Thursday, October 02, 2025
The Snapshot
The Trump administration took steps on Wednesday to maximize the pain of the government shutdown, halting billions of dollars in funds for Democratic-led states while readying a plan to lay off potentially droves of civil servants imminently.
The moves by the White House appeared both unprecedented and punitive, underscoring the risks of a fiscal stalemate that had no end in sight. It also evinced how President Trump might try to leverage the governmentwide closure to achieve his agenda, slash the budget and exact revenge on his political enemies.
In a series of social media posts, Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, said the administration had paused or moved to cancel the delivery of about $26 billion in previously approved funds across a range of programs, describing the money as wasteful or in need of further review.
The timing seemed to be no mere coincidence, nor were Mr. Vought’s choices of location. He said the administration was terminating one tranche of funds, totaling about $8 billion, because it was “Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda,” a move that affected projects in 16 states, most of which are led by Democrats.
BLOOMFIELD — Today, Mikie Sherrill pledged once again to “fight tooth and nail”
to complete the Gateway Tunnel Project, the nation’s most important
infrastructure project that is crucial to fixing New Jersey’s broken
transit system.
Jack Ciattarelli knows this project is critical.
But, he is squirming and refusing to fight these attacks on New Jersey.
Because, as always, Jack’s focused on serving Donald Trump, not New
Jersey.
When asked who is to blame for the shutdown, Jack said “I don’t know enough about the details.” News flash — it’s his boss, Donald Trump.
When asked about the Trump administration’s move to pause the project, Jack said “it doesn’t stop what’s going on” How does Jack expect the project to continue after Trump ripped away the funding? (You would think a CPA could figure that out)
Jack
has no interest in serving New Jerseyans — as a candidate or as
governor. On the debate stage last week, he promised Trump he won’t sue him on anything. This comes after Jack has said his job as governor would be “to help Trump” and refuses to name a single thing he disagrees with Trump on.
Mikie
is running to take on anyone — including her own party — to fix New
Jersey’s broken transit system, build the Gateway Tunnel, and deliver
for working families.
###
Mikie Sherrill's campaign or MSNBC needs to immediately post a video of the discussion on YOUTUBE. She talks about how her rival in the race is backing Chump, not New Jersey. Mikie notes, "He refuses to lead on this effort nd is kowtowing to Donald Trump." She talks about how the project Chump is trying to destroy would bring in around 100,000 jobs in New Jersey. It's very clear that one side is attempting to provide for citizens and the other side isn't interested in serving the people of New Jersey because he would rather kiss Chump's sweaty ass.
[WASHINGTON, D.C.] — Today, U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) issued the following statement lambasting President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s unprecedented, wasteful and insulting speeches to many of our nation’s military leaders at great cost to American taxpayers and our national security:
“As Trump pushes our nation to the brink of another Republican shutdown, Cadet Bone Spurs and the least qualified Defense Secretary in history decided to waste millions of taxpayer dollars—and our top military leaders’ time and attention—to force them to fly thousands of miles to listen to a partisan diatribe unbecoming of our nation’s leaders, all while Americans face real threats from adversaries that wish to do us harm.
“The nation’s top defense leader encouraging hazing troops who answered the call to fight and die for us is utterly appalling, especially from someone who should know that American troops have died from hazing. He also claimed that weakening rules of engagement strengthens our warfighters, when in reality it will simply create more enemies of America and make it more likely those enemies would torture captured American troops. And his claim that diversity is ‘debris’ erases the valor shown by women, people of color and many others who’ve served in uniform since this country’s founding and makes a mockery of our Veterans. Meanwhile, Trump’s distressing desire to use American cities as ‘training grounds for our military’ isn’t just intrinsically un-American, it’s unconstitutional and is the sort of misuse of the military that tin-pot dictators—not Presidents—are known for.
“None of the ideas presented this morning make our military stronger or our nation safer. They are dangerous actions that threaten our national security and undermine the Constitutional rights of all Americans that our troops—as well as Trump and Hegseth—have sworn an oath to support and defend. If this PR stunt proved anything, it’s that the best thing Pete Hegseth can do to strengthen our military is resign in disgrace immediately.”
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At least one journalist appeared to be injured after one reporter was grabbed and another was shoved by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at a New York City immigration court Tuesday morning, video of the encounter showed.
In the video, a group of people enter an elevator, including a reporter from amNewYork who was carrying his camera. A masked man wearing a bullet proof vest with the word “police” grabs the reporter, as others shout, “Get the f*** off the elevator,” the video, obtained by Getty Images, shows.
Another woman shooting photos outside the elevator is then shoved to the ground by another masked agent and falls onto another man with a camera who was also knocked to the floor, the video shows.
According to another video of the incident cited by CNN, the woman was seen with her arms interlocked with a man, understood to be her husband, as he was being detained.
One masked agent is allegedly seen grabbing the woman's hair while someone else is heard saying, “Just grab her, grab her and pull her away.
Monica's the woman we noted in Friday's snapshot who was assaulted by ICE:
Want to see something disgusting? Steam this video at THE NEW YORK TIMES of an ICE agent slamming a woman to the ground. Andy Newman and Luis Ferré-Sadurnà report for the paper:
A federal agent shoved a woman and pushed her to the floor in front of what appeared to be her two young children on Thursday during a confrontation at an immigration courthouse in Manhattan.
A video shows a wrenching encounter in a hallway of 26 Federal Plaza in which the woman and a girl are desperately clinging to the woman’s husband, who is being detained. Agents pull the hair of the woman and the girl to get them away from the man.
After agents pry the family apart and lead the resisting man away, the woman yells, “You guys don’t care about anything!” in Spanish at an agent who is trying to get her to leave and telling her, “Adios, adios.” She puts a hand on his chest, and he shoves her. When she tries to grab onto him, he pushes her down.
This is not America, let's not pretend that it is. It's hell and it's brought you to be the tedious contributions of Convicted Felon Donald Chump and the corrupt Supreme Court.
These are thugs unleashed by Donald Chump who are not bound by laws -- per the Supreme Court -- and who terrorize people daily. And there is no real legal recourse presently, none at all. Federal courts try to do their job and follow the law -- including the Constitution -- and for that Chump attacks them publicly and the Supreme Court nullifies them.
That's why the mid-terms are so important.
That video was outrageous. And it got attention. Other video that has been outrages has not gotten the amplification it deserves and needs. Luis Ferré-Sadurnà (NEW YORK TIMES) reports:
A federal immigration officer was “relieved of his duties” and is under investigation after he shoved an Ecuadorean woman whose husband had been arrested and pushed her to the floor at an immigration courthouse in Manhattan, the Department of Homeland Security said on Friday.
The altercation took place on Thursday at 26 Federal Plaza, the epicenter of President Trump’s immigration crackdown in New York City, and was captured in videos that spread rapidly on social media and beyond. The footage set off an outcry from New York City officials who denounced the behavior of the officer, who has not been identified, and demanded that he be disciplined.
[. . .]
“The officer’s conduct in this video is unacceptable and beneath the men and women of ICE,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, the agency that oversees ICE. “Our ICE law enforcement are held to the highest professional standards and this officer is being relieved of current duties as we conduct a full investigation.”
Ms. McLaughlin declined to elaborate when asked if the officer had been suspended or fired, saying, “That’s being determined pending investigation.”
On Friday, Representative Dan Goldman and Brad Lander, the city comptroller, both Democrats, referred the ICE officer to Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan for felony prosecution. The referral is a recommendation for prosecution, but the Department of Justice has the discretion to decide whether to pursue a case.
And that's probably where it now starts and ends. Homeland Security says they're investigating and they don't do a damn thing and then try to pretend that there's no reason to provide an update. Of course, there is. The simplest one being public trust.
No one should ever be treated the way Monica Moreta-Galarza was treated.
But ICE and Homeland Security will pretend the matter was addressed when it never was.
It can't be addressed. To do so would probably open the US government up to a lawsuit on the part of the ICE agent beating up the woman. That man would then sue if he was held accountable. And he'd note what ICE agents have told me: That they're instructed to do whatever they want and told they will face no consequences.
So watch Homeland Security bury the whole thing while pretending that they're addressing it.
Reached for comment, a DHS official did not address the officer being placed back on duty but called the woman's husband a "criminal illegal alien."
"President Trump and Secretary Noem are not going to allow criminal illegal aliens to terrorize American citizens," the official said. "If you come to our country illegally and break our laws, we will arrest you and you will never return."
CBS News reached out to representatives for ICE and the White House for comment.
A man from El Salvador was stopped for allegedly driving a landscaping truck through federal parkland. A Honduran man was pulled over when the police said he ran a stop sign as his family left a local park. A Jordanian man was detained while working in a food truck on the National Mall during a crackdown on unlicensed vendors.
President Trump’s deployment of federal law enforcement officers in August across Washington — intended, officials said, to lower crime — transformed what was one of the largest sanctuary cities in the country into a test case for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as it expands its efforts in major urban centers.
The agency sharply increased its arrests in the city by working alongside the local police and other federal agencies to identify immigrants during stops for minor traffic violations, according to law enforcement officials, lawyers for detained migrants, internal immigration records and witness accounts.
ICE had made only 85 arrests in Washington from Jan. 20 through the end of July, according to data obtained by the Deportation Data Project. But from early August until mid-September, ICE made around 1,200 arrests, according to officials with knowledge of the data.
One key to the strategy: ICE’s close partnership with both the Metropolitan Police Department and the U.S. Park Police, according to a New York Times review of dozens of videos filmed by witnesses in Washington. At other times, the agency operated alone, with masked officers detaining people in sometimes aggressive encounters that drew angry protests from neighbors.
Last week, an immigrants rights organization sued the Department of Homeland Security, accusing the agency of targeting people for their ethnicity, making arrests without probable cause and sowing “terror in Latino and other communities across the District.”
n the six months since beloved immigrant rights activist Jeanette Vizguerra-Ramirez was detained outside a Target, her family, friends and fellow reformers have protested weekly outside the ICE detention center in Aurora.
“Every single Monday. Since March 17,” said Jennifer Piper, who has fought for human rights alongside Vizguerra for 22 years.
“I can’t overstate the harm to her, to her children and to our communities that the administration has targeted her in this way for standing up for human rights over so many years,” said Piper, with the nonprofit American Friends Service Committee. “It’s urgent that she be free so she can be safe, so she can be the mom she wants to be and so she can do her life’s work, which is to advocate for human rights.”
Supporters of Vizguerra, who once took refuge in a Denver church to avoid deportation and in 2017 was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world, gathered outside the detention center again this week. Along with praying, chanting and singing, the group learned from Vizguerra’s legal team that, after more than six months of fighting her detention and deportation in court, her attorneys are making a fresh attempt to win her release.
Now that Vizguerra has been held for longer than 180 days, her legal team can file a motion for leave that forces the federal government to justify her detention. The legal maneuver is more straightforward than the complex motions filed in the case so far, which have included arguing that Vizguerra’s right to free speech was violated because she was targeted for speaking out against the Trump administration.
For the first time since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, private employers in the United States laid off more workers than they hired in back-to-back months, according to payrolls processor ADP (Automatic Data Processing).
The unofficial data, which Wall Street investors are relying on since the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) job report is unlikely to come out this Friday due to the government shutdown, revealed that private employment decreased in the US by 32,000 jobs in September, staggering economists who had previously estimated gains of as many as 50,000 jobs.
ADP also revised its August 2025 report, which initially reported 54,000 private sector job gains to -3,000. This is the third month this year ADP has reported negative monthly job growth; in June 2025 ADP reported -33,000 private sector job losses, the first monthly decline since March 2023.
President
Donald Trump’s claims that the US economy has entered a “golden age”
were bluntly rebutted by the report, which noted the “trend was
unchanged; job creation continued to lose momentum across most sectors.”
Industries seeing declines in hiring included construction,
manufacturing, leisure and hospitality, trade, transportation and
utilities, as well as professional and business services. The few
sectors that saw any growth were mining, education and healthcare
services.
The ADP report is based on surveys and analysis
covering more than 26 million US workers. Unlike the ADP report which
only tracks private job growth, the BLS report tracks both government
and private business.
ADP’s figures are in line with other private sector analyses. On September 4, global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found US-based employers had announced nearly 86,000 jobs cuts in August, up 39 percent from the 62,075 job cuts announced in July. August job cuts were the highest recorded for the month since August 2020, when over 115,000 jobs were slashed.
The US economy is teetering on the brink of recession with workers in white- and blue-collar industries finding it increasingly impossible to find work. In their September report, Challenger, Gray & Christmas observed that so far this year, private companies in the US have announced “892,362 job cuts the highest year to date since 2020,” when companies laid off nearly 2 million workers. This year’s figures represent a 66 percent increase compared to the first 8 months of last year and 17 percent more job losses than in all of 2024 (761,358).
An Alabama construction worker and U.S. citizen who says he was detained twice by immigration agents within just a few weeks has filed a lawsuit in federal court demanding an end to Trump administration workplace raids targeting industries with large immigrant workforces.
The class-action lawsuit, filed Tuesday by concrete worker Leo Garcia Venegas with the public interest law firm Institute for Justice, demands an end to what the firm calls “unconstitutional and illegal immigration enforcement tactics.”
Venegas, who was born in the U.S., lives and works in Baldwin County, Alabama, a Gulf Coast area between the cities of Mobile and Pensacola, Florida, that has seen immense population growth in the last 15 years, and which offers plenty of construction work.
Attorneys for the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) have argued in court that federal agents working for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) violated the law when they detained a family of four this past weekend in front of the Crown Fountain at Millennium Park.
The arrest took place on Sunday when U.S. Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino, along with tens of masked, armed agents dressed in camouflage were seen patrolling the streets of downtown Chicago, in a show of force aimed at advancing President Trump's massive deportation agenda.
According to a Tuesday court filing by attorneys with the NIJC, agents arrested two parents and their two young children, ages three and eight, "without warrants or any flight risk determinations."
"The family simply wanted to enjoy the warm Sunday afternoon in Millennium Park at their daughter's insistence," the filing states. "Now, DHS has already transferred [one parent] to detention in Texas, and [the other parent] and children are detained in a room at O'Hare airport."
A video posted on Instagram by the account Arab Chicago, which was included as an exhibit in the court filing, shows the family of four marched out of Millennium Park, escorted by federal agents.
"Based on available video, the DHS officers appear to rely on the parents' young daughter to translate for them," the filing states. "With Mr. Bovino in charge of immigration enforcement operations in Chicago, Defendants are taking an equally aggressive, cavalier and unlawful approach to their enforcement here."
Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
Trump, Vought cause shutdown, use it as pretext to enact their extreme agenda & inflict pain on the American people
President Trump yesterday: “A lot of good can come down from shutdowns. We can get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want.”
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and Ranking Member of the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, issued the following statement on announcements made by White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought vowing to cancel billions of dollars in funding provided by Congress to lower people’s energy costs–including in Washington state.
“President Trump has spent the year hurting families, killing jobs, and raising people’s costs, and now he and Russ Vought are gleefully using the shutdown they have caused as a pretext to inflict even more pain.
“The American people deserve so much better than a president and an administration that treat their families and their livelihoods like pawns in some sort of sick political game.
“This administration has had plans in the works for months to cancel critical energy projects, and now, they are illegally taking action to kill jobs and raise people’s energy bills. This is a blatant attempt to punish the political opposition, but this won’t just hurt Democrats–it’ll hurt regular people just trying to get by, in red districts and blue districts alike. We’ve never had an administration work so hard to hurt the people they represent.
“The last thing that anyone is asking for right now is to pay more on their electric bill or their health care, but that’s what President Trump is ensuring happens.
“If Donald Trump and Russ Vought think these ugly intimidation tactics will work, they are sorely mistaken. I will be standing firm against this corrupt abuse of power—and every Republican should think carefully about what precedent they want to set by allowing this weaponization of taxpayer dollars.”
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Rubio: Tiny Desk Concert3 hours ago
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Jane Fonda's latest boss move7 hours ago
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‘Palestine Has Already Won.’ Watch Mehdi’s Powerful Award Acceptance Speech
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‘Palestine Has Already Won.’ Watch Mehdi’s Powerful Award Acceptance Speech
Zeteo’s editor-in-chief denounced mainstream media ‘complicity’ in the Gaza genocide, but also gave his Palestinian diaspora audience a message of hope and strength.
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“You don’t have to be Palestinian to support Palestine, you only need to be human.”
With those words, our very own Mehdi Hasan accepted the ‘Path of Truth’ award from Palestinian diaspora organization Know Thy Heritage (KTH) over the weekend for his “fearless journalism, bold commentary, and principled advocacy—exposing the realities of Palestinian life under occupation and inspiring global action for a just peace.”
KTH educates and empowers Palestinian youth in the diaspora, organizing regular trips to Palestine and supporting business and leadership programs. Veteran Palestinian politician and activist Hanan Ashrawi sits on the organization’s advisory board.
Mehdi, in his powerful speech to a packed ballroom in northern Virginia on Saturday evening, said he believed the people “most responsible for the catastrophe in Gaza are not the ones loudly and shamelessly supporting it but the ones who see it all, and stay silent. See it all, and then look away. See it all, and pretend it’s not happening.” He warned his colleagues in the mainstream media that their “silence” and “bothsides-ism” on Gaza amounts to “complicity” in the genocide.
Watch his address in full above, and do please consider becoming a paid subscriber or a donor to Zeteo today.
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