<A federal judge sharply criticized Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Monday, saying both violated court rules by making “troubling” public statements about a defendant in an ongoing criminal case.

According to Politico, U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw said the officials’ remarks about Kilmar Abrego Garcia — a Salvadoran man deported illegally before being returned to face smuggling charges — breached a local rule that limits commentary on active prosecutions.

“Government employees have made extrajudicial statements that are troubling, especially where many of them are exaggerated if not simply inaccurate,” Crenshaw wrote.

He said Noem described Abrego Garcia as a “MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser and child predator,” while Bondi called him “a smuggler of humans and children and women” who made “over 100 trips.”

Although Crenshaw declined to impose a gag order, he ordered prosecutors to remind every Department of Justice (DOJ) and Department of Homeland (DHS) employee of the restrictions on public comment.

He warned that future breaches could bring sanctions.

The judge also criticized prosecutors for “side-stepping” earlier directives to ensure compliance and demanded copies of internal government communications about the decision to charge Abrego Garcia, saying full transparency was now required.>

Go to it, <animal killer> and <side piece>.

<In the normal course of history, the president of the United States is a figure who inspires optimism in the American people. The 47th president prefers to stir feelings of fear, vulnerability, hopelessness, and political inevitability—the sense that he, and only he, can rescue the nation from looming peril. Since his second inauguration, Donald Trump has seized authoritarian control over the federal government and demanded the obedience of the other powerful institutions of American society—universities, law firms, media companies. The question weighing heavily on the minds of many Americans is whether Trump will subvert next year’s midterm elections or the 2028 presidential election to extend his reign.

With his every word and deed, Trump has given Americans reason to believe that he will seek a third term, in defiance of the Constitution. It seems abundantly clear that he will hold on to the office at any cost, including America’s ruin.

The Founders of our nation foresaw a figure like Trump, a demagogue who would ascend to the presidency and refuse to relinquish power to a successor chosen by the American people in a free and fair election. Writing to James Madison from Paris in 1787, Thomas Jefferson warned that such an incumbent, if narrowly defeated, would “pretend false votes, foul play, hold possession of the reins of government.” Were that moment ever to come, the Founders believed, it would mark the demise of the nation that they had conceived, bringing to a calamitous end the greatest experiment in self-government ever attempted by man.

Trump proved in 2021 that he would do anything to remain in the White House. Even after the violence of January 6, his second impeachment, and the conviction and incarceration of scores of his followers, he reiterated his willingness to subvert the 2024 election. That proved unnecessary. Yet since his victory, Trump has again told the American people that he is prepared to do what it takes to remain in power, the Constitution be damned.

In March, Trump refused to rule out a third term, saying that he was “not joking” about the prospect and claiming that “there are methods which you could do it.” He was asked about the idea of Vice President J. D. Vance running for the presidency, getting elected, and then passing the baton back to him. “That’s one,” he said. “But there are others, too.” As he so often does, Trump later claimed that he wasn’t being serious. But also in March, Trump’s ally Steve Bannon said that he is “a firm believer that President Trump will run and win again in 2028,” adding that he and others are working on ways to do it, which would require circumventing the Twenty-Second Amendment. (Bannon later told The Economist: “Trump is gonna be president in ’28, and people just ought to get accommodated with that.” He added, “At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is. But there’s a plan.”) In September, after meeting with congressional leaders about the looming government shutdown, Trump posted photographs on Truth Social in which Trump 2028 hats rested prominently on his Oval Office desk. In October, when discussing the possibility of a third term, Trump said, “I would love to do it. I have my best numbers ever.”

We Americans are by nature good people who believe in the inherent goodness of others, especially those we elect to represent us in the highest office in the land. But we ignore such statements and other expressions of Trump’s intent at our peril. The 47th president is a vain man, and nothing would flatter his vanity more than seizing another term. Doing so would signify the ultimate triumph over his political enemies.

I am not a Pollyanna, nor am I a Cassandra. I was at the forefront of the conservative legal movement that began in 1981 with the inauguration of Ronald Reagan. I have had the privilege of spending much of my career in public service, first in the Ford and Reagan White Houses; then in the Department of Justice; and, finally, appointed by George H. W. Bush, in the federal judiciary. I have never once in more than four decades believed that any president—Democrat or Republican—would intentionally violate the Constitution or a law of the United States. But Trump is different from all prior presidents in his utter contempt for the Constitution and America’s democracy.

The clearest evidence that Trump may subvert upcoming elections is that he tried to overturn the 2020 election. He shocked the nation and the world when he ordered then–Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the votes electing Joe Biden president, while claiming that the election had been stolen from him by his “radical left” enemies, whoever they are. When Pence refused to yield to Trump’s demand, Trump instigated the attack on the U.S. Capitol to prevent Congress from counting the votes and certifying Biden as his successor....>

<....On January 6, Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution,” further inflaming the crowd that had already breached the Capitol. Witnesses before the January 6 committee testified that Trump expressed support for hanging Pence while the attack was under way. Trump was prosecuted by the United States for having committed the gravest crime that a president can commit: attempting to remain in the presidency after losing an election and thereby obstructing the peaceful transfer of power. Yet he continues to deny that he lost the election. He describes January 6 as a glorious day in American history, not one of its darkest.

Among his first acts after being sworn in again was pardoning or commuting the sentences of every person convicted in connection with January 6. He then set about exacting revenge on the American justice system. He summarily fired dozens of government officials who had tried to hold him accountable for the attack on the Capitol, as well as for his other alleged criminal offenses of removing classified documents from the White House upon his departure, secreting them to Mar-a-Lago, and obstructing the government’s efforts to find and retrieve the documents. He has since replaced those fired officials with loyalists—sycophants committed to him, not to our democracy or the rule of law.

Today, Trump has vastly greater powers than he did in 2020. He has a willing vice president to preside over the joint session of Congress that will certify (or not) the next election, a second in command who refuses to admit that his boss lost the 2020 election. (Vance has said that he would not have certified the results without asking states such as Pennsylvania and Georgia to submit new slates of electors, a solution he invented to a problem that does not exist—there is no evidence of widespread fraud in those states or any state in 2020.) Trump’s party controls both houses of Congress, and he will surely do everything he can to maintain those majorities. The Supreme Court, meanwhile, has paved the way for a third Trump term, as it did for his current term, by essentially granting him absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for any crimes he might commit in violation of the Constitution or the laws of the United States.

For anyone who doubts that Trump is contemplating a monarchical reign, consider how very far down that road he already is. Since returning to office, he has sought absolute power, unchecked by the other branches of government, the 50 states, or the free press.

On the first day of his current term, he launched a direct attack on the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of birthright citizenship when he issued an executive order contradicting the clear language of the amendment, federal statute, and Supreme Court precedent.

He has arrogated to himself Congress’s power to levy tariffs, declaring that previous foreign-trade and economic practices had created a national emergency justifying his unilateral imposition of sweeping global tariffs. When Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell predicted that Trump’s unlawful tariffs would cause “higher inflation and slower growth,” Trump wrote on Truth Social that “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!” Later, he fired Fed Governor Lisa Cook, purportedly “for cause.” The Supreme Court has temporarily blocked Cook’s firing, but it won’t decide until next year whether Trump has the power to fire a member of the independent Federal Reserve. A ruling in Trump’s favor would give him absolute control over the central bank and thus over the monetary policy of the United States.

He has usurped Congress’s spending and appropriation powers by attempting to impound billions of dollars that Congress designated for specific purposes, including for public broadcasting, for Voice of America, and for desperately needed U.S. aid to starving and disease-stricken populations around the world.

He has likewise usurped Congress’s power to establish executive-branch departments and agencies, fund their operations, and provide civil-service protections to federal-government employees, unilaterally overhauling the U.S. government. He has hollowed out the Department of Education, effectively abolishing it. He has dismantled the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and asserted executive control over the independent Federal Election Commission and Federal Trade Commission, and fired thousands of federal employees without reasonable cause or explanation—all while Congress has stood by silently....>

<....The Supreme Court, too, has largely given the president its imprimatur to continue his power grab. It has either effectively reversed lower-court rulings against the president using the so-called shadow docket, or allowed the administration to proceed until the Court determines the constitutionality of various actions, by which time the damage to the Constitution, the U.S. government, and American society will have been done, as the justices well know. When the Court has ruled against Trump—for example, forbidding him from deporting undocumented immigrants without due process—he has provoked a constitutional crisis by ignoring the order.

The Founders built layers of safeguards into the American system of government to constrain a president, not just the checks and balances by the branches of the federal government. But Trump has run roughshod over these fail-safes, too. In violation of the sovereign rights reserved for them by the Constitution, Trump has commanded state officials to aid him in his purge of undocumented immigrants.

The president has also taken military command of cities across the country—over the vehement objection of the states. When a federal judge held that Trump’s military occupation of Portland, Oregon, was unlawful, he circumvented her orders and trashed the judge—whom he appointed—for her ruling, saying that she should be “ashamed” of herself.

Given that Trump has for years pronounced the free press in America “the enemy of the people,” it came as no surprise when media companies were among the first Trump targeted with unconstitutional edicts. In return for his favor, many of the country’s major media institutions have surrendered to him.

Though he claims to be a great friend of free enterprise, Trump has asserted dominion over the economy and insinuated his administration into American capitalism so that our great businesses are dependent on and subject to the government, as they are in communist and socialist nations.

He has extorted the nation’s legal profession, forcing law firms to betray their clients and the law in order to secure his favor. He has bludgeoned the nation’s colleges and universities with lawless order after lawless order. The federal government cannot tell universities how to conduct their affairs or dictate the viewpoints that professors teach. The First Amendment zealously guards such decisions, and the Constitution categorically forbids the president from wielding Congress’s power of the purse to punish these institutions.

Trump has turned the federal government against the American people, transforming the nation’s institutions into instruments for his vengeful execution of the law against honorable citizens for perceived personal and political offenses. He has silenced dissent by persecuting and threatening to prosecute American citizens for speaking critically of him, and he has divided us, turning us against one another so that we cannot oppose him.

Trump has always told us exactly who he is. We have just not wanted to believe him. But we must believe him now.

This is the man who said in January 2016, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay? It’s, like, incredible.”

The man who proposed in 2022 that the “Massive Fraud” he alleged in the 2020 election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” and who proclaimed, soon after reassuming office, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”....>

<....The man who, when asked the question “Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president?,” answered, “I don’t know.” And the man who, when asked whether every person in the United States is entitled to due process, replied, “I don’t know.”

The man who said in August that he can “do anything I want to do,” because he’s president.

The man who has demanded that his attorney general and Department of Justice immediately prosecute his enemies: “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

And the man who summoned American military generals from around the world to Quantico, Virginia, to tell them that “America is under invasion from within,” repeatedly describing that enemy invasion as being by the “radical left,” a term he now seemingly uses to characterize all of his political opponents. He also said at this meeting, “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military” for fighting the “war from within.”

Donald Trump is clearly willing to subvert an election in order to hold on to the power he so craves, and he is now fully enabled to undermine national elections. No one can prevent him from remaining president of the United States for a constitutionally prohibited third term—except the American people, in whom ultimate power resides under the Constitution of the United States.

On July 4, 1776, nearly 250 years ago, America freed itself forever from the oppression of tyrannical rule by monarchs. There was never to be a king in the United States of America. Never again were the liberties and freedoms of Americans to be subject to the whims of a monarch. From that day, Thomas Paine wrote, “so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.”

The nation has survived great challenges and calamities, including the Civil War. Now it is being tested again. Once more, we must ask, as Lincoln did, whether a nation so “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” can long endure.

If America is to long endure, we must summon our courage, our fearlessness, our hope, our spirited sense of invulnerability to political enthrall, and, most important, our abiding faith in the divine providence of this nation. We have been given the high charge of our forebears to “keep” the republic they founded a quarter of a millennium ago. If we do not keep it now, we will surely lose it.>

<With Republicans and Democrats both dug in behind their shutdown battle lines, one thing seems to be increasingly clear: The possibility of shutdown-related pain isn’t dislodging anyone. That pain is arriving with a vengeance, and the biggest question now is how long it will last.

Two of those major pain points will truly kick in on November 1. That’s when open enrollment starts for Obamacare plans—plans that no longer benefit from expiring pandemic-era subsidies. The sticker shock will be major, and it’s already begun: Enrollment letters are hitting mailboxes across the country, bringing unwelcome news about how much more expensive people’s coverage will be in the new year.

But that’s not the most dire financial cliff the government is running off of. Also on November 1, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will effectively be out of cash, which means the 20 million American households that rely on food stamps won’t see benefits hit their accounts again until the shutdown is resolved. The Department of Agriculture has said it will not tap emergency funds to keep SNAP benefits flowing, although many states are suing to try to force the administration’s hand.

It now seems vanishingly unlikely that the shutdown will be resolved before we drive over these cliffs, since both sides seem to be counting on the pain generated by one or the other to bring their opponents back to the negotiating table.

“November 1 rolls around pretty quickly,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) told The Bulwark yesterday. “So [Trump’s] probably gonna see on Twitter all this is starting to come out about how much people are gonna have to pay [for health insurance], and how it’s gonna affect his approval. And he’s not going to be happy about it. And then all he needs to do is to tell [Senate Majority Leader] John Thune to negotiate something and come up with a fix for this.”

That’s a fairly confident posture. But over in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson seems equally sure that the abrupt halt to SNAP benefits will evaporate Democrats’ will to continue the shutdown. “The pain register is about to hit level 10,” he said on a call with House Republicans yesterday, as reported by Politico. “We deeply regret it on our side.”

That deep regret, however, does not seem to translate into a desire for action: Johnson has flatly rejected the possibility of standalone legislation to keep SNAP funded, calling such bills “a waste of our time.”

How public opinion will bounce next isn’t clear. Republicans’ show of sorrow over the abrupt halt of food stamp funding rings pretty hollow given the way the White House is openly flouting government-funding rules to keep money flowing to the places they really care about. While USDA says its hands are tied on SNAP benefits, the Pentagon has no problem going through the budgetary couch cushions to find cash to keep military paychecks going—even taking private donations from billionaires. Meanwhile, it’s hard to see how Johnson can place the blame for SNAP expiration at Democrats’ feet when he is the one pledging to block bills that would do nothing but restore its funding.

Democrats are undoubtedly going to feel the squeeze too, however. This was always the danger—as we’ve said around here repeatedly—of them making their shutdown stand over an issue of policy rather than an issue of power; of them grinding things to a halt over Obamacare subsidies rather than, say, blocking Trump’s ability to usurp congressional spending authorities. The Democratic party’s shutdown narrative is “we’re doing all this to spare the public pain,” a position that becomes more difficult to maintain the higher the pain spikes from the shutdown itself.

What’s obvious for now is that the pain is coming. It’s a sad commentary on the sorry state of Congress that things have gotten this far—and who knows how much farther they’ll have to go before we see a breakthrough. Many of the problems we face today spring from an authoritarian wannabe president who is happy to trample all over the legislature and help himself to its powers. We’d all like to see a world where Congress starts standing up to him and defending its constitutional lawmaking prerogatives. But it’s also not clear these jokers would know what to do with their own power if they ever got it back.>

<Yesterday, five Republican senators joined all the chamber’s Democrats to reject the 50 percent tariffs Donald Trump imposed on Brazil three months ago. The July 30 White House statement announcing the tariffs had claimed justification for Trump’s action under the 1977 International Economic Emergency Powers Act, laughably asserting that Brazil’s policies posed “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.”

But the “threat” was in fact that the democratically elected government of Brazil was holding accountable the country’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, who had plotted to overturn a presidential election he lost.

It’s not surprising that Trump was offended by an elected government seeking to uphold the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power. It’s not surprising that Trump usurped powers granted to the executive branch only for use in an emergency.

What was surprising is that five Senate Republicans voted against their dear leader.

Of course, the fact that this was a surprise shows how far we’ve fallen. Five Republicans out of 53 standing up to Trump! Almost ten percent of the GOP conference voting to uphold the rule of law! Amazing! An age of miracles!

But it’s a miracle whose effect will be limited. The Senate resolution is unlikely to become law. The New York Times reports that it “faces long odds in the House, where Republicans have taken extraordinary steps to make it more difficult to bring up such measures.” One step occurred last month, when the House quietly added a provision to a routine rule on another legislative matter preventing its members from forcing votes on lifting the tariffs until March 31, 2026.

Only three Republicans joined Democratic House members in opposing the measure, which passed 213–211.

All of this is a stark reminder that the whole Republican party wouldn’t have had to turn against Trump to check him. At any moment over the past nine months, all it would have required was a few members to meaningfully limit Trump’s authoritarian usurpations, or at least to make his path of usurpation harder. Yesterday’s exception illustrates the rule: They haven’t stepped up.

Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who is the lead sponsor of the tariff measure, asked yesterday:

Are we just going to allow the trade power which is handed to Congress, or the war power which is handed to Congress, or the appropriations power which is handed to Congress, or the nominations advice and consent power which is handed to the Senate — are we just going to allow those powers to be taken over by this president or any president?

The answer is yes, because so few Republicans have been willing to show even a modicum of courage.

<KASH HONEY: This past Saturday, FBI Director Kash Patel traveled to Penn State, not to announce new findings from the agency’s sports gambling investigations, or as part of the search for Jimmy Hoffa’s remains, but as a boyfriend supporting his girlfriend’s work.

Country singer Alexis Wilkins sang at the university as part of “Real American Freestyle,” a new unscripted wrestling league founded by Hulk Hogan. Patel appeared alongside her in a picture she posted on X.

That’s a perfectly non-scandalous act—endearing, even. But what caught the eye of former FBI agent and Patel nemesis Kyle Seraphin was how Patel ended up at Penn State.

Seraphin noted that a government jet that took off from a northern Virginia airport, then landed at State College, Pennsylvania’s regional airport near the campus, right around the time Patel was headed there. The FBI didn’t respond to a request for comment. But the jet is registered with the FAA as government-owned, with its owner’s address as the FBI’s Washington headquarters. Earlier that week, the jet traveled from Washington to Philadelphia, an itinerary that matches Patel’s appearance at a press conference in that city.

As FBI director, Patel is required to fly on government jets to handle his communications and security. Directors are supposed to pay the government at a commercial-flight rate for their personal travel, meaning each personal trip costs the government vastly more than it receives as reimbursement.

Before Patel became FBI director, he was critical of how often previous directors used their government jets, once urging the FBI to “ground” Chris Wray’s plane. And Wray wasn’t travelling during a government shutdown when agencies are under strain (FBI agents, unlike other federal workers, are being paid). It should be noted that after the wrestling match ended, the jet that Seraphin flagged took off again—this time headed from the State College airport to Nashville, where Wilkins lives.>

<In a presidential administration and Justice Department that have treated Jan. 6 rioters as victims, it stood out on Tuesday when two federal prosecutors acknowledged the simple fact that “[o]n January 6, 2021, thousands of people comprising a mob of rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol while a joint session of Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.”

The prosecutors who submitted that memo, Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White, were then placed on leave. They wrote those words in a sentencing memorandum for Taylor Taranto, who they noted had “promoted conspiracy theories” about Jan. 6.

The memo — which the DOJ subsequently withdrew — didn’t concern any sentencing for Taranto’s conduct on Jan. 6, which the DOJ previously alleged was criminal — before Donald Trump retook office. That’s because Trump began his second term as president by granting blanket pardons and ordering the dismissal of pending charges “against individuals for their conduct related to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

But that still left other criminal charges for Taranto, who was found guilty at a bench trial in May by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, of carrying a pistol without a license and unlawful possession of ammunition, and of violating a crime called false information and hoaxes.

Like Jan. 6, those other charges involved Trump, though they stemmed from conduct in 2023. The sentencing memo recounted that Taranto “perpetrated a hoax on June 28, 2023, by falsely claiming that he would cause a car bomb to drive into the National Institute of Standards and Technology.” The next day, after Trump had posted on social media a purported street address for former President Barack Obama in Washington, Taranto reposted the address and then started livestreaming from his van on his YouTube channel as he drove through Obama’s D.C. neighborhood.

Per the memo, Taranto claimed “he was searching for ‘tunnels’ he believed would provide him access to the private residences of certain high-profile individuals, including former President Obama.” The prosecutors added:

He parked his van, walked away from it, and approached a restricted area protected by the United States Secret Service. He walked through the nearby woods and stated, “Gotta get the shot, stop at nothing to get the shot.” After noticing the presence of the Secret Service he said, “If I were them, I’d be watching this, watching my every move.” He also said, “So yeah, more than likely, these guys also all hang for treason” and “I control the block, we’ve got ‘em surrounded.” When Secret Service agents approached him, Taranto fled, but he was apprehended and placed under arrest.

Shortly after his arrest, law enforcement conducted a sweep of Taranto’s van for hazardous materials and recovered two firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

“Taranto’s actions caused the evacuation of a residential neighborhood and forced law enforcement agents from multiple agencies to respond to his false bomb hoax,” Valdivia and White wrote in the memo. They requested a prison sentence of 27 months, which they wrote “reflects the gravity of Taranto’s conduct, his lack of remorse, and the need to deter him and others from engaging in similar threatening conduct.” They noted that such a sentence is at the top of the range of the federal sentencing guidelines as they apply to his case.

An entry subsequently appeared on Taranto’s court docket that said the memo was “entered in error,” after which two new lawyers appeared on the docket on behalf of the DOJ: Travis Wolf and Jonathan Hornok. As of 5 p.m. ET on Wednesday, a new sentencing memo hasn’t appeared on the docket ahead of Taranto’s sentencing, which had been scheduled for Thursday.>

You want to tell the truth about J6? Can't have that! We'll fire your asses!

<Kristi Noem, a self-proclaimed experienced truck driver, recently emphasized the dangers posed by “foreigners” who drive tractor-trailers. The Secretary of Homeland Security claimed that their inability to “communicate” like Americans is what puts everybody on the road in danger.

The 53-year-old was heard claiming that she was an experienced semi-truck driver. During a press conference in South Dakota, she noted that driving trucks requires the driver to be skilled as well as excellent at communicating with other drivers on the road.

With that line of reasoning, she immediately ruled out “foreigners” from being good drivers. During a conference in Gary, Indiana, she doubled down on her claim about how putting immigrants behind these trucks is an act endangering everyone else’s lives as well.

“Putting them behind the wheel of these tractor-trailers weighing tens of thousands of pounds loaded with explosive fuel down the highway endangers every single citizen that is on our roads,” she added.

Members of the Trump administration seem to have set their minds on minimizing immigrant truck drivers and have been taking steps to ensure the same for months. Marco Rubio has played a significant part in the effort.

The Secretary of State urged the White House to stop issuing work visas for commercial truck drivers in August. After a month, he issued an emergency regulation that would reduce the number of licenses given to immigrants by a significant amount.

The government supported their decision by claiming that the immigrants caused three dangerous truck crashes. Reuters reports that an immigrant is required to undergo a mandatory federal immigration status check in order to get a license.

Sean Duffy cornered the state of California by revealing that he would push to get their $160 million funding stopped. He accused the state of illegally giving commercial driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

“So you have 60,000 people on the roads who shouldn’t have licenses,” the Transportation Secretary said in a conference on Sunday. He claimed that the same people are being entrusted with driving fuel tankers and school buses. Duffy claimed that “some” crashes on the American roadways were caused by the same people “who shouldn’t have these licenses.”

The claim was refuted by a spokesperson of the California Department of Motor Vehicles. The employee noted that the claim ”has no legitimate basis,” and another made-up reason to withhold the funding.

“The federal government previously allowed commercial driver’s licenses for asylum seekers and refugees, and on September 26, announced emergency regulations to cease this practice that went into effect on September 29, “Eva Spiegel said in an interview with NBC.>

Them dang furriners is ta blame fer everthing in the eyes of <animal killer>.

https://www.inquisitr.com/kristi-no...

<He asked me how to know which spots to study after a session.

Our natural instinct in poker study draws us to confusing spots. We don't like feeling confused, especially when money is at stake, so often we have to scratch the itch and study the spot. The problem is that the most confusing spots are often outliers that will rarely come up again. A 5-bet pot UTG vs UTG1, for example.

The other instinct we have is to look at close spots, where two different decisions both have merit. Like facing a polarised bet on the river with a hand that only can beat a bluff. The problem with studying these spots is that the EV difference between option A and option B is marginal. You probably didn't make a mistake even if you lost.

The most useful hands to study come from two factors:

How often they happen

How much equity was at stake

Having a good baseline strategy for BTN vs BB, SB vs BB, CO vs BTN etc is much more valuable. These spots come up all the time, so the impact of studying them compounds. So if you think you missed up a small BTN vs BB pot, study that.

Likewise high equity spots = bubble spots, heads-up at the end of a tournament spots, pots with lots of big blinds in. These all have a dramatic impact on your bottom line, even if they don't come up often. A "close" spot at a final table might be worth 10 buy-ins, so you better know what to do.

<On Tuesday, nearly half the country will head to the polls to cast ballots on a range of major questions and offices, and President Donald Trump just made a not-so-subtle power grab ahead of the off-year vote. Just days before next week’s elections, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that federal monitors will be sent to California and New Jersey to ensure “ballot security.” Though the move has sparked fear on social media, preeminent elections expert Rick Hasen assures Slate that it’s more bark than bite, likely intended to “trigger” Democrats during the lead-up to a critical vote. That said, Hasen warns that this initial attempt by Trump to use federal officials to push his unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud could lead to something much more terrifying in the near future: federal troops at our polling places.

Last week, Bondi announced that federal monitors will be sent to five California counties and one New Jersey county to watch voters cast their ballots. Hasen, a professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, told Slate that the message this conveys is intentionally chilling.

“Sending monitors feeds into the perception that there’s something wrong with how elections are being conducted,” Hasen said. “And it might be a way of testing for what could potentially be done in 2026.”

Technically, the government has the authority to oversee local elections to monitor compliance with federal voting-rights laws, but only if it receives a court order authorizing the surveillance—a restriction stemming from the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder. And shortly after Bondi’s announcement, California Secretary of State Shirley Weber reminded the Department of Justice of this, writing in a letter, “None of the five targeted counties are subject to any court order requiring federal observers.”

The next day, one of the California counties subject to the order confirmed that only two federal monitors, both attorneys at the DOJ, would be observing the state’s Election Day voting. The Orange County registrar framed this as more typical “election observation,” open to any qualified member of the public. “The DOJ representatives are permitted access to view publicly observable election and voting activities in accordance with California laws and regulations. Observers may not disrupt the voting process or impede voting activity,” the registrar wrote. “The same rules of observation apply to these and all observers.” Hasen believes that this is the agency taking a cautious step back, moving away from literal enforcement but still angling to send a message.

“I think it’s meant to send a message to [Trump’s] base, and it’s meant to potentially upset liberals,” Hasen said, as Bondi has directed that observers be sent only to two solidly Democratic states. Plus, California voters are set to vote on Proposition 50, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s effort to hand control of the state’s congressional maps to Democratic lawmakers. If the measure is successful, the state would likely net five additional congressional seats, a counter to Texas’ decision to redraw its maps at the behest of the president in a way that will likely net Republicans five seats....>

<....A few days after Bondi’s initial announcement, California countered with its own message to the Trump administration. State Attorney General Rob Bonta announced that California would send its own state election watchers to watch Bondi’s watchers, while also calling out the Trump administration’s motives.

Despite how ridiculous this nesting-doll monitor situation sounds (who will watch the watchers of the watchers?), Bonta is rightfully concerned about Trump’s long-term intentions with American elections. “He is laying the groundwork,” Bonta said during a press conference this week. “He is socializing an idea that is very dangerous about potential election interference and fraud when it does not exist.”

In reality, Hasen believes, none of the election monitors will have much to do. “I think there’ll be a lot of people standing around doing nothing,” he said, noting that of California’s 58 counties, only five are being targeted.

However, he says, this is still a space Americans should be watching: The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the president has ordered the Pentagon to tap the National Guard to create “quick reaction” forces in every state and territory in the case of “civil disturbance.” This has obvious echoes of how Trump used the military to quell protesters during the 2020 social justice protests in Washington but, given the election denial of Jan. 6 that followed, reads as an even more dangerous potential threat to those who might stand up for the sanctity of the vote.

“This is not normal. I do think we have to take seriously the possibility that people are going to have to get around federal troops if they want to be able to vote,” Hasen said. “Which would be a good reason to vote early and not have to deal with these things on Election Day.”>

<The upcoming gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, along with next week's mayoral election in New York City, could be viewed as a reliable bellwether for how next year's midterm elections will go, according to CNN data analyst Harry Enten.

In a Friday segment on CNN's "OutFront," Enten told guest host Erica Hill that "Donald Trump can't be too happy" with the latest polling in those three races. Even though New Jersey's gubernatorial race is the closest of the three, Trump-endorsed Republican Jack Ciattarelli is still anywhere from six to eight points behind Democratic candidate Mikie Sherrill.

Republicans have an even smaller chance of keeping control of the governor's mansion in Virginia, as Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears is trailing Democrat Abigail Spanberger by 14 points according to a recent YouGov poll. And Democrat Zohran Mamdani is poised for a clear victory over former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (who is running as an independent) and Republican Curtis Sliwa. An Emerson College poll shows Mamdani ahead of Cuomo — his closest challenger — by roughly 25 percentage points.

"At this point in time, to me, it seems like the Democrats are most likely going to sweep all three of those races," Enten said. "And that's in part because of Donald Trump."

Enten went on to observe that there have only been five instances in the past 90 years where Democrats have swept all three off-year elections, with the latest instance happening in 2017. The other four times were in 1989, 1961, 1957 and 1953. However, Enten said that Democrats have reason to be hopeful if they repeat the feat next week.

"The five times that I mentioned that the Democrats swept all three of those races, each and every single time, the following year, they won a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives," he said. "So if Democrats sweep on Tuesday, in my opinion, it's a very good sign looking forward to 2026 in taking back that majority from the Republicans.">

<Kids and cops got tear-gassed in Chicago, a judge is holding ICE/CPB officials to account, Americans are horrified by the destruction of the East Wing of the White House, and even UFC fighters are starting to turn away from Trump.

What’s going on? Is he really as strong as he appears to think?

In 1999, I was working in a remote part of rural Russia for a German-based international relief agency; building housing and trying to teach peasant agricultural methods to people who’d only ever known massive, collective factory farms. I was staying in the home of a family of four with two young children. Dad was Russian and Mom — her name was Olga — was from East Germany, although she’d grown up watching West German TV.

The night before the first open and fair election in Russia’s entire history, we were watching Russian TV news and eating dinner in the midst of a huge snowstorm when a wild-eyed fellow came on the screen. He was giving some sort of speech, and his face was twisted with a kaleidoscope of extreme emotions. He pounded his fist and shook his finger at the camera, then became soft and soothing in his voice, then began shouting again.

He was followed by a news anchorwoman, sitting behind a desk, making commentary with a solemn expression. Olga suddenly broke out in laughter, although her husband’s face was serious, if not confused.

“What’s that about?” I asked Olga. (My German is pretty good, but not my Russian.)“Vladimir Zhirinovsky [the extreme right-wing candidate],” she said in German. “He’s a candidate in tomorrow’s election, and he says that everybody who votes for him will get a liter of vodka and a turkey after the election. The news lady is wondering where he’ll get all the turkeys.”

“People fall for that?” I said.

She nodded. “Remember, Russia has been here nearly a thousand years. And this is the first democratic election ever. Ever! People have no idea what to do, how to do it, or what to believe. And he doesn’t really care what he promises; if he gets elected he’ll do whatever he pleases.”

Donald Trump seems to be bringing Zhirinovsky’s political strategy to America.

He made a simple, straightforward deal with his supporters. It included elected Republicans and his base voters, and was elegant in its simplicity.

He promised that he’d make life miserable for Blacks, Hispanics, women, queer people, academics, and people living in big cities. The deal was first offered when he came down the infamous escalator in 2015, and repeated in rally after rally, campaign commercial after campaign commercial, for the past decade.

He also promised to make life better for his white male base, saying he’d “end inflation on day one,” “make America affordable again,” “slash energy and electricity prices by half within 12 months,” “unleash American energy,” and “get prices down” on “groceries, cars, everything.”

In exchange, he asked them to let him steal as much as he could from the public treasury, get away with past and present crimes, ignore his marital infidelities, and look away from his associations with his Miss Teen USA Pageant and Jeffrey Epstein.

His loyal followers did their part. They ignored his payoffs to a porn star and a Playboy bunny, his bragging about sexually assaulting women, his adjudication as a rapist, his 34 convictions for stealing the 2016 presidential election by fraud, his hustling made-in-China campaign swag, even the hundreds of millions he and his third wife made selling nearly worthless digital tokens.

Loyal preachers and even business leaders groveled before him, basking in the glow of his base’s love. Apple’s Tim Cook embarrassed himself and his company by slobbering over Trump as he handed him a chunk of 24 karat gold. Thirteen billionaires in his cabinet simpered when the cameras came on, repeatedly and pathetically reassuring Donald of his brilliance and nobility.

House Speaker Mike Johnson engineered a coverup of Trump’s association with Epstein, and Republicans averted their eyes as Ghislaine Maxwell was moved from a real prison to a Club Fed where she lives in an unlocked dormitory and can entertain herself with tennis and puppy training.

They disregarded his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, his placing his own personal lawyers in charge of justice in America, and his subsequent weaponization of the Justice Department against their own former lifelong Republican peers.

Now they’re defending his defilement of the White House, his depraved sons taking billions from foreign governments, and his betrayal of Ukraine in his never-ending deference to Vladimir Putin.

Republican politicians who for years warned about “jackbooted thugs” as they waved “Don’t Tread On Me” flags are suddenly fine with masked secret police openly and brutally beating American citizens as they build a massive network of concentration camps across the country....>

<....It’s been a good run and a great grift. But scams like this — even well-engineered ones with the power of a corrupted government behind them — usually don’t last.

Richard Nixon went down in flames, and his attorney general went to prison. Warren Harding’s health was destroyed, many biographers claim, by his association with Teapot Dome. Bill Clinton lost his law license and was impeached for his lies about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Now, it appears, it’s Trump’s turn to pay the price for his cozenage. Although all but a small handful of elected Republicans don’t yet seem to realize it, Trump is losing his grip.

Four Republicans in the House are demanding to know the details of his association with child rapists. Five Republican senators yesterday voted to block his illegal and unconstitutional tariffs against Brazil.

Several Republican senators have voiced concerns about his illegal murder of “drug traffickers” in the Caribbean. The public is aghast at his destruction of the historic “people’s” White House.

His approval in every category is underwater. Seven million or more people poured into the streets two weeks ago to defy him. His ICE and CPB thugs are pursued by citizens with whistles and apps to identify their locations.

Instead of fixing inflation, his tariffs have caused it to take off again. Instead of increasing employment, jobs are increasingly hard to find.

Instead of making groceries and housing more affordable, Trump’s policies have made things worse.

Instead of cutting energy prices, his killing off Biden’s green energy projects in exchange for fossil fuel campaign money is jacking electricity prices sky-high nationwide.

About the only thing holding up so far is the stock market, and most of that is being driven by an AI boom (which may be a bubble) that started under Biden — 21 states are in or near full-blown recession now as a result of Trump’s tariffs.

Republican politicians openly worry about the 2026 elections as they desperately try to rig them with outrageous and transparently corrupt gerrymanders and widespread voter suppression, mostly by voter roll purges in Red states.

Meanwhile, America’s allies around the world are recoiling from Trump’s embrace of Putin and Netanyahu, his betrayal of Ukraine, and his saber-rattling against Venezuela. His misguided tariff policies have devastated our relations with our nearest neighbors and traditional partners, while China and Russia play him for a sucker.

Most importantly, the racist, homophobic, misogynistic base Trump made his original deal with — the deal that put him into office twice — is turning away from him, disillusioned.

His “get the brown people” deportation scheme is wreaking havoc with the economy, devastating farmers and low-wage industries, and causing even the most hateful racists to admit he’s shooting America in the foot.

The LA Times, owned by a Trump-humping billionaire, is even pointing out that Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, and podcasters like Andrew Schultz have “caught the scent of blood in the water” and are turning against him.

Even MAGA Republicans in the US Senate turned against Trump’s most recent nominee, Paul Ingrassia, because of his pro-Nazi postings.

How long can Trump hold things together?

That’ll mostly depend on what happens with the larger economy. If prices continue to rise, employment stays paralyzed, and Republicans do nothing about healthcare and housing costs, there’ll be a huge reckoning in November, 2026.

Similarly, if the media continues to desert him over corruption and foreign policy, and even deals like Don Jr.’s with Fox’s primetime host Laura Ingraham fail to hang onto network loyalty, his fall could be spectacular. No matter how many networks David Ellison buys, he and Rupert/Lachlan Murdoch won’t be able to cover up the wreckage.

America is not Russia or Hungary. Both were ruled by dictators for millennia while we’ve practiced democracy for 250 years. Most of us believe in it. We want it to continue.

Sophocles famously said, “Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.” Trump thought he could invert that, but three thousand years of history taught us that the truth generally triumphs over lies and corruption.

It’s just a matter of time.>

<When the Trump administration tried to send National Guard troops into Chicago and Portland, bipartisan judges in federal district court blocked him. Trump lost his appeal in the Chicago case to the federal circuit court—but in the Portland case, two Trump-appointed judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals voted in favor of allowing Trump to deploy the military in U.S. cities. Now, Trump has asked the Supreme Court to intervene on his behalf in the Chicago case. And Trump has every reason to expect the Roberts majority will side with him, given their track record of letting him run rampant over our laws and constitution.

Taken together, these cases reinforce the pattern Court Accountability identified in our new analysis of President Trump’s win-loss rate in the federal courts this year. Our findings reveal that the district courts are engaged in a bipartisan fight for the rule of law—but when cases against the administration reach the circuit courts, Republican-appointed judges have largely voted in Trump’s favor, often writing ideologically driven dissents that their MAGA allies on the Roberts Court have then adopted to enable Trump’s autocratic rule.

District Courts: Trump’s challengers have a 60% win rate in the nearly 240 orders issued by federal district courts. Republican-appointed district judges have ruled against him in 55% of the cases before them. Democratic-appointed judges have ruled against him in 63% of the cases before them.

Circuit Courts: Trump’s challengers have a 59% win rate across just over 90 orders issued by federal circuit courts. Republican-appointed circuit judges, however, have given 84% of their votes to Trump, while Democratic-appointed circuit judges have given 85% of their votes against Trump.

Supreme Court: Trump has a 90% win rate in the 23 Supreme Court orders included in our analysis. Virtually every case was decided on the Court’s so-called shadow docket, with the right-wing majority often refusing to provide much, if any, reasoning for its result.

The District Courts

On September 30, Senior District Judge William Young issued a 161-page opinion declaring unconstitutional the Trump administration’s attempts to deport student visa holders for their political speech. Judge Young, a Reagan appointee, fashioned his opinion as a letter to someone who sent a threatening postcard to his chambers:

Young is hardly alone among federal district judges from both parties who have been standing up for the American people and “our magnificent Constitution” against the Trump Administration’s lawless attacks.

To date, litigation challengers to Trump’s executive policies have won over 60% of the nearly 240 cases decided in the district courts, with similar win rates before Republican and Democratic judges alike.

In case after case, these district judges have issued lengthy opinions loaded with legal analysis to back up their decisions to side for or against Trump based on the facts before them.

For instance, from the earliest days of Trump’s return to power, Democratic and Republican appointees have uniformly declared unconstitutional Trump’s executive order attacking the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.

More recently, both Trump- and Biden-appointed judges blocked Trump from sending the National Guard into Portland and Chicago, respectively. “The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts,” wrote Judge Karin Immergut, the Trump appointee, before reminding the administration that “this is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.”

The Circuit Courts

The federal circuit courts have so far issued 92 orders in around 60 of the nearly 100 cases that have been appealed from the district courts. Of those 92 orders, Trump’s challengers have prevailed almost 60% of the time, a success rate similar to that of their wins in the district courts. But unlike in the district courts, the circuit courts’ respect for the rule of law is not embraced on a bipartisan basis.

Democratic-appointed circuit judges have sided against Trump with 85% of their 199 votes, while Republican-appointed circuit judges have given Trump 84% of their 128 total votes. Many of the Republican appointees had been nominated to pursue the Federalist Society’s right-wing agenda, and it shows. The opinions the MAGA circuit judges have issued in these cases, often in dissent, have served to distort the district courts’ fact-finding and subvert longstanding precedents....>

<....This has been perfectly clear in the challenges to Trump’s order attacking birthright citizenship and his firings of independent agency heads. In the birthright citizenship cases, Republican judges have sought to limit relief issued by the district courts or throw the cases out altogether. And in the agency head firings, Republican judges have sought to further undermine a 90-year-old Supreme Court precedent known as Humphrey’s Executor that the Roberts Court appears eager to overrule.

These positions largely come in dissent because Republican appointees hold a minority of seats in virtually all of the circuit courts considering appeals in the Trump challenges. But those judges in dissent are influential with their superiors in the Supreme Court’s majority, and that influence is growing, with the likes of former Trump private attorney and DOJ official Emil Bove now on the Third Circuit.

The Supreme Court

On the Roberts Court, Republicans rule. And as the Roberts Court begins its first full term of the second Trump administration, Trump has already amassed a 21-2 record on the so-called “shadow docket” to prevent lower court orders against the administration’s lawlessness from going into effect.

After handing Trump sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution last term, the Roberts majority has enabled his lawlessness by—so far—ignoring Acts of Congress, making up new constitutional rules, and defying its own landmark precedents. In most shadow docket cases, the justices haven’t even bothered to tell us why.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, speaking in September at the Judicial Conference, asked:

“What accounts for the dramatic difference between the lower courts, where the President is losing in the overwhelming majority of cases, and the Supreme Court’s Shadow Docket, where the President is winning virtually every time? Well, because the Court refuses to explain itself, we simply have no idea.”

True enough. But in seven of the shadow docket cases, the justices adopted the pro-Trump bottom lines of Republican judges who did explain themselves, sometimes at great length, in the circuit courts below.

In the remaining cases, the justices have left us to guess why they are letting Trump persist in his lawlessness across a wide range of issues from immigration to federal spending, while leaving lower courts without guidance on how to carry out the high court’s unexplained orders.

Members of the Roberts majority’s own views on the precedential value of their shadow docket orders have evolved. In 2021, Justice Alito said the orders have no precedential value, but Chief Justice Roberts this year said they should inform similar subsequent cases—only for Justice Gorsuch to insist that “when this Court issues a decision, it constitutes a precedent that commands respect in lower courts.”

As Rep. Raskin said,

“Orders emerging from the Shadow Docket cannot be entirely non-precedential, as Justice Alito told us, casually informative, as Chief Justice Roberts suggested, and binding precedent, as Justice Gorsuch commands. Simply put, the Court has got to pick a lane. If emergency orders are non-binding, the Court should say so. If they are precedent, then the Court should tell us that—but they should understand that the lower courts will be left to guess where the Supreme Court will land when it finally hears a case in full.”

Lower court judges have echoed Raskin’s concerns. As Politico reported on September 11,

“They’re leaving the circuit courts, the district courts out in limbo,” said Judge James Wynn, an Obama appointee, during oral arguments in a case about the Department of Government Efficiency employees’ access to Social Security data. “We’re out here flailing. … I’m not criticizing the justices. They’re using a vehicle that’s there, but they are telling us nothing. They could easily just give us direction and we would follow it.”

“They cannot get amnesia in the future because they didn’t write an opinion on it. Write an opinion,” Wynn said. “We need to understand why you did it. We judges would just love to hear your reasoning as to why you rule that way. It makes our job easier. We will follow the law. We will follow the Supreme Court, but we’d like to know what it is we are following.”

<....Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented:

“We once again eschew restraint—ignoring the need for exigency or any other prudent threshold limitation on the exercise of our discretion—and wordlessly override the considered judgments of our colleagues. We once again use our equitable power (but not our opinion-writing capacity) to allow this Administration to disrupt as many lives as possible, as quickly as possible.

I view today’s decision as yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket. This Court should have stayed its hand. Having opted instead to join the fray, the Court plainly misjudges the irreparable harm and balance-of-the-equities factors by privileging the bald assertion of unconstrained executive power over countless families’ pleas for the stability our Government has promised them. Because, respectfully, I cannot abide our repeated, gratuitous, and harmful interference with cases pending in the lower courts while lives hang in the balance, I dissent.”

Inverting the Judicial Pyramid

Justice Robert Jackson famously quipped that the Supreme Court is “not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.” But the Supreme Court is neither infallible nor final when its own decision-making is—as our current Justice Jackson has continuously reminded us—at once egregiously wrong, unexplained, and in service to an antidemocratic executive.

The lower courts, however, have been telling a different story. These federal courts, bound by law and precedent that the Supreme Court flouts, have been hard at work for the last nine months explaining their reasoning for or against Trump to a public whose democracy is under assault.

Among district court judges, this is a bipartisan project, with Democratic and Republican appointees siding against the administration at roughly the same rates. While the outcomes are similar at the circuit level, the vote breakdown is not. There, Republican appointees chosen for their fealty to the Federalist Society have largely voted for Trump at similar rates to his win record before the Roberts Court, but at least they bother to explain themselves.

Both levels, then, can help light the way back to a democracy governed by the rule of law that the Roberts majority has abandoned.

Article III of our Constitution says, “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” In Trump’s second term, it’s clear that the courts Congress created to be closest to our country’s cases and controversies are demonstrating far more respect for the Constitution and the democratic processes it protects than their right-wing appellate overlords sitting on—or auditioning for—the “one supreme Court” ordained by the document that Trump, with their blessing, defies daily.

Lower court judges, then, should not wilt when the Roberts majority accuses them of defiance.

As Judge Young wrote in September, urging we, the people, to defy the would-be tyrant who seeks to divide us:

“I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected.

Is he correct?”

Trump will not be correct if we invert the judicial pyramid and follow Young’s lead. We should call out and demand reforms to stop the Supreme Court’s abuse of its outsized power to abase itself before an anti-constitutional executive. We must keep close watch on the circuit courts, which serve as the proving grounds for future Supreme Court justices of both parties. And we should celebrate and protect the independence of the district judges taking up the Trump cases, who are showing how a truly independent judiciary should conduct itself by refusing to bend the knee....>

<For several days, people all over the country (and all over the internet) have been talking about the now-viral hug between Vice President JD Vance and Erika Kirk, the CEO of conservative political organization Turning Point USA. Kirk’s husband, former Turning Point CEO Charlie Kirk, was killed at a speaking event in Utah in September.

The infamous hug happened at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi, where Vance was a featured speaker. In a video of the exchange, Erika Kirk and Vance are seen hugging tightly with their bodies pressed up against each other. At one point, Kirk brings her hand up to Vance’s hair, and when the hug eventually ends, Vance’s hand drops to Kirk’s hip.

“That’s a Nicholas Sparks kind of hug right there,” said one creator on Instagram — and body language experts don’t disagree. Here’s what they think of the exchange:

Experts say Erika Kirk’s hand placement in JD Vance’s hair is “super-intimate,” “comfortable” and “attention-controlling.”

One of the standout moments of the Kirk-Vance interaction is Kirk’s hand placement; she physically holds Vance’s head and has her fingers in his hair during their onstage hug.

“That’s a super-intimate move, but beyond that, it controls his attention — so, she’s controlling what he’s looking at,” said Traci Brown, a body language expert and behavior analyst.

“In the hug, also, they’re pressed up against each other, he is smiling, and the little crème de la crème on the sexual aspect of that interaction, besides the pelvis placement, is she’s running her hands through his hair,” said Patti Wood, a body language and nonverbal communication expert and author of “SNAP: Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language, and Charisma.”

“She’s got her hands inside of his hair, and if you look at the fingers, there’s a tightening, that’s a curling around of the fingers, meaning she is pulling him closer,” said Wood.

This move shows affection, said Karen Donaldson, a communication and body language expert. “It suggests, or signals, she’s comfortable. And there’s some type of familiarity there. He’s familiar to her as well,” Donaldson explained.

Vance didn’t pull away from her embrace and “his facial expressions are positive,” Wood said. “So, he’s into it,” Wood said.

The other stand-out moment from this interaction is Vance’s hand placement on Kirk’s waist during their hug. “His hands drop to her hips, and that is not formal, and that is, in many instances, not appropriate. However, it’s what they’re doing,” Brown said.

Kirk doesn’t recoil when this happens, “so, there is much more going on ... could it be a deep friendship? Yeah. Could it be more than that? Absolutely. Is there any one move that says, ‘Hey, they’re a couple now?’ No, there’s not,” said Brown.

Professional touch tends to be higher on the body — think shoulder pats and handshakes. “When we go just below the lower part of your ribs, that’s someone’s intimate space. That signals that there’s a connection, but it’s a little bit more on the intimate side,” Donaldson said.

Intimate space doesn’t always mean romantic, though, Donaldson added.

In body language analysis, there’s something called proxemics, which is how experts read the amount of space between people, according to Donaldson. This is used to determine how someone is feeling, their power and their connection to those in their space.

In an impersonal interaction, people are typically 12 to 25 feet apart; in a social space (like a networking group), folks tend to be about 4 to 12 feet apart; personal space (like with a friend or coworker you’re fond of) is 1 to 4 feet, she explained.

“When we talk about intimate space, we’re talking really close. Usually within a foot and all the way up to touching,” Donaldson said.

People who fall in our intimate space zone can be romantic partners, but can also be those who are in your close emotional support system, such as a best friend, she said.

In the case of Vance and Kirk, they’re “150%” in each other’s intimate space, Donaldson said.

“They’re facing each other directly and they are in each other’s intimate space — and what I want to say about that is it’s mutual, because no one’s pulling away,” she added.

This signifies closeness and a “heavy emotional connection,” Donaldson said.

She stressed that, once again, intimate space can refer to close friendships and romantic relationships....>

<....Being in someone’s personal space is even more meaningful when someone is grieving, according to experts.

There are a range of behaviors that are “normal” in grief, loss and trauma — no two people grieve the same way, according to Wood.

When it comes to personal space, there is an amount of distance that’s “normal” to give someone who is grieving, she added.

“Strangely, if somebody is dealing with grief, most of the time people leave space,” Wood said, adding that generally, people leave about 2 feet between themselves and someone who is grieving.

“They don’t approach a person in grief at a close (range),” she said.

In the case of Vance, he did approach Kirk in a close range, which could potentially indicate a few things.

“Typically, the only dearest, closest people feel super comfortable going into face-to-face full body [connection],” said Wood.

Donaldson noted that Vance and Kirk are “touching chest to chest and pelvis to pelvis.” This closeness and this kind of hug can indicate emotional connection as well, said Donaldson.

Overall, given everything, this type of interaction would “create attention” and a “media story,” Wood said ― and it has.

There are no signs of discomfort from either party; it was likely a choice on both of their parts to partake in this kind of hug on a world stage, she noted.

“Think about how much media is concerned about these two people and the event when everything else is going on,” Wood said.>

<REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS claim to be innocent in the government shutdown. Unlike Donald Trump—who has used layoffs, termination of construction projects, and additional threats to bully Democrats during the impasse—House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune say they just want to work constructively across the aisle, not score political points. Johnson and Thune insist that they’re helpless in the standoff because they need sixty votes in the Senate to break a Democratic filibuster.

But the third-ranking House Republican, Majority Whip Tom Emmer, has abandoned this pretense. Like Trump, Emmer is vilifying Democrats, hurling gratuitous insults, and urging Republican senators to exempt appropriations bills from the filibuster.

Johnson often accuses Democrats of kowtowing to American Marxists. But Emmer goes further. In the past month, by my count, he has called Democrats, their political base, or No Kings protesters “Communist” (seven times), “Marxist” (fourteen times), “violent” (nine times), “almost jihadist” (once), and “terrorist” or “pro-terrorist” (twenty-four times).

In a radio interview on October 9, Emmer accused Democrats of having changed completely from the days when they merely disagreed with Republicans “over the size and scope of government.” Nowadays, he professed, “They want Venezuela. They want Cuba. These are not constitutional republic–loving Democrats. These are Marxists, Communists.”

Emmer doesn’t confine these hyperbolic terms to the left. He applies them indiscriminately. On Wednesday, he even went after Rep. Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for governor of Virginia, who had worked for eight years at the CIA. “Abigail Spanberger, she’s on the Marxist side of the party,” Emmer declared preposterously. As evidence, he claimed that she “doesn’t have a problem” when “young girls have to be in dressing rooms with young men.” That was an egregious misrepresentation of Spanberger’s position. It was also comically unrelated to Marxism.

Emmer routinely impugns the patriotism of Democrats and their supporters. “They truly do hate, they hate America, these people that they’re playing to,” he charged in a radio interview on October 13. He said the No Kings protests on October 18 would prove his point. “You’ll see them on Saturday on the mall. They just do not love this country,” he told Maria Bartiromo a few days before the protests. In the radio interview, he predicted: “You’re going to see all kinds of pro-terrorist stuff, you know, the Hamas flags . . . on the mall on Saturday.”

He was wrong. It’s possible that among the 7 million participants, someone carried a Hamas flag. But I can’t find any reports or pictures of that flag, which is quite distinct from the Palestinian flag. Nevertheless, on October 24, Emmer pretended to have been vindicated. “All you have to do is watch” the protests, he asserted, offering no evidence. “They’re carrying around their Hamas flags.”

Sometimes Emmer says the Democratic party has a pro-terrorist “wing.” At other times, he says this putative pro-terrorist faction is the party’s base. “You got a bunch of Marxists and Communists holding this so-called No Kings protest,” he told Scott Jennings in an interview on October 20. “They support Hamas terrorists. And this is the Democrat base.”

One measure of Emmer’s insincerity, when he feigns concern that Hamas sympathizers are taking over the Democratic party and endangering America, is his willingness to joke that his Democratic colleagues are worse than Hamas. On October 13, radio host Dan O’Donnell asked Emmer whether it was “easier to negotiate with Hamas terrorists than it is with congressional Democrats.” Emmer, seizing on the invitation to ding his opponents, replied “Yes.”>

<Texas' anti-DEI crusaders have found another dragon to slay in their never-ending culture wars.

The wars are never-ending because somewhere in American academia, government agencies and nonprofits burn the fires of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or DEI, which must be extinguished before they destroy the country.

The most recent dragon slain, or at least put on temporary ice, is a state program called the Historically Underutilized Business program, known as HUB. The program was created more than a quarter of a century ago under that liberal George W. Bush to help businesses owned by women, minorities and disabled veterans get exposure when seeking state contracts.

Last week, the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts froze HUB because it was doing its job. It was helping businesses owned by women, minorities and disabled veterans get exposure when seeking contracts from state agencies.

The freeze will allow for a review to make sure HUB's work doesn't conflict with Gov. Greg Abbott's January executive order banning DEI programs from state agencies as well as recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock crowed on social media, "Businesses deserve a level playing field where government contracts are earned by performance and best value - not race or sex quotas. We must END ALL DEI in Texas!"

DEI has replaced CRT (Critical Race Theory) as the bogeyman of the right. It has become en vogue for conservative politicians to misrepresent and lie about the intent and performance of programs designed to address long-existing inequities.

HUB was designed to help level an uneven playing field.

It was codified into state law in 1999 - during Bush's second term as governor - after being developed over several legislative sessions. Its purpose is to promote equal procurement opportunities for small businesses owned by minorities, women and disabled veterans and small business owners. This doesn't mean those businesses will be awarded contracts, but it does give them better exposure.

For a business to qualify for HUB, at least 51% of its ownership must be an "economically disadvantaged person," which defined by the state as Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, women, Asian Pacific Americans, Native Americans and disabled veterans.

HUB was created out of the recognition that for much of our history there was an absence of diversity, equity and inclusion in employment and contracting opportunities. Policies and practices had to be developed for underrepresented groups to showcase talent and pursue equal opportunities.

What Hancock and others like him have done is equate diversity, equity and inclusion as being about quotas and giving "unqualified" people of color and women opportunities they haven't earned. The sad irony is that this echoes the kind of thinking historically used to exclude these groups.

HUB doesn't force state agencies to award contracts to HUB-certified businesses. But it does grant these businesses access to bid opportunities and a list of state agency HUB program coordinators who can introduce them to their agency procurement officers. It also allows them a free listing in the HUB directory, which is used by all state agencies to identify minority and/or women-owned businesses who are eligible for their procurement opportunities/bids.

Despite Hancock's charges, HUB isn't about quotas, but rather, to use his metaphor, level the playing field by allowing more players the opportunity to get in the game to see if they can compete. It doesn't demand that they be chosen, just the fairness of consideration and a chance to be seen.

As of now, HUB can't be seen since it's frozen and program information has been removed from the comptroller's website.

Diversity, equity and inclusion doesn't mean lowering standards. It means casting a wider net so more talent can be brought in and opportunities can be offered. HUB is such a wide net. Texas is better for it.>

<[Event "Hull-Bradford Match"] [Site "Hull ENG"]
[Date "1939.01.21"]
[EventDate "1939"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Bronowski, Jacob"]
[Black "Broadbent, Reginald"]
[ECO "A92"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]