Wednesday, September 30, 2026. Senate Republicans embarrass themselves with their own stupidity, is the stock market going to tank under Chump, Ka$h Patel rigs the numbers, Markwayne Mullin has a loud explosion, Epstein's back in the news, and much more.
It was meant to be a dramatic confrontation, a public accusation of perjury against Jack Smith, the special counsel who investigated Donald J. Trump. Instead, Senator Eric Schmitt’s amateur sleuthing into basketball led him to the wrong game, league and state.
During a four-hour Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Mr. Schmitt, a Republican from Missouri, struck a conspiratorial tone and asked Mr. Smith if he had attended an Atlanta Hawks home game in February 2024.
Mr. Schmitt focused on the basketball game in the hopes that he could show Mr. Smith had perjured himself and was involved in a conspiracy with local Atlanta prosecutors to ensnare Mr. Trump. In a hearing where Republicans repeatedly accused Mr. Smith of lying, what Mr. Schmitt first presented as smoking-gun evidence against Mr. Smith turned out to be a misfire.
During his testimony, Mr. Smith appeared deeply confused by Mr. Schmitt’s question. “I definitely did not go to a Hawks game,” he said. “I’m sure of that.”
Mr. Schmitt seemed confident he had just caught Mr. Smith in a lie. It was part of a broader effort by Mr. Trump’s Republican allies to characterize Mr. Smith as politically partisan, a man with an ax to grind not just against a former president, but also the Republican establishment. Mr. Smith has already defended his work before Congress, and Republicans have claimed that his past testimony included perjury.
On Tuesday, Mr. Schmitt argued that Mr. Smith had lied again, this time about a basketball game. If the prosecutor was in Atlanta, Mr. Schmitt suggested, he might have met with the local district attorney, Fani Willis, who also pursued a criminal case against Mr. Trump.
Mr. Schmitt’s Republican colleague from Louisiana, John Kennedy, stood next to him helping hold up a poster board showing text messages among members of Mr. Smith’s special counsel team from Feb. 3, 2024, discussing seats at a basketball game.
“I don’t think you know we have this stuff, so I’ll give you a second to process it so you don’t perjure yourself,” Mr. Schmitt said, even as the poster board was swiftly taken down, too quickly for most in the room to read it.
When the former special counsel insisted he had not gone to see the Atlanta Hawks play in that time period, Mr. Schmitt declared, “I think you’ve already perjured yourself,” and called Mr. Smith a “dirtbag.”
The accusation appeared to unravel almost immediately.
Invited to respond by Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, Mr. Smith said he had, in fact, attended a basketball game on that day, but it was to see the Iowa Hawkeyes at the University of Maryland. That night, Caitlin Clark, the star point guard who now plays in the W.N.B.A., scored 38 points and had 12 assists.
Ms. Klobuchar suggested that Mr. Schmitt’s accusation was rooted in the senator’s confusion between the “Hawks” of Atlanta and the “Hawkeyes” of Iowa.
The dirt bags were the Republicans on the Committee who were trying hard to attack the investigations of Convicted Felon Chump.
It was nonsense and meant to get MAGA charged up. But it didn't put food on the table and it didn't bring down gas prices or food prices. Yet again, the GOP in Congress wasted a day playing with themselves instead of addressing the concerns of the American people.
Will Ebiefung (THE MOTLEY FOOL) ponders whether or not Chump will crash the stock market noting, "Despite his frequent attempts to talk down inflation, Trump's actual policies have increased it. Aggressive tariffs raise the cost of imported finished goods and components, while the war in Iran has triggered bottlenecks in the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb, which are key to the global oil and gas trade. The result is that Brent crude is up 70% since the start of the year, and the Federal Reserve has been forced to raise its benchmark interest rate to 3.75% to 4.00% to try to keep prices under control." This comes as Jing Pan (MONEYWISE) speaks with economist Peter Schiff who has concerns about the stock market:
But Schiff argues the rally is being built on shaky ground. “In the long run, the fundamentals are going to ultimately bring the market back down,” he said.
And he isn’t warning about a garden-variety correction.
“Even if everything was good, the U.S. market is expensive,” Schiff said. “But it’s not — it’s a ticking time bomb.”
In his view, investors are looking past too many warning signs. “The markets, I think, are really looking past a lot of problems and pricing stocks based on hope and not reality,” he said.
The last time Americans felt this bad about the economy and their own finances, Donald Trump was best known as the host of The Apprentice.
The index of Consumer Confidence fell for a third month to its lowest since 2014 in September, the Conference Board, an economics think tank, said Tuesday.
Back in 2014, the index, which is based on a survey of U.S. adults about financial topics, was on an upward trajectory as the economy healed from the Great Recession.
These days, it’s moving in the opposite direction amid high fuel prices due to the Iran war and overall pessimism about the job market. And for the first time since 2022, more people in the survey said their own family’s financial situation was “bad” than “good.” The confidence index reading of 81.9 was lower than its August level of 88.6 and below the 89 that forecasters had expected, according to a survey of economists by Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday, for a second time, removed obstacles to the Trump administration deporting certain immigrants to “third countries” to which they have no previous connection.
The justices, with the court’s three liberals dissenting, granted an emergency request filed by the government seeking to block an appeals court ruling that said the current process is unlawful because the affected people are not given a proper chance to raise concerns about safety risks in violation of federal immigration law.
In the brief unsigned order, the court also said it would hear oral arguments in December and issue a definitive ruling on the legal questions raised in the litigation.
And this apparently includes countries that will knowingly be hostile to those being sent.
Chump's not worried about LGBTQ+ people at all. You can be an idiot like Caitlyn Jenner and be in it for your own good but most LGBTQ+ people are aware that Chump is a danger to them. John Fritze (CNN) reports:
President Donald Trump’s administration urged the Supreme Court on Monday to allow federal prison officials to deny certain types of medical care for transgender inmates, such as surgeries – putting another culture war issue on the high court’s burgeoning fast-track docket.
The Bureau of Prisons policy that began early in Trump’s second term – and that was modified after an early round of court battles – permits psychotherapy and psychiatry services for inmates with gender dysphoria, but not hormone therapies, surgeries or “social accommodations.”
The appeal reached the 6-3 conservative Supreme Court at a time when LGBTQ Americans have faced a series of legal setbacks, including back-to-back decisions in recent years that have allowed states to ban transgender care for minors and permitted states to prohibit transgender athletes from playing on girls’ sports teams in school.
Ariana Baio (GUARDIAN) notes Chump issued an "executive order from January 2025 that directed the Bureau of Prisons to 'ensure that no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex'. The order prohibited trans inmates from receiving certain gender transition medical care and ordered trans women inmates to be housed in men’s facilities. Trans inmates sued the administration over the policy and, so far, two lower courts have blocked officials from implementing the order as the larger lawsuit over the executive order continues." Joe Fisher (UPI) adds:
Attorneys representing the inmates said in a statement on Monday that they will continue to fight against the Trump administration policy.
"The lower courts have consistently found the administration's policy is a direct threat to the well-being of transgender people in federal custody and an open violation of their fundamental rights," the statement reads. "The withholding of medically necessary health care, including gender-affirming health care, from people in prison violates their Constitutional right to serve their sentence free of cruel and unusual punishment. We will continue to defend the rights of our clients and all incarcerated people."
The Kennedy Center? Created as a memorial to our slain president John F. Kennedy. And yet Chump continues to demand his name be put on the center. As Chump tries to destroy it, some are fighting to preserve it, some are working to destroy it. Add Utah's Mike Lee to the list of cry babies trying to destroy it. Joseph Gedeon (GUARDIAN) reports:
A Republican senator has blocked a bipartisan bill that would have prevented Donald Trump from demolishing the Kennedy Center without the approval of Congress.
Mike Lee, of Utah, objected on Monday night when the Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley asked the Senate to pass the Protecting Presidential Memorials Act by unanimous consent. The bill, co-written with the Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski, would have banned the demolition of any presidential memorial designated by Congress, including the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, unless lawmakers explicitly approved it.
[. . .]
Lee has been closely aligned with Trump since 2020, and supported his efforts to overturn that year’s election result. More recently, he has repeatedly brought the Trump-backed Save act, which would impose voter ID and citizenship-proof requirements, to the Senate floor, and in April urged Trump to force lawmakers back to Washington to end a partial shutdown and pass it.
President Donald Trump’s administration told a federal appeals court that barring him from adding his name to the Kennedy Center would be an "existential" threat to the building because only he has the expertise and fundraising potential to save the venue.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ordered the removal of Trump’s name from the façade in May because the congressionally-approved statute that created the memorial designated it the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in recognition of the slain president.
But Trump has argued the building will fall into disrepair and could eventually be demolished unless he oversees the renovation and raises hundreds of millions of dollars to endow it. Congress has approved $257 million for the project.
The building will be just fine without Chump's name on it. And certainly not having his name on it doesn't mean Chump can't try to fundraise. As for his expertise? Putting plastic buckets in the hallways of his 'resorts' to catch rain water did not demonstrate expertise.
Former DHS secretary, known as "ICE Barbie," Kristi Noem officially filed for divorce from her husband, Bryon Noem, months after he admitted to his "bimbofication" fetish.
Rumors that Noem was preparing to divorce her husband, Bryon, began in July, but recent reports show she has moved forward with the process. South Dakota court records accessed by Newsweek show, she has filed the paperwork for divorce.
In March, during a tense House hearing during which lawmakers questioned her ability to lead the department and its aggressive immigration enforcement actions, Kristi was asked outright about a long-rumored affair between her and Trump ally Corey Lewandowski, whom she had made an unpaid adviser at DHS.
Both she and Lewandowski, who is also married with children, have denied reports of an extramarital romantic relationship.
But Kristi is in the news for much more serious topics as well. Alia Shoaib (NEWSWEEK) reports, "A federal appeals court is set to consider on Tuesday whether a criminal contempt inquiry into the Trump administration can proceed over the deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador. Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is at the center of the dispute, after the government identified her as the official responsible for the decision to allow Venezuelan detainees to be transferred to El Salvador’s CECOT prison in March 2025, despite a judge’s order blocking their removal."
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin's “temperament” came under scrutiny Monday after The Oklahoman published audio of his “shouting match” with a former mayor — an exchange one Democratic operative described as a “meltdown.”
“The Oklahoman obtained audio of meltdown Markwayne,” wrote Danny Dabbs, a Democratic operative with American Bridge 21st Century PAC.
Speaking at an Edmond Chamber of Commerce meeting Monday, Mullin was asked by former Edmond Mayor Randel Shadid how he reconciled his Christian faith with mass deportations and the alleged physical abuse of migrants by agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), according to The Oklahoman.
Mullin responded by shouting.
“You're not going to throw out Christian scripture to me and sit there and say that Jesus didn't say we should obey the nation's laws,” Mullin shouted.
A Minneapolis special education assistant has filed a federal claim against the U.S. government, alleging that Border Patrol agents assaulted and wrongfully detained him outside his school before the Trump administration publicly accused him of attacking federal officers in a criminal case that was later dismissed.
Quentin Williams, who works at Roosevelt High School, alleges that federal agents shoved him, pulled his hair, tackled him to the ground and pressed on his neck and back during an immigration enforcement operation outside the Minneapolis school on January 7, 2026. Williams says he did not threaten, attack or resist the officers.
The allegations are detailed in a Federal Tort Claims Act claim, a filing used to seek compensation from the federal government. The document represents Williams’ account of what happened and does not constitute a court finding that his allegations are true.
“My life completely changed when federal agents invaded my school community, attacked and falsely arrested me,” Williams told Newsweek. “Every day, I look forward to going to school to be with my kids at Roosevelt. Some days are harder than others, but I am trying my hardest to heal.”
Federal prosecutors have charged the Austin man an ICE agent shot earlier this month with a single count of resisting and assaulting a federal officer, according to court documents.
Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, a Venezuelan national, was shot by an ICE officer in Austin on Sept. 20. He was taken to Dell Seton Medical Center, where he was released and taken into ICE custody three hours later with the bullet remaining in his back. He has since remained at a detention center in Pearsall.
They shoot someone and then they claim that they were assaulted. That has been the playbook and it's not worked in court. The country has turned against the gestapos. Mateo Moreno (LATIN TIMES) reports:
Amnesty International is calling on the United States to shut down Immigration and Customs Enforcement, arguing that abuses documented during city-wide enforcement surges point to a flawed institution rather than a handful of rogue officers. The group laid out its case in "We Had Whistles, They Had Guns," a 168-page report released on Thursday, Sept. 24.
Amy Fischer, who leads Amnesty's refugee and migrant rights work, said the organization has never before pressed for any country's government agency to be dissolved, MPR News reported. She described the violence and discrimination in the findings as built into how ICE operates, not flaws that better training or revised policies could repair.
Markwayne's not the only embarrassment in this administration. There's also Ka$h Patel and Pete Hegseth dealing with hacking. Sean Lyngaas and Evan Perez (CNN) report:
A week after a cybercriminal group claimed to steal sensitive personal data on thousands of current and former FBI employees, the bureau is still assessing the extent of the damage while facing internal criticism about the agency’s handling of the incident.
It’s one of the most serious breaches of agency data in years, but some FBI employees have felt left in the dark about whether they’re affected and underwhelmed by the security resources being offered to victims, according to current and former officials.
“Management is lost,” one ex-FBI agent in touch with their former colleagues told CNN. “They’re not providing any clear advice to agents.”
The issue began a week ago, when hackers broke into an online portal hosting information on FBI job applicants. Social Security numbers, emergency contact information and personal addresses were in the stolen data.
This is such an embarrassment for Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Ka$h Patel. And it comes as Ka$h's inability to be a leader and/or get along with others is being noted. Steve Benen (MS NOW) notes:
Under normal circumstances, the FBI has a director and a deputy director, with the latter helping to oversee day-to-day operations at the bureau. The Trump administration, however, isn’t normal at all, which helps explain why, last summer, the FBI decided it needed two deputy directors: Dan Bongino, a right-wing provocateur and podcast personality, and Andrew Bailey, who had served as state attorney general in Missouri. Neither had any experience at the FBI.
FBI Co-Deputy Director and former Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is leaving his post to spend more time with his family.
According to two people familiar with his departure, Bailey … was frustrated at not being named FBI director, a proposal once floated to him after Kash Patel had made numerous missteps and generated headlines that were unfavorable to the administration.
A related New York Times report added, “Mr. Patel and Mr. Bailey did not get along, and often went long stretches without speaking to each other, according to multiple people familiar with their interactions who spoke on the condition of anonymity.”
Kash Patel’s FBI has been fudging the numbers to boost the agency’s success rate on apprehending fugitives from its Top 10 Most Wanted List.
Patel announced the addition of a new name to the agency’s Top 10 Most Wanted List on Tuesday, and bragged about the agency’s rate of successful captures under his leadership.
“This FBI has had historic success manhunting Ten Most Wanted fugitives—since the start of the Trump administration, we’ve captured TEN of the Top Ten Most Wanted, 2.5 times the number of TMW fugitives captured during the previous four years combined,” Patel wrote on X.
However, Patel’s FBI has imposed new policies that manipulate that data, by adding the names of fugitives who are expected to be imminently captured, according to MS NOW.
Read on to find out how Patel is claiming "FBI arrests" for Homeland Security arrests and local and state police arrests and any arrest at all. Remember that as we note Mike Corder's report for THE INDEPENDENT:
Dutch police have arrested a suspected member of the ShinyHunters hacker group and accused the man of trying to arrange two murders.
[. . .]
ShinyHunters claimed last week to have breached the FBI’s jobs website. The hacker group said it had stolen “very sensitive data” belonging to thousands of agents and applicants and that it had compromised the bureau’s jobs website.
FBI Director Kash Patel took to X to highlight the arrest in the Netherlands.
“This morning @FBI and our partners the Dutch National Police are announcing the arrest of one of the alleged leaders of ShinyHunters - a global cybercrime and threat actor group linked to cyberattacks in the United States, the Netherlands, and around the world,” he said.
“In coordination with FBI investigators the Dutch High-Tech Crime Unit arrested the suspect under Dutch law,” he added. "As we speak FBI teams are actively working with partners to obtain and execute more leads in the ongoing investigation based on this arrest.”
The Dutch police statement announcing the arrest did not mention the FBI hack or coordination with American law enforcement.
It didn't? Looks like Ka$h is again grabbing credit he didn't earn.
Jeffrey Epstein? Dead since 2019. But prior to that, he was Chump's roll dog for decades. Decades. Plural. Chump hung with the pedophile and sex trafficker. Ryan Mancini (THE HILL) reports:
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said Monday the government's files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein should be one of the "highest priorities" for Democrats if they retake control of Congress after the November midterm elections.
"This is not about politics," Khanna told CNN's Kasie Hunt on "The Arena." "This is about survivors who have been denied justice for decades. And this is about a group of wealthy and powerful men who either raped or trafficked or abused young girls and have not paid the price, have not had any consequence."
Khanna said he and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), with whom he authored and led the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act last November before President Trump signed it into law, "have an Epstein 2.0 bill" that they expect will get passed.
"We already have 218 signatures, and we need to empower the attorney generals to be able to prosecute," the California Democrat told Hunt. "And we need to demand the Department of Justice begin prosecutions."
Speaking with Jennifer Welch of “I’ve Had It” podcast, Khanna stressed the importance of getting the rest of the files to the public.
“What do you have to say about Todd Blanche running cover for this,” Welch asked Khanna, “and the fact that the sitting President of the United States has claims of a 14-year-old girl against him?”
“We still don’t have those documents,” Khanna says. “We’ve had millions of files released, but those documents need to be released under the Epstein Transparency Act Massie and I passed.”
The bigger bombshell here is that Blanche apparently isn’t running cover for Tr*mp anymore. Over the weekend, Blanche quietly handed over those infamous handwritten FBI notes at the center of journalist Katie Phang’s lawsuit against the DOJ. These are the notes detailing the 14-year-old victim’s abuse at the hands of the president. The best part? Blanche allegedly did not tell Tr*mp about this piece of cooperation.
Now, these notes are in the hands of Judge Sullivan, who will “review both redacted and unredacted versions and determine whether the Trump regime’s proposed redactions are justified before the records are released publicly.”
We don’t know what the outcome will be, but we can venture a guess. From the very start, citizens and congresspeople have called BS on the heavily-redacted form in which the files came to us. These redactions have been proven by Phang’s suit to be not in the interest of protecting victims, but in the interest of keeping the names of powerful men protected.
That era may just have come to an end, and it’s a heartening sign for a country on the verge of one of the most meaningful elections before the next regime change. For queer people, victims of sexual abuse, and other marginalized people, the Epstein files have come to represent something bigger than a cover-up. They’re a blatant reminder of how easy it is for abuse and oppression to thrive unchecked in politics, business, and finance without a shred of justice for the women and girls subjected to this all too common form of violence.
Jeffrey Epstein refused to release his photos of President Donald Trump with young women at his home because he feared for his own life, an author claims.
Trump biographer Michael Wolff made the claim on Tuesday's episode of "Inside Trump's Head," where he and co-host Joanna Coles went back over a column Wolff recently wrote on Substack about Epstein's fears.
Coles read aloud a passage in which Wolff recounted pressing Epstein to go public about his "great friend."
Wolff wrote, "I tried to encourage and then to push Epstein to talk publicly about Trump, including to release photographs he had of Trump with the young women in constant attendance at Epstein's house."
Epstein's answer was blunt.
"I may be a pedophile, but I don't have a death wish," Epstein said, according to the column, which described him as "cavalier about his situation and yet seemingly also clear-eyed."
Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray, Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, delivered the following remarks at the Senate Democratic leadership press conference, calling out Republican inaction to prevent President Trump’s illegal attempt to cut funding for lifesaving health research, education programs, and more through a “pocket rescission.”
Senator Murray’s remarks, as delivered, are below:
“If Republicans are ready to grow a spine and help us rein in Trump on pocket rescissions—great, it’s way past time. I am not holding my breath.
“Even though I’ve heard what some Republicans said recently about opposing Trump’s move to steal taxpayer dollars, I’ve also seen what they did about this threat over the past two years, which is nothing.
“When Russ Vought made it plain-as-day he would try illegal pocket recissions, every Senate Republican voted to confirm him. When his nominee for deputy director said pocket rescissions were still on the table—many months after Trump issued one—every Senate Republican voted to confirm him.
“And when Democrats fought for language time and again to stop this exact thing—including in the recent CR negotiations, weeks ago—Republicans said no.
“First, Republicans voted to confirm the arsonist—a man openly hostile to Congress and our power of the purse. Then, they refused to take away his matches. And now, they are surprised the house is burning? You know what? You don’t get to be surprised when the arsonist you confirmed to run America’s budget starts fires.
“Especially when we keep seeing this kind of push from Trump to give him more power and rip up our bipartisan agreements with partisan rescissions. It seems like every time Trump says ‘stoop,’ the only response most Republicans can muster is: ‘How low?’
“Trump uses tariffs to slap one of the largest tax increases on Americans ever—and Republicans do nothing. Trump calls for the largest health care cuts in our history—and Republicans move heaven and earth to get it done. Trump nominates an anti-vaxxer to lead the health department—and even Republican lawmakers who are doctors are afraid to step out of line to stop him.Trump starts a war with Iran—something he literally campaigned against—and Republicans champion his one-and-a-half trillion-dollar war budget.
“Maybe Republicans are confused—but when we talk about checks and balances, it is not about blank checks for Trump’s wars, it is not about balancing his tax cuts for billionaires with health care cuts on families. It is about stopping a president who is out-of-control—and sorely out-of-touch with the American people.
“And I really can’t drive that part home enough, because Trump proves just how out-of-touch he is every time he opens his mouth.
“Trump says groceries are ‘old fashioned,’ and affordability is a ‘scam.’ Trump says his favorite word is ‘tariffs,’ and that he loves inflation. Trump says families can spend less on dolls, and more on gas. Trump says we can’t afford child care, but wars can be fought forever. He says he doesn’t think about Americans’ financial situation at all.
“Well, yeah. No kidding. Now if you are Trump’s family—or one of his billionaire buddies who are cashing in on the corruption—Trump’s economy is probably working great.
“But working families are hurting today, and they are sick of waiting for Republicans to take their heads out of the sand and notice.
“So let me ask, how does Trump stealing taxpayer dollars for life-saving health care, research, or housing, help make life more affordable? It does not.”
