WASHINGTON — The National Park Service said Tuesday it is going to start charging the millions of international tourists who visit U.S. parks each year an extra $100 to enter some of the most popular sites, while leaving them out of fee-free days that will be reserved for American residents.Also that's a not a minor fee increase.
Brazil's former president Jair Bolsonaro has said "hallucinations" and a nervous breakdown led to an attempt to tamper with his electronic ankle tag.Ah well.
Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been ordered to start serving his 27-year sentence in a 12 sq metre bedroom in a police base in the capital, BrasÃlia, after his conviction for plotting a coup.
President Trump is considering removing Kash Patel as FBI director in the coming months, as he and his top aides have grown increasingly frustrated by the unflattering headlines Patel has recently generated, according to three people with knowledge of the situation who requested anonymity in order to speak freely.
Excuse Me While I Felch A floozy newsie named Nuzzi got all boozy and told RFK Twosie he could suck something oozy from where she goes number twosie. The mere thought makes me woozy. by Maureen Dowd
— NY Times Pitchbot (@nytpitchbot.bsky.social) November 24, 2025 at 4:36 PM
I don't know what's "funnier" - the idea that Alan Dershowitz represents the majority of Americans or the the idea that before Bari Weiss came along, Dershwitz wasn't on TV daily and on the front page of the NYT regularly.
Bari Weiss says she wants to use her new perch at CBS News to “redraw the lines of what falls in the 40 yards of acceptable debate” in American political and cultural life. She says the aim is to sideline voices like Hasan Piker, Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes, and elevate… pic.twitter.com/hfbM4gOwcN
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) November 25, 2025
I found this article by a former Harvard Crimson President very disturbing. The moral bankruptcy that led the Crimson to endorse BDS some time ago, without subsequent withdrawal, appears to have spread to the news pages.
— Lawrence H. Summers (@LHSummers) November 10, 2025
(I have shared Stoll's article to several at the Crimson…
A federal judge dismissed the indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday.I know none of this is funny, but Comey being indicted and then having the case dimissed every few months would be kind of funny. That asshole deserves it a bit!
The judge found that the appointment of interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan in Alexandria, Virginia, was invalid.
Here’s one particularly exercised senior House Republican:There aren't that many cushy barely-show jobs if your party is about to be in the minority. Better jump quickly!“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.”
Wall Street is straining to absorb a flood of new bonds from tech companies funding their artificial intelligence investments, adding to the recent pressure in markets.
..
Companies were able to complete their sales. But some had to pay unexpectedly high interest rates. Prices of bonds from the companies have also been sliding—a sign that investors were caught off guard by the sheer quantity of bonds entering the market and of growing concern about the worsening credit metrics of the businesses.
Stock investors, already nervous about the sky-high valuations of AI businesses, have taken note of the weakness in the bond market. Meanwhile, the cost of insuring those bonds using credit-default swaps also has climbed, with negative sentiments from different groups of investors feeding into each other.
“I want to make sure that Homeland Security can provide me with the definitive list of people who were detained, how long they were detained, whether or not they were released and, when property was damaged, whether or not they’ve been provided proper restitution,” Tillis said, in the hearing. “We’re the party of law and order, and I want to make sure that we’re also orderly in the process of enforcing it.”No idea what is motivating Tillis here. I'm sure he will have different opinions about other nasty states - I certainly don't think Tillis is joining the Resistance - but the basic demand is good!
WASHINGTON—In the wake of a controversial incident aboard Air Force One in which President Donald Trump insulted a female journalist, Vice President JD Vance is said to have wept in his office bathroom, furious that the commander-in-chief had used his special “piggy” nickname on someone else. “But I’m supposed to be his piggy—I’m supposed to be his only piggy,” a weeping Vance said this week as he collapsed against the locked bathroom door and slid down onto the tile. “Somebody’s in here! Just give me a second! God, it’s not fair. She didn’t even do the oinks. It was hard enough to have to hold it together after he called Marjorie Taylor Greene a ‘ranting lunatic’ last week, but this—this is a bridge too far. Who does that bitch reporter think she is? I’m his piggy. Me! You just need to pull yourself together, JD, and show him you’re still his best little piggy.” At press time, Vance had reportedly locked himself in his bedroom and refused to come out after hearing Trump refer to someone else as a “fat slob.”
Multiple sources told Target 12 that Rhode Island sheriffs earlier noticed someone taking photos of the intern inside the courthouse and in Superior Court Judge McBurney’s courtroom. When approached, the individual identified himself as an ICE agent and was told to abide by standard courthouse rules, and to stop taking pictures.And Schumer and Jeffries have been almost silent themselves.
The intern was reportedly shaken, so McBurney offered to drive him home. ICE agents then surrounded the judge’s car and demanded everyone to exit the vehicle, threatening to smash in the windows if they did not comply.
Dana Smith, Head of Security Operations for R.I. Superior Court, confronted the agents and told both the judge and the intern to stay inside the car. After an argument, ICE confirmed they had misidentified the teen and left. The intern was released once his ID was checked.
After all, the purpose of criminal investigations is to determine whether people are guilty of crimes. The Justice Department exists to prosecute those crimes. It does not exist to satisfy public curiosity. That’s a job for Congress and journalists. When prosecutors leak investigative information about people who haven’t been charged with a crime, that is normally considered a breach.Is the implication here that ordering the release is bad but it would be OK if it was all just leaked to journalists? But that would be bad, because it's a breach? I don't understand. And Congress is... passing a law to make this happen? Doing their job? Is there something different Congress can do here?
Yet here the Justice Department, by popular demand, is being directed to open its investigative books and publish a trove of information related to any “entities” with “known or alleged ties” to Epstein. That could include private information obtained in search warrants that is not incriminating.
Weisenburg and Thomas prepared from August 2024 to July 2025 to execute their plans, in which they allegedly intended to buy a boat, sail to Gonâve Island, kill every man on the island, overtake it by force, and take the women and children as sex slaves.
Gonâve Island has a population of about 87,000.
During the pre-dawn hours in South Texas on Friday morning, SpaceX’s next-generation Starship first stage suffered some sort of major damage during pre-launch testing.Verdict: no structural strength.
The company had only rolled the massive rocket out of the factory a day earlier, noting the beginning of its test campaign, it said on the social media site X: “The first operations will test the booster’s redesigned propellant systems and its structural strength.”
The U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify the swastika, an emblem of fascism and white supremacy inextricably linked to the murder of millions of Jews and that more than 400,000 U.S. troops died fighting against in World War II, as a hate symbol, according to a new policy that takes effect next month.
(in response to Dems telling the military not to follow unlawful orders)
The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious, The Associated Press has found.
The predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested. A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took. Federal agents in turn may then flag local law enforcement.
Suddenly, drivers find themselves pulled over — often for reasons cited such as speeding, failure to signal, the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view. They are then aggressively questioned and searched, with no inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement’s radar.
Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers will immediately leave his role as an instructor at Harvard while the University investigates his ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey E. Epstein.
Microsoft’s warning on Tuesday that an experimental AI agent integrated into Windows can infect devices and pilfer sensitive user data has set off a familiar response from security-minded critics: Why is Big Tech so intent on pushing new features before their dangerous behaviors can be fully understood and contained?
As reported Tuesday, Microsoft introduced Copilot Actions, a new set of “experimental agentic features” that, when enabled, perform “everyday tasks like organizing files, scheduling meetings, or sending emails,” and provide “an active digital collaborator that can carry out complex tasks for you to enhance efficiency and productivity.”
Hallucinations and prompt injections apply The fanfare, however, came with a significant caveat. Microsoft recommended users enable Copilot Actions only “if you understand the security implications outlined.”
Harvard has started a new review of ties that its former president, Lawrence H. Summers, and others at the institution had with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to the university.I don't really understand people like this, but Larry loves being in the public eye and doing media hits and well...
A man pardoned by President Donald Trump for storming the Capitol was arrested on child molestation charges, according to Florida officials, who said he tried to use an anticipated Jan. 6 payout to silence the victim.
Andrew Paul Johnson, 44, was arrested in Tennessee in August and extradited to Florida on charges of lewd/lascivious molestation, lewd/lascivious exhibition and transmission of material harmful to a minor.
Seems like bad lawyer behavior to me!!!NEWS: During a hearing in federal court in VA, prosecutors confirmed that the operative indictment in the case against James Comey was never shown to or voted on by the entire grand jury before it was presented in open court. Defense counsel argued that’s a complete bar to further prosecution
— Anna Bower (@annabower.bsky.social) November 19, 2025 at 4:36 PM
It didn't work this time, but it probably does a lot of the time.
More than a dozen men have been arrested after trying to solicit a minor for sex in Bloomington, Minnesota, police say.
According to Bloomington Police Chief Booker Hodges, officers started the three-day sting on Nov. 5. They used several methods to find people who were attempting to solicit a 17-year-old girl for sex.
...
"When he was arrested, he said, 'I'm ICE, boys,'" Hodges said during a press conference Tuesday. "Well, unfortunately for him, we locked him up."
I am sure it is one reason many are joining.
What are the odds of there being another pardon?
I know there are no rules anymore, but some of us remember how Clinton pardongate lasted months.
Months into the Bush administration, and journalists/pundits/talking heads just could not stop talking about Clinton. It was an addiction. It was all they knew how to do. It was their entire careers.
My skimming of the Law Blog Types has them saying that this ruling is designed to get around any existing objections Roberts will have, that does mean he can't come up with new ones!
A federal court Tuesday blocked Texas from using its newly drawn congressional map in next year’s midterms, ruling that the map is likely an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
US District Judge Jeffrey Brown, who was appointed to the bench by Trump in 2019, wrote that the challengers were “likely to prove at trial that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”
But as I said, I don't worry my beautiful mind with The Ass Law, none of it is real anymore.
Schumer Has Worst Ever Favorability Rating, 32-55%; Only 45-43% with Democrats
Other notables: oh no people not from NYC are mad they didn't get to choose the mayor.
Majority of NYC Voters: Mamdani Will Be Good for NYC; Plurality of Voters from Rest of NYS: He Will Be Bad for NYC;
This is New York state, not nationally, but one reason people might be less than thrilled with Chuck is that he isn't providing any voice on these things.
Strong Majorities Oppose Trump on: Demolishing East Wing of White House, Deploying ICE Agents to City Streets, Increased Tariffs, Prosecuting Enemies, Bombing Boats Claimed to Be Venezuelan Drug Traffickers & Cancelling Fed $ for Gateway Tunnel
LONDON, Nov 18 - Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said no company would be unscathed if the artificial intelligence boom collapses, as soaring valuations and heavy investment in the sector fuel concerns of a bubble.
Pichai said in an interview with the BBC published on Tuesday that the current wave of AI investment was an "extraordinary moment" but acknowledged "elements of irrationality" in the market, echoing warnings of "irrational exuberance" during the dotcom era.
WASHINGTON, Nov 17 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Monday found evidence of "government misconduct" in how a prosecutor aligned with President Donald Trump secured criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey and ordered that grand jury materials be turned over to Comey's defense team.
U.S. Magistrate Judge William Fitzgerald of the Eastern District of Virginia found that Lindsey Halligan, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney leading the case, may have made significant legal errors in presenting evidence and instructing grand jurors who were weighing whether to charge Comey.
Some Indian American conservatives seem shocked that segments of the political right are now taking aim at them. When Democrats won big on election night, Ramaswamy advised Republicans to “cut out the identity politics,” saying “we don’t care about the color of your skin or your religion. We care about the content of your character.” After one X user said that the existence of Indians disgusted them, Dinesh D’Souza, the right-wing commentator who has peddled racism against Black Americans for decades, mused: “In a career spanning 40 years, I have never encountered this type of rhetoric. The Right never used to talk like this. So who on our side has legitimized this type of vile degradation?”Though to be fair to D'Souza, he's been pretty racist agaisnt Indians, too.
Just one of many examples. At many times, you have described your political opponents of Indian ancestry with condescension as “Indian waiters” as if they were lesser.
— Agnicayanam (@Avnk90) October 21, 2025
And your invocation of DEI critique to directly ascribe Indian people as lesser here. pic.twitter.com/JXJm4eJ4Xw
A U.S. Department of Agriculture report released last Friday showed only two Chinese purchases of American soybeans since the summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea, totaling 332,000 metric tons from Oct. 2 through Nov. 12 — well short of the 12 million metric tons that the White House said China agreed to purchase by year-end.
It wasn't just Rubio and the Senate that decided bygones.
Official DC decided, for whatever reason ($$$), that a few weepy tributes to Khashoggi had taken it far enough, and it was time to return to hard-headed realism ($$$).With MBS’s arrival to DC, it’s worth remembering that 2 months after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Senate UNANIMOUSLY passed a resolution—co-led by Rubio—calling on MBS to be held accountable for the jailing & torture of Saudi activists & the murder of Khashoggi.
— Seth Binder (@seth_binder) November 17, 2025
Harvard Crimson, continuing to do the best Larry Summers-related journalism. I hope Patel and Srivastava have non-journalism career plans, because there are no rewards for exposing made men.
Summers went on to describe what he saw as his “best shot”: that the woman finds him “invaluable and interesting” and concludes “she can’t have it without romance / sex.”
Throughout June, Summers fed Epstein updates about the woman’s workload and continued contact. Epstein urged him to play the “long game” and keep her in what he called a “forced holding pattern.”
The final messages, dated July 5, 2019, show Summers still in regular contact with Epstein. That morning, Summers wrote he was in Cape Cod with his family — “Bit of an Ibsen play,” he joked — and the two men exchanged a brief flurry of literary one-liners.
The thread ends at 1:27 p.m.
Epstein was arrested the next day.
The name they used for this Chinese-born woman was... "peril."
We must remember that Larry's great "bitches be stupid" speech, which he gave to a room full of mostly top women academics.
There are three broad hypotheses about the sources of the very substantial disparities that this conference’s papers document and have been documented before with respect to the presence of women in high-end scientific professions. One is what I would call the—I’ll explain each of these in a few moments and comment on how important I think they are—the first is what I call the high-powered job hypothesis. The second is what I would call different availability of aptitude at the high end, and the third is what I would call different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search. And in my own view, their importance probably ranks in exactly the order that I just described.
In order: 1) women don't put enough time in, because they have kids, 2) bitches be stupid, 3) old lecherous men demand sex for help in career advancement, without which women cannot succeed due to sabotage. Obviously #3 is unimportant, in Larry's detached, objective, unbiased, sensibly centrist view.
MEGYN KELLY IS RIGHT ABOUT EPSTEIN Bill Donohue
Lawyers are going to lawyer, but this man's former client is dead and it is obscene (but not unique, of course) that a man who regularly performs this kind of sophistry is the toast of cable news, and a regular sympathetic NYT page 1 figure.
Also, generally it's absurd that outlets let criminal defense attorneys use them for PR purposes for rich and famous people. People like Dersh can do what they want in the courts, but high priced lawyers are largely in the PR business in cases like these. The courts, at least, will slap down some bullshit.Dershowitz: The predecessor on your show described Epstein as a convicted pedophile. He pleaded guilty to one count of having sex for money with a 17-year-and-10-month-old person. That’s not a pedophile. pic.twitter.com/cz5r6S2gan
— Acyn (@Acyn) November 15, 2025
WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Friday he received a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) exam as part of his recent physical, calling the scan "very standard."This was the previously reported MRI.
Trump told reporters he got the MRI "because it's part of my physical. Getting an MRI is very standard. What, you think I shouldn't have it? Other people get it ... I had an MRI. The doctor said it was the best result he has ever seen as a doctor."
US President Donald Trump is readying substantial tariff cuts designed to address high food prices and a series of new trade deals — including framework agreements with Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador and Ecuador — as he seeks to address voter concerns over the cost of goods.
Summers’s efforts at CAP are part of a multipronged effort by high-powered centrists in the Democratic Party to bend the agenda of the 2029 candidate toward the middle. As The New York Times reported over the summer, the Project 2029 advisory committee includes Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan, the economist Justin Wolfers, New America CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter, Roosevelt Institute principal Felicia Wong, and Third Way’s Jim Kessler.
Harvard professors responded with outrage to a tranche of emails showing a close yearslong correspondence between former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers and sex offender Jeffrey E. Epstein, reopening an old and bitter divide between Summers and the faculty.
Peter Mandelson had more than one leak to worry about after another tranche of his friendly emails to Jeffrey Epstein was made public.The disgraced former US Ambassador could be seen relieving himself against a garden wall after a late-night visit to George Osborne's Notting Hill home.
The man President Trump wanted to be attorney general was allegedly paying for sex with a 17-year old girl who was working at a McDonald’s, saving up for braces, and partly living at a homeless shelter.Last year, a House Ethics Committee report found “substantial evidence” that former representative and former attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz “regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him,” and that he “engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl” in 2017. The report also mentioned that Gaetz possessed and used cocaine and ecstasy while in office. Last month, newly unsealed court documents further detailed just how dire a situation the girl was living in before she was connected with Gaetz.
Former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers maintained a close personal relationship with convicted sex criminal Jeffrey E. Epstein until just months before his death in August 2019, according to emails released by Congress on Wednesday.Larry started it:
"moral bankruptcy"I found this article by a former Harvard Crimson President very disturbing. The moral bankruptcy that led the Crimson to endorse BDS some time ago, without subsequent withdrawal, appears to have spread to the news pages.
— Lawrence H. Summers (@LHSummers) November 10, 2025
(I have shared Stoll's article to several at the Crimson…
Lawrence H. Summers is a distinguished senior fellow at American Progress.
Yes Larry has plenty of Dem detractors, but the way of dealing with him for years was to keep giving him fancy titles, in hopes of keeping him on board, instead of just booting him into the sun. This has never worked. It has just empowered him to wreck thingss.
As Karoline Leavitt concludes her press briefing and walks off, @andrewfeinberg.com asks: "What was the president doing with Virginia Giuffre for hours at Epstein's house?" She did not respond.
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona.bsky.social) 12 November 2025 at 19:20
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President Donald Trump’s advisers have had conversations about him traveling the country to give economy-focused speeches as they privately weigh a number of strategies to improve his standing on the issue, administration officials told CNN.DO NOT REPEAT THIS INSIGHT
Larry Summers explaining his naughty joke to his pal Jeff (pdf). Click to embiggen as always.
The naughty joke is the first highlighted bit. As for the second...
Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender whose death by suicide has spawned intense scrutiny of the high-profile people he knew, mentioned Donald Trump by name multiple times in private correspondence over the last 15 years with an associate and an author in Trump’s orbit, according to newly released emails from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.
The emails to longtime Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted of sex trafficking after Epstein’s death, and the author Michael Wolff include conversations in which Epstein asserts Trump spent significant time with a woman whom Oversight Democrats describe as a victim of Epstein’s sex trafficking. The emails also include a message in which Epstein asserts Trump “knew about the girls” — seemingly in reference to Trump’s claim that he kicked Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club for poaching young women who worked there, according to the newly released emails.
They assert that in hammering away at the extension of health care subsidies that are slated to expire at the end of next month, they managed to thrust Mr. Trump and Republicans onto the defensive, elevating a political issue that has long been a major weakness for them.If by some miracle the take the House and Senate and then send "nasty" bills to Mr. Trump who will happily shut down the government again, will they go on TV and say there's no point in trying to stand up to him, again?
..
And in holding out for weeks while Republicans refused to extend the health tax credits and Mr. Trump went to court to deny low-income Americans SNAP food benefits, Democrats also honed their main message going into 2026: that Republicans who control all of government have done nothing to address voters’ concerns that the cost of living is too high.
“I’ve been hearing that standards will be eliminated or severely cut back. Bari has told people that she wants to get rid of standards and is shocked that they have so much power. She also asked openly, ‘What’s the point of standards?’” one CBS News insider claimed.
The president was back at it on Monday, promising an imminent solution to America’s growing health care crisis — on which he has repeatedly failed to deliver in the past.
“I tell you, we’re going to be working on that very hard over the next short period of time, where the people get the money,” President Donald Trump said, referring specifically to Americans thrown into crisis by expiring enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies. “We’re talking about trillions and trillions of dollars, where the people get the money,” he added, without giving details about a vague idea to send cash to affected policyholders to replace subsidies while bypassing insurance firms.
Trump’s off-the-cuff answer was a typical example of the waffle he sometimes conjures to escape a jam in a photo-op. But he could not disguise the downside of his “win” in the government shutdown, which looks set to end after Democrats failed to secure their top demand: the extension of those enhanced Obamacare subsidies.
Trump and Republicans once again own the issue of health care, with millions of citizens — not just those on ACA plans — afflicted by rising premiums and high deductibles against the backdrop of a wider cost-of-living crisis. And just as in his first term, Trump lacks a comprehensive, detailed plan to bring relief to citizens who lack health care, who can’t afford the plans they have or who know that the loss of a job could leave them without any coverage at all.
If the GOP cannot fix the immediate issue of the subsidies — and convince voters they have a serious solution to this and other affordability questions — their 2026 midterm election hopes could take a dive.
There — I fixed the analysis so it is actually accurate to what happened when 8 Senate Dems caved instead of keeping up the righteous fight to deliver lower health care costs for Americans.
— Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (@jayapal.house.gov) November 11, 2025 at 2:09 AM
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NYT's reporters are famous for not crediting other outlets, but some of them love to give a nod to the NYPost.Following up on some good @nypost reporting. https://t.co/hosIykQcN9
— Ben Oreskes (@boreskes) November 10, 2025
This is outrageous. Another reason the CR should not pass.
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) November 11, 2025
It creates a new offense, tailored perfectly to allow Trump to write a government check of millions of dollars to 8 Republican Senators.
GOP Leader Thune just made 8 of his colleagues rich. Off taxpayer money. https://t.co/1gOwplvsnw
Democrats have been fighting for months to address America's healthcare crisis
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) November 10, 2025
For the millions who will lose coverage
For people with cancer who won't get the care they need
For working families who can't afford to pay $25K more a year for healthcare
We will keep fighting
I do wish people would understand more that members of congress and their staffs leak "things which might happen" to the press for two reasons: as trial balloon (by the people pro the thing happening) and as warning (by the people against).
You have to yell at them before they do the thing. It is too late after.
I don't imagine that me yelling at them on this blog matters much, but behind the scenes, powerful interests are yelling at them constantly, generally pushing them in the wrong direction.
Or you can just trust that Chuck Schumer is doing the right thing, updated hourly, because he has such a consistently good record recently.
Just ask the Baileys.
President Trump said Sunday that most Americans would receive a $2,000 dividend payment as a result of his administration’s tariffs levied against foreign countries.Though I guess this is a setup to yell at the Supreme Court when they take your $2,000 checks away.
And not because of the fears of what an unrestrained Republican Senate would do, but because of fears that their own excuses for inaction and their favorite tool of responsibility avoidance would evaporate.This was all about the filibuster.
— Karen Tumulty (@ktumulty) November 10, 2025
Senate Democrats on Sunday indicated they are ready to advance a package of bills that could end the government shutdown, multiple sources told Axios.Please clap.
Why it matters: It is the most significant movement toward a bipartisan breakthrough in the talks to re-open the government in over a month.
At least 10 Senate Democrats are expected to support a procedural motion to advance a package of spending bills and a short term funding measure, multiple sources from both parties told Axios.
The deal would include a promised vote [in the Senate only] on extending Obamacare tax credits in December, the sources said.
“Reporting this up the chain was a hot potato: No one wanted to touch it,” the senior official said. They believed fear of being perceived as overly critical of Israel — whose supporters wield significant political power — drove that thinking. Biden officials worried that attaching their names to a recommendation to limit American support for Tel Aviv would hinder their future career prospects, the former senior official said, “which is in itself appalling.”
Eventually, high-level concerns about the information spurred discussions that included Biden. McGurk led the pushback to reducing support, two officials said; the controversial Biden adviser often behaved as “Israel’s lawyer” when U.S. officials questioned the country, another senior Biden-era colleague told HuffPost.
Polls show people don't blame the Dems, but if I were a not-getting-paid federal worker, I would certainly blame them for doing this to me and *then* caving for absolutely nothing.
At Thursday’s meeting, they told their caucus colleagues that they now had ten votes to re-open the government in exchange for no real Republican concessions. At that, much of the rest of the caucus went ballistic, and some of the supposed ten said that, in fact, they were not willing to vote for any such deal.
The leaders of the proposed Democratic cave-in, Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, both of New Hampshire, and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, then backed down. Only after that did Schumer go public with his proposal to reopen the government in exchange for a one-year extension of the ACA subsidies, along with a bipartisan commission to figure out a long-term solution.
Republican Senate Leader John Thune (R-SD), who had been led to expect a Democratic capitulation, first accused Schumer of “browbeating” his colleagues but then said later Saturday that talks were continuing.
What was the point of all of this, then? Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing (if they went through with this).
I am sure they are telling themselves stories about how they have "raised healthcare as an issue" or whatever, but that's bullshit of course.
Every bit of this is disheartening on its face. But it’s actually worse than any first-blush irritation, that familiar annoyance that comes from encountering still another textbook exercise in witless triangulation. Because what this sort of reporting ultimately means is that if you have enough money to get somebody, anybody, to produce a white paper for you, which you can then put on some think-tank stationery? Then, my friend, you are ready to enter into the rushing current of elite reportage. For no matter how unhinged the position you’ve taken, or paid someone marginally credentialed to sketch out on your behalf—“Can Woman Think?: We Investigate,” “Is the Negro a Man: A Reconsideration”—that opinion will, by virtue of such provenance, possess all needed evidentiary gravity for the Times. And then some. (Only yesterday the Times ran this actual story, which is not parody.)
Like other conservatives interviewed for this article, Ms. Bowers contended that left-wing politics had crept into the Kennedy Center, warping it so that it became a place that was not welcoming for all. And yet, she would not accept that Mr. Trump had injected his own politics into the place, which has driven away audiences.Obviously businesses (and nonprofit arts orgs) don't always get it right, but generally conervatives don't understand that they didn't do all the 'woke shit' to please Joe Biden, they did it to sell widgets and tickets.
“That characterization is a little unfair,” she said. “In the past, I don’t think that everyone felt welcome, to be frank with you. I know that lots of conservatives did not.”
Asked why people were not coming to the Kennedy Center as much anymore, Ms. Daravi, the head of communications, replied with two words.
“Liberal intolerance.”
Randian self-created entrepreneur, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. At a recent Wall Street Journal tech conference, OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar suggested that a government loan guarantee might be necessary to fund the enormous investments needed to keep the company at the cutting edge.
Gerrit De Vynck of The Washington Post explained further that she also discussed “financial innovation,” like making sweetheart deals with chipmakers like AMD that get a stock boost from having any relationship with OpenAI, or trying to get a cut of the revenue that other companies generate through ChatGPT. But the loan guarantee suggestion stuck out; it felt like a pre-bailout, leaping past the crash and going right to the socialization of risk.
Though Friar later walked back her suggestion, saying that she was advocating for structural support for AI in general, not just her company, it is likely true that some kind of huge subsidy or another is probably the only way that OpenAI’s preposterous business model—it is “worth” a supposed $500 billion—can be sustained.
A CNN review of nearly 70 pages of chats between Shamblin and the AI tool in the hours before his July 25 suicide, as well as excerpts from thousands more pages in the months leading up to that night, found that the chatbot repeatedly encouraged the young man as he discussed ending his life – right up to his last moments.
Layoff announcements soared in October as companies recalibrated staffing levels during the artificial intelligence boom, a sign of potential trouble ahead for the labor market, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.Predictions are hard, especially about the future, but with all the various self-inflicted wounds, it's hard not to see a recession arriving...
Job cuts for the month totaled 153,074, a 183% surge from September and 175% higher than the same month a year ago. It was the highest level for any October since 2003. This has been the worst year for announced layoffs since 2009.
Change in Headline
— Editing the Blue-Gray Lady (@nytdiff.bsky.social) November 6, 2025 at 1:40 PM
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“I’m in the ‘Hitler sucks’ wing of the Republican Party,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said over the weekend at the R.J.C. event. “Here’s what I do know: You can sit in a basement with weird people and say weird things. It’s a free country.”
Sir Humphrey: The only way to understand the Press is to remember that they pander to their readers' prejudices.The specifics are a bit dated (no more Page 3 girls, for one), but it's still surprisingly close. However, I think putting it on *the readers* misses the point. The idea that if news outlets are shit, it's because they are just giving the readers what they want, erases the agency and intentions of the people who make the newspaper. Change it to:
Jim Hacker: Don't tell me about the Press. I know *exactly* who reads the papers. The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they *ought* to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually *do* run the country; The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; The Financial Times is read by people who *own* the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by *another* country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it *is*.
Sir Humphrey: Oh, and Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard Woolley: Sun readers don't care who runs the country as long as she's got big tits.
The Daily Mirror is written by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is written by people who think they *ought* to run the country; The Times is written by the people who actually *do* run the country...
WASHINGTON/CHICAGO, Nov 5 (Reuters) - U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Wednesday that he would order a 10% cut in flights at 40 major U.S. airports, citing air traffic control safety concerns as a government shutdown hit a record 36th day.Maybe I just don't watch much (hardly any) cable news anymore, but am I wrong that the shutdown generally doesn't seem to be getting the same kind of coverage previous ones did? I'm exaggerating a bit here, but my memory is that it was scary graphic SHUTDOWN DAY 3 [ominous music] in the past, and now it's just... eh, this is normal now.
OpenAI Wants Federal Backstop for New InvestmentsGotta, um, beat China. Send it over to our favorite bribed senators and see what they can do. This looks like a job for Gillibrand!
Sarah Friar, the CFO of OpenAI, says the company wants a federal guarantee to make it easier to finance massive investments in AI chips for data centers. Friar spoke at WSJ’s Tech Live event in California. Photo: Nikki Ritcher for WSJ
Coordinated messaging push. "Give us all the money or the Chicoms win."A statement from NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. pic.twitter.com/Exwx54OYJV
— NVIDIA Newsroom (@nvidianewsroom) November 5, 2025
Dems listened to Shor after the election, and he had no data to back up assertions like this.
This kind of thing had Chris Murphy saying things like, "We must gift some of our women to the incels." (exaggeration).@NBCNews exit polling on young men (18-29) in VA, NJ and NYC
— Allan Smith (@akarl_smith) November 5, 2025
VA: Spanberger +14
NJ: Sherrill: +10
NYC: Mamdani +40
