Thursday, November 6, 2025. Why do elected Republicans hate our veterans, why does Chump attack Christians, some observations on Tuesday's elections and much more.
We're going to start with Senator Patty Murray because we live in a country where too many Republicans in office slander and attack those receiving SNAP benefits. As the senator made clear yesterday, many veterans receive SNAP benefits as well.
At Hearing, Senator Murray Slams Trump and Republicans for Abandoning Veterans Who Rely On SNAP, Discusses Support for Veterans’ Transition to Civilian Life
Trump is refusing to allow SNAP benefits to flow despite available funding—1.2 million veterans rely on SNAP, 40 percent of whom are disabled
***WATCH: Senator Murray’s exchange at the hearing***
Washington, D.C. — Today, at a Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs hearing to examine efforts to support transitioning servicemembers, veterans and their families, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA)—a former chair and senior member of the committee—emphasized how veterans who rely on SNAP are being hurt by President Trump blocking SNAP benefits despite available funding, and questioned witnesses on how the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) can provide better support to veterans during their transition to civilian life.
Appearing at the hearing as witnesses were: Jason Galui, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army (Ret.), Director, George W. Bush Institute; Mike Hutchings, CEO, Combined Arms; Jared Lyon, National President & CEO, Student Veterans of America; Barbara Carson, Colonel (Ret.), U.S. Air Force Reserve Managing Director, D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University; Elizabeth O’Brien, Director, Hiring Our Heroes; and Holly Hermes, Yale University Liaison for Veteran and Military Affairs.
[TRUMP BLOCKING SNAP, HURTING VETERANS]
“Let me echo something Senator Blumenthal talked about, and really point out something that I think has not gotten enough attention, and that is that 1.2 million veterans rely on SNAP. That is, about a third of them are over the age of 65, and forty percent are disabled.
“We know right now that President Trump is blocking them from getting the SNAP benefits they need so they don’t go hungry.
“The money to fund SNAP exists. Trump has chosen not to use that funding, and his administration said they’re going to do partial benefits—they’d be late—and then he posted yesterday on Truth Social that he’s decided to block benefits altogether.
“So now we are, of course, hearing reports of veterans flocking to food banks. They’re not sure where their next meal is going to come from.
“Mr. Chairman, my family was one of those families. My dad was a veteran. He got multiple sclerosis, and we had to rely on food stamps for a while, so this is not something we should tolerate.
“The money exists. It is supposed to go out, and I hope every member of this committee lets the administration know that they need that money to get out.”
Senator Murray continued by asking Jared Lyon, National President & CEO of Student Veterans of America, about the impact that President Trump’s refusal to fund SNAP benefits is having on student veterans in particular: “So Mr. Lyon, let me just ask you about that. What are you hearing from your members who do rely on SNAP, and tell me why it’s so important to student veterans in particular?”
“At Student Veterans of America, we leverage a lot of research, and basic needs has been something that we’ve been looking into for the better part of the last five years. Food and housing insecurity are remaining challenges for veterans in higher education,” Mr. Lyon replied. “The GI bill is designed for a single person that heads back to school, and when you look at the modern student veteran, over half are married or in a committed relationship with children when they head back to school. Another 20 percent of us are single parents when we’re back in school, and over 75 percent of us are working full-time while we are in school, just trying to make ends meet. It is very difficult to transition without a military pension, without health care for life, and that is what the average veteran is doing when they head back to school. So, it’s no surprise to see benefits like SNAP and other things being relied on while you’re back in school and trying to make ends meet. When those benefits go away, veterans are impacted—and more than that, their family members that rely on these benefits are impacted as well.”
“Thank you for sharing that. And again, I urge all of our committee members to let the Administration know that money’s there. They’re legally required to obligate it. Get it out. We have people who need that,” Senator Murray replied.
[BARRIERS FACING WOMEN VETERANS]
Senator Murray continued her questioning by asking Colonel Hermes about the barriers female veterans face when seeking civilian employment: “Let me ask about, Colonel Hermes, about women veterans. They are the fastest-growing demographic of veterans. And I personally have heard from many women veterans that when they return home to civilian life, people don’t respect their service or assume that they are a military spouse, not the actual veteran. And it is disturbing that we now have a Secretary of Defense who takes every opportunity to insult women who’ve been in the military. And that really, I believe, adds to the barriers that women face now when they return to civilian life. So, talk to us a little bit about some of the barriers that women veterans in particular face when they come home and seek civilian employment.”
“That is a very important question for our society to wrestle with,” Colonel Hermes replied. “In our group of enlisted student veterans… we have a very small number of women, and I even say parents, or families, because it is very difficult, just like Mr. Lyon mentioned, to support a family while you’re going to college. The GI benefits, the federal benefits that we’re able to give even institutionally, can’t support some families as they leave the military. So that’s a huge challenge, and I think that’s something that our society needs to keep wrestling with. And we could talk to the VA about programs that could support that in the future nationwide, not just at one school or another.”
“Thank you very much. I have run out of time, but this is something I’m very concerned about—when we hear discussions about DEI, and then it impacts women who we need in our in our military. And not just then, but when they come home and they are veteran, they actually don’t want to identify as a veteran, or don’t see themselves as a veteran, and they then don’t get the services and benefits that they’ve earned,” Senator Murray said.
Senator Murray was the first woman to join the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee and the first woman to chair the Committee—as the daughter of a World War II veteran, supporting veterans and their families has always been an important priority for her. Senator Murray has been a leading voice in the Senate speaking out forcefully against President Trump and Elon Musk’s mass firing of VA employees and VA researchers across the country and Elon Musk and DOGE’s infiltration of the VA, including accessing veterans’ sensitive personal information. After pressing Doug Collins on EHR and protecting women’s access to VA health care, including lifesaving abortion care, at his nomination hearing, Senator Murray voted against Doug Collins’s nomination to be VA Secretary—sounding the alarm over Elon Musk and DOGE’s activities at the VA and making clear that the Trump administration’s lawlessness is putting our national security and our veterans at risk. Senator Murray released a report earlier this year on how Trump’s mass firings at VA are hurting veterans’ services and health care in Washington state and across the country. And in August, Senator Murray slammed the Trump administration’s move to ban abortion care at VA, even when a veteran’s pregnancy is putting their health at risk or is the result of rape or incest.
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Why do elected Republicans have to attack veterans? Do they not support our veterans?
Moving on . . .
When Chump speaks, am I the only one who hears Margaret Cho doing her Kim-Jung Un impersonation on 30 ROCK?
In the MEIDASTOUCH NEWS video below, when Chump starts lying and saying food prices are down, doesn't he come off like Cho's characterization?
Big difference being, Margaret was aiming to make people laugh, Chump's just a joke and can't evade the laughter.
At THE NEW REPUBLIC, Greg Sargant weighs in on Tuesday's elections:
The Democratic Party’s blowout wins on Tuesday night underscore a fundamental reality about the Donald Trump era: Anti-Trump politics is affordability politics, and affordability politics is anti-Trump politics. It’s not just that there is no need to choose between attacking Trump’s lawlessness and addressing the “price of eggs,” in the hackneyed shorthand for costs and inflation. It’s that the two missions are inseparable from one another.
In the weeks leading up to the elections—in which Democrats Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill won the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races by 15 points and 13 points, respectively—a strange, contrary media trope took hold. Various news analyses suggested that Spanberger and Sherrill were erring by obsessing over Trump rather than focusing on what actually matters to voters. Some Democrats fretted that while attacking Trump was “seductive,” an opportunity was being missed to offer a substantive “alternative.”
Start with this finding in the updated exit polls: Both Spanberger and Sherrill entirely erased the GOP advantage with voters who lack a four-year degree. Spanberger tied her Republican opponent among them, with each getting 50 percent, a huge swing from four years earlier, when Glenn Youngkin won them by 59 percent to 40 percent. Meanwhile, Sherrill also tied her GOP opponent among non-college voters by 50 percent to 49 percent.
And here’s a striking nuance: While both Democrats lost non-college white voters by large amounts—a demographic the party continues to struggle with—Spanberger did reduce that margin relative to 2021. Critically, both made up for that by winning huge margins among non-college nonwhite voters: The spreads were 85–15 for Spanberger and 75–23 for Sherrill. Given that Trump’s 2024 victory unleashed a hurricane of analysis about his inroads with the nonwhite working class, those margins are heartening indeed.
At TAP, Harold Meyerson offers:
On the one hand, when voters in Virginia and New Jersey were asked by exit pollsters for their views of the Democratic Party, they weren’t exactly effusive. In New Jersey, 47 percent said they had a favorable impression; 50 percent said their impression was unfavorable. In Virginia, it was 45 percent favorable and 52 percent unfavorable.
And yet—and yet—Tuesday was a great day for Democrats, and more important, a great day for America, or at least, an America that hopes to overcome the rule of a tin-pot megalomaniac.
Those Virginia voters elected Democrat Abigail Spanberger to be their governor by a 14-point margin over her Republican opponent. They elected a full slate of down-ticket Democrats, too, including their attorney general candidate whose years-old tweets would have defeated him had state voters not been furious at the presumptuous misrule of Donald Trump.
Those New Jersey voters elected Democrat Mikie Sherrill to be their governor by a 13-point margin over her Republican opponent. Pennsylvania voters returned all three Democratic state Supreme Court justices—who’d rejected Trump’s machinations to skew their state toward MAGA injustices—by 20-point margins. Georgia voters ousted two Republican members of the state’s Public Service Commission in favor of two Democrats—the first Democrats to win statewide nonfederal offices in decades. In California, voters passed by a nearly 2-to-1 margin Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Democratic redistricting map, which would offset the Republican one enacted in Texas. And in New York City, voters gave majority support to a democratic socialist Democrat and a tribune for a struggling, largely immigrant working class to be their next mayor.
The results dispelled fears that the drift of Black and Latino voters into the Republican column that characterized the 2024 presidential election would continue. Spanberger carried Virginia Latinos by a 64 percent to 35 percent margin, and she won the vote of the state’s nonwhite working class (that is, voters without college degrees) by a 56-percentage-point margin. Sherrill won New Jersey’s Latino voters by a 2-to-1 (64 percent to 32 percent) margin, and carried the state’s nonwhite working class by a 48-percentage-point margin.
And some video discussions on the elections.
Paul Krugman's analysis kicks off with:
Something big happened in New Jersey Tuesday — namely, Hispanic voters made a major voting reversal. Last year, across the country Hispanics swung Republican in a significant departure from past voting patterns, helping propel Trump to victory. But yesterday, in New Jersey, they swung back hard to the Democrats. And I’m going to go out on a limb and make a prediction: They won’t be going back to the G.O.P. for a very long time.
Jonathan V. Last very helpfully focuses on Union City, N.J., an overwhelmingly Hispanic area. Donald Trump got only 19 percent of the vote there in 2016. But in 2024 he received more than twice that share, 41 percent. This pattern was replicated across the country, leading ebullient Republicans to tout a widespread, durable realignment of Hispanic voters toward their party.
Durable, that is, until it wasn’t. The Republican candidate for New Jersey governor, Jack Ciatarelli, received only 15.1 percent of Union City’s votes on Tuesday. What happened?
In this case, the simple answer is the right one — it’s the economy, stupid. The 2021-2022 surge in prices infuriated many Americans, particularly working class Americans who have little surplus to spare. Biden economists pointed out until they were blue in the face that this was not Biden’s fault – that inflation had surged everywhere. They also pointed out that wages had risen too, so much so that workers’ purchasing power was higher in 2024 than it had been before the pandemic. It didn’t matter: making these statements was interpreted as tantamount to denying people’s felt reality. Economics comparisons are abstract while the price of eggs is not. Furthermore, workers believed, as they always do during wage-price spirals, that they had earned wage increases that were being unfairly snatched away by inflation.
So many voters turned to Trump, believing his promises that he would bring prices down to pre-Covid levels. They remembered the low inflation, low mortgage rates and full employment that prevailed on the eve of the pandemic and let themselves be persuaded that Trump would turn back the clock.
But, equally important, the 2024 Hispanic swing to the Republicans was also a function of what voters chose not to believe. Namely, many Hispanics chose not to believe warnings that a second Trump administration would be an era of racial profiling and mass deportations, of Hispanic communities terrorized by ICE agents.
After all, the reasoning went, that didn’t happen during Trump’s first term. So many Hispanic voters brushed aside dire warnings from Democrats that an emboldened Trump II would be very different.
Moving over to a different topic, Chump is threatening Nigeria as Ben pointed out at the top in the MEIDASTOUCH NEWS video. "Guns a blazing," Chump threatened. He wants to attack Nigeria where, he says, Muslim terrorists are attacking Christians.
Has Bola Ahmed Adekunle Tinubu threatened to attack the US? Over an Orange Faced Terrorist who attacks Christians in the US?
Because Chump is attacking Christians.
Yes, let's turn to Chump's war on immigrants. Earlier this week, Gaby Vinick (ABC NEWS) reports:
And Judge Gettleman reached a finding as Mitch Smith (NYT) reports:
A federal judge said Wednesday that immigration officials must provide bottled water, clean bedding, hygiene products and access to lawyers at a suburban Chicago detention center that detainees have described as squalid and unsanitary.
The judge, Robert W. Gettleman, said conditions at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Ill., “don’t pass constitutional muster.” He gave federal officials until midday Friday to submit a report on how they were meeting 15 requirements that he imposed in a temporary restraining order.
And we stop there. Why? Dept of Homeland Secuirty's Tricia McLaughlin. She's a known liar, she's a serial liar.
As Ava and I noted two weeks ago in "Media: They fail to note the pattern of ICE lies but make time to defend this year's John Fetterman:"
And here's where the media keeps failing us. Homeland Security officials have been caught in one lie after another. It's so bad that judges can't really take their claims seriously at this point. But the media too often repeats claims regarding ICE without noting the long pattern of lies from them this year.
We were all taught about the little boy who cried wolf. You don't lie because you'll be known as a liar and the time will come when you need to be believed but you're known as a liar.
A lesson we're taught as children is too much for ICE and the officials over ICE to grasp. That might be shocking if we hadn't already addressed the relaxed 'standards' when it comes to hiring ICE agents.
The media needs to, if they quote her, note how one claim she's made to the public after another has turned out to be a falsehood.
Back to the article after the serial liar has been quoted:
Judge Gettleman, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, said in his order that holding cells must be cleaned twice a day, that detainees must be allowed to shower at least once every other day and that detainees should be allowed to communicate with their lawyers by phone.
A lawyer for the plaintiffs praised the judge’s order in a statement.
“These are urgent and necessary measures to protect these detainees and preserve their basic human rights,” said the lawyer, Alexa Van Brunt of the MacArthur Justice Center.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Ron Wyden's office:
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden said today he is leading a letter with his Senate colleagues, including Oregon U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley, slamming Trump for his failure to address rising health care costs for American families.
Wyden, Merkley, and the lawmakers highlighted the worsening affordability crisis, especially for health care — the crux of the fight surrounding Donald Trump and Republicans’ ongoing government shutdown.
“Over 90 percent of American voters say it is important for Congress and the President to lower health care costs,” the lawmakers wrote to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “We urge the Trump administration and Congressional Republicans to join us to lower Americans’ health care costs and reopen the government.”
The senators explained that Trump has raised health care costs for Americans in the following ways:
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An estimated 154 million Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance will face the biggest premium increase in over a decade because of Trump’s policies;
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More than 24 million Americans who get their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act will see their premiums skyrocket next year, and families receiving enhanced premium tax credits will face the largest price hike in history if the tax credits expire;
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About 15 million Americans will get kicked off of their health insurance because of Trump and congressional Republicans’ budget law, and millions more with Medicaid will face new, higher out-of-pocket costs;
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An estimated 15 million Americans with $49 billion in medical debt are being denied federal relief, while 15 million more are at higher risk of accruing medical debt; Millions of Americans will have to pay “hundreds of dollars more in out-of-pocket costs” for Affordable Care Act coverage due to the Trump administration’s final Marketplace rule; and
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Millions of Americans will pay more for prescription drugs due to Trump and congressional Republicans’ nearly $9 billion handout to Big Pharma.
In addition to Wyden, the letter was led by U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. In addition to Merkley, the letter was also signed by U.S. Senators Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., Richard Durbin, D-Ill., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., Andy Kim, D-N.J., Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., Patty Murray, D-Wash., Alex Padilla, D-Calif., Gary Peters, D-Mich., Jack Reed, D-R.I., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Tina Smith, D-Minn., Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., and Peter Welch, D-Vt.
The full letter is here.
The following sites updated:
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Are Hispanics America’s New Jews?2 hours ago
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Merch12 hours ago
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Quack quack says lame duck Donald Chump12 hours ago
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