Melt butter in a stockpot over medium heat. Add carrots, scallions, and garlic; cook and stir until scallions are soft, 1 to 2 minutes. Pour in chicken broth; bring to a boil.
Add pasta and cook, stirring occasionally until tender yet firm to the bite, 5 to 10 minutes. Stir in spinach; cook until tender, 2 to 3 minutes more. Season with salt and pepper.
Libby notes her kids love and it's "a soup recipe which is great now that we have colder weather and it's also a meatless recipe and I don't think there have been a lot of those lately."
Frankly, we probably heard enough from him in his hour and 37 minute speech in Park City two weeks ago.
We got the laundry list of who he hates, including the French, Muslims, brown-skinned folks who want to come to America to pick our crops, cut our meat and clean our hotel rooms; along with trans people, minorities with college degrees and good jobs, liberals, Democrats, non-MAGA Republicans, socialists and communists (they’re all the same to Trump). Oh, and let’s not forget Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and a bevy of public officials and candidates from other states who we don’t vote on and really couldn’t care less about.
We found out who Trump loves - mostly himself.
About the only new thing he announced here was an $8 billion attempted-vote-buying bailout for farmers, as he squeezes their businesses to death like a rabid anaconda via his aforementioned trade and tariff policies, and a poorly executed war with Iran that has sent the price of fertilizer and diesel fuel sky-high - oops. I know I’ll be screaming welfare fraud if I see any guys in bib overalls and checkered shirts getting out of Ford F-150s, talking on smartphones and buying candy and soda pop at the Wallymart.
Friday, October 30, 2026. Chump ends his DESPERTION TOUR today cancelling planned weekend appearances due to sluggish turnout and no improvements in the polls, ICE takes it upon themselves to vandalize US citizen's parked vehicles, Epstein remains an influence in the midterms, Priss Pot Pete fires another military official, Senator Patty Murray calls out the damage Chump has done to health care, and much more.
NBC News Chief White House Correspondent Garrett Haake, who has covered “dozens if not hundreds” of President Donald Trump’s rallies, expressed surprise at the size of the venue selected for the president’s latest campaign event, saying he couldn’t recall ever seeing the president speak in such a small space.
[. . .]
According to Haake, though, the size of Wednesday’s rally venue is raising some eyebrows.
“I’ve covered dozens if not hundreds of Trump rallies and I can’t recall him ever holding one in a room as small as this arena in Chillicothe, Ohio,” the chief White House correspondent wrote on social media. “It’ll be packed and loud — but maybe 1000 people will fit.”
And despite it being so small, Chump still couldn't fill it. The sparse attendance, Chump's weird noises he's been making from the stage, his homoerotic commentary on various men, his lies about the economy having recovered, it's just not selling. Which may explain why Alex Woodward (INDEPENDENT) is reporting:
President Donald Trump has canceled his Saturday appearance at a Kansas rally, his only scheduled campaign-trail appearance the weekend before Election Day.
The president will instead participate in a series of virtual rallies. It’s unclear whether he will reschedule the Kansas event.
Trump was scheduled to appear at Salina Regional Airport to support embattled Republican incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall, who is polling closely in a race for re-election against Democratic candidate and pastor Adam Hamilton. The last time voters in the state elected a Democratic U.S. senator was in 1939.
He will instead be doing 'telerallies' which seems as though he's packing in the live band to do a hologram performance and it will, no doubt, pack in just as many people as The Ronnie James Dio Hologram Tour' DIO RETURNS.
President Donald Trump went on an eyebrow-raising riff about Jeffrey Epstein while stumping for Republicans in Ohio ahead of Tuesday midterm elections.
Trump remained tight-lipped about the late convicted sex offender and wealthy financier as his administration faced backlash last year over its handling of government files relating to its federal sex trafficking case against Epstein. The heat on Trump was turned up when The Wall Street Journal released an article in July 2025 about a bawdy birthday letter Trump reportedly wrote to Epstein in 2003, that read: “May every day be another wonderful secret.”
In a rare remark about Epstein, who ran in the same social circles as Trump decades ago, the president said Wednesday night that he threw him the “hell out of Mar-a-Lago.”
His throwing Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago is actually disputed.
Video posted on X by Robert Potylo, who goes by Robby Roadsteamer on social media, shows him starting a heckle shortly after the president began speaking at the rally in Chillicothe, south of Columbus.
"Trump went on the Jeffrey Epstein plane! Trump went on the Jeffrey Epstein plane!” Potylo sang as the crowd booed.
Moments later, the video appears to show him being escorted out of the rally while the crowd chants “USA! USA!”
[. . .]
The rally protest comes days after House Judiciary Committee Democrats released a report calling for an independent special counsel to investigate Trump’s relationship with Epstein, arguing that accounts from women and records released in the Epstein case warrant further investigation into whether Trump committed wrongdoing. The allegations are disputed and have not resulted in any criminal findings against Trump.
He’s the subject of scores of midterm campaign ads, each more lurid than the last. A second bill mandating the release of the Epstein files is currently kicking around Congress. And on Monday, House Democrats released a new report alleging that the Justice Department helped cover up details of Epstein’s relationship with President Donald Trump, calling — very aspirationally! — for an independent criminal investigation.
Of course, no one really expects Trump’s attorney general to name a special counsel to investigate the Trump administration. In a statement, one White House spokesperson panned the report as “a desperate attempt by crazed Democrats to distract Americans.” (The timing, just one week before the midterms, does seem pretty fortuitous.)
The document, which runs to 50 pages, draws on public accounts and staff interviews with an unspecified number of survivors, including a former pageant queen who alleges that Trump raped her in 1993. The woman had previously accused Trump of groping her, which a Trump spokesperson dismissed at the time as “fake.”
When it comes to Epstein, however, Democrats don’t need a lot of new material to damage Trump. The scandal, and his administration’s handling of it, continue to cast a long, dark shadow over Republicans.
That’s surprising to me, candidly, because the decades-old dealings of even a very despicable sex offender don’t have any bearing on Americans’ day-to-day costs or experiences. And Trump has been able to brush off a lot of other unsavory behavior and associations.
But the Epstein story has lodged in the brains of some voters who helped elect Trump — including young voters whose growing disillusionment could make a big difference in next week’s elections.
Many of these young voters “resent the fact that Trump’s basically become part of the establishment” and see the Epstein files as evidence of that, the political analyst Rachel Janfaza recently told Vox. Some also feel burned by Trump’s campaign promise to release the government’s investigative files on Epstein…and his about-face once in office.
US House Rep Ro Khana discusses how Epstein is on voters' minds.
The Trump regime just suffered another courtroom defeat in its battle over the release of Jeffrey Epstein-related documents, and this time, it came at the hands of a federal appeals court.
On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected an emergency request from Attorney General Todd Blanche to pause a review of foreign-language documents under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, delivering a significant victory to attorney and MeidasTouch host Katie Phang.
The ruling, issued by Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan and Circuit Judges Cornelia Pillard and Florence Pan, denied the Justice Department’s motion for a stay pending appeal, finding that the government failed to meet the stringent legal requirements necessary to justify halting the process.
In particular, the judges rejected the administration’s argument that it would suffer irreparable harm simply by beginning to review documents that may be subject to disclosure under federal law.
“The government has failed to show that it is irreparably harmed by merely initiating review of foreign-language documents under the Epstein Files Transparency Act,” the court wrote.
On the one hand, the October headline inflation forecast, courtesy of the Cleveland Fed's Inflation Nowcasting tool, moderated slightly from the previous update to 3.75% from 3.77%. Unfortunately, the Fed's preferred inflation gauge, Core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE), is headed in the wrong direction.
Core PCE excludes volatile food and energy costs, providing economists with a clearer picture of long-term price trends. After three consecutive months at 3%, forecasts call for Core PCE to climb to 3.05% in September and 3.13% in October.
Though these increases are modest, they signal an evolution of Trumpflation. In other words, we're likely seeing Iran-war-driven inflation reaching the broader economy. This means everything from altered shipping routes to higher input costs for petroleum-based products (e.g., plastics) is hitting consumers' wallets.
The more Trumpflation evolves and becomes entrenched in the U.S. economy, the more likely it is that the Fed will get more aggressive with interest rate hikes. This is a potential worst-case scenario for a historically expensive stock market driven by debt financing amid the AI data center build-out.
Lauren Aratani (GUARDIAN) adds, "The US economy grew faster than expected in the third quarter while inflation accelerated in September, according to new commerce department data released on Thursday, less than a week before the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress. [. . .] New data from the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, showed that prices increased 0.5% for the month in September and the annualized inflation rate rose to 3.6%. In August, the PCE’s inflation rate was 3.4%." Tony Romm (NEW YORK TIMES) explains:
The concern among Republicans has been evident as Mr. Trump crisscrosses the country in an 11th-hour campaign sprint. He has tried to present the economy as strong, growing and rife with new investment, while downplaying the fact that inflation has clearly worsened under his party’s stewardship.
Offering a final snapshot on the state of the economy before Election Day, a set of government reports on Thursday confirmed some of Mr. Trump’s claims and undercut others. The data showed that the economy was indeed expanding at a faster clip, with a key measure of its total output increasing at a 3.4 percent annual rate this summer. But prices also accelerated, rising more rapidly in September compared with a year earlier, and continuing to outpace wage gains.
As a result, Mr. Trump’s message contrasted with the experience of voters, who see the harsh realities of a high-cost economy every day — when they fill up their gas tanks, shop for groceries, pay their health insurance premiums, receive their credit card bills and confront the difficulties of homeownership.
Having weathered almost two years of high tariffs, geopolitical discord and other economic shocks, voters seem inclined to exact another round of political vengeance at the ballot box, or so the latest polls suggest. Depending on the extent of that rebuke, it could strip Republicans of their congressional majority and curtail Mr. Trump’s economic ambitions for the rest of his presidency.
Samuel Sey spent the past two years telling American Christians that the Bible demands what Immigration and Customs Enforcement does. “Christian ethics do not denounce deportations,” the conservative Christian blogger and podcaster wrote in Feb. 2025. “They demand it.” Immigration was a privilege and not a right, he argued, and America “doesn’t owe anything to people born outside of the country -- including me.” Should his own residency ever be ended, he allowed, that would be “inconvenient — not unjust.”
Now Sey, who is originally from Ghana and grew up in Canada, has found himself swept up in the very deportation apparatus he spent years cheering on.
The resulting uproar has exposed a particularly ugly contradiction in the MAGA movement: Its most enthusiastic defenders of mass deportation suddenly understand the human cost of immigration enforcement when the person facing removal belongs to their own. On Oct. 21 federal agents arrested Sey at the Columbus airport. He now sits in the Butler County Jail on an ICE hold. The Department of Homeland Security says he entered the country legally in 2022 but overstayed by more than four years, that he has no pending applications and that he accepted voluntary departure. Sey’s wife -- who was born in the U.S., as were the couple’s three children was born in the U.S. -- says he entered legally and has spent years working with a lawyer to secure permanent status. His friends call the whole thing a clerical error. The conservative movement that amplified him is tearing itself apart over what to feel about his detention, because the answer exposes what its immigration politics were always made of.
“This has been probably the darkest 24 hours I’ve ever experienced on social media,” wrote Joel Berry, the former Babylon Bee managing editor who calls himself a right-wing Protestant evangelical Trump supporter. “There is a segment of the so-called ‘Christian’ nationalist crowd that has given itself completely over to Satan.”
For a political coalition that has built its entire identity around the demonization of undocumented immigrants and the ruthless execution of mass removals, the detention of one of their own foot soldiers has triggered a profound internal fracture. Christian conservative influencers like The Blaze’s Allie Beth Stuckey and The Daily Wire’s Megan Basham immediately flooded social media to sound the alarm and rally support for their fallen comrade. Berry rushed to set up a GiveSendGo crowdfunding campaign that quickly hauled in more than $30,000 to cover legal fees. The right-wing influencers rallying around Sey have suddenly discovered that an immigrant can be a good person, that the government’s account might be incomplete and that separating a father from his children can be devastating.
As Salon’s Amanda Marcotte has extensively documented, Stuckey has built a lucrative career railing against what she dismissively derides as toxic empathy whenever progressives advocate for basic human decency toward migrants and asylum seekers. Being so empathetic toward one set of people that you are blinded to everyone else, she has written, “isn’t just misguided, it’s evil.” Yet when Sey was taken, Stuckey asked her followers to empathize with his family. “As you can imagine, his wife, who’s at home with their 3 babies, is devastated and also trusting the Lord to help them find a resolution quickly. Please pray for all of the Seys,” she wrote on X. Berry, who produces the Jeremy Boreing podcast, which Sey was traveling to record when he was arrested, once declared that “the only due process owed to an illegal alien is deportation.” Now he says that Sey “is in my tribe, and he is my brother” and “would make an excellent American.”
But the reactions from the broader MAGA grassroots suggest that despite Sey’s relentless pandering to white Christian nationalists, he was never truly seen as an equal member of the tribe. “Lord, we thank you sincerely. We thank you for the arrest of Samuel Sey,” Joel Webbon, a prominent Texas pastor, said following the podcaster’s detention. “We thank you for shutting his mouth from spewing out more lies and slander against your servants and your church here in these United States of America.” Webbon described Sey as an “illegal alien wrongfully in our country” who lectures Americans about their heritage.
And Sey learns that his 'friends' are largely not his friends as they rush to demonize him and to call for him to be deported. A small number of his friends have remained supporters. The article notes, "In its recent American Values Survey, PRRI found that 47% of white evangelical Protestants back identifying and deporting undocumented immigrants, down from a peak of 53% in 2024." About six percent have changed their minds since 2024. A small number but an important number. Tim Sullivan and Nicholas Riccardi (AP) report:
While Trump maintains some support for his handling of the border, polling shows voters disapprove of his approach to immigration, a striking turnaround that could undermine Republican attempts to maintain control of Congress in the midterms.
“The American people supported strong border security,” said Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat who has become a prominent critic of the administration’s policies. “What they got instead was shredding the Constitution, mass deportations and killing American citizens on the streets of Minneapolis.”
[. . .]
The early face of the Trump crackdown was top Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, who swaggered through raids in tactical gear and deployed forces to Los Angeles and Chicago, where he led a helicopter raid on an apartment building.
But Minneapolis was the turning point. More than 2,000 federal officers were sent to the city, and scenes of masked agents spilling from convoys of unmarked vehicles became commonplace. Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets.
Two U.S. citizens -- Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37 -- were killed during confrontations with agents. In the weeks that followed, the White House pushed aside Bovino and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Michael Pretti, Alex's father, said this week that the family is still troubled by the bystander videos of the shooting. He had a holstered gun that he was legally allowed to carry, and none of the footage shows him brandishing the weapon or attacking federal agents in the moments before he was killed.
“I think it haunts many Americans to see a U.S. citizen who was peaceful and in his community shot multiple times on the back, in the back, while on the ground,” he told reporters.
And the violence against immigrants also has impacted the enthusiasm for Chump's war. When ICE agents are using cars to run over a man in a parking lot to break his leg, they are out of control, barbaric and acting illegally whether the Supreme Court wishes to recognize that at this time or not. C.J. Ciaramella (REASON) reports on more crimes carried out by ICE:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents slashed the tires of a couple who were recording the agents in an incident near Portland, Oregon, earlier this month. The agents then drove away without arresting or talking to the couple, video footage shows.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which released the footage today, says it is yet another example of ICE agents retaliating against people for protected First Amendment activity. In an administrative complaint on behalf of the anonymous couple, the ACLU and the ACLU of Oregon are demanding an investigation and answers from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) about why agents tailed, boxed in, and "vandalized" the vehicle of a U.S. citizen.
The stunning video does not resemble any sort of normal law enforcement:
"What happened to us is not unique, and that is what is so terrifying," A.P. and M.P., the unnamed husband and wife, said in a statement provided by the ACLU. "We observe and record public ICE activity in order to shine a light on their abusive behavior and to create a record of what our government is up to. Because of that, they are terrorizing us and anyone else who dares to exercise their First Amendment right to hold our government accountable. We hope that sharing our story will bring attention to their reckless and unconstitutional attacks on our communities."
ICE is not a legitimate force because there are no safeguards and no oversight. They are a band of outlaws who shoot, kill, run over and destroy. And they are never punished.
If any of you met me and enjoyed our time together, know that this administration and their policy goals are targeting me specifically. I am a part of every single group they’ve singled out to hate. If you need a face to put to this issue, maybe it can be mine. It’s always easier to make sense of something when you have a personal connection to it.
Cosplayer Clara Tan was on her way home to the state of New York from an event in California when she was aggressively taken into ICE custody at the Frederick Douglass Greater Rochester International Airport without being shown the warrant. After a suspected broken foot with no medical care and 18 hours in ICE custody in a male-only facility, Tan was released with an ankle monitor only because her detainers learned she had undergone bottom surgery.
“As I was exiting the terminal and heading towards the taxi stand, I was accosted by four men who called me by my name,” Tan wrote in her Facebook post. “I turned, and did not recognize a single one of them. The tallest, a pipe-cleaner looking fellow with a mildly Snidely Whiplash-esque mustache and some of the deadest eyes I’d ever seen, tells me, ‘We’re with ICE, and we have a warrant for your arrest.’”
Tan quickly asked to see the warrant they claimed to have, as well as some identification for the four unknown men who were trying to take her out to their car and drive her away. She says they told her, “We can show it to you in the car, just come peacefully.”
To make sure someone would know what was happening, she tried to call someone. This, she says, prompted all four 220+ pound men to tackle her to the floor, potentially breaking her foot in the process.
“I eat pavement,” she writes in a Facebook post about the experience. “At the same time, I hear a godawful crack, and there’s suddenly a very familiar pain in the left ball of my foot, while they’re cuffing me behind my back.
Tan says she was then driven at high speeds to the Batavia Detention Center. While being taken in, she asked for a lawyer and was dismissively told: “You’ll get your phone call.”
Her foot in extreme pain, Tan says she was then “thrown into a metal box, not larger than 6×10, with a toilet bowl in the corner and absolutely no privacy.” While she tried to sleep, she was kept awake by what she described as “the sound of raucous laughter and the exchange of racist jokes. A couple of times, I attempt to ask for my phone call, but both times, I’m told to shut the f**k up and go to sleep.”
Pete Hegseth has canned a top U.S. Army general who was targeted by Trump whisperer Laura Loomer in a social media ragepost.
The defense secretary fired Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia from the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff earlier this week, The Atlantic reports.
Loomer had targeted Sylvia in an online tirade against his son Gavin’s response to the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a Utah campus event in September 2025.
She called on then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to dismiss Gavin from his post as a data analyst at the DHS’s Federal Emergency Management Agency and urged Hegseth to also “review the employment of Gavin’s father.”
“These people hate us,” Loomer wrote on X. “They don’t belong near the levers of our National Power.”
The conspiracy theorist and longtime Trump supporter’s rage posts have preceded the dismissal of dozens of officials throughout the president’s second term.
The defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters, said there is no immediate replacement for Sylvia and no reason has been given for the firing. The move was reported earlier by The Atlantic.
A spokesperson for the Joint Staff said “the Chairman, the Joint Staff, and the Joint Force extend our deepest gratitude to Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia and his family for their 32 years of distinguished service to our nation” and they "wish him and his family the best.”
Typically, the J5 director and their staff are responsible for generating and coordinating military plans with both the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the president. Sylvia's firing comes as Trump has repeatedly floated starting new military operations against Iran.
Donald Trump has been left red-faced after mistaking a male Army general for a woman while defending Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s latest military shake-up.
[. . .]
However, asked on Thursday about the firing of “Lt. Gen. Sylvia,” Trump appeared to assume he was female as he threatened consequences against Pentagon leakers.
“She’s got problems,” the 80-year-old president told reporters, and no one corrected him.
“She’s gonna have big problems. We’re very much looking for leakers.”
The position requires coordinating military plans with the president and the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and yet Chump, after nearly two years back in office, didn't know enough about the person in the position to know whether the person was male or female? Is this road fatigue? Is this him delegating tasks that he should be carrying out? Or is another sign of his increased dementia?
This summer, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asked a Republican lawmaker what he thought the odds were that Congress would pass the Trump administration’s record $1.5 trillion defense budget request.
The chances, the lawmaker responded, were about the same as Hegseth getting confirmed again by the Senate.
“You have a problem, and you need to increase the amount and the quality of the communication” with Congress, the Republican lawmaker recounted in an interview, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe the private exchange.
Months later, members of both parties said the Pentagon has not changed course.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
ICYMI: Senator Murray Responds to 22.2% Rate Increase for Washington’s 2027 Exchange Health Insurance Market
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member and former Chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, held a roundtable discussion in Seattle with patients, small business owners, and health care providers to discuss how Republicans’ sabotage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace have sent premiums skyrocketing and have created a health care crisis for families, businesses, and communities as open enrollment season has begun. Senator Murray highlighted how Republicans’ nearly $1 trillion cut to Medicaid is costing millions their health care, forcing hospital layoffs, and worse.
Window shopping for families who shop for health care on the Washington Health Benefit Exchange has already begun and open enrollment will begin on November 1, 2026.
Joining Senator Murray at the roundtable were: Patty Kuderer, Washington State Insurance Commissioner; Dr. Matt Logalbo, MD; Alicia Anderson Pieri, a small business owner from Seattle who has seen premium costs skyrocket for her employees; and Jon Kiehnau, Co-Owner of Don & Joe’s Meats, Pike Place Market.
“Republican policies are driving health care costs higher and higher every year, from expiring tax credits to Medicaid cuts, drug tariffs, and more. Families need to know when they see their premium go up, when they see their Medicaid ripped away, when their local hospital closes or cuts services—it’s not because our government can’t afford to help families with health care. It is because those are choices that Republicans made,” said Senator Murray. “Republicans are ready to spend trillions on Trump’s wars. And they moved heaven and earth to give billionaires a giant tax cut last year. But when it came to helping working families by extending the health care tax credits—Republicans literally shut down the government to avoid working with Democrats. But Democrats won’t let Republicans ignore the damage they caused. We want to restore the health care tax credits, reverse the Medicaid cuts, and undo all the damage we can right now. And long term, I believe we need to go bolder and chart a path to universal health care coverage.”
Last year, Republicans passed the single largest cut to health care in our country’s history, and they blocked every Democratic effort to extend the ACA tax credits—causing massive premium hikes for families in Washington state and rising uncompensated care for hospitals and clinics. And in September, the Office of the Insurance Commissioner of Washington State announced that a 22.2% average rate increase was approved for insurance providers who will sell individual health plans on the Washington Health Benefit Exchange in 2027. Hospitals and clinics in Washington state are facing a $160 million loss in funding, a 5.6% spike in uncompensated care, and are expected to lose between $31 billion and $51 billion over the next decade due to Republicans’ health care cuts. So far 37 hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes in Washington state are at-risk, have announced cuts to services, are closing, or have closed.
“Today, many people are feeling the sticker shock of rising premiums,” said Insurance Commissioner Patty Kuderer. “The individual market has always been the most vulnerable, but actions by the other Washington have inflicted unnecessary harm and are part of what’s driving up these costs.”
“Our patients are worried about losing access to the insurance they rely on for essential health care and life-saving medications,” says Matthew Logalbo, MD, Medical Director at Seattle Roots Community Health. “We provide care regardless of ability to pay, but when our patients lose coverage, it hurts their ability to access necessary care beyond our walls, and our ability to fund the services they count on within.”
In August, a new report was released detailing how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA)—which cut over $1 trillion from health care to fund tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires—has caused 50,545 Washingtonians to lose their Medicaid, CHIP, or ACA coverage they relied on to receive health care. Republicans also refused to extend the ACA enhanced premium tax credits, which caused premiums to double for 226,813 people across Washington state and which the Washington State Insurance Commissioner cites as a primary reason driving the rate increase for 2027. For 2026, rates for plans on the Washington Health Benefit Exchange increased by 21%, which had direct impacts on families. This year, a family of four in Washington state who makes $130,000 a year saw their average annual premium rise by $12,392—costing them a total of $23,442.
ABOUT GOP REFUSAL TO EXTEND ACA TAX CREDITS:
Senator Murray forced the issue of the ACA tax credits at every opportunity before Republicans ultimately refused to take any action, speakingoutnonstop about the urgent need to save health care and calling on Republicans to come to the negotiating table to work out a bipartisan deal to extend the ACA tax credits. She took to the Senate floor in November 2025 with her Democratic colleagues to call for a clean one-year extension of the ACA tax credits, and held numerous virtualpressconferences with Washingtonians, as well as residents of neighboring states Idaho and Montana, about the exploding health care premiums that Americans would see due to the expiration of the tax credits. As the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Murray led legislation supported by the Democratic caucus that would have addressed the health care crisis during the government shutdown last fall. Senator Murray has also cosponsored multiple pieces of legislation over the past year—the Health Care Affordability Act and the Protecting Health Care and Lowering Costs Act—that would make the ACA tax credits permanent.
As then-chair of the Senate Health Committee, Senator Murray played a critical role in passing the ACA enhanced premium tax credits into law in the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021 and extending them in the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022.
ABOUT TRUMP’S MEDICAID CUTS:
Nationwide, the Republican health care cuts represent a more than $400 billion hit to America’s hospitals—with one estimate finding that over 170 rural hospitals will likely be forced to close or scale back their services, which will force more Americans to travel further for maternity care and emergency room visits, and face longer wait times. Washington state is one of the states most at-risk, with 22 hospitals at-risk of closing or reducing services. An estimated 477,000 health workers will lose their jobs as a result of the Republican cuts to Medicaid. Senator Murray has consistently advocated for rural health care access across the state, hosting numerousevents to emphasize the importance of investment into rural communities.
Hospitals in Washington state could lose at least $662 million in Medicaid revenue every year under OBBBA—forcing hospitals to lay off staff, cut services, or close their doors entirely. Overall, Washington state is expected to lose between $31 billion and $51 billion in federal Medicaid dollars over the next decade. In 2024, Washington had an uninsured rate of 4.8 percent—the lowest in the country—but the Republican bill is expected to balloon that number into the double digits.
In Washington state, nearly 2 million people—roughly 1 in 5—are enrolled in Apple Health, the state’s Medicaid program.
In a soup kettle add all vegetables and the 3 cups water and chicken bouillon.
Simmer 20 minutes or until vegetables are tender.
In a large saucepan melt butter.
Stir in flour and cook for 2-3 minutes until nice and bubbly.
Whisk in milk; bring to a boil.
Add this to the vegetable-water mixture in soup kettle.
Bring all to a simmer and add ham and shredded cheese.
Bring to a simmer again and cook until cheese is melted and all is heated through.
Serve and ENJOY!
So that's a nice recipe. I remember in the early 90s, The Food Network offered a vegetable chowder recipe that I loved and made for about eight years. I haven't made it since the 90s. I'll have to look and see if I still have the recipe.
President Donald Trump’s attempt to rescue Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) from a medical-debt scandal has left some of his own advisers grimacing, according to a new report.
A longtime Trump adviser and another Republican close to the president told Zeteo’s “First Draft” newsletter that they were unhappy with Trump’s defense, saying his “viral, antisemitic-slur-prone” remark only spread the debt controversy further, both in Kansas and nationally.
Trump also falsely claimed that Marshall had been required “by law” to “go after those people.”
The Times reported last month that patients sued by Marshall, an OB-GYN, “were routinely charged 18 percent interest” and that “some had bank accounts garnished.” The headline read: “A Doctor Sued 700 Patients for Debts; 81 Were Arrested. Now He’s a Senator.”
The story has dogged Marshall in his unexpectedly tight race against Democrat Adam Hamilton, a pastor. When Vice President JD Vance rallied for Marshall in Olathe last month, a protester managed to shout “He sued his patients!” before being removed.
Marshall’s troubles haven’t stopped there. He faces allegations that he actually lives in Florida, and on Wednesday, independent journalist Judd Legum reported that Marshall bought stock in an obscure pharmaceutical company just before it won FDA approval to begin a Phase 1 clinical trial.
Thursday, October 29, 2026. Chump's DESPERATION TOUR continues with smaller and smaller crowds, Todd Blanche's questionable actions demand the appointment of a special counsel, Alex Pretti's parents want justice, and much more.
Chump continues his DESPERATION TOUR trying to shake off his dismal polling numbers and also convince Americans that the economy he's destroyed is doing just great. But he flounders to stay on message and he has this habit of making rude revelations. For example, Lim Hui Jie (CNBC) reports:
U.S. President Donald Trump has reiterated his claim that the Iran war will end "whenever I want it to," but insists that Tehran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
Speaking at a rally in Lubbock, Texas, Trump said "Somebody asked me before, 'When will the war in Iran end?' I said, 'Whenever I want it to end.'"
Whenever I want it to end.
It started February 28th. That was 243 days ago. He started it at night while Americans slept and those who were awake might have caught his videotaped announcement of the war. No, that's not how the US government typically announces wars. They also typically have to do a roll out on the wars. But Chump avoided those things because he was convinced this was what was needed. He started this war of choice and it has destroyed the American economy. Prices increased on everything.
And he said it would be a few weeks. It hit the eight month mark yesterday.
"Whenever I want it to end."
The American people didn't want it to start and they've been calling for it to end since it started.
Lim Hui Jie adds:
Currently, Trump's approval ratings stand at 32%, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll on Monday.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, said on Oct. 12 that the war was costing American families an average of $2,000 so far, where $1,100 comes from higher energy costs, $540 from heightened interest rate costs and $360 due to increased military spending.
Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon has now spent more than $47 billion waging the war in Iran, handing Donald Trump a damaging new spending figure just days before the midterms.
The number, drawn from Pentagon data obtained by Reuters, is more than 25 percent higher than the $37.5 billion estimate Hegseth gave lawmakers over the summer.
The Defense Department has not made the estimate public. It comes as Republicans face the real possibility of losing their majorities in both the House and the Senate in the November 3 election.
Pentagon watchdogs have received at least five reports of fraud, safety issues, bad parts or ethics concerns involving President Donald Trump's Qatari dream jet and Boeing's Air Force One replacement program at Port San Antonio.
Since late 2024, the Defense Department's inspector general's office has logged four complaints and one disclosure from Boeing Co. involving problems with the presidential aircraft programs, according to 90 pages of newly released records.
The heavily redacted documents provided to the San Antonio Express-News reveal previously undisclosed allegations and at least one criminal investigation potentially involving the presidential jets.
Pentagon and service IG offices investigate fraud, waste and abuse, but typically do not discuss ongoing cases or unsubstantiated claims. The complaints came from anonymous sources, including a Boeing employee in Everett, Wash., and a Pentagon contract analyst in San Antonio. The records do not show whether any of the allegations were substantiated.
Meanwhile, Monday Joanna Coles observed of THE DESPERATION TOUR, "If you also pan the crowd when Donald Trump is speaking now, he started making these strange noises, you see the crowd behind him looking really embarrassed for him." Jason Miciak (RAW STORY) shares his observations of the ones
You can see it in the eyes of the people aligned behind President Donald Trump as he makes his campaign speeches nowadays, not so much dead eyes as dread eyes, the type that question why they are at another Trump speech, what is so appealing about this guy, and whether they feel much of anything nowadays.
Donald Trump is not dead, and yet he is dead, at least politically, and all one needs is the look in the eyes of the crowd behind him. He is also deeply disturbed.
Now, of course, we have known since 2015 that something about Trump was deeply disturbing; that's not new news, as they say. But the dread in the crowds is new, or at least newer, more extreme, approaching, just approaching, some self-loathing.
Remember back when? In 2016, it was delirium as opposed to dread. Trump was larger than life. They and he lived to "own the libs," remember? When was the last time you heard, "Owned, Libtard!" Even some of us who spend our own dread-like lives swimming in political soup haven't run into that in a long time.
He has had it. He's done. Ask the crowd. Or at least he is making noises that most associate with dying. During his last three speeches, he's made some noise, a weird "guhggu" — certainly not a word, kind of like if a guy could hiccup and burp at the same time. The noise itself comes out sounding as if IT is confused as to its purpose, unleashed into our atmospheric ocean with no purpose, no meaning, a lot like his current presidency.
MOTHER JONES notes Garrison Hayes and David Corn on STRESS TEST talking about THE DESPERATION TOUR:
Trump, meanwhile, has been obsessively commenting on physical anatomy—specifically “asses”—in one of the stranger closing arguments in modern American political history. “This has to be, like, the definition of being off message,” co-host Garrison Hayes observes. “Like, definitionally off message.”
Trump’s fixation on rear-ends extended to rapper Nicki Minaj, who appeared at a rally, where Trump asked her to stand and extolled her derriere, fueling the silly rumor she might be named press secretary after the brief tenure of Katie “Half a Scaramucci” Zacharia.“It reminds me of what happened in 2016 when Trump was campaigning and he would say, ‘Hey, where’s my Black friend?’” David recalls. For Garrison, the gambit is all-too familiar: “Here we are in the closing moments of this midterm election, and the way that the Trump administration has decided to utilize a Black person in order to, I imagine, appeal to Black voters is offensive. It’s almost a caricature of the kind of racism that has become emblematic of this administration.”
Chump's DESPERATION TOUR has seen him in Georgia twice already to campaign for his buddy Mike Collins. Collins and Collins' campaign fit into Chump's world -- now more than ever. THE SWAMP notes:
As Trump-endorsed Mike Collins makes his last-ditch effort to unseat Democratic senator Jon Ossoff in Georgia, his campaign’s associates are also hard at work. Hard at work fighting abhorrent criminal allegations against them, that is.
Collins’ campaign leader—or “convoy captain”—in Cobb County, Andre Lamar Stafford, was arrested after he allegedly drove up to a bus stop just before 8.30 am on Friday, Oct. 15, in the Atlanta suburb of Smyrna. He stopped his car where an underage schoolgirl was standing, told her she was pretty, and then promptly exposed himself, his arrest warrant alleged. He was tracked by a Flock camera and picked out of a lineup by his alleged victim, whose age has not been disclosed. Stafford was accused of public indecency and child molestation and initially denied bond. Stafford, 26, claims he is innocent. However, the Cobb County arrest warrant stated that Collins’ “convoy captain” represented a “danger to a person or community.” He was later released. Oh, and did we mention that Stafford is running for a seat in the Georgia state house? So far, he’s not letting a little arrest warrant interrupt his campaign and plans to remain in his race, where he wants to oust Democrat Gabriel Sanchez.
The Collins campaign issued a statement that bravely came out against child molestation: “Mr. Stafford has volunteered on many campaigns across the state this year, including ours,” Collins said. “The charges are sickening, and if they’re true then he belongs on a list and behind bars.”
The Swamp has exposed a series of questionable characters serving as “convoy captains,” the name Collins is giving to appointed campaign leaders in counties across Georgia. The list includes B.B. Langham, a campaign leader in Richmond County, who pleaded guilty in 2014 to felony cruelty to children, along with charges of family violence and sexual battery—stemming from an incident involving his own (minor) stepdaughter. Joey Jackson, convoy captain for Jenkins County, was charged with cruelty to children. Gordon Austin, Carroll County’s captain, lost his dentist’s license after pleading guilty to fraud. And, of course, who could forget the “convoy captains” with ties to the Ku Klux Klan? That distinction belongs to Joshua Mote (Hall County) and Michael Boggus (Banks County).
Where there is sexual abuse, one finds Chump. Let's move over to his roll dog, the late Jeffrey Epstein. Bonded at the hip to Chump from the 80s through the 00s, the sex trafficker and pedophile is remembered for his crimes. Something Chump will be remembered for as well. And those crimes may include joining Epstein in the rape and assault Earlier this week, the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee issued a report which noted women coming forward to speak of incidents with Chump and Epstien. The fact that these accusations were not released by the Justice Dept when they released 'everything' as the Congressional Act required has led them to note a cover up appears to have taken place and that a special counsel needs to be appointed to explore the events and see what happened. One of the women, identified only as Jane, was a witness in court against Epstein's sex trafficking partner Ghislaine Maxwell. When Todd Blanche went to speak to Maxwell in July of 2025, the transcript shows that when Maxwell would mention Jane, Blanche would make clear that they weren't to speak of her.
Weren't to speak of her.
Let's go to the report:
As revealed by this Staff Report, documents in the Epstein files show that then-Deputy
Attorney General Todd Blanche likely knew about certain survivors’ claims against the President
when he traveled to Tallahassee, Florida, to interview Epstein co-conspirator Maxwell in federal
prison. The transcript of that meeting shows that on at least three separate occasions, Blanche
directed Maxwell not to discuss one individual, Jane, whose report to FBI implicated Donald
Trump in Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, but whose claims were not yet known to the public. In
other words, Attorney General Blanche may have engaged in criminal obstruction of justice while
acting on a mission to protect Trump.
And this is what the Congressional report notes of Jane:
JANE DOE 1 (A.K.A. JANE) – 14 YEARS OLD
DOJ documents released pursuant to EFTA include an allegation that in 1994 at Mar-aLago,
Jeffrey Epstein “introduced [a victim] to Trump saying ‘This is a good one, huh’ and Trump
responded ‘Yes.’”67 The victim was 14 years old at this time. As made apparent when viewed in
the version made available to Members of Congress, but not to the public, Jane Doe 1 was viewed
as a credible witness by DOJ investigators and prosecutors, and she was one of four women to
testify against Ghislaine Maxwell during her criminal trial under the pseudonym “Jane.”68 Jane’s
testimony was devastating for Maxwell’s defense. She described, in detail, abuse and sex acts that
occurred at Epstein’s properties in Florida, New Mexico, and New York, sometimes involving
Maxwell and groups of people.6
This slide deck of “Prominent Names” in the Epstein investigation, was created by DOJ
and FBI personnel in the weeks leading up to Todd Blanche’s interview of Maxwell and seemingly
initiated in “Response to 07/10/2025 Director’s call.” The slide deck includes a reference to
Jane’s account of Trump and Epstein’s conversation. Yet, strikingly, when then-Deputy Attorney
General Blanche interviewed Maxwell, ostensibly to “pursue justice wherever the facts may lead”
in the Jeffrey Epstein case, he did not ask any questions at all about Jane’s allegations. In fact,
when on several different occasions, Maxwell proactively referenced Jane, he quickly redirected
Maxwell away from any further discussion of “Jane” or her claims.
In one instance, Maxwell volunteered to Attorney General Blanche: “I believe you’re
talking about Jane,” to which he responded “yeah” -- indicating he was aware of her allegations.
However, as soon as Maxwell began to “address that,” meaning Jane’s claims, Attorney General
Blanche cut her off and instructed her not to share specifics. At various points during the interview, Attorney General Blanche interrupted Maxwell and instructed her not to discuss Jane's claims, for instance, saying "yeah, yeah, I don't want to get into … he said, she said." Maxwell responded "Absolutely, not. I'm not -- I don't want to go there either" and even more explicitly, "I'm not going to do that." At another point, Maxwell again raises Jane on her own and Attorney General Blanche abruptly cuts in saying, pointedly, "Let's not talk about individuals." The whole point of the conversation was not to uncover information but to create a conspiracy of silence and strategically deter Ghislaine Maxwell from sharing information that was not public at the time regarding the relationship between Trump and Epstein.
Attorney General Blanche’s actions, while perhaps not surprising given his former role as
Donald Trump’s defense attorney, potentially constituted witness tampering and obstruction of an
official proceeding—serious felonies. At the time of this interview, the House Oversight
Committee had scheduled an interview with Maxwell for August 11 -- less than two weeks later.
Blanche’s apparent instructions not to discuss a specific Epstein victim, and how that victim could
implicate Donald Trump, could easily run afoul of 18 U.S.C. § 1512, which forbids hindering or
delaying the communication of information relating to the potential commission of a federal
offense to a law enforcement officer, as well as corruptly influencing the testimony of any person
in an official proceeding -- such as a congressional interview and investigation.
Similarly, 18 U.S.C. 1505 forbids corruptly influencing, obstructing, or impeding any pending proceeding before Congress -- a crime which would almost certainly encompass indicating to a witness that they should not provide Congress with specific information that could implicate the President of the United States.
Blanche was supposedly interviewing Maxwell to find out what she knew. In reality, he was most likely preparing her for what she would testify to (Maxwell was supposed to appear before a Congressional committee shortly after her exchange with Blanche but that did not end up happening). Erin Mansfield (USA TODAY) notes:
Democrats on the Judiciary Committee argue in their report that the Department of Justice and the FBI have protected Trump and stonewalled attempts to investigate Epstein's associates.
"There is more than enough evidence that many individuals other than Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell may have committed a crime," the report says. "This includes Donald Trump."
Maxwell, a longtime associate of Epstein who women have told USA TODAY participated in their abuse, is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for sex trafficking, among other convictions. She met with now-Attorney General Todd Blanche shortly before the federal government moved her to a minimum security prison.
The report says the DOJ "has actively obstructed the Epstein investigation into any co-conspirators, attempted to prevent the release of the Epstein files, and then released an incomplete and heavily redacted set to the public—all while withholding key information about Trump in the process."
It also cites DOJ policy that prohibits prosecuting a sitting president, and federal law requiring the Department of Justice to appoint an independent special counsel if performing the investigation itself "would present a conflict of interest for the department or other extraordinary circumstances."
Mrinav Dehingia (WGTC) adds, "The report doubts that the administration will take even the 'minimal step' of appointing an independent special counsel. Raskin called on Congress to obtain the 'complete files required by law' and urged an independent special counsel to investigate Epstein’s alleged co-conspirators and the department’s handling of the case."
Donald Trump has been accused of sexually and physically assaulting a 13-year-old girl, RadarOnline.com can report, and then allegedly threatening to make her "disappear" if she tried to tell her story.
The allegations are part of an explosive new report from the House Judiciary Committee that claims Trump sexually assaulted at least five women years before becoming president, and all in the company of Jeffrey Epstein.
In an official complaint to authorities, a woman who was only identified as "Katie Johnson" claimed she was "enticed by promises of money and a modeling career to attend a series of underage s-x parties" at Epstein's home when she was just 13.
Trump was allegedly a guest at the parties, and Johnson details at least four separate times in which she was allegedly assaulted by the real estate mogul.
THE BULWARK addressed the new Congressional report yesterday.
A former Swiss beauty pageant contestant has accused President Donald Trump of raping her at New York City’s Plaza Hotel in 1993, providing House Judiciary Committee Democrats with a more serious account of an alleged encounter she previously described publicly as sexual assault.
Beatrice Keul, a former Miss Switzerland contestant, told Democratic committee staff that Trump raped her in a hotel suite in November 1993 after allegedly offering to help her obtain a U.S. visa and admission to New York University. Her allegations were detailed in a report released Monday, October 26, examining Trump’s past association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
According to the report, Keul was 24 when pageant organizer Jill Harth recruited her for the Donald J. Trump American Dream Pageant. During a luncheon at the Plaza Hotel, then owned by Trump, Keul alleged that he approached her with promises of educational and immigration assistance. She also recalled Epstein introducing himself as Trump’s best friend and offering to arrange a visit to Mar-a-Lago.
Keul said she was subsequently invited to meet privately with Trump in an upstairs suite, believing the conversation concerned her professional opportunities. Instead, she alleged, Trump grabbed her from behind and raped her, leaving her bruised and bleeding. She characterized the alleged attack as “brutal” and claimed Trump pressured her to remain silent while reiterating his earlier promises, telling her, “The show must go on.”
This week, the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee released an incisive accounting of how Trump’s Department of Justice has managed to avoid – nothing to see here – investigating ANY of the men in the Epstein files accused of sexual assault and rape, including Trump himself. It is the most damning official document yet published, not only linking Trump to Epstein’s crimes against women and girls but accusing Trump himself of rape.
[. . .] Tal Alexander and his year-younger twin brothers Oren and Alon [were convicted] for sex trafficking. They are the only people in America, other than Ghislaine Maxwell, mentioned in the Epstein files to be investigated and sentenced to prison despite the known cohorts and fellow travelers in the files. Meanwhile, as we’ve noted before, European countries including France, England and Norway have opened investigations into high profile men, all the way up to and including the de-princed Andrew.
The brothers were convicted of federal sex trafficking. They deny guilt, but a jury convicted them of a laundry list of heinous sex offenses, mostly involving group roofie rapes and the videotaping of inert victims. Their “sex trafficking” doesn’t appear to have involved the kind of commercial sex Epstein orchestrated, just inducements to party in fancy hotels and resorts – venues that, for the women, turned out to be the horror equivalent of Bluebeard’s cave.
Since late 2024, the three Alexander brothers have been sitting in a federal prison in New York that now also houses Luigi Mangione and Nicolás Maduro. They will soon be moved to institutions where they will serve out 30 year sentences. Prosecutors had asked for life.
For more than a decade, the Alexanders occupied a privileged position in the Trump-Epstein demimonde and luxury real estate world. They were well known to Trump and Epstein, Leon Black, the Witkoffs, Ivanka and Jared (whose Indian Creek mansion purchase two of the brothers handled in an off-market $24 million deal in April 2021) and other Trump pals.
The Southern District of New York arrested the brothers in December 2024, after Trump’s second election and not long before his inauguration. Their trial commenced in January 2026, the same week the DOJ dropped a huge tranche of Epstein files into public view under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The Alexanders appear in both images and email exchanges.
But on the night of the document dump, the BBC ran images of a government spreadsheet from the files in which allegations against the Alexanders were placed just below a box naming Trump and Clinton. That box included a 14-year-old victim’s allegation that Trump punched her in the head during sex. That accuser turns out to have been a woman who, as we reported earlier this year, the FBI had earmarked as “Protect Source” and whose FBI interviews have been held back from release for unknown reasons.
The Alexander-Epstein Venn diagram is worth studying.
For at least a decade, they were millennial members of the same skeezy underworld inhabited by Trump, Leon Black, Epstein, and other horny, powerful, desiccated men. They palled around with Alex Witkoff, the son of Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate dealer (for whom Oren handled at least two deals in Miami) who currently serves as Trump’s Special Envoy for Peace Missions.
Oren and Tal, in red MAGA hats, were at the Trump 2016 victory party in New York, along with their boss and one of Trump’s closest pals, Howard Lorber – a scene captured on Israeli TV. After Trump lost in 2020, Oren and some of his family were guests at the White House Hanukkah party. “Spare your political views. The president just served us kosher food in his house and wished us a Happy Hanukkah,” he wrote on Instagram.
They were welcome at Trump Tower and the White House, but the brothers insist they never went to Epstein’s properties – even though one woman has claimed they raped her upstairs at his mansion.
These are graphic and salacious charges, the kind of descriptions whose appearance in news coverage prompts memories–and then calls to the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800-656-HOPE) spike. But that surge of calls won’t happen today, because the New York Times and Washington Post, and all the major cable networks, have covered CheesecakeGate more thoroughly than this report put together by the Democrats of the House Judiciary Committee. (A search of the media monitoring service Snapstream showed the three major cable news networks combined mentioned the rape allegation against Trump just twice, whereas the word “cheesecake” has received 368 mentions in the same span.)
Blanche is a dishonest person whose actions warrant review by a special counsel.
Attorney General Todd Blanche has long maintained that the so-called Epstein files, even those kept from the public, contain no secret information related to national security.
When the document releases began last winter, Blanche noted that the Epstein Files Transparency Act authorized withholding information in the interest of national security or foreign policy, but said, "no files are being withheld or redacted on that basis."
"There's not some tranche of super-secret documents about Jeffrey Epstein that we're withholding, we're actually not withholding anything based upon [national defense information]," said Blanche, who was deputy attorney general at the time.
But the contents of at least three documents in the massive tranche of files indicate classified information was included in files collected by the DOJ.
One of the documents shows Blanche's Office of the Deputy Attorney General itself received classified material related to Epstein in March 2025. By law, material can only be classified for national security purposes.
What exactly was classified and why remains a mystery.
The parents of Alex Pretti, a US citizen shot and killed by federal immigration agents in Minnesota in January, criticized President Donald Trump's administration on Tuesday for withholding evidence from local prosecutors who are investigating the incident.
"Our experience with the Department of Justice has left us wondering how Alex will ever get justice," Pretti's father Michael said at a press conference in Minneapolis, the first time the family has spoken publicly since his death. "Do your job and stop shielding Alex's killers," he demanded.
During a press conference on Tuesday, Michael and Susan Pretti made their first public remarks since their son’s death in January, calling for the Department of Justice to hold those involved in their son’s death accountable. The federal government has not provided them with meaningful information about the case, they said.
“At every turn, they have ignored us, misled us and shielded Alex’s killers,” said Michael Pretti. “We are a family who love this country. We trust in the institutions of this country. We believe in the rule of law – and that people should be held accountable through that law.”
Pretti, who worked at a veterans hospital, died on 24 January after being fatally shot by federal immigration agents. The Trump administration quickly painted Pretti as a domestic terrorist who was armed, and baselessly accused him of wanting to harm agents during Donald Trump’s immigration operations in Minnesota. They defended the agents and said Pretti had violently resisted.
Video footage of the incident contradicted the government account, and showed Pretti had a cellphone in his hand and did not brandish a weapon or attack agents before they shot him in the back as he lay in the street.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
Top appropriators call on Education Secretary to scrap plans to refurnish her office
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senators Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, sent a letter to Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon calling on her to scrap plans to spend over $43,000 in taxpayer dollars on new furniture for her office.
“It has come to our attention that as you cut off funding for students, push out staff, and do all you can to illegally dismantle the very Department you lead, you plan to spend $43,278.64 on new furniture for your own office,” write Murray and Baldwin. “You vowed to put yourself out of a job; now you expect American taxpayers to pick up the tab to refurnish your own office.”
“Secretary McMahon, you have asked students, families, and teachers across the country to endure extraordinarily painful cuts in the name of ‘fiscal responsibility,’ and you have pushed out nearly half of the staff at the Department… This year, you have asked Congress to slash funding for important K-12 programs and to cut funding for higher education programs by nearly $5 billion,” they continue. “But it is clear that you do not think that you should have to abide by the same rules you want to apply to others.”
Senators Murry and Baldwin conclude by calling on Secretary McMahon to scrap the planned purchases, which the Department claimed were necessary in part because the Secretary’s existing furniture “cannot be … aesthetically integrated into the agency’s new office space.” They write: “The American people are sick of the corruption, sick of the waste, and sick of the hypocrisy coming out of all corners of this administration.”
It has come to our attention that as you cut off funding for students, push out staff, and do all you can to illegally dismantle the very Department you lead, you plan to spend $43,278.64 on new furniture for your own office. While schools nationwide lose out on funding Congress provided for everything from literacy programs to student mental health because of actions taken by your Department, you are wasting tax dollars on frivolous furniture purchases. You vowed to put yourself out of a job; now you expect American taxpayers to pick up the tab to refurnish your own office.
Secretary McMahon, you have asked students, families, and teachers across the country to endure extraordinarily painful cuts in the name of “fiscal responsibility,” and you have pushed out nearly half of the staff at the Department in a chaotic, illegal campaign to fire employees tasked with protecting students with disabilities in the classroom and going after predatory student lenders. This year, you have asked Congress to slash funding for important K-12 programs and to cut funding for higher education programs by nearly $5 billion—including by destroying programs like TRIO and Federal Work Study.
But it is clear that you do not think that you should have to abide by the same rules you want to apply to others. As you illegally spin off the Department’s core functions to other agencies and are forcing hundreds of your employees to move to agencies across government, apparently your old furniture cannot be moved to your new office.
We want the Department of Education to have a safe and professional office space to work from—but that must mean a safe and professional office space for every employee, not merely the Secretary. While you use Americans’ tax dollars to refurnish your own new office, you have forced your own employees to go work in offices that “are unsafe and in disrepair, with water leaking from ceilings, mold in kitchens, extreme temperatures from a failing HVAC system, insect traps filled with dead bugs and live insects in lactation rooms and work areas.” Your Department claims that the existing furniture in your office “cannot be … aesthetically integrated into the agency’s new office space.” It is unjustifiable to buy new furniture while students lose access to education services you are illegally dismantling and suffer from painful funding cuts that were not authorized by Congress.
The American people are sick of the corruption, sick of the waste, and sick of the hypocrisy coming out of all corners of this administration. They deserve a full accounting of how and why their tax dollars are being used to buy new office furniture for a secretary whose stated mission is to put themselves out of a job. We urge you to reconsider this wasteful purchase, restore Congressionally mandated funding families are counting on, and refocus your Department’s time on helping students get ahead.
