcing those safeguards.”

“This administration is making good on its determination to silence dissent in all forms, creating a culture of fear, silence and intimidation,” Andrew Bakaj, chief legal counsel of the nonpartisan group Whistleblower Aid, told Reuters in a statement.

Trump Publicly Threatens to Fire Scott Bessent in Unhinged Rant - 2025-11-19T20:39:08Z

President Trump joked (we think) about firing Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent while Bessent was sitting right in front of him.

“Interest rates are down despite the Fed. I mean Scott, you gotta work on this guy. He’s got some real mental problems. He has something wrong with him,” Trump said while addressing the Kennedy Center on Wednesday, referring to current Fed Chair Jerome Powell. “I’ll be honest, I’d love to fire his ass. He should be fired. Guy’s grossly incompetent. And he should be sued for spending $4 billion to build a little building. I’m building a ballroom that’s gonna cost a tiny fraction of that.

“You gotta work on him, Scott,” Trump continued. “The only thing Scott’s blowing it on is the Fed. Because … the rates are too high, Scott. And if you don’t get it fixed fast, I’m gonna fire your ass, OK?” The crowd roared with laughter. “I wanna get him out, Scott!”

Trump on Jerome Powell: "I'd love to fire his ass. He should be fired. The only thing Scott [Bessent] is blowing it on is the Fed. The rates are too high, Scott. And if you don't get it fixed fast, I'm going to fire your ass." pic.twitter.com/s653VB3MI1

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 19, 2025

This is a pretty stunning undermining of his own staff, even for Trump. And if the economy is doing so well, why is he so pressed about rates getting cut?

“Translation: the economy isn’t bad enough, let’s speedrun a recession!” California Governor Gavin Newsom’s press office posted in response.

Trump has been after Powell for months now, threatening to fire him over and over again for not cutting interest rates and refusing to fully capitulate to Trump’s aggressive economic plans.

It’s unclear how much power Bessent has to influence Powell’s job security, if any at all. Bessent is one of the front-runners for Powell’s job, although he has told the president he doesn’t want it. That’s probably a smart decision.

“I get that Treasury Secretary is a cool job ... but if I were a billionaire, there is [no] way I’m staying in a job that requires me to spin indefensible, economically-illiterate policies for a morally-corrupt boss who tries to humiliate me publicly,” Manhattan Institute senior fellow Jessica Riedl wrote on X. “I’d be on a beach somewhere.”

Trump’s Ukraine Peace Plan Gives Putin Everything He Wants - 2025-11-19T20:21:16Z

President Donald Trump’s newest plan to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would give President Vladimir Putin exactly what he wants—and Ukraine isn’t happy.

Trump’s sweeping new proposal would require Ukraine to give up Donbas, an industrial region in the eastern part of the country, the Financial Times reported Wednesday. The framework deal would also require Ukraine to reduce the size of its armed forces, and not to use certain weapons. The deal would make it significantly harder for Ukraine to defend itself from Russian military incursion, and move the country’s border with Russia closer to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

A senior White House official told Politico that a peace agreement could come “as soon as this week.” But it’s not looking likely that Ukraine will accept.

The newest proposal was tantamount to surrendering Ukraine’s sovereignty, one person familiar with the deal told the FT. They said that Russia was attempting to “play” the United States, which was eager to “show progress” had been made on the deal.

The 28-point plan was reportedly drafted by Trump’s special envoy and business partner Steve Witkoff in collaboration with Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, as a follow-up to the president’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza, according to Axios. Of course, Trump’s plan for Gaza was a resounding failure, as Israel has continued its campaign of deadly military strikes.

Earlier this week, Witkoff discussed the plan with Ukraine’s Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov, a Ukrainian official told Axios. Dmitriev said that Moscow is likely to accept the plan, saying, “We feel the Russian position is really being heard.”

Trump has already tried and failed to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to agree to concede territory during a disastrous meeting at the White House last month. Trump also reneged on an offer to supply Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles, and claimed that he didn’t think Ukraine stood a chance against Russia.

Give It Up, Folks: Donald Trump Will Escape Justice for Epstein Too - 2025-11-19T20:08:08Z

When the shutdown ended, Arizona Democratic Representative Adelita Grijalva was finally sworn in, 50 days after she was elected. She promptly signed the discharge petition to release the full Epstein files, getting it past 218 signatures and forcing a vote in the House. Democrats were jubilant in the expectation that this would finally expose Trump and bring us to a point where Republicans are perhaps forced to remove him from office—or at least forced to reckon with his moral deficiencies.

The problem is, even assuming the best case for Democrats (and the worst for Trump), and even though every House Republican but one hopped on the “release the files” bandwagon, neither of these things are likely to ever happen. Let me walk you through how things will proceed.

First, let’s assume—purely hypothetically and for the sake of argument—that compromising pictures exist of Trump with an underage girl. Trump will do everything in his power to make sure these never see the light of day. He will first refuse to release them, and he’ll go to court to do it, which will drag out for months or even years. He will also have his minions work to destroy all proof that the evidence ever existed.

If forced, he will release redacted files. If Democrats realize the pictures are doctored or have been removed from the filings, they’ll have to go back to the courts again to get the unredacted version. Trump will (again) drag this out for months, if not years. We can see the seeds of it already, in the fact that they are reopening federal investigations to plausibly deny the release of information related to an ongoing probe.

The Supreme Court’s deference to the executive office and law enforcement makes it likely that Trump will get a favorable ruling at some point that prevents the release of the photos. Even if he loses in the courts, his team can always refuse to comply, as they’ve already done in so many cases, dragging it out further.

Given all this, it’s very unlikely that the House will ever receive anything incriminating Trump.

But even if it does, what happens then?

“They’re AI fake images.” “Fake news.” “They were planted by the Biden administration to slander me.” “Total witch hunt.” “No president has been treated more unfairly than me.” “Bondi will be opening investigations into the people slandering me …” We’ve heard this song and dance before, and this time will be no different. 

The social media that MAGA hangs out on (X, Truth Social, Parler, Facebook, TikTok, etc.) will steer people to content that either avoids the photos or supports the claims they are a hoax. AI chatbots like Grok will quickly be tuned and trained to repeat and support these lies, as Grok already does with Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen. With this propaganda flooding their feeds, the MAGA base will never believe the evidence. They’ll angrily call Republican politicians, demanding that they stand up for the president against the fake Biden evidence.

But suppose that Democrats win the House in 2026 and, in the face of all this, work up the gumption to send articles of impeachment to the Senate. With that sort of pressure from Trump and his base, I can’t imagine getting to 67 votes in the Senate. If it looked to be getting close, Trump would pull out all the stops, including using the Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to intimidate wavering Republicans. And if that failed, he could always invoke the Insurrection Act, declare martial law in the Capitol, and make sure the vote didn’t happen.

When you look at the chain of events required for the documents to be released without edits, scrubs, or redaction, and for them to avoid being destroyed before Trump’s time in office expires, it’s almost impossible for them to be released before the 2028 election, much less before next year’s midterms. Factor in the tools that Trump has available to combat incriminating evidence that’s come to light, and several miracles or deus ex machina events will have to take place before Trump pays any sort of price.

All it would take is for the Supreme Court to agree that, yes, the executive branch can redact whatever it wants if it is related to an ongoing investigation of any sort. Or executive privilege. Or national security. Given how this court has deferred to the executive branch, Trump’s lawyers will throw spaghetti at the wall until something sticks. Then it is game over. 

You would think people opposed to Trump would have figured this out by now. Every time they start getting “happy on the farm” about Trump finally facing consequences of his actions, he inevitably escapes them.

He survived the Stormy Daniels payoffs and Mueller investigation. He escaped punishment for stealing top-secret documents and showing them to casual friends. He escaped child rape allegations before the 2016 election (this was the woman who alleged that Trump raped her when she was 13; she was going to go public just before the 2016 election but canceled because she had received threats). He was convicted in civil court of sexual assault, but he has yet to pay a dime of the $88 million he owes. He was convicted of 34 felonies in criminal court but avoided all punishment. He survived the January 6 insurrection and the criminal investigation for meddling in the 2020 Georgia election, where he was literally caught on tape demanding the governor “find” votes for him. The man has spent his life learning to use his power and money to escape consequences for criminal acts; it’s perhaps his greatest talent.

So, when I look ahead at what it would take to remove him from office (or even get incriminating evidence to the House), the path is very narrow, and many barriers would have to be overcome. I believe he will not face consequences of any sort, regardless of what is (or was, if he’s already had evidence destroyed or covered up) in the files.

Betting that the president of the United States doesn’t find a way out of this, when he’s consolidated all the power of the federal government in the executive branch and controls the GOP with an iron fist, is like watching the Harlem Globetrotters whomp the Washington Generals for 10 years and betting all your money against them because, “I thought the Generals were due.”

What Are Nicki Minaj and Trump Up to in Nigeria? - 2025-11-19T19:52:46Z

On Tuesday afternoon, the Trump administration produced yet another moment that felt more fever dream than reality.

Legendary (and, more recently, embattled) rapper Nicki Minaj addressed the United Nations at a special event, titled, “Combatting Christian Violence and the Killing of Christians in Nigeria.” The event, led by Ambassador Mike Waltz, came just days after President Trump named Nigeria a “country of particular concern.” Alleging “Christian genocide,” the president has since threatened U.S. military intervention in Africa’s most populous—and most oil-rich—country.

“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities,” the president wrote earlier this month amid a series of posts on Nigeria. “I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians! WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!”

Trump threatens to go into Nigeria ‘GUNS A-BLAZING’

47 says he’s instructed the Pentagon to prepare for ‘possible action’ against Islamists

‘If we attack it will be fast, vicious, and sweet’ https://t.co/rID692XIjU pic.twitter.com/nxdeIqR9mE

— RT (@RT_com) November 5, 2025

Minaj, who has been shifting rightward for some time now, publicly supported the president’s crusading rhetoric.

“Reading this made me feel a deep sense of gratitude. We live in a country where we can freely worship God. No group should ever be persecuted for practicing their religion. We don’t have to share the same beliefs in order for us to respect each other. Numerous countries all around the world are being affected by this horror & it’s dangerous to pretend we don’t notice,” the addled rap star wrote on X earlier this month. “Thank you to The President & his team for taking this seriously. God bless every persecuted Christian. Let’s remember to lift them up in prayer.” The post was met with disdain, confusion, and blind devotion from her “Barbz” fandom—which is still mostly made up of women of color and LGBTQ folk.

But before we talk message, why this messenger?

Minaj has had quite the fall from grace since Cardi B threw that shoe at her in 2018. Her accolade-laden career has been marred by spiteful, nasty feuds with other, often younger, women rappers, many of which have ended with public, alarming manic episodes on social media. Her husband, Kenneth Petty, is a registered sex offender, and in 2021, the woman he assaulted when she was just 16 alleged that Minaj “directly and indirectly intimidated, harassed and threatened [her] to recant her legitimate claim that Defendant Petty raped her.” In 2020, Minaj’s brother was sentenced to 25 years in prison for raping an 11-year-old. She publicly and financially supported him during his trial. And just last month, Minaj was on X claiming rival Cardi B had fertility issues, calling her boyfriend gay, and claiming Cardi had surgery to look more like her.

At 42, Minaj has struggled to find her footing and age gracefully as an artist, and her legacy is actively suffering for it. So perhaps it’s no surprise she has a sudden affinity for MAGA—and is willing to be the PR face of a right-wing evangelical push for U.S. intervention in Nigeria.

“Today, faith is under attack in way too many places. In Nigeria, Christians are being targeted, driven from their homes, and killed,” Minaj stated. “Churches have been burned, families have been torn apart, and entire communities live in fear constantly, simply because of how they pray.... It demands urgent action.”

Grateful to @NICKIMINAJ for standing with me today at the UN against the persecution of Christians in Nigeria. pic.twitter.com/xJiDnVlOZW

— Ambassador Mike Waltz (@USAmbUN) November 18, 2025

“America is a Christian country,” Alex Bruesewitz, the Trump adviser and content creator who reportedly booked Minaj, said at Tuesday’s panel, which was organized by the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. His comments echoed common malicious, revisionist Christian nationalist points. “It was founded as a Christian country and it will always be a Christian country, and we are not ashamed of that. We are proud of that. And President Trump is doing incredible work here in our country to defend religious liberties and I’m very proud of him. But I’m also grateful that he uses his platform and his powerful voice to raise awareness about the atrocities that are happening to Christians all across the globe.”

Minaj was joined by other speakers who focused more on Islam as a whole rather than specific extremist and militia groups, and alleged the violence is solely religious to justify their own evangelical intentions.

“Is this about a caliphate? Why do they kill Christians? Or is it a religious, spiritual warfare that we’re seeing now waged on one side?” Fox News host Harris Faulkner asked the speakers.

“I believe it absolutely is. And we’ve talked about the [Islamic State] ideology or the Al Qaeda ideology, and that sense that anybody who stands in the face of a totalizing and violent extremist view shouldn’t be allowed to exist,” said Sean Nelson of the right-wing Alliance Defending Freedom. “Climate change doesn’t cause people to behead each other, right? These different excuses when the attackers themselves say … ‘We will kill all Christians,’ the Christians who see that and experience that every day, they believe them, because they know what’s happening.”

There is no consensus that this is what’s happening. The Nigerian government has stated, “Portraying Nigeria’s security challenges as a targeted campaign against a single religious group is a gross misrepresentation of reality. Terrorists attack all who reject their murderous ideology—Muslims, Christians, and those of no faith alike.” Just days before the panel, 25 mostly Muslim schoolgirls were abducted by gunmen in the northwestern Nigerian state of Kebbi. Waltz mentioned the horrific incident at the event, but conveniently left out that they were Muslim—because he wants to handle this on U.S. terms. Nigeria is having issues with Boko Haram, Fulani herdsmen, and other militant groups. But if the country thinks the situation merits military intervention, it needs to be the one to decide that. This unilateral decision from Trump, a bunch of white Christians, and Minaj reeks of classic imperialistic tropes. Other Nigerian cultural leaders have called the Trump administration’s argument a blatant attempt to foment violence.

“[President Donald Trump] said he enjoys war. And it’s clear he’s dying to make war,” Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian author Wole Soyinka said this month. “He says he wants to help Nigeria. Of course—anybody, any leader, any nation, would gladly accept assistance from anywhere to get rid of this vicious fundamentalist group, whose principle, whose understanding of their religion is just to butcher others who happen not to follow them.... At the same time, there has been partnership, partnership between Nigeria, other regimes for weaponry, equipment, training to deal with these well-organized and transnational killers under the name of Islam. They exist.... But to use language like ‘invading’ ... ‘guns-blazing,’ ‘sweetly,’ ‘viciously.’”

“This is not a Christian genocide, because the facts don’t support it,” Good Governance Nigeria researcher Malik Samuel has also said. “If you look at the areas where this conflict is rife, even in the—even if you take Borno state alone, you look at northern Borno, many of these communities are Muslim-dominated. So most of the victims of Boko Haram violence are Muslims.”

But the facts don’t matter to the Trump administration. As Minaj’s role suggests, Trump wasn’t just suddenly compelled by the plight of Christians in Nigeria. These recent developments are the result of a long-standing evangelical campaign to shape Nigeria—and the greater African continent—in the evangelical image. Multiple white evangelical groups like Focus on the Family, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and the Fellowship Foundation have poured millions into a concerted effort to push U.S.-branded right-wing ideologies on African countries like Nigeria, Uganda, and others. Paula White-Cain, Trump’s own spiritual adviser, has been taking trips to Nigeria and other African countries in the name of Jesus for years.

This current campaign is driven by those same forces.

We’ll have to wait and see just how far Trump’s threats of intervention go. It seems obvious that the attacks from Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen should be handled in tandem with the Nigerian government in a way that preserves the sovereignty they’ve been historically robbed of, not this all-out, “guns-a-blazing” effort. But the current rhetoric, along with sanctions and the addition of Nigeria as a “country of particular concern,” could potentially make a flailing rapper the face of a military campaign that further destabilizes the country.

“The Barbz are really famous. In like real life lmfaooooooo wow,” Minaj later posted on X. “What a day.”

Abbott Releases—and Blacks Out—1,400 Pages of Emails With Elon Musk - 2025-11-19T19:42:17Z

After Texas news outlets made a public records request to see emails between the office of Texas Governor Greg Abbott and tech oligarch Elon Musk’s companies, state officials took months fighting and delaying their release.

Then, they released 1,374 pages of mostly redacted documents, with all but 200 of those pages entirely blacked out.

According to The Texas Newsroom, a collaboration between NPR and Texas public radio stations that made the request, the emails don’t reveal much about the relationship between Musk and Abbott, or how the tech oligarch influences Texas’s government. The unredacted documents contained little new information, consisting mostly of things like old incorporation records and some meeting agendas.

Abbott’s office claimed over the summer that the governor’s emails with Musk were private and too “intimate or embarrassing” to be released to the public, which begs the question of what law protects that reasoning. Musk has also fought against disclosing communications, claiming that releasing emails could hurt his competitive advantage.

Musk has relocated many of his businesses to Texas and has lobbied for new state laws to help those companies, making his communications with the state of vital public interest to Texans. But thanks to a June court ruling, Texas officials have increased protections from having to disclose public records, leaving news outlets with little recourse to get more documents released.

In effect, Musk’s activities in Texas are taking place with little oversight or scrutiny. It seems that his presence in Texas shields him from accountability, and Abbott is only too happy to protect him.

Trump Makes Ridiculous Claim About Saudi Investment in the U.S. - 2025-11-19T18:33:56Z

Saudi Arabia is so invested in U.S. development that the country’s leadership is apparently willing to give more than they’ve got.

Hours after the U.S. president penned a $1 trillion economic agreement with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Donald Trump told a crowd at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum Wednesday that he had actually pressed for $1.5 trillion, billions more than the nation’s gross domestic product.

“While we were taking the picture, I said, ‘Could you make it $1.5 trillion?’ So he’s got something to think about,” Trump said, to laughs. “We’ll get something, I think we’ll get something.”

Given that Saudi Arabia’s GDP is $1.24 trillion, that seems unlikely.

The deal came as an enormous upgrade to Saudi Arabia’s previously pledged investment of $600 billion, the details of which included “investments and trade” but were otherwise vague. It also came after Trump promised to sell highly coveted F-35 fighter jets to the newly appointed non-NATO ally, ignoring Pentagon concerns that the sale could provide China with a golden opportunity to steal U.S. military technology.

“We will be doing that, we’ll be selling F-35s,” Trump told reporters at the White House Monday, adding that the Saudis “want to buy them, they’ve been a great ally.”

Trump has touted several major investment deals over the span of his second administration to detract from the failures of his wildly unpopular tariff plan, claiming that he has reeled in $17 trillion in just eight months. But that figure is fiction, even according to the digits highlighted on the White House website, which lists $8.8 trillion in active investment.

That includes the Saudi sum, as well as $600 billion from firms in the European Union, though the coalition of countries has made clear that the amount is simply an estimate of potential investment rather than a legitimate commitment.

It also includes a $1.2 trillion deal with Qatar, which was an “economic exchange” rather than direct investment; a seemingly impossible $1.4 trillion investment from the United Arab Emirates that is more than double that nation’s GDP, and $1 trillion from Japan, which in actuality is roughly half that and will be predominantly composed of loans.

Treasury Sec Has Idiotic Idea for How People Can Use Stimulus Checks - 2025-11-19T17:48:07Z

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hopes that Americans will save their $2,000 checks President Donald Trump promised for a rainy day—if they get them at all.

During a disastrous appearance on Fox News Tuesday, host Brett Baier asked whether Trump’s repeated promise to deliver $2,000 dividends of tariff money to every American would be inflationary.

“Well, there are a lot of things that are gonna happen next year, and that could be one of them,” said Bessent. “And maybe we could persuade Americans to save that.”

Bessent suggested that parents could potentially put the money into their children’s “Trump accounts,” where the government plans to deposit $1,000 for Americans born between 2025 and 2028. Parents are encouraged to contribute up to $5,000 annually. Bessent has claimed that the accounts will give disillusioned young people a stake in the economy, while providing a “backdoor” to privatize Social Security.

But if the secretary’s plan to fight steadily rising inflation relies on Americans not immediately spending a $2,000 check, we’re in some serious trouble. Americans are increasingly worried about how to pay for necessities such as food and health care, concerns helped in no small part by the Trump administration’s attacks on SNAP and Obamacare. Some extra cash would likely go straight into paying for bills.

It’s also not clear that an actual payout is coming. Earlier this month, Bessent claimed that the president’s promise of a two-grand payout “could come in lots of forms,” listing the supposedly “substantial” tax deductions outlined in Trump’s behemoth budget bill that passed in July, and falsely claiming that Social Security would no longer be taxed.

Additionally, Trump’s tariffs haven’t actually collected enough money to pay for the kind of payout the president promised. The Trump administration has collected more than $220 billion in tariff revenue, but the $2,000 paid to all 163 million Americans who filed their taxes would cost roughly $326 billion, according to CNN. So that would leave -$106 billion to pay off the national debt.

Man Who Trump Pardoned for Fraud Is Headed Back to Prison … for Fraud - 2025-11-19T17:13:27Z

A Ponzi schemer who Donald Trump saved from prison is headed right back to the clink.

Eliyahu “Eli” Weinstein was sentenced Friday to 37 years in prison in a New Jersey courtroom, capping the career criminal’s third fraud conviction.

Prosecutors argued that Weinstein, who in recent years went by the alias Mike Konig to hide his criminal history, milked roughly $35 million from dozens of investors who believed they were putting their money into Covid-19 masks, baby formula, and first aid kits for Ukraine, according to the indictment.

It was a crime that Weinstein never would have been able to cook up if the president hadn’t lifted him out of federal prison in 2021. At the time, Weinstein had served just eight years of a combined 24-year prison sentence for two fraud convictions—a real estate fraud scheme in which he utilized a portfolio of fake property investments to reel in $200 million from unsuspecting buyers, and another in which he duped dozens of investors into investing in Facebook just before the social media company went public (swindling at least one investor of $6.7 million).

For whatever reason, Trump decided Weinstein was the guy who deserved a get-out-of-jail-free card. The 51-year-old was a part of a whopping 143-person pardon the president issued the day before he left office in 2021. Other recipients of the unexpected clemency included former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, rapper Lil Wayne, and former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was sentenced to 28 years on corruption charges.

But Weinstein wasn’t ashamed of his behavior. In August 2022, he recalled that he “finagled, and Ponzied, and lied to people,” according to court documents. Shortly after he was released from prison, he started defrauding people again, orchestrating the Ponzi scheme that he was sentenced for last week.

U.S. District Judge Michael Shipp ruled that Weinstein must pay more than $44 million in restitution for his most recent offense, due immediately.

Treasury Sec Flails When Asked If Trump’s Foreign Investments Are Real - 2025-11-19T17:07:13Z

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent struggled to sell President Donald Trump’s outrageous claims about how much money the United States is making from his trade deals.

During an interview on Fox News Tuesday night, host Brett Baier asked Bessent how much money Trump was bringing in through trade deals, corporate commitments, and tariff revenue.

“Well, the president uses the number ‘20 trillion’ in terms of total investments, and I think that those commitments are real,” Bessent replied, sounding slightly unsure.

He rattled off a few examples of major investments as part of trade deals with Japan and Korea, as well as a commitment from Apple, calling them “investments like we’ve never seen.” But the Treasury secretary offered no exact number, just the president’s own propaganda.

Bessent’s waffling answer could indicate that he knows how ridiculous that “20 trillion” claim actually is. The White House’s own investments website lists the total of all U.S. and foreign investments at only $9 trillion—but crucially, the Trump administration also misstated some investments.

They claimed that Japan had agreed to make a $1 trillion investment, when the most recent deal from July was for only a little more than half of that. The website claimed that Korea has pledged a $450 billion investment in U.S. energy products, when the number is actually $350 billion, made up of $200 billion in cash installments capped at $20 billion per year and another $150 for shipbuilding. Similarly, Apple has pledged to spend more than $500 billion, and the White House website bumped that up to $600 billion.

At the same time, tariff revenue for FY 2025 was only $195 billion, which is a significant increase from the year before, but doesn’t push that number anywhere near the $20 trillion Trump has claimed.

DOJ Admits Shocking Details That Could Blow Up Entire Comey Case - 2025-11-19T17:01:54Z

The Trump administration’s attempt to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey hit two major snags on Wednesday.

First, interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Lindsey Halligan, who brought the indictment, admitted the entire grand jury did not vote on the final indictment—a shocking development. Instead, only two grand jurors reviewed the indictment before it was presented in court.

Earlier in the day, Justice Department lawyer Tyler Lemons, who is prosecuting the case, also told U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff that someone in Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s office ordered him not to disclose whether career prosecutors in the Department of Justice authored a memo recommending that Comey should not be indicted. Lemons said that he was told he couldn’t disclose privileged information without permission.

“At this point, my position would be, whether there was a declination memo, is privileged,” Lemons said. “I don’t know in the world of documents there is a declination memo.”

Nachmanoff pressed Lemons on whether that actually meant that he was told not to say anything by someone in Blanche’s office, but Lemons wouldn’t elaborate.

“I hope you understand that I am trying to answer your questions,” said Lemons.

While Lemons refused to answer the question, ABC News reported in September that career prosecutors did in fact recommend against indicting Comey. This latest development suggests that Blanche, formerly Donald Trump’s personal attorney, is trying to keep that info from being part of the official record.

The indictment is being challenged by Comey for being politically motivated and tainted by government misconduct, and Comey seems to have a lot of evidence on his side. Halligan, who had no prosecutorial experience prior to this case, is only in her position because her predecessor, Erik Siebert, refused to indict Comey due to a lack of evidence. With each development in Comey’s trial, Siebert’s decision is looking more and more correct.

Epstein Tanks Trump’s Approval Rating to Record Low, Brutal Poll Shows - 2025-11-19T16:38:24Z

Donald Trump’s approval rating is at an all-time low for his second term, and the president has his old pal Jeffrey Epstein to thank—and those pesky grocery prices.

Only 38 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s performance in office, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published Tuesday evening. That’s down a whopping nine points from Inauguration Day. But there’s still a far way to fall: Trump’s approval rating for his first term bottomed out at 33 percent.

Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files seemed to be a particularly sore spot for respondents. Only 20 percent of Americans—including only 44 percent of Republicans—approved of how Trump has handled the case against the alleged sex trafficker. A whopping 70 percent of respondents, including 60 percent of Republicans, said that they believed the government was concealing information about Epstein’s clients.

After months of dismissing calls for more transparency as a Democratic “hoax,” Trump claimed Sunday that he was prepared to sign a bipartisan measure to force the release of all the government’s documents related to Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking.

The bill finally made its way to Trump’s desk Wednesday after being approved by the House and Senate, but it’s not clear that the president intends to sign it into law. House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested that Trump shared some of his so-called concerns about the unamended bill, indicating that Trump could still choose to veto the legislation.

Epstein wasn’t the only area of concern for Americans: Only 26 percent of respondents approved of Trump’s work managing the cost of living, down from 29 percent earlier this month.

After sweeping election victories for Democrats campaigning on the cost of living earlier this month, Trump ranted that he didn’t want to “hear about affordability.” And so far, it seems that the president’s renewed efforts to address Americans’ economic anxieties is simply to lie.

Trump has repeatedly claimed to have brought grocery prices down despite consumers experiencing the biggest price jump in more than three years, and pushed claims he has defeated Biden-era inflation even though it has steadily increased for the last five months in a row. Again, Trump has claimed that voter concerns were the result of a “con job” by Democrats. In reality, Trump’s tariffs and his crackdown on immigrants have significantly contributed to rising prices.

Pardoned Jan. 6 Rioter Punched in the Face During Racist March - 2025-11-19T15:55:17Z

A January 6 rioter decided to lead a hate march Tuesday in Dearborn, Michigan, a city with a sizable Muslim and Arab American populace, and got punched in the face.

Jake Lang, who was pardoned by Donald Trump while facing 11 charges related to his actions at the Capitol in 2021, decided to hold his own march in the city while Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Anthony Hudson led a march of his supporters. Lang had a clear agenda in mind, holding a banner that read “Americans Against Islamification,” taunting counterprotesters with bacon, and threatening to burn the Quran.

One counterprotester decided that Lang needed to be taught a lesson, and, while pretending to march next to him, suddenly turned and punched a smiling Lang in the face. Lang tried to shrug it off, telling a throng of cameras, “I was punched harder by Capitol police officer ladies,” while the puncher ran away across a busy street.

A person punches Jake Lang and takes off running here in Dearborn pic.twitter.com/TqOrTfAPmp

— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) November 18, 2025

Lang, who is running as a Republican for Marco Rubio’s vacated Senate seat in Florida, was accused of assaulting law enforcement with a deadly weapon and engaging in physical violence on restricted grounds at the Capitol over four years ago. He also tried to form his own paramilitary militia in 2021, and in his remarks on Tuesday, even expressed concern about a growing non-white American population.

Dearborn has been targeted by anti-Muslim and anti-Arab protesters before. The latest protests came after Hudson claimed that Dearborn was under sharia law, only to walk back his claims after visiting the city and meeting Muslims last week. The stated goal of his march was to promote unity, but it seems to have attracted people like Lang, a bigot with a history of violence. Unfortunately for Lang, his actions led to a violent punch in the face.

Republicans Tear Into Each Other Over Payout in Shutdown Deal - 2025-11-19T15:30:02Z

Senate Republicans are still planning to take advantage of a provision of the shutdown-ending bill that would allow them to rake in cash from the federal government.

At the close of the 44-day federal hiatus, the caucus quietly slipped in a self-serving resolution that granted senators the ability to pursue financial compensation from the Justice Department—up to $500,000 each—if they had their phone records seized by former special counsel Jack Smith as he investigated Donald Trump’s 2020 election conspiracy.

Despite passing the measure, the House adamantly opposed the detail: House Speaker Mike Johnson has signaled his support for an effort to repeal it altogether. As of last week, it wasn’t clear whether anyone in the Senate actually planned to pursue the new retribution pathway, save for Senator Lindsey Graham—but the upper chamber’s initial resistance appears to have ebbed in recent days.

“The House is going to do what they’re going to do with it. It didn’t apply to them,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told CNN Tuesday. “There’s a statute that obviously was violated, and what this does is enables people who are harmed, in this case, United States senators, to have a private right of action against the weaponization by the Justice Department.”

When asked whether he believed Senate Republicans would actually line their pockets with U.S. taxpayer funds, Thune said he wasn’t convinced “anybody was talking about taking the money.”

“But I think the penalty is in place to ensure that in the future … there is a remedy in place,” Thune told the network.

Eight known Senate Republicans had their phone records subpoenaed as part of Smith’s inquiry: Senators Marsha Blackburn, Lindsey Graham, Bill Hagerty, Josh Hawley, Ron Johnson, Cynthia Lummis, Dan Sullivan, and Tommy Tuberville. Of that lot, five indicated late last week that they have no intentions to utilize the controversial provision.

“This fight is not about the money; it is about holding the left accountable for the worst weaponization of government in our nation’s history,” Blackburn told CBS News, signaling her support to change the language of the resolution. “If leftist politicians can go after President Trump and sitting members of Congress, they will not hesitate to go after American citizens.”

Smith’s team from the case has clarified that it was not spying on senators and, in fact, was well within its rights to request the phone records. Two of the team members issued a letter in October stating that they had requested phone toll records, which only show incoming and outgoing phone numbers, as well as call duration—not the contents of the calls.

Jeffrey Epstein Emails Finally Catch Up to Larry Summers - 2025-11-19T15:23:48Z

Former Treasury Secretary and Jeffrey Epstein confidant Larry Summers has resigned from the board of Sam Altman’s OpenAI company amid renewed scrutiny caused by the release of his countless emails to the disgraced sex offender.

“I am grateful for the opportunity to have served, excited about the potential of the company, and look forward to following their progress,” Summers said in a statement. He was also cut from his temporary guest columnist position at The New York Times. Meanwhile, Harvard announced Tuesday that it has begun an investigation into Summers, who said he will still teach at the university.

Summers and Epstein were contacting each other back and forth frequently like high schoolers in 2018 and 2019, when both men were in their sixties.

“We talked on phone. Then ‘I can’t talk later’. Dint think I can talk tomorrow’. I said what are you up to. She said ‘I’m busy’. I said awfully coy u are,” Summers wrote to Epstein, seeking advice on the young female “mentee” he was trying to seduce at the time (he was married then, and still is). “And then I said. ‘Did u really rearrange the weekend we were going to be together because guy number 3 was coming.’ She said no his schedule changed after we changed our plans.”

“Shes smart. making you pay for past errors. ignore the daddy im going to go out with the motorcycle guy, you reacted well.. annoyed shows caring., no whining showed strentgh,” Epstein wrote back, just months before his death in prison.

Summers has addressed these new revelations in a “statement of regret.”

“Some of you will have seen my statement of regret expressing my shame with respect to what I did in communication with Mr. Epstein,” Summers told a lecture hall full of students at Harvard earlier this week, stating that he’d be stepping away from other public engagements. “But I think it’s very important to fulfill my teaching obligations.”

Larry Summers discusses his “statement of regret” for his disturbing messages to Jeffrey Epstein with Harvard students pic.twitter.com/dMGma2mtFu

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) November 19, 2025

This is a former treasury secretary and high-powered Harvard professor who was asking Epstein—a known sex offender by then—for girl advice. Some think he should be far away from the undergraduate students he’s currently teaching too.

“If he had so little ability to distance himself from Jeffrey Epstein even after all that was publicly known about Epstein’s sex offenses involving underage girls, then Summers cannot be trusted to advise our nation’s politicians, policymakers, and institutions—or teach a generation of students at Harvard or anywhere else,” Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said on Monday.

Mike Johnson Gives Away the Game on Next Steps on Epstein Bill - 2025-11-19T14:24:57Z

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson—who was so set on blocking the release of the Epstein files that he wouldn’t swear in Adelita Grijalva—says he has “concerns” about Congress’s decision to open the files up.

“Any reaction to Leader Thune releasing the bill without adding amendments or changing it?” MS NOW’s Mychael Schnell asked Johnson, hours after the Senate passed the bill on Tuesday.

“I am deeply disappointed in this outcome. I think … I was just told that Chuck Schumer rushed it to the floor and put it out there preemptively. It needed amendments, I just spoke to the president about that. We’ll see what happens.”

“So do you think he may veto it? You say you spoke to the president—”

“I’m not saying that—”

“Is he supportive of it in its current form?”

“We both have concerns about it, so we’ll see.”

NEW: Speaker Johnson tells me he’s “deeply disappointed” the Senate approved the Epstein files bill without making changes.

He said he spoke to Trump about it tonight: “We both have concerns,” Johnson said.

I asked if Trump may veto it: “I’m not saying that. I don’t know.” pic.twitter.com/qdErlrMKWY

— Mychael Schnell (@mychaelschnell) November 19, 2025

It’s unclear what exactly Johnson has to be worried about (aside from more allegations and potentially incriminating references to President Trump, of course).

“Yesterday the House did the People’s will by voting overwhelmingly to release the Epstein files, overcoming Mike Johnson’s five month long obstruction,” Representative Thomas Massie, the original Republican co-sponsor of the discharge petition behind the bill, wrote in response to Johnson. “His last hope was that the Senate would insert a loophole to kill the intent of the bill, but the Senate was having none of it.”

From “the files are on my desk” to this, the GOP’s handling of the Epstein case has been completely botched from the jump. Now, Johnson is hand-wringing about amendments and concerns while the majority of Congress—and the country—is longing for any semblance of truth or transparency. What amendments would Johnson possibly introduce that would get in the way of that?

“I cannot believe they took all the Goodwill they had after the election and called us stupid for wanting the files then trying to primary two Republicans to then in the end release the files anyway,” one user replied to Massie. “MAGA needs a better PR firm.”

“Insane, isn’t it?” Massie replied.

ICE Agent Arrested in Sex-Trafficking Sting Told Cops: “I’m ICE, Boys” - 2025-11-19T14:19:02Z

The Trump administration has not hired the best people to work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One of them was arrested for sex trafficking as part of a three-day sting earlier this month.

The man is an auditor for ICE, and was one of 16 men arrested who were allegedly attempting to solicit a 17-year-old girl in Bloomington, Minnesota. The ICE employee, 41-year-old Alexander Steven Back, could face federal charges, said Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges at a news conference on Tuesday.

Back, a resident of Robbinsdale, Minnesota, responded to a fake online ad “offering prostitution services,” and wasn’t dissuaded when an undercover officer pretending to be 17 years old wrote, “U ok if I’m a lil younger than my ad says … just wanna be honest.”

“Sure,” Back responded, according to charging documents.

“K cause I am 17 and one guy got hella mad at me,” the undercover officer, going by the name “Bella,” replied.

“Bella” told Back that she was 17 a second time, and then gave him a Bloomington address, where police arrested him and took his phone.

“When he was arrested, he said, ‘I’m ICE, boys,’” Hodges said. “Well, unfortunately for him, we locked him up.”

Under the Trump administration, ICE’s hiring has become so haphazard that many people aren’t properly vetted, with some being turned away due to disqualifying criminal backgrounds or failed drug tests. Many end up being terminated because they don’t meet academic or physical standards. Back’s case seems to show that the agency is attracting the wrong kinds of people.

Transcript: Trump Seethes as Plot to Rig 2026 Suddenly Goes Off Rails - 2025-11-19T12:29:50Z

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the November 19 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Suddenly, President Trump’s effort to rig the 2026 midterms with corrupt gerrymandering schemes seems to be in serious trouble. In Indiana, Republicans have announced that they lack the votes to redraw their congressional map. And on Tuesday, a panel of judges blocked a big GOP gerrymander in Texas, another big blow to Trump’s scheme. Trump is unhappy that his plot is faltering. He lashed out at Indiana Republicans on Truth Social, threatening primaries and raging at the stupidity of one leading opponent. So is this plan dead? Not quite. Several aspects of this still remain unresolved. Republicans had added five seats in Texas. Those are now in serious doubt, but they have added four others. Meanwhile, Democrats are adding five in California and got one in Utah. Still, there’s a lot up in the air. So we’re working through what lies ahead with Heather Williams, who’s been leading the fight against the scheme as president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. Heather, thanks for coming on.

Heather Williams: Thank you. I’m glad to be here with you.

Sargent: In Texas, Republicans had added five seats in a gerrymander, and a panel of judges just ruled that it’s likely unconstitutional. Politico called this a massive blow to the White House and Trump. It looks like this might be appealed and may end up at the Supreme Court. It’s always foolish to count on this court to do anything, let alone something on gerrymandering. What happened with the Texas ruling, and what do you expect from the high court on that?

Williams: Yeah, Texas is where it started, right? And this is where the president called on Republicans in a strategy that does not seem like it was well thought out. And so the process moved through the courts, as one would expect here. And now we are sitting at a ruling that is not good for Republicans that creates a question mark of whether or not this map, the first one that Republicans gerrymandered in this mid-cycle process, is actually going to stand.

Sargent: Well, what do you think is going to happen? How do you anticipate this unfolding at the Supreme Court?

Williams: It’s an interesting question. I think it’s so new, and what this court does is … I feel like it’s always uncertain. But what I do know is going to happen while we wait for the process to play out in Texas is Republicans started this fight, as we were just talking about, and we are not going to sit by the sidelines and wait for this to happen.

We know that the president continues to put pressure on Republican lawmakers to continue the gerrymandering process. They have hit some roadblocks. And we know that the Democrats are going to continue to look at this because, at the end of the day, people deserve representation in Congress. And this—this is the path to making sure that that happens.

Sargent: Well, just to do the overview again, now that you subtract Texas’s five seats, Republicans got one each in North Carolina and Missouri and two in Ohio. That’s a total of four that they’ve got in the bank, as it were. But with Democrats adding five in California and, in a surprise, picking up one in Utah, Democrats are actually at a place where they’ve suddenly added more than Republicans. Isn’t that right?

Williams: Yeah. I mean, we still, of course, have to see what happens with this Texas case and how the courts decide on it. But yes, in terms of movement right now and what the landscape looks like, that is exactly right. And we know that the fight’s not over. And we also know that this electoral environment is good for Democrats. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but it’s good for Democrats. So I think we’re in a pretty strong place in this moment.

Sargent: It certainly is a surprise twist. Let’s talk about Indiana now. Republicans appear to lack the votes in the state Senate to pass a redistricting there. This prompted an outburst on Truth Social from Trump, who attacked the Senate leader, Rodric Bray, this way: “Soon he will have a primary problem as will any other politician who supports him in this stupidity.” Trump also slammed him as “weak and pathetic.” But it sure looks like Trump feels that this whole thing is getting away from him and slipping away in a big way. What do you expect to happen in Indiana?

Williams: There seems to be hesitancy from the Republican caucus to move this forward. I think that there’s hesitancy to have the president tell them what to do. And I think it goes back to this plan was not well thought out. It was a reaction to something, and now it is getting away. And we’re going to continue to see these conversations happen. But Republicans have hit a bunch of roadblocks here, and it’s not looking good in Indiana.

Sargent: So Heather, if they do succeed in Indiana, which as you say is pretty dicey, how many could they add there? Not many, right?

Williams: That is right. Not many. I think it looks like at the most maybe one seat. They’ve got a lot of work to do, I think, to even get to that point.

Sargent: It sure looks that way. Although I got to think the pressure is going to be much more intense now that the Texas thing fell apart. I will say though, it looks like the big unknown right now is Florida. Republicans there seem poised to move ahead sometime soon. It’s a huge state. Now that we know this, it’s even more likely that Democrats will respond with the redistricting of their own in Virginia, which is another very populous state, but not nearly as populous as Florida. What’s going on with that in Virginia? What can Democrats reasonably expect there?

Williams: We just notched a win in the process in Virginia by securing that legislative majority in the state house that was on the ballot in November. They passed the first round before the election. They’ve got to pass it again in the legislature early next year, and then, similar to California, it’s a constitutional amendment. So it would go to the ballot.

The question on Virginia, the question on Florida, the question in so many of these places is how fast does the process move and how… what is the impact of how they bump up against deadlines? And that, I think, is going to be the thing that we’re going to continue to look out for and hear more about—what is the implication of the next step in the 2026 elections: candidate-filing deadlines, primaries that will have an impact on when maps can be changed in order to have the 2026 elections?

Sargent: Well, I got to think of the size of the victory in Virginia [where] Abigail Spanberger won the gubernatorial race by 15 points. There’s a trifecta and there was a really big pickup on the state legislative level as well. I got to think that really emboldens Democrats to say we’re going to do this. We can’t let them outflank us with Florida, right? I mean, is there any, is there any doubt that Virginia will move forward? I would expect that they will. Right. And how many seats do you think Democrats can add from there?

Williams: Yeah. So Virginia, it looks like maybe a two to four seat are in play in this process. They are again in a constitutional process, so it has to pass the legislature. again, and then it has to go to the people. So there’s some steps involved and again, some deadlines that they’re working through. I think the other thing that is happening that is [a] complimentary and less processed piece is that Democrats are honing in on what this electorate wants. And the takeaway from Virginia that I think is actually applicable in this context in 2026 is that we won in Trump districts. So the idea that all of these gerrymanders are unreachable for Democrats or that there is not a path to the majority is just fundamentally not true. So while the process takes place on mid-cycle redistricting, there is also efforts, of course, around the campaign side to ensure that we’re maximizing opportunities in this electorate and reaching voters where they are.

Sargent: Yeah, it looks to me like what we saw in Virginia and in California, the through line is basically people want a Democratic party that is going to fight Trump on every conceivable front, no matter what it takes. Now, I think Democrats at the start of this whole mid-cycle redistricting process were a little uncomfortable with kind of going to war in that way, but the fundamental thing that I think has changed, you’ve seen it from people like Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, is that they’re essentially saying, you know what, Republicans don’t get to play by their own rules anymore. Is that the fundamental thing here?

Williams: Yeah, I think Governor Newsom said a version of what people are looking for is strong and wrong and not weak and right. And I think that the big picture here is that voters are looking for someone to stand up for them and fight for them. They’re not looking for UFC-style fighting. They’re looking for someone to be on their side, to create a better future.

And I think one of the big lessons that we took away from previous election results and from the electorate was that we needed to meet voters where they were on the issues that they cared most about. And that has been affordability. That has been economic prosperity and opportunity. And all of this is happening in the construct of a presidency that is neglecting the issue that he campaigned on most, and not only neglecting it, but he’s creating more harm for people.

And the redistricting process is not going to solve all of those problems for Republicans. So we sit at this place where there is absolutely an ask to their elected officials and candidates to be strong, to be bold, to stand up for something, right? And to fight for it, while also recognizing that hearing people when they say this economy is not good for them is really meaningful.

Sargent: Well, let’s talk about a deeper problem that Democrats have here. And this is one you’ll appreciate. The Democrats have perennially faced the situation where a lot of donors and rank and file voters don’t take state legislative contests seriously enough. I don’t know what it’s going to take to persuade people of the importance of these races, but one thing that should do it is watching Trump order GOP controlled legislatures to deliberately redraw their maps solely for the GOP to keep power in Congress despite having a profoundly unpopular agenda.

Can you talk about that big picture? This has always been a thing for democratic operatives such as yourself, the reluctance to take state legislative contests seriously enough.

Williams: You make such an important point. And I will say Republicans have known this, right? If you remember 2010, they invested in the project called Project Red Map. That investment in state legislatures from national Republicans down into the states was about this moment. It was about their ability to use state legislatures to move their agenda—whether that agenda was testing Project 2025 and moving the Overton window, whether that agenda was trying to secure their power when their policies were unpopular and not meeting voters where they were in a mid-cycle redistricting process like they are employing right now.

The president obviously has called on legislatures, which has put an enormous spotlight on the impact legislatures have—not just on the normal policy issues that you would expect them to for their constituents within their state borders, but also the deep implications that they have on the rest of the ballot and our ability as Democrats, or frankly their ability as Republicans, to have a congressional map across the country that is representative or favorable or whatever adjective one wants to use, that sits with state legislatures.

And we’ve made a lot of progress in telling the story of state legislatures and why Democrats should care about them alongside the interest in, of course, eventually taking back the White House, winning Congress, and having federal power. But I think that this spotlight has shown the urgency behind the strategic sort of change or inclusion, if you will, and why it matters so much.

Sargent: Well, let’s talk about what it’s going to look like at the end of the day here. So if Republicans have added four seats, not including Texas—let’s just say maybe Texas doesn’t come through for them in the end—but they do get a bunch out of Florida, they could still kind of end up ahead of Democrats, right? But only marginally.

If I understand this correctly, they’ve got their four that they’ve pocketed. If they add a few more out of Florida, and yet Democrats are able to offset that with Virginia, we’re pretty close to parity. Maybe Republicans go a little bit ahead of them, right? What do you expect at the very end of the day?

Williams: What I expect at the end of the day, honestly, is that we have campaigns up and down the ballot that are fighting for a different future for voters. And they are telling that story. And the reason why I say that is because the electorate in 2025 did not look the same as the electorate in 2024. The midterm electorate in 2026 is also not going to look the same. And if we are able to continue the momentum that we have seen in 2025, those coalitions of voters that these maps—these Republican maps—are predicated on are called into question, right?

These voting blocks that voted for Trump are not secure for Republicans. And Democrats have a lot of work to do to communicate and to connect with voters, again, about what a different future looks like on the issues they care most about. And we are doing that, and we are committed to doing that through these midterms.

So I don’t want to undervalue the impact of the mid-cycle redistricting conversation that is happening and the need for Democrats to continue to evaluate opportunities and seize them where they can. That remains important. Whether the Republican strategy is falling apart or not does not matter. They started this. We cannot let up.

And the same goes for the electoral environment. We won some great elections in 2025. We exceeded expectations. We moved voters across states into voting for Democrats. And we need to hold that and build on that for the midterm so we can be successful up and down the ballot.

Sargent: Right. It seems like at the end of the day, you could see something close to a wash in the redistricting wars. And in addition to that, Democrats maybe are able to put more seats in play on the House level than expected, because in order to redistrict, Republicans have to spread around the Republican vote a little more and they’re taking their safe-seat Republicans and making them a little more vulnerable. After seeing what happened in these elections just this year, you got to think that there’s at least a decent chance that in 2026, there’s something close to a blue wave and it goes and gets some of those seats that are now more vulnerable as a result of this scheme. So in some sense, it could backfire on them even even more brutally than we expect. Correct?

Williams: Yes. Republicans have a circular feedback loop right now that is telling them that the way that they are governing, and the things that they are prioritizing, is what voters want them to be doing. And voters are telling them very clearly and very loudly that they are not. And I think the more that Republicans continue to tell voters that their experience in this economy, their experience in their community right now, is not valid and not true, the more agitated people get about looking for alternatives.

And that’s where certainly Democrats come in, with a strong message building off of a united front in 2025, rooted in classic kitchen-table political issues. And we’re going to carry that. And that means that there are a lot of seats in play up and down the ballot. There’s a lot of opportunities for Democrats.

I mean, in elections alone this year, we have flipped—at our ballot level—we have flipped Trump double-digit districts. We won R-plus-four seats in November. This was not blue states where we just won easy. These were hard-fought wins where we moved the needle, and we can build on that and do it again in November 2026.

Sargent: It’s certainly getting very interesting. Heather Williams, thanks so much for giving us that overview.

Williams: Thank you so much.

Trump Honors the Man Who Had Jamal Khashoggi Killed - 2025-11-19T11:00:00Z

President Trump welcomed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the White House on Tuesday with fighter jets flying overhead, black horses processing across the South Lawn, and cannons firing in salute. It was the kind of welcome typically reserved for heads of state, which MBS technically isn’t. But Trump had promised he wasn’t just meeting with Saudi Arabia—he was “honoring” them. And he delivered on that promise, rolling out the red carpet for a man U.S. intelligence agencies concluded ordered the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

When ABC News reporter Mary Bruce asked about that murder during the Oval Office meeting, Trump immediately jumped to MBS’s defense.

“You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial,” Trump said, sitting right next to the Saudi crown prince. “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen, but [MBS] knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that.”

Things happen.

A U.S. resident and journalist gets lured into a consulate, murdered, and dismembered by a 15-person Saudi hit squad, and the president’s response is basically a shrug. Things happen. Oops.

Later in the meeting, after Bruce asked about the Justice Department’s files on Jeffrey Epstein, Trump circled back to her Khashoggi question and called it “a horrible, insubordinate and just a terrible question.” He told her she was “a terrible person and a terrible reporter.”

Right. Wouldn’t want to make a murderer feel awkward at his party.

Here’s what we know, despite Trump’s insistence otherwise: In November 2018, the CIA concluded that MBS personally ordered Khashoggi’s assassination. Then, in February 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence put out a report that said, flat out: MBS approved an operation to capture or kill Khashoggi.

The intelligence community didn’t hedge. They pointed to MBS’s control over Saudi decision-making, the involvement of his personal security detail, and his history of using violence against dissidents. The CIA had evidence of MBS texting back and forth with the guy who ran the kill team. There were audio recordings from Turkish intelligence of Khashoggi’s final moments. His body was cut apart and has never been found.

But sure, MBS “knew nothing about it.”

Trump kept going. He praised MBS’s human rights record as “incredible,” and called him “an extremely respected man” and a longtime friend. Never mind that the State Department’s own 2024 report on Saudi Arabia lists ongoing problems with arbitrary killings, disappearances, torture, restrictions on free speech, and restrictions on religious freedom. Just incredible work on human rights.

MBS gave what might be the most half-assed response imaginable. He didn’t even say Khashoggi’s name. Just referred to him as “the journalist” and said, “It’s really painful to hear anyone losing his life for no real purpose.” Called it “painful” and “a huge mistake.” Cool. Very convincing.

Now let’s talk about the money, because of course there’s money involved.

Right there in the Oval Office, MBS told Trump that Saudi Arabia would bump its planned $600 billion investment in the United States up to nearly $1 trillion. Trump was giddy. They announced what they’re calling the largest defense deal in U.S. history, including the sale of F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia.

And about those Trump family business interests? The Trump Organization has projects going up in both Jeddah and Riyadh. Literally the day before MBS showed up in Washington, they announced another project with a Saudi-linked developer in the Maldives. The New York Times reported that Trump’s family is involved in a development inside Diriyah, a massive $63 billion Saudi government project.

The developer behind a bunch of these Gulf projects, Dar Global, handed the Trump Organization about $22 million in licensing fees last year. Dar Global’s parent company has close ties to the Saudi government and royal family. And let’s not forget that after Jared Kushner left the White House, a Saudi fund overseen by MBS gave him $2 billion for his private equity firm.

Trump’s response to questions about conflicts of interest? “What my family does is fine. They do business all over. They’ve done very little with Saudi Arabia, actually.”

That’s just a lie. The Trump family is making millions off Saudi connections, and everyone can see it.

Khashoggi’s widow, Hanan Elatr Khashoggi, shared a statement directed at Trump before the meeting: “The murder of my husband has caused me to lose everything.” She wrote that she wants her husband’s body back so she can give him a proper burial. She wants compensation for his murder, comparing herself to 9/11 families and families of Israeli hostages.

Trump couldn’t be bothered. He was busy telling people what a great guy MBS is.

This is American foreign policy now. The president dismisses a murdered journalist as “controversial” and says “a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman.” He waves away his own intelligence agencies’ findings when there are deals to be made. His family rakes in tens of millions from entities tied to a foreign government, then he turns around and sells that government weapons while praising their human rights record.

The corruption is sitting right there in plain sight. Total moral rot.

Back in 2018, after Khashoggi’s murder, Trump put out a statement saying that “maybe [MBS] did and maybe he didn’t” know about it, but “our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.” At least back then, he maintained some thin veneer of uncertainty. Now he’s just declaring that MBS knew nothing and everyone should drop it. Don’t embarrass our guest, he says.

Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, to get paperwork for his wedding. He never walked out. Fifteen Saudi agents killed him, cut up his body, and got rid of it in some way we still don’t know. He was 59. He’d been living in Virginia after leaving Saudi Arabia in 2017 because he criticized MBS and the crackdown on dissent. His columns in The Washington Post went after the regime regularly.

So they killed him for it.

And on Tuesday, the president of the United States scolded a reporter for being rude enough to mention it.

Trump spent Tuesday praising MBS’s human rights record, announcing weapons deals worth billions, and scolding a reporter for being rude enough to ask about a murdered journalist. He stood in the Oval Office and told the American people that the man his own intelligence agencies say ordered Khashoggi’s murder “knew nothing about it.” And why wouldn’t he? The Trump Organization is making millions off Saudi-connected developers while Trump is president.

The message here isn’t complicated: If you’ve got enough money, you can get away with murder. Literally. You can have a journalist killed and dismembered, and the president of the United States will not only give you a pass but throw you a party with flyovers and cannons. He’ll sell you fighter jets. He’ll praise your human rights record. And if anyone asks uncomfortable questions, he’ll attack them for embarrassing you.

The Real Losers in Seattle’s Mayoral Election? Oligarchs. - 2025-11-19T11:00:00Z

Katie Wilson, who was just elected Seattle’s mayor by a narrow margin, is a new brand of college dropout. When she quit Balliol College, Oxford, in 2004, she didn’t plan to launch a start-up. She left Oxford because, without a college degree, she figured she’d never have to become a management consultant at McKinsey.

Wilson’s wish came true. She’s spent the last two decades in Seattle busking, working construction, and organizing transit riders. Now, after enduring a bruising billionaire-funded attack campaign by incumbent Bruce Harrell, she’ll be sworn in on January 1 as Seattle’s first socialist mayor.

Wilson’s unexpected victory is the latest defeat for oligarchic politics. After she bested Harrell in the nonpartisan August primary by pledging to make Seattle more humane by taxing the rich, the city’s billionaires snapped to attention. First, real estate developers, spooked by Wilson’s zeal for rent control and social housing, gave generously to a pro-Harrell PAC. The billionaire co-owners of the Seattle Mariners, T-Mobile founder John Stanton and crypto baron Christopher Larson, followed close behind. In the end, the Harrell PAC raised more than four times as much as the Wilson PAC. Harrell also nabbed the endorsement of Pete Buttigieg (Oxford, 2007; McKinsey, 2007–2010).

On September 30, the Seattle alt-weekly The Stranger wrote Wilson’s political obituary: “If history teaches anything, you can buy the Seattle mayoral election for the right price.”

But sometimes history teaches bupkis. Wilson’s individual campaign, which unlike the PACs carries a contribution cap of $550, raised over $921,000. And in the end, her campaign was simply more cost-effective. It spent $2.98 in PAC money per voter, where Harrell’s campaign spent a whopping $13.32. In my back-of-envelope McKinsey calculations, this means that socialist Katie Wilson got a better ROI than the oligarchs.

The problem for billionaires is, as the Brits say, written on the tin: It’s their billions. Lately, once the money of the private-jet set enters a campaign, the stink of the oligarchy sticks to the campaign and the candidate can be attacked as a corporate tool. An opponent can then do what Wilson did and accurately present herself as a friend of the worker and a foe of the rich. When Zohran Mamdani, mayor-elect of New York City, congratulated Wilson on Friday, he posted, “Seattle voters made their voices heard: they want a new kind of politics—one that rejects corporate PAC money and delivers for working people.”

But the fact that the superrich are in social disfavor is not their only problem. It’s how they spend their money: far too much on advertising. Harrell’s billionaires spent on an attack ad that ran during a Mariners game in late October, but the mandatory donor disclosure statement eclipsed the ad’s content, shining a spotlight on Stanton, the Mariners’ majority owner. The Wilson campaign immediately pounced—and portrayed Harrell as a stooge of the rich. Stanton’s donor money went up in smoke, and the Mariners went on to lose the playoffs.

According to a comprehensive study last year, political ads are a crap shoot. No one can predict what will be effective. And then there’s the collapse of TV. Not only are 50 percent of young voters forgoing TV entirely, but 38 percent of voters under 64 are. And then there’s evidence to suggest that the young have even begun to balk at anything with the merest whiff of TV-style polish.

Talia Mayden, a Gen Z design influencer and onetime commercial director, broke this down for agencies recently. “If you’re shooting a social media campaign, and there are 40 people, 20 of them clients, on set, and you’re sending out call sheets and there’s pre-pro meetings, it’s over.” Mayden concluded: “Gen Z and Gen Alpha can smell production value. Production value is not your friend. Production value is blood in the water.”

A big lesson of this cycle is indeed that overworked, overcapitalized ads backfire. Think of the moldy “Dr. Evil” AI spot run by Andrew Cuomo’s campaign against Mamdani. The cringe bomb turned people off, and the satire that spun out of it redounded to Mamdani’s benefit. And then came Cuomo’s racist “Criminals for Mamdani” AI spot, which Cuomo himself ended up cringing at. And taking down.

When the ads were duds, the Cuomo billionaires bet their money on hiring canvassers in hopes of simulating a fraction of his opponent’s vast volunteer army. This move also ended up handing Mamdani free content. In one video, a Mamdani volunteer yuks it up with two Cuomo non-volunteers, who laughingly admit they’re getting paid to pretend to support Cuomo. If he weren’t getting paid, one canvasser says, he’d probably burn the campaign fliers. The video has more than 30,000 likes.

Of course, the oligarch effect can hurt a candidate of any ideological orientation, as when 82 billionaires backed Kamala Harris for president in 2024, while only 52 backed Trump. With $1.5 billion to spend in short order, the Harris campaign shelled out for neoliberal abbondanza—a dazzling tidal wave of ads, drone shows, influencers, canvassers, rallies, an Oprah town hall, and extravagant celebrity concerts. Even a Gen Xer could scent out the call sheets and pre-pro meetings. After Trump won, he duly trolled Harris for overspending.

Back in Seattle, with the election finally decided, the mayoral campaigns are folding their tents and settling their books. Bruce Harrell’s campaign spent $282,000 on broadcast advertising; Wilson spent $200,000. Harrell spent $86,000 on wages, salaries, and benefits; Wilson spent $153,000. And then the Harrell campaign spent $158,000, almost twice what it paid in wages, for something called “Management and Consulting.” For this same mysterious expense, Wilson spent less than $7,000.

Rejecting the input of stuffed-suit consultants is one thing. But rejecting money is another. If socialist billionaires—all none of them—started to give to progressive candidates, would the candidates really decline? Maybe not on moral purity. But if big PAC money and lavish spending actually hurts a politician’s chances at victory, that might be a curious new incentive for thrift.

How to Lower Energy Costs: Break Up the Electrical-Grid Cabal - 2025-11-19T11:00:00Z

Power bills are exploding across the United States. Roughly one-third of Americans struggled to pay for electricity in the past year, and millions received service disconnection notices due to unpaid bills. New Jersey Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill and Virginia Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger both campaigned on energy affordability. When they take office in January, they could tackle an unlikely adversary: PJM, the grid operator for the mid-Atlantic and parts of the Midwest. Finally, states in this part of the country may be ready to restructure the electrical grid.

The grid is a wonky topic, easily overlooked. But it’s also the backbone of everyday life, delivering power to homes, hospitals, and businesses; affecting household and commercial budgets and thus the broader economy. Much of the American grid is managed by seven obscure private regional transmission organizations, or RTOs, like PJM, with generally little public scrutiny or accountability. And in recent years, RTOs have fumbled both price increases and the energy transition, failing to get grid infrastructure upgraded or built.

RTOs are a product of the power industry deregulation of the 1990s and 2000s. Outside of the Southeast and most of the West, states, with encouragement from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, restructured their power systems to replace publicly regulated rates with private competition wherever feasible. The theory was that rivalry between utilities and power generators would yield lower rates over time than public regulation could. The results of this experiment are decidedly mixed. As part of this sectoral reform, states and FERC encouraged utilities to form RTOs to operate and plan the grid in a fair and nondiscriminatory manner.

RTO transmission planning does not fit any ordinary understanding of the word “planning.” Instead of identifying system-wide needs based on cost, reliability, and sustainability, new transmission projects are built through a bottom-up process. Lines are proposed and built based on expected profitability for developers. This discretionary approach means that few long-distance lines have been built, despite clear benefits of grid expansion, such as increased system reliability, lower energy prices, and reduced emissions of greenhouse gas and other air pollutants.

An even more extreme example of RTO planning dysfunction is the interconnection queue. Thousands of new generation projects, especially solar and wind plants, languish for years on end, waiting to be connected to the grid. At the end of 2024, the total proposed capacity in queue was greater than the present installed generation capacity of the nation. This also creates warped incentives for developers to submit speculative projects because they are unsure of the cost or timeline of interconnection and just want to secure a spot in line. Sherrill and Spanberger have both criticized PJM’s inability to bring cheap, low-cost renewable energy online quickly.

This non-planning at RTOs is structural. Their decisions are made by committees and subcommittees dominated by representatives of generation and transmission owners. Further, RTO boards typically are selected by the transmission owners, generation developers, and industrial customers participating in the RTO’s market. Their decision-making is also ordinarily opaque: Spanberger emphasized the lack of transparency at PJM in a June op-ed about her affordable energy plan. While FERC has regulatory authority over these institutions, its practical control is weak under the Federal Power Act and has been further weakened by adverse court decisions.

RTOs also tend to favor the interests of transmission owners, often private utilities. An RTO’s very existence requires a critical mass of transmission owners to join. No transmission facilities mean no RTO. Transmission owners can and have left RTOs when they believed their policies were not sufficiently favorable to them. This credible threat of exit means transmission firms’ interests are generally given priority. New lines can mean loss of revenues and profits for transmission-owning utilities that directly or indirectly own generation, commonly gas, assets. Thus, a new independently owned wind farm is a potential competitor to these transmission-owning utilities, which in turn can leverage their power over the RTOs.

Accordingly, RTOs sometimes have a vested interest in impeding grid expansions. This can be especially pronounced with long-distance transmission line proposals. Connecting solar-rich Arizona and New Mexico with the Pacific Coast or the bountiful wind of the Great Plains with the Gulf Coast would mean low-cost, abundant renewable power displacing higher-cost energy from natural gas power plants. By contrast, preserving inadequate transmission between areas can ensure continued energy sales and maintain highly lucrative pricing power for generators in the “congested” zone.

So what’s the solution? In the short run, there is room for creating a more public grid. Governors like Sherrill and Spanberger, in alliance with other state executives in their region, can use their political leverage over utilities in RTOs and through complaints to FERC to demand more transparent decision-making. They should insist that RTOs open their proceedings to the public to ensure that consumer advocates and state officials can monitor and scrutinize their decision-making. Further, they should select at least a few board members from slates proposed by governors of states in their service territory.

In the longer term, we should aim higher, through multistate compacts and federal legislation, regional or national public grid operators. A more democratic RTO system would transfer power from what legal scholar Ari Peskoe calls the “transmission syndicate” that governs regional grids to a public agency. Instead of governance defined and developed by the private RTO members, this would allow for new governance that considers the twenty-first-century grid and grounds decisions in the public interest.

This model already exists. California’s transmission operator, CAISO, is managed by a governor-appointed board that acts to advance state policy goals, rather than private objectives. Further, the federal Tennessee Valley Authority and Bonneville Power Administration are responsible for grid operations and planning in parts of the Southeast and the Pacific Northwest, respectively. In 1999, Public Citizen urged FERC to create publicly owned transmission companies, instead of private RTOs, for each of the three physical grids in the United States (West, East, and Texas).

Around the world, the national government holds planning power via public, nonprofit national transmission agencies. The Netherlands, the Philippines, France, and Uruguay are just some of the countries that manage their transmission grid via one nationalized transmission system. This system has helped them manage grid balancing, as well as decarbonizing the energy sector.

Shifting the United States to a national transmission company to manage grid load may appear radical. But it shouldn’t be: The grid, like roads and highways, is basic infrastructure on which domestic, economic, and social life depends. Transmission organizations should be public bodies leading the transition to an affordable, reliable, and sustainable power system, not private clubs obstructing it.

Ian McEwan’s Haunting Vision of the Future - 2025-11-19T11:00:00Z

It’s perhaps fair to observe that Ian McEwan has entered the elegiac phase of his career. It happens to us all eventually, I suppose, whether one makes donuts or novels; eventually pondering what came before takes up most of your dwindling time. He looked back at the past in his last two novels: Machines Like Me (2019) is set in a 1980s England depicted through an alt-historical lens (the Brits lost the Falklands war to Argentina, but, in a version of the country where Alan Turing still lives, flying cars already exist), and Lessons (2022), a portrait of a feckless boomer born the same year McEwan was, 1948, spans 70 years of its protagonist’s unremarkable, faintly gilded life, one that never quite escapes the shadow of a sexual assault at the hands of his piano teacher, Ms. Cornell, when he was 14. McEwan’s fiction has always been about the need to make meaning from catastrophe, to awaken or shield the moral imagination through the intellect, and in his new book, What We Can Know, the catastrophe is the future and the elegy is for our species, as the oceans rise and prospects grow dour.

The book concerns a literary scholar, Thomas Metcalfe, in a diminished England, one McEwan imagines as half-submerged and wholly disillusioned by 2119. The country’s green fields have turned into inland deltas, the southern coast has been eaten by what survivors call The Inundation—erosion of the coasts and rewriting of the world’s topography by the onrush of salt water, spurred not just by climate change but also by a catastrophic tsunami in the Atlantic caused by an errant Russian nuclear missile that landed short of America—and what remains of civilization has reorganized itself around an archipelago in which travel is hard and the only growth industries are data recovery and atmospheric management.

McEwan sketches a scarily plausible dystopia, in which Civilization hasn’t ended; after decades of hanging by a thread it has stabilized, salvaged by our weary successors who are forever bound to pay for our excesses. People move through the future quietly, their lives bracketed by scarcity and the faint hum of desalination plants. Interracial love has rendered most people honey-colored, just as the 1998 movie Bulworth predicted would become a necessity, and those with pale skin now face discrimination and othering; there was no stopping those from the global south from moving north to seek higher ground and cooler climates, especially after Pakistan and India’s nuclear exchange.

In this world the humanities have become an archival curiosity and Metcalfe, a professor at the underfunded University of the South Downs, teaches to near-empty rooms. He is a relic of the humanities in a world that no longer values them, “a poor cousin to the water scientists,” as he puts it. His colleagues envy the grant money that still flows to the climatologists and biotechnologists in the new “Renaissance of Necessity.” His own work of retracing the biographies of dead poets and their spouses from an archive of the entire internet, made possible only by Nigerian ingenuity, is a ritual of mourning, an act of faith performed in the ruins of meaning. The old moral questions persist, but without the luxury of conviction.

When Metcalfe refers to the twenty-first century as the “century of hubris,” he’s not sneering, he’s nostalgic. His generation has a life expectancy of 64. Electronics are scarce, plane travel nonexistent. Those born into collapse can no longer imagine progress, only curation, it seems. Amid this landscape of loss, Metcalfe begins his excavation of Francis Blundy, a prominent early-millennial poet who once read a cycle of sonnets called “A Corona for Vivien” to a coterie of literati at a dinner in 2014. The poem is ostensibly about his life with his wife, but comes in later years to achieve widespread and enduring fame largely because of the controversy surrounding its nonexistence—no copy of it exists—and the persistent belief that it was a suppressed masterpiece containing profound truths about a changing world during the years of what twenty-second-century citizens have come to call “The Derangement.”

That is the time we the reader are living through now, when the world is on a collision course with ever more calamitous climate change–powered disasters. We are promised a future that is One Battle After Another with the elements, in which no political solutions seem possible. Over time, McEwan’s novels have grown more austere, more haunted by the sense that the moral and narrative architectures that once defined Western civilization—its faith in reason, progress, democratic governance—have finally given out.

The world of What We Can Know is one of threadbare survival and epistemological doubt. It’s a book about the failure of understanding, and it reads like the work of a man who has accepted that no form of mastery, literary or otherwise, will save us. Yet the mastery is there for all to see: McEwan’s prose has never been looser or more humane. Gone is the mechanical precision that once made his moral contraptions click. What remains is an older writer’s acceptance of disorder, an embrace of the fog. The sentences are warm even when the world they describe has cooled due to nuclear dust settling into the atmosphere as The Derangement faded.

The mystery of the poem’s disappearance and the suggestion that it might have been suppressed, or bought off by oil interests, or simply burned, drives the narrative as Metcalfe digs deeper into the moral archaeology of Blundy’s life. Blundy is vain, brilliant, intermittently tender, and wholly convinced that his intellect confers moral immunity. Vivien, a scholar of the Romantic poet John Clare, has allowed her own academic career to calcify in service of her husband’s as a poet. McEwan renders the contours of her domestic life—the long dinners for “the Barn set,” the ironing, the peeled potatoes for the poet’s birthday—as both parody of how much information those living through The Derangement collected digitally about their lives and as a lament for where it was all headed. Hers is a mind turned servant to another’s ambition, the life of the highly educated housewife whose tragedy is self-knowledge.

The revelations in her confession arrive with the deliberate rhythm of memory loosening its hold. Vivien recounts her earlier marriage to Percy Greene, a kind craftsman and luthier whose mind begins to fray with Alzheimer’s. It is while caring for Percy that she meets Francis, who charms her, seduces her, and eventually persuades her that the sick man’s death would be merciful—an event he brings about himself, with a mallet. Francis, having inherited both his widow and his violin, begins the slow work of absorbing the dead man’s life into his own art.

That theft—and its moral, emotional, and artistic dimensions—forms the novel’s true moral crisis. When, years later, Francis reads “A Corona for Vivien” aloud at a dinner table thick with smoke and brandy, she recognizes its falseness immediately. The poem, a lush meditation on love, mortality, and the natural world, is the inverse of everything the man believes. “I don’t like country walks,” he once told her. “I don’t know the names of flowers and I don’t give a damn.” In that moment she understands that he has not only stolen her husband’s essence but forged a counterfeit of her own devotion.

What Metcalfe finds is not the poem itself but explanation of its absence, made manifest in the form of Vivien’s confession. Her memoir, retrieved from a sealed container beside her first husband’s violin, rewrites the story entirely. It reveals a marriage rooted in exploitation, a literary myth built on cruelty. Francis, a self-anointed genius who dismissed climate change as hysteria, depended on Vivien’s labor and intellect even as he erased them. That night, after the guests have gone, Vivien rolls up the poem’s vellum scroll and feeds it into the dairy stove. The act is both vengeance and mercy: the burning of a false idol. Her decision to destroy his work, committing it to the fire on the night of its triumph, is both punishment and release, the act of a woman reclaiming the one power left to her: the right to silence him.

Climate change here is not backdrop but the lens through which all the characters must see the world. It muddies everything: the meanings of guilt, of authorship, of love. The irony that Metcalfe’s entire project—his attempt to reconstruct a bygone world from fragments—is perhaps animated by the same delusion that animated Blundy’s poetry does not escape McEwan. The belief that language can fix what nature destroys, or at least allow us a way past it, lives in both the protagonist and the object of his obsession here. He pores over Vivien’s letters, texts, and shopping lists as if they were fossils, “tokens of vitality” in an era when vitality itself has become an endangered condition. McEwan uses that obsession to mirror our own digital archiving of catastrophe, the endless documentation that substitutes for action.

Francis’s climate denial, meanwhile, is more than characterization; it is McEwan’s indictment of the twenty-first-century elite class that refuses to imagine the crisis as worth sacrificing our decadent comforts and entitlements for. The poet’s failure to perceive the natural world except as metaphor becomes, in hindsight, a metaphor for civilization’s failure to perceive its own ending. McEwan, who turned 77 this year, writes with the lucidity of a craftsman who knows he’s constructing his own monument to a future he will never know.

Like McEwan’s most famous novel, Atonement, What We Can Know has a nested structure—beginning with Metcalfe’s frame, then Vivien’s confession, and the recovered fragments of Francis’s correspondence—and it recalls Atonement, too, in its fascination with the ethics of narrative control. Francis Blundy, in his climate-denying, classicist arrogance, is an emblem of the old order, one that governs our world today: male, murderous, self-mythologizing, possessed by delusions that are driving us all off a cliff. Vivien’s corrective isn’t enough to save her first husband, or the world, from Francis’s harm. There is no justice to be found. If Atonement asked whether fiction could redeem guilt, What We Can Know suggests that the very possibility of redemption might be foolhardy.

But continue we must; the future McEwan envisions is grim but not loveless. Metcalfe, trudging between the archives and his coastal home, finds an unexpected companion in his colleague Rose Church, and their late-blooming affection, growing into an on-again, off-again literature department romance—halting, courteous, tinged with exhaustion—gives the novel its fragile heartbeat. When Rose reveals her pregnancy near the end, McEwan resists sentimentality. The child’s birth is not salvation; it is continuation, “the next link in the chain of futility and care.” Still, that flicker of human persistence feels like grace.

If 2011’s Solar was McEwan’s comic treatment of environmental hubris, What We Can Know is its deeper, more tragic echo. Here, climate change functions as the novel’s moral solvent, dissolving the old binaries—guilt and innocence, art and theft, preservation and erasure—until all that remains is entropy. “The imagined poem triumphs over the real,” Metcalfe concludes, “because the imagination is all we have left.” In that single sentence lies both McEwan’s despair and his faith: despair that human artifice has supplanted the natural world, faith that it might still bear witness to the loss.

The 2026 World Cup Is Trump’s Authoritarian Debutante Ball - 2025-11-19T11:00:00Z

The best moment of the 2026 World Cup may have already happened. It might not even matter.

On Sunday, in the final seconds of a tied qualifying match between Ireland and Hungary—win and you reach a playoff, lose and you go home—Ireland goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher launched a ball from the halfway line into Hungary’s box. The ball was desperately headed forward by wingback Liam Scales and miraculously found its way to striker Troy Parrott, who tapped it into the net with the tip of his right cleat. The goal did not secure Ireland’s place in next year’s World Cup finals, but you’d never know it from the celebrations.

Parrott, who had already scored twice in the game, ripped off his shirt. The Irish bench stormed the field, even though the game was not yet over. The commentators went hoarse. The visiting fans’ section became a frenzied blur. “This is why we love football, because things like this can happen,” Parrott said. “I love where I’m from, my family are here, this means the world to me.” For Hungary’s players and fans, the reaction was equally intense but opposite: utter devastation. This is, ultimately, what it’s all about. There is nothing quite like the World Cup, the most thrilling, insane sporting competition on the planet. It’s a competition so good that just making it to the qualification playoffs can make a man break down in tears.

The 2026 World Cup may not supply a moment as perfect as Parrott’s late winner, but it will undoubtedly supply many that come close. It always does. But it is increasingly clear that those moments will be overshadowed by the competition’s principal host country. Since taking office in January, Donald Trump and his closest aides have made it increasingly clear that they plan on using the tournament as an opportunity for fascistic spectacle: immigration raids and detentions of foreign fans, military deployments in host cities with Democratic mayors and governors, and flashy meet and greets with a Who’s Who of global autocrats.

That was made evident this week at two White House events: one, on Monday, with FIFA president Gianni Infantino and another, on Tuesday, with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who will host the 2034 installment.

The Monday event was meant to be a triumph for Infantino, whose obsequiousness knows no bounds. Since taking over the fantastically corrupt governing body of global soccer almost a decade ago, the bald, slippery Swiss-Italian administrator has shown a special knack for sucking up to the autocrats, thugs, and bullies who run World Cup host nations: Russia, Qatar, and now the United States. Infantino went so far as to move his family to Qatar for the 2022 World Cup, where his standout contribution was a lengthy diatribe that defended the host nation’s long history of human rights abuses by, among other things, detailing the bullying and abuse he suffered as a child due to his red hair and declaring: “Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arabic. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel [like] a migrant worker.”

As a speech, it was bizarre, oscillating between incoherence, offense, and profound stupidity. But it succeeded in its ultimate goal, which was to take some of the heat off of the host nation, which had been receiving justifiable global criticism for its treatment of migrant workers, women, homosexuals, and minority groups.

Now that the global media is turning its attention to the Trump administration’s growing list of human rights abuses—and the president’s increasingly bellicose threats to move games away from blue cities, apparently to punish them for their disloyalty—Infantino has attached himself to Trump. For most of the year, Infantino has popped up beside Trump everywhere, allowing him to steal one trophy (FIFA’s Club World Cup trophy, which Chelsea won but currently sits in the Oval Office) and inventing another (the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize) in a blatant, pathetic attempt to satiate the president’s ego. (The latter prize has not been awarded, but Trump is the odds-on favorite given his well-documented—and unrequited—desire for a Nobel Peace Prize.)

Still, Infantino’s doglike devotion seemed to pay dividends on Monday, when Trump announced that ticket holders to the 2026 World Cup would have access to advance appointments to acquire visas. The scheme is similar to ones deployed in Russia and Qatar, and would seem to alleviate one major, growing source of anxiety ahead of the tournament: that the Trump administration’s frothing nativism and increasingly violent and restrictive immigration regime would prevent citizens of dozens of countries from attending the tournament.

The visa plan was arguably the principal goal of Infantino’s long, agonizing diplomatic mission, and he secured it with plenty of time to spare. Some nations with teams that have qualified for the tournament, like Colombia and Morocco, currently face visa wait times that stretch to the start of the tournament, which will run in June and July of next year, or beyond. Infantino accomplished this despite facing far more resistance—both immigration czar Stephen Miller and Vice President JD Vance, among others, had flexed their muscles in previous comments about the tournament—than he had in either Qatar or Russia. Ticket holders will still face the administration’s stringent screening process, but they will do so with an expedited timeframe. It was a huge victory for the FIFA president—until Trump started speaking.

Asked about Katie Wilson, the democratic socialist who was just elected mayor of Seattle, Trump immediately threatened to move World Cup games away from the city, citing—as usual, without evidence—concerns about “safety.” Those comments could be read as an implicit threat against New York City, which also just elected a democratic socialist (Zohran Mamdani) as mayor and will host the tournament’s championship game in July. If Infantino was taken aback, he didn’t show it; he dutifully stood by the president and spewed some gibberish about the importance of safety during the Cup.

Then Trump threatened to bomb Mexico—which is, with Canada, co-hosting the tournament with the United States—as part of his administration’s growing extralegal military campaign against several nations it accuses of drug smuggling. “Would I launch strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? OK with me. Whatever we have to do to stop drugs. Mexico is—look, I looked at Mexico City over the weekend, there’s some big problems over there.” Again, Infantino betrayed no objection or discomfort. He sat and smiled as the president raved about the likely release of the FBI files related to Trump’s old friend Jeffrey Epstein. What was meant to be a triumph quickly became yet another humiliation.

Things only got worse on Tuesday, when Trump hosted Mohammed bin Salman, a.k.a. MBS, at the White House for the first time since American intelligence found that the Saudi crown prince had ordered the brutal execution of Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident journalist and U.S. resident. When a reporter asked about Khashoggi, Trump jumped in and chastised the journalist. “He knew nothing about it,” he insisted. “You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking something like that.”

Instead, Trump made it clear that the two were there to clasp hands and smile as they spoke in glowing terms about their close relationship. (Saudi Arabia, it should be noted, has close ties to Trump’s business empire and is on the verge of reaching a $63 billion development deal with his namesake organization.) This is the reception that dictators and autocrats get in America now. It is the reception they will receive next summer, when Trump will welcome them with open arms (and open pockets) as he subjects fans and guests to intrusive screenings and the constant threat of detention, arrest, and deportation on spurious grounds.

We know this because of the surprise appearance of 40-year-old Portuguese striker Cristiano Ronaldo, who was visiting Washington (and the White House) as a guest of bin Salman. Ronaldo’s presence wasn’t just notable because he is the second-best player of his generation, or even because he is currently playing out his final act as a highly paid shill for Saudi Arabia. (He is paid more than $200 million a season not just to play in the Gulf nation’s domestic league but to promote it for tourism.) It was notable because it was the first time that Ronaldo had traveled to America in nearly a decade, reportedly because of the threat of arrest over an alleged sexual assault in Las Vegas in 2009. (Although Ronaldo has denied the allegations, the details of a settlement with the accuser that leaked in 2017 are highly disturbing.)

Ronaldo’s presence in the White House is unsettling but hardly surprising, given that the Trump administration is overflowing with men who have been accused of assault, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Trump himself. But it is still notable, especially given the striker’s Flying Dutchman–like quest to concoct a final act for a remarkable career. For Ronaldo, the perfect ending would undoubtedly be one with him holding the World Cup trophy aloft next July—something that is not out of the question, given the overall strength of the Portuguese team.

Instead, his real last act is coming into focus: He has become a pro-Trump diplomat. In June, European Council President Antonio Costa—who is Portuguese—gifted the president a signed Ronaldo jersey at a Group Seven summit in Canada. Earlier this month, Ronaldo talked up the president to Piers Morgan, a longtime admirer of both men. “He is one of the guys I wish to meet to sit and have a nice talk,” he said. “If it is here, or in the U.S., wherever he wants, I know he was here in Saudi with our boss MBS. I wish one day to meet him because he is one of the guys who can make things happen and I like people like that.” With Trump in office, Ronaldo doesn’t have to worry about arrest. He is at the White House to fete and be feted: shaking hands, posing for pictures, and lavishing praise on one boss in a diplomatic mission on behalf of another. That is how the career of one of soccer’s greatest ever players will most likely end: not with a bang but with a banquet full of the worst people in the world.

Which brings us back to Troy Parrott and Ireland. It would be quite a story if the Irish team made its first World Cup appearance since 2002 in the United States, whose massive Irish diaspora would surely show up to cheer on the (dogged but certainly doomed) team. Even if they don’t, there will be improbable, magical moments to come this summer that rival Parrott’s goal last week. The World Cup is still the World Cup, even if it’s hosted in repressive, authoritarian countries like Russia, Qatar, or the United States.

But even Russia and Qatar saw the World Cup as an opportunity to showcase idealized versions of their nations—to soften the global perception of their autocracies. It is clear that Trump and his cronies see the 2026 installment as something quite different: an opportunity for the U.S. to flex its authoritarian muscles, to harden its image in the world’s eyes. There will still be goals and glory this summer. But the real drama will always be happening somewhere off the pitch.

Trump’s Plot to Rig 2026 Is Falling Apart, and Boy Is He Mad About It - 2025-11-19T10:00:00Z

Suddenly, President Trump’s effort to rig the 2026 midterms with corrupt gerrymanders appears in trouble. A panel of judges just blocked the GOP gerrymander in Texas, which had added five seats. In Indiana, Republicans currently lack the votes to redraw their congressional map. Trump is angry about all this. He lashed out at Indiana Republicans, threatening primaries and calling one opponent “weak” and “pathetic.” So is the scheme dead? No. Several aspects of it still remain unresolved. The Texas seats are in doubt, but that’s being appealed, and Republicans have added four other seats. Meanwhile, Democrats are adding five in California and one in Utah. Now what? We talked to Heather Williams, who’s been fighting against the GOP schemes as president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. She explains the hurdles that lie ahead, how it could all turn out relatively well for Democrats, and why rank-and-file voters need to take state-level contests way more seriously. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.

Red State GOP Gives Trump the Middle Finger on Gerrymandering - 2025-11-18T21:17:32Z

Indiana’s Senate has decided not to meet until January, signaling that redistricting will not be on the state’s legislative agenda this year.

The decision is in direct defiance of an order issued earlier this year by Donald Trump, who met privately with Indiana Republicans in August as part of a pressure campaign to maximize GOP House seats before the 2026 midterms.

The White House visits were, apparently, ineffective at changing the minds of state lawmakers. The issue came down to a 29–18 vote Tuesday, with 19 Republicans joining 10 Democrats to effectively adjourn until next year.

But the elected officials’ anticipated rebuke didn’t minimize the president’s gaze: Indiana Governor Mike Braun has remained in Trump’s hot seat so far this week. The two reportedly had a “good conversation” on Monday, in which Trump reiterated that he expected the state Senate to vote to draw up new maps.

“Unfortunately, Senator Rod Bray was forced to partner with DEMOCRATS to block an effort by the growing number of America First Senators who wanted to have a vote on passing fair maps,” Braun wrote in a statement after the vote. “Now I am left with no choice other than to explore all options at my disposal to compel the State Senate to show up and vote.

“I will support President Trump’s efforts to recruit, endorse, and finance primary challengers for Indiana’s senators who refuse to support fair maps,” he added.

The other half of Indiana’s Congress was not on the same page, however. House Speaker Todd Huston told state lawmakers to keep the first two weeks of December clear for a potential redistricting vote, reported the Indiana Capital Chronicle.

The White House’s intense focus on this issue illustrates just how nervous the GOP is about maintaining its razor-thin majority in Congress: Indiana holds nine seats in the U.S. House—seven of those are already held by Republicans.

Trump issued similar directives for a handful of other red states, including Missouri, Ohio, Florida, and Texas, though some of those redistricting efforts have also crumbled. After facing similar fire—including legal threats—from the Trump administration, a federal judge threw out Texas’s gerrymandered congressional maps earlier Tuesday, ruling that there was “substantial evidence” the state had “racially gerrymandered” its 2025 maps at the president’s direction.

Mike Johnson’s Gamble on Releasing Epstein Files Blows Up in His Face - 2025-11-18T21:10:25Z

If House Speaker Mike Johnson thought his buddy Senate Majority Leader John Thune would help hold up a measure to release the government’s files on Jeffrey Epstein, he was sorely mistaken.

The House voted 427–1 in favor of the Epstein Files Transparency Act (H.R.4405) Tuesday. Shortly after, Thune sounded optimistic about advancing the effort to release a complete trove of documents on the alleged sex offender, who had ties to prominent figures such as President Donald Trump, through the Senate.

Thune said that the Senate would likely take up the petition “very quickly,” after Trump revealed he was “prepared” to sign it, according to Semafor’s Burgess Everett.

Thune acknowledged that Johnson hoped his colleagues in the Senate would amend the legislation but admitted that making changes “wasn’t likely” after the overwhelming support from the House.

That could spell bad news for Johnson. Earlier Tuesday, the staunch Trump ally said he was “very confident” that Thune and Senate Republicans would address his own laundry list of concerns about the resolution.

Alongside his supposed concerns about not protecting the identities of victims, or not adequately preventing the release of child sexual abuse materials, Johnson has also expressed fears that the release could potentially disclose “non-credible allegations” and risk “creating new victims.”

Representative Thomas Massie, the sole Republican co-sponsor of the resolution, dismissed Johnson’s so-called concerns as a “red herring” and warned they could simply be another “delay tactic.”

Trump Threatens ABC’s License as He Freaks Out Over Epstein Question - 2025-11-18T19:48:49Z

Donald Trump couldn’t handle a reporter asking about Jeffrey Epstein while he met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House Tuesday. 

ABC News reporter Mary Bruce asked Trump if the House of Representatives even needs to vote on releasing the Epstein files, when the president could just order the release of the files himself. That set Trump off.

“People are wise to your hoax, and ABC is, your company, your crappy company is one of the perpetrators. I’ll tell you something, I’ll tell you something, I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and so wrong. And we have a great commissioner, a chairman, who should take a look at that,” Trump said, referring to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who has taken a combative approach against TV news stations critical of the president. 

“I think when you’re 97 percent negative to Trump and then Trump wins in a landslide, that means obviously your news is not credible, and you’re not credible as a reporter,” Trump said, saying that the reporter should look at Democrats, particularly Harvard professor Larry Summers and Democratic benefactor Reid Hoffman. 

“Those are the people, but they don’t get any press, they don’t get any news, and you’re not after the radical left because you’re a radical left network,” Trump added. “But I think the way you ask the question with the anger and the meanness is terrible. You ought to go back and learn how to be a reporter.” 

Trump in response to an Epstein question: "ABC, your company, your crappy company is one of the perpetrators. I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake and so wrong. And we have a great commissioner, a chairman, who should take a look at… pic.twitter.com/vLCAjYGgXm

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 18, 2025

Earlier in the meeting, Trump became enraged after Bruce asked both him and MBS about U.S. intelligence reports that the Saudi crown prince ordered the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

ABC’s parent company, Disney, paid $16 million to Trump in December to settle a defamation lawsuit, but it doesn’t appear to have earned the network any goodwill with the president. Instead, it has only emboldened Trump to ignore any questions he doesn’t like. With Carr’s help at the FCC, the Trump administration has gone after more TV networks, even trying to muzzle late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.

Trump may have been trying to distract the public from Epstein and threaten any other reporters who wanted to ask about the billionaire child sex predator. What he really did is show he’s willing to undermine the freedom of the press for his own benefit.  

One Republican Votes Against Releasing Epstein Files for Some Reason - 2025-11-18T19:45:56Z

The Senate voted unanimously Tuesday to release the Epstein files, sending the measure to Donald Trump’s desk.

Trump has said he will sign the bill. Shortly before the Senate announced the bill had passed, he posted on Truth Social that he didn’t care when the chamber voted on the measure.

“I just don’t want Republicans to take their eyes off all of the Victories that we’ve had,” he wrote, citing his tariff policy, his immigration policies, and his budget policy, among others.

After months of dragging their feet, House Republicans—minus one—voted earlier Tuesday to release the Epstein files.

The majority of the caucus sided with Democrats, voting in favor of the Epstein Files Transparency Act (H.R.4405), advancing the effort to the Senate, where its fate has yet to be decided. But Republican Representative Clay Higgins struck out on his own.

The final vote was 427–1. Five representatives did not vote. Lawmakers standing on the Democratic side of the chamber broke out in cheers and applause after the measure passed.

Hours after the bill passed that vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made a motion to pass the motion by unanimous consent once it is transmitted from the House. There were no objections, meaning the bill will automatically go to Trump now.

Higgins wrote moments before the vote that he had been a “no” vote on the matter “since the beginning.”

“What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today. It abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America,” Higgins argued on social media. “As written, this bill reveals and injures thousands of innocent people—witnesses, people who provided alibis, family members, etc.

“If enacted in its current form, this type of broad reveal of criminal investigative files, released to a rabid media, will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt. Not by my vote,” the Louisiana lawmaker continued. “The Oversight Committee is conducting a thorough investigation that has already released well over 60,000 pages of documents from the Epstein case. That effort will continue in a manner that provides all due protections for innocent Americans.

“If the Senate amends the bill to properly address [the] privacy of victims and other Americans, who are named but not criminally implicated, then I will vote for that bill when it comes back to the House,” he added.

But the victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking ring are not aligned with Higgins’s opinion. Speaking with reporters before the vote on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, a group of survivors demanded that Congress unequivocally pass the bill and unlock public access to the Epstein case files.

Jeffrey Epstein, a New York socialite who orchestrated an international child sex trafficking ring to service the sick desires of the ultrawealthy, is believed to have abused hundreds of young girls.

His network included an array of high-profile, powerful individuals, including former treasury secretary and ex–Harvard University President Larry Summers, Victoria’s Secret chief executive Les Wexner, Wall Street titan Leon Black, British ex-Prince Andrew (now Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor), and President Donald Trump.

The House Oversight Committee released more than 20,000 documents Wednesday that it had obtained from Epstein’s estate. The documents included multiple mentions of Trump and his ascent to the White House, including one exchange in which Epstein noted: “Of course [Trump] knew about the girls.”

For months, just four House Republicans had penned their signatures on a discharge petition demanding transparency into the investigation of Epstein and his potential associates. Those conservative lawmakers include Representatives Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace, and Lauren Boebert.

At least two members of that cohort—Mace and Boebert—were personally courted by Trump last week in a last-minute bid to convince them to change their minds about the petition, despite the fact that Trump has repeatedly washed the publicity effort as a Democrat-invented “hoax.”

In the end, Massie was the lone Republican to co-sponsor the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who for months parroted Trump’s talking points, sang a very different tune on Tuesday. “Now, at least in recent days, at least every member of the chamber … is in for complete transparency,” he said ahead of the vote.

This story has been updated.

Marjorie Taylor Greene Just Wrecked the Cult of Trump - 2025-11-18T18:48:02Z

President Donald Trump is very angry at Republicans over the Jeffrey Epstein fiasco. Politico reports that he believes Democrats “outplayed” the GOP, resulting in the fiasco that’s about to unfold, in which the House is expected to vote to release the Epstein files with the support of most or all Republicans. In this telling, Trump—who called on the GOP to support release after opposing it for months—only had to reverse himself because his party botched the politics of this battle.

This is a monumentally absurd reading: Trump’s own longtime opposition to releasing the files is what created the—correct—impression of a cover-up, building pressure for disclosure and leaving him no option but to climb aboard. At any point during this saga Trump could have backed release of the files and not gotten forced into it. Heck, he could have ordered this himself. He—and he alone—is the author of this mess. But that aside, we suspect Trump is enraged for another reason entirely: His aura of mastery over the GOP has now been shattered.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene offered an extraordinary takedown of Trump on Tuesday morning that lays all these dynamics bare. Watch this whole clip, courtesy of Aaron Rupar:

As Greene notes, Trump depicted her as a “traitor” for supporting the discharge petition compelling a House vote on release of the files, i.e., the trove of investigative materials gathered in the Justice Department’s investigations of Epstein’s sex trafficking. That’s a reference to Trump’s explosion of fury at Greene earlier this week, in which he angrily declared that he no longer supports her due to her Epstein apostasy.

What Trump understands better than anyone alive is that it’s the perception of his mastery over fellow Republicans that matters above all to the success of his project. Trump’s eruption at Greene was a last-ditch effort to warn other Republicans that if they dare join her, they’d face his wrath. Earlier, the White House had privately pressured Lauren Boebert—another GOP representative who’d joined the petition, along with Thomas Massie—to pull her name, a retreat that would cement Trump’s aura of control. She refused.

Indeed, if you think about it, even Trump’s sudden about-face, at bottom, is really about maintaining that perception of mastery. Faced with certain defections, what Trump feared most was the spectacle of Republicans not doing his express bidding. In calling for release himself, Trump was not primarily concerned with appearing transparent; rather, he was making an eleventh-hour effort to create the impression that he—and he alone—is dictating this GOP outcome.

It’s a key tell that the most determined of pro-Trump propagandists are suddenly pushing that line, that Trump is the one responsible for the vote to release the files. Look at this insane exchange between a New York Times reporter and MAGA Congressman Troy Nehls, in which Nehls struggles to explain why he’s been calling the files a “hoax”  but will now vote to release them:

“It is a hoax by the Democrats against Trump,” Mr. Nehls said, lighting a cigar on the steps of the Capitol.

So then why support it?

“Why not?” he replied. “Trump said just release the damn files. He said do it—release the damn files.”

Get it now? Trump wants us to do this, and that’s why it’s happening. Mark this down: It won’t be long until Trump’s propagandists start pushing the line that by ordering the files released, Trump totally owned the Democrats. Oh, wait: As Matt Gertz shows, MAGA media has already started saying this.

What is surely most galling to Trump in the above video is Greene’s straightforward declaration that Trump was unable to control the course of events. Not by calling her a “traitor.” Not by privately pressuring Republicans. Not by raging on Truth Social that the Epstein files are a “Democrat hoax.” His control over what information enters and exits the ears and minds of MAGA voters turns out not to be absolute, after all.

Indeed, Greene’s speech is kryptonite to the cult of Trump primarily because of her delineation of the real reasons Congress—including most or all Republicans—will vote to rebuke him. The culprits are: sustained organizing, the power of the victims’ stories, the untenability of the elite cover-up suppressing the files, and—yes—the willingness of a few Republicans like Greene to take on the president and all the hate and rage and death threats that come along with it.

Obviously, Trump’s grip on the Republican Party is still quite formidable. But that grip is plainly loosening on many fronts. Trump has failed to bully Indiana Republicans into joining his corrupt gerrymandering scheme. More than once, a handful of GOP senators have joined Democrats to vote to undo some of his tariffs. Trump’s prosecutions of Democratic enemies are running aground precisely because Justice Department officials appointed by him or picked by his attorney general won’t go along. And as Kyle Cheney notes, Trump has failed to get Republicans to nix the filibuster or end the power of GOP senators to block home-state appointments.

To be sure, we still don’t know whether the files will ultimately be released in full. David Kurtz explains how the administration is already using weaselly language to try to give itself an out. And of course the Senate may still vote to keep them under wraps. 

But how much longer can that dynamic hold? In purely political terms, the longer Trump does keep the files suppressed, the worse it is for him and the GOP. In this regard, it’s worth noting an amusing irony: Now that Republicans are going all in with the fiction that the files are getting released because Trump wants it so—now that they must maintain the propagandistic illusion that Trump couldn’t care less if the files are released—it’ll be even harder to spin right around and defend future efforts to keep them buried nonetheless. 

What we’re now learning, above all, is that Trump appears to wield absolute mastery over the GOP … until he doesn’t, and can no longer sustain that illusion. And when the illusion has been shattered, reality quickly follows suit.

Mike Johnson Lets Slip How He Hopes to Block Epstein Files Release - 2025-11-18T18:35:39Z

House Speaker Mike Johnson has tapped Senate Majority Leader John Thune to take up the torch of blocking the release of the government’s files on Jeffrey Epstein.

During a press conference Tuesday, Johnson announced that he would support the House petition to release the government’s files on the alleged sex trafficker—but not without throwing one final wrench in the plans of lawmakers who support the measure.

The staunch Donald Trump ally hinted that Republicans would likely attempt to stall the measure in the Senate, saying that he had been in contact with his upper-chamber counterpart to express his lingering concerns about the bill.

“And of course they share those concerns, as well,” Johnson said. “And so I am very confident that when this moves forward in the process, if and when it is processed in the Senate—which is no certainty that that will be—they will take the time methodically to do what we have not been allowed to do in the House: to amend this discharge petition, and to make sure that these protections are there.”

It’s worth noting that if Johnson had simply put this legislation to a vote, instead of requiring lawmakers to seek a discharge petition, he could have potentially amended the bill.

Among supposed concerns about not protecting the identities of victims, or not adequately preventing the release of child sexual abuse materials, Johnson has expressed fears that the release could potentially disclose “non-credible allegations” and risk “creating new victims.”

Representative Thomas Massie, one of the lawmakers behind the petition, said Tuesday Johnson’s so-called concerns were a “red herring” and warned they could simply be another “delay tactic.”

The Kentucky Republican also criticized Johnson’s claim about “non-credible allegations” in a post on X.

“Do not let the Senate add an amendment to avoid disclosing those rich and powerful men who have evaded justice for so many years. Is Johnson calling all victims ‘non-credible?’” Massie wrote.

Johnson’s 180 on the Epstein petition itself isn’t particularly surprising, considering that Trump has also changed his tune, in order to emphasize the convicted sex offender’s ties to Democratic figures. Meanwhile, the Republican Party has fractured over some members’ blatant unwillingness to move forward with the files’ release.

Ahead of the vote, victims rallied for the files’ release, with one calling Trump a “national embarrassment.”

Trump Welcomes Saudi Leader MBS With Red Carpet and Lavish Ceremony - 2025-11-18T18:34:10Z

President Trump gave a lavish welcome to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on his visit to the U.S. Wednesday, complete with a red carpet reception at the White House.

Bin Salman technically isn’t Saudi Arabia’s head of state, as that title belongs to his father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, but that didn’t stop Trump from bringing out military cavalry, sparing no exceptions to the pomp that normally accompanies a state visit.

Trump greets MBS at the White House pic.twitter.com/y9ui6fCJZ6

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 18, 2025

President Trump welcomes Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the White House 🇺🇸🇸🇦 pic.twitter.com/dHLj9Gep86

— Margo Martin (@MargoMartin47) November 18, 2025

MBS, as he is commonly known, has not visited the United States since Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the crown prince and a Washington Post columnist, was murdered at a Saudi consulate in 2018 and then dismembered with a bone saw. At the White House, Trump glossed over that scandal, saying, “What he’s done is incredible, in terms of human rights and everything else.”

When a reporter asked about the U.S. intelligence’s conclusion that MBS had personally ordered Khashoggi’s killing, Trump asked who the reporter was with and rushed to defend the crown prince.

“He knew nothing about it. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking something like that,” Trump said, later adding, “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about, whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.”

MBS is in Washington for defense and business deals, including the sale of F-35 jets to the country, opposed by Israel, which insists on Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with it beforehand. Saudi Arabia says it wants Israel to make clear and definitive steps toward establishing a Palestinian state before it joins other Arab countries in the Abraham Accords.

In the meantime, though, Trump just cares that Saudi money gets spent in the U.S. and on his family’s businesses. Saudi Arabia’s poor human rights record doesn’t matter to the president, as long he sees oil and dollar signs.

Trump Freaks Out That MBS Might Be Embarrassed by Khashoggi Question - 2025-11-18T18:23:50Z

President Donald Trump offered a mind-boggling defense of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Tuesday when asked about the foreign kleptocrat’s orchestrating the murder of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

During a joint press conference in the Oval Office, Trump responded with hostility when ABC News reporter Mary Bruce asked Trump whether it was “appropriate” for the president’s family to do business in Saudi Arabia while he was in the White House, before turning her attention to the crown prince.

“And your royal highness, the U.S. intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. 9/11 families are furious that you are here in the Oval Office. Why should Americans trust you, and the same to you, Mr. President?” Bruce asked, but Trump was already trying to interrupt her.

“No, who are you with?” the president snapped.

“I’m with ABC News, sir,” she replied.

“Who?” he asked.

“ABC News, sir,” she repeated.

“Fake news. ABC fake news. One of the worst, one of the worst in the business,” Trump said.

Trump then launched into a rant claiming he had “nothing to do with the family business” and that his family’s company had done “very little with Saudi Arabia, actually.”

“As far as this gentleman is concerned, he’s done a phenomenal job,” Trump said, referring to MBS. “You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial, a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen, but he knew nothing about it. And we can leave it at that. You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.”

MBS offered his own response. “I feel painful about families of 9/11 in America, but we have to focus on reality,” he said, claiming that Osama bin Laden had used Saudi citizens in his attacks in order to destroy the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia.

“About the journalist, it’s really painful to hear [of] anyone that’s been losing his life for no real purpose or nothing illegal way. And it’s painful for us in Saudi Arabia,” the crown prince said. He claimed that the government had done “all the right steps” in investigating Khashoggi’s death and determined that “nothing happened like that.”

According to a 2021 assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, MBS had “approved” Khashoggi’s murder in 2018, during Trump’s first term, and supported “using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad.”

Trump Suffers Major Setback in Texas Gerrymandering Scheme - 2025-11-18T18:20:07Z

A federal judge has thrown out Texas’s gerrymandered congressional maps.

Judge Jeffrey V. Brown ruled Tuesday that the Lone Star State must return to its 2021 maps for the 2026 election, writing that “substantial evidence” proved Texas had “racially gerrymandered” its latest districts.

Congressional maps are typically redrawn every 10 years, after new census data is released. But Texas’s decision to do so in the middle of the decade—at Donald Trump’s direction—raised alarm.

Trump had suggested that Texas could give Republicans five more House seats by flipping a handful of blue districts in the Lone Star State next year via “a very simple redrawing.” In July, the Justice Department threatened to take legal action on the matter, asserting that at least four Texas congressional districts were “unconstitutional” since the presence of multiple racial groups had made white people the regional electoral minority.

Mere days after the DOJ letter, Governor Greg Abbott added redistricting to the special session’s legislative agenda.

“Lawmakers reportedly met that request to redistrict on purely partisan grounds with apprehension. When the governor announced his intent to call a special legislative session, he didn’t even place redistricting on the legislative agenda,” Brown wrote in his ruling. “But when the Trump Administration reframed its request as a demand to redistrict congressional seats based on their racial makeup, Texas lawmakers immediately jumped on board.”

Redistricting is perfectly legal—so long as it complies with federal law. Trump’s directive for Texas forced the state to focus on race rather than politics in defiance of national nondiscrimination laws. Brown noted in the legal opinion that if the effort had intended to thwart Democratic strongholds in the state, it would have also targeted majority white Democrat districts,” but those were “conspicuously absent.”

“In other words, the Governor explicitly directed the Legislature to redistrict based on race. In press appearances, the Governor plainly and expressly disavowed any partisan objective and instead repeatedly stated that his goal was to eliminate coalition districts and create new majority-Hispanic districts,” Brown wrote.

Brown determined that reverting to the 2021 map was a more adequate solution than providing the state with another opportunity to draw up a plan, since the 2021 iteration was not only developed by the state legislature (as opposed to the state judiciary) but has successfully been used in two previous congressional elections as well as an ongoing special election.

Democrats celebrated the news.

“Womp, Womp,” responded Texas State Representative Gene Wu, the chair of the state Democratic caucus.

Trump issued similar directives for a handful of other red states, including Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Illinois, and Florida.

The aggressive redistricting effort elicited shock and contempt from two of the country’s most populous (and Democratic) regions—California and New York. Both states have since launched their own redistricting wars to potentially offset Texas’s altered numbers, though the initiative may seriously offset House seats in the coming years in light of Tuesday’s ruling.

This story has been updated.

MTG Appears to Call Trump a “Traitor” Ahead of Epstein Vote - 2025-11-18T17:20:09Z

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene seemed to call out Donald Trump Tuesday at a press conference surrounded by victims of child sex predator Jeffrey Epstein.

“I was called a traitor by a man that I fought for five—no actually six years for. And I gave him my loyalty for free. I won my first election without his endorsement, beating eight men in a primary, and I’ve never owed him anything, but I fought for him for the policies and for America First,” Greene said outside of the Capitol. “And he called me a traitor for standing with these women and refusing to take my name off the discharge petition.”

Greene laid out her reasons for supporting the release of the Epstein files, using her strongest words against the president to date.

“Let me tell you what a traitor is. A traitor is a, is an American that serves foreign countries and themselves. A patriot is an American that serves the United States of America and Americans like the women standing behind me,” Greene added.

Greene: I was called a traitor by a man that I fought for six years for. And I gave him my loyalty for free. I won my first election without his endorsement, beating eight men in a primary, and I've never owed him anything. But I fought for him for the policies and for America… pic.twitter.com/0PBSYiedra

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 18, 2025

Greene was one of three Republican signatories to the original discharge petition triggering a vote on the Epstein files. The House is expected to vote Tuesday on a bill to release the government’s files on Epstein, and it is now expected to easily pass with Republican and Democratic support.

Trump has seemingly given up on blocking and delaying the vote, but not without calling the Georgia congresswoman “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Greene” in recent days and mocking her claims of receiving threats. With these latest remarks, it seems Trump and Greene’s relationship could soon be irreparable.

Epstein Victims Call Out Trump for Being a “National Embarrassment” - 2025-11-18T16:34:28Z

The survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex-trafficking empire are begging Donald Trump to stop turning their suffering into a political issue.

Speaking during a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol Tuesday, a group of the financier’s victims excoriated Trump’s dogged efforts to minimize interest in the case as a “national embarrassment.”

Jena-Lisa Jones, who publicly accused Epstein in 2019 of abusing her in his home years earlier, described the process to obtain transparency into the government’s investigation as “distressing.”

“First, the administration said it would release everything, and applauded President Trump for that,” Jones said. “Then it fought to release nothing.

“Now that the checks and balances of our democracy have worked, and the bill is getting passed to release the files, we are hearing the administration say they intend to investigate various Democrats who were friends with Epstein.

“I beg you, President Trump—please stop making this political. It is not about you, President Trump. You are our president, please start acting like it. Show some class, show some real leadership. Show that you actually care about the people other than yourself,” Jones continued. “I voted for you, but your behavior on this issue has been a national embarrassment.”

The women met on Capitol Hill hours ahead of a House vote that could unlock public access to the Epstein case files.

The Trump administration first bungled the release of the files in July, when the Justice Department issued a memo that contradicted Attorney General Pam Bondi on the alleged existence of Epstein’s so-called “client list.” Since then, Trump has attempted to brush off the scandal, repeatedly referring to it as a Democrat-invented “hoax.”

Pressure on lawmakers dramatically ramped up last week after Representative Adelita Grijalva was sworn in, adding the final signature necessary to force a vote in the House on the files’ release.

The House Oversight Committee also released more than 20,000 documents that they had obtained from Epstein’s estate, revealing that Trump was a frequent topic of conversation between Epstein and his pen pals.

Senior Republicans privately expect dozens of their party members—“possibly 100 or more”—to vote in favor of a bill that would make the federal government’s trove of Epstein files publicly available.

Their split sent Trump into a tailspin, inspiring him to meet with conservative lawmakers one-on-one in an apparent pressure campaign to kill the vote. But by Sunday, Trump appeared to acknowledge that he had lost the battle—at least in the House—writing on Truth Social that Republicans should release the files because they had “nothing to hide.”

But the sudden reversal didn’t win him any favors with Epstein’s survivors.

“To the president of the United States of America, who is not here today, I want to send a clear message to you,” said Haley Robson, who was 16 when she met Epstein. “While I do understand that your position has changed on the Epstein files and I’m grateful that you have pledged to sign this bill, I can’t help to be skeptical of what the agenda is.

“I want to relay this message to you: I am traumatized. I am not stupid,” Robson added, repeating herself. “I am traumatized. I am not stupid.”

Welcome to the Age of Aristopopulism - 2025-11-18T16:29:56Z

In 1843, Karl Marx said religion was the opium of the people, and in 1955, Raymond Aron said Marxism was the opium of the intellectuals. Aron’s formulation was later updated in the 1973 Lindsay Anderson film O Lucky Man! to “Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals.” All three formulations were plausible, but today revolution would, I think, best be described as the opium of the MAGA right.

In MAGA, conservatism has degenerated from an ideology into a rabble-rousing nihilism committed to the indiscriminate destruction of the status quo. The regulatory state, the civil service, the rule of law, and the separation of powers are all under attack for reasons nobody can articulate very well because (as in most revolutions) it’s all just a power grab. The shock troops may be working-class voters who revile coastal elites, but the strings are being pulled by the oligarchic class.

Political scientists struggle to attach a descriptive name to all this. This aspirational revolution isn’t especially conservative, and it’s populist only according to the most pejorative definition of that term. The acronym MAGA (for “Make America Great Again”) is too evasive about how far back it wants to go. A better descriptor is Trumpism, because it seems doubtful this crackpot revolution can outlive the increasingly erratic kleptocrat at its head. But what if I’m wrong, and it does?

The newest term for Trumpism is aristopopulism. When I first encountered the word, I thought it had to be the invention of some shrewd satirist. But in fact it’s the coinage of Patrick Deneen, a conservative political scientist at Notre Dame, and he isn’t kidding. Deneen first wrote about aristopopulism in his 2023 book Regime Change: Toward a Post-Liberal Future. Today, according to Elizabeth Dwoskin of The Washington Post, aristopopulism is the animating idea behind the Rockbridge Network, a “secretive organization” backed by Peter Thiel and other Silicon Valley billionaires that wants to fight wokeism and, in Dwoskin’s words, “push unrestrained capitalism into American life.” Which in practice appears mostly to mean selling access to the Trump administration.

Deneen is no Trump fanboy. In Regime Change, he calls Trump “a deeply flawed narcissist who at once appealed to the intuitions of the populace, but without offering clarifying articulation of their grievances.” But he likes what Trump started. What’s needed now, Deneen writes, is “sustained policy and the development of a capable leadership class.” Deneen reviles America’s liberal meritocratic elite, but he isn’t anti-elite; he just wants a “distinct and new elite, attuned to the requirements of the common good.” These are “self-conscious aristoi.” The term refers to the ancient Athenian nobility, but a reasonable translation would be “aristocrat.”

The Rockbridge Network is similarly straightforward in emphasizing the need for a new elite (“It is time for a new network,” its 2021 brochure states), but it’s much less starry-eyed than Deneen about who these aristoi will be. “One way to think of Rockbridge,” the brochure continues, “is as an investment manager, a kind of political venture capital firm. It is our job to leverage our investors’ capital with the right political expertise to ensure results. We are pursuing political alpha.” No sentimental nonsense here about making the world a better place; this is the language of money.

Rockbridge Network chief Christopher Buskirk thinks we all of us aspire to run the world. “Those [who] decry the very concept of elites may be trying to conceal their own ambition to be among the elite,” he wrote in his 2023 book, America and the Art of the Possible. But “in classic political thought, aristocracy meant rule by the best, the aristos, who were expected to act for the public good.” (He means aristoi, but set that aside.) Buskirk denies that his aristos are the same as oligarchs, who lack “a sense of responsibility to use their power or influence in the public interest.” To the Post’s Dwoskin, Buskirk said: “You either have an extractive elite—an oligarchy—or you have a productive elite—an aristocracy—in every society.”

But give me a break. Extraction is Buskirk’s middle name. He co-founded the Rockbridge Network in 2019 with JD Vance, then a bestselling memoirist and Thiel protégé, later a senator, and now vice president of the United States. Buskirk also co-founded 1789 Capital (a name that evokes the French Revolution but which Buskirk says is meant instead to evoke the Bill of Rights). The other co-founder of 1789 Capital is Omeed Malik, financial wingman to Donald Trump Jr. The president’s son is himself a partner at 1789 Capital, and after Don Jr. arrived, the firm’s assets miraculously climbed from $150 million to $1 billion.

Trump père is the best thing that ever happened to Buskirk. According to a September Reuters profile by Alexandra Ulmer and Joseph Tanfani, Buskirk “struggled with debt and lawsuits from collection companies” before he invested in MAGA in 2016 by starting a pro-Trump think tank called the Center for American Greatness. The nonprofit was backed by Thiel and, later, by the Bradley Foundation.

With Malik and Don Jr., Buskirk is also co-owner of a private club in Georgetown called Executive Branch, which is basically a very expensive turnstile to do business with, well, the executive branch. The club charges up to $500,000 for a membership. It was at Executive Branch that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent almost got into a fistfight with Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte. This is all a pretty far cry from the “School of Athens” picture Buskirk tries to paint in America and the Art of the Possible.

Aristopopulism celebrates the virtues of the free market the same way Washington did during the Gilded Age. It buys and sells power. If we’re going to have an aristocracy, I’d prefer the old mugwumpy WASP one, which for all its faults took a dim view of that sort of corruption and never troubled to don populist garb. This newfangled version is more decadent, more corrupt, more authoritarian, and more self-contradictory. You can have a populist revolution, or you can have an aristocracy, but I really don’t see how you can have both.

White House Stepped in to Help Accused Sex Trafficker Andrew Tate - 2025-11-18T15:53:46Z

When misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate and his brother left Romania in February to return to the United States, a Trump administration official intervened on their behalf with Customs and Border Protection.

ProPublica reports that Paul Ingrassia, a White House lawyer who had previously represented the Tate brothers and once bragged about having a “Nazi streak,” intervened on their behalf when customs officials seized their electronic devices at the airport in Fort Lauderdale. 

Ingrassia, working as the administration’s liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, personally sent a letter to senior DHS officials urging them to return the devices. Ingrassia’s letter, obtained by ProPublica, told the officials that seizing the items was not a good use of the department’s time or resources, and that the request came from the White House. 

The letter reportedly alarmed the officials, who thought they could be interfering in a federal investigation if they returned the devices. Tate is under investigation for criminal and civil charges in Romania and the U.K. relating to sexual assault, tax evasion, and human trafficking. A woman in Florida has also sued Tate for coercing her into sex work. 

Ingrassia’s request disgusted at least one government official because of its “brazenness and the high-handed expectation of complicity.”

“It was so offensive to what we’re all here to do, to uphold the law and protect the American people,” the person told ProPublica. “We don’t want to be seen as handing out favors.”

Ingrassia already has a negative reputation inside and outside of government. Currently working for the General Services Administration, he was forced to withdraw his nomination to the Office of Special Counsel last month after text messages surfaced where he made blatantly racist comments. 

Not only is Ingrassia a racist, it seems he has a misogynist streak as well. It’s no surprise that he has also been accused of sexual harassment. But in the Trump administration, all that matters is loyalty to the president, and both Ingrassia and the Tates have it.  

Trump Judges Throw Out His “Meritless” Lawsuit Against CNN - 2025-11-18T15:49:49Z

This Trump-MBS Bromance Was Brought to You by Benjamin Netanyahu - 2025-11-18T15:28:23Z

At the U.N. Security Council on Monday and in the White House on Tuesday, Benjamin Netanyahu’s diplomatic cul-de-sac and defeat was on full display. A man who claimed to be the savior of Western civilization and a member of the world’s executive committee is now exposed. He is out of antics, out of maneuvering room, out of effective levers, and out of clout, and he suffers from acute credibility deficit. It is self-inflicted, and he eminently earned it.

At the U.N. Security Council, a U.S. draft resolution on the next phases in Gaza’s immediate future—including the establishment of an “International Stabilization Force” and a “Board” that would supposedly govern Gaza, was accepted in a 13–0 vote, with only China and Russia abstaining. Aside from the important fact that this was a policy departure from the Trump administration in seeking a mandate and legitimacy from a body he deeply disdains, the resolution had two significant implications.

First, it further internationalizes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, complementing the French-Saudi “Recognition of a Palestinian State” initiative from September. “Internationalization” is something Israel has adamantly opposed for many years. A Palestinian state is something Netanyahu vociferously rejects and vows to never accept. He made false claims that the issue is no longer relevant on the international stage, before the Hamas terror attack of October 7, 2023, and the ensuing devastating war in Gaza, explaining that Israel is on the verge of normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia without any reference to the Palestinian issue.

Second, the fact that the resolution was an American initiative demonstrates that the United States no longer accepts Israeli intransigence at face value. After the U.S. recently coerced Israel into a ceasefire it did not want, this seems like a rare willingness by an American government to actually pressure Israel.

On Tuesday, at the White House, a very welcome Trump ally and buddy is receiving a lavish reception. Mohammed bin Salman, MBS in short, is in town. In May 2025, during a visit to Saudi Arabia, his first as president, Trump ceremoniously announced, “Over the past eight years, Saudi Arabia has proved critics wrong,” adding—in a stark departure from a post-1945 U.S. foreign policy tenet—that the days when the United States tells other countries how to govern themselves and what system of government they should have are over.

In return, MBS pledged $600 billion in arms procurement and investments in the U.S. It almost doesn’t matter that it will never invest $600 billion—Saudi Arabia’s oil-tied finances are far from the endless riches people think they are. What matters is that for a transactional Trump, who loves the fealty, the gold, and the marble halls, MBS is far from the pariah he was after the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, or the pariah President Joe Biden promised to make him. In fact, his rehabilitation began with Biden.

Prime on the agenda today is the sale of U.S. advanced Lockheed-Martin F-35 jets. The Saudis are asking for 48 jets, in a deal worth roughly $4.8 billion (depending on the model). Despite Pentagon warnings that the jet’s stealth technology can fall into Chinese hands, Trump said on Monday that he is determined to proceed with the sale.

The Israeli aspect of this is even more intriguing. Israel claims that Saudi acquisition of F-35s will alter the balance of power in the Middle East and erode Israel’s QME: Qualitative Military Edge, codified in U.S. law.

But then Israel contradicted itself. Even by the usual sanctimonious and braggadocious standards of Israeli public diplomacy, the reaction to the U.S. sale of F-35 jets to Saudi Arabia offered a comic intermission. Israel, according to “senior diplomatic defense sources” (it’s always they who come up with the worst nonsense), “will consent to such a U.S.-Saudi deal only if Saudi Arabia normalizes relations with Israel.”

You have to feel for the heavy burden on these senior government sources, having to formulate policy and make decisions for the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel all at once. If “normalization” is the issue—something Saudi Arabia repeatedly pledged not to do unless there is a tangible Israeli commitment to a future Palestinian state—then what’s with the “qualitative” advantage? Is it no longer a danger to Israel’s security?

This new reality is not a circumstantial predicament but a direct result of Netanyahu’s reckless mismanagement of relations with the United States. He consistently and crudely alienated Democrats for years, confronted and defied American presidents, managed to upset Republican voters and provoke harsh criticism from major MAGA influencers. Now he has no allies in Washington, no levers to pull, no sway of the kind Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, or Qatar have.

It is doubtful that Trump knows much about the history of U.S.-Saudi relations or about the meeting that set their tone, between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the founder and first king of Saudi Arabia, Abdulaziz Al Saud, known as Ibn Saud. On February 14, 1945, returning from the Yalta Conference with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, FDR met Ibn Saud on the deck of the cruiser USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal. FDR was already thinking in terms of a post–world war world, assuming that there would inevitably be a fierce competition over spheres of influence between the United States and the Soviet Union following the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

The meeting centered on two topics. The first was Saudi oil, which the U.S. needed itself and which would be critical for postwar Europe. Second was “the question of Palestine” and the prospects of the establishment of a Jewish state, to which the Saudis objected vehemently. The meeting laid the foundation of the Cold War formula that defined U.S.-Saudi relations: oil for security.

Fast-forward 80 years, and the formula remains as relevant. Instead of real oil barrels, there is promise of investment of hundreds of billions of dollars in oil revenues into U.S. weapons systems, artificial intelligence, and business investments in the U.S. “The question of Palestine” remains on the agenda, just as it was in February 1945, and Saudi is again an ally.

From the Saudi perspective, ironically, the September 9, 2025, Israeli attack on Hamas members in Doha, the capital of Qatar, factors into their current thinking on the U.S. The attack impelled the U.S. to pressure Israel into a ceasefire and gave momentum to the Saudi-French Palestine recognition initiative at the U.N. At the same time, it exposed America’s limited credibility as a security guarantor of its allies.

A livid Trump subsequently signed an executive security agreement with Qatar—short of a defense treaty or pact that requires Senate approval, but a signal to Netanyahu all the same. The Saudis now want a similar deal but on a much broader scale, including a civilian nuclear power development agreement. And there is nothing Israel can do about it but embrace it.

Even if Trump sees the U.N. vote and MBS’s visit as little more than a short respite from the Jeffrey Epstein crisis engulfing him, the two events represent a change in the dynamics of U.S.-Israel relations and a possible shift to Saudi Arabia becoming America’s main regional ally. It is doubtful that Netanyahu thinks he made this happen. But he did.

Trump Goes on Wild Tangent About McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish - 2025-11-18T15:26:24Z

President Donald Trump interrupted his own scrambled attempt to elucidate his affordability pitch to talk about his favorite sandwich.

“I like the fish,” said a hoarser-than-usual Trump while speaking at the McDonald’s National Impact Summit in Washington Monday night. He waved his hand and released a throaty hiss, ostensibly to mime the fish he liked.

“I like it. You could do a little bit more tartar sauce though, please. Seriously. I hate when I say, ‘Do you have any tartar sauce? Do you understand that? Yes, he understands that.’”

Trump: I like the fish *sound effect* pic.twitter.com/K0qhlz3ph8

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 18, 2025

Trump’s latest weird attempt to tout the McDonald’s brand in order to seem like a normal person comes just one week after McDonald’s chief executive Christopher Kempczinski told investors that ballooning prices at the fast-food chain had caused traffic from low-income households to drop by double digits.

But it seems that Trump accidentally made clear that his emphasis on the cost of living was simply an attempt to steal the issue from his political opponents, who’d used it to great effect on Election Day earlier this month.

“The word is ‘affordable,’” Trump said. “And affordable should be our word, not theirs, because the Democrats got up and said, ‘Affordability, affordability,’ and they don’t say that they had the worst inflation in history, the highest energy prices in history, everything was the worst. What they are great at is lying.”

In reality, inflation has steadily increased for the last five months in a row.

Clearly, the nation’s economic anxieties have become a sore spot for the president, who has repeatedly claimed to have brought grocery prices down despite consumers experiencing the biggest price jump in more than three years. Earlier this month, he ranted that he didn’t want to “hear about affordability.” Now he can’t seem to stop talking about it.

But he still failed to acknowledge his own role in raising prices—through tariffs and his crackdown on immigrants—and blamed former President Joe Biden for, well, everything.

“We’re gonna make the American dream a word that—two words that you didn’t have. You didn’t have those two words. Remember when Biden said, ‘It’s all about three words: the American dream’? You don’t ever want to get in that situation. Remember that? That was not good,” Trump said.

“You are so damn lucky that I won that election,” Trump said.

He’s right: If he hadn’t, we’d never get to hear him make great economic addresses like this one.

Republicans Prove Irony Is Dead With Vote on Condemning Fascism - 2025-11-18T15:22:11Z

American politics has come a long way since World War II.

More than 250,000 Americans lost their lives fighting fascism in the European theater between 1942 and 1945, but decades later, that fervor to reject the destructive ideology seems to have died among the country’s ruling class.

Republicans on the House Rules Committee refused to condemn fascism Monday, voting against an amendment that would formally rebuke the hyper-nationalistic, authoritarian credo.

Lawmakers that opposed the effort included Representatives Michelle Fischbach, Ralph Norman, Chip Roy, Erin Houchin, Nicholas Langworthy, Austin Scott, H. Morgan Griffith, Brian Jack, and Chairwoman Virginia Foxx.

The conservative fascism defense comes days after the White House branded antifa—a catchall for self-described antifascists—as a foreign terrorist organization. President Donald Trump has used the famously decentralized antifascist network as a scapegoat for years, leveraging the provocative label to push narratives that an organized network of violent, far-left radicals is wreaking havoc in cities across the country.

Fascism, however, has become a remarkably touchy topic. In recent weeks, Republicans have flown into a fury over getting called fascists and accused Democrats of inciting political violence by using the term. Since at least 2015, Americans have argued over the application of the phrase, debating the merits of torching Trump’s authoritarian populist ideology as a fascist groundwork or staying silent to maintain the gravitas of the word.

But this wasn’t always true. Decades ago, fascism and its followers had a clear definition in the U.S. consciousness, especially among the Americans who spent their lives fighting it.

“A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends,” wrote Vice President Henry A. Wallace for The New York Times in 1944.

“The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They use isolationism as a slogan to conceal their own selfish imperialism,” continued Wallace, who served as the editor of The New Republic after the war.

“They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed, is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”

This story has been updated.

“Quiet Piggy”: Trump Snaps at Female Reporter Asking About Epstein - 2025-11-18T14:15:29Z

Donald Trump snapped at a reporter late last week when she asked him about the Jeffrey Epstein files, appearing to insult her appearance.

The president was asked on Friday aboard Air Force One about his name showing up in many of Epstein’s emails and correspondence released by the House Oversight Committee, and how Epstein said Trump “knew about the girls.” Trump tried to deflect, saying that reporters should be looking into how much time Larry Summers and Bill Clinton spent with Epstein.

When a reporter asked him, “If there’s nothing incriminating in the files, sir, why not—,” Trump shut her down.

“Quiet! Quiet piggy!” Trump said to the Bloomberg reporter.

Trump is known for insulting reporters, usually calling them “fake news,” but it seems the Epstein revelations have pushed him into schoolyard territory. After months of calling the Epstein files in the government’s possession a hoax and trying to delay or block their release, Trump is now faced with the fact that Congress is expected to vote for their disclosure.

If Epstein stays in the news cycle much longer, Trump may resort to even more childish antics. But then again, it’s not really a huge departure from his usual self. One thing is for sure: The files must contain some damaging material to provoke this kind of reaction.

Transcript: Trump Accidentally Shivs JD Vance as MAGA Civil War Erupts - 2025-11-18T11:08:34Z

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the November 18 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is the Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

A civil war has erupted inside the MAGA movement over Nick Fuentes, the neo-Nazi and white supremacist, and President Donald Trump just made it worse. In an interview, Trump defended Fuentes in a way that will boost his standing inside MAGA in a big way. Yet it occurs to us that this is terrible news for JD Vance. The Vice President has tried to avoid taking sides on Fuentes, but it’s now clear that Fuentes represents a big constituency inside MAGA. Vance and everyone else who’s thinking about what MAGA will look like after Trump will have to take this very seriously. Vox’s Zack Beauchamp has a really good piece digging into the developing MAGA civil war about all this, so we’re talking to him about where the American right is going in the wake of it. Zack, great to have you on.

Zack Beauchamp: Hey, Greg. Good to be talking to you again.

Sargent: So to quickly recap, Tucker Carlson recently gave Nick Fuentes as a long, largely fawning interview. That caused some on the right to lash out at Carlson for platforming a “well-known Nazi sympathizer,” as one put it. Another called it “sick and despicable.” Trump finally broke his silence on all this. Here’s what Trump said about Tucker’s interview with Fuentes.

President Donald Trump (voiceover): We’ve had some great interviews with Tucker Carlson, but you can’t tell him who to interview. I mean, if he wants to interview Nick Fuentes, I don’t know much about him, but if he wants to do it. Get the word out. Let them. You know, people have to decide. Ultimately, people have to decide. So there you have it.

Sargent: Trump is just fine with platforming Nick Fuentes. Your response to all that, Zack?

Beauchamp: I don’t find this surprising at all, what Trump just said, to be clear. It’s consistent with his pattern of a very long time. You know, back as far as Charlottesville he said, there are very fine people on both sides. And then he told the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by during the 2020 presidential election and then he went on to defend the January 6 rioters, right? Trump’s attitude towards extremism is very consistently not to condemn and to play this sort of dance around it, where he’ll never say, basically, no, or he will in the most oblique terms. And if he does try to criticize it, he’ll walk that back sometime soon in some other way.

Sargent: So in addition to that, Zack, I want to flag something else because Trump in that exchange sort of tried to say, I don’t really know what Nick Fuentes stands for, but Axios just asked the White House if Trump condemns Fuentes’ racism and anti-Semitism, and the White House pointed Axios back to Trump’s remarks, which didn’t criticize Fuentes. So Trump and the White House can’t even claim ignorance anymore. They were given the explicit opportunity to condemn Fuentes’ racism and anti-Semitism and declined to do so. Zack, can you talk about what that means and what Fuentes really believes and who the Gropers are?

Beauchamp: I mean, the thing about Nick Fuentes is if you actually watch his show as opposed to his more sanitized public appearances on like sort of center-right or more mainstream-right podcasts, he’s not subtle about what he thinks, right?

This is a man who says that he admires and loves Hitler. He said at one point the Holocaust has never happened and made fun of it. And while at the same time, calling for the execution of “perfidious Jews,” that’s his term. This is as explicit anti-Semitism as you could imagine. This isn’t any of this coded stuff that you’ve gotten in the past. And so when the White House is refusing to condemn that, they’re not, it’s not just like refusing to condemn it, right? It’s saying it’s an acceptable part of our discourse, that this man should be somebody that Tucker Carlson can be friendly with without suffering social consequences or professional consequences, which is like how you maintain norms in a society, right?

You maintain boundaries that there are consequences for engaging in particular kinds of behavior. And when you say Nick Fuentes gets a pass, you’re saying there’s no limit. I mean, we’re talking really explicit, violent eliminationist anti-Semitism. At one point, he called for Jews to be forced to convert or leave the country, right? It really is that bad.

Sargent: Well, in your piece, you dug into how there’s a genuine fear among some on the right that Fuentes has become, I guess, too big to exile might be the way to put it. His constituency is too large at this point for him to be marginalized. And of course, some of the institutional players inside MAGA agree with that constituency anyway, to some degree or other, and want to embrace and utilize it. Can you take us inside that dimension of it?

Beauchamp: Yeah, here’s the problem. So Fuentes has this very large following among young conservatives. There is a raging debate about how large that following is. It’s not clear. It depends on different ways you look at measuring it. There is an estimate that only 30 to 40 percent of staff in D.C.—Republican staff—are followers of Fuentes. I think that’s overstated. That estimate is not scientific. It’s based on one conservative pundit who has a tendency to exaggerate things. But people who I trust have said that it’s plausible. Right. I don’t know if I’m to go so far as to say it’s likely, but it’s plausible.

And so let’s say, like, that’s the upper bound. That’s a huge percentage of young Republican staffers in Washington, D.C., right? And then extrapolate that out to the broader world of young conservatives—whose survey data shows, by the way, are the single most anti-semitic group in the United States. Right. There’s a very good study on this by two professors, Eitan Hersh and Laura Royden. They’ve done this very clearly and shown that the epicenter of anti-semitism in the modern United States specifically is among young conservatives.

So what does that tell us? Well, it tells us that this is a part of the constituency that many, many, many Republicans feel is the future of the party, right? And it’s where they’re going. And there’s a deep fear among more establishment-minded conservatives—even people who were once Tea Party radicals—of being left behind the way they were in 2016, where they all lined up against Trump, thought that the primary voters would reject him for being a fake conservative, thought that he would lose the general election to Clinton. And when none of those things happened, they saw themselves out cold in a MAGAfied party and had to embarrassingly grovel or else self-exile from the party.

So nobody wants to do that again. And there’s a lot of fear that if they vocally condemn Fuentes or vocally try to marginalize him, that they’ll end up on the losing side of another one of these factional fights.

Sargent: I think it’s a reasonable fear. I hate to say it. I mean, we saw all this crazy stuff come out from the young Republicans on on listservs and so forth. You wrote about JD Vance’s role in all this. Vance has his eye on the post-Trump MAGA movement and how to harness it for his own purposes.

He’s gonna be the presumed nominee, I guess, but it’s not necessarily a lock. It occurs to me that Trump really, whether intentionally or not, shivved Vance in the back in a way here. So Vance has an Indian American wife. He’s gonna want a free hand to do his anti-immigrant appeals while also presenting himself as non-bigoted.

Vance wants to get away with what you might call a soft or veiled white nationalism. But Fuentes actually mocks Vance and makes racist comments about his wife. He made he makes the white nationalism extremely explicit. As you said, I think Vance would have preferred it if Trump sidelined Fuentes, but Trump basically dumped Fuentes on Vance to have to deal with later. Can you untangle all that for us?

Beauchamp: It’s hard to know what’s going on without really knowing the interior mental states of any of these people, right? I’ve got a personal theory that Trump has mostly checked out of the succession fight at this particular moment in time. There’s a lot going on with him, a lot of things to wrangle. And the question of, like, how to deal with someone like Nick Fuentes is just not at the top of his agenda. He’s just answering it the way he would any other question. I don’t know him. I’m not involved in this, I don’t know, Tucker’s business is Tucker’s business.

That abdication, though, does put Vance in this position because he wants to—as you say, it’s very clear—be the Republican standard bearer in 2028. He wants to create a sort of very ideological version of MAGA. I think MAGA right now is not ideological beyond a few very specific points that Trump is adamant on, because Trump himself is so protean. He’s willing to take on whatever policy agenda or ideas, except on a few core issues like trade and immigration, he feels like in the moment. Right. So that’s—that’s Trump’s role in this.

But Vance is trying to turn it into a disciplined ideological cadre. But then you have to answer questions, right? Questions: if you really stand for something, what do you do about this guy who’s gaining popularity? Who hates you? Who will demean you in the grossest of possible terms—and your family. And you’re supposed to have honor, and you’re supposed to stand there and say, look, I can be a leader, and you’re gonna let this guy take pot shots and be platformed by your friend, Carlson. And Vance and Carlson are friends. But Carlson pushed very hard to get Vance nominated and was reportedly instrumental in securing that role.

So there’s—it’s not just that there are these—there’s these ideological goals that are locked in here. There’s a lot of personal stuff that’s wrapped in here. I suspect—again, speculation, somewhat informed speculation based on knowing some of the people involved—but [my] speculation is that Vance doesn’t want to condemn Tucker because he sees him as an essential ally going forward for the nomination. And if he goes too hard on Fuentes, that can be seen as going after Carlson. So he’s stuck. Right? I think that if Vance were left to his own devices, he probably would try to kick Fuentes out of the coalition. He has said negative things about him before, but at this point it’s like a little bit of a World War One-type situation, right? Where different alliances are being activated by virtue of different people taking actions at different times.

And Vance is part of the Carlson alliance network. And now him staying silent is de facto an endorsement of what Tucker is doing. And that’s where he’s stuck at this moment. And that’s bad for him. That’s not where he wants to be in a world where he’s trying to consolidate across the conservative movement core support ahead of people who are going to try to outflank him on the we-don’t-like-Nazis side, which is still popular even among some mainstream conservatives who have MAGAfied themselves.

Sargent: So it seems very clear that Fuentes knows that he’s got Vance in a real pickle here. Let’s listen to what Fuentes said about Vance recently.

Nick Fuentes (voiceover): He’s getting squeezed. Because the Groypers are on the one hand saying, ‘hey, listen, fat boy, we want America First.’ You want to run for president? We want to hear you say ‘America First.’ And on the other side, he’s got his donors and they’re saying, ‘they’re horrible antisemites. You have to disavow them. You have to forcefully condemn them. Condemn Tucker, condemn the Groypers.’ Now, if Vance condemns the Groypers, We are deploying to Iowa. Raise your right hand. I swear I’m going to move to Iowa and New Hampshire and Nevada and South Carolina. People will drive there for free and they will follow Vance around and ask him, ‘When will you put America First? Why would you condemn the young white men of America and sell out to our elites?’

Sargent: So Zack, what interests me about that is the use of the phrase “America First.” Fuentes is basically saying, you know what, fat boy, as he put it, you don’t get to get away with soft peddling what America First actually means. You don’t get to do soft or veiled white nationalism anymore. You gotta go all the way. And I think that that is gonna, at some point at least, maybe not as part of this round, but maybe the next round, because it’s all going to come up again, especially when 2028 rolls around—at some point, Vance is going to be cornered into saying whether he finds Fuentes’ view of what constitutes “America First” acceptable or not.

Beauchamp: Yeah, look, I think the strategy right now from Vance—again, speculation, right, based on his public presentation—is that he’s trying to ride it out. I think he does have to at one point try to push back against Fuentes. I don’t think there’s an alternative here. He really does need to do that because of the vitriolic and personal way in which Fuentes attacks him. Plus he’s just electoral poison with those positions. But he can’t do it too aggressively now without getting roped into shooting at his own allies.

And here I don’t just mean Tucker Carlson, though they’re very close. There’s also Kevin Roberts at the Heritage Foundation—which is, you know, they wrote Project 2025. Roberts is the president, is the most… is the leading, or at least most prominent, think tank on the right. And he’s in a lot of hot water right now based on his defense of Carlson, which he has sort of walked back, but not really.

You know, there was recently a leaked staff meeting at Heritage where some of his own senior scholars—very, very right-wing people—are screaming at him because there is, again, this faction of the Republican Party that’s MAGAfied but not okay with open Nazism. They’re willing to deal with the sort of veiled white nationalism of someone like Vance, not, like, straight-up eliminationist Nazism. The sort of thing that Fuentes does is a red line for them. And Vance doesn’t want to alienate those people.

Roberts has alienated them people just by defending Carlson. Right? And now Roberts is in a lot of trouble. And there’s a lot going on in Heritage. In the piece that you mentioned that I did earlier, I got a Heritage insider to tell me about some of the nastier stuff that’s going on there. And it’s quite bad, right—the internal culture that’s been fostered under Roberts is the sense that I got from that source who would know.

But all that being said, the point is that Vance is in a position where his own allies are at risk if he shoots at Fuentes. So my guess is he wants to take that shot but wants to do it at a better time. Not right now, because right now in doing so he’d be stabbing people who he’s close to personally and who he needs politically in the back.

Sargent: Well, I don’t think it’s ever gonna get easy. And I thought your piece really captured the broader crossroads that MAGA is at right now or the bigger civil war that MAGA is devolving into. Let’s just go through some names. Ted Cruz recently slammed Carlson as “complicit in evil” over the Fuentes interview. Ben Shapiro called Carlson dishonest and a coward. But Zack, what happens with all those figures, the broader MAGA world, now that Trump said, what Carlson did is fine. Trump is telling these people in effect that the white nationalists and the white supremacists and the Gropers and the far-right anti-Semites do have their place in the MAGA coalition. It’s all just a big debate is the basic idea. How does MAGA process that from Trump in particular?

Beauchamp: So look, I think that what we’re seeing, and I referenced this a little earlier, is that MAGA is kind of an empty signifier, right? Like what it stood for was a broadly populist nationalist far-right reorientation of the Republican Party around the personal figure of Donald Trump. Right? That’s it. I’ve maintained consistently throughout this and I think the evidence is bore it out that the policy commitments of MAGA are very, very loose. And it’s ideological orientation, very flexible.

Sargent: MAGA is what Trump says it is, as Trump said.

Beauchamp: Yeah, and he’s not wrong. I mean, there are some bounds here, and he could run into conflict from his own movement, as we’ve seen during this whole Epstein saga. But the point is that it’s not really about ideology so much as it is this kind of broad orientation against the Republican establishment, towards a certain level of extremism, and certainly towards a kind of nationalist reorientation of what the party is about—with an intense focus on immigration, culture war, and hostility to foreigners. But there’s so much room within those broad confines. And it’s included all sorts of different kinds of conservatives, people like Ben Shapiro, who were initially very appalled. Right.

So was Ted Cruz. Remember how viciously Trump went after Cruz, and that Cruz himself declined to endorse Trump during the 2016 Republican National Convention and had been really holding out. Eventually, he caves and starts working the phones for Trump because he wants to stay in the Republican Party. Right. But Cruz and Shapiro are very different kinds of conservatives than Tucker Carlson is now, than J.D. Vance is now, than Kevin Roberts is now—and those are just two factions.

I happen to think that Shapiro and Cruz are sort of more closely aligned, but they’re one kind of sort of nationalist, post–Tea Party but still interventionist-on-foreign-policy strain of republicanism. There’s others, right? There’s hardline libertarians who are sort of also cultural warriors. Those are the kinds that are left there. There’s Trumpy nationalists. There’s these kind of trade, economic-populist types oriented around Oren Cass and the American Compass think tank. All sorts of different broad strains of the American right. We haven’t even gotten into some of the more abstract intellectual subtypes, of which there are many.

So the point is this is a movement that has tons and tons and tons of different factions. And there’s one guy holding it together to prevent this open civil war from breaking out, and it’s Trump. And the issue on which there was most likely to be pressure on this coalition was anti-Semitism and Jews and Israel. That pressure is now real. Fuentes has kind of forced the issue due to his large following. Trump doesn’t seem interested in weighing in to stop it. And I’m not even sure he could, given that he’s going to pass from the scene at this point.

Maybe if it seemed like he really was going to be a dictator, he would be able to override a third-term limit—as he suggested he wants to be—he’d be able to stick the movement together. But the fact of the matter is right now that seems unlikely. And with his political fortunes in the toilet at this moment, there are some rats who are starting to flee the sinking ship, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, that indicate some real discontent.

Sargent: So what happens in the end? JD Vance inherits a movement that is absolutely splintering after Trump, right?

Beauchamp: Yeah, I think Vance may or may not win the Republican nomination coming forward. do think is that the movement is going to be at each other’s throats. Now maybe a hatred of liberals and whoever the Democratic nominee is in 2028 will be able to unify these people again. That’s possible, right? That is the core unifying force aside from Trump, right? And sort of this broad nationalism. The third critical prong has been shared horror, anger, and distaste at the Democratic party and sort of the broader left in the United States. Maybe that’ll work. If there’s anything that can save them from their pickle, it’s that. And it’s the power of partisanship and ideological polarization. But that’s the thing, right? That is the only thing at this point, aside from Trump turning around his political fortunes.

Sargent: Well, you know, I said on the pod a little while ago that they thought the assassination of Charlie Kirk was going to unite the right. It really basically lasted about a week. Folks, if you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to check out Zack Beauchamp’s work. He has a great book called The Reactionary Spirit. His writing at Vox is essential for understanding all this crazy stuff. Zack, thanks so much for coming on, man.

Beauchamp: Thanks, Greg, man. This has been awesome. As usual, love talking to you on the show.

The Next Foreclosure Crisis Has Arrived - 2025-11-18T11:00:00Z

While President Donald Trump is scrambling to try to fix all of the economic problems he’s caused with his own policies, many American families may be heading toward a disaster. And the proximate cause may end up being not what the administration has done, but what it’s not doing.

In October, foreclosure starts were up 20 percent compared to the year before, according to numbers from ATTOM, a real estate analysis firm. Moreover, the rate has been rising for eight months in a row. Because it can take banks as many as three months to start the foreclosure process, these cases aren’t caused by momentary blips from the government shutdown. These are continuing signs that American families have been struggling to pay their bills all year.

None of these numbers have risen to Great Recession levels, but the fact that they are following years of record lows in foreclosures is a bad sign, pointing to a crisis over the horizon. Averting such a calamity isn’t easy in most instances. This administration, however, is not even trying.

Some of the most worrying signs involve, as the saying goes, “location, location, location.” The states with the highest foreclosure rates over the past few months include Florida, Nevada, South Carolina, and Texas. These are states that saw a huge uptick in home prices and sales throughout the pandemic, before the Federal Reserve Board started to raise interest rates to calm runaway inflation.

One of the reasons the first creases of this disruption are starting in these locales is that private home insurance is becoming increasingly unaffordable in some of these states, and families, in turn, are struggling to make their monthly payments. At the same time, home prices are falling relative to where they were during the overheated market in 2020 and 2021, so buyers can’t sell their properties to get out from under ballooning costs. “It’s a good example where you have both a combination of falling home values and insurance costs that are climbing up that seem to be kicking off this foreclosure issue,” said Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the nonprofit Groundworkers Collaborative.

All of which means that people feel stuck in their homes even as monthly payments climb.

There are other factors at work, as well. Joel Berner, chief economist at Realtor, said in a blog post at Realtor.com in August that Nevada and Florida are also states that rely heavily on tourism. “Tourism tends to be volatile, and when economic growth slows as it has this year, that industry is often the first and most painfully impacted. Some homeowners in these states may be losing their jobs and becoming unable to make their mortgage payments,” he said.

Vacations are one of the first things families cut out of their budgets when hard times hit. But the job market is fairly volatile right now, no matter which sector is under the microscope. Economists believe a labor market slowdown is ahead, and some of the economic uncertainty caused by Trump’s policies, including tariffs, is making companies nervous about adding jobs.

Month to month, more families are struggling to make ends meet. Housing costs, whether it’s in the form of rent or a mortgage, are usually the biggest monthly expense families have, and they remain at record highs.

It’s not just the cost of housing that’s squeezing families, however. After the Supreme Court squashed hopes that President Joe Biden would help rein in the student loan debt that’s strangling many millennials, borrowers are now having to pay back into a less forgiving system. Trump ended Biden’s signature income-based repayment program, which capped monthly payments and kept borrowers from accruing too much interest, and is making it harder for some borrowers to receive public service student loan forgiveness for work in nonprofits and the public sector. The administration is talking about selling the entire student loan portfolio, essentially privatizing it. That means many borrowers could go without the protections they’re used to. Meanwhile, almost all borrowers are being saddled with high monthly student loan payments that might have been more manageable a few years ago.

On top of that, utility bills are increasing. A new report from the Century Foundation says many Americans can expect bills that are 7.6 percent higher this winter as compared to last. These costs are rising because of many factors that aren’t quickly solved; unfortunately they’re also a monthly bill that most Americans can’t skip. The impact of these higher costs is already being felt electorally: Two Democrats won spots on the Georgia Public Service Commission earlier this month because of the affordability crisis hitting people’s energy costs.

Additionally, most families will see their health insurance premiums skyrocket in 2026 because the enhanced tax subsidies on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces were allowed to expire. On average, the cost of premiums on the marketplace are going up about 26 percent. But some families who buy their insurance on the marketplaces will see their premium costs go up even more because they will no longer qualify for subsidies they once enjoyed. Beyond that, everyone is likely to see some increase, even if they get their insurance from their employer, because healthier people will opt out of insurance altogether and make those covered more expensive to pay for.

All of this means that many Americans are seeing more and more necessities stretch beyond their budgets, all while they feel insecure in their jobs and the safety net is being whittled away. This could be just the beginning of a new wave of foreclosures that topples Americans’ delicate financial security.

To solve this, Trump has only floated a widely criticized idea that seems to have come on a whim: a 50-year mortgage, which was quickly dismissed by experts. It would barely lower monthly payments for borrowers and instead saddle them with hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest over the life of the loan, while it takes them decades to build equity.

At the same time, Trump’s tariff policy continues to steer the economy toward a disaster while he tries to pressure the independent Fed to lower interest rates, even if that’s not the right policy for the moment. And Trump and the Republican Party continue to refuse to even acknowledge that climate change is already happening, which means homeowners in states with increasingly unaffordable home insurance are on their own.

“People are getting killed on the cost of living,” Jacquez said. “These are real, structural, big-ticket items on people’s balance sheets that they’re struggling to afford.”

A Tea Party for Democrats? No. There’s A Much Better Strategy - 2025-11-18T11:00:00Z

The deep frustration that Democratic voters have with the party’s elected officials, which turned into fury after Senate Democrats last week cut a deal with Republicans to end the government shutdown that didn’t include the Obamacare subsidies that Dems had previously demanded, has led to comparisons to the conservative Tea Party movement of the early 2010s. Democratic activists and voters, critics charge, need to lead a purge of the party’s leadership and many of its current officials, as the Republican rank and file did more than a decade ago.

I understand the frustration. Truly. But we don’t need a liberal version of the Tea Party. Instead, the Democratic Party should borrow from what it did from 2005 to 2008 and from 2017 to 2020, the last periods after the party lost presidential elections. Careful leadership changes, innovative policies, and yes, a few well-targeted primary challenges are the path Democrats took in those instances and should be repeated again—not the tear-it-all-down craziness of the Tea Party.

If not for James Comey sending a letter on the eve of the 2016 election reopening the investigation about Hillary Clinton’s use of email as secretary of state and fatally wounding her campaign, as well as Democrats insisting on pushing an 81-year-old Joe Biden as their candidate for most of the last election cycle, I doubt anyone would think of the Tea Party as a successful model to replicate. The Tea Party, the informal name given to the conservative protests and activism in the wake of Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, wasn’t exactly the civil rights movement, in terms of discipline, strategy, and execution. It was scattershot, simplistic, and at times just outright stupid.

Let me remind you of the real story of the Tea Party. It started with an on-air rant by a cable television host. Once it became a political movement, Republican voters and super-right-wing members of Congress haphazardly tossed out prominent figures in the party, starting with Utah Senator Bob Bennett in 2010 and hitting a fever pitch when House Speaker John Boehner was essentially forced to resign from that post in 2015. Conservative voters squandered winnable seats and likely a Senate majority by nominating crazy candidates like Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell, Nevada’s Sharron Angle, and Missouri’s Todd Akin, who infamously invented the phrase “legitimate rape.” There wasn’t much of a policy agenda beyond bizarre and unsuccessful efforts to get President Obama to stop the implementation of Obamacare, which was one of his signature programs.

The Tea Party seems successful now became Trump and advisers like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon turned the anti-government, antiestablishment, racist sentiments that animated the movement into something resembling a coherent political program, built around racist policies they implemented (the Muslim ban) and populist economist rhetoric that was largely fake (promises to bring back manufacturing jobs). And of course Trump won in 2016 and 2024.

What happened from 2005 to 2008 actually has better lessons for Democrats today. Then, as now, the party leadership had supported a foreign policy initiative that was initially opposed only by the party’s progressives but eventually viewed by most of the party as misguided and indefensible. (The Iraq War in the early 2000s; the strong backing of Israel’s policy in Gaza in recent years.) Then, as now, the party ignored the concerns of activists and insisted it was pursuing a smart electoral strategy—and then lost the presidential race. In the early 2000s, it was both backing the Iraq War and nominating John Kerry for president on the theory that swing voters would support Democrats if they seemed tough on national security issues. (Kerry is a veteran, which was emphasized constantly in his campaign.) In 2023–24, the supposed wisdom was pushing forward Biden despite his age, and then Harris’s over-the-top attempts to establish her security credentials, for instance by repeatedly pledging that the U.S. would maintain the “most lethal” military in the world.

How did Democrats recover back then? They found leaders that the base respected and could rally around, in part because those figures hadn’t been centrally involved in the mistakes of the past. Nancy Pelosi, who had voted against the Iraq War, became the House Democrats’ leader and the party’s most visible figure on Capitol Hill. (Pelosi hung on too long and eventually became the kind of establishment leader she had supplanted in her earlier years.)

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid had actually supported the war. But after Bush won a second term in 2004, Reid and Pelosi jointly ignored the D.C. pundit class, which suggested that the Democrats, led by a San Francisco liberal like Pelosi, were out of step with the country and needed to compromise with Bush. They fought Bush hard on things like his Social Security privatization scheme. You can see the obvious contrast with Schumer, who at the start of the year led Senate Democrats in trying to show they weren’t too oppositional to Trump.

Today, I love the idea being touted by some Democrats that Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen should supplant Schumer as the party’s Senate leader. Van Hollen is a longtime figure on Capitol Hill and not aggressively progressive or centrist. But he has met the moment, becoming outraged and impassioned by the mistakes of his own party in Gaza and the radicalism of the Trump administration. Van Hollen’s trip to El Salvador to oppose the deportation of Kilmar Ábrego García was a moment of courage and strength. If he had to cut a deal with Trump, the party base would trust him. Not Schumer.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is in a similar position vis-à-vis the base. He spent months taking shots at Zohran Mamdani, one of the few Democrats voters are really excited about, showing poor political judgment and further reducing his credibility with core voters. If someone who has been speaking presciently about the authoritarianism of Trump, such as Representative Jamie Raskin or Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, were to become the party’s leader in the House, Democrats would be better off.

The period after the 2026 elections is a logical time for Democrats to reassess their congressional leadership and perhaps replace Schumer and Jeffries. They don’t need a Tea Party–style immediate dismissal of Schumer, unless Senate Democrats are ready to unify behind a new person, which doesn’t appear to be the case.

Back in the early 2000s, it was ideal that one of the Democrats considering a presidential bid, Obama, had opposed the Iraq War and not been part of the D.C. establishment that had failed to restrain Bush. I am not sure who is the party’s best candidate now, but it’s great news that the two Democrats most closely tied to the Biden administration (Harris and Pete Buttigieg) clearly aren’t going to waltz to the nomination. And both Harris and Buttigieg have hinted that they think Biden’s Gaza policy and his initial decision to run in 2024 were mistakes—suggesting they already know that the party’s voters are mad about those moves and want their anger acknowledged.

But again, Obama was not Trump, who had no experience in government, maturity, or judgment. The Tea Party analogy falls flat there too.

Two things happened from 2017 to 2020 that Democrats should repeat today: real policy innovations, and a few primary challenges. Some people I respect are calling for sweeping out large numbers of congressional Democrats. TNR contributor Meredith Shiner encouraged a primary challenge against every congressional Democrat earlier this year; Run for Something’s Amanda Litman says all Democrats over age 70 up for reelection should retire.

I get those impulses. But I have a hard time embracing any idea that in the long term would remove some of the best members of Congress (Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren) and potentially bring in duds who happen to be under age 70. What we need is akin to 2018 and 2020. There were more primaries. They swept into office members of Congress such as Representatives Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley, who were more media savvy and oppositional to Trump than their predecessors. A targeted approach yielded important gains.

Pelosi has opted to retire. If Steny Hoyer and James Clyburn, the other eightysomethings who led the party with her for two decades, don’t soon announce that they are stepping aside, they deserve primaries. They’ve had their time. The bigger issue is the Senate. There is a chance, however small, that the Democrats will control the Senate, House, and presidency in 2029. If so, they’ll need to go really big then: get rid of the filibuster and pursue policies like making D.C. a state. Anyone who might stand in the way must be primaried. Delaware’s Chris Coons, Colorado’s John Hickenlooper, Rhode Island Jack’s Reed, and Virginia’s Mark Warner are up for reelection next year and occasionally like to brag about their bipartisan reputations and friendships among Republicans. We need primary challenges to them—either replacing them or forcing them to pledge to fight hard for real democracy reforms in 2029.

In 2028, some of the ringleaders of last week’s deal, including Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman, and New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan, are up for reelection. Those are swing states, so this is tricky. It’s imperative in the next few years to identify Democrats who are moderate enough to win elections in those states but who are likely to embrace a reform agenda on Capitol Hill, even if they fudge that on the campaign trail to seem more centrist. For example, Conor Lamb, who lost the 2022 Pennsylvania U.S. Senate primary to Fetterman, had a centrist voting record on Capitol Hill but would likely embrace filibuster reforms in a way that Fetterman would not.

So my call is not to primary everyone but to primary the right people.

Finally, 2017–2020 was a real time of policy innovation for Democrats. Think tanks such as the Roosevelt Institute called for a real break with neoliberal policies that hadn’t addressed rising income inequality. The Black Lives Matter movement pushed economic justice but also much-needed changes to policing and other policies that left deep racial inequality still in place. The presidential campaigns of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders fixated on the growing political power of billionaires and how that was a threat to democracy.

Biden’s presidency was an electoral failure because of some combination of his age, worldwide anti-incumbent sentiment, and inflation. But there were some important policy innovations during his tenure that sprang from that 2017–2020 period, from a sustained effort to reduce student debt to Lina Khan’s moves at the Federal Trade Commission to fight monopolies and protect consumers.

So unlike the Tea Party, this is a time for Democrats to start deciding which policies they could actually implement in office. Affordability, of course, but also addressing questions of rising authoritarianism, out-of-control Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and billionaires taking over social and traditional media.

I can’t describe 2005–2008 and 2017–2020 in a two-word phrase. But Democrats need an Obama-Pelosi-Warren-ization of the party, not a Tea Party. That’s a good thing. The path to a Democratic renewal has been blazed by admirable people who pushed smart policies—and are around today to offer advice and counsel.

Anti-Corruption Politics Are the Way for Democrats to Crush Trumpism - 2025-11-18T11:00:00Z

You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack. You can read a transcript here.

The Democrats need to become a party centered on fighting government corruption, oligarchy, and other issues that don’t cut along traditional ideological lines, says Adam Bonica, a political science professor at Stanford University and author of the On Data and Democracy newsletter. In the latest edition of Right Now, Bonica argues that many voters don’t think in the left-right terms that political junkies do. These Americans think basically politicians are corrupt and ineffective, leading them to keep ejecting whichever party briefly has control in Washington. Instead of Democrats mindlessly following polls and trying to demonstrate “moderation,” Bonica says they could appeal to the big bloc of people either not voting or swinging between the parties, by taking stands such as limiting how much billionaires and corporations can spend in politics and banning members of Congress from trading stocks.

Transcript: Anti-Corruption Politics Are the Way to Crush Trumpism - 2025-11-18T11:00:00Z

This is a lightly edited transcript of the November 17 edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch the video here or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.

Perry Bacon: This is our show Right Now. I’m joined now by Adam Bonica. He’s a professor of political science at Stanford University. He also writes this excellent Substack and blog called On Data and Democracy, where he uses data but talks about these core democracy issues that we’re all grappling with.

So Adam, welcome.

Adam Bonica: Oh, thanks. Thanks for having me, Perry.

Bacon: So I want to start—you wrote a piece a few months ago that I really want to zone in on, which is basically arguing that … the opportunity for the Democratic Party is to become a party fixated on being the anti-corruption party. So when you say anti-corruption, describe what that means for people, first of all.

Bonica: So that’s a broad set of things that “anti-corruption” can mean. In the context of what we’re looking at now in American politics, it’s pretty much everything. We’re looking at an administration that—Steven Levitsky, who is a very prominent political scientist, the author of How Democracies Die, has said the Trump administration is the most basically openly corrupt regime that he has ever seen. And you see this as a through line through pretty much everything we see, especially within the second Trump administration.

Part of the reason that I think this moment points towards the politics of anti-corruption is twofold. One, just having a cursory knowledge of how authoritarian regimes worldwide are successfully challenged, there’s very few examples where anti-corruption was not either the main pillar of the anti-authoritarian movement, or at least a very key part of the component. Now, most recently we saw in Nepal an authoritarian regime that was very quickly overthrown and replaced by an anti-corruption crusader. We have tons of other examples throughout history, including in Bangladesh in 2024, Slovakia in 2018, Malaysia, and the 1MDB [1Malaysia Development Berhad] scandal. I could go back and list like 30 different examples.

That’s where the starting point is, but it’s also something that’s very much in the DNA of American politics, right? So if you go back to 2006 and the culture of corruption campaign, that was very much an anti-corruption platform that Democrats ran on. In 1994, you could argue what Republicans were doing was an anti-corruption platform, and then going back to Watergate.

So there’s just a lot of empirical evidence backing this idea that anti-corruption is a very powerful force in politics, and I think there’s a lot of evidence in the moment pointing towards a regime being extremely vulnerable to arguments about it being corrupt.

Bacon: You listed a bunch of countries where the authoritarian regime was defeated in part by an anti-corrupt message. Does that imply that authoritarianism always involves corruption, or is there a formal tie or a formal study there?

Bonica: Yeah, I see those. Corruption is the Achilles’ heel of authoritarians and is frequently their downfall, as I pointed out, but they just can’t seem to resist, and it seems to be part of what keeps these regimes together—there’s this notion of you’re in the in group, and these in groups trade with this currency of corruption. You can see all these members of the Trump administration now getting in on the act. I think the ProPublica piece about [Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem, most recently, but we have one or two a week of [Border czar Tom] Homan or [FBI Director Kash] Patel recently having these examples.

And so you do see these regimes, they almost always have a very strong component of corruption built into them, and it becomes a very huge vulnerability for them politically if it can be exploited by the opposition.

Bacon: So talk about if the Democrats decided to take this advice and to become … what would that look like? What would an anti-corruption agenda look like?

Bonica: So it could take multiple forms, but the most likely form, I think … I’ll back up a little bit. So, what is the thing that’s stopping Democrats from just pushing down the pedal on anti-corruption? And polling data shows us that people were pretty, pretty pessimistic about Democrats, in terms of seeing them as corrupt as well.

There was a recent poll by YouGov that asked people whether they thought members of Congress would take a bribe, and said—it was like 70 percent of people, around that number, said that yes, a Democratic member of Congress would be likely to take a bribe. And they said this about specific Democratic and Republican politicians.

So the starting point is, people seem to look at American politics and see both parties as similarly corrupt. It’s an interesting observation because it’s very clear that one party is much more openly corrupt than the other. But I think that points to—OK, so what might be driving what would seem like a false equivalence, but one that may have some footing in an actual—how people see and understand politics?

And I think that’s because of a lot of what we see as legalized corruption. So campaign finance, for instance—it’s hard to really differentiate between a large donor having influence and that not being a type of corruption, even if it’s legal. And I don’t think a lot of voters necessarily make that distinction.

And I don’t think, honestly, that they should. I agree with most voters that even these legalized forms of influence are forms of corruption. And so I would say the way that this would take place is: one, it has to be a focal point, right? You have to talk about corruption, but more importantly, for it to really stick, Democrats need to find a way to signal very clearly that they are not corrupt.

They need to take very clear—probably costly—action to show that they are different. They have not done that yet, but that, I think is the crucial step. If they can accomplish that, then they have one of the biggest electoral openings I think any party has seen in our lifetimes.

Bacon: Give me examples of what actions they could take to seem really strongly anti-corrupt.

Bonica: So I’ve been arguing and putting together these plans for how they could think about doing that. One is they need to clean their own house. So when we talk about things that … congressional stock trading—people hate that. Voters hate it. There’s no political advantage to supporting it, and no electoral advantage for a party to say, We’re not going to ban it.

There’ve been efforts, and they have been blocked by leadership within the Democratic Party, right? So that’s an easy example. Democrats just need to come out and say, Well, we are against this. The whole party is unified against this. And those who don’t, they’re outside of the official platform, and so forth.

But how do you get a broader coalition of anti-corruption to congeal within the Democratic Party? That’s what the leadership is for. And I think the way that Democrats could do this is that they can run on something—you remember, going back to 1994, the Contract of America—that was a way for the Republicans at the time to signal that they were different than the entrenched, powerful Democrats.

Now Democrats have an opportunity to do something like that as well, where they could say, We’re running on—here’s a contract that if we take back office, here are the very concrete things we are going to do. And you can do most of these with just a speaker’s power within Congress—internal rules.

You can do a lot of campaign finance reform by saying members of our own party are going to be required to follow these sets of rules. They’re not allowed to take or fundraise with big donors anymore. They’re not allowed to trade stocks. They’re not allowed to become lobbyists within five years, or meet with them under certain conditions.

And if they do, they lose certain privileges: like, they’re not considered for the committees they want to be on. They lose seniority. These are things that party leaders have done in the past and things that a party leader could do in the future and say, This is our anti-corruption platform. This is how we’re going to enforce it, and we’re going to be able to do that by showing that members of Congress that are not going along with it are actually not fully, in-good-standing members of the caucus.

Bacon: Stock trade banning. You said something about becoming a lobbyist is after, they have to sign a pledge that’s after. What else could they do?

Bonica: Campaign finance reform.

Bacon: Campaign finances reform, meaning they won’t take money from billionaires or they won’t take super PAC funding or …

Bonica: Well, I would say, OK, so Democrats would do way better if they just said, We’re done with big money. They don’t need it. They have plenty of, like, the professional class, which has turned very democratic over the last generation, provide more than enough money if they just …

Bacon: We’re done with gig money, meaning we don’t take donations over $2,000.

Bonica: Go back to Citizens United levels. So I’d say like $100,000, $130,000 is the max any donor can give.

Beyond that, the Democratic Party just refunds it and says, We don’t accept that money. They can’t do that completely, but they could put that as part of what you would expect to do. If they did that, they would still out-fundraise Republicans. And Republicans are extremely dependent now on megadonors, so you could do that.

The other thing is cleaning up the other fundraising environment that I have talked about quite a bit in the past, with the way in which the small-donor and digital fundraising on the Democratic side is really scammy and sleazy, with all these text messages and this whole really bad environment that a lot of candidates actually either tolerate or take part in. The party needs to clean up these very clear signals of We’re not that much better on these issues to actually make use of this open lane in anti-corruption.

Bacon: So when you say problems, you don’t just mean I am caught on video exchanging government contracts for things. You mean something deeper.

Bonica: Yeah. So I think when we think about corruption in a legalistic standpoint, we miss the broader problem, which is you can legalize a lot of corruption. That’s what’s been happening in American politics over the last 50 years. You can see this, there’s a through line of … I’ve studied the legal system in the U.S. There’s this avenue of power for corruption and wealth that’s not accessible to most of the population but allows wealthy people and corporations to get a lot out of the system that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to. It’s all legal—giving someone; megadonors are totally legal in how they’re donating money. No one’s saying that people who are giving these donations are doing anything illegal, but it is corrupt.

And so I just see that as a framework: Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s not corrupt. And those are the types of things that I think upset voters more than anything else.

Bacon: Let me ask; I guess my worry about this is that we already have polls showing everyone thinks politicians are corrupt. So are we going to make that worse if we have every Democrat saying politics is corrupt, or is your point that they will be saying it’s corrupt but also changing it?

Bonica: Yeah, it’s like a coming clean. Parties can reinvent themselves.

And that’s the only real way that parties really spark realignment in American politics. They make conscious decisions, say that we’re going to move forward in a different way. There’s also, I think, very strong contingents within the Democratic Party that are already very aligned with this and already very upset. They’ve been part of Democratic politics for quite some time.

So, given how bad things are, it—I guess it would be like saying we shouldn’t talk about stuff being too expensive because polls say that people are really concerned about affordability. Well, there are a number of polls now that show that corruption shows up higher in terms of people’s concerns about both government and general concerns than even affordability, which is wild.

Anytime it shows up on a poll, people are … they express a really strong opinion about it. So, again, I think if you were a party that said, Look, we see the problem, we see—we have a plan on how to fix it, and we are going to make those costly actions internally. We can’t force Republicans to do it, but we can do it ourselves, that would be a really strong message.

Bacon: So the barrier to this is probably how do we talk about this? Like, Michael Bloomberg probably wants a Democratic Party that takes money from billionaires. So is the problem billionaires or the ideology of people like Michael Bloomberg? Are those the same thing, different words?

Bonica: I mean, they’re not exactly the same thing, but they’re clearly overlapping, in terms of the problem that the Democratic Party faces. We couldn’t have had a clearer lens to see this through than what we saw in the New York mayoral race. So—and Andrew Cuomo should have been banned from Democratic politics, in the sense that people knew he was corrupt in a lot of ways. They knew that his type of politics was toxic to a large percentage of the population. And Mamdani showed a different face of the Democratic Party, and that division … if the party was just; it’s status quo versus reform—that was an undercurrent in that election. Cuomo was the status quo candidate, despite being a very weak candidate in every other way you could imagine.

But he got a lot of backing from billionaires within that environment. And so I see that as—there’s a lot more support, money-wise, going towards maintaining the status quo. If you’ve made a billion dollars in the U.S., that means the status quo has been pretty good to you, right? That’s definitional, at some point.

And so it is unsurprising to see that people who have done really well under the status quo may be more likely to want to protect it, even if that means supporting candidates that are, I would say, less than optimal in every other way.

Bacon: So I’ll make an editorial comment myself so you don’t have to … my sense is you could see this dividing the party—the anti-corruption message—along a progressive/centrist lane.

But I would tell you, encourage the audience, to look at a man named John Ossoff. The person who sounds most like Adam these days in politics is John Ossoff, who I don’t think of as being particularly progressive or centrist and is in a swing state. But he also is very leaned into these corruption [arguments], which tells me that it’s not—this is not just an ideological thing. There’s more there.

Bonica: Well, absolutely. So this is the secret sauce of anti-corruption politics. It is those coalitions across ideological spectrums. Progressives, yeah, they’re going to get on board with anti-corruption intuitively.

Bacon: More supportive.

Bonica: Yeah. But so are centrists, so are a lot of disaffected conservatives, and most importantly, so are a lot of people who have checked out of politics because they think both parties are corrupt.

That’s actually what we see very consistently with anti-corruption movements that are challenging authoritarians worldwide. Part of the reason they succeed is because they move away from the traditional, Here’s left-right politics in America, and say, no, we’re actually going to open up a new front.

And it’s going to be inviting to anyone who cares about having good government, who cares about not being ripped off by your politicians. These are very easy messages, and they’re not messages that are ideological in the sense that we’ve come to think of ideology in U.S. politics. They’re about fairness.

Bacon: I’m going to use just a little bit rapid fire by here. I want to compare anti-corruption to four other frames of what the Democratic Party should do. So, give short answers to what they should do. Can abundance fit into anti-corruption?

Bonica: Absolutely. There’s no inconsistency between them.

Bacon: Can fighting oligarchy fit into it?

Bonica: Yeah. Yeah. So it would have to.

Bacon: Can affordability fit into this?

Bonica: Yes. Corruption is also about inequality.

Bacon: And can, affordability … OK. I’ve seemed to have forgotten my other one, so I’m going to have to let it go, but affordability is a big frame you’re hearing.

Oh, popularism. Can it fit into that one? That’s the hard-to-define thing, but can it—but it is popular, I guess.

Bonica: Well, I mean, it is—popularism is about looking at what voters are telling us and what they want. They want anti-corruption more than anything else, according to polls. So it would … you would have to argue pretty hard against what voters want in polls to say that popularism wouldn’t fit into that, as well.

Bacon: Alright. So again, you’ve given a theory that’s hard to disagree with right now. So what should the next steps be for the Democratic Party and also for those of us who are not Democratic Party leaders and those of us who are just regular citizens. If we could believe in this idea, how do we propagate this further?

Bonica: So, let me just step back a bit. So the leadership has a different challenge than the population. The population seems to, and the public, and voters and people who are engaged in progressive and democratic politics all seem to be pretty aligned that this regime is corrupt.

Bacon: Yeah.

Bonica: Where the challenge is, is how do we coordinate that to turn it into an effective electoral opposition? That’s the challenge for 2026. Beyond that, the other thing about anti-corruption politics is it doesn’t stop at the ballot box—that even if we face a, hopefully not, a type of election that is unwinnable for Democrats, which authoritarians often try to push towards; that is often their goal: to make sure that elections are still held but they’re not actually competitive in a way that’s winnable by the opposition party. If we find ourselves in that situation, anti-corruption becomes a mass movement. It’s usually a key component of mass protests. Some of the most famous examples would be the Philippines and the People Powered Revolution.

But right now we see in Serbia, for example, a large mass anti-corruption protest movement. And so I would say for the party, the challenge is they need to coordinate, they need to create a message, they need to actually coalesce that energy in something that’s going to be electorally advantageous—which they can do, but they just need to make sure that they do it in a way that isn’t undermined by their own people’s own sense of their corruption.

Right? So they need to really clean house to do that. For voters, they just need to know that that’s an avenue. If you go to the No Kings protest, there’s lots of people with signs that hit on issues of anti-corruption. It’s very much within that movement already.

Bacon: One thing I want to emphasize here is you’ve mentioned a lot of international comparisons.

You wrote a piece earlier in the year that I thought was really great. Adam has a Substack called On Democracy and Data, and you went through a bunch of countries where some head of state had committed some kind of illegal act, and then the country had not only thrown that person out of power but also banned them from being in power again. You get this long list of—it’s not just Brazil—you got a long list of examples.

And I think it went to this interesting point, which is, we in the U.S. often treat … We are democracy and we are special, and no other country’s ever tried democracy. And there was a whole rhetoric from—not the right, from the left—on We can’t punish Trump, we can’t ban him.

That would be taking on one party. So talk about—the example is obvious—so talk about why it’s important for people in the U.S. to look at democracy in other nations and think about what we can learn from things abroad.

Bonica: I mean, the simple answer is what we’re facing in the U.S. may feel exceptional to us, but to my colleagues who study comparative politics, they look at what’s happening in the U.S., and they’re like, yep, that’s—like, they’re checking off boxes. They’ve seen this before. Other countries have been through this. And we have lots of examples of countries that have successfully navigated this and pulled off what’s called an autocratic U-turn, where things had trended in a really negative, antidemocratic way but then reversed.

And so one of the reasons is because we have lots of other countries that have done the hard work to face off against authoritarian politics and have succeeded. And so we really should not discount that. 

The other thing is that the U.S. has been quite exceptional relative to pretty much any other democracy in how we’ve treated the powerful who have behaved in ways that were antidemocratic. As you mentioned, I put together that list—it was 34 different prime ministers and presidents of countries—and this was only in the last 20 years. Like, there would be a much longer list. And so I just compiled a list of all these examples of national-level leaders who had been convicted of a crime and what was the consequence.

And in every single example, except for the U.S., which was the sole exception, the offending leader was either banned from running for office or imprisoned. The U.S. was the only place where that didn’t happen. And, to be honest, if you look at the crimes that were committed by other leaders, Trump had done every single one of them, and for the most part in a much more intense fashion.

And so this whole hemming and hawing we saw—it goes back to this notion of; there is this elite protection norm within American politics, this idea that it was going to be too polarizing to go after a leader for the criminal acts and antidemocratic acts that Trump had committed out in the open.

And the idea that, Oh, it’s going to pull the party apart—well, every single country where you see that happen, the leader who’s accused always says it’s a political attack. But the response is what matters. Like, you have to hold the powerful accountable.

And that’s maybe the key example showing, wow, the U.S. really should have looked at what other countries were doing when we were navigating that moment. The right thing to do was to move swiftly, to bring, like … so, early on in the Biden administration, had that been a priority—and it should have been a priority—we would’ve just been one of 35 countries who had done that, not the one country who didn’t.

Bacon: Let me finish on two subjects. The first is you and Jacob Grumbach, great political scientist at Berkeley, wrote a piece that got published in The New Republic a couple days ago arguing that Gen Z is actually very progressive, or the most progressive generation of the generations we have, on racial issues.

And this idea that there’s a bunch of Joe Rogans is inaccurate. Let me ask this. First of all, we saw this drop in youth—in the youth vote for Democrats from 2020 to 2024 that led to all this … the young white … young Gen Z men, white and non-white, are sort of Joe Rogan devotees.

What did you make of that drop, and what explains that drop to you?

Bonica: A drop? So from what I can see in the data, that drop was largely a function of turnout dynamics. We saw a much bigger drop among, say, registered Democrats and also registered independents that are very likely Democrats who didn’t vote in 2024, that would’ve voted or did vote in 2020. And Republicans saw no commensurate drop in that generation. So often what we interpret as these electoral swings really are just who’s turning out to vote. And you can predict a lot of political election outcomes just based off of these turnout dynamics without having a single person switch parties or switch their vote. And so that’s how I interpret largely there. You know, there is something odd going on among some … something different happening among a subset of young men. And so I think that’s also something that we need to recognize.

But as a group, this notion that Gen Z has just done this U-turn—from going from being the most progressive and most Democratic generation that we had seen to all of a sudden the one that was the most Republican and conservative—that just doesn’t add up.

It also didn’t show up in the actual exit polls of the data. It was just a narrative that emerged. And I think that a more data-driven look at what Gen Z believes and what they want out of politics points in a very different direction.

Bacon: And let me close. You’ve been a part of this big debate about moderation and, there’s a term called war that I don’t remember.

But I think the core thing that I want to ask you about then is, I guess even I have—who’s someone who’s probably left ideologically in a way most people aren’t—always assumed this … [that] there’s a lot to be gained by being the most centrist candidate.

I may disagree with Joe Manchin on policy, but if we ran Joe Manchin everywhere, that would win most of the most seats, and that’d be great. And I think your data is … what you’re arguing is that maybe that was true in 1992, but we’ve had a change. That the benefits of moderation went from pretty big, went from sizable to almost zero? Explain what the argument is here.

Bonica: The core of the argument is actually partisanship has just become so dominant in American politics that it’s near impossible to truly outrun your party.  What that means is that if someone shows up to vote and they’re voting up and down the ballot, if that person’s voting for the presidential Democratic ticket, they’re totally going to vote for everyone downballot Democrat.

That’s how things work these days. That wasn’t true back in the 1980s, right? There was a lot more ideological overlap between parties. There were liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats, and so you saw a lot more opportunities for someone to outrun their party. 

The crux of the argument is, I have millions and millions of data points—political scientists have been studying this for generations now. And unlike physics, in political science you don’t find laws of the universe that hold forever, right? Like, you have to continually check them to see if they’re still applicable to the political environment. The median voter theorem, which is this notion that if you move to the center you do better in politics, has two important caveats to it. One, people can’t be pure partisans—which now, we’re in a moment where that is true for the most part. And two, turnout has to remain fixed, right? 

So a lot of what, even those theories … you go back and you read the early political science on it. The median voter theorem didn’t even survive the original book that it was developed in—the Downsian theory of voting—because he came to this conclusion: Well, if turnout changes, then the median voter isn’t a fixed position. That’s a lot of what we’re seeing. The whole wave-cycle pattern that we see is this pattern of … if the turnout surges on the Democratic side and doesn’t on the Republican side, you see a wave election, and you see all these swing districts swinging one way or another.

That wouldn’t happen in a world where voters were voting on individual candidates and not on parties. I mean, the bigger issue is this whole debate has ignored the last 30 years of very rigorous political science research on this question, and that, I think, was one of the more frustrating aspects of it because political scientists have found consistently over the last decade or two that this—this effect—was really small.

There is still a small persuasion effect for moderation, right? Like, you can do a little bit better in your district relative to your party, but for a major ideological shift—moving from, say the center of the party to where Joe Manchin is—you can expect to get about half a percentage point in vote share.

So how many districts would that swing? Well, zero. And all the districts that we have that were swing districts in 2024 had moderates running in them anyway. And so this strategy—the problem with it is, as a party strategy, it’s tapped out. There are no gains left to be had.

And those gains that would be had if you had a bunch of progressives, perhaps, running in those districts are just not there—they would be small anyway. So I think that’s what’s frustrating about that debate, that it’s trying to give this party-wide strategy over to this tactic that just—there’s really not much to be gained from it.

Bacon: Let me play this out a little bit. Alright, so, if we wanted to see the Democrats win a stable Senate or a Senate majority, if we want to see the Democrats win Ohio and Iowa, let’s say, it’s likely that they’re going to win that only if they’re fairly close in the presidential. 

Part of what you’re saying is if they lose the presidential by 40 points, they’re not going to have this magic candidate who breaks from the party by 12. And I think you’re also saying that the path to Democrats getting 52 percent nationally is probably not—and also in Ohio—is probably not moderation, Bill Clinton–style, because they’ve been doing that.

It hasn’t worked. It might … in other words, the anti-corruption thing is at least something maybe they haven’t tried already as a way to get to a bigger national majority.

Bonica: Yeah. So, I think my view on this is anti-corruption has huge upsides, electorally, if done right; the types of upsides that could really upend the way we’ve seen this ossified politics take place.

Bacon: It could be a realignment, so to speak.

Bonica: Yeah. And realignment for decisions. The New Deal realignment—there are things that happen when parties have openings and they make the decision to take them. Like, the New Deal realignment in the 1930s was a deliberate response by the Democratic Party and FDR to deal with it in a different way.

It was a—at the time—seen as a risky prospect, but one that paid off enormously. The Southern realignment, the most recent major realignment we’ve seen, was a deliberate set of decisions by Democratic leadership about civil rights and a Republican response to go from the party of Lincoln to the party of Southern racism, in a sense.

This is something that a party needs to decide to do. The realignment isn’t just something you wait for—you wait for the opportunity, and then you take advantage of it. I see anti-corruption as this very open lane for that type of realignment that has the distinctive advantage of you don’t upset anyone in your existing coalitions, other than a few powerful politicians who you don’t need anyway.

Bacon: Adam, this was a great conversation. I’m going to end it there. Thank you for joining us. I urge everybody to look at Adam’s Substack, On Data and Democracy, because he’s got some really great work that is essential to understanding politics there.

He also, with Jacob Grumbach, has a piece on the New Republic website about young voters not being as conservative as claimed. So, Adam, thanks for joining us.

Bonica: Thanks for having me.

The American People Voted for Jeffrey Epstein - 2025-11-18T11:00:00Z

As I thumbed through the trove of Jeffrey Epstein emails released by Congress last week, I thought often of John Adams. The nation’s second president was not without his flaws, but they were typically outshone by his perceptive understanding of what republics like the early American state need if they are to endure.

Republics are so normative that it is easy to forget how rare they were when Americans broke away from the British Empire. When early American statesmen imagined their new republic, they had only a few examples to draw from: ancient Greek city-states, pre-Augustan Rome, the Italian merchant republics, and so on. A country without a king was an unusual thing.

Adams and his associates knew that these republics rarely endured. Sometimes they were simply conquered, as any nation might be, but more often than not they collapsed from within—typically felled by corruption and oligarchy. The Greeks elected tyrants. The Romans, who had seized power from kings, surrendered it to emperors. The Italians fell under the sway of wealthy nobles who treated public resources like family firms.

The United States could avoid that fate, Adams noted, by maintaining high moral standards. “Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private [virtue], and public virtue is the only foundation of republics,” he wrote to an acquaintance in June 1776. “There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honour, power, and glory, established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty.”

Reading the Epstein emails is like absorbing the negation of the Founders’ dream. Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to state charges in Florida for soliciting an underage girl for prostitution. It was generally understood even then that this was the tip of a rotten iceberg. Yet Epstein kept his place in elite society, maintaining quiet friendships with people from across the political and ideological spectrum.

There are a lot of conspiracies surrounding Epstein, an inevitability when a wealthy sexual predator with a lot of famous friends is found dead by suicide in a prison cell. The emails themselves do not describe specific criminal acts by anyone in particular, though they point toward unsavory behavior by more than a few people. What they do underscore, rather emphatically, is the utter absence of any sort of civic virtue.

Last week, members of the House Oversight Committee released thousands of pages of emails, text messages, and other documents that they had obtained from Epstein’s estate. He died in 2018 while awaiting trial on a host of charges related to underage sex trafficking. This trove is distinct from what many have called “the Epstein files,” which are the investigatory materials in the Justice Department’s possession.

First, Democrats on the committee released a tranche of documents that shed new light on Epstein’s relationship with Trump. The president famously does not text or email other people, so his own words aren’t present in the documents, but Epstein described his interactions with Trump to third parties. In one email, Epstein alleged that Trump “spent hours at my house” with one of Epstein’s victims, and in another, he claimed that Trump “knew about the girls,” an apparent reference to the financier’s sex-trafficking schemes.

Committee Republicans responded by releasing a much larger trove of documents that capture Epstein’s interactions with a significant chunk of what one might describe as the American elite. The contents are often mundane but frequently stomach-churning. They also capture the amorality and decadence of some of the most influential people in the country.

Lawrence Krauss, a prominent astrophysicist who resigned from his university posts amid a sexual harassment scandal, sought advice from Epstein (of all people) on handling the growing turmoil. Steve Bannon, a prominent MAGA leader and then–White House adviser, corresponded regularly with Epstein on a variety of matters, including improving the latter’s image. In one ugly exchange, Epstein suggested to Bannon that he could try to discredit Christine Blasey Ford—who alleged that now–Justice Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers—during the confirmation battle by publicly insinuating that she was taking memory-affecting drugs for purported psychiatric disorders. (Bannon, to my knowledge, did not follow Epstein’s advice.)

Epstein’s wide-ranging contacts were already public knowledge in recent years, but the emails add new light and texture to his relationships with important and powerful people. He offered to introduce Peter Thiel, an apparent acquaintance, to his friend Woody Allen. He casually mentioned his friendships with the Clintons, the (now former) Duke of York, various Middle Eastern leaders, influential figures in academia, finance, government, the arts, and more—relationships that largely endured despite his well-known offenses.

Among the most telling interactions are those between Epstein and Larry Summers. If anyone could be counted among the nation’s elite it would be Summers: he served as a treasury secretary during the Clinton administration and later became the president of Harvard University for a time. (More on his Harvard tenure later.) For some reason, Summers maintained an active friendship with Epstein long after his 2008 arrest and corresponded with him regularly in 2018 and 2019. He has since said that he regrets having done so.

In some of the exchanges, Summers made the baffling decision to ask Epstein for advice on courting a woman who viewed him as an “economics mentor.” The two men use the nickname “peril” when mentioning the woman—who is an accomplished economist and academic in her own right—in an apparent reference to her Chinese ethnic background and the “yellow peril” trope. Summers told Epstein about his efforts to romance her via their professional relationship, which were apparently unsuccessful. His “best shot,” Summers explained, was that she would find him “invaluable and interesting” and realize “she can’t have it without romance/sex.”

This is not Summers’s first public episode of misogyny. In 2005, he remarked at an academic conference that fewer women might be represented in scientific and mathematical fields because of innate biological differences between the sexes. Summers later apologized after intense public backlash, and his resignation from the Harvard presidency the following year stemmed in large part from the scandal. (He remained on Harvard’s faculty and teaches there to this day.)

In an apparent reference to the scandal, Summers told Epstein in one email, “I observed that half of the IQ In [the] world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population.” He also appeared to downplay the gravity of sexual harassment. “I’m trying to figure why American elite think if u murder your baby by beating and abandonment it must be irrelevant to your admission to Harvard,” Summers wrote to Epstein at one point in 2017. “But hit on a few women 10 years ago and can’t work at a network or think tank. DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT.”

Perhaps the most haunting aspect of the Epstein emails is how the now-dead financier described Trump himself. In Epstein’s eyes, the president is exactly who he seems to the rest of us. His public persona is not an act to thrill his supporters, nor it is a caricature invented by his critics and foes. “Recall I’ve told you, I have met some very bad people, none as bad as Trump,” Epstein told Summers during Trump’s first term. “Not one decent cell in his body. So yes, dangerous.” In a 2018 exchange with Kathy Ruemmler, a former White House counsel in the Obama administration, he remarked, “You see, I know how dirty Donald is.”

It would be tempting to dismiss the Epstein scandals as a purely elite phenomenon. But this is the society for which the American people have voted. The 2016 election could once be dismissed as a constitutional fluke since most Americans voted for Trump’s opponent. The 2024 election is more definitional. This country had nearly a decade of experience with Trump in power—the corruption, the lies, the bigotry and misogyny and abuse and violence—and welcomed more of it.

At its core, Trumpism is a permission structure for evil. It is the abolition of ethical norms and the erasure of moral authority. It defies checks and balances, rejecting the notion that power can be abused or corrupted because it justifies itself. Trumpism is not really about immigration, or inflation, or trade, or draining the swamp, or building the wall—it is ultimately about the dark thrill of abusing those whom its adherents consider to be inferiors, either directly or by proxy.

This is why the second Trump administration is populated with such ghoulish figures. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s own mother described him as an “abuser” who “belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego.” He is now purging women and minority service members from the armed forces, blaming “wokeness” for past military defeats and unwinding decades of efforts to make the nation’s military reflect the nation itself.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services, allegedly introduced his own family members to illegal drugs, cheated on his wife multiple times, allegedly assaulted his children’s babysitter, and hung out with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell on multiple occasions. He is now spending his time undermining public confidence in vaccines, dismantling the nation’s public health infrastructure, and misleading parents about the causes of conditions like autism.

Trump almost managed to install Matt Gaetz, a former Republican member of Congress who barely practiced law, as the nation’s attorney general. His nomination only failed because Gaetz so thoroughly repulsed his own Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill that even Trump’s demand could not sway them. A House Ethics Committee investigation concluded that he had likely slept with an underage girl; The New York Times reported recently that she was homeless at the time.

Economic and social precarity always enables abuse. Perhaps that is why the Trump administration has gone to such great lengths to destabilize large swaths of American life. Russ Vought, the head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, bragged to wealthy donors that he wanted federal employees to be “traumatically affected” by his planned mass layoffs. He largely dismantled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects Americans from financial scams and exploitation, and worked to weaken public-sector unions that help protect civil servants from illegal conduct.

It is also no small wonder that the Trump administration’s policies are largely about inflicting harm on the people who voted for it (and the tens of millions who didn’t). Trump’s tariff policies effectively allow him to extort foreign trading partners and American industries alike into ideological compliance. By simultaneously waging war on American higher education and the federal government’s research-funding infrastructure, Trump and his allies apparently hope to de-educate millions of Americans and force them into menial, low-wage industrial jobs.

“The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones—that kind of thing is going to come to America,” Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick bragged to CNBC in April. Americans, he argued, are now destined for a form of industrial serfdom. “This is the new model, where you work in these plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here,” he later rejoiced in an interview in May. Lutnick, coincidentally enough, was Epstein’s former next-door neighbor in New York City. His own children are reportedly set to make millions at a major investment firm thanks to their father’s tariff policies.

In Trump’s America, all of us are not created equal. There is a hierarchy atop which the Lutnicks and Kennedys and Thiels and Musks of the world can prosper, free from government regulation or union negotiations or press scrutiny or law enforcement investigations. Everyone else is part of a underclass whom the wealthy can abuse and immiserate at their own discretion. The Epstein emails give the rest of us a glimpse into this world, where even the most grotesque crimes can be forgiven or ignored out of a sense of elite solidarity—at least until they become too publicly awkward to privately sustain—and where amorality is required to participate.

The Founders were not without their own sins, of course, but at least they had higher aspirations for their new nation. “Avarice, ambition, revenge, and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net,” Adams once wrote to another friend. “Our Constitution was made only for a moral ... people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” So far, Americans are failing that test—and the republic itself.

Trump Accidentally Stabs Vance in the Back as MAGA Erupts in Civil War - 2025-11-18T10:00:00Z

A civil war is unfolding inside the MAGA movement over Nick Fuentes, the neo-Nazi and white supremacist, and President Donald Trump just made it worse. In an interview, Trump defended Fuentes in a way that will boost his standing inside MAGA. As it turns out, however, this shivs Vance in the back by creating a surprising and unwelcome problem for him. The vice president has tried to avoid taking sides on Fuentes, hoping he’ll go away. But Fuentes has mercilessly attacked Vance, and Trump’s comments make it clear that Fuentes represents a constituency inside MAGA that’s too big to exile. That means Vance, who’s hoping to harness the MAGA movement for his 2028 presidential run, will have to tread carefully around Fuentes, and Trump’s intervention has only made all that harder for him. We talked to Vox’s Zack Beauchamp, who has a great new piece digging into all this. He explains Fuentes’s growing influence inside MAGA, why Vance’s Fuentes problem has gotten worse thanks to Trump, and what all this says about today’s right and MAGA’s future. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.

“It’s OK With Me”: Trump Considers Bombing Mexico - 2025-11-17T21:29:35Z

Donald Trump is open to the possibility of launching attacks on Mexico to stop the flow of drugs, he told reporters in the White House Monday.

“It’s OK with me,” Trump said. “Whatever we have to do to stop drugs. Mexico is, look, I looked at Mexico City over the weekend, some big problems over there.”

Trump bragged about his bombing campaign across the Caribbean Sea and in the Pacific Ocean next to Central America, claiming that it had reduced the drug flow into the U.S. by 85 percent.

“We have almost no drugs coming into our country by the sea, by, you know, the waterways, and you know why, OK? I mean, it’s pretty obvious. Would I do that on the land corridor?” Trump said, making a positive gesture. When a reporter asked if he would need Mexico’s permission, the president was dismissive.

“I wouldn’t answer that question. I’ve been speaking to Mexico. They know how I stand. We’re losing hundreds of thousands of people to drugs. So now we’ve stopped the waterways. We know every route,” Trump said, claiming that the government knows where “every druglord” lives. He said that he’d be proud to go to Congress and claimed that he would have the support of Republicans and Democrats “unless they’re crazy.”

“I am not happy with Mexico,” Trump said, concluding the press session.

Trump: Would I launch strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? It's ok with me…

Reporter: Would you need Mexico's permission?

Trump: I've been speaking to Mexico. They know how I stand. I’m not happy with Mexico pic.twitter.com/u16dH4bLb9

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 17, 2025

The Trump administration has bombed dozens of boats south of the United States without providing evidence that they are trafficking drugs, or providing the names of people killed in the strikes. In some cases, the dead and injured were fishermen whom the U.S. declined to prosecute.

The strikes have been condemned by multiple countries, with some even opting to stop sharing drug-trafficking intelligence with the U.S. out of fear that it would be used for more bombings without transparency. Even Republicans have spoken out against the strikes. But if Trump decides to strike Mexico, that could change, as some Republicans have been egging on the president to bomb the country for years.

Trump himself told advisers in his first presidential term that he wanted to “bomb the drugs” in Mexico, and even devised plans to invade the country before beginning his second term. Will he follow through, or is this just the ravings of a man experiencing cognitive decline?

Trump’s Border Patrol Boss Asks Random Brown Man if He Speaks English - 2025-11-17T21:08:33Z

Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino was seen on video asking a random brown-skinned man standing at a bus stop in Chicago if he spoke English. 

“You speak English?” Bovino asks, pointing at the man, who looks obviously uncomfortable. He gives no response, and Bovino switches to Spanish. 

“No demands made.  It was a very casual conversation that ended with the arrest of this illegal alien,” Bovino posted on X in the comment section of the video. “Chicago will continue to see Title 8 immigration enforcement. All illegal aliens should self deport immediately via the CBP Home app.” 

Watch Bovino, head of Border Patrol's racial profiling operation, approach a random Hispanic guy at what looks like a bus stop and demand to know if he speaks English. pic.twitter.com/BhIabDVhnn

— David J. Bier (@David_J_Bier) November 17, 2025

Bovino has been often criticized for his brutal and wanton tactics, which include using tear gas and pepper balls against peaceful protesters. 

“This is the lie they want you to believe; that you can refuse to answer and walk away but we know that’s not true,” Cato Institute Immigration Studies director David Bier wrote in response to Bovino. “We’ve seen them arresting people for doing exactly that.” 

Bovino’s approach in the clip also aligns with the Department of Homeland Security’s policy of racial profiling, which it has fought in court to preserve. 

“Apparent ethnicity can be a factor supporting reasonable suspicion in appropriate circumstances—for instance, if agents know that the members of a criminal organization under investigation are disproportionately members of one ethnic group—even if it would not be relevant in other circumstances,” the Trump administration wrote in a Supreme Court request that was later granted, clearing the way for racial profiling. “And, in context, officers might reasonably rely on the fact that someone exclusively speaks Spanish to support reasonable suspicion that the person is here illegally.” 

Chi Ossé, Mamdani Ally, Files Paperwork to Take On Hakeem Jeffries - 2025-11-17T19:20:27Z

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has a new primary challenger: New York City Council member Chi Ossé, an ally of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

Ossé filed paperwork Monday to run in New York 8th congressional district, which covers part of east and south Brooklyn. In a statement, Ossé said, “The Democratic Party’s leadership is not only failing to effectively fight back against Donald Trump, they have also failed to deliver a vision that we can all believe in.”

The council member is 27 years old and supported Mamdani in the Democratic mayoral primary, leading a rally and canvassing for him. Like Mamdani, Ossé has a large social media following and is seeking to capitalize on public frustration with Democratic leadership, joining other young candidates launching primary challenges across the country.

Ossé enters the race with some name recognition in New York City, having been featured in The New Yorker, GQ, and New York magazine. But according to Axios, Mamdani won’t be offering any public support to Ossé to ensure that Jeffries and other leading New York Democrats don’t oppose his policies as mayor.

Still, the upstart candidate could build upon not only Mamdani’s example but also that of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who in 2018 defeated a member of the Democratic leadership at only 27 to enter Congress, representing the nearby New York 14th district. Ossé will have to rally the support of Jeffries’s many critics who see the congressman as ineffectual in leading Democrats against Donald Trump and the Republican Party. The question is whether Brooklynites agree.

ICE Agents Raid a Church With No Explanation - 2025-11-17T19:18:46Z

The arrival of masked federal agents at a church in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Saturday sent some worshippers fleeing into the woods while children sobbed inside, witnesses told The Charlotte Observer. 

The ICE agents, who mobbed a group of church members doing yard work, did not ask any questions or make any attempt to identify themselves before arresting one man. The Observer did not report the name of the church.

The church’s pastor, who told The Observer he did not want to identify himself, said that agents threatened to arrest other church members, and were physically aggressive. “Right now, everybody is scared. Everybody,” he said. “One of these guys with immigration, he say he was going to arrest one of the other guys in the church. He pushed him.”

Fifteen-year-old Miguel Vazquez was one of the people who took off running when federal agents arrived. “I thought, ‘Wait, why am I running? I’m a citizen,’” Vazquez said. 

As some of the men outside fled, the women and children inside the church reportedly cried out of fear that their loved ones had been arrested.

The Department of Homeland Security claimed that the U.S. Border Patrol, which has been favored over Immigration and Customs Enforcement by the Trump administration for its more aggressive law enforcement tactics, made 130 arrests in Charlotte on Saturday and Sunday. The DHS claimed that detainees had criminal records, including a variety of infractions, but they have not released the names or paperwork relating to the arrests.  

As part of its tactlessly named Operation “Charlotte’s Web,” masked agents in paramilitary gear have kidnapped people from a number of public locations in Charlotte, including restaurants, grocery stores, Home Depot parking lots, and now churches. In January, Trump directed ICE to target immigrants in previously protected areas considered “sensitive locations,” including churches, and in April, a federal judge gave him the greenlight.

On Saturday, Charlotte residents took to the streets to protest the presence of federal law enforcement. 

FEMA Head Abruptly Resigns After Going MIA - 2025-11-17T18:56:49Z

Acting Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator David Richardson abruptly resigned from his post on Monday, according to sources familiar with the situation. His resignation comes after months of being AWOL, particularly during deadly flooding in Texas over Fourth of July weekend.

FEMA employees told The Washington Post that Richardson spent as little time as possible in daily operations meetings and shied away from leadership, even telling his own employees that he expected to be gone by Thanksgiving.

Richardson became acting head of FEMA after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ousted his predecessor, Cameron Hamilton. During his first meeting as the new head of FEMA, Richardson told his employees, “Don’t get in my way … because I will run right over you.”

When flooding hit Texas in July, Richardson was unable to be reached “for hours and hours,” one senior official said. Richardson claimed to be in “constant contact” with FEMA officials but was actually missing from disaster response while on vacation with his two sons. At least 130 people died in the floods.

“Staff say Richardson is basically useless—absent from the office, unreachable in a disaster, and powerless because Secretary Noem has sidelined him,” New Jersey Democratic Representative Frank Pallone Jr. said in September, calling on Richardson to resign. “This level of bureaucratic incompetence from the Trump administration is putting lives at risk when the next natural disaster hits.”

In November, Richardson was muzzled by the Department of Homeland Security, banned from giving interviews or responding to media requests.

President Trump has yet to comment on Richardson’s resignation.

Judge on Comey Case Scolds Trump Prosecutor for “Fundamental” Errors - 2025-11-17T17:31:00Z

The Trump administration seems to be screwing up its attempt to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey.

On Monday, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick ordered the Department of Justice to turn over all grand jury materials, including minutes and recordings, to Comey’s defense team because he thinks there is merit to Comey’s claim that government misconduct may have tainted legal proceedings.

In his ruling, Fitzpatrick said that an FBI agent who may have had access to attorney-client information, which is privileged, was allowed to testify to the grand jury, which the judge noted was “highly irregular and a radical departure from past DOJ practice.” Also, the judge said that Lindsey Halligan, the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, made two “fundamental misstatements of law” to the grand jury, jeopardizing the case.

Fizpatrick also said he thinks the DOJ is not being transparent on all of the grand jury proceedings because jurors approved a second indictment after rejecting the government’s first one, which does not show up in transcripts. All of this bolsters Comey’s attempt to have the false-statement and obstruction-of-Congress charges against him dismissed and validates his claims that they are politically motivated.

Halligan was chosen by President Trump after her predecessor refused to charge Comey due to a lack of evidence. She has no prosecutorial experience, sent a legal reporter multiple texts about grand jury matters, and is having her appointment legally challenged. With each day, Halligan looks more out of her depth and her attempt to carry out Trump’s baseless case against Comey seems closer to failing.

DHS Posts Wild Video Rewriting American History - 2025-11-17T17:17:48Z

On Sunday, the Department of Homeland Security posted the latest installment in its running series of outrageous social media posts that seem like they could be cited at the Nuremberg trials. 

“This week, it’s important to dispel a lie that has permeated American political thought for some time. America is not a nation of immigrants,”  said DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary Micah Bock, in a video posted to X. “We are a nation of citizens. And it is because of those citizens that we are an exceptional nation.”

The United States, of course, is a “nation of immigrants.” That’s not a lie. No American citizen, with the exception of Native Americans, has a family history that does not involve some form of immigration to the United States. 

The phrase “a nation of immigrants” was popularized as the title of President John F. Kennedy’s 1958 book that argued the nation was strengthened by the steady flow of immigrants from around the world. Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously called this book a reminder “of our shared dreams, goals, and destiny as a nation,” writing that Americans “must remain mindful that there is much more that unites us than divides us.” 

Bock, on the other hand, insists that immigration system had been “molested and abused by previous administrations without concern for preserving our country’s traditions, customs, or quality of life.” In the text accompanying the video, DHS attempted to refashion the U.S. motto to be a slogan about homogenizing American citizenry. “Our national motto is E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one. One Nation. One Culture. One Shared Heritage,” the post read. 

This is a pretty questionable compression of the history of the “E Pluribus Unum” slogan, which was originally supposed to symbolize the Thirteen Colonies: It makes no claim about a common culture or heritage—language with strong fascist overtones. But this is par for the course for DHS, which seemingly shitposts specifically to excite far-right internet trolls. 

Jamie Raskin Faces Backlash After Saying Democrats Could Accept MTG - 2025-11-17T16:52:17Z

Maryland Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin is facing some backlash for extending party membership to hard-line MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene—once again raising the issue of just how big the Democratic tent should be.

“We are a big tent. We must be a huge, vast tent. I say this is a party that’s got room for Marjorie Taylor Greene if she wants to come over!” Raskin said on Sunday while speaking to a group of Florida Democrats. “We got room for anybody who wants to stand up for the Constitution, and for the Bill of Rights today.… You’re damn right I’m a liberal, the heart of that word is ‘liberty.’ And I’m a progressive because the heart of that word is ‘progress.’ But my favorite thing to call myself today is a conservative, because I wanna conserve the land, the air, the water, the climate system, the Constition.”

Raskin: We are a big tent. We must be a huge, vast tent. I say this is a party that’s got room for Marjorie Taylor Greene if she wants to come over. pic.twitter.com/Iswe6tzG84

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 17, 2025

Raskin’s comment is certainly eyebrow-raising. Greene has been making headlines in recent weeks due to her surprising break from Trump on Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, his decision to bail out Javier Milei in Argentina, and his insistence that the economy is great and there is no inflation. Just this weekend, Trump called her a “traitor” to the country, leading her to fear for her safety.

But this is also the same woman who has supported Trump on nearly every other issue, spreading racist, antisemitic, and generally unhinged rhetoric that has made her one of the most radical members of Congress.

“Fuck no. Stop trying to rehabilitate terrible people just because they said one bad thing about Trump,” one frustrated X user wrote.

“I’m an admirer of @RepRaskin & I think the Dems should be a ‘big tent’ too BUT as @AdamKinzinger has pointed out, MTG still supports election denial & the Big Lie and, I would add, the ICE cruelty & violence against people, including Americans, of color,” journalist Medhi Hasan said. “Let’s not whitewash her.”

Republican Lawmaker Becomes Swatting Target Hours After Trump Attack - 2025-11-17T15:55:14Z

Hours after Donald Trump targeted an Indiana Republican, that same state senator became victim to a swatting incident. 

On Sunday,  Trump accused Greg Goode and fellow Republican state Senator Rod Bray of going against his idea to redraw Indiana’s congressional districts. The president called the pair “RINO senators” on Truth Social and said he was “very disappointed” in them. 

That same night, Goode’s home was swatted, meaning that a false emergency call was made to law enforcement in Vigo County, Indiana, that people were in danger inside the residence. Officers from the Vigo County Sheriff’s Office responded, and initially couldn’t make contact with anyone at the house before they finally spoke to people there. 

Goode and others “were secure, safe, and unharmed. Investigation showed that this was a prank or false email (also known as ‘swatting’),” Vigo County Sheriff Derek Fell said in a statement. 

“While this entire incident is unfortunate and reflective of the volatile nature of our current political environment, I give thanks to God that my family and I are ok,” Goode said in his own statement Sunday. 

Swatting incidents go well beyond pranks, and can cause injury or even death, not to mention trauma and wrongful arrests. They are a tool of intimidation designed to threaten people. Trump bears responsibility for his post inspiring stochastic terrorism, and Goode has not even made a public statement on redistricting. 

Trump’s post also claimed that every Indiana Republican senator against redistricting would have their names released to the public later on Sunday, which did not seem to happen. If it had, Goode might not have been the only victim of Trump’s worst supporters. All of this goes to show that Trump is demanding total obedience and authority, and his supporters see any defiance as worthy of violence. 

Nicki Minaj Confirms Plan to Work With Trump’s U.N. Ambassador - 2025-11-17T15:40:43Z

Iconic and recently troubled rapper Nicki Minaj will address the United Nations on Tuesday to speak up against what the Trump administration describes as “atrocities against Christians” in Nigeria.

“.@NICKIMINAJ is not only arguably the greatest female recording artist, but also a principled individual who refuses to remain silent in the face of injustice,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz wrote on X on Sunday. “I’m grateful she’s leveraging her massive platform to spotlight the atrocities against Christians in Nigeria, and I look forward to standing with her as we discuss the steps the President and his administration are taking to end the persecution of our Christian brothers and sisters.”

Minaj responded to the right-wing Christian Zionist graciously.

“Ambassador, I am so grateful to be entrusted with an opportunity of this magnitude. I do not take it for granted. It means more than you know,” she wrote. “The Barbz & I will never stand down in the face of injustice. We’ve been given our influence by God. There must be a bigger purpose.”

Minaj has never been that politically inclined, aside from a few Obama endorsements, and her music wouldn’t suggest that she feels strongly enough about the persecution of Christians to speak on behalf of the Trump administration at the U.N. But her flailing career—marked by her incessant use of Grok and nasty, manic beefs with younger female rappers—and the sex offense and rape charges of her husband and brother certainly would. Earlier this month, Minaj also reposted Trump’s Truth Social message from earlier in which he pledged to “stand ready, willing, and able” to step in and aid Nigerian Christians.

“Reading this made me feel a deep sense of gratitude. We live in a country where we can freely worship God. No group should ever be persecuted for practicing their religion. We don’t have to share the same beliefs in order for us to respect each other,” she said at the time. “Numerous countries all around the world are being affected by this horror & it’s dangerous to pretend we don’t notice. Thank you to The President & his team for taking this seriously. God bless every persecuted Christian. Let’s remember to lift them up in prayer.” She also reposted a pro-Trump TikTok around the same time she started talking about Nigerian Christians.

The claim that Christians in Nigeria are being targeted for their faith is as contentious as Minaj’s expertise on the matter. Trump has threatened to invade the “now disgraced country guns-a-blazing” to stop Islamic extremist groups.

Nigerians and their government have pushed back on assertions of anti-Christian prosecution.

The Nigerian government wrote in a statement in September, “Nigeria’s security challenge is not a war of religion.” The statement continued:

‘Portraying Nigeria’s security challenges as a targeted campaign against a single religious group is a gross misrepresentation of reality.’ Terrorists attack all who reject their murderous ideology—Muslims, Christians, and those of no faith alike.

Between May 2023 and Feb 2025, over 13,500 terrorists were neutralized and nearly 10,000 hostages rescued. Just last month, the top leaders of ANSARU, Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Nigeria, were captured.

‘The Nigerian story is not one of genocide or persecution, but of resilience, diversity, and a globally acknowledged commitment to peaceful coexistence.’

Christianity is neither endangered nor marginalized in Nigeria. Our nation is home to some of the world’s largest Pentecostal churches, the largest Anglican congregation, and one of the biggest Muslim communities anywhere.

Anyone should be skeptical of Trump’s plans to invade a West African country under the guise of religious freedom—especially when it comes after what The Guardian described as “weeks of lobbying by U.S. lawmakers and conservative Christian groups urging him to designate Nigeria as a ‘country of particular concern.’”

Kash Patel Assigns FBI SWAT Team to Protect 27-Year-Old Girlfriend - 2025-11-17T15:37:01Z

Kash Patel has reportedly assigned a security detail of SWAT agents to guard his country singer girlfriend, in the latest chapter of the FBI director’s blatant misappropriation of bureau resources.

A group of elite agents from the FBI Field Office in Nashville have been assigned to protect Patel’s girlfriend, Alexis Wilkins, two sources told MS NOW, formerly MSNBC. The sources added that those agents, who are typically charged with responding to high-risk situations, would likely be unable to respond in the event of a crisis in the Nashville area. People familiar with FBI security protocols told MS NOW that they’d never heard of a top FBI official’s girlfriend receiving a security detail staffed by government agents.

Patel’s efforts to heighten his girlfriend’s security come after he was caught using a $60 million government jet to visit Wilkins at a wrestling event at Penn State and then fly her back to Nashville. Patel responded to the scandal by making it harder to track his jet and arguing that people were wrong for “attacking” Wilkins, though it seems that most people were just criticizing him.

“Attacking her isn’t just wrong—it’s cowardly and jeopardizes our safety. My love of family will always be my cornerstone, and you will never tear that down or keep me from them,” he wrote in a post on X earlier this month.

Patel’s commute to work in Washington, while he keeps a legal residence in Las Vegas, has sparked concern from lawmakers over whether Patel reimbursed the government for personal trips. The leaks to MS NOW suggest Patel’s unorthodox use of government resources hasn’t won him any friends at the bureau, either.

* An earlier version of this post gave the incorrect age of Alexis Wilkins.

Why Trump Made a Sudden 180 on Releasing Epstein Files - 2025-11-17T14:22:30Z

Donald Trump has changed his mind and now wants House Republicans to vote to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.

The president announced his reversal on Truth Social Sunday night, saying, “We have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown.’”

Why the sudden flip-flop, especially since House Republicans have been trying to delay a vote to force the release of the Epstein files for months? Well, after the House Oversight Committee released pages and pages of damaging correspondence from the Epstein estate, Trump feels as though he’s going to lose anyway. House GOP leadership was already projecting that as many as 100 Republicans could vote to release the files.

By agreeing now, Trump is trying to get ahead of the release and placate his fellow Republicans, who have no defensible reason to keep blocking the files with their base clamoring for their release. Over the past week, emails and text messages have revealed that Trump was very close to Epstein in recent years, despite his many denials. Trump is eager for the stories to end and the issue to fade out of news coverage, and now he wants to rip off the Band-Aid.

“The House Oversight Committee can have whatever they are legally entitled to, I DON’T CARE! All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT,” his Truth Social post said.

It’s a rare instance that the president has caved to pressure from Congress, and shows some cracks in his control over the GOP. What happens now? Will Senate Republicans also vote to release the files? And what is in the files that the president has fought so hard to keep hidden?

Trump Attacks MTG After She Blames Him for Dangerous “Dog Whistle” - 2025-11-17T14:06:27Z

Outspoken GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene says she has received multiple threats of doxing and violence, and she directly blames President Trump and his “dog whistle” rhetorical attacks for endangering the lives of her and her family. 

The jabs became more serious  last Friday, as Trump announced that he’d be “withdrawing” his support from Greene after she pressed for the Jeffrey Epstein files to be released in full, broke with Trump on inflation and affordability, and criticized his foreign policy decisions on bailing out Argentina and bankrolling Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. 

“All I see ‘Wacky’ Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!” Trump wrote Friday, claiming that Greene was only publicly disagreeing with him because he told her not to run for senate or governor in her home state of Georgia, which Greene denies. 

Over the next few days, Trump went on to say that Greene (who he called “Marjorie Taylor Brown” because of green turning brown when it rots) “betrayed the entire Republican Party when she turned Left” and that she was a fake Republican, a “traitor,” and a “disgrace” to the “great Republican party.” 

Greene was quick to respond. 

“I stood with President Trump when almost no one else would. I campaigned for him all over this country and spent millions of my own dollars helping him get elected,” she said Sunday on CNN. “That’s why being called a ‘traitor’ isn’t just hurtful, it puts a target on my back and puts my life in danger.”

Greene elaborated on that danger in a post on X later that same evening. 

“The hoax pizza deliveries have started now, to my house and my family members. Update: we also received a pipe bomb threat on my construction companies office building. President Trump’s unwarranted and vicious attacks against me were a dog whistle to dangerous radicals that could lead to serious attacks on me and my family,” Greene wrote. “Unfortunately, I’ve been down this road before. As a matter of fact, as I campaigned all over the country and defended President Trump, I received dozens of swatting calls on my house and my family members homes along with these hoax pizza deliveries, but even more severely I have received some of the most death threats of any Member of Congress that led to multiple men being convicted and serving time in prison. And all of that came from the left.

“Now that President Trump has called me a traitor, which is absolutely untrue and horrific. Mark Levin has been calling me a traitor. And so have other prominent likely paid social medial activists. This puts blood in the water and creates a feeding frenzy. And it could ultimately lead to a harmful or even deadly outcome.”

The president had no regard for Greene’s fear. 

“Wacky Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Brown (Remember, Green turns to Brown where there is ROT involved!) is working overtime to try and portray herself as a victim when, in actuality, she is the cause of all of her own problems,” he wrote on Truth Social. “The fact is, nobody cares about this Traitor to our Country!”

Trump is no stranger to inciting violence through rhetoric, but this is a significant shift given how loyal Greene was to Trump and the MAGA agenda. Still, she has no intention of dropping her push for the release of the Epstein files.

“I stand with these women, I stand with rape victims, I stand with children who are in terrible sex abuse situations, and I stand with survivors of trafficking,” Greene said on CNN. “I will not apologize for that. I believe the country deserves transparency in these files. And I don’t believe that rich powerful people should be protected if they have done anything wrong.” 

Transcript: Trump Fury at Epstein Mess Explodes as Allies Openly Panic - 2025-11-17T12:30:25Z

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the November 17 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

 Anxiety is rising among President Trump’s staunchest allies that he’s politically lost his way. Several new reports document that they fear the MAGA coalition is fragile, that Republicans are in political trouble in the midterms and that Trump isn’t doing enough about any of it. Meanwhile, Trump just exploded in fury on Truth Social saying he is now calling on Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s ties with Democrats. Yet as one Republican pointed out, it’s Trump who is overly obsessed with Epstein right now, and that’s part of the GOP’s political problem. It’s clear that Trump and the GOP are in very deep political trouble, but Trump doesn’t seem to know it. That puts him in a moment of extreme weakness. And yet, do Democrats know it? Are they really set to capitalize on it? Today we’re talking about all this with Michael Cohen, author of the very good Substack Truth and Consequences, who has new pieces out on Trump’s unpopularity and the GOP breakdown. Michael, good to have you on.

Michael Cohen: Greg, great to be here. Thanks for having me. 

Sargent: So we have a couple striking new reports out right now. Let’s start with the one in The New York Times. It reports that Trump allies fear that his populist message has become muddled because he’s spending his time courting wealthy donors, like on his ballroom, and demanding Nobel Peace Prizes for his alleged successes abroad. He’s also talking about going to Davos and his advisers fear this would send the wrong message right now. Michael, what I find striking about this is that the GOP coalition seems to be in trouble. The non-MAGA voters don’t like the ballroom or the bizarre Nobel Prize antics and his own allies and advisers know it. What do you think of this? 

Cohen: One thing I’m struck by in Trump’s second term is I don’t think I’ve ever seen a president who seems to care less about his political standing than Trump. I mean, he really doesn’t spend a lot of time and energy trying to improve how Americans see him. He seems very completely focused on his own sort of pet issues, which is, I would say, his legacy—which is why you see all these efforts to travel around the world trying to make peace deals, and his ballroom, I think, is part of that legacy consideration. And also his revenge tour. That is what seems to be driving him.

The things he has done so far—the big beautiful bill, the shutdown, the refusal to bend on these Obamacare subsidy increases—they’re not … he doesn’t seem to be thinking about politics at all. He doesn’t seem overly concerned about how Republicans do in the elections next year.

And so from that perspective, if I was Republican, I would be pretty concerned about this, because you have a president who should be leading the way politically and is not.

Sargent: Well, you’re absolutely right to bring up the Affordable Care Act subsidies. In fact, the other report I wanted to bring up is from CNN, and it says that the expiration of these subsidies has stirred deep anxiety among some Republicans—particularly in the battlegrounds.

It occurs to me that the MAGA coalition is getting hit by a kind of double whammy. On one side, you’ve got the ACA subsidies lapsing—that’s going to hammer the Trump base. The economy is killing him with his own voters. But on the other, you’ve got key voters in the GOP coalition who voted for Trump, that helped Trump win, who don’t like all the ballroom antics and the Nobel Prize garbage and all that sort of stuff, and he’s not doing anything to appeal to those people.

It’s like a double blow, right?

Cohen: Yeah, the Obamacare subsidy story—it’s underappreciated how much of a landmine this is for Republicans, right? I mean, I know the Democrats, you know, allegedly caved in the shutdown. I guess they did, they did cave in. They didn’t get to what they wanted, but they actually took the situation up politically so that this budget bill that they agreed to expires at the end of January.

And by that point, people will have already been paying these higher premiums for their health insurance. And I don’t know if people are aware of this, but according to a Kaiser Family Foundation report I saw earlier today, those premiums are expected to double in price—double. That is a huge increase for an ordinary American.

And here’s the thing: Why are Republicans not more concerned about this? I don’t actually kind of get it. I really don’t. Democrats, in a way, gave them a lifeline by shutting the government down over this issue. If they compromised on it, it would have actually diffused what is a ticking time bomb, which is these increases.

And now actually the chances that the Republicans concede on this point and compromise has actually gone up, because I think once people realize how damaging this is gonna be politically, I think there’s going to be a lot of pressure on Speaker Johnson and John Thune in the Senate to find some way to avoid this happening.

Sargent:  I think a lot of Republican elected officials still don’t quite understand the degree to which they depend on these new types of working class voters as well. Don’t you?

Cohen: Yes. And look, you really saw this in what happened in New Jersey and Virginia in these off-year elections. In 2024, Trump made serious inroads with younger voters, with Hispanic voters. You saw that completely reversed in New Jersey and Virginia. Now, some people—on the Hispanic voters—some people would say it’s because of the mass deportations. I’m sure that’s part of it.

But part of it too is some of these voters voted for Trump because they were unhappy about the economy under Biden. Think they’re happy now? I don’t really get the impression that they are. If you look at the numbers on the economy, most voters are not happy with the state of the economy, and they’re not happy with Trump’s attention to the issue, or lack thereof.

Same thing with young voters. The switch in young voter support against Trump is overwhelming. I saw a poll about a week or two ago—I think before the Tuesday election—that showed Democrats … There was a question about the congressional ballot: Which candidate do you support, the Democratic or Republican candidate? And among 18- to 29-year-olds, Dems were leading by 27 points. That number probably has even gone up since last week. And that’s kind of what the Republicans are dealing with right now.

And I think a lot of that has to do with the economy. And so that they are willing to (a), have these bad numbers in the economy and then proceed with these premium increases—it’s political malpractice. It’s a hard thing to grasp what’s going on up there on Capitol Hill that they’re allowing this to happen.

Sargent: It really is remarkable. And I think maybe the way to think about it is not a double whammy, it’s a triple whammy because we’ve got Jeffrey Epstein stuff, which is absolutely deadly for Trump and the Republican Party right now. And Trump just exploded on Truth Social over the Epstein stuff. I’m going to read a big chunk of it because it’s so deranged:

“I will be asking AG Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, JP Morgan Chase, and many other institutions and people to determine what was going on with them and him. This is another Russia, Russia, Russia scam with all arrows pointing to the Democrats.”

Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t think that’s going to work, Michael, do you?

Cohen:  Do you think anybody believes that outside of the pure MAGA base? I understand that—that Trump wants to get this issue to go away. But the idea that you can do that by sort of pointing to Democrats, when I think something like half the emails that were released by Democrats last week or this week contain Trump’s name, that’s a pretty hard argument to make—especially when you’re actually talking directly about Trump.

So I think that again, I get what they’re doing, but I don’t think it’s gonna work. And I do think that the Epstein story, unlike every other scandal that involves Trump, is one that actually [is] going to strike at the heart of the MAGA base. Because there are Republican voters who truly believe in this conspiracy around Epstein, and they—I don’t think they’re—I think this is an issue where they actually might break with Trump.

And you’re seeing this on the Hill, by the way. You’re seeing already Democrats—I mean Republican senators and congressmen who are distancing themselves on Epstein, or at least saying that they’re gonna support this House vote on releasing the Epstein files. I saw on CNN this week, Senator Kennedy from Louisiana coming out and saying that he might vote to open … on this bill to open up the Epstein files that are at DOJ. That’s a huge shift. I mean, Kennedy is a big supporter of the president, but I think he understands where the political winds are blowing, and on this issue, they’re blowing against the White House.

And I don’t think the White House—I don’t think Trump—truly realized that. And going after Bill Clinton … And I, and by the way, it’s worth noting that he wrote this, that Bondi should go after Clinton. Apparently within the hour of that happening, Bondi appointed a prosecutor to look into Clinton’s role. I mean, you know, this is just an obvious effort to try to obfuscate Trump’s own relationship with Epstein.

Sargent:  It’s ludicrous. And then Marjorie Taylor Greene got another dimension of the Epstein thing right, I think. I think she pointed out that Trump is spending his time trying to stop the Epstein files from coming out. In other words, Trump is the one who’s obsessed with Epstein, not Democrats. Well, Democrats want the files, but it’s Trump who’s really letting it consume him in some sort of really profoundly pathological way.

And we all know why, because he’s desperately trying to keep it from coming out. But I think the core truth that Marjorie Taylor Greene got at there is that the Epstein files is really bad for Trump in two ways. Right? The more obvious, superficial way, which is that he’s in the damn files and he doesn’t want ’em to come out, but every second he spends trying to stop the files from coming out reminds everybody that he’s taken his eye off the ball of the economy—or worse, that he’s just wrecking the economy and doesn’t give a shit about it.

Cohen: I think that’s right, and I also think that they have gone above and beyond trying to cover up, or trying to make this issue go away with Epstein. It’s not working. And they—and I don’t even know if Trump’s guilty of anything. I really don’t. I’m not convinced he did anything wrong except maybe, perhaps, you know, not speaking up when he may have known that Epstein was abusing young girls, but he looks guilty. He’s made himself look guiltier than he probably already is.

He did the same thing on the Russia investigation to some degree, and I think that’s a political problem for him. It’s a political problem for the party. And I do think every day they spend on Epstein is a day they’re not talking about the economy, and that’s a good thing for Democrats.

Sargent:  So on your Substack, you had this piece that used The New York Times’ chart—polling chart—of Trump’s approval, which is an average of the polls, and it looks like it’s now nosedived to its lowest point of his second term. It’s down to 41 percent approve and 55 percent disapprove. That is a -14 rating, and the trend is very clearly down in recent days.

Can you talk a little bit about that? I mean, these are bad numbers, and I think probably the Times approval average might even be a little high, because some of the recent polls we’ve seen—quality polls—have it even lower than that, like in the high thirties. But still, to have the average of polls, the New York Times average, down to 41–55, -14, that’s terrible. Can you talk about it?

Cohen:  Yeah, no. Look, the AP poll from—I think it was this week or last week—had him at 36%, which is insanely low. I don’t remember it being that low even in his first term.

Look, I’ve been saying this for months now, and I think it’s just the story that not enough people are appreciating. Donald Trump is historically and deeply unpopular. Okay? His numbers for a first-term president are insanely low. And they have—they have been—they have been going lower, you know, and there seems to be very clear—this inflation Navigator survey poll out, I think it was yesterday or today, that showed that his numbers went down during the shutdown. The shutdown definitely hurt him.

His numbers on the economy are in the 20 percents. He’s getting killed on health care. Even on immigration, he’s doing poorly. Across the board, he is unpopular. And I don’t think—I think it wasn’t until last week and the election returns in New Jersey and Virginia, people suddenly realized how unpopular he is and how damaging this is to the party.

You can talk all you want about Democrats and are they too liberal, are they too moderate, or whatever you want to discuss. But the reality of the situation is that Democrats won big in New Jersey, Virginia, for one major reason: because Donald Trump is unpopular and people want to just send him a message.

And, by the way, it’s not just that people disapprove of him; they strongly disapprove of him. His strong-disapprove numbers are much higher than his even sort of slightly-disapprove numbers. This is the biggest story in American politics, and it’s not—I don’t see much reason to believe it’s gonna get better.

There was a hilarious story I’m seeing about the White House which wants to send Trump out to talk about the economy. I mean, good luck with that. He’s not capable of doing that at all. When he goes out on these speaking tours, he talks about his sort of pet issues that he cares about. It’s clear he doesn’t care about the economy. He cares about his legacy. He cares about his ballroom. He cares about his revenge tour. He doesn’t care about the economy, and he has no really good ideas how to fix it.

So to me, this is a situation that is bad for the White House and bad for Republicans, and it’s getting worse. I don’t see it improving anytime soon.

Sargent: And you could even slot the Epstein thing into the revenge tour idea here. So in a funny way, that too works against Trump, because nobody likes the revenge tour stuff. No one likes the politicization of the Department of Justice. No one likes the fact that Trump is spending all his time sicking prosecutors on his Democratic enemies. That stuff works against him. All of it works against him. And I don’t know if he knows it.

Cohen:  Oh, I don’t think he knows it at all. Or if he does, I don’t think he cares. I just don’t think he cares about the Republican Party. I don’t think he cares about the long-term future of the party. I think he’s concerned about Democrats taking back the House in ’26 because he is worried about maybe getting impeached again. But I don’t think he cares politically about—from a policy standpoint—about what happens.

And, by the way, I think it’s also interesting—we could talk about this a little bit—that one of the ways Trump was trying to get around the fact that he’s so unpopular, and Democrats are probably gonna do well in the midterms, was he tried to get all the Republican states to redistrict. Well, that’s not working out too well right now.

I wrote a piece out this week about it. If you add up the numbers, it’s quite possible that Democrats actually gain more seats from redistricting than Republicans do. Just today, an hour or so ago, Indiana Republicans announced they’re not going to redistrict. They got a hard, hard push from the White House on this, and they said no to the White House.

That speaks to something else, which I think is very characteristic of the White House: that they do not have the same kind of political persuasive capabilities that they once had, or thought they once had, even with their own members.

So that is a good—and you may see on this Epstein thing, just to go back to that for a second—you could see a good number of Republicans in the House end up voting to open up the files. And if that happens, I don’t think there’s any chance the Senate blocks that.

If that happens, it’s not just a problem for Trump in the substance of the policy of releasing all these files. It’s a problem because it shows that he is weak, and he’s weak with his own party. So that becomes a much bigger political problem for Trump to deal with.

Sargent:  Right. I have trouble seeing 13 Republican senators supporting, releasing the Epstein files, but I certainly hope you’re right and I wouldn’t rule it out at all, especially if the vote is very big in the house. As you say, that really brings a lot of pressure, and as you said earlier, Senator Kennedy moving like that is also a key tell. You never know, Donald Trump has a lock on his party until he doesn’t. That’s the thing that people forget, is that politics isn’t static. It actually changes.

Cohen: No, it changes a lot. And actually in these days, it changes, you know, from month to month and year to year for sure.

Sargent: So you had in your piece, just to wrap this up, you talked about how these key voter groups move towards Spanberger in Virginia and Sherrill in New Jersey. And you talked a little bit about that, especially the young voters. I’m so old that I remember when pundits were saying that the young voters shift towards Trump was the end of the Democratic Party, basically. Somehow all these pundits forgot that the way politics works is that the party in the White House is the one who get the referendum in the midterms and in the off year elections. Talk about that.

Cohen: I love to point this out: the last three presidential elections we’ve had governing trifectas won by each party in each of these three elections—2016 Republicans, 2020 Democrats, 2024 Republicans. You know the last time that happened in American politics? Never. It’s never happened before, which says to me that there is a major sentiment of anti-incumbency in the country right now, which also means that if you’re drawing your conclusion from what happened the last election, you might need to update your priors.

And I think what we saw, you know, last week was that what happened in 2024 may not be relevant anymore. I don’t think it’s relevant at all in 2025. And the young people thing is interesting. You know, if you look at 2020, you look at the midterms—’18 and ’22—Democrats did very, very well with young voters. And in ’24, you saw slippage.

Now, to assume from that slippage in a year in which there was a great deal of anti-incumbency, in which the economy was a major concern among all voters, especially young people—if you drew from that that all of a sudden Democrats are screwed with young voters, I mean, you really were sort of, I mean, based on a sample size of one. And what we’ve seen in the past nine months is there’s no group in which Trump has lost ground more dramatically than with younger voters.

And this should surprise nobody. I mean, from a cultural standpoint, younger Americans are much more aligned with the Democratic Party than the Republican Party, and that’s been true for more than a decade now. None of this should surprise us.

But beyond that, what happened in ’24 was that a lot of young people were upset about the state of the economy—they couldn’t find jobs, inflation was high. Well, guess what? The economy isn’t very good now either. So, not surprisingly, those same voters have switched back to the Democratic Party. I think also, by the way, they’re not terribly happy with a lot of the policies that Trump’s implementing, like on deportations and on other cultural issues.

So I just think that we should not … Remember that things can change quickly in politics. And if the president is not doing what he promised to do, if the economy is struggling, there’s going to be a consequence from that. And these voters who may have switched to Trump in ’24—if they switched, it means that their allegiances are fluid. And we’re seeing that now that they’re flowing back to the Democratic Party.

Sargent: Absolutely. So let’s try to tie all this together. So one of the storylines here is that the low-propensity voters who aren’t really MAGA ideologues in any sense—they’re very fluid, as you said—we’re talking about young voters, you know, non-white working class of a certain type, they moved to Trump a little bit in 2024.

Now we’re seeing they’re really moving in the other direction pretty hard. Chances are that in the midterms we’ll see that as well. They’re motivated by the economy. So that’s one story that’s happening.

Then we have this other story in which Donald Trump is completely fucking his base in every conceivable way, including the elements of his base who are hardcore MAGA, or at least pretty, pretty committed to Trump—maybe not super, super hardcore MAGA, but pretty committed to him, right?

So you’re saying the Epstein files alienate those voters, the globalist stuff alienates those voters. There you have, I think, the two big stories of the moment. Can you talk about that?

Cohen: Well, you know, think one thing I think I’m surprised by is how big a story this Epstein files issue really is. Because I have to say, I’ve always been—because I was skeptical there was really much here. I’ve never bought into a lot of the conspiracy theories around Epstein. But I think what we’ve seen over the past couple of months is a recognition that this is a big story for a lot of people on the right.

And not just on the right, but in general, across the political spectrum. But it’s a story that motivates a lot of Republican voters and was a big motivation for them. And what you’re seeing, I think, with this story—the way that it has continued to metastasize over the past couple of months—is that people care about this and that this is something that Trump doesn’t have a good response on. And I think it’s hurting him politically in a way that I don’t—I frankly didn’t really expect.

And I think it’s—look, you could say all the bad things in the economy about Trump, all things are going to hurt Trump, and that’s the major thing that’s going to hurt Trump. The economy is the biggest factor; that’s what’s going to hurt him the most. But this Epstein story is kind of—this is a nagging story that continues to chip away at his support, especially, I’d say, among, you know, these sort of committed MAGA voters.

I mean, look, there’s probably 30 percent of MAGA voters who will vote for Trump no matter what, support Trump no matter what. But I think there are some softer Trump voters out there who are upset about this. And I think, will they still vote for Trump? Probably. But will they vote for Republicans in 2026? I don’t know.

That’s why I said before, I’m kind of getting to the point now where I think a lot of these Republican senators and House members may conclude they don’t want to be on the wrong side of their own voters on this issue. That could be wrong; I suspect that’s what’s happening. And when you see somebody—Kennedy—come out and say that, that makes me think this is a real thing.

Sargent: Well, I’ll tell you what, the size of the defections or deflections as Donald Trump put it in one of his deranged tweets is going to be a very big tell. Folks, if you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to check out Michael Cohen’s Substack, Truth and Consequences. Michael, always good to talk to you, man. Thanks for coming on. 

Cohen: Greg, always a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Get to Know the Name Jay Clayton—Our Fate May Depend on His Honesty - 2025-11-17T11:00:00Z

Donald Trump’s appointments track record is just about uniformly hideous. From putting a vaccine denier in charge of public health to having our nearly $1 trillion defense colossus run by a guy who thinks it’s cool to be called the War Secretary (but whose only wars so far are against Latin American fishermen and soldiers with beards), to the Rolex-flashing dog-killer who relishes sending innocent people to live in horrendous conditions in foreign prisons … and these are just the first three to spring to mind.

But let’s not give short shrift to his atrocious record on naming prosecutors. First, there was Jeff Sessions; I know he looks tame by today’s Stalinesque standards, and he did stand up to Trump on Russia, but his track record on immigration and deportations, voting rights, and criminal justice was hard-shell right wing. Bill Barr won, and earned, praise for standing up to Trump when he tried to steal the 2020 election, but prior to that, he made a number of moves that only shored Trump up, like essentially burying the Mueller report.

Another of Barr’s lamentable moves involved maybe the most horrific prosecutorial appointment of all: He named, with Trump’s presumed blessing, John Durham as special prosecutor to uncover the truth about the deep state. Durham became a national laughingstock, although his efforts probably weren’t terribly amusing to the two targets against whom he worked up flimsy indictments that juries rejected out of hand.

Which brings us to Jay Clayton. Who is he? Clayton was named over the weekend by Attorney General Pam Bondi—speaking of prosecutorial appointments that would make Francisco Franco smile—to delve into the Jeffrey Epstein affair. Except that when I say “delve into the Jeffrey Epstein affair,” I don’t mean that it is Clayton’s mandate to turn over every last rock to see which American politicians and other movers and shakers may have benefited from Epstein’s, um, generosity over the years.

No—Bondi and her boss have made it quite clear that their official ukase for Clayton involves looking under only rocks that have bright blue D’s painted on them. Trump was quite explicit that Clayton’s targets were to be former Democratic President Bill Clinton, Democratic presidential adviser Larry Summers, and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman.

You do not have to be paid-up members of those men’s fan clubs to understand this as the hideous affront to American custom that it is. For starters, the idea that a president should be ordering up an investigation of specific citizens is a horror; in an America that was actually adhering to its founding ideals, this would in itself be grounds for starting to discuss impeachment. It certainly would have been if Barack Obama had done it, I assure you. But now, that’s just one more norm that Trump has set on fire. Last Friday, on Air Force One, Trump told reporters: “I’m the chief law enforcement officer of the country. I’m allowed to do it.”

Let’s quickly pause here just to note: That statement is an admission of both his laser-instincts directly toward authoritarian rule and his ignorance. Democracy isn’t about what’s allowed. It’s about what’s right—as well as what’s respectful of norms and traditions.

But of course, he ordered it, and—of course—Bondi said, “Yes, sir!” Which brings us around to an examination of who Clayton is, and why Bondi chose him for this obviously political task that has nothing whatever to do with “justice.”

Clayton is mostly a high-finance guy. His career is in corporate law. In Trump’s first term, he chaired the Securities and Exchange Commission. That he did not become a household name in those years indicates to some extent that he probably executed his duties in a comparatively responsible fashion. He oversaw the kinds of deregulatory moves you’d expect from any Republican SEC chair; at the same time, he did initiate some high-profile insider trading cases. One thing that impressed me, and that was at odds with the standard Trumpian flouting of rules of any kind governing the behavior of appointees and their families, is that his wife, a Goldman Sachs official, resigned her position when he took the job. What? People in the Trump solar system acting ethically of their own volition? Hard to imagine how Trump tolerated that small nod to deceny.

So that’s all fine. However: Clayton has no prosecutorial experience at all. Barr said in 2020 that Clayton would be named the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, arguably the most important federal prosecutorial post in the country after the attorney general. But Trump ultimately chose someone else.

Then, earlier this year, Trump named Clayton to run the Southern District. Chuck Schumer blocked the nomination. Trump appointed him on an interim basis for 120 days. Once that period expires, it’s up to the federal court for the district to decide whether the appointment should go forward. In August, seven months after Trump tried to name Clayton, Manhattan’s federal judges decided he should have the job.

So, there he sits, in Foley Square, with all the power his office entails—the associate prosecutors, the investigators, the budget. He’s been a cautious sort so far, although critics noted that when Bondi fired Maurene Comey, the daughter of James Comey who had overseen the prosecutions of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, Clayton said nary a word. In a filing detailing the basis of her lawsuit alleging wrongful termination, Comey said Clayton told her: “All I can say is it came from Washington. I can’t tell you anything else.”

So we return to the question raised higher up in this column: Who is Jay Clayton? In these next several weeks, we’re going to find out. The Aaron Sorkin–movie version of Clayton would have told Bondi to stuff it Saturday and resigned—I do not hold this public trust to go on politically motivated fishing expeditions. But that’s not real life, especially in Trumpworld.

Might he quietly embark on this task and come back early next year, say, and announce that there is no evidentiary basis on which to indict this trio? That would be brave. But if he brings indictments … well, there would be two plausible explanations. One might be that there’s actually evidence sufficient to an indictment. In which case, let justice be done. But in Donald Trump’s, and Pam Bondi’s, America, we would be quite justified in suspecting a second explanation: That Clayton did what he was ordered by the White House to do.

The Trump era is a time of learning what people are made of. I’m guessing that in six months’ time, we’ll know a lot more about Jay Clayton than we know today.