I went out to vote this afternoon. My precinct is just electing local officials. Plus there is a ballot initiative about building Nordic ski and biathlon trails in the Adirondacks. Sure, why not? The polling place was doing brisk business for an off-year election, seemed to me. Although I can’t compare it to last year, since I voted early last year.
So when I got back home to my laptop, the first thing I saw was this:
This is the headllne from Talking Points Memo; here is the story. And this cartoon immediately came to mind:
But the “White House” says Americans will still get partial SNAP payments in spite of what Trump said, according to Politico.
The post seemingly contradicted his own administration’s actions to abide by a federal judge’s decision requiring officials to use emergency money to pay for at least some SNAP benefits. USDA earlier on Tuesday had delivered guidance to states on how to fund half of November benefits.
Trump’s announcement quickly sent lawmakers and administration officials scrambling to clarify next steps for the nation’s largest anti-hunger initiative, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter, who were granted anonymity to share private details.
“We are getting the payments out the door as quickly as we can. USDA sent the guidance to the states,” Leavitt added. “The president is referring to future SNAP payments. He does not want to have to keep tapping into an emergency fund and depleting it in the case of a catastrophe in this country.”
Apparently somebody is overriding Trump’s tantrums. Trump never expected the shutdown to last this long. And now he’s getting frantic. This is also from Politico:
In early October, several Trump administration officials had a friendly pool going of how long the shutdown would last. The White House, at the time, was confident Democrats would quickly fold.
No one guessed more than 10 days. …
… When the shutdown began, White House officials were certain the Trump administration was better positioned to battle the left during a funding lapse.
Trump and his top aides thought that unpaid federal workers, closed and limited federal facilities and threats of ever-more job cuts from Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, would be too much for Democrats to handle.
Trump also is still raving about killing the filibuster rule (yes! please!). Axios:
President Trump’s Truth Social demands to end the filibuster are just a hint of his coming rampage if Senate Republicans hold out against him, advisers tell Axios.
Why it matters: Most Senate Republicans have no interest in nuking the filibuster. But Trump’s frustration is the first clear sign that the shutdown, which becomes a record on Wednesday, is getting to him.
“He will make their lives a living hell,” one Trump adviser told Axios.
“He will call them at three o’clock in the morning. He will blow them up in their districts. He will call them un-American. He will call them old creatures of a dying institution. Believe you me, he’s going to make their lives just hell,” the source continued.
Another adviser emphasized: “He’s really mad about this.”
The article goes on to say that “For weeks, Trump wasn’t paying close attention to the shutdown out of a belief that Democrats would eventually drop their demands.” But now he’s paying attention and making demands. This is going to get messy.
I’ll be watching returns later tonight and probably blogging a bit more. Go ahead and add comments about the elections or anything else to the comments.
Update: The first big result is that NBC has called the Virginia governor’s race for Abigail Spanberger, the Democrat.
Update: Mamdani wins! Such a relief. Cuomo really disgraced himself in this campaign. Maybe he’ll slink away and disappear now.
And Mikie Sherrill won the governor’s race in NewJersey. A good night for Democrats. It’ll be interesting to see the margins, but I will look at that tomorrow.
Commonly used terms and phrases just do not seem adequate anymore. It is way more than just in a bubble or out of touch. It is more like foreign or alien with an extreme language barrier. Fearless leader and his cabal appear to think they are in control of a popular situation when most on the outside see a leader totally out of control of many chaotic situations. Total detachment with no indication of anything close to a shared reality.
Sadly, the same is true of the Clinton Generation Democrats, with Cuomo's stupid & ugly campaign against Mamdani being the prime example.
(I was gonna say 'Old Dems', but didn't want to insult the few remaining New Dealers like Bernie Sanders)
Trump is hosting GOP Senators in the morning at the WH for breakfast. IMO, he will demand that the GOP reopen the government by doing away with the filibuster. (Anybody who notes that my prediction is no proof of my psychic abilities is right.)
Trump is getting ALL bad news tonight. He does not process bad news well. The promise to withhold food from needy families unless the Democrats cave is proof how badly he accepts bad news. The insurance of gerrymandering TX was undone by CA. (I'm predicting – results not in yet. But the GOP quit trying to fight Prop 50 in CA weeks ago. So it's not a big gamble.)
A recent "tweet" by Trump lays out the blueprint of the fascist defeat and Trump lays the blame on the GOP for not ending the shutdown now. Pressure is building to end the shutdown. Trump can't publicly defend what he did with the budget bill that stripped subsidies for needy families who otherwise will be without health care. It's not that the 10 to 20 million affected will not notice – Trump is counting on the rest of the country not noticing or not caring. When the media carries stories, Trump will wave it away as "fake news." Public debate and testimony with projections from experts like Kaiser will set the GOP up for failure in the midterms.
The GOP does NOT want the filibuster to end. If they end it and the Democrats return to power, they will leave it alone. The majority in the USSC will end, So despite the excellence of the WH omelet, Trump will fail tomorow morning no matter what threats he makes.
In a way, that's too bad. I have no confidence that Democrats in the Senate will have the….. moral fortitude to change the Senate rules and end the fascist USSC majority. But it's not fair for me to expect evil to do the dirty deed that Democrats must.
It will be somewhere between mind numbing and depressing to watch the GOP smear machine go into maximum overdrive panicking about the new Islamic Caliphate of Greater New York.
Ames, IA is now ruined. All of Arkansas will now feel the tyranny of extra bike lanes in Upper Manhattan.
Next they'll be claiming that all of New York City is a "no go zone."
Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz says he has formally left the Democratic Party after six decades, citing what he calls its growing hostility toward Israel — a trend he argues is epitomized by New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. In an interview, Dershowitz called Mamdani “a vicious antisemite” and warned that his election could have repercussions far beyond New York.
Oh no! What will we do without Alan leading our party???
The people have spoken, and the political winds will bring change. New York gets new young blood with a more egalitarian message. On those two counts alone, it looks like the best choice the city could make. Good news for today and at least a promise of more good news to come.
The good news will come from the citizens themselves, with leadership that shapes their efforts not with oppressive direction and storm troopers, but with tempered and fair treatment without silly biases. The people their must be trusted. We have seen the horror of allowing the "elites" too much control. We know they cannot be trusted. We have seen their "elite nonsense" in action way too much of late.
Had Local elections here (Groton, CT), too, and Dems swept everything, way more than any prior election since I've been here (2007). The Dem candidate for Town Council with the /lowest/ vote count got almost twice as many votes as the most popular Republican; usually, there are a couple Republicans who fare better than the least popular Dems. Dems swept every local District; usually, the richer sections of town go GOP.
However, in the voting booth, I noticed something odd: there were multiple offices where there weren't enough candidates from /either/ party. I fear this is a sign of Americans giving up on Democracy…