M.T.G. 2.0

How can it be that Marjorie Taylor Green is sounding like the last sane person in Congress.

If you didn’t catch her interview Thursday on CNN, you missed seeing a politician who rather than weave and bob and prevaricate simply stood on her principles and condemned both parties for the government shutdown. 

She took specific aim at the leaders of her own party, Mike* and John*. It was a refreshing change from the usual dribble emanating from Capitol Hill.

As things look now, she and her constituents (who are worried about the cost of health insurance, she says) may be the best hope to force those Congressional leaders to reopen the government before the holidays kick in.

In that regard, the administration is cutting ten percent of the flights at the busiest U.S. airports today, which will affect people who presumably have more political clout than the people struggling to find enough food to eat.

To date, it’s the poorest among us who have borne the brunt of the shutdown’s impacts, but that may be about to change. And since out of every political crisis, new leaders tend to emerge, we may need to prepare ourselves for an M.T.G. moment.

*Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

HEADLINES:

• Marjorie Taylor Greene blames Republican leaders for government shutdown (CNN)

• Will 2026 Be a Fair Fight? (Atlantic)

• Judge Orders Trump Administration to Fully Fund Food Stamps This Month (NYT)

• ICE indefinitely holds man facing no charges in high-stakes asylum case (WP)

• A Spanish-language immersion daycare on the North Side of Chicago was raided by federal immigration agents and a teacher was taken away, panicking school administrators and parents at the center (Reuters)

• Travelers brace for chaos as US government shutdown threatens holiday flights (AP)

• ‘None of This Is Good For Republicans’ (Atlantic)

• Jurors Find Sandwich Hurler Not Guilty of Assault (NYT)

• Heritage Foundation staff in open revolt over leader’s defense of Tucker Carlson (WP)

• America’s homebuyers are older than ever before (Business Insider)

• Supreme Court Clears Way for Trump Transgender Passport Policy (NYT)

• Nancy Pelosi will retire after historic 20-term career in Congress (SFC)

• Israeli jets strike southern Lebanon towns, escalating near-daily attacks (AP)

• Is A.I. Amazing or Are We Simple? (New Yorker)

• DHS: ‘Daycare Workers Have Walked Freely in This Country For Far Too Long (Onion)

 

A Bad Day at Court

Listening to Wednesday’s Supreme Court hearing on the legality of Trump’s global tariffs was, like most such audio casts, somewhat disconcerting but also ultimately fascinating and even rewarding.

Trump’s argument, as articulated by his Solicitor General D. John Sauer, is that his beloved tariffs are legally permissible under an obscure law known as The International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA.

Sauer, who is unquestionably a brilliant fellow, possesses a high, squeaky voice that only gets higher and squeakier as he becomes agitated — which happened a lot on Wednesday.

Sauer also speaks almost unbelievably rapidly as his agitation rises until he basically sounds like Mickey Mouse on acid.

By contrast, the Supremes all sound calm and grounded. At one point one of them urged Sauer to slow down and I started feeling sorry for him. They tend to speak in deep, rich, measured tones, which just made squeaky Sauer sound more pathetic as he flailed around in the minutiae of IEEPA.

To get to the point of all this, the Justices, in their unsettling disembodied, God-like way, sounded deeply skeptical that IEEPA or any other precedent justified Trump’s unprecedented tariffs, sending the President’s team away deeply disappointed.

The Court has not yet ruled on the matter but it’s not looking good for the home team. I just hope that when D. John Sauer got home afterward he tried my grandmother’s cure for a raspy throat — warm water with honey, lemon and a dash of Scotch.

HEADLINES:

• Conservative Supreme Court justices appear skeptical of Trump’s sweeping unilateral tariffs (AP)

• Takeaways from Trump’s rocky Supreme Court arguments over global tariffs (CNN)

• Dow rises 300 points after Supreme Court doubts Trump tariff argument and AI trade recovers (CNBC)

• The Supreme Court might actually stand up to Trump (Vox)

• The Anti-MAGA Majority Reemerges (Atlantic)

• Medicare patients who rely on telehealth left in limbo because of government shutdown (NPR)

• A Big Win in California Propels Newsom (NYT)

• How Newsom and allies delivered a redistricting counterpunch against Trump (WP)

• Republicans Swiftly File Lawsuit in Bid to Block California’s New House Maps (NYT)

• Zohran Mamdani’s transformative child care plan builds on a history of NYC social innovations (The Conversation)

• What business leaders are saying about NYC’s new mayor (Business Insider)

• Virginia redistricting gambit survives after Democrats dominate downballot (Politico)

• Trump Officials to Cut Air Traffic in 40 Major Markets if Shutdown Continues (NYT)

• Is MAGA Splitting Over Israel, Anti-Semitism & Neo-Nazis? (Daily Kos)

• FBI urges ICE to ID themselves as criminals impersonate officers (The Hill)

• Air traffic controllers warn of ‘tipping point’ as U.S. government shutdown drags on (NPR)

• Exxon funded thinktanks to spread climate denial in Latin America, documents reveal (Guardian)

• Judge orders White House to restore sign language interpreters at briefings by Trump, Leavitt (Politico)

• Jimmy Kimmel leading celebs in addressing food insecurity (CNN)

• Snowflake builds new intelligence that goes beyond RAG to query and aggregate thousands of documents at once (VentureBeat)

• Whisper Into This AI-Powered Smart Ring to Organize Your Thoughts (Wired)

• The Company Quietly Funneling Paywalled Articles to AI Developers (Atlantic)

• Google is hiring an economist to understand how advanced AI could affect our wallets (Business Insider)

• AI-designed antibodies promise big boost to drug development (Financial Times)

• Trump Imposes 25% Tariff On Chinese-Made Trump Products (Onion)

 

Anti-Trump Rising

“So hear me President Trump when I say this: to get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.” — Zohran Mamdani

Voters around the country took their first opportunity in Trump’s second term Tuesday to reject him and his policies. In every race of significance, Democrats beat Republicans by wide margins.

It was a good night for America.

Besides winning the governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia, and the mayor’s race in New York City, Democrats passed Prop. 50 in California to counter the GOP redistricting maneuver in Texas.

But there was a striking contrast among the victorious Democrats in their victory speeches. The two women (Spanberger and Sherrill) struck a gracious note, extending an olive branch to those opposing them and Republicans generally.

The two men (Mamdani and Newsom) were angry and defiant, declaring themselves warriors ready to stand up to Trump and his “war within.” Newsom sounded the alarm that Trump has been, is and will continue doing everything in his power to rig next year’s elections, so that fight has now been engaged.

Newsom spoke in a room almost devoid of people, with just a few flags, cameras, microphones, lights, crews and his wife. A lone reporter (from CNN) shouted questions that he ignored while exiting the scene. It seemed almost dystopian. 

There were no smiles or cheers, just a grim determination that the battle has begun.

HEADLINES:

• Mamdani Wins N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race After Highest Turnout in Decades (NYT)

• The Mamdani Era Begins (New Yorker)

• ‘Turn the volume up’: Mamdani invokes Trump in fiery speech laying out plan of action (Guardian)

• Democrat Abigail Spanberger is elected Virginia’s first female governor (CNN)

• Democrats win key Georgia special elections seen as midterm bellwethers (The Hill)

• New Jersey Elects Sherrill Governor as Democrats Pick Up Key Wins (NYT)

• Election Day 2025: The Resistance Strikes Back (Bulwark)

• Trump suggests U.S. won’t pay any SNAP benefits during shutdown, contradicting court filing (CNBC)

• The secretive donor circle that lifted JD Vance is now re-writing MAGA’s future (WP)

• A Confederacy of Toddlers (Atlantic)

• Department of Transportation may close parts of airspace if government shutdown continues, Duffy says (NBC)

• Medicare patients go without needed treatment as government shutdown disrupts telehealth (PBS)

• Administration hints furloughed workers may not be paid after shutdown (WP)

• We are ready to discuss human rights law changes: top ECHR (BBC)

• Hegseth restricts military officials from talking to Congress without prior approval (ABC)

• Following Trump’s threats to carry out strikes in Nigeria, several Pentagon officials who spoke to Reuters describe feeling whiplash from Trump’s orders as they try to understand the priorities of an administration that in the past several months has elevated once backburner issues like nuclear testing, democracy in Venezuela and cocaine trafficking. (Reuters)

• Report: ICE Shot a US Citizen Trying to Help Kids (Mother Jones)

• Groyper War Consumes the Biggest Right-Wing Think Tank (Bulwark)

• US nuclear weapons testing can forever scar a nation. Just ask the Marshall Islands (CNN)

• World’s biggest spiderweb discovered inside ‘Sulfur Cave’ with 111,000 arachnids living in pitch black (LiveScience)

• The Man Who Invented AGI (Wired)

• The most likely AI apocalypse (Vox)

• Instacart rolls out AI tools for grocers, Sprouts will be first to use its Cart Assistant (CNBC)

• OpenAI Signs $38 Billion Cloud Computing Deal With Amazon (NYT)

• CDC Figures It Easier To Start Tracking People Without Measles (Onion)

In Name Only

Today’s another Election Day. Looking back, the only time I remember feeling a sense of unrestrained joy at the results of an election was 17 years ago when the U.S. elected Barack Obama its first black president.

But even then it was easy to see the trouble that lay ahead. Racism is too embedded in our history for a change like that to go unchallenged. Writing positive essays about Obama online had brought me one indication in the form of some withering attacks from readers outraged at the prospect of a non-white family in the White House.

Although a majority of voters had chosen Obama, almost half of the electorate was opposed, mostly for reasons directly or indirectly rooted in our country’s racial past. And for many of us, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and its aftermath in 1968 was still a fresh memory four decades later.

Once in office, Obama conducted himself with grace and integrity — his eight years as president were essentially scandal-free. His greatest accomplishment other than the Affordable Care Act was simply proving that anyone (male) could be president.

But, egged on by racists like the real estate tycoon Donald Trump, the seething resentment felt by those who felt a black man could never be a legitimate president represented an electoral pot boiling over, just waiting to explode.

In 2016, when Obama left office, it did, bringing us Trump as president. Practically everything in our country has been in a state of utter chaos ever since.

Looking back, it’s clear that Trump’s main appeal has always been to the racist impulses deeply embedded in the American psyche. Our ancestors may have thought that they had settled these matters back in 1865, but 160 years later, the Civil War rages on. We are “One Nation Under God” in name only, all too easily divided against ourselves, and led by a tyrant skilled at doing so.

There is a lot more to the rise of Trump than race, of course, but it remains central to his story.

HEADLINES:

• Counting Race: How the Census Measures Identity and What Americans Think About It (Pew)

• The Southern US county honouring its dark past (BBC)

• Dick Cheney, Powerful Vice President and Washington Insider, Dies at 84 (NYT)

• Trump administration will use SNAP contingency fund to pay partial food stamp benefits (CBS)

• 2 US citizens arrested in alleged ISIS-inspired Halloween plot: DOJ (ABC)

• Trump says Maduro’s days are numbered but ‘doubts’ US will go to war with Venezuela (Guardian)

• The president’s disapproval rating is the highest it’s been this term, according to a new poll, reflecting concerns with his use of executive power and deployment of the National Guard, among other things. [HuffPost]

• Mamdani Has a Point About Rent Control (Atlantic)

• Trump’s politicizing of the U.S. military is accelerating (WP)

• A powerful 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck near the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif early, killing at least 20 people, injuring hundreds and damaging the city’s historic Blue Mosque, authorities said, with the death toll likely to rise. (Reuters)

• In Mexico, Killer Whales Take Down Great White Sharks (NYT)

• School crossing guards face life-threatening dangers on the job (AP)

• Climate change is supercharging extreme rainfall. See if you live in a hotspot. (WP)

• Bring the big leagues to Mexico City (Silver Bulletin)

• How AI Browsers Sneak Past Blockers and Paywalls (CJR)

• ChatGPT’s Browser Bot Seems to Avoid New York Times Links Like a Rat Who Got Electrocuted (Gizmodo)

• Will AI make dating apps better—or even worse? (Economist)

• ICE Agent Panics After Realizing There More Children Than He Has Flash-Bangs (Onion)

 

Trump Intl.

As Trump continues his drive to consolidate power domestically, it is worth remembering that authoritarian leaders typically attack other countries as part of their quest for domination.

Hitler did that, unleashing World War II in the process. Putin has been doing it more gradually for decades now.

In Trump’s case, he is already waging what is almost certainly an illegal war against Venezuela and the drug cartels allegedly headquartered there. His pretext is the drug overdose crisis in the U.S., which is a real problem that needs thoughtful attention by government officials.

I’m not sure that blowing up the unknown occupants of small boats off of South America’s coastlines fits the description of thoughtful attention, but again, this is just the pretext for Trump’s expansionist dreams.

(Remember his comments about Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal.)

Now he is threatening what sounds like a modern-day Crusades against Nigerian Islamists who have allegedly killed a few Christians.

I’ve got news for the president. People of different religions, races and nationalities kill each other all over the world every day. It is appalling, but why does Trump get to choose one isolated situation above all others to threaten using the U.S. military?

There’s no mistaking what Trump is doing as he cherry picks targets around the globe. Like Putin and Hitler, he is not satisfied with merely achieving domestic control.

He is eyeing other parts of the globe where he can dominate as well and he has most of his term in office left to settle on targets.

HEADLINES:

• Nigeria rejects US military threat over alleged Christian killings (Politico)

• Trump tells military to prepare for ‘action’ against Islamist militants in Nigeria (BBC)

• Nigeria says U.S. help against Islamist insurgents must respect its sovereignty (Reuters)

• Treasury Secretary Bessent says SNAP food benefits could restart by Wednesday (CNBC)

• Tariffs are Trump’s favorite foreign policy tool. The Supreme Court could change how he uses them (AP)

• Michigan lawyer says a Halloween terror plot that FBI Director Kash Patel described never existed (Seattle Times)

• Tuesday’s elections may leave America more divided than ever. (CNN)

• Voters divided on midterms despite broad Trump disapproval, poll finds (WP)

• China to ease chip export ban in new trade deal, White House says (BBC)

• US not planning nuclear explosions at this time, energy secretary says (Reuters)

• An Intoxicating 500-Year-Old Mystery (Atlantic)

• Large reasoning models almost certainly can think (Venture Beat)

• AI researchers ’embodied’ an LLM into a robot – and it started channeling Robin Williams (TechCrunch)

• Parents Ask Detained Nanny If She’s Still Free To Watch Kids Friday (Onion)

 

Sunday Reads

HEADLINES:

• Why Fiction Matters Even More in an Irrational World (Globalist)

• Trump threatens military action in Nigeria over Christian persecution claims (NPR)

• As the Shutdown Pain Grows, Trump Attends to Other Matters (NYT)

• Trump asking court how to “legally fund SNAP” after judge’s order (Axios)

• Two held on suspicion of attempted murder as police say train stabbings likely not terror-related (BBC)

• Portland prepares for invasion (New Yorker)

• How Jack Smith’s strongest case against Donald Trump collapsed  (WP)

• America Had a Black President. Then Came the Whitelash. (Reveal)

• Chicago, ICE, and the Lie of the American Pastoral (New Yorker)

• MAGA singles are looking for love in Washington. It’s a challenge. (WP)

• New York City’s Mob Families Are Still in Business (NYT)

• Maduro braces for a U.S. attack; Venezuelans worry more about dinner (WP)

• Will Jon Stewart Get Cancelled? (New Yorker)

• White House restricts media access in key area of the West Wing (WP)

• A.I. Is Making Death Threats Way More Realistic (NYT)

• Here’s How the AI Crash Happens (Atlantic)

• Prince Andrew Stripped Of Royal Computer Privileges (Onion)

 

American Hungry

I had a dream last night, a vivid dream. Whether it was the Parkinson’s, which is known for vivid dreams, or the phase of the moon, or my medications, or the fact that it was Halloween, or maybe such dreams are like earthquakes, you know, the stress to have one builds up over time until you just have a big one, I don’t know.

But I had it. 

In my dream, I had organized a huge event that stretched along a jagged line in an open area south of the city. Under a long string of tents, pretty much everyone I know or ever met was cooking their food specialities for members of the public.

And the public had shown up. Thousands of people had come, including many more people that I knew. Most of them were hungry but the majority of my friends just were there to taste the delicacies, sort of like at the food tents at Burning Man.

I went up and down the food line, checking on everybody. Clearly I was in charge. I explained that people should pay for the food if they could, but that it was fine to give it away as well.

Clearly, most of the people who’d come didn’t have the means to pay, but they were cheerful and willing to volunteer their services to help the operation run smoothly. There seemed to be a lot of bartering going on.

Before long, all of the food was gone. As I walked the line one last time, I remembered that my business plan depended on me getting a small cut of the sales from the vendors who had appeared at my event.

When I checked my pocket, I had one dollar bill.

***

Hunger in America is real and has long been one of our biggest and most persistent social problems. Just check out the two CBS documentaries from the 1960s, one by the legendary Edward R. Murrow.

The most recent estimates are that some 18 million people, or 13.5 percent of U.S. households in 2023, suffered from food shortages or its euphemism, “food insecurity.”

As our elected representatives, Republican and Democrat alike, play their high-stakes political games using hunger as one of their trump cards, and as our overweight President waddles off to his private golf resort in Florida, million of Americans are hungry.

And I had a dream about them. Today’s top story is from the L.A. Times, “Judges order USDA to restart SNAP funding, but hungry families won’t get immediate relief.”

HEADLINES:

• Hunger in America (CBS — 1968) 

• Harvest of Shame (CBS — 1960)

• Federal judge orders Trump administration to pay SNAP benefits out of contingency fund (NBC)

• National Guard deployment in D.C. extended through February (WP)

• Republicans quickly push back on Trump’s call to nix filibuster (Politico)

• Trump’s Plan Is Now Out in the Open (Atlantic)

• U.S. poised to strike military targets in Venezuela in escalation against Maduro regime (Miami Herald)

• Pentagon Admits It Has No Idea Who’s on “Drug Boats” Being Bombed (TNR)

• UN human rights chief says US strikes on alleged drug boats are ‘unacceptable’ (AP)

• Newsom Turns a California Election Into a National Platform (NYT)

• Ohio approves new map giving Republicans a leg up in two more House seats (WP)

• How a radical experiment to bring a forest into a preschool transformed children’s health (Guardian)

• Trump demanded that former special counsel Jack Smith be hauled off to jail amid the political leader’s repeated, sweeping calls for the prosecution and jailing of his perceived political opponents. [HuffPost]

• Classified U.S. report finds hundreds of possible Israeli human rights violations (WP)

• The GOP’s top think tank just defended an open Nazi (Vox)

• FBI says “potential terrorist attack” thwarted in Michigan, 5 people arrested (CBS)

• Kennedy Center ticket sales have plummeted since Trump takeover (WP)

• Despair spreads across historic seaport in Jamaica that Hurricane Melissa demolished (AP)

• Don’t Blow This, Baseball (Atlantic)

• Inside the Louvre jewelry heist (NYT)

• King Charles III strips Prince Andrew of titles and evicts him from royal residence (AP)

• I Tried the Robot That’s Coming to Live With You. It’s Still Part Human. (WSJ)

• As AI reshapes the job market, here are 16 roles it has created (WP)

• Scream Mask Left On While Using Toilet (Onion)