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“None of this is
complicated,” political data specialist Tom Bonier wrote yesterday about
Tuesday’s dramatic Democratic victories around the country. “The [Republicans]
ran on affordability in 2024. They gave sanctimonious lectures on cable news on
election night about how the ‘silent working class majority’ had spoken. Then
they governed as reckless authoritarians, punishing the working class.”
For nine months now,
officials in the Trump administration have pushed their extremist policies with
the insistence that his election gave him a mandate, although more people voted
for someone other than Trump in 2024 than voted for him. Tuesday’s elections
stripped away that veneer to reveal just how unpopular their policies really
are.
Aside from the health of
the country, this poses a dramatic political problem for the Republicans. The
midterm elections are in slightly less than a year, and Tuesday’s vote, which
suggests the 2024 MAGA coalition has crumbled, may spell bad news for the
mid-decade gerrymandering Republicans have pushed in states they control, like
Texas. Republican lawmakers created the new Republican-leaning districts by
moving Republican voters into Democratic-leaning districts, thus weakening
formerly safe Republican districts. That could backfire in a blue-wave
election.
First thing Wednesday
morning, on the day the government shutdown became the longest shutdown in
history, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House minority leader
Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) wrote to President Donald J. Trump to “demand a bipartisan
meeting of legislative leaders to end the [Republican] shutdown of the federal
government and decisively address the Republican healthcare crisis.” They
assured him that “Democrats stand ready to meet with you face to face, anytime
and anyplace,” and concluded: “Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Trump had a different
approach to Tuesday’s news. He met with Republican senators before the cameras
and admitted that the shutdown had badly hurt the Republicans. But rather than
moving to compromise—as all previous presidents have done to end shutdowns—he
reiterated his crusade to make sure Democrats can never again hold power. He
demanded that Republican senators end the filibuster and, as soon as they do,
promptly end mail-in voting and require prohibitive voter ID. “If we do what
I’m saying,” he told the senators, Democrats will “most likely never obtain
power because we will have passed every single thing that you can imagine.”
Former Senate Republican
leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) stopped Bloomberg News Senate reporter Steven
Dennis in the hallway to say: “We’re not going to do that.”
Throughout the day,
Trump continued to flood social media with more than 30 social media posts and
choppy videos in which, standing in a dark room behind a podium and slurring
his speech, he appeared to read from his social media posts, touting his accomplishments,
railing against former president Barack Obama, threatening Nigeria with war,
and pleading with Republican senators to end the filibuster.
Jenna Amatulli of The Guardian noted that “[t]he bizarre series of posts could raise further
questions on Trump’s mental acuity.” More questions arose yesterday after Trump
spoke before the America Business Forum saying: “For generations Miami has been
a haven for those fleeing communist tyranny in South Africa. I mean, if you
take a look at what’s going on in parts of South Africa. Look at South Africa,
what’s going on. Look at South America, what’s going on. You know, I’m not
going there. We have a G20 meeting in South Africa.”
Trump seems to be
flailing in other ways, too. One takeaway from Tuesday’s vote was that
Americans are frustrated at the rising costs of living and slowing job market,
and Republicans are suddenly pivoting to claim they are good stewards of the
economy. But it’s a hard sell.
One of Trump’s posts
yesterday tried to make the point that the economy has improved under his
guidance. He posted that “Walmart just announced that Prices for a Thanksgiving
Dinner is [sic] now down 25% since under Sleepy/Crooked Joe Biden, in 2024. AFFORDABILITY
is a Republican Stronghold. Hopefully, Republicans will use this irrefutable
fact!”
But readers noted that
Walmart’s 2024 Thanksgiving meal contained 21 items while the 2025 list
includes only 15, and that most of the brand name items listed in the 2024 meal
were replaced with Walmart brand items in 2025.
Yesterday the Supreme
Court heard arguments concerning the legality of Trump’s tariff war, the
centerpiece of his economic plan. Trump seemed to try to pressure the Supreme
Court to save his tariffs, posting that the case before the court “is,
literally, LIFE OR DEATH for our Country.”
But the Constitution
gives power over tariffs to Congress alone. Three lower courts have found that
Trump’s assumption of power to set tariffs through the International Emergency
Economic Powers Act of 1977, which gives the president power to regulate international
commerce after declaring an emergency in response to an external threat against
the United States, is unconstitutional.
As Chris Geidner of Law Dork explained, the Supreme Court justices seemed inclined to agree with
the lower courts that Trump’s tariffs are unconstitutional. Undermining Trump’s
insistence that the tariffs are paid by foreign countries, in yesterday’s
arguments the administration’s lawyer admitted that American consumers pay from
30% to 80% of the tariffs.
Today Trump disagreed
and changed the justification for the tariffs to national security, ground on
which he likely expects the Supreme Court to support him. “No, I don’t agree,”
he told a reporter. “I think that they might be paying something, but when you
take the overall impact, the Americans are gaining tremendously. They’re
gaining through national security. Look, I’m ending war because of these
tariffs. Americans would have to fight in some of these wars.”
Today brought more bad news for Americans living in Trump’s economy. A
report today showed that in October, layoff announcements hit their highest
level in more than 20 years. According to data from Challenger, Gray &
Christmas, a private firm that collects data on workplace reductions, Abha
Bhattarai of the Washington Post reported, U.S. employers have announced 1.1 million layoffs so far
in 2025. That number rivals job cuts during the Great Recession of 2008 and
2009.
Transportation Secretary
Sean Duffy announced today that a shortage of air traffic controllers will
force flight reductions at forty of the nation’s busiest airports starting
tomorrow. This will affect both commercial and cargo traffic. Today airlines began
to cancel hundreds of flights. The Federal Aviation Administration said that
reductions will begin at 4% on Friday and go up until they hit 10% on November
14.
The administration is
tripping in court over its immigration policies, as well.
On Monday, jury
selection began in the trial of Sean Dunn, a former paralegal for the
Department of Justice, charged with a misdemeanor for throwing a salami
submarine sandwich “at point blank range” at a federal agent after a grand jury
refused to authorize felony charges. As former federal prosecutor Joyce White
Vance noted, prosecuting this case while dismissing others—like the issue of
border czar Tom Homan allegedly accepting $50,000 to steer contracts toward a
certain firm—diminishes the public’s confidence in the Justice Department.
The case also made the
administration seem like a joke as a federal agent wearing a bulletproof vest
tried to claim a sandwich that remained intact in its wrapper “exploded”
against his chest. Punsters had a field day all week. This afternoon, the jury
acquitted Dunn.
“He beat the wrap,” one
poster wrote.
Trump’s immigration
policies were in court in Chicago today, too, where U.S. District Court Judge
Sara Ellis issued a broad injunction to stop federal agents’ undisciplined use
of tear gas, pepper balls, and other “less-lethal” crowd control measures. As
Heather Cherone of WTTW reported, Ellis found that federal agents had violated
protesters’ First Amendment rights to free speech and free assembly while
preventing the free exercise of religion by using force against clergy members.
Ellis repeatedly called out federal agents for lying.
And, in the District of
Rhode Island, U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell found the administration
had ignored his order to pay Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
benefits this week. He accused the administration of withholding SNAP benefits
“for political reasons” and called out Trump’s social media post saying SNAP
would be funded only after the shutdown ends as “an intent to defy the court
order.” McConnell ordered the administration to make full SNAP payments to the
states by tomorrow for distribution to beneficiaries.
The Trump administration
immediately appealed.
Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance
Prosecutors
Can Indict a Ham Sandwich, But Can They Convict?
What happens when you indict a ham sandwich? The Justice
Department is about to find out. Or, at least, find out what happens when you
indict a salami sub…
