4 very large green bell peppers or about 5 small ones
15 ounce can tomato sauce
1/2 pound ground beef or turkey
1/3 cup chopped onion
1 cup cooked brown or white rice
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
Instructions
Cut the tops off the peppers and remove the seeds. Place the peppers in a large saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a simmer and cook 3 minutes, just until the peppers are slightly soft. Drain, rinse with cool water and set aside on paper towels to drain.
In a skillet, heat the ground beef and onion and cook until no pink remains. Drain.
Add the salt, pepper, rice, garlic powder and half of the tomato sauce.
Stir well and spoon into the peppers.
Top with the other half of the tomato sauce.
Bake in an ungreased dish at 350 for 25-30 minutes. Serve warm.
That's a straight forward recipe for stuffed bell peppers.
Speaking to Scott Jennings, Johnson bemoaned the fact that if Democrats take the House as predicted, Tr*mp will immediately have to face repercussions for his many failings in office. Which is even worse news for Johnson, who’s been Tr*mp’s greatest enabler throughout his second term. Just this week, Johnson painted his boss’s shady use of taxpayer dollars to fund pro-Tr*mp political ads as totally fine and ok.
“It was talking about America’s greatness and the economy coming back, and it wasn’t a plea to vote for anybody. It was just — it was pro Americana,” Johnson told POLITICO. “If the Super PAC’s funding them, that’s good.”
We already knew Johnson was living in Delulu Land. In 2024, Johnson joined in the pile-on against President Biden for celebrating Transgender Day of Visibility when it happened to fall on the same day as Easter.
“Banning sacred truth and tradition—while at the same time proclaiming Easter Sunday as “Transgender Day”—is outrageous and abhorrent,” Johnson said in a tweet that year. During a 2023 prayer call, Johnson claimed that the rise in LGBTQ+ youth identification was going to invite God’s judgment.
Now the tables have turned, and it’s Johnson who’s about to face the judgment of the American people—not to mention their wrath. Perhaps because of this, it would appear that the House Speaker’s refusal to contend with reality is only getting worse as the midterms loom closer.
Mike Johnson is someone in the midst of a homosexual panic. He really needs to learn to breathe.
Thursday, October 8, 2026. Hegseth fails in his public attempt to work out with the troops, Chump visits Texas for a fourth time in six weeks, Chump goes from cursing THE NEW YORK TIMES as liars to trying to fix an issue they exposed, ICE remains a joke and so does its leader, and much, much more.
Mr. Trump was in fighting form, tossing out red meat reminders to Texans about why they voted for him in 2024. He was interrupted nearly a dozen times by protesters, several of whom were led out in handcuffs. He talked a lot about the border, and Democrats, and himself.
What he didn’t talk a lot about was Ken Paxton.
Mr. Trump called the scandal-plagued Texas attorney general one of the best in the country and brought him up onstage briefly, but that was about it. When Mr. Trump first came onstage, it wasn’t even Mr. Paxton who introduced him. It was the baseball player Roger Clemens.
In San Antonio, Mr. Trump wasn’t trying to get people excited about Ken Paxton so much as he was trying to get them excited about Donald Trump. The question animating this race, and so many of the others this season: Is that still enough for Republicans to win these days?
Chump's Desperation Tour has now spent four days in Texas. There were the two days for his TrumpIsABigLoosah convention in September, last week he was in Denton and yesterday he was in San Antonio. The state's governor, Greg Abbott skipped Chump's event yesterday.
Ben (MEIDASTOUCH NEWS) notes that Chump was repeatedly heckled in San Antonio.
If Democrats make big gains in the midterm elections in four weeks, it may not only be because their most loyal voters come out in force, or because their candidates have converted Republican voters to their cause.
Instead, the Democrats’ dream blue wave could come from Republicans who sour on President Trump and stay home. It already has a name: the red undertow.
Across the country, signs are emerging of an enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans, even among those who consider themselves likely to vote. A stretch of rural southwest Michigan — long a Republican stronghold — illustrates the point, with more signs for blueberries and eggs than for political candidates. Volunteers are not showing up to door-knock. And many voters say they are tuning this election out.
“People are just more focused on everyday life,” said Lindsay Kronemeyer, 35, a conservative Christian mother of two who works in the construction industry. “I don’t hear the chatter on the Republican side of ‘Trump this, Trump that.’ He’s just not there in my head anymore.”
With less than a month until Election Day, Democrats are seeing some of their strongest signs yet that the Senate majority is within reach.
A new batch of YouGov polls released Oct. 6 shows Democratic candidates, or an independent who caucuses against Republicans, leading in six of seven closely watched Senate races. The surveys suggest several GOP-held seats in states considered Republican strongholds, including Texas, Ohio, Kansas and Nebraska, have become competitive as Republicans work to defend their 53-47 majority.
Democrats need a net gain of four seats to reclaim control of the chamber. While many of the contests remain within the margin of error, the latest polling points to multiple potential pickup opportunities for a party trying to overcome a difficult Senate map.
It's harder for Republicans, with midterm voting ending in 26 days, to pretend that Chump isn't a drag on the ticket and elected Republicans are moving further and further away from him in hopes of holding on to their offices. AP reports:
Republicans are increasingly anxious that the $1 billion at their disposal may not be enough to fend off sweeping midterm election losses as the party reckons with President Donald Trump’s unpopularity, persistent cost concerns and the fallout from the war in Iran. Despite their cash advantage, the spending is coming in late, forcing MAGA Inc. to pay much higher rates because of the shrinking availability of air time.
After abandoning a GOP-held Senate seat in North Carolina — a state President Donald Trump won three times — the outside groups began spending money to defend a seat in South Carolina. And they’re intensifying their advertising in Kansas, where Democrats haven't won a Senate race in nearly a century.
In the battle for control of the House, national Republicans gave up on defending a blue-leaning seat in Nebraska held for a decade by retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon.
Those dispiriting setbacks signal that the party's defensive position is weakening with a month still left in the campaign.
One national Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak freely about the party’s predicament, said the GOP could wind up facing even worse losses than in President George W. Bush’s disastrous second term.
“If the bottom continues falling out like it has been,” this operative said, “this will be worse than 2006.”
As Trump’s approval continues to sag amid soaring gas and diesel prices driven by the war with Iran, Democrats are bullish that the map will continue to grow for them. And while Republicans still maintain a big outside money advantage, the recent moves show it’s not unlimited — with more tough decisions likely before Election Day.
American drivers are forgiven if they don’t take comfort from President Trump’s latest assertion that oil prices “will drop precipitously” at the end of the Iran war, with gas prices falling to “three dollars a gallon, but ultimately, below two dollars … it will all happen quickly.”
The prediction came via Truth Social on September 7, the same day that notched the most expensive Labor Day gas prices in history at $4.15 a gallon nationally. Prices remained at that level the next day, marking a roughly 30% year-over-year jump as the conflict in the Middle East continues. The national average cost for gas is currently at $4.36.
Trump’s latest promise, meanwhile, follows a $2 per gallon pledge in October, which didn’t come to pass, as well as his February State of the Union declaration that gas “is now below $2.30 a gallon in most states and in some places $1.99 a gallon.”
The Trump administration has been sued over its plans to deploy “a historic number” of election monitors to polling stations during next month’s midterm elections.
The bid “stands to jeopardize” the elections and could “interfere with the right of voters to participate in the election free from intimidation”, according to the NAACP, which filed a lawsuit against Harmeet Dhillon, head of the justice department’s civil rights division, who has said she hopes to send 1,000 monitors to midterm polling sites in November.
“To be clear, there is no federal statute that gives the US Department of Justice [DoJ] the right to send their so-called ‘election monitors’ to polling sites across the country, and this administration has made clear its intent to disrupt and interfere with the way elections are run in our country,” said Kristen Clarke, the NAACP’s general counsel, who served in Dhillon’s role under Joe Biden.
The NAACP lawsuit seeks to force the Trump administration to release records regarding the deployment of the monitors. The NAACP said it requested such records under the Freedom of Information Act on 1 September, but said the Department of Justice had failed to comply.
As President Trump crisscrossed the country last week trying to help his party avoid a blowout in next month’s midterm elections, two of his top political advisers were in the Balkans helping a pro-Russian government looking to tighten its grip on power.
James Blair and Chris LaCivita, who are leading a big-money midterm advertising campaign for the Trump political operation, spent some of the past few days in a small self-governing territory in Bosnia and Herzegovina called Republika Srpska ahead of elections there on Sunday, according to four people familiar with their travels who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the Balkan work.
The engagement is the latest example of Trump advisers profiting from far-right politicians abroad who have sought favor from the U.S. president while bucking the international community.
Mr. Blair and Mr. LaCivita were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars each through a Washington-based law firm that was retained by Republika Srpska’s government to provide counsel on voting issues, according to two of the people familiar with the engagement. They said the work was for the government and not the nationalist party that controls it, though they are essentially one and the same.
Chump, who this week announced on his social media that THE NEW YORK TIMES was "going to hell" for a photo they published of his Trump National Doral golf resort in Miami, responded to THE TIMES article yesterday. Steven Nelson (NEW YORK POST) reports:
President Trump threatened Wednesday to “terminate” two key advisers after they were revealed to have raked in “hundreds of thousands of dollars each” advising a pro-Russian political party in Bosnia as Republicans brace for a potential bloodbath in the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
“Chris LaCivita and James Blair are outside consultants. They do not work for me, other than as outside consultants. They most likely have numerous clients, but for that, you would have to ask them,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“They are allowed to do work for others, just like all consultants in Washington, D.C. I do not have any idea who else they work for but will, on reflection, ask them and, if there’s a conflict, I will terminate them, immediately!”
Blair formerly worked as Trump’s White House deputy chief of staff for legislative, political and public affairs, leaving in May to lead Republican midterm efforts at the pro-Trump MAGA Inc. super PAC.
LaCivita led Trump’s 2024 campaign alongside Susie Wiles, who is now White House chief of staff, and remains an important outside ally.
LaCivita, who served as Trump’s 2024 co-campaign manager, and Blair, who until recently was Trump’s White House deputy chief of staff, were reportedly paid hundreds of thousands of dollars through a Washington, D.C.-based law firm retained by Republika Srpska’s government ahead of Sunday’s elections in the small self-governing territory in Bosnia and Herzegovina, according to The New York Times.
They reportedly defended their work for the far-right government, not the nationalist party that controls it, despite being largely the same. Under that party’s control, Republika Srpska has aligned itself with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
After leaving the White House earlier this year, Blair now leads the Trump-connected super PAC MAGA Inc..
LaCivita works as a senior adviser to the group.
Loser Chump has not won the Nobel Peace Prize and is not going to win it. Barack Obama did but Chump has not and will not. AFP notes:
Donald Trump's chances of winning the Nobel Peace Prize are seen as minimal, but his "spectre" will cast its shadow over Friday's announcement of the winner in Oslo, experts say.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee knows it will be under close scrutiny: since his return to the White House in January 2025, the billionaire Republican has campaigned intensively for the prize and hasn't hidden his disappointment at not winning it yet.
The chances of him getting the nod are however undermined by his war against Iran, his territorial ambitions -- sometimes at the expense of allies, as in Greenland -- and his attacks on international cooperation institutions and the media.
Even though he has not been lobbying as openly for the Nobel in recent weeks, Trump remains on everyone's minds, with strong chances that the committee's pick will, regardless of who they choose, be interpreted as direct or indirect criticism of the US president.
And yet yesterday Chump began harping on the topic yet again. AP notes:
Ahead of the Nobel Peace Prize being announced, Trump said he deserved the award from the Norwegian Nobel Committee but, “They have a reputation for maybe not giving it to people like me.”
Trump, who launched a war in Iran this year, went through his accomplishments for which believed qualified him for the Nobel. He also noted that the 2025 winner, Venezuela’s María Corina Machado, gave him her award.
“Whether I get it or not, I have done far more,” Trump said. “And I think it would be a great discredit to them” if he goes unrecognized.
The 47th president said on Wednesday that he was more deserving of the prize than Obama.
“Look, Obama got it, and he didn’t do anything-- he still doesn’t know what he got it for,” said Trump. “He got it when he was elected, right? Right at the beginning.”
“Whether I get it or not, I have done far more [than anyone else],” the president said.
Ah, listen to the little whiny, cry baby. Tell us again about tariffs were paid by foreign countries. Remember that lie? Remember the lie that tariffs would fix everything? Sasha Rogelberg (FORTUNE) explains:
“They’re a national emergency that threatens our security and our very way of life,” he said at the time. “It’s a very great threat to our country.”
But 17 months later, the administration’s import taxes haven’t closed that deficit at all. In fact, the trade deficit is now the largest it’s been since Trump implemented tariffs, and economists are pouring cold water on the very idea that a widening trade gap is even a threat.
The trade deficit grew by 13.7% to $105.6 billion from July to August, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the highest it’s been since March 2025’s $140 billion. While imports increased by 4.3% to $420.8 billion, exports increased, but at a slower rate, growing 2.2% to $205.7 billion.
He's a failure. Every attempt he makes ends up failing. He's a failure.
The vast majority of relatives of six service members killed in the deadliest strike of the Iran war will be absent from a major White House reception hosted by President Donald Trump for Gold Star families.
Only one family member of those killed during the March 1 Iranian drone attack on Port Shuaiba in Kuwait confirmed plans to attend Tuesday's gathering with Trump and the First Lady.
Meanwhile, surviving troops from the attack have questioned why they were stationed at a location that lacked sufficient air defenses despite being identified as a likely target.
Since commencing on Feb. 28, the conflict has resulted in the deaths of 19 U.S. troops and injured more than 800 others. The annual gathering marks Gold Star Mother’s and Family’s Day, which takes place on the final weekend of September.
According to the White House, this year’s reception recognizes nearly 40 fallen troops from operations dating back to the Vietnam War. Trump was scheduled to deliver an address, followed by a candle-lighting ceremony and a musical presentation featuring a rendition of "America the Beautiful."
Many Gold Star relatives continue to express frustration regarding the lack of details released by the Pentagon concerning the strike in Kuwait.
"There are questions about what happened before the attack, what information was available, what decisions were made, and what happened in the moments leading up to six American soldiers losing their lives," Joey Amor — whose 39-year-old wife, Master Sgt. Nicole M. Amor, was among those killed — said in a public Facebook statement Monday.
"I am done asking quietly. Today, I am asking the American people to stand with these six families and demand transparency."
Injured soldiers recounted unheeded warnings raised prior to the attack and described feeling let down by the military medical system in the weeks that followed. The account of the March 1 assault relies on interviews conducted with 13 service members.
A US senator has accused Hegseth of attempting to hide the realities of the war from Congress. Namrata Sen (BENZINGA) reports:
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) says the Pentagon blocked his access to a key U.S. military installation in Qatar, alleging officials sought to limit congressional scrutiny of damage from Iranian attacks.
Murphy, also a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was denied entry to Al Udeid Air Base during a Middle East trip with a congressional delegation. He said the trip was intended to inspect potential damage at U.S. facilities and evaluate the conflict’s effect on regional partnerships.
"Something unprecedented happened during my visit to the Gulf. For the first time in 20 years in Congress, I was denied entry to U.S. military facilities and even meetings with military leaders," Murphy wrote on X.
According to Murphy, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued an order that applies to both parties in a bid to “hide the cost of the war.”
Pete Hegseth is odd. This isn’t just a personal opinion, though there’s no doubt that he gets widely mocked for his carefully cultivated public persona, which is a mix of megachurch preacher, gym rat and Robert Duvall’s napalm-huffing character in “Apocalypse Now.” The fact that the defense secretary is different is simply a statistical reality.
It’s not just that he’s a white evangelical Christian, a group that, according to PRRI, makes up only 13% of the population. Hegseth’s church, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, is extreme even for the right, with a leader who argues against women’s suffrage and teaches that slavery was the height of “mutual intimacy and harmony” between the races. Even within MAGA, those remain fringe positions, despite great efforts by some Christian nationalists to reignite “debate” on such long-resolved issues.
All this means it’s hard not to laugh when Hegseth pontificates about his hatred of “weirdos.” Although he has a war to fight in Iran, somehow he finds time to focus his attention on what he clearly sees as the greater battle: remaking the military according to the demands of his very white, very male, very right-wing vision.
“No fatties, no t******s, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals,” Hegseth said during a Sept. 30 speech at the U.S. Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. He didn’t explicitly say “no women,” but his kicker — “with testosterone testing on top” — made the implication plain. The “no beardos” demand may seem strange, but as Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times explained, it’s coded racism. Hegseth ended medical exemptions that allowed beards for people, mostly Black men, with certain skin conditions. This may explain why he has no problem when white men have beards, as seen on his church leader, Doug Wilson, or the many celebrities the defense secretary likes to take photos with. (Hegseth himself sported a beard in 2018.)
Priss Pot Hegseth couldn't handle a workout.
Turning to ICE, a September FOX "NEWS" poll finds 51% of Americans believe ICE deportations have gone too far. Alexander Bolton (THE HILL) notes some Republicans who agree with that finding:
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who’s running for reelection this year, said most Americans want Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to target migrants who have committed crimes other than crossing the border illegally.
“Most Americans are saying we are a nation of laws, but with as many people here illegally as we’ve got, let’s make darn sure that our focus is on getting those individuals that have violated our laws with regard to other things other than being here illegally,” he said.
Rounds advised the Trump administration to ease off on immigrants who “are here and that have a court determination that [says] they can be here.”
He suggested “we not go after them” and instead “refocus on those individuals that are actually causing harm within society today.”
“Most Americans will tell you that just in terms of their sense of fairness, they would prefer to go after individuals who have been violating our [criminal] laws,” he said.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said he agrees with his Senate GOP colleagues that Trump’s mass deportations have gone too far.
“I would rather have 100 illegally present people go free than have that innocent person caught,” he said. “They’re right."
“If you’re going to put somebody through that, you better be damn sure you have a justified basis for doing it,” he said of immigration enforcement sweeps that have caught up citizens and green-card holders.
An investigation by ProPublica found that more than 170 U.S. citizens have been held by immigration agents, including some Americans who have been tackled, beaten and shocked with Tasers by federal immigration enforcement officers.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin sparked outrage Wednesday after accusing “socialists” of trying to “vandalize the demographics of America” to seize political power.
“Socialists want to vandalize the demographics of America to gain political power,” Mullin wrote on his official government account. “We will never allow amnesty, illegal alien voting, or any other scheme to disenfranchise Americans.”
The unusual phrase quickly set off alarm bells among immigration experts and historians, including Cato Institute Director of Immigration Studies David J. Bier.
“What the actual insane garbage is this? Vandalize the demographics? Gross,” Bier wrote on X. Bier argued that President Donald Trump “didn't have to ‘vandalize the demographics’ to win Republican support for his policies" — before taking aim at the MAGA administration’s agenda.
“The only demographic ‘vandals’ here are DHS officials trying to carry out ‘100 million deportations,’” he added.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, called Mullin’s language “chilling” and questioned what exactly the Trump cabinet official meant.
“‘Vandalize the demographics of America’” is either a chilling phrase suggesting that Mullin is a white nationalist or an absurdly meaningless bit of pablum which ignores 250 years of the constantly shifting demographics of a nation of immigrants,” Reichlin-Melnick posted Wednesday.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray, Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, issued the following statement on a Government Accountability Office (GAO) decision issued today, which concludes that President Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. illegally impounded fiscal year 2025 funding for health research conducted by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in violation of the Impoundment Control Act (ICA):
“This decision confirms what we’ve long known: President Trump lit health research funding on fire last year, and it’s clear as day he’s just done the same again this year. In fact, President Trump announced to the world just a few days ago that he was illegally cutting nearly $30 million more, and HHS has failed to detail to the Committee exactly how it has spent down AHRQ funding for fiscal year 2026.
“This is research that has saved tens of thousands of lives and saved billions of dollars in health care costs—but President Trump and Secretary Kennedy are intent on breaking the law to cut it off, and Republicans in Congress have all but let them do it. It’s past time Congress imposes real consequences on this administration for killing lifesaving health research—I’ll keep fighting to do just that.”
In its decision today, GAO concluded:
“Congress appropriated lump-sum amounts to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to carry out various research initiatives for fiscal year 2025. .… We conclude that HHS withheld funds when it declined to obligate or expend more than $78 million of its FY 2025 appropriation before the close of the fiscal year.We further conclude that this withholding constituted an impoundment under the ICA rather than a programmatic delay. Because HHS did not submit a special message proposing to rescind AHRQ funds, HHS’s actions violated the ICA.”
GAO’s decision examines how the Trump administration illegally impounded fiscal year 2025 funding provided to AHRQ for health research after the Trump administration sabotaged the agency, pushing out 80% of all staff and cancelling grants en masse. It’s clear, however, that this administration has once again illegally withheld and misspent AHRQ funding provided by Congress for fiscal year 2026, as well. Senator Murray and Senator Tammy Baldwin, Ranking Member of the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee, raised alarm bells about the fate of fiscal year 2026 AHRQ funds several weeks ago. Then, just days after HHS Deputy Secretary Nominee Chris Klomp vowed to senators that virtually all of the agency’s funding would be spent—while failing to provide details to back up that assertion—President Trump moved to permanently impound nearly $30 million in AHRQ funding in his “pocket rescission.” Republicans have repeatedly blocked Democrats’ efforts to prevent presidents from attempting to use “pocket rescissions.”
½ green bell pepper sliced any color will do actually -the more the merrier
2 cups chicken broth
1 Tablespoon Italian seasoning
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
16 oz Angel Hair pasta
1 cup Parmesan cheese
Directions
Start a pot of water on the stove for your pasta. In a big skillet, drizzle a small amount of olive oil.
Slice chicken breast and place in skillet. Cook on med-high heat until it begins to brown good. Toss in onions and peppers and cook for about 2-3 minutes.
Add the Italian seasoning, minced garlic, salt, and black pepper. Stir to coat the chicken and vegetables.
Add in 2 cups of chicken broth. Stir and bring to a boil. Cover and reduce heat.
Place your pasta in the other pot that is now boiling. Once your pasta is finished cooking, your chicken will be done too!
Drain pasta. Mix in a handful of the cheese in with the chicken mixture. You can either toss it all with the pasta in the same pan, or keep it separate until it goes on your plate. Season with salt and pepper.
Conservatives who blasted Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders for casting a white man as her Medicaid freeloader ran into a problem, as a new report pulled her own state's numbers.
About 60% of people enrolled in ARHOME, the Arkansas Medicaid program covered by Sanders' new work requirements, are white, according to state Department of Human Services data cited by the Associated Press. About 18% are Black.
That puts white enrollees ahead of Black enrollees by more than 3 to 1, in the very program the ad was promoting.
The spot features "Brad," a young white gamer covered in cheese puffs while taxpayers cover his health care. It set off a revolt on the right last week, led by Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh.
"Republicans don't have the balls to do this ad with 'Shaniqua' as the villain," Walsh posted. "Even though that would actually be an accurate portrayal of the problem at hand."
Broader Medicaid figures tell the same story. White residents make up about 57% of Arkansas' entire Medicaid population, according to KFF data cited by the Arkansas Advocate.
Nationally, Black Americans make up roughly 13% of the population and about 18.5% of Medicaid recipients, AP reported. Experts tie that overrepresentation to generations of structural economic disparities. White beneficiaries still outnumber Black beneficiaries nationwide, by about 38% to 19% among those under 65.
Wednesday, October 7, 2026. Chump's Desperation Tour continues and today finds him back in Texas for the third time since the start of September, Priss Pot Hegseth continues to garner attention as does ICE which was caught lying to the courts again, and much more.
Donald Trump has spent his political life treating the press as a prop. Friendly outlets are the audience he performs for, while hostile ones are the villains he performs against. But the president has never had to confront a prop that has stopped cooperating. It’s why he has spent several days raging at nearly every corner of the media, including the one network he has long treated as his own. Increasingly obsessed with controlling the image of his political decline rather than reckoning with reality, Trump has set out on a campaign of intimidation as his usual spectacle starts to finally fizzle out following more than a decade of domination. But browbeating Fox News and continuing to sideline CNN and POLITICO cannot conceal what is there in plain sight: shrinking crowds and falling poll numbers.
Over a whirlwind weekend of rallies across Alabama, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas, the cracks in the MAGA facade became impossible to ignore. Trump has always treated crowd size at his rallies as a proxy for legitimacy and domination. In his eyes, the image of an overflowing arena functions as proof that the country loves him, that the media lies about him and that his political project remains invincible. This is why the sight of empty seats in high school gymnasiums and muted cable coverage that tell a less flattering story cuts so deeply.
“In actuality, my Events for very good Republican Politicians are probably more crowded than ever. There are no empty seats, there haven’t been for years, and there never will be. The Rallies are ‘HOTTER’ than ever,” he wrote on Truth Social Monday, demanding that “The New York Times, and many other Artificial Media Outlets, should be arrested for their dishonesty.” The president was referencing a Times report that during an event on Friday, Trump’s venue on the campus of the University of South Alabama was not full and that Trump’s midterm campaign swing feels “more like a farewell tour.”
But the day before, Trump had turned his fire on a less obvious target.
“Sad to see that Fox & Friends (Sunday) is not covering our packed house and incredibly enthusiastic (beyond!) Rally that took place in Ohio last night, or the ones in Alabama, Texas, or Oklahoma over the past two days,” he posted on Truth Social Sunday morning. The rallies were “absolutely phenomenal, better than ever,” he insisted. “Our people want to see our Rallies, and reports on our Rallies, on FoxNews, or they will very quickly stop watching (like I am doing right now!).”
With his approval ratings in the dirt over the economy and failing war on Iran, Trump’s latest midterm blitz has seen him address high school gyms and venues dramatically smaller than those he packed during his first presidential campaign, drawing crowds up to 75 percent smaller.
The clearest comparison of his dwindling power came in Mobile, Alabama, where Trump held one of the defining rallies of his insurgent 2015 campaign, so popular it had to be moved to a bigger venue. Around 30,000 people descended on the 40,000-plus capacity Ladd-Peebles Stadium to see Trump that August, according to an estimate from city officials reported at the time.
When Trump returned to Mobile last Friday, however, the president appeared at the Mitchell Center, an arena with room for around 10,000 people. Local media reported that around 8,000 attended.
The venue was about 75 percent smaller than the stadium Trump used in 2015, while the estimated crowd had fallen by around 73 percent.
The Desperation Tour is about Chump going to states he once had huge popularity in and talking up GOP candidates who are in tight races. Instead, however, he's making every event on this pity tour about himself.
On Monday night, the president defended the costs of his war on Iran, insisting once again he prevented the country from developing nukes.
He then added, “They could take out a city. Let them take — Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.”
On Tuesday morning, Rampell joked with MS NOW’s Peter Alexander that California's Republican candidates must be cringing —particularly the GOP nominee for governor.
The Desperation Tour is poorly planned, very poorly planned. For example, last week it was in Texas -- Denton, Texas. Then it went on to Ohio and other states. Today? It's back in Texas. San Antonio. Chump will be sharing the stage with? Not Texas Governor Greg Abbott. He has announced he has other events to attend.
More Americans are identifying as Democratic than at any time since the first years of the Obama administration, less than a month before the midterm elections.
The latest quarterly poll from Gallup shows 50 percent of Americans asked either said they were a Democrat or leaned that way, compared to 39 percent for the Republican Party. The share of those on the left has been steadily rising since the end of 2024, while the number of those saying they were Republican or Republican-leaning has fallen.
One of the most telling signs of broader GOP panic? Republicans feeling compelled to distance themselves from Trump even in these red areas — whether calling for an end to the Iran war, overhauling their websites to erase mentions of the president, or declining to campaign with Trump.
On Monday, the Houston Chronicle reported that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott won’t appear with Trump when the president visits San Antonio this week. Abbott’s campaign blamed scheduling conflicts, but these are the kinds of events GOP candidates would never have missed once upon a time, especially in a red state.
And indeed, many of the worst signs for the GOP are emanating from Texas.
There’s the awkward ad from Senate nominee Ken Paxton’s estranged wife (who has accused him of infidelity) in which she encourages people to vote Republican. There are the leaked audio clips in which Paxton is heard complaining about Trump and the national GOP hurting his campaign. And on Monday, GOP state Rep. Briscoe Cain posted on X: “If the election were held tomorrow, all state wide races go blue.”
Just to underscore how stunning that would be, Democrats haven’t won any statewide race in Texas since 1994. And this isn’t some moderate Republican spouting off; this is a MAGA lawmaker who tried to help overturn the results of the 2020 election for Trump.
None of this means the GOP is doomed. While there are enough signs in the polling to cause the party to worry, Democrats’ path to the Senate majority still goes through those double-digit Trump states. That’s a high bar to clear.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s ouster of top generals and admirals from the U.S. military are “damaging our readiness,” according to Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a retired astronaut and Navy captain.
A member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Kelly said Hegseth’s intended 20 percent reduction of the top of the ranks — announced last week — would only hurt national security.
“When you hurt readiness, it means that all of us ... are less safe because we have the most unqualified secretary of Defense we've ever had in this country's history,” Kelly said Sunday on CBS News’s "Face the Nation."
He also accused Hegseth of often firing people “because of the color of their skin or because they’re women.”
Key Republican senators say they were blindsided by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s announced 20 percent reduction of the U.S. military’s general and admirals, and they're voicing concerns about the lack of consultation with Congress and the possibility that qualified senior officers were sacked for political or ideological reasons.
Senior Republicans on Capitol Hill are questioning whether too many experienced and highly qualified generals and admirals are being pushed out because of politics and what impact it might have on military readiness in the future.
“I wouldn’t have made that a priority if I had been asked,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who said he was only informed of the 20 percent reduction shortly before it was announced.
“I didn’t get a long lead,” he said when asked if he got a heads up before Hegseth’s announcement Wednesday.
Wicker didn’t have many details about the significant reduction in senior ranks. “I think he’s probably interested in cutting out bureaucracy at the top level,” he speculated.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is handling the Pentagon’s request for an emergency supplemental spending package as well as the annual defense spending bill, said the sudden and large reduction of generals and admirals raises questions and concerns.
Collins said she didn’t get advanced notice of the steep reduction in military leadership ranks.
She noted she told Hegseth at a hearing earlier this year that his ouster of senior military officials was “deeply troubling” and risked “depriving us” of the “talent, dedication and patriotism” of women and people of color who were disproportionately pushed out.
Republican US House Rep Thomas Massie has introduced a call for Hegseth to be impeached. A Republican senator has declared he regrets his vote to confirm Hegseth. John Light (TALKING POINTS MEMO) reports:
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) has a book to promote. In it, he revealed this week, he delves into his greatest regret: voting to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“The president referred to Pete Hegseth as right out of Central Casting — and I agree with that: He’s an actor. He’s not a manager,” Tillis told MS NOW’s Morning Joe.
This confession comes with a hint of déjà vu. An outgoing senator with a brand as a moderate — at least within the spectrum of today’s Republican Party — regrets a pivotal confirmation vote. Perhaps it brings to mind Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the doctor-turned-legislator who, despite his reservations, confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead Health and Human Services. Kennedy then immediately broke promises Cassidy said he had made to him, and began acting on his life’s work to undercut the vaccine regimen in America. Who could have seen it coming?
For any who may have forgotten, Hegseth was the most controversial nominee in Chump's cabinet and the vote was split 50 for and 50 against. JD Vance, as Vice President, is President of the Senate. To break the tie, JD Vance voted in favor of confirming him.
The Associated Press spoke to a group of nine servicemembers who all claim that the U.S. military’s medical system failed them after they were injured in the deadly attack on March 1.
Army Lieutenant Colonel Arturo Lincón, a veteran of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, suffered extensive injuries from shrapnel, including to his left vertebral artery, which put him at risk for a stroke. However, his injuries were not considered serious enough to get him admitted to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. Instead, he was dismissed to the Army barracks and instructed to schedule outpatient appointments.
“I was just kind of on my own, at least it felt like that,” Lincón told the AP. He underwent weeks of specialized outpatient care at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington. Months later, he is still struggling to receive Traumatic Injury benefits under the Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance.
The shock gloves immigration agents could soon use to control detainees and protesters worked so powerfully during a military exercise that participants felt intense pain, stopped fighting immediately and feared additional exposures, according to a previously unreleased Army study.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement leaders were aware of the findings before signing a $16.7 million contract to purchase 6,000 pairs of shock gloves in August, according to records obtained by the watchdog group American Oversight and shared with The Associated Press.
The shocks had a profound impact on Army employees who played the role of combative prisoners during the exercise, which took place at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas in October 2024. The participants, several of whom were large-statured men, stopped resisting seconds after officers applied shocks by touching gloves to their skin, and were left with “fatigue, soreness and excessive apprehensiveness to being shocked again,” the study found.
“After experiencing the effects of the GLOVE, ... participants stated just seeing the GLOVE was enough to make them want to comply,” the authors wrote.
ICE has called the gloves “distraction and de-escalation devices" that will be safer than other non-lethal options to subdue targets for arrest and deportation and protesters who create civil disturbances. The agency has argued the rapid compliance they cause will keep officers safer and prevent incidents from requiring potentially lethal force.
But critics have warned the gloves will give ICE another weapon to intimidate and brutalize people even as the agency is under fire for excessive force that has left a trail of deaths and injuries across the nation.
A Chicago teacher who was shot five times by an immigration agent last year is suing the federal government for damages.
The federal government had originally charged Marimar Martinez with assault after she was shot by Border Patrol agent Charles Exum in October, saying she was a "domestic terrorist" who "ambushed" law enforcement agents and rammed them with her vehicle.
However, federal prosecutors later dropped those charges with prejudice, meaning the case against Martinez is permanently closed. An Illinois Accountability Commission later found that Exum had no justification in shooting her.
Martinez said she wants to spread awareness through the charges against the federal government, which include negligence, battery, assault, false arrest, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution.
One of the pronouncements in Martinez's trial was that ICE agents and the government had lied to the court. Kathryn Wilkens (MEDIAITE) reports that this has happened again:
A federal judge appointed by President Donald Trump tore into Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a blistering ruling Monday, accusing agents of making illegal arrests and falsifying official records to cover up their actions.
U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown issued the rebuke in the case of Angel Jesus Almonte, who was arrested during a May ICE operation in the Bronx despite not being one of the two men agents were seeking. ICE also wrongly arrested Jeury Concepcion, a U.S. citizen, during the same operation.
Brown rejected ICE’s explanation that agents had simply mistaken the men for their intended targets.
“The claims of misidentification here prove baseless, the arrests were procedurally deficient and legally invalid, and ICE agents falsified official records trying to conceal their illegal actions,” the judge wrote, noting Concepcion suffered significant injuries.
The judge pointed to stark discrepancies in ICE’s account. Almonte was six feet tall and weighed 180 pounds, while the man agents claimed to have confused him with was 5-foot-7 and 110 pounds. The ICE team leader acknowledged that photographs made it “very easy to see they’re two different people.”
In March of this year, Kristi Noem was fired as Secretary of Homeland Security. Markwayne Mullin became the new Secretary of Homeland Security that same month. And though they got a new secretary, they continue to lie to the courts. Not a good look. Not a look that instills faith in their actions.
The Department of the Interior is headed by a lunatic (Doug Burgum) who sees our national lands as something to sell off. He's having his own problems in his department. Jimmy Tobias (GUARDIAN) reports:
An 18-year veteran of the US Department of the Interior has resigned in protest from the sprawling federal agency, denouncing “a deeply troubling assault on the rule of the law” that took place at the department under Donald Trump.
John Murdock, an attorney and self-described conservative Christian, began working for the agency’s legal office in 2002. In his resignation letter, first sent to his supervisor earlier this year and obtained exclusively by the Guardian and Public Domain, Murdock cites “glaring legal flaws” he witnessed within the agency during the course of the Trump administration, as well as concerns over offshore oil and gas drilling, the aggressive push to expand fossil fuels and the flouting of environmental regulation.
“We are headed in the wrong direction,” wrote Murdock, who officially stepped down on 30 September.
Murdock’s resignation and public comments come amid an exodus of longtime government workers and scientists within federal agencies, including at the interior department, which has lost thousands of employees ever since Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) began its controversial efforts to slash government employment last year.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:
Senators concerned that “the President has in fact accepted the ring as part of a quid pro quo agreement to reduce diamond tariffs.”
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) questioned the White House, the General Services Administration (GSA), and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) about the location and ownership of the watch-sized 18-karat gold ring encrusted with 321 diamonds and 75 gemstones gifted to President Trump by Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC), noting the “unseemly appearance of this transaction.”
In June, AWDC gifted this ring to Trump just weeks before the President exempted European natural diamonds from Section 301 tariffs, making Belgium’s diamond industry the only major player with zero-percent tariff access to the U.S. market. In August, Senators Warren and Blumenthal wrote to AWDC and David Gotlib Luxury Cufflinks, probing them on what seemed to be a “cartoonish bribery attempt” that raised fresh concerns about the President’s record of distributing special treatment to giant corporations and wealthy insiders who come bearing gifts.
The disposition of the ring is currently unknown.
“In June 2026, AWDC presented the ring to U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Bill White…[who] posted that he could not ‘wait to present this ring to President Trump and have it on display in the Oval Office.’ As of July 2, 2026, the White House confirmed that the ring had not yet been presented to President Trump. To date, we are not aware of any public reporting indicating the current location of the ring,” wrote the senators.
The gift may have been processed through one of two different channels. Gifts given by anyone other than a foreign government to the President, the White House, or the U.S. government are first screened, categorized, and evaluated by the White House Gift Office. If a gift is made to the President personally, it may be retained by the President, while those made out to the government of the United States are cataloged and distributed to the appropriate government agency.
As a public-private partnership, AWDC may have acted on behalf of a foreign government, in which case the ring is subject to the Foreign Emoluments Clause and therefore should have been processed through different channels.
“The circumstances in which AWDC gifted this ring, and the lack of clarity about its disposition, raise significant questions about whether the President has in fact accepted the ring as part of a quid pro quo agreement to reduce diamond tariffs,” wrote the senators.
The senators demanded that the White House, GSA, and NARA release information about the ring and its whereabouts by October 19, 2026.
Senator Warren has long conducted oversight on the Trump family’s apparent attempts to profit from their government roles:
In August 2026, Senators Warren, Blumenthal, and Kim probed Korean company Base Group’s mysterious $2 million payment to President Trump while under a trade-related investigation by the Trump administration, raising concerns about pay-to-play politics and bribery. In a new letter to Base Group Chairman Kim Sung-jip, the lawmakers pressed the company for answers on the suspiciously timed payment.
In July 2026, Senators Warren and Blumenthal, along with Representative Stansbury, opened an investigation into reports that Softbank Group (Softbank) recently donated $50 million to the Trump Presidential Library — the largest publicly disclosed contribution to the Library and a possible attempt to curry political favor.
In March 2026, Senator Warren released a new response from the Department of Defense (DoD) indicating that there are no effective processes in place to prevent possible conflicts of interest and corruption involving President Donald Trump’s family and the Department’s awarding of defense contracts. In a new letter, she and Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) pressed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on this failure and pushed for answers regarding Trump’s sons’ latest investment in Powerus, a drone company.
In September 2025, Senator Warren pressed the CEO of Rolex on why the company invited President Trump to be Rolex’s guest at the finals of the U.S. Open Tennis Championship earlier this month — just weeks after President Trump announced 39 percent tariffs on Swiss imports.
In July 2025, Senator Warren pushed the CEOs of Amazon, Meta, Tesla, Apple, and Alphabet, on their attempts to secure billion-dollar tax handouts paid for by ripping away health care coverage, food assistance, and other services from millions of American families.
In May 2025, Senator Warren wrote to Pilgrim’s Pride and JBS USA (the parent company of Pilgrim’s Pride), pushing them to explain Pilgrim’s Pride’s $5 million donation to the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee, the single largest donation — bigger than Amazon, Meta, and Google’s donations combined.
In April 2025, Senator Warren pressed Tim Cook about reports that spoke with Trump administration officials to win an exemption to Trump’s China tariffs, worth billions of dollars for Apple.
In April 2025, on the 100th day of the second Trump administration, Senator Warren read 100 reports of corruption from President Trump’s term into the Congressional record, pointing to all the ways President Trump and his family have used the presidency to enrich themselves, give favors to donors, and make it more difficult to hold him accountable for corruption.
