Wednesday, November 19, 2025

Slow Cooker Stuffing in the Kitchen

Jean e-mailed a very important recipe, All Recipes' Slow Cooker Stuffing:
 
1 cup butter

2 cups chopped onion

2 cups chopped celery

12 ounces sliced mushrooms

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley

12 cups dry bread cubes

1 ½ teaspoons salt

1 ½ teaspoons dried sage

1 teaspoon poultry seasoning

1 teaspoon dried thyme

½ teaspoon dried marjoram

½ teaspoon ground black pepper

3 ½ cups chicken broth, or more as needed

2 large eggs, beaten

Directions

Gather all ingredients.
 
Melt butter in a skillet over medium heat. Cook and stir onion, celery, mushroom, and parsley in butter until slightly softened, 5 to 8 minutes.

 
Place bread cubes in a very large mixing bowl. Spoon cooked vegetables over bread cubes. Season with salt, sage, poultry seasoning, thyme, marjoram, and pepper.

 
Pour in enough chicken broth to moisten the mixture—bread cubes should be evenly damp but not soggy—then stir in beaten eggs until fully incorporated.
 
Transfer mixture to a slow cooker.

 
Cover and cook on High for 45 minutes. Reduce heat to Low and cook until heated through and flavors are blended, about 4 to 8 hours.

Jean has her own stuffing recipe as do I.  We won't be using the above one -- though it's a very good recipe.  So why note it?  Because you may have a slow cooker.  First time entertainers for the holidays can get stressed very easily.  Four burners, if you're lucky, an over and a microwave oven.  A slow cooker, an instanta pot, etc.  These are things that can free up space on your stove top.  Same with a toaster oven.  My friend Betsy has never made her Thanksgiving ham in the oven.  She uses that for her turkey and makes the ham in a slow cooker instead.  A lot of time, people show up with something.  And that's great.  More food!  But it can sometimes be packed in the kitchen and everyone's waiting for that stove top burner or the microwave to heat what they've brought.  Remember that you can use other devices.  Pop the cooked stuffing over to the crock pot and you can warm it and keep it warm with the "keep warm" setting. 

Jean's reminding us to be creative and to remember it's the moment and the people.  If you feel overwhelmed, take a moment for yourself.  It can be a lot but you're going to do just fine.


News?  AP reports:

The leader of an Eastern European neo-Nazi group has pleaded guilty in New York to trying to recruit others to commit violent attacks against Jews and racial minorities, including one plot that would have involved dressing as Santa Claus to hand out poisoned candy to children.
Federal prosecutors said they would seek a sentence of up to 18 years for Michail Chkhikvishvili, a 22-year-old from the Republic of Georgia who goes by the nickname “Commander Butcher.” He pleaded guilty Monday before a federal judge in Brooklyn to soliciting hate crimes and distributing information about making bombs and ricin.

If Chump is done playing footsie with Nazis like Nick Fuentas, can we please see that this hateful man is prosecuted to the full extent of the law?

On Chumpy and Fuentes, be sure to read Ava and C.I.'s "Media: The Four Jack Asses of the Apocalypse."

Yesterday, I noted Rev. Jesse Jackson and his health.  Mahalia Otshudy (The Root) reports:

After scary health concerns and false claims of being on life support, there are finally some positive health updates about civil rights icon and Martin Luther King Jr. protégé Reverend Jesse Jackson’s condition in the hospital.

If you didn’t know, Jesse Jackson, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2015 and re-diagnosed with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) in April, has been staying at Western Memorial Hospital in Chicago since Nov. 12, according to USA Today.
PSP is a rare neurological condition that affects certain areas of your brain, causing you to think, walk, move your eyes, and even swallow differently, according to the Cleveland Clinic. The condition has no cure, but can be treated to help manage symptoms.

However, in a statement released by Jackson’s organization Rainbow Push Coaltion, his family cleared up false reports about his health and confirmed that the activist is in stable condition.

“The family of Reverend Jesse L Jackson, Sr., wishes to clarify his current medical condition following inaccurate media reports. Reverend Jackson is in stable condition and breathing without the assistance of machines. He remains under the care of physicians as he manages progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a neurological disorder he was diagnosed with in April.”

Good.  We still need him.  What Barack Obama is to a younger generation, Rev. Jackson is to me -- a fighter and an inspiration. 


This is C.I.'s "The Snapshot" for Tuesday:


Tuesday, November 18, 2025.  Today, the House is scheduled to vote on releasing the Epstein files, Donald continues his war on immigrants, an ICE-er gets arrested, the editorial board of THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVERS serves up a must-read piece, Chump's war on the economy has driven a family out of the family business -- a family trade that had lasted since the late 1800s prior to Chump 'helping' the economy, and much more.


As we all know, Donald Chump is now claiming he wants the Epstein files released.  Meredith Lee Hill (POLITICO) reports:

President Donald Trump's call for House Republicans to support releasing Jeffrey Epstein-related documents was a stunning capitulation after a months-long campaign to block the vote.

It was also a specific defeat for Trump at the hands of a despised GOP opponent: Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

“He got tired of me winning,” Massie said of Trump’s U-turn in an interview Monday morning.

Insisting “I DON’T CARE!” in a late-night Truth Social post, Trump was bowing to the inevitable — a broad House Republican mutiny on a vote that was only scheduled because Massie forced it. It was the result of Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) launching a discharge petition aimed at sidestepping senior GOP leaders who desperately wanted to avoid bringing the issue to the House floor.

The campaign to avoid the vote got remarkably ugly in the days before Trump finally conceded, with the president personally attacking Massie for recently remarrying after the sudden death last summer of his wife of more than 30 years.  

Chump's a liar.  If he wanted the files released, they'd be released.  Luke Broadwater (NEW YORK TIMES) points out Chump doesn't need the House of Representatives to vote on the issue today, he can release the files without a vote:

Facing intense political pressure, President Trump has reversed his position on whether he supports a congressional measure that would compel the Justice Department to release more materials from the investigation into the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

On Monday, Mr. Trump said he would sign the bill if it reached his desk.

But Mr. Trump’s sudden reversal raises a question: If the president agrees that more investigative materials in the Epstein case should be released, why is he waiting for the passage of the so-called discharge petition to do so? Why doesn’t he immediately order Attorney General Pam Bondi to make the documents public?

The fact is that if Mr. Trump chooses to, he can indeed order more files released — with or without legislation — much as he did in other cases of intense public interest, including the killings of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy.


In the end, he was forced to change his public statements because ha had lost and by lying and pretending he wants the Epstein files released, he hopes to look like less of a loser.  Not possible.  Annie Karni and Tyler Pager (NEW YORK TIMES) offer a reminder on his previous stands:


President Trump denounced calls for the release of the Epstein files as a Democratic hoax. He dispatched aides to warn Republicans that backing it would be seen as a “hostile act.” He placed personal calls to those who dared to do so, and even dispatched his attorney general and F.B.I. director to meet with one in the White House Situation Room in efforts to get her to flip.

In the end, none of it worked. And on Sunday night, Mr. Trump did something he has rarely been forced to do: He caved in the face of pressure from his party and called on House Republicans to go ahead and back a bill that would order his Justice Department to release all of its investigative files on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

By Monday, he was saying, “Sure,” he would sign the legislation he has spent months trying to kill.

It’s not clear that doing so would have any concrete impact; Mr. Trump could have ordered the release of the files without an act of Congress, and has not. And it remains to be seen whether his Justice Department will ultimately release the files.

But his reversal has opened the floodgates of Republican backing for the bill, which is expected to come to a vote in the House as early as Tuesday and appears likely to pass unanimously. It has also raised questions about Mr. Trump’s ability to impose his will on Republicans and the nation, suggesting a slip in his iron grip on his party amid his falling polling numbers, rising prices and rifts within his political coalition.




Poised to lose a House vote this week calling for the Justice Department to release its Jeffrey Epstein files, President Trump snookered a good chunk of political media by declaring in a social media post last evening that the House should vote to release the files.

Knowing he’s going to lose the vote — and knowing that the vote itself won’t be enough to pry the files loose unless the Senate agrees and he doesn’t veto it — Trump tried to redefine the setback by withdrawing his opposition to the vote, but not actually releasing the Epstein files.
But who in the world would be fooled by this?

The whole reason the House is voting is because the Trump DOJ — run out of the White House — won’t cough up the files. That is to say: Trump won’t release the files.

It’s not an about-face or a reversal. It’s a sham.
 Trump’s inane new position — that he wants House Republicans to vote to demand that he release the Epstein files that he refuses to release — comes after the president on Friday ordered the Justice Department to re-investigate everyone’s contacts with Jeffrey Epstein except his own.

Who knows what tricks the con artist Chump has up his sleeves but right now it looks good for the survivors.  They are supposed to appear outside the Capitol later today with Massie and US House Reps Ro Khanna and Marjorie Taylor Greene. 

MS NOW's Jen Psaki, over the weekend, caught one of the lies Ghislaine Maxwell told Deputy AG Todd Blanche during the two days of questioning -- Ghislaine lied that the photo taken of her with King Charles' brother Andrew and Epstein survivor Virginia Giuffre was a fake photo.  It wasn't real.  It never happened.  In the e-mails, Epstein talks about taking the photo himself.  Ghislaine lied.  Cameron Adams (DAILY BEAST) catches another lie:

However, last week’s trove of Epstein emails highlighted contradictions from what the prisoner told Blanche, including Maxwell’s claim to have never seen Trump at Epstein’s home.
In one of the emails sent in 2011, Epstein told Maxwell had “spent hours at my house” with the late Virginia Giuffre.

That led to a feud between George Conway and Blanche on X last week.

Conway wrote, “Blanche’s questioning of Ghislaine Maxwell was either (a) completely incompetent; or (b) intentionally crafted not to elicit facts incriminating Trump.

“Either way, he is not fit to serve as Deputy Attorney General of the United States,” he added.
 




. 

Donald Chump will be gone soon -- three years or so he'll be kicked out of the White House -- and he'll be gone soon from this earth because the diuretics and the heart medication just isn't working -- and can't with his obesity.  Until he leaves, he's bound and determined to destroy as much of our great country as he can.  Sabrina Haake (SALON) notes:


On Nov. 10, the Trump administration submitted supplemental arguments to the Supreme Court claiming that no court — including the Supreme Court itself — can question the president’s ability to deploy military troops against U.S. cities. 

“The President’s determination to call up the National Guard is a core exercise of his power as Commander in Chief over military affairs, based on an explicit delegation from Congress,” Trump’s lawyers wrote. “That determination is not judicially reviewable at all; at minimum, it is entitled to extremely deferential review, under which (Trump’s deployment) should be upheld.” 
Claiming that Trump called up the National Guard in Chicago “in light of the violent, organized resistance” faced by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the attorneys insisted his decision is not subject to judicial review under Martin v. Mott, a nearly 200-year-old case that stemmed from the War of 1812. In 1827, the court ruled that military subordinates could not make their “own determination whether an imminent threat of invasion existed.” Although the ruling is often incorrectly cited by the Trump administration, it did not prohibit or even discuss judicial review of military deployments — foreign, domestic or otherwise. 

Most Americans have a strong moral resistance to military intrusion into civilian affairs. According to public polling, a bipartisan majority opposes sending military troops into U.S. cities in the absence of a foreign threat.
That resistance is rooted in tradition dating back to the American Revolution. After living under the tyranny of King George III, whose hated armed troops ate their food and slept in quarters the colonists were forced to provide under the Quartering Act of 1765, the drafters of the Constitution held a widespread fear of a national standing army, which they believed posed a threat to individual liberty and the sovereignty of the separate states. Because of that distrust, the founders carefully apportioned responsibility over the “militia” — today’s National Guard — between the federal government and the states.

The Constitution grants Congress, not the president, the power to deploy the National Guard “to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.” That foundational constitutional authority in turn supports Title 10 USC 12406, which allows a president to call up the militia — but only under specific, statutorily defined circumstances. It also supports the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the use of any part of the federal armed forces to execute laws, except where “expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress,” reflecting “the deeply rooted and ancient opposition in this country to the extension of military control over civilians.” 

An idiot who barely made it through college, Chump's never grasped the law.  The law, for Chump, is nothing but something you can break with a bribe or a crooked attorney.  He has no respect for the law and no respect for the United States.  

He's currently attacking North Carolina.  You have to wonder how Governor Greg Asshole plans to respond when Texans are soon up in arms.  And they will be.  Texas shares a border with Mexico.  There's no way Chump's plan doesn't involve invading Texas in the near future as well.  


On MEIDASTOUCH NEWS this morning, Ben addresses the assault on North Carolina. 

 

 

He also notes Latino voters.  


Kamala Harris only got 2% more support from Latinao voters in November.


B-b-b-but how could that be?


Whores and whoring. It was covered in real time here.  And certainly left and 'left' media outlets like DEMOCRACY NOW! covered it, right?


Wrong.  We covered it in real tim.  We covered in the end of the year piece.  Ava and I covered it at the start of the year in "Media: How Amy Goodman harmed immigrants and helped elect Chump" at THIRD.  Find me, please, the episode in the summer or fall of 2024 where Goody Whore addressed the consequences of Chump's war on immigrants.  


I'm not a genius.  But somehow I could see South Africa on the streets of the United States.  Somehow I could see the racial profiling that Chump's plan would result in.  I could see all innocents swept up into it.  Which is why I wrote about it and spoke about it before the election.


Goody was too busy carrying out the DSA's grudge f**k of Kamala to do her job.  So instead she gave us one segment after another saying Kamala was just as bad as Chump on immigration or even worse.


The damage these people did to our country will never be forgotten.  And as they try to shove Graham Platner down people's throats, they should stop a moment, these liars like David Sirota and grasp that they don't have the suck with us that they think they do.  


The other issue to note not in Ben's segment is: Kiss Latino voters goodbye.


That's what the GOP better be prepared to do.  This has impacted too many Latinos in the US -- including Latino citizens.  How does the GOP ever again think they can stand before Latino voters and make a claim and be believed.  Chump's war on immigrants is a war on all Latinos.  Citizens or not.  And the hatred the GOP has for Latinos -- all Latinos -- has been made clear.  It's as though they want to push all Latinos out of the Republican tent.  

Chump's actions will influence elections for the immediate future.  And pasty White faced Republicans holding office?  You better grasp that George P Bush and others with Latino roots?  GOP is going to have to back them like crazy now -- at your expense -- because they can't afford to lose Latino voters forever and they've got to do something to try to win them back.



Not long from now - maybe even a few weeks - Donald Trump's Border Patrol surge will roll out of Charlotte to take its terror to another city. It will leave behind destroyed lives and fractured communities, but it will have accomplished very little that meaningfully addresses our nation's immigration issues. We suspect that never was really the goal.
What is? Perhaps the president is still hoping immigration can bring him a political win as his approval numbers head lower than even his worst first term levels. Maybe he's hoping for a distraction from the relentless drip of Jeffrey Epstein and economic headlines.

None of which is happening. None of which will likely happen. Not because of Charlotte.

In fact, just two days in, Operation Charlotte's Web already has failed.

With every unnecessarily smashed window, every sneer at due process, every federal agent's smirk at those who are horrified by it all, Donald Trump continues to lose. He loses because this immigration enforcement surge is not really about immigration. If the president really wanted to solve our nation's border issues, he would work toward broader solutions instead of rounding up whomever he can to hit a big number to show Americans.

It is a fiery editorial, a needed one and one you really should read in full.  The American people are sick of this and ICE is not above the law no matter what Pam da Bimbo Bondi says, no matter what Corrupt Kristi Noem says and no matter what Chubby Chump The Convicted Felon says.  One of Chump's gestapo just found that out the hard way.  Will Neal (DAILY BEAST) reports:

Police have arrested a man believed to be working as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent after he allegedly brandished a gun at a 17-year-old boy.

Footage of the Nov. 10 incident, obtained by local outlet KTLA 5, shows the man approaching an SUV on a dark street with his sidearm drawn and pointed toward the window.

“Freeze, police,” the man in the video says. “Put the car in f---ing park. Get out of the car. Turn it off, get out. You’re speeding in the f---ing neighborhood. Come over here, sit down, get your a-- down. You have a driver’s license?”
Cops in Riverside, southern California, have since identified the suspect as 45-year-old Gerardo Rodriguez, a resident on the street who also displayed a badge toward the minor before getting him to step out of the car.

The teen is understood to have complied with demands from Rodriguez, who eventually released him to his parents. Authorities say Rodriguez has now been booked for assault with a deadly weapon, child endangerment, and assault by a public officer.


While Chump and Kristi try to hoodwink the nation with lies, the American people respond with reality.   Last night on MS NOW, Rachel Maddow detailed how Americans were training and arming themselves with information to be able to support one another in the midst of these very un-American raids. 





Gregory Bovino is leading the assault on Charlotte.  NEWSWEEK's Billal Rahman provides some context:


Bovino also has ties to the region, having grown up in western North Carolina, attended Watauga High School, and later earned degrees from Western Carolina University and Appalachian State University.

Border Patrol agents under his command have been facing increased scrutiny over heavy-handed tactics, deploying tear gas, and excessive use of force.

As of 2023, roughly 17.9 percent of Charlotte’s population, or about 159,000 residents, were born outside the United States, according to Data USA.


The following month, Ellis extended her temporary restraining order against ICE's use of tear gas and pepper balls, stating that Bovino had lied under oath about threats posed by protesters and reporters.[21]

In November 2025, the Project on Government Oversight released a report analyzing federal data from fiscal years 2022–2025, finding that under Bovino's leadership Border Patrol agents used force disproportionately to the number of assaults they faced.[22]

What did Bovino accomplish?  Nothing worth praising. Sophia Tareen, Brian Witte and Maryclaire Dale (LOS ANGELES TIMES) report:

After a surge in Border Patrol activity in North Carolina's largest city over the weekend, including dozens of arrests, Gov. Josh Stein said the effort is “stoking fear," not making Charlotte safer.

The Trump administration has made the Democratic city of about 950,000 people its latest target for an immigration enforcement surge it says will combat crime, despite fierce objections from local leaders and downtrending crime rates. Charlotte residents reported encounters with federal immigration agents near churches, apartment complexes and stores. 


Immigration agents aggressively detained a day-care worker, Diana Santillana Galeano, at her workplace with small children present (“Chicago day-care worker detained by immigration agents released after community support,” Nov. 13). Couldn’t they have waited until she was home? Might they have given her time to prepare for her arrest and separation from her family? She was treated like a dangerous criminal, "the worst of the worst” as President Trump declares.
Americans are largely people who value fairness, and this kind of unnecessarily violent arrest is simply not fair. Even if someone supports a general immigration sweep, it should be handled humanely and fairly, and people should be treated with basic human dignity.

Unfortunately, this particular arrest is not a one-off exception to the general policy. The newsworthy raid on the apartment building in Chicago, which the federal government justified by calling it a raid on Tren de Aragua, may have netted a couple of gang members. But it also disrupted the lives of everyone in the building.

Santillana Galeano was legally working and was eventually released, as multiple inappropriately arrested people have been. This kind of generally intrusive and unfair process is simply not American.


Rudro Chakrabarti (MONEY WISE) has a story of a business closed after generations in the same family:

Wilson Jones stands in what used to be the heart of his family's lumber empire — the Mackeys Ferry Sawmill in North Carolina.

But instead of the familiar roar of saws cutting through Southern pine, there's only silence.

"I've grown all my life in the lumber business," the 60-something mill owner tells Bloomberg (1), his voice heavy with emotion. "And to hear nature at a sawmill, I think for any lumberman is not natural. I don't wanna be overly dramatic, but in a way it's as unnerving as watching a loved one take their final breath."
Jones is the fifth generation in his family to run a lumber business — and the first to close a mill. The culprit? President Donald Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs, announced April 2, 2025, which promised to bring manufacturing jobs roaring back to America.

"When I say Liberation Day, I cannot put enough snark and sarcasm in my voice because we weren't liberated," Wilson says. "Liberation Day, it did, at the time, it had damn near liberated me from our business."
The Jones family's story isn't unique. It's playing out in factories, mills and plants across America. Since President Trump's April tariff announcement, overall manufacturing employment has declined by 42,000, while job openings and hires have fallen by 76,000 and 18,000, respectively according to the Center for American Progress (2). Manufacturing hiring plunged in May to the weakest rate since 2016 under President Barack Obama (3).
The situation hasn't improved in recent months. Manufacturing jobs are down by 78,000 since the start of 2025, with the sector losing another 3,000 jobs in October alone according to an ADP report (4). Despite job openings in the sector increasing to 462,000 in July — up from 393,000 in June — actual hiring has declined 5% year-over-year according to iCIMS data (5).


Wilson Jones' Mackey's Ferry Sawmill had been "the largest private employer in Washington County" and the family "are sixth-generation lumberman, carrying on the legacy that their great-great grandfather, William Sawyer Jones, began."  He blames Chump's tariffs (and is right to) and he tells CAROLINA JOURNAL's Katherine Zehnder, "I'm not talking about money, because I can think any independent lumberman would tell you that they are not in this industry to make money. They're in it because they love it. It's taken 38 years of my time, effort, and life inside and outside from me. It's taken a business that I enjoyed --  and I do love the industry -- from me.”
 
The family business since the end of the 1800s, destroyed in less than one year by Donald Chump's ignorance and ineptitude. 

There's a lot more left to cover but the snapshot's already running long.  Maybe we can address the Justice Dept tomorrow.  At any rate, let's wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:


Bicameral letter warns that “sale would be a giveaway to wealthy insiders at the expense of working-class borrowers and taxpayers.”

“Time and again, the Trump Administration has put the interests of well-connected, wealthy insiders ahead of working families.”

Text of Letter (PDF)

Washington, D.C. - U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, along with Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), led 41 of their colleagues in a letter urging Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent to immediately end any plans to sell or transfer the federal student loan portfolio to the private market.

“Let’s be clear: This sale would be a giveaway to wealthy insiders at the expense of working-class borrowers and taxpayers,” wrote the lawmakers. “It threatens the loss of borrowers’ legally guaranteed protections, and the sale would likely be illegal if the debt is sold at a loss for taxpayers.”

According to a report last month, the Trump Administration is exploring options to sell the federal government’s $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio to financial firms and other private companies.

This move could illegally strip student loan borrowers of key protections, including income-driven repayment (IDR) plans, Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), disability and death discharges, and relief for those defrauded by predatory schools.

Such a sale would likely be illegal as well if the portfolio were sold at a loss. In 2019, the Trump Administration explored selling the student loan portfolio but abandoned the idea after consultants determined that the portfolio was “worth far less than government accountants had projected.”

Additionally, the sale of federal loans would be a massive giveaway to private lenders that have been shown to exploit private borrowers. Though private loans only account for 8% of student debt, they account for 40% of student loan-related complaints submitted to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“The Trump Administration should immediately stop any plans to sell or transfer responsibility of the student debt portfolio to the private, often predatory, market,” the lawmakers concluded. “The Department of Education’s role in providing financial aid to America’s students is clear, and the Department should not take any action that would enrich the wealthy and well-connected at the expense of working-class borrowers and taxpayers.”

The lawmakers requested more information as to the potential privatization of the federal student loan portfolio by December 1, 2025.

Senator Warren has led the fight to make our higher education system more affordable, cancel student loan debt, and hold student loan servicers accountable for incompetence and malfeasance. She launched the Save Our Schools campaign in a coordinated effort to fight back against President Trump’s attempts to abolish the Department of Education:

  • On November 10, 2025, Senator Warren led her colleagues in a letter urging the Trump administration to use the IRS’s existing legal authorities to stop the looming “tax bomb” facing borrowers who obtain income-driven repayment (IDR) discharges of their student loan debt.

  • On October 15, 2025, Senator Warren and Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) led 70 members of Congress in a letter calling on the Trump administration to address the ongoing and unprecedented wave of student loan delinquencies and defaults, which threatens the financial stability of millions of people and could have disastrous effects on the American economy.

  • On September 19, 2025, following a push by Senator Warren and nine other senators, the Acting Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education agreed to open an investigation into DOGE’s infiltration of internal systems, including the scope of its access to sensitive student loan borrower information and its impact on borrowers’ rights and privacy.

  • On August 26, 2025, Senator Warren led colleagues in sending a follow-up letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon condemning the Department of Education for deliberately hiding the “Submit a Complaint” button on the Office of Federal Student Aid’s website, firing employees responsible for providing customer service to borrowers and families, and misleading Congress about the scope of these firings.

  • On August 7, 2025, Senator Warren publicly released Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s response to the senator’s 60+ questions and pressed for additional information. Senator Warren announced that she would refer certain matters where the Department has proved uncooperative to the Government Accountability Office and the Education Department’s Inspector General.

  • On August 4, 2025, Senator Warren led eight Senators in pressing major private student loan lenders on their plans to serve the incoming surge of borrowers who will be pushed to the industry because of Republicans’ recently passed “Big, Beautiful Bill.”

  • On July 17, 2025, Senator Warren released a new 23-page report, “Education At Risk: Frontline Impacts of Trump’s War on Students,” highlighting warnings from 11 major national education and civil rights organizations on the impact of the Trump Administration’s dismantling of the Department of Education (ED), slashing support to millions of American students, primary and secondary school teachers, administrators, parents, and student loan borrowers.

  • On July 15, 2025, Senators Warren and Sanders, along with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, sent a letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, urging her to reverse the interest hike on student loan borrowers in the SAVE forbearance.

  • On July 14, 2025, Senator Warren joined a letter to the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, and Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, demanding that the Department of Education stop blocking nearly $7 billion in funds for K-12 schools, including for afterschool programs.

  • On July 3, 2025, Senator Warren led her colleagues in submitting an amicus brief for NAACP v. US, arguing to the United States District Court District of Maryland that President Trump’s attempts to dismantle the Department of Education violate separation of powers and lack constitutional authority.

  • On June 10, 2025, Senator Warren met with Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and delivered over 1,000 letters to McMahon that the senator had received from people in all 50 states who were worried about the Secretary’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education.

  • On June 9, 2025, Senator Warren led her colleagues in pushing the Acting Inspector General of the Department of Education to open an investigation into new information obtained by her office, revealing that DOGE may have gained access to two FSA internal systems, in addition to sensitive borrower data.

  • On May 20, 2025, Senator Warren and 27 other senators pushed for full funding for the Office of Federal Student Aid.

  • On May 14, 2025, Senator Warren led a Senate forum entitled “Stealing the American Dream: How Trump and Republicans Are Raising Education Costs for Families,” highlighting the consequences of Secretary Linda McMahon’s reckless dismantling of the Department of Education and President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” for working- and middle-class students and borrowers.

  • On May 13, 2025, Senator Warren agreed to meet with Education Secretary Linda McMahon and promised to bring questions and stories from Americans across the country to highlight how the Trump administration’s attacks on education are hurting American families.

  • On May 6, 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren highlighted the consequences of President Trump and Secretary Linda McMahon’s reckless dismantling of the Department of Education for American families in a Senate forum.

  • On April 24, 2025, Senator Warren launched a new investigation into the harms of President Trump’s attacks on the Department of Education, seeking information on the impact of the Trump administration’s actions from the members of twelve leading organizations representing schools, parents, teachers, students, borrowers, and researchers.

  • On April 10, 2025, following a request led by Senator Warren, the Department of Education’s Acting Inspector General agreed to open an investigation into the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the Department of Education.

  • On April 2, 2025, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Mazie Hirono, along with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, sent a letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon regarding the Department of Government Efficiency’s proposed plan to replace the Department of Education’s federal student aid call centers with generative artificial intelligence chatbots.

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The following sites updated:


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Tuesday, November 18, 2025

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars in the Kitchen


Tess' e-mail ("Popcorn Trail Mix in the Kitchen") spoke to a number of you.  So thank you again to Tess for sharing her experience and the recipe.  Joan e-mailed to note Taste of Home's Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars:


Ingredients

  • 1 cup creamy peanut butter
  • 3/4 cup honey
  • 3 cups old-fashioned oats  

Directions

  1. In a small saucepan, combine peanut butter and honey. Cook and stir over medium-low heat until melted and blended. Remove from heat; stir in oats. Spread into a greased 9-in. square pan; press lightly. Cool to room temperature; cover and chill for 1 hour.


 Joan said Tess' e-mail resulted in two of her friends and four family members deciding to hold a Thanksgiving lunch next week that Joan will host at her apartment.  They're doing sandwiches and finger foods and Joan's doing cucumber sandwiches and also these peanut butter oatmeal bars that she will drizzle with chocolate.  

So hopefully Tess has inspired you and encouraged you and reminded us all that the most important thing is getting together.  Even if, as Charlene is doing, you get together by phone.  She doesn't have the money this year to fly across the country.  So she'll be with her family via speaker phone and her older sister is shipping a cake, cookies and brownies to her.  



News? The Democratic Party too often tends to ignore or jettison its most loyal voters.  I've seen that my entire life including both times Rev. Jesse Jackson ran for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.  I was a big supporter of the Reverend and he never got the credit he deserved.  He built a huge coalition and his coalition welcomed all.  And I'm a  little sad because of reports that he's not doing well health wise.  Anyway, he valued our party and the members -- all the members.  Today?  


Conservative columnist T. Becket Adams writes in a Substack post that "the Republican Party faces a more severe version of the Democrats’ current demographic crisis: the GOP has lost nearly all female voters under 30.”

"Millions of words and hours of news programming have been devoted to the issue of the Democratic Party’s recent loss of male voters aged 18 to 29," Adams writes, adding that "Even less discussed is the fact that, while Democrats rack their brains trying to find ways towin over young men, the right doesn’t seem to recognize the seriousness of its own predicament, much less have a plan to fix it."
He also notes that while Republicans in past elections have lost key voter blocs including Black and Jewish voters, " losing one more probably feels more a matter of routine than a sign of impending doom."

Demographics, however, make this crisis worse, Adams explains.

"Considering that there are eight million more registered female voters than male voters in the United States, and considering that of the overall number of female voters, the 10 percent to 12 percent that fall into the 18-to-29 age bracket are much more politically active than men their age, Republicans simply cannot accept that they’ve lost another voting group," he writes.

At a time when we should be reaching out to more women, yet again the Dems seem to think they need to go for the male vote and not via meaningful positions but instead by racism and homophobia -- that is what's fueling the push for Graham Platner in Maine. 

This is C.I.'s "The Snapshot" for Monday:


Monday, November 17, 2025.  Chump throws  moving vehicle into reverse as he tries to get ahead of what appears to be a huge embarrassment this week when the House votes on whether or not to release the Epstein materials, his lie about a peace deal is revealed (it wasn't even a cease-fire), North Carolina gets targeted by the corrupt Homeland Security, and much more.


Dumpster fire Donald Chump can't stop lying.   All it took was diving poll numbers, former supporters going on Tik-Tok to burn their MAGA gear, members of Congress on both sides standing up to him and the public's growing suspicion that he's hiding something with regards to his best friend Jeffrey Epstein.  That's all it took to put Chump in turnaround.  Helen Sullivan (BBC NEWS) reports:


US President Donald Trump has called on House Republicans to vote to release the Epstein files, in a reversal from his previous position.

"House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide," Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday night.

The shift from days of Trump fighting the proposal comes as the House is expected to hold a vote this week on legislation that would force the Justice Department to release the files to the public.

Supporters of the proposal appear to have enough votes to pass the House, though it is unclear whether it would pass the Senate.

 

AP's Kevin Freking and Chris Megerian explain, "The president's shift is an implicit acknowledgement that supporters of the measure have enough votes to pass it the House, although it has an unclear future in the Senate. It is a rare example of Trump backtracking because of opposition within the GOP."  Mia McCarthy (POLITICO) notes:


President Donald Trump is coming to grips with his impending loss on the Jeffrey Epstein files and a rare moment of tenuous control over the House GOP.

In a late Sunday Truth Social post, Trump said House Republicans should vote to release DOJ records on the late convicted sex offender “because we have nothing to hide.”

“I DON’T CARE!” he said. “All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT.”

Trump’s reversal after a months-long pressure campaign came as dozens of Republicans — perhaps as many as 100 — were already poised to break with him in a vote Tuesday. As Meredith Lee Hill and Mia report, even close allies of GOP leadership were weighing whether to defect from the president.

 Apparently the most convincing way to convey that you don't care about something is to scream in all caps "I DON'T CARE!"  Or at least that's what you think if you're a nut case named Donald Chump.  

At MEIDASTOUCH NEWS, Ben's of the opinion that this new and false stance is prep for the announcement "Oopsie!  Ongoing inesstigation!  We can't release anything!"




Ashley Ahn (NEW YORK TIMES) adds, "In a Sunday interview on ABC News, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who has helped lead congressional efforts to release the files, suggested that “100 or more” House Republicans could vote in favor of releasing the Epstein files this week despite opposition from Mr. Trump. The House speaker also predicted a significant number of G.O.P. votes." 


Chump lies and his underlings lie.  Travis Gettys (RAW STORY) reports on Deputy AG Todd Blanche:

"An important side note about today's Epstein/Trump revelations," noted conservative attorney George Conway on X. "They show that Todd Blanche's questioning of Ghislaine Maxwell was either (a) completely incompetent; or (b) intentionally crafted not to elicit facts incriminating Trump. Either way, he is not fit to serve as Deputy Attorney General of the United States."

Blanche spoke to Maxwell over two days in July at a prison where she's serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking and other charges, and he publicly asserted that she had told him she never saw Trump act inappropriately, and he disputed Conway's criticism.

"George, you’ve never been confused for a trial lawyer, and these kinds of posts explain why," Blanche replied. "When I interviewed Maxwell, law enforcement didn’t have the materials Epstein’s estate hid for years and only just provided to Congress. Stop talking. It’s unbecoming."

The Justice Department official's explanation didn't pass the smell test for many social media users, however.

"Todd, didn't the Justice Department have these emails when they seized Epstein's computers, phones, iPads, and other electronic devices from his homes in Manhattan and the US Virgin Islands?" posted Business Insider's Jacob Shamsian.

"Mr. Blanche - When you questioned Maxwell you simply let her spew a narrative contradicted by evidence already in your possession," said retired attorney Tirah Att. "I'm not sure what the point of the interview was, but we know the result - she was moved to a cushy prison not meant for sexual predators."


If she lied to him, Todd has croaked for months, she could face legal consequences.  Well she did lie.  Jen Psaki (MS NOW) points that reality out noting the photo of Virginia Giuffre with  the King of England's brother Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell:

 

I’ll spare you the rest of the truly wretched details, but Giuffre said that she and Andrew had sex that night at Epstein and Maxwell’s direction. It was the first of three such encounters.

Both Maxwell and Andrew have vehemently denied that any of this ever happened. A key part of that denial has been asserting that the photo of the trio is fake.

Even just this summer, in an interview with Donald Trump’s personal lawyer-turned-deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, Maxwell flat-out denied it and told him she believed it was “literally a fake photo.”

However, according to one of the emails included in the trove of documents released on Wednesday, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

On July 1, 2011, just months after the photo was first published in the British tabloids, Epstein allegedly sent an email in which he wrote: “Yes she was on my plane, and yes she had her picture taken with Andrew.”

Epstein denied everything else that took place and seemed to defend the photo by adding that many of his employees had taken pictures with Andrew.

It should be noted that Epstein himself is not exactly a reliable or trustworthy source. But the idea that Epstein, way back in 2011, said this photo was real throws into question everything both Andrew and Maxwell have said about the rest of that story.

The fact that, just months ago, Maxwell told Blanche that the photo was fake now adds all the more reason to be skeptical that anything she told the deputy attorney general in that meeting was true.


She lies.  Jen's documented it.  Ghislaine Maxwell lied.  So she goes back to a real prison now?  Of course not.  She got the deal she wanted in order to shut her up.  We have someone in the Oval Office thqt  federl prisoner can and did blackmail to get what she wanted.  That's another reason you never elect a convicted felon.


Changing topics, ABC7 CHICAGO reports:


The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has left its "Operation Midway Blitz" command center at Naval Station Great Lakes, city officials confirmed to ABC7 Chicago Sunday.

The development comes as 200 federalized Texas National Guard members also vacated the base this week, and Customs and Border Protection Cmdr. Greg Bovino also left the Chicago area, being seen during a new surge in immigration enforcement in Charlotte, North Carolina.

And they took the chaos with them to North Carolina. Another peaceful city destroyed by Chump's gestapo. Eduardo Medina and Sonia A. Rao (NEW YORK TIMES) report, 


The Trump administration crackdown on illegal immigrants arrived in Charlotte this weekend, resulting in 81 arrests on Saturday. It continued on Sunday, with Border Patrol agents fanning out across the largest city in North Carolina.

An immigrant rights group said the tally, reported by a senior Border Patrol official on social media, was the largest number of immigrant arrests in the state’s recent history.

The presence of the agents, led by Gregory Bovino, who directed similar operations in Chicago and Los Angeles this year, has startled people in one of the fastest-growing cities in the country. Much of that growth has been spurred by international migration, especially from Latin America. The city is also home to large corporations in the retail, banking and manufacturing sectors.


 Nick Sullivan (CHARLOTTE OBSERVER) explains that every where in the city of Charlotte was a target -- even churches:


Congregants of an east Charlotte church scattered into the woods Saturday when masked federal agents arrived and detained one of their members, according to witnesses. About 15 to 20 church members were doing yard work on the property off Albemarle Road while their children played games and their spouses cooked meals. Agents parked just outside a closed gate leading to the church parking lot and ran into the yard, said the pastor, who did not want to identify himself or his church. The agents asked no questions and showed no identification before taking one man away, whose wife and child were inside at the time, the pastor said. They attempted to grab others, too.

 

The location didn't matter and citizenship didn't matter.  Charlotte's WCNC reports:

As US Customs and Border Patrol began its operation in Charlotte on Nov. 15, 2025, a handful of encounters with agents were reported across the city. This included an encounter near a bar and grill on South Boulevard that a man said led to his truck's window being smashed.

Elsewhere in Charlotte, another encounter was captured on viral video. WCNC Charlotte first brought the video live in a special edition of our Live Impact News show on the WCNC+ platform. The location is unclear, but the video shows agents confronting a woman holding a cell phone. She then stumbles on a grassy area. Agents then proceed to handcuff her, and as she is handcuffed as she says, "I'm a US citizen," and bystanders yell at agents. Her phone is also confiscated during the encounter.


More storm trooper action from the lawless and feckless Chump administration.  All this money going into Homeland Security?  And it's not really about securing the homeland, remember that. Alexia Underwood (THE NEW REPUBLIC) reports:\


President Donald Trump’s obsessive focus on deporting immigrants has led to extreme changes at the Department of Homeland Security and undermined efforts to combat child exploitation and sex trafficking, a new report found.

According to The New York Times, the department has been forced to shift its priorities and sideline other important law enforcement activities to make way for the president’s agenda.

Agents investigating sexual crimes against children have been temporarily reassigned, a national security probe into the Iranian black market slowed and lost momentum, and agents working on sex trafficking issues have been forced to pause their work in order to support the Trump administration’s deportation goals. Even the Coast Guard has been pulled in to aid the deportation work, the Times reported.

The new data that the report is based on comes from previously unseen internal DHS documents, and interviews with more than 60 officials.

People inside the agency spoke of being “berated” by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller for not arresting enough people. Yet the Trump administration’s extensive focus on immigration hasn’t played out the way they might have imagined. Less than 40 percent of people ICE arrests carry criminal convictions, the report says.

 

Border patrol is not homeland security.  We had border patrol on September 10, 2001.  We didn't have Homeland Security.  The Dept of Homeland Security was voted into law in November of 2002 and started business on March 1, 2003.  The department was created in response to 9/11.  This was one of the ways that the country was going to be protected.  That's not what they work on these days.  Nicholas NehamasMichael H. KellerAlexandra BerzonHamed Aleaziz and Zolan Kanno-Youngs (NEW YORK TIMES) report:


The Department of Homeland Security has diverted thousands of federal agents from their normal duties to focus on arresting undocumented immigrants, undermining a wide range of law enforcement operations in response to mounting pressure from President Trump, a New York Times investigation has found.

Homeland security agents investigating sexual crimes against children, for instance, have been redeployed to the immigrant crackdown for weeks at a time, hampering their pursuit of child predators.

A national security probe into the black market for Iranian oil sold to finance terrorism has been slowed down for months because of the shift to immigration work, allowing tanker ships and money to disappear.

And federal efforts to combat human smuggling and sex trafficking have languished with investigators reassigned to help staff deportation efforts.

Sadly, instead of protecting Americans, Homeland Security is staffed with corrupt people doing a money grab on US tax dollars.  Here's Elaine's post Friday:

How much corruption is Kristi Noem going to be allowed to get away with?

Kristi Noem is corrupt.  That's not  in question at this point.  The question is, how much corruption is she going to be able to get away with?  Did you miss the latest: 


A firm owned by a long-term friend of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and who is married to her senior communications advisor secretly won work on a $220 million border TV advertising blitz in a “corrupt” arrangement, according to a bombshell report.

Benjamin Yoho, 38, has worked and socialized with Noem and Corey Lewandowski, her closest adviser and alleged lover, for many years. He is also the husband of Noem’s loyal Assistant Secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, 31.

Now Yoho’s Strategy Group is alleged to have helped film a DHS TV commercial for the government’s “Stronger Border, Stronger America” campaign, per an investigation published Friday by ProPublica—even though the firm’s name isn’t listed on any public documents.

Instead, the main recipient listed is a shell company, Safe America Media, which had been created only days before it was awarded more than $143 million by DHS, after the department invoked a “national emergency” to bypass competitive bidding.


Here's PROPUBLICA's Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski:


On Oct. 2, the second day of the government shutdown, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrived at Mount Rushmore to shoot a television ad. Sitting on horseback in chaps and a cowboy hat, Noem addressed the camera with a stern message for immigrants: “Break our laws, we’ll punish you.” 

Noem has hailed the more than $200 million, taxpayer-funded ad campaign as a crucial tool to stem illegal immigration. Her agency invoked the “national emergency” at the border as it awarded contracts for the campaign, bypassing the normal competitive bidding process designed to prevent waste and corruption.

The Department of Homeland Security has kept at least one beneficiary of the nine-figure ad deal a secret, records and interviews show: a Republican consulting firm with long-standing personal and business ties to Noem and her senior aides at DHS. The company running the Mount Rushmore shoot, called the Strategy Group, does not appear on public documents about the contract. The main recipient listed on the contracts is a mysterious Delaware company, which was created days before the deal was finalized.

No firm has closer ties to Noem’s political operation than the Strategy Group. It played a central role in her 2022 South Dakota gubernatorial campaign. Corey Lewandowski, her top adviser at DHS, has worked extensively with the firm. And the company’s CEO is married to Noem’s chief spokesperson at DHS, Tricia McLaughlin.

That is not her personal money, that is our tax dollars.  Our tax dollars are supposed to spent wisely and openly.  They're not a slush fund for her friends.

This is outrageous.  She needs to face Congressional hearings immediately.

We all knew Chump II was going to be corrupt but I don't think we anticipated this kind of blatant corruption where Tom Holman, for instance, takes a $50,000 bribe and is caught on tape doing so and the administration acts like it's normal.

Go read Marcia's "Twelfth Night."  

--------------- end of Elaine's post ------------------------------


Chump is a liar who has destroyed our country.  His new lie is he wants the Epstein documents released.  But it's just today's big lie.  He lies constantly.  He lied that he'd brought about a peace deal between Gaza and Israel.  Peace deal?  He didn't even bring about a cease fire. Kevin Reed (WSWS) reports:


According to information compiled by the Government Media Office in Gaza and reported by Al Jazeera, the Israeli military has repeatedly violated the ceasefire that was imposed on Palestinians by the Zionist state in collaboration with the government of President Donald Trump.

The Al Jazeera report says that between October 10 and November 10, Israel breached the agreement at least 282 times, resulting in the death of 242 Palestinians and the wounding of 622.

Through ongoing sustained military offensives and occupation actions, Israel has criminally violated the terms of the ceasefire.

The Gaza Media Office figures show that Trump’s so-called “peace plan” amounts to a continuation of the campaign of violence and repression that began in October 2023 at the outset of the genocide. Cloaked in the language of “security” and “counter-terrorism,” the ongoing targeted assassinations and airstrikes have repeatedly hit civilian Palestinian infrastructure and humanitarian zones, obliterating homes, schools and medical facilities.

Israeli forces have continued to directly target those attempting to deliver and receive humanitarian aid, further deepening the starvation and misery of Palestinians. Despite promises to allow up to 600 aid trucks daily, actual deliveries have fallen far short, a shortage compounded by Israeli announcements to further limit or halt distribution entirely.

The overall death toll continues to mount with Gaza’s Ministry of Health now reporting over 69,000 Palestinian dead and tens of thousands more injured, with many bodies still trapped under debris. These figures alone expose any talk of “peace” as a cynical cover for ongoing atrocities.

Following Trump’s high-profile Gaza “peace plan,” Israel has escalated its military operations under the banner of restoring order but in reality, orchestrated new massacres. Al Jazeera has detailed several of these episodes, including the deadliest day so far, when Israeli attacks killed 45 Palestinians in a series of coordinated strikes shortly after the ceasefire was proclaimed.


Chump lies all the time.  It's all he does and it's all he knows. 


The following sites updated:


 



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