Nancy Was Alone 🤯😱🌻✡️😱🤯

STFU:  The government is still closed.  SNAP funding is still up in the air, but planes are grounded and Trump who for a nano second appeared to understand that Tuesday’s Democratic victories were significant and likely (hopefully) an indicator of things to come, is back to ignoring reality and still impeding shutdown negotiations.  Yesterday, after announcing that he’s gotten the prices of what he called “fat shots,” but what the medical establishment calls GLP-1 agonists, down to more affordable levels, he went on to lie, prevaricate, and fantasize about everything else.  He claimed the economy was in the best shape ever, even though Treasury Secretary Bessent acknowledges that parts of it may already be in a recession and corporate job cuts, to quote CNBC, “surged past 1 million so far this year, with 153,000 layoffs just in October. The worst October since 2003.”  Trump went on to claim that grocery prices were way down, citing Walmart’s “bag” of Thanksgiving foods to prove his point.  The problem with that assertion is that prices aren’t down, and even his delusional base can’t ignore their grocery store receipts.  Additionally, the bag he cited includes only 15 products, six fewer than the 21 products included last year when the Sleepy guy was president.  On the SNAP front, Trump who never misses a meal, is still standing in the way of feeding people.  Yesterday, after a Rhode Island District Court judge ordered the administration to restart all rather than just a portion of SNAP funding using the contingency funds set aside for that purpose, the DOJ announced plans to appeal. To clarify, a Gatsby themed party at Mar a Lago, $20 billion maybe even $40 billion to Argentina, another billion to retrofit a “gifted” plane, $300 million for the Trump or maybe the Epstein Memorial ballroom and Trump actually said that there isn’t enough money for SNAP payments because the US has to remain “liquid for catastrophes, wars, anything” but absolutely not for feeding 42 million hungry Americans even though those SNAP payments ultimately contribute more back to farmers and grocers than they take.   By the way liquidity isn’t an issue, for better or worse the US unlike the rest of us can print money when it’s needed.  And wars?  Why is the end all wars, Nobel Peace prize seeking guy planning wars against Venezuela and maybe even Nigeria while revving up his nukes? Is it Wag the Dog time?  Lastly, during a hearing on the legality of Trump’s tariffs Chief Justice Roberts said what most of us know, tariffs are taxes.  The rest of the justices, or at least those other than Alito and Thomas also appear to get that tariffs are taxes and that taxing power belongs to Congress.  That said this SCOTUS never fails to disappoint and Amy Coney Barrett is concerned about how the tariffs already levied will be refunded so we’ll only know what they court does when what’s supposed to be an “expedited” decision is released.       

More About Tuesday:  Tuesday’s election results were even more stunning across the board than originally reported.  The ban the book crowd was ousted from lots of school boards including in Texas where control of the third largest school board is no longer in the hands of those who had removed textbook chapters on climate change, vaccines, Covid, and diversity. Mississippi Democrats broke the Republican super majority in their very red state’s Senate.  Maine voters rejected a voter ID initiative that would have created new voter ID requirements and made absentee voting less accessible, both intended to suppress voting by members of the Democratic base.  Perhaps influenced by the repeated reports of the tear gas and rubber bullets, and plastic handcuffs being used on school age children around the country by Kirsti Noem’s weaponized forces, voters in Bucks County Pennsylvania which voted for Trump in 2024, ousted their incumbent elected sheriff who had signed a deal to collaborate with ICE earlier this year.  All of this is on top of all those resounding Democratic victories in Virginia and New Jersey, two states that Speaker Johnson dismissed as not being indicative of anything.  And in a final irony, given the significant shift of Hispanic voters to Democratic candidates, Republicans in Texas are now a wee bit nervous that their aggressive redistricting might not pan out as planned as some of those “red” leaning Hispanic voters might actually turn a few red districts blue come the midterms. That doesn’t appear to be a concern for Democrats in California where Ken Calvert, a Republican incumbent, has already announced plans to challenge another Republican in one of the state’s newly drawn districts.  Still it’s going to be a long slog to the midterms, and as Democracy Docket’s Mark Elias warns, Trump and his cohorts have lots of vote suppressing plans in their bag of tricks and lots of military like people to enforce them.   

Peeps:  Yesterday, Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi announced that she won’t be seeking reelection to Congress in 2026. The 85-year-old Pelosi was first elected to Congress in 1987. The daughter of a former Mayor of Baltimore, she didn’t formally enter politics until the youngest of her five children was six.  She was the first and, so far, only women to become Speaker of the House.  Republicans, many of whom secretly admired her grit and competence, loved to dump on her, portraying her as that radical socialist from San Francisco. She was neither, but she was ahead of her time, a hugely competent legislator whose vote counting skills and backroom cajoling was remarkable.  She is largely credited with getting the ACA (Obamacare) passed.  While some Republicans, including former Speaker Paul Ryan who fled Congress because of Trump and who is now cashing it in as a Fox Corporation board member came out from under his protective rock to praise her yesterday.  Trump not so much; the vindictive self-obsessed wannabee king called her retirement a “great thing” adding “She was evil, corrupt, and only focused on bad things for our country.” Not much of a surprise from the master of projection but still despicable.  In other retirement news, citing incivility in politics and threats against his family, Democratic Congressman Jared Golden, the centrist from Maine announced that he won’t be running for reelection. Golden who frequently crossed the aisle to vote with Republicans, will be missed because despite being a party outlier, he was part of the Democrat’s headcount.  Moreover, it’s not clear that another Democrat can win in his district even after Tuesday’s Democratic trounce of most things red. The beleaguered Sean Duffy, busy cancelling flights across the country because overworked and now also unpaid flight controllers have been calling in sick, remains the Secretary of Transportation.  However, despite the unqualified reality star’s best efforts to convert his second job as interim Head of NASA into a permanent one, he will soon lose that job.  Trump has nominated, or more accurately renominated tech industry’s Jared Isaacman to serve in that capacity.  Isaacman, who was Elon’s Musk’s preferred appointee and who also had bipartisan support was nominated early in Trump 2.0 before Trump unexpectedly withdrew his nomination, citing a “thorough review of his prior associations.” Those associations included his past donations to the campaigns of Democrats, not a secret but an excuse for Trump, with the urging of his then head of personnel Sergio Gor, to dump him back when he was feuding with Musk who, in addition to having just secured a $1 trillion compensation package, is now back in Trump’s good graces. Gone for good is former VP Dick Cheney who passed away earlier in the week.  By current Republican standards, Cheney, the father of former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who was credited (discredited?) with pushing the US into a war with Iraq, seemed almost normal in comparison to what we have now, in part because he recognized Trump for what he is and publicly announced his intent to vote for Kamala Harris in 2024. Though she might not be for long,  Lindsey Halligan is still the interim attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.  Halligan who was appointed by Trump when no one else in the Virginia office would proceed with obtaining indictments of former FBI Head James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James is now also a Special Attorney.  That title was bestowed on her by Trump toady/Attorney General Pam Bondi who despite her assertions otherwise knows that Halligan’s appointment as interim US Attorney is likely not legitimate. Bondi provided further evidence of her acknowledgement of Halligan’s questionable status by backdating her “special” appointment to September 22, not so coincidentally three days before Comey’s indictment.  Though the Comey’s and James’ indictments may not survive judicial review, Bondi’s team isn’t discouraged.  Word is that they’ve moved on to seeking an indictment of the next name on Trump’s retribution list, Obama era head of the CIA head John Brennan.  Sean Charles Dunn, also known as the “Sandwich Guy” who was tried on a misdemeanor assault charge for throwing a hero at a dressed for war Homeland Security officer, was acquitted yesterday by a jury of his peers who weren’t buying that what he did was a punishable offense. The charges against Dunn had been downgraded from a felony to a misdemeanor after Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox host who is now the US Attorney for DC had failed to get a felony indictment. One more thing, NY Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik who was Trump’s pick for UN Ambassador before she wasn’t and who has gained notoriety and traction for her loud condemnation of anti-Semitism and college wokeness announced this morning that she’s running for Governor of New York against incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul. Stefanik’s no shoe in, one of her reasons for running is that her district could move blue as the result of redistricting but before she went full MAGA she was viewed as a moderate so she’s a skilled shapeshifter.  Moreover, she is expected to capitalize on downstate fears about NYC’s Mayor-elect Mamdani.