Democratic Tea?

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

Holly Otterbein and Stephen Neukam at  Axios:

Hours after former NFL star Colin Allred quit the Texas Senate race Monday, rabble-rousing Rep. Jasmine Crockett jumped in — the latest sign that Democrats are facing a Tea Party-style revolt by progressives.

Why it matters: Senate Democratic leaders this year have tried to tip the scales in favor of their favorite 2026 candidates in several states — but they've lost some power as much of the party's base has turned on them in President Trump's second term.

...

Zoom out: In Ohio and North Carolina, Schumer helped clear the 2026 Democratic primary fields for former Sen. Sherrod Brown and former Gov. Roy Cooper. But in several other states, Democratic leaders have failed to head off contested primaries — and party-approved candidates are struggling to stake out leads. It's all unfolding amid an intraparty rebellion that's drawn some comparisons to how the conservative Tea Party movement reshaped the GOP nearly two decades ago.

• In Maine, polls show oyster farmer Graham Platner, a progressive Democrat, as still competitive against Schumer-endorsed Maine Gov. Janet Mills — even after reports Platner made controversial comments online and had a Nazi-linked tattoo (which he's covered up).
• In the Michigan Senate primary, mainstream Democrats have complained that Rep. Haley Stevens, the favorite of party officials, has run a lackluster campaign against liberal state Sen. Mallory McMorrow and Bernie-Sanders backed Abdul El-Sayed, a doctor.
• In Iowa, the establishment favorite, Josh Turek, faces a large primary field.

No, Trump is Definitely Not Reagan's Heir

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Pete Hegseth's tenure is one of them.

David McAfee at Raw Story:

Hegseth over the weekend made a simple comment when he said, "If you look at actual policies, Donald Trump is the true and rightful heir of Ronald Reagan."

The statement didn't go over well with critics.

Attorney Danny Miller simply quoted Reagan as saying, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

Conservative Heath Mayo chimed in with, "No serious person believes this. Reagan helped *win* the Cold War. He invested in freedom and peace. He knew it mattered, and that it wasn’t a waste or a 'territorial dispute.' And it’s frankly embarrassing that the Reagan Foundation and the 'Reagan National Defense Forum' would give this guy a microphone."

"He’s not worth the time of serious people, despite his title. I would have walked out," Mayo added.

Another conservative analyst, Tom Nichols chimed in with, "Yeah, no."Independent veteran leader Paul Rieckhoff said, "Hegseth is the only person who believes this."

Another conservative analyst, Tom Nichols chimed in with, "Yeah, no."

Independent veteran leader Paul Rieckhoff said, "Hegseth is the only person who believes this."

Reagan supported robust immigration, free trade, and a tough stance on the Kremlin.  Trump's policies are the opposite.

Here is Reagan on the moral stakes of foreign policy: "Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness -- pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the Earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world."

Trump's national security strategy: “We seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.”

Kremlin spokesman Peskov: Adjustments to the U.S. National Security Strategy largely align with our own vision.

🔗 Source: https://t.co/fkc1rZJ13Q pic.twitter.com/AadbDEHBVw

— Russia Direct (@RussiaDirect_) December 7, 2025

A City on a Pile of Cash

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Ronald Reagan:

Our nation was conceived in liberty, and we have always understood that the fate of our own freedom is tied to the fate of freedom in the world. The flourishing of liberty, democracy, and constitutional government is the goal of this administration as it is the greatest wish of Americans and that Americans have for all peoples of the world. We pray that we'll all come to enjoy what we consider our greatest treasure—freedom.

Anton Troianovski at NYT:

Latin American countries must grant no-bid contracts to U.S. companies. Taiwan’s significance boils down to semiconductors and shipping lanes. Washington’s “hectoring” of the wealthy Gulf monarchies needs to stop.

The world as seen from the White House is a place where America can use its vast powers to make money.

President Trump has shown all year that his second term would make it a priority to squeeze less powerful countries to benefit American companies. But late Thursday, his administration made that profit-driven approach a core element of its official foreign policy, publishing its long-anticipated update to U.S. national security aims around the world.

The document, known as the National Security Strategy, describes a world in which American interests are far narrower than how prior administrations — even in Mr. Trump’s first term — had portrayed them. Gone is the long-familiar picture of the United States as a global force for freedom, replaced by a country that is focused on reducing migration while avoiding passing judgment on authoritarians, instead seeing them as sources of cash.

“We seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world,” it says, “without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.”

 

Pete Hegseth's Bad Week

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

The DOD Inspector General report on Signalgate:

 The Secretary sent information identifying the quantity and strike times of manned U.S. aircraft over hostile territory over an unapproved, unsecure network approximately 2 to 4 hours before the execution of those strikes.  Although the Secretary wrote in his July 25 statement to the DoD OIG that “there were no details that would endanger our troops or the mission,” if this information had fallen into the hands of U.S. adversaries, Houthi forces might have been able to counter U.S. forces or reposition personnel and assets to avoid planned U.S. strikes.  Even though these events did not ultimately occur, the Secretary’s actions created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots.  

 Katie Bo Lillis, Natasha Bertrand, and Haley Britzky at CNN:

The two men killed as they floated holding onto their capsized boat in a secondary strike against a suspected drug vessel in early September did not appear to have radio or other communications devices, the top military official overseeing the strike told lawmakers on Thursday, according to three sources with direct knowledge of his congressional briefings.

As far back as September, defense officials have been quietly pushing back on criticism that killing the two survivors amounted to a war crime by arguing, in part, that they were legitimate targets because they appeared to be radioing for help or backup — reinforcements that, if they had received it, could have theoretically allowed them to continue to traffic the drugs aboard their sinking ship.

Defense officials made that claim in at least one briefing in September for congressional staff, according to a source familiar with the session, and several media outlets cited officials repeating that justification in the last week.

But Thursday, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley acknowledged that the two survivors of the military’s initial strike were in no position to make a distress call in his briefings to lawmakers. Bradley was in charge of Joint Special Operations Command at the time of the strike and was the top military officer directing the attack.

...

Ultimately, Bradley told lawmakers, he ordered a second strike to destroy the remains of the vessel, killing the two survivors, on the grounds that it appeared that part of the vessel remained afloat because it still held cocaine, according to one of the sources. The survivors could hypothetically have floated to safety, been rescued, and carried on with trafficking the drugs, the logic went.

The other source with direct knowledge of the briefing called that rationale “f**king insane.”

 

.@KFILE reports: Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told an audience in a previously unreported 2016 video that the U.S. military “won’t follow unlawful orders from their commander in chief,” and described the refusal of illegal commands as a part of the military’s ethos and…

— Matt Marshall (@_Matt_Marshall) December 2, 2025

Mike Johnson's Bad Week

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

Annie Karni at NYT:

Representative Elise Stefanik of New York called Speaker Mike Johnson a habitual liar.

Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina has told people she is so frustrated with the Louisiana Republican and sick of the way he has run the House — particularly how women are treated there — that she is planning to huddle with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia next week to discuss following her lead and retiring early from Congress.

Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida has gone around Mr. Johnson in a bid to force a vote he has declined to schedule on a bill to ban members of Congress from stock trading.

Less than a year out from midterm elections in which Republicans’ vanishingly small majority is at stake, Mr. Johnson’s grasp on his gavel appears weaker than ever, as members from all corners of his conference openly complain about his leadership. Some predict that he may not last as the speaker for the rest of this term.

...

Ms. Stefanik told The Wall Street Journal in an interview that Mr. Johnson would not have the support to remain speaker if a vote were held tomorrow, adding that disaffection with him among Republicans was “that widespread.”

Ms. Stefanik declined to speak on the record for this article.

Mr. Johnson declined to comment, as well. But a senior Republican congressional aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of prolonging an intraparty feud, said that after Mr. Johnson had provided Ms. Stefanik with office space and a budget for what the aide described as “a fake job and a fake title,” he would have expected her to be more gracious.

 Kate Santaliz and Hans Nichols at Axios:

President Trump didn't tell Speaker Mike Johnson that he was granting a "full and unconditional PARDON" to Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) before announcing it on Truth Social this morning, Johnson told Axios.

Why it matters: Trump's pardon boosts one of House Republicans' top political targets — and could hamper GOP efforts to protect their razor-thin majority in next year's midterms.

"I didn't know anything about it," Johnson told Axios Wednesday afternoon.
Asked if he was surprised by Trump's pardon, Johnson said: "I think he had talked about that since last spring. It shouldn't be a huge surprise to anyone. But no, I didn't discuss it with him."

National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson (N.C.) told Axios that he found out about Trump's pardon on X.The pardon "certainly makes it tougher" for the GOP to flip Cuellar's South Texas seat, Hudson said.


Driving the news: Trump not only pardoned Cuellar — he praised him, calling the Texas Democrat "highly respected" and "beloved."

Shane Goldmacher at NYT:

President Trump and Republicans got a win on Tuesday night — and it set off alarm bells for the party.

Just like every other congressional contest held this year, the Tennessee special election for the House tilted sharply in the Democratic Party’s direction compared with the 2024 election. The Trump-backed Republican candidate, Matt Van Epps, won by nine percentage points in a ruby-red seat that Mr. Trump had romped through a year earlier by 22 points.

That 13-point swing to the left — if it continues into 2026 — threatens to be an undertow strong enough to subsume a range of Republicans in less lopsidedly red seats and deliver Democrats a comfortable House majority next year.

Note: the D candidate was too liberal for the district.  A moderate would have done even better.

 

Trump's Racist Rant

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Shawn McCreesh  at NYT:

President Trump unleashed a xenophobic tirade against Somali immigrants on Tuesday, calling them “garbage” he does not want in the United States in an outburst that captured the raw nativism that has animated his approach to immigration.

Even for Mr. Trump — who has a long history of insulting Black people, particularly those from African countries — his outburst was shocking in its unapologetic bigotry. And it comes as he started a new ICE operation targeting Somalis in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region.

...

“When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it,” Mr. Trump added as Vice President JD Vance banged the table in encouragement.

Transcript: 

But no, I think that Walz is a grossly incompetent man. There's something wrong with him, OK? There's something wrong with him. And when you look at what he's done with Somalia, which is barely a country, they have no anything, they just run around killing each other. There's no structure. And when I see somebody like Ilhan Omar, who I don't know at all, but I always watch her.

For years, I've watched her complain about our Constitution, how she's being treated badly. Our Constitution, the United States of America is a bad place. It hates everybody, hates Jewish people, hates everybody. And I think she's an incompetent person. She's a real terrible person. But when I watch what is happening in Minnesota, the land of a thousand lakes or however many lakes they have -- they've got a lot of lakes, but this beautiful place.

And I see these people ripping it off and now I'm understanding and you're going to look into that, Scott. I hear they ripped off -- Somalians ripped off that state for billions of dollars, billions. Every year, billions of dollars and they contribute nothing. The welfare is like 88 percent. They contribute nothing.

I don't want them in our country, I'll be honest with you, OK? Somebody would say, oh, that's not politically correct. I don't care. I don't want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks and we don't want them in our country. I can say that about other countries too.

I can say it about other countries too. We don't want them -- the hell -- we have to rebuild our country. You know, our country is at a tipping point. We could go bad; we're at a tipping point. I don't know if people mind me saying that, but I'm saying it. We could go one way or the other and we're going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.

Ilhan Omar is garbage, she's garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren't people that work. These aren't people that say let's go, come on, let's make this place great. These are people that do nothing but complain. They complain, and from where they came from, they've got nothing. You know, if they came from Paradise and they said this isn't Paradise.

But when they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch we don't want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Bubble Boy

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Jonathan Lemire at The Atlantic:

Every president, of course, deals with being in a bubble, distanced by the demands on his time and the extraordinary security concerns that come with the office. But in his return to the presidency this year, Trump has seldom ventured across the country to anywhere other than his own clubs. He also inhabits something of a news silo, watching far-right cable channels such as One America News and Newsmax along with Fox News. Even his social-media consumption has become narrower: Instead of being on the app formerly known as Twitter, where he’d occasionally encounter contrary views, he now posts solely on Truth Social, which he owns and where he is surrounded by sycophants. And his own White House staff, this time largely populated by true believers and yes-men (and a few yes-women), only adds to the echo chamber.

...

“People voted for him to lower prices, to bring manufacturing back, to stand up to those taking advantage of them,” a close Trump ally told me on the condition of anonymity so as not to antagonize the president. “They didn’t vote for him to build a damn gilded ballroom. He’s not hearing them.”

The Cabinet makes the bubble thicker and darker.  Jack Blanchard and Dash Burns at Politico:

SHOW TIME: It’s a strange place, Washington in 2025, but rarely stranger than when the president assembles his Cabinet for the TV cameras. This town is well acquainted with long, pointless meetings packed full of boastful claims, but these truly bizarre White House events stand out even in such a crowded field.

So once again this morning, we’ll see some of America’s most successful business leaders, politicians, war veterans and legal minds crowd into a room at the White House to pay homage to their boss.

In case you weren’t watching: At the last meeting in October, we were treated to Marco Rubio — a two-term United States senator — telling Trump that no president in modern history could have pulled off a ceasefire deal in the Middle East. Pete Hegseth, a proud war veteran, told Trump it was “a personal honor” to “witness the way you lead.” Doug Burgum — a billionaire businessman and former state governor — told the president he’d delivered “a masterclass in peace through strength.” The previous meeting in August went even further, dragging on for more than three hours as Trump’s team took lengthy turns to out-do one another. Does anyone actually talk to their boss like this?

It’s not entirely clear what the purpose of all this actually is. No other democracy in the Western world showcases its officials paying homage like this to their leader. And how many people are even watching a three-hour Cabinet meeting on live TV? But beyond the wild claims and the flattery, we should actually get some interesting moments today — not least because this will likely be the first public outing for Hegseth since that Washington Post story on Caribbean missile strikes was published Friday afternoon.

 

Cui Bono?

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments. Its corruption is unprecedented.  Qatar's gift of a jet is just one example. His memecoin is another. Its corruption is unprecedented.  Qatar's gift of a jet is just one example. His memecoin is another. The Ukraine sellout is a third.

Tom Burgis at The Guardian:

The Trumps’ income in the first half of this year increased 17-fold, from $51m 12 months earlier to $864m, Reuters calculates. Of that, more than 90% came not from real estate but from cryptocurrency. The Trumps’ representatives have questioned those numbers but it is clear that this new frontier is proving remarkably lucrative for them.

When Trump launched World Liberty Financial two months before his re-election, he claimed it would help make “America the crypto capital of the world”. Three of his sons – Don Jr and Eric along with Barron, aged 19, net worth about $150m – are named as co-founders, as was Trump himself until he was sworn in.

Four months into Trump’s second term, World Liberty announced that its USD1 digital currency had been selected for a gigantic transaction. Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange, was selling a stake to a United Arab Emirates state-owned fund called MGX. The $2bn price could have been paid in dollars. Instead, Binance would receive 2m freshly minted USD1.

Because USD1 is a stablecoin – crypto pegged to a real currency – World Liberty holds one dollar for each token it issues. It makes money from the interest and investment returns on these reserves. The $2bn jump in the reserves from this one deal could end up making the Trumps’ company tens of millions annually.

Around the same time, Binance’s stratospherically wealthy Chinese-born founder, Changpeng Zhao, asked Trump for something. He had served a four-month sentence in a California prison for violating US laws against money laundering. Prosecutors said that allowing sanctioned Russians, al-Qaida and assorted others to move illicit funds over Binance – which paid a $4bn fine – had caused “significant harm to US national security”.

Upon his release, CZ, as he is known, went home to the UAE. His criminal record looked like an obstacle to re-establishing Binance in the US. He applied for a pardon in May, just as it emerged that the $2bn deal was done with USD1. On 23 October, Zhao posted on X: “Deeply grateful for today’s pardon and to President Trump for upholding America’s commitment to fairness, innovation, and justice.”

David Sacks is a South African-American who chairs the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.  Cecilia Kang et al. at NYT:

Since January, Mr. Sacks, 53, has occupied one of the most advantageous moonlighting roles in the federal government, influencing policy for Silicon Valley in Washington while simultaneously working in Silicon Valley as an investor. Among his actions as the White House’s artificial intelligence and crypto czar:

• Mr. Sacks has offered astonishing White House access to his tech industry compatriots and pushed to eliminate government obstacles facing A.I. companies. That has set up giants like Nvidia to reap an estimate of as much as $200 billion in new sales.
• Mr. Sacks has recommended A.I. policies that have sometimes run counter to national security recommendations, alarming some of his White House colleagues and raising questions about his priorities.
• Mr. Sacks has positioned himself to personally benefit. He has 708 tech investments, including at least 449 stakes in companies with ties to artificial intelligence that could be aided directly or indirectly by his policies, according to a New York Times analysis of his financial disclosures.
• His public filings designate 438 of his tech investments as software or hardware companies, even though the firms promote themselves as A.I. enterprises, offer A.I. services or have A.I. in their names, The Times found.
• Mr. Sacks has raised the profile of his weekly podcast, “All-In,” through his government role, and expanded its business.

 

Selling Out Ukraine

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Drew Hinshaw et al. at WSJ:

Three powerful businessmen—two Americans and a Russian—hunched over a laptop in Miami Beach last month, ostensibly to draw up a plan to end Russia’s long and deadly war with Ukraine.

But the full scope of their project went much further, according to people familiar with the talks. They were privately charting a path to bring Russia’s $2 trillion economy in from the cold—with American businesses first in line to beat European competitors to the dividends.

At his waterfront estate, billionaire developer-turned-special envoy Steve Witkoff was hosting Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign-wealth fund and Vladimir Putin’s handpicked negotiator, who had largely shaped the document they were revising on the screen. Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, had arrived from his nearby home on an island known as the “Billionaire Bunker.”

Dmitriev was pushing a plan for U.S. companies to tap the roughly $300 billion of Russian central bank assets, frozen in Europe, for U.S.-Russian investment projects and a U.S.-led reconstruction of Ukraine. U.S. and Russian companies could join to exploit the vast mineral wealth in the Arctic. There were no limits to what two longtime adversaries could achieve, Dmitriev had argued for months: Their rival space industries, which raced one another during the Cold War, could even pursue a joint mission to Mars with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

For the Kremlin, the Miami talks were the culmination of a strategy, hatched before Trump’s inauguration, to bypass the traditional U.S. national security apparatus and convince the administration to view Russia not as a military threat but as a land of bountiful opportunity, according to Western security officials. By dangling multibillion-dollar rare-earth and energy deals, Moscow could reshape the economic map of Europe—while driving a wedge between America and its traditional allies.

Pete Hegseth and War Crimes

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima at WP:

The longer the U.S. surveillance aircraft followed the boat, the more confident intelligence analysts watching from command centers became that the 11 people on board were ferrying drugs.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.

A missile screamed off the Trinidad coast, striking the vessel and igniting a blaze from bow to stern. For minutes, commanders watched the boat burning on a live drone feed. As the smoke cleared, they got a jolt: Two survivors were clinging to the smoldering wreck.

The Special Operations commander overseeing the Sept. 2 attack — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions, two people familiar with the matter said. The two men were blown apart in the water.

Hegseth’s order, which has not been previously reported, adds another dimension to the campaign against suspected drug traffickers. Some current and former U.S. officials and law-of-war experts have said that the Pentagon’s lethal campaign — which has killed more than 80 people to date — is unlawful and may expose those most directly involved to future prosecution.

The alleged traffickers pose no imminent threat of attack against the United States and are not, as the Trump administration has tried to argue, in an “armed conflict” with the U.S., these officials and experts say. Because there is no legitimate war between the two sides, killing any of the men in the boats “amounts to murder,” said Todd Huntley, a former military lawyer who advised Special Operations forces for seven years at the height of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign.

Even if the U.S. were at war with the traffickers, an order to kill all the boat’s occupants if they were no longer able to fight “would in essence be an order to show no quarter, which would be a war crime,” said Huntley, now director of the national security law program at Georgetown Law.

Trump has a history of condoning war crimes.  Steve Benen reported in 2018:

On his first full day as president, Donald Trump traveled to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, spoke in front of a memorial wall, and delivered one of the strangest presidential speeches I’ve ever seen.

Trump attacked journalists, lied about the size of his inaugural crowd, assured those in attendance about how impressed he was with his intellect, reflected on the number of instances in which he appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and speculated about taking Iraqi oil.

But the Washington Post reported this week on something else that happened when the president visited the CIA and “was ushered up to the agency’s drone operations floor.”

Trump urged the CIA to start arming its drones in Syria. “If you can do it in 10 days, get it done,” he said, according to two former officials familiar with the meeting.

Later, when the agency’s head of drone operations explained that the CIA had developed special munitions to limit civilian casualties, the president seemed unimpressed. Watching a previously recorded strike in which the agency held off on firing until the target had wandered away from a house with his family inside, Trump asked, “Why did you wait?” one participant in the meeting recalled.

For those with a moral compass, such a comment is obviously jarring, especially coming from a president. But for those who’ve covered Trump’s public positions, this isn’t too surprising.

In December 2015, near the height of the race for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, then-candidate Trump endorsed torturing detainees — even “if it doesn’t work” in producing valuable intelligence — simply because he saw it as a worthwhile thing to do.

He added soon after, “[T]he other thing is with the terrorists, you have to take out their families. When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don’t kid yourself. But they say they don’t care about their lives. You have to take out their families.”

Trump Is Not Well

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is has been full of ominous developments. Last year, Trump was already showing signs of cognitive decline. It's getting worse.

 Daniel Orton and Robert Birsel at Newsweek:

Tim Walz hit back at Donald Trump after the president used an ableist slur to attack him during a late-night online tirade against immigration.

Trump called the Minnesota governor “seriously retarded,” a term widely regarded as derogatory toward people with intellectual disabilities. Walz responded by calling for the release of the president’s recent MRI results, drawing renewed attention to questions surrounding the 79-year-old commander-in-chief's health.

Trump's health has drawn increased scrutiny in recent months after he was diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a common condition in older adults. He also confirmed receiving an MRI at Walter Reed in October as part of what the White House described as a routine physical, though Trump told reporters he had “no idea what they analyzed.”

"Release the MRI results," Walz wrote, sharing a screenshot on X of Trump's lengthy Truth Social post in which he slammed immigration, attacked Walz and Somali-American Democratic Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar, and pushed unsubstantiated claims about Somali immigrants.

 Katie Rogers and Dylan Freedman at NYT:

According to a Times analysis of the official presidential schedules in a database maintained by Roll Call, Mr. Trump’s first official event starts later in the day. In 2017, the first year of his first term, Mr. Trump’s scheduled events started at 10:31 a.m. on average. By contrast, Mr. Trump in his second term has started scheduled events in the afternoon on average, at 12:08 p.m. His events end on average at around the same time as they did during the first year of his first term, shortly after 5 p.m.

The number of Mr. Trump’s total official appearances has decreased by 39 percent. In 2017, Mr. Trump held 1,688 official events between Jan. 20 and Nov. 25 of that year. For that same time period this year, Mr. Trump has appeared in 1,029 official events.

Mr. Trump still regularly comes down to the Oval Office after 11 a.m., according to a person familiar with his schedule. This routine is a holdover from his first term: After he complained about being overscheduled in the mornings, Mr. Trump kept so-called executive time hours in the White House residence before he headed downstairs for work.

...
Mr. Trump has long rambled in his speeches; during his 2024 campaign and in his second term, the meandering has often been noticeable. He can veer off script to share stories that are sometimes riddled with untruths, such as his false claim that his uncle, John Trump, had taught the domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski at M.I.T.

“I said, ‘What kind of a student was he, Uncle John, Dr. John Trump?’ He said, ‘What kind of a student?’ And then he said, ‘seriously good.’ He said he’d go around correcting everybody,” Mr. Trump said during a speech in Pennsylvania in July. “But it didn’t work out too well for him, didn’t work out too well, but it’s interesting in life. But I will say this that we have the greatest brains, we have the greatest power and we are going to have more electric.”

A rational president would ignore the story, confident that it would soon fade away.  Instead, Trump spotlighted it. 

Marina Dunbar at The Guardian:

Donald Trump lashed out on Wednesday against a New York Times reporter, calling her “ugly inside and out” in his latest personal insult against female members of the media after last week calling another “piggy”.

In a Truth Social post, Trump criticized the newspaper for an article suggesting he was running low on energy in his 80th year, insisting he had “never worked so hard in my life”.

Trump specifically targeted one of the authors. “The writer of the story, Katie Rogers, who is assigned to write only bad things about me, is a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out,” he wrote.

Rumors surrounding the president’s health have been circulating for months, with more questions raised after Trump admitted to having an MRI last month. He claimed it was part of a standard physical and would not reveal what body part the test had analyzed.

 

Foreign MAGA

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is has been full of ominous developments.  For one, we have learned that foreign interference in American politics has not gone away.

Marina Dunbar at The Guardian:

Many of the most influential personalities in the “Make America great again” (Maga) movement on X are based outside of the US, including Russia, Nigeria and India, a new transparency feature on the social media site has revealed.

The new tool, called “about this account”, became available on Friday to users of the Elon Musk-owned platform. It allows anyone to see where an account is located, when it joined the platform, how often its username has been changed, and how the X app was downloaded.

As soon as the update was rolled out, users found numerous Maga and rightwing influencers who presented themselves as patriotic Americans were operating from other countries.

“This is easily one of the greatest days on this platform,” wrote the liberal influencer Harry Sisson. “Seeing all of these MAGA accounts get exposed as foreign actors trying to destroy the United States is a complete vindication of Democrats, like myself and many on here, who have been warning about this.”

The account MAGANationX, with nearly 400,000 followers and a bio reading “Patriot Voice for We The People”, is actually operated from eastern Europe, according to the Daily Beast. Another popular profile, IvankaNews, an Ivanka Trump fan account with about 1 million followers that frequently posts about illegal immigration, Islam and support for Trump, was revealed to be based in Nigeria.

Another user also uncovered several additional cases. Dark Maga, a smaller account with roughly 15,000 followers, is run from Thailand. MAGA Scope, which has more than 51,000 followers, operates out of Nigeria, while MAGA Beacon is based in south Asia.

Miles Klee at Rolling Stone:

A user with the handle @AmericanGuyX, for example, who represents themselves as a “Florida guy,” regularly posted in support of Trump and Musk while denouncing figures including George Soros and fear-mongering about the U.S. national debt. Their location, according to X, is India. On Saturday, Trump shared an X post from @TRUMP_ARMY_ about a Supreme Court ruling on Truth Social; that person, who has more than half a million followers, also lives in India. And a now-suspended account with the handle @American and a profile image of a bald eagle superimposed on an American flag traced back to Pakistan.

Other accounts featuring MAGA slogans, American flag emojis, references to the American Revolution, and Trump-favored words such as “patriot” were found to be run by users in places including Nigeria, Turkey, Ukraine, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. Quite a few have substantial followings and at some point alluded to voting for Trump in 2024 despite evidently lacking U.S. citizenship. There was evidence, too, that more of these inauthentic profiles are springing up every day and often rebranding to gain a wider audience. The MAGA account “Charlie’s Voice Rising,” or @CharlieK_news, which uses an avatar of slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and has nearly 200,000 followers, was created less than a year ago by someone in Eastern Europe, and the handle has been changed multiple times.

 

ACA Subsidies

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  Trump was a liability for Republicans in the 2025 off-year elections.  He could be a bigger liability in the 2026 midterm -- and not just because of his low approval ratings.

Congressional Republicans are in a tough spot.  On the one hand, anything bearing Obama's name is toxic to GOP activists. On the other hand, the general public now favors the Affordable Care Act by nearly a two-to-one margin. And about half of those who receive ACA premium subsidies are either self-employed or work for a small business — exactly the kind of voters that marginal Republicans need in a general election. 

Robert Jimison at NYT:

Representative Jen Kiggans, Republican of Virginia, once called for eliminating the Affordable Care Act.

Representative Mike Lawler, Republican of New York, has repeatedly called it “a disaster.”

But the two are part of a small group of G.O.P. members of Congress — most of them facing tough re-election races next year in competitive districts — who have broken with their party to push for a temporary extension of a crucial piece of the law: subsidies, currently slated to expire at the end of the year, to help Americans afford their premiums.

Their eagerness to vote for an extension, which was Democrats’ main demand in the weekslong government shutdown fight, underscores how entrenched the health care law has become, even among Republicans who once fought to kill it. And it helps explain why President Trump, who has long railed against the law, commonly called Obamacare, is said to be weighing such a move as he and his party toil to address affordability issues that could be a major liability for them going into the midterm elections.

Letting the subsidies lapse would put a heavy financial burden on millions of voters just as the G.O.P. is grasping to keep control of Congress.

Bad November for Trump

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is has been full of ominous developments.

Chris Megerian at AP:

Thanksgiving may not provide Trump with much political respite after Democrats won sweeping victories in New Jersey, Virginia and elsewhere earlier this month. Some research indicates that holiday meals could cost more this year , despite the president’s insistence otherwise , a reminder of persistent frustration with elevated prices.

Meanwhile, Trump is struggling to advance a plan to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine after an earlier version faced swift criticism from European allies and even some Republicans. The U.S. military is also poised to target Venezuela with military strikes, part of an anti-drug operation that could ultimately destabilize the country’s leadership. [CBS poll finds 70% would oppose an attack on Venezuela.]

In Washington, Trump faces the possibility of a splintering Republican coalition ahead of next year’s midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress. Some members of his party already took the rare step of crossing the president by successfully pushing legislation to force the Justice Department to release more documents about the Jeffrey Epstein case.

Trump faced a setback in court this week when a federal judge tossed cases against James Comey and Letitia James, two targets of the president’s retribution campaign.

The Very Unhappy House Republicans

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  Trump was a liability for Republicans in the 2025 off-year elections.  He could be a bigger liability in the 2026 midterm -- and not just because of his low approval ratings.  He is effectively pushing Republicans out the door.

MTG explaining her decision to resign:

Loyalty should be a two way street and we should be able to vote our conscience and represent our district's interest because our job title is literally, "Representative."

America First should mean America First and only Americans First, with no other foreign country ever being attached to America First in our halls of government.

 Standing up for American women who were raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men, should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the President of the United States, whom I fought for.

Jake Sherman at X:

A few other GOP members messaged us over the weekend saying that they, too, are considering retiring in the middle of the term.

Here’s one particularly exercised senior House Republican:

“This entire White House team has treated ALL members like garbage. ALL. And Mike Johnson has let it happen because he wanted it to happen. That is the sentiment of nearly all — appropriators, authorizers, hawks, doves, rank and file. The arrogance of this White House team is off putting to members who are run roughshod and threatened. They don’t even allow little wins like announcing small grants or even responding from agencies. Not even the high profile, the regular rank and file random members are more upset than ever. Members know they are going into the minority after the midterms. “More explosive early resignations are coming. It’s a tinder box. Morale has never been lower. Mike Johnson will be stripped of his gavel and they will lose the majority before this term is out.”

It Sounds Better in the Original Russian

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is has been full of ominous developments.

Associated Press:

Lawmakers critical of President Donald Trump’s approach to ending the Russia-Ukraine war said Saturday they spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio who told them that the peace plan Trump is pushing Kyiv to accept is a “wish list” of the Russians and not the actual proposal offering Washington’s positions.

A State Department spokesperson denied their account, calling it “blatantly false.”

Rubio himself then took the extraordinary step of suggesting online that the senators were mistaken, even though they said he was their source for the information. The secretary of state doubled down on the assertion that Washington was responsible for a proposal that had surprised many from the beginning for being so favorable to Moscow.

It all added up to a confusing — and potentially embarrassing — turn of events for a Trump administration-blessed peace plan that already faced a potentially rocky future.

The widely leaked 28-point U.S-backed peace plan was, according to the White House, the result of a month of work between Rubio and Trump envoy Steve Witkoff along with input from what it said was both Ukrainians and Russians. The plan acquiesces to many Russian demands that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has categorically rejected on dozens of occasions, including giving up large pieces of territory. Trump says he wants Ukraine to accept the plan by late next week.

“This administration was not responsible for this release in its current form,” said Republican Mike Rounds from South Dakota, speaking at a security conference in Canada. “They want to utilize it as a starting point.”

Rounds said “it looked more like it was written in Russian to begin with.”

Rounds was not kidding.  Hafiz Rashid at TNR:

The U.S. peace plan presented to Ukraine appears to have been translated from Russian.

The syntax of certain phrases are more common in the Russian language, such as the third point of the 28-point plan: “It is expected that Russia will not invade neighbouring countries and Nato will not expand further.”

“It is expected” is not commonly used in English, but it is common in Russian and appears to come from the phrase ожидается or ozhidayetsya, according to The Guardian’s Luke Harding. Other words that appear to be translated from Russian include “ambiguities” (неоднозначности) and “to enshrine” (закрепить).

It’s no accident, either: The plan was hammered out by President Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev, an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, after the two met last month in Miami. While Secretary of State Marco Rubio was also involved, no Ukrainian or European officials were, which is pretty evident by its contents.

For example, under the proposal, Ukraine would cede Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk to Russia and would be banned from joining NATO. Russia would get readmitted to the G8. Ukraine would also reduce the size of its military by hundreds of thousands, and no NATO troops could be stationed in the country. Sanctions against Russia would also be lifted but would snap back if Russia invades Ukraine again.

Grok’s Conclusion:
“This document is almost certainly translated from Russian into English by a native Russian speaker or a non-professional translator. It is not originally written in English. pic.twitter.com/uNF7yup85n

— Meaghan Mobbs (@mobbs_mentality) November 22, 2025

ChatGPT confirms.: "This is almost certainly a translation, not originally written in English. The underlying source language was almost certainly Russian, with a possibility of Ukrainian, but the linguistic signals point more strongly to Russian → English translation."

Trump Calls Critics "Traitors"

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments.

Todd Spangler at The Detroit Free Press:

U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin's office said Michigan State Police responded to a bomb threat at her Oakland County home on Friday, Nov. 21, a day after President Donald Trump called her and other Democrats traitors for putting out a video message to members of the military telling them it's their right and duty to disobey illegal orders.

A message posted on social media platform X by a spokesperson for Slotkin, D-Michigan, said Slotkin wasn't at her home in Holly at the time of the threat. Michigan State Police searched the premises "and confirmed no one was in danger," the message said.

Tommy Christopher at Mediaite:

President Donald Trump began posting earlier than usual to rant about the shock resignation of former ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), whom he disparaged with a derisive moniker.

MTG shocked the political world when she announced on Friday that she will resign from Congress effective Jan. 5, 2026. The congresswoman released a lengthy statement via video on X/Twitter in which she said, in part, “I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’ hoping it all goes away and gets better.”

...

Trump first reacted to the news by phone on Friday night, telling ABC News White House correspondent Rachel Scott that “I think it’s great news for the country. It’s great.”

The president expanded on the thought early Saturday morning with a Truth Social message posted at 6:45 AM that featured characteristic insults:

 

Dictator Stuff

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments.

Trump is calling for the six Democratic lawmakers who urged the military not to follow any illegal orders to be arrested, and he’s reposting replies saying they should be hanged and calling them terrorists. pic.twitter.com/j4m7ZBcm50

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) November 20, 2025

Hugo Lowell at The Guardian:

Senior White House officials have discussed internally their preference for Paramount Skydance to acquire Warner Bros Discovery in recent weeks, and one official has discussed potential programming changes at CNN with Larry Ellison, the largest shareholder of Paramount.

The discussions, according to people familiar with the matter, come as Paramount portrays itself as the best bid for Warner Bros Discovery, after the company announced last month it was open to offers, because it would have an easier time getting through regulatory review.


Ellison often speaks to connections at the White House but, in at least one of the calls, engaged in a dialogue about possibly axing some of the CNN hosts whom Donald Trump is said to loathe, including Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar, the people said