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Whew. Last week was...a week. Enraging, astounding, often venomous, with flailing small dicktator energy all around. There were pigs, dogs, bonesaws, pedophiles, tumbling polls, charming Marxists, almost everything he's done declared illegal and defiant Democrats threatened with death for, um, defending the rule of law. Sen. Chris Murphy's message to those still complacent before the growing dangers posed by a cornered, venal, fascist loser: "Maybe now would be the time to pick a fucking side."
Over the last bungled weeks of a shambolic presidency that's transmuted America into ugly chaos, the wannabe king has suffered enough losses - electoral, legal, political, economic - some observers argue he's finally losing his mystifying "air of impenetrability," with polls showing him underwater on every issue, including immigration. As U.S. consumer sentiment falls over 7 points to record lows - thanks disastrous tariffs! - he has a lame 26% approval rating on the cost of living, 76% of Fox viewers say the economy is bad, and even cult members shopping for the holidays are reportedly starting to notice the dissonance between his gold ballroom and their unaffordable "groceries," even if he did invent the elegant word. Hell, they might even spot the idiocy of a guy who recently revealed he had an MRI, insisted it had "the best result," but when asked if it was for his brain raved, "I have no idea what they analyzed, but whatever they analyzed, they analyzed it well."
They've also finally noted his stonewalling on what is evidently, universally unpopular pedophilia, with 80% of voters blasting his handling of his dead bestie predator's files and the "wonderful secret" they shared. Even as Congress voted to release the Epstein files and Trump signed off on it, he continues whining it's "time to move on" from "a Hoax" that just deflects from his "Great Success (with) Affordability (where we are winning BIG!)" and "gaining Trillions of Dollars of Investment" and "stopping Transgender for Everyone." Hmm. A tad suspiciously, he then ordered his Dept. of Justice (sic) to newly investigate any creepy Democrat pedophiles though they already said there'd be no more investigations; asked about that disparity, a robotic Pam Bondi declaimed there is "Information...new information" but not to worry because they will "follow the law" with "maximum transparency," blankly repeating, def not from a script, "follow the law, maximum transparency," "follow the law...."
Finally, desperately cornered into "maximum transparency" after months of dissembling and deflection and lies, Trump has taken in stride his monumental failure to get his way and hide his crimes with the calm compliance of any vaguely responsible adult who knows he's doing the right thing. Just kidding. Because, "Nothing says 'I'm definitely not worried about the Epstein Files' like telling a female reporter, 'Quiet, Piggy,'" that's what he now famously did last week during a press gaggle on Air Force One en route from D.C. to Mar-A-Lago (again). Asked by Catherine Lucey, a senior Bloomberg reporter who's covered national politics for over 20 years, what Epstein meant when he said Trump "knew about the girls" - duh - he said, "I know nothing about that" but insisted on his "very bad relationship" with his longtime bestie. When Lucey began a very sensible follow-up question - "If there's nothing incriminating in the files..." he lost it. "Quiet! Quiet, piggy," he snarled, jabbing his stubby, rancid, little finger in her face.
It was, of course, "one more unforgivable thing in a list of 20,000 unforgivable things." It was the gazillionth loutish, repulsive, misogynist dross issuing from the vile anus mouth that's spewed, "be nice;" "fat pig," "keep your voice down," "not my type," "what a nasty question," "don't be threatening," "that's enough of you," "there was blood coming out of her eyes, out of her wherever," and, "they let you do it." Perhaps because it was more of the same or that no reporter stood up to it, the atrocity drew little mainstream coverage. But for many, revulsion at his aberrant, "aggressive sexism now seemingly uncontrollable by the man himself" took off. Among pols, Gavin Newsom and his take-no-prisoners press team were almost alone to speak up, loudly. Along with legit critiques - tariffs, ballrooms, gold crap, last month's 40,000 layoffs: "Cant. Stop. Winning" - there was the pig-faced builder of ballrooms, the Trump/Epstein "piggies," the "Good Night Little Piggy" and several other grotesqueries.
Speaking of: In the following days, there was also treacherous, sycophantic Press Barbie, aka Washington Rose, excusing the "hostile sexism" widely deemed not just a crass personal offense but "a political weapon (tied) to violence, a war on women that is ultimately part of the war on democracy." First, Karoline Leavitt tried out, "This reporter behaved in an inappropriate and unprofessional way towards her colleagues" - with, obviously, zero evidence. When that didn't fly, she turned to calling for us, his lucky minions, to celebrate the mad king's "frankness." We should respect "the president being frank and honest," she said, returning to the "frankness" theme three more times as "one of the many reasons the American people reelected him." Also, "fake news," calling it "like he sees it," and getting "frustrated with reporters when you lie about him" - which we bet is a lot like patriots getting "frustrated" when foul regime flunkies brazenly lie to them about fucking everything.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
Lie, twist, embroider, digress, threaten, distort: Has there ever been a less "frank," more hideously two-faced, self-serving band of charlatans, fraudsters and crooks ostensibly running this nation? "Quiet, piggy" has, indeed, been said in various iterations to us all. Words have become hollow and weaponized, cudgels to deceive, subdue, silence enemies" - who, if they dare speak up, are pummeled by the full force of a vengeful regime. And so to six "seditious" Democratic lawmakers, all veterans, who had the chutzpah in this dark lawless time to urge members of the military to, gasp, obey the law. In last week's 90-second video, Senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly, and Reps Maggie Goodlander, Chris Deluzio, Chrissy Houlahan, Jason Crow reminded service members they don't have to obey orders they believe break the law. "Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend the Constititution," they said. "Our laws are clear, you can refuse illegal orders."
Private Bonespurs, the abuser-in-chief in charge of words as weapons, went ballistic. "Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL," he thundered. "Their words cannot be allowed to stand - We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET.” For moral support, he added 16 MAGA comments; one called for hanging the perps. Still fuming, he kept raging. Soon, "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP??" Then, just going for it, "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” He also re-posted another MAGA stable genius: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!” Ok. So the leader of the free speech, anti-cancel-culture party, whose frenzied campaign against potentially violent political speech after the shooting of angelic Charlie Kirk led to many hundreds of people losing their jobs for accurately critiquing Kirk's incendiary words, now accuses his opponents for encouraging political violence. Got it.
The Democratic veterans stood firm. "The president considers it punishable by death for us to restate the law," they said. "But this isn’t about any one of us. This is about who we are as Americans. This is a time for moral clarity." Sen.Chris Murphy concurred. "The President just called for Democratic members of Congress to be executed...If you're a person of influence in this country (who) hasn't picked a side, maybe now would be the time to pick a fucking side." On social media, people were aghast at the spectacle of a weak strongman spiraling down, like a cornered animal. "Good fucking Christ, what an absolute buffoon," said one. Also, "'Just following orders' is not a valid defense, and never will be." Heather Cox Richardson noted that, before 1866 midterms, Andrew Johnson called for his rivals to be hanged as traitors: "Voters were so profoundly moved by his words they gave his opponents a supermajority in Congress, and the nation got the 14th Amendment.”
Republicans, with their usual backbone, stayed silent. Reptilian Mike Johnson said Dear Leader was "just defining the crime of sedition" and any Democrat "behav(ing) in that kind of talk is to me just beyond the pale," MAGA-ese for, "You talkin' to me?" Press Barbie again defended her mob boss, shrieking Dems "conspired together" to urge the military to "defy the president's lawful (sic) orders" and we should be talking about them inciting violence. But the backlash shut her up. A day later, asked, "Does the president want to execute members of Congress?” she answered, "No." Headlines befitting the surreal timeline then dutifully reported, "Trump Does Not Want to Execute Members of Congress, White House Says." The same day, a judge declared National Guard deployment to DC an unlawful order, just like in Chicago and Portland; another, in a 233-page roast, said ICE use of force was also illegal, blasting mini-perp Greg Bovino as "evasive, violent and outright lying."
At the next "veritable Comicon for serial killers," the White House rolled out a blood-red carpet for Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Bonesaw as a giddy Trump proclaimed, "We’re more than meeting. We're honoring Saudi Arabia." Never mind his own first-term CIA found they ordered the grisly murder of WaPo writer Jamal Khashoggi: Cue a weird, gleeful, blindingly gold Oval Office meeting, a state dinner with Jewish or gay CEOs who'd be stoned or jailed by Saudis, a swap of U.S fighter jets for Saudi investment. It was jolly until ABC News' Mary Bruce rightly asked about the Saudis' role in 9/11, Khashoggi's murder, Trump's blood-soaked business deals. At her impudence, the mob boss who gets to decide who says what scowled. He smeared Khashoggi, cleared Bonesaw, inanely decreed "things happen," and went after Bruce. She was "insubordinate," "a terrible reporter" who shouldn't "embarrass our guest by asking him a terrible question.” Essentially, he told Bruce, "Quiet, piggy."
@thedailyshow Trump’s playdate with Mohammed bin Salman took a handsy turn #DailyShow #Trump #MohammedbinSalman
It's unclear how productive the meeting will prove. At their last visit, the Saudis blithely played the idiot narcissist - SAD - with a mobile McDonald's truck; this time, headlines posited Bonesaw "got almost everything he wanted" from Trump, and pundits gravely noted, "We're still kind of waiting to see what all this actually means." Meanwhile, can-do House Republicans continue tackling vital issues of the day. After 10 months of mostly being on vacation and accomplishing virtually nothing but an Epstein vote they were forced into - and before breaking until December - they just passed a resolution, 285-98, denouncing the horrors of socialism. In a truly WTF move, they were helped by the votes of 86 cowardly Dems who evidently agreed with sponsor and Florida Rep. María Elvira Salazar that, "The Mamdani socialist agenda is seeping into our country like poison," aka we can't let them make our children live under Sharia law and count in Arabic numbers and let's all panic.
The next day, Trump met with Mamdani. It was not the expected fiery confrontation; rather, a savvy, charming Mamdani wrapped a star-struck Trump around his Democratic Socialist finger in a surreal scene that made MAGA heads - especially, presumably, Goebbels' bald one and J.D.s groveling one - explode. The newly gracious,Trump, a hollow, insecure, image-obsessed shell of a human ineluctably "drawn to the shine of respect in others' eyes" who "agrees with whoever's standing within 10 feet of him," pronounced Mamdani "a very rational person," a winner who will make "a great New York City mayor." Mamdani smiled. "What the hell is going on?" asked many. Also: "Trump having a man crush on Zohran was not on my Bingo card," "You can tell Mamdani spent a lot of time ferrying loose aunties around because I don't know how else you get that kind of composure," and, "We did the same thing to our dog - insult him but with a smile and friendly voice. He would wag his tail."
In a memorable moment, one far-right dreg of the White House press corps asked Mamdani if he still thinks Trump is a fascist. Carefully starting to answer, he's interrupted by Trump mildly saying, "That's okay, you can just say yes...I don't mind." "Okay, yes," said Mamdani, still smiling; Trump pats his arm. In all, argues Bruce Fanger, it's a case study in what happens when a bully can’t rely on fear, and a principled politician refuses the role of victim. Trump, argues Fanger, needs an emotional response to his abuse - fear, flattery, even anger. "Mamdani gave him nothing," he writes of "the calm of someone who refuses to let the other person set the emotional tempo." He speaks plainly, in a "civic language," about issues. Trump, awash in grievance, ego, delusion, nostalgia, "can't decode it...They aren’t having the same conversation, (or) even on the same continent." The lesson: "Trump is only powerful when the room fears him. Mamdani didn’t. Trump folded."
At least in that moment. Then he sprang back to vitriol, bluster, lies. At length, he blasted "THE TRAITORS THAT TOLD THE MILITARY TO DISOBEY MY ORDERS," raved about "prices sharply down," bragged about "THE HIGHEST NUMBERS OF MY 'POLITICAL CAREER.'" More numbers: Racking up thousands of conflicts of interest, often on lavish pointless trips abroad, he's spent $71 million on 99 fucking trips to his fucking properties and many millions more on a fucking marble bathroom and Gatsby party and cheesy patio and Oval Brothel and tacky ballroom to come, all amidst kidnappings of brown people, extrajudicial murders, endless abuses of power, vast obstruction of justice and rabidly working to strip food stamps as four of ten kids in the U.S. go to bed hungry. Now, after a fucking aerial tour of Joint Base Andrews' fucking three 18-hole golf courses, three putting greens, two private practice areas and driving range, he's decided to do "some fix-up" on them: "We’re going to do some work." A fucking shameless piggy. May he fall quiet soon.
Environmentalists are sounding the alarm about a slate of new proposals from the Trump administration to weaken the Endangered Species Act, which they say will put more imperiled species in danger to line the pockets of the wealthy.
On Wednesday, the Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced that it would once again roll back several key provisions of the ESA. Many had been in place for decades before they were slashed during President Donald Trump's first term. They were then restored under former President Joe Biden.
"These revisions end years of legal confusion and regulatory overreach, delivering certainty to states, tribes, landowners, and businesses while ensuring conservation efforts remain grounded in sound science and common sense," said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, a billionaire ally of the fossil fuel industry.
But some of the nation's leading environmental groups say the proposals will allow the government to flout science and approve new projects that will destroy the habitats of vulnerable creatures and accelerate the already worsening extinction crisis.
“The ESA is one of the world’s most powerful laws for conservation and is responsible for keeping 99% of listed species from extinction,” said Jane Davenport, senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife.
The group said the changes "could accelerate the extinction crisis we face today." According to a 2023 investigation by the Montana Free Press, the ESA has prevented 291 species from going extinct since it was passed in 1973. At that point, around 40% of all animals and 34% of plants were considered at risk of extinction according to NatureServe, a nonprofit that collects conservation data.
“The ESA is only as effective as the regulations that implement it," Davenport said. “Rolling back these regulations risks reversing the ESA’s historic success and threatens the well-being of plant and animal species that pollinate our crops, generate medicine, keep our waterways clean, and support local economies.”
One of the rules being rolled back requires species to receive "blanket" protections when they are added to the list of threatened species. Instead of those blanket protections—which protect these newly-added species from killing, trapping, and other forms of harm—the FWS will instead create individual designations for each species.
According to Jackson Chiappinelli, a spokesperson for Earthjustice, some of the species that would lose protection under this rule would be the Florida manatee, California spotted owl, greater sage grouse, and monarch butterfly, which it said could remain unprotected for years after being listed.
Another major change would let the government consider "economic impacts" when deciding which habitats are required to be protected. In 1982, Congress modified the ESA to clarify that the secretary of the interior must make decisions "solely on the basis of the best scientific and commercial data available," an amendment specifically intended to prevent economic factors from overawing environmental concerns.
The Interior Department said "the revised framework provides transparency and predictability for landowners and project proponents while maintaining the service’s authority to ensure that exclusions will not result in species extinction."
But Chiappinelli contends that the change would "violate the letter of the law" and warns that "the federal government could decide against protecting an endangered species after considering lost revenue from prohibiting a golf course or hotel development to be built where the species lives."
"If finalized, the rules would bias listing decisions with unreliable economic analyses, obstruct the ability to list new protected species, and make it easier to remove those now on the federal endangered or threatened list," said Ian Brickey, a spokesperson for the Sierra Club.
The proposed rules would also reduce the requirements for other federal agencies to consult with wildlife agencies to determine whether their actions could harm critical habitats. It also eliminates the requirement for agencies to "offset" habitat damage when approving new projects, such as logging or drilling, that harm protected species.
“Without rigorous consultations,” Davenport said, “projects could push species like the northern spotted owl and Cook Inlet beluga whale closer to extinction.”
The new proposals follow several efforts by the Trump administration to weaken protections for endangered species. Earlier this year, it proposed weakening the half-century-old definition of what counts as "harm" to endangered species to exclude habitat destruction.
The Department of Agriculture, meanwhile, has proposed rescinding the 2001 "Roadless Rule," which has shielded nearly 45 million acres of protected national forest from logging, oil and gas drilling, and road construction.
Amid the government shutdown, the administration announced its intent to lay off more than 2,000 Interior Department employees, including 143 from the FWS, though a federal judge blocked those layoffs.
It also attempted to sneak a provision into July's One Big Beautiful Bill Act that would have mandated the sale of millions of acres of public lands, but it was stripped out in the Senate following fierce backlash.
"The Trump administration is stopping at nothing in its quest to put corporate polluters over people, wildlife and the environment," said Loren Blackford, the Sierra Club's executive director. "These regulations attempt to undermine the implementation of one of America’s bedrock environmental laws, and they could seal the fate of animals that, without these protections, would disappear from the Earth."
Amid President Donald Trump's efforts to conceal the harmful consequences of his economic policies by hiding key data and replacing economists who tell harsh truths with partisan yes-people, a leading US think tank on Monday announced a new digital dashboard "to provide an accountability check" against attempts to manipulate and mislead the public.
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) says its new data accountability dashboard "serves as a one-stop shop" for economic data as federal statistic agencies (FSAs), once the "gold standard" for information, "face historically unprecedented threats from the Trump administration to their capacity and even their independence."
"This raises the specter of a future where FSA data cannot be relied upon to honestly report whether the US economy is experiencing dysfunction," EPI said.
In a bid to circumvent this, the EPI dashboard "displays a range of data not collected or disseminated by FSAs to shed some light on the economy during the pause in government data collection during the shutdown and—even more importantly—to provide an accountability check against efforts to manipulate FSA data in the future."
The federal statistical agencies (FSAs) that produce the gold standard economic data employers/investors/job seekers/workers/policymakers rely on to assess the health of the U.S. economy face unprecedented threats.We've pulled next-best data from non-FSA sources to help keep an eye on things. 1/
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— Economic Policy Institute (@epi.org) November 18, 2025 at 7:19 AM
As EPI senior economist Elise Gould explained in a statement: “The data collected by the federal statistical agencies are an incredibly valuable public good. While there would never be a good time to squander it, the absolute worst time to degrade data quality is when the economy is facing policy shocks that threaten to cause either a recession or an uptick of inflation."
"Given this urgency, we’re collecting all data we can to assess the economy’s health in this time when the gold standard data are under attack,” she added.
Trump's attempts to hide unfavorable economic data date back to his first administration, when he blocked or delayed economic analyses on the projected impacts of his tariffs. For example, half a dozen economists at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) quit en masse in April 2019, claiming they suffered retaliation for publishing reports that shed negative light on the president's trade and taxation policies.
In a related move that year, the USDA abruptly relocated its Economic Research Service main office from Washington, DC to Kansas City, Missouri, prompting another wave of resignations. ERS publications—including reports on farm income, rural economies, and trade impacts—dropped sharply, with key analyses delayed or blocked. Critics, including former agency officials, argued that the move to Kansas City was intended to conceal negative impacts of Trump's trade policies from the public.
During Trump's second administration, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick disbanded the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee (FESAC), a key body that worked under the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis to ensure that the federal government produces accurate data on economic indicators.
Trump also gutted the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Technical Advisory Committee, which had advised the Department of Labor about how economic changes can impact data collection. In August, Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, baselessly accusing her of manipulating economic data to harm him politically by publishing a jobs report showing weak employment growth.
Two weeks later, the president nominated EJ Antoni, a senior economist at the Heritage Foundation described as a "partisan bomb thrower" who helped write Project 2025, a blueprint for a far-right overhaul of the federal government, to replace McEntarfer. Antoni stunned critics with suggestions including eliminating federal monthly jobs reports, and with his overall lack of data management experience. His nomination was later withdrawn amid mounting controversy.
Additionally, the Trump administration has summarily fired dozens of independent agency leaders, required every federal agency to have a White House liaison, and required ostensibly independent agencies to submit draft regulations to the Office of Management and Budget—headed by Project 2025 architect Russell Vought—for review before publication.
As Common Dreams reported, an analysis published in September by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities detailed how the Trump administration's politicization of data, combined with funding cuts, is making it more difficult for experts to determine how the president's policies are impacting US households.
From ending tracking of the impacts of climate-driven extreme weather, to removing a study from the Department of Justice website that showed violent attacks by far-right extremists outpaced those committed by the left, to removing questions about gender identity from key crime surveys, the Trump administration's attacks on information transcend economic data.
"The assault on data, research, and facts is fundamental to Trump and his authoritarian regime," Liza Featherstone, a contributing editor at The New Republic, recently wrote. "He seems to understand that data provides the basis for arguments, and he does not want any arguments. He also understands that facts and knowledge can only be nourished and sustained by institutions and experts, so he is destroying those institutions and pink-slipping those experts."
"We must appreciate their importance and their stakes as well as he does, and remain as committed to the institutions, the data, the facts, and the experts as Trump is to their eradication," Featherstone added. "He has brought sincere zeal to their destruction, and we must bring an even greater passion to their restoration and renaissance. We will need it, as ours is the harder job."
US Sen. Lindsey Graham on Thursday blocked an effort to repeal a provision allowing senators to reap potentially millions of dollars in taxpayer money by suing the Justice Department.
Shortly after the House voted 426-0 to repeal the provision, which Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) slipped into a government funding package that lawmakers approved earlier this month, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) requested unanimous consent for the Senate to follow suit.
Graham (R-SC), who recently described Medicaid funding as a "money laundering scheme," objected to Heinrich's request, blocking the bill's passage. The South Carolina senator has been vocal in his defense of the payout provision even as GOP lawmakers in the House have condemned it as abhorrent.
The provision empowers senators to sue the federal government for damages of at least $500,000 if investigators obtained their phone records or other data without notifying the targeted lawmakers. The language applies retroactively, making eligible Graham and other Republicans whose records the Justice Department obtained as part of its investigation into President Donald Trump's lawless attempt to subvert the results of the 2020 election.
Graham has openly vowed to take advantage of the provision, saying in an interview earlier this week that he intends to "sue the hell out of" the Justice Department for "tens of millions of dollars."
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said in response that Graham "may be upset, but he's not entitled to millions of taxpayer dollars."
"Republican senators' secret provision making themselves eligible multimillion-dollar payouts is just corrupt," said Beyer.
So far, despite mounting criticism from members of his own party, Thune appears bent on upholding the provision. The Republican senators positioned to benefit from the measure are Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said following the House repeal vote that "American taxpayers should not be forced to pay the bill for partisan payouts, least of all for Senate Republicans who were implicated in the insurrection that nearly toppled our democracy."
"Majority Leader Thune must bring this measure to a vote at once," said DeLauro. "The American people deserve to know on the record who supports taxpaye-funded payouts for Republican senators, and who does not. If they really do support this cash grab, they should own it."
Federal prosecutors on Thursday moved to drop criminal charges against Marimar Martinez, a woman who was shot multiple times by a US Border Patrol agent last month in Chicago's Brighton Park neighborhood.
As reported by local news station WTTW, prosecutors filed a one-page motion asking the court to dismiss the indictment against both Martinez and Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, who had been accused of assaulting a federal immigration officer by intentionally ramming their vehicle into the officer's car.
The US attorneys who filed the motion to dismiss offered no further explanation for their decision to drop the case.
In the indictment, prosecutors alleged that Martinez and Ruiz were part of a larger group of people in cars that was trailing immigration officers' vehicles as they conducted operations in Brighton Park.
Prosecutors said that the Border Patrol agent who shot Martinez had been acting in self-defense, and that he had only opened fire after Martinez's car collided with his vehicle.
However, recently uncovered text messages showed the Border Patrol agent apparently bragging about shooting Martinez, as he boasted that he "fired five rounds and she had seven holes" in a message sent to fellow agents.
An attorney representing Martinez claimed last month that he had seen body camera footage that directly undermined the US Department of Homeland Security's claims about how the shooting unfolded.
Gregory Pratt, an investigative reporter at the Chicago Tribune, said the dismissal of the case was yet more evidence that the Trump administration's aggressive immigration enforcement operations appear to be backfiring.
"This follows several dropped prosecutions against protesters," he wrote on Bluesky. "To say the immigration raids have been all around mess is an understatement."
A series of Israeli airstrikes on targets in southern Lebanon have killed at least 17 people and wounded more than 100 others in recent days, including 13 people—mostly children, according to local officials—massacred Tuesday at a camp for Palestinian refugees.
Officials and residents said that the Israeli strike on Ain al-Hilweh near Sidon struck an area where children were playing soccer. Ain al-Hilweh is the largest camp in Lebanon housing refugees from the Nakba—the ethnic cleansing and terror campaign through which the modern Israeli state was founded—and their descendants.
The Israel Defense Forces said it targeted members of the Palestinian resistance group Hamas "operating in a training compound" in the camp.
Hamas rejected the IDF claim as "fabrication and lies."
The strike was the deadliest IDF attack in Lebanon since Israeli troops shot and killed at least 24 people including 6 women and injured 134 others in January.
The IDF carried out subsequent attacks, including a Wednesday morning drone strike on a vehicle in Al-Tayri that reportedly killed two civilians including the town's treasurer and wounded at least 10 university students. Israeli forces also bombed a residential area of the town of Tair Filsay in Tyre district. It is unknown if anyone was harmed in the strike.
Israeli warplanes carried out an airstrike on Wednesday, Nov. 19, targeting several points in the village of Tair Filsay in southern Lebanon’s Tyre district, Anadolu reports.Emergency teams moved toward the targeted locations after the attack.
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— Middle East Monitor (@middleeastmonitor.bsky.social) November 19, 2025 at 9:46 AM
Often overshadowed by its genocidal war on Gaza—which has left at least 249,600 people dead, maimed, or missing; millions more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened; and the coastal strip in ruins—Israel's bombardment and invasion of Lebanon has killed more than 4,000 people since October 2023, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health. This figure includes at least 790 women and 316 children. More than 16,600 others have been wounded. Upward of 1.2 million Lebanese were also forcibly displaced by Israel's attacks and invasion.
This, despite a November 2024 truce between Israel and Lebanon-based Hezbollah. Since then, Israeli forces have killed at least 121 civilians, including 21 women and 16 children, in its northern neighbor—which Israel has invaded or bombed numerous times since 1948, killing and wounding tens of thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians.
Israeli forces also bombed the Qizan an-Najjar area, south of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, killing at least one Palestinian and wounding a mother and her child, according to local officials, who said at least 280 Palestinians have been killed and 650 others wounded in nearly 400 Israeli violations of the October ceasefire with Hamas.
One pollster argued that ranked-choice "gives a better chance to new faces, outsider candidates, people with grassroots movements, people who run positive campaigns, people who have something new to offer."
Progressives are hopeful that a new push for ranked-choice voting could allow for more primary races in which candidates who accurately reflect the priorities of the party’s voters rise to the top.
Ranked-choice voting (RCV), which lets voters rank candidates in order of preference rather than voting for a single one, was instrumental in the unexpected triumph of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in this summer’s Democratic primary.
Axios reported Monday that Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin has recently met with advocates seeking to implement RCV in the party's 2028 presidential primary.
Among them were reportedly Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), pollster Celinda Lake, organizers with the nonprofit FairVote Action, and several other figures in the Democratic Party.
Raskin is a long-time advocate for ranked-choice voting. In 2019, leading up to what would be a chaotic and crowded 2020 primary, he wrote in Common Dreams, along with political organizers Adam Eichen and Rob Richie, that:
RCV is the best way to allow greater voter choice without wasted votes and unrepresentative winners...
It will help any party gain stronger nominees and provide more clarity about what voters really want going into conventions. Because voters’ backup choices matter, candidates with RCV tend to run more positive campaigns, seek common ground, and respect their opponents’ supporters.
Notably, that scenario is exactly what played out in New York City’s Democratic primary. City Comptroller Brad Lander, another progressive mayoral candidate, was able to encourage his voters to rank the more popular Mamdani without fear of splitting the votes and helping their centrist opponents.
At a time when Democratic voters have historically low levels of trust in their party's leaders, Lake told Axios that "[RCV] gives a better chance to new faces, outsider candidates, people with grassroots movements, people who run positive campaigns, people who have something new to offer. It really meets the moment."
New York City is the highest-profile practitioner of RCV, which it adopted in 2019 for party primaries. But others include Maine and Alaska, as well as cities like San Francisco and Minneapolis.
Republicans have aggressively sought to outlaw ranked-choice voting in states where they have legislative control. In 2024, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Kentucky all passed bills to outlaw RCV—bans that may hinder its implementation as a new nationwide system, even in Democratic primaries.
Meanwhile, in Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, and Oregon, voters rejected RCV during last year's elections following industry-backed pushes against it.
In a letter to the editor of the Anchorage Daily News on Sunday, a reader pointed out that President Donald Trump's calls for any Indiana lawmakers who vote against redistricting the state in the GOP's favor to be "PRIMARIED" was evidence of why RCV "is important for protecting our democratic process."
“In ranked-choice voting, no one person, nor small group of people, can keep a candidate in their party off the final ballot because they don’t agree with a particular partisan attitude,” he wrote.
In order for the DNC to implement ranked-choice voting, it would need support from its Rules and Bylaws Committee, whose members are appointed by Martin. It would also need majority support from the DNC's roughly 450 members, which include state party leaders and others elected by states. Axios reported that enthusiasm among members is mixed.
Progressive commentators have expressed excitement at the idea: "This would be a fantastic pro-democracy stance," wrote the left-wing Breaking Points co-host Krystal Ball on social media.
But others doubted that party powerbrokers, who worked behind the scenes to stop the insurgent campaigns of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016 and 2020, would ever implement a reform that would cede so much power to outsider candidates.
“This is a great idea,” said Sanders’ 2020 press secretary, Briahna Joy Gray. “They won’t do it.”
Trump ally Jair Bolsonaro was taken into custody over concerns he might attempt to flee the country after he tampered with his ankle monitor.
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing ally of US President Donald Trump, was arrested in Brazil early Saturday morning following concerns he might flee the country.
Bolsonaro was under house arrest awaiting the result of his appeal after he was tried and sentenced to 27 years in prison for plotting a coup and the assassination of current Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and other officials.
“Brazil just succeeded where America failed. Bringing a former president who assaulted democracy to justice,” filmmaker Petra Costa wrote on social media, as The Guardian reported.
Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered the arrest after discovering Bolsonaro's ankle monitor had been tampered with at 12:08 am local time Saturday. Bolsonaro's lawyers said that this was not the case, but Bolsonaro later admitted to taking a soldering iron to the device "out of curiosity" in a video released by the Supreme Court.
"This isn't curiosity, it's a crime," said State Deputy to the Legislative Assembly of Rio de Janeiro Renata da Silva Souza, on social media. "Bolsonaro is not a victim: He is convicted, ineligible, and is IMPRISONED. Turning this absurdity into a justification is a mockery of Brazilian democracy."
The ex-president's arrest also came the same day that his son Flávio Bolsonaro had planned a protest outside the Brasilia condo where Bolsonaro has been living.
De Moraes said Bolsonaro's tampering with his monitor fed his suspicions that he would attempt to flee the country in “the confusion that would be caused by a demonstration organized by his son," according to The Associated Press.
“He is located about 13 kilometers (8 miles) away from where the United States of America embassy lies, in a distance that can be covered in a 15-minute drive," de Moraes added.
Trump, who has sanctioned de Moraes and supports Bolsonaro, reacted to news of the arrest by saying it was "too bad."
Bolsonaro was arrested around 6:00 am local time and is now detained in an approximately 130-square-foot room in the federal police headquarters in Brasilia, according to Reuters. The entire five-judge panel that originally sentenced Bolsonaro will review his detention on Monday.
Institutional Relations Minister Gleisi Hoffmann was the highest-ranking member of the current government to comment on the detention, according to Reuters.
Hoffmann wrote on social media:
The pretrial detention of Jair Bolsonaro strictly follows the rites of due process of law, overseen by the Federal Supreme Court and the Attorney General's Office in each stage of the criminal action against the attempted coup d'état in Brazil. The decision by Minister Alexandre de Moraes is grounded in the real risks of flight by the leader of the coup organization, as well as the imminent finality of his conviction for the serving of his sentence. It also rightly takes into account the background of a process marked by violent attempts to coerce the Judiciary, such as the tarifaço and the Magnitsky sanctions. In a democracy, justice must be upheld.
Ordinary Brazilians also celebrated the news of Bolsonaro's arrest, with some uncorking champagne bottles outside police headquarters.
"The message to Brazil, and to the world, is that crime doesn’t pay," Reimont Otoni, a Workers’ Party congressman, said.
Alito's order came in response to a ruling from a federal court in Texas on Tuesday, which blocked the new congressional maps on the basis that they were "racially gerrymandered."
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Friday temporarily restored a controversial Trump-backed Texas redistricting plan that could grant Republicans an extra five seats in the House of Representatives.
Alito's order came in response to a ruling from a federal court in Texas on Tuesday, which blocked the redrawn congressional maps on the basis that they were "racially gerrymandered."
"It is ordered that the November 18, 2025 order of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, case No. 3:21-cv-259 is hereby administratively stayed pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court," Alito wrote around one hour after Texas appealed the district court's ruling.
Alito was the justice to issue the stay because he handles emergency requests from the Fifth Circuit, which includes Texas.
"Well, the Supreme Court fucked us yet again."
Friday's ruling is not the final say on the fate of Texas' new maps, but allows the state to continue preparations for the 2026 midterm elections under the redistricting while the full Supreme Court considers the case. Texas has asked for a ruling by December 1, one week before the December 8 filling deadline for congressional races. The state is set to hold primary elections in March.
Alito has asked the civil rights organizations fighting to block the maps for more materials by Monday, November 24—a sign, according to Politico, that he planned to put the case "on a fast-track."
Texas was the first state to heed President Donald Trump's request to redraw its maps in order to give Republicans an advantage in the 2026 midterm elections and attempt to prevent the Democrats from retaking the House. In response, Missouri and North Carolina also redrew their maps to give the GOP one extra seat each. However, California voters then retaliated by approving a proposition to redistrict in a way that would see an additional five Democrats elected. All of these plans now face legal challenges.
As the fight for control of the House continues through maps and courts, Texas Democratic activists haven't given up on voters.
"Well, the Supreme Court fucked us yet again," said Allison Campolo, who chairs the Democratic Party of Tarrant County, Texas, on social media Friday, "but—We in Texas know the cavalry doesn't come for us. We save ourselves."
"100 people came out to our party headquarters tonight and we were absolutely PACKED with candidates running for every seat and bench from the top to the bottom of the ticket," Campolo continued. "Texas Democrats are here to save our county, our state, and our country. We'll be seeing you at the polls."