Monday, November 10, 2025
Sunday, November 09, 2025
Donald Chump's dementia spreads to Schumer and a few other Senate Democrats
Fat and crazy Donald Chump's had another embarrassing moment. Will Neal (DAILY BEAST) notes:
President Donald Trump, 79, enthusiastically shared a screenshot on Sunday from a website that has clearly labeled its content as complete and utter fiction. “WOW!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, accompanied by a screenshot of a post that read: “DOGE halts yearly payment of $2.5 million to Barack Obama for “royalties linked to Obamacare.’ Obama has collected this payment since 2010, for a total of $40 million in taxpayer dollars’.” This is indeed completely false—something the current president did not disclose when he posted it. The source of the story, the Dunning-Kruger Times, has a pretty clear explanation on its site. “Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real,” a disclaimer from the outlet reads. “If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined. Any similarities between this site’s pure fantasy and actual people, places, and events are purely coincidental and all images should be considered altered and satirical.”
Big fatty combing the internet to find something to rage over, anything, and immediately believing it. He's they typical over-75 y.o. FOX "NEWS" viewer. All the more reason that the idiot shouldn't be president. And he's fat, he's morbidly obese, his efforts at creating rage are just going to march him off to a massive stroke all the faster. Chump wasn't the only one spreading lies. Peter Wade (ROLLING STONE) observes, "Meanwhile, Trump administration officials took to the Sunday news shows to spread the message of good economic cheer. But actual economic indicators, such as the 3 percent inflation the U.S. saw in September, point to rising prices, although it wasn't as bad as the 3.1 percent economists had predicted. When Trump first announced his tariffs in April, inflation was at 2.3 percent. In September alone, consumer prices rose .3 percent, and prices increased for four of the six major grocery store food groups. We won't know the October numbers until Nov. 13."
In other news, Catie Edmondson and Michael Gold (NEW YORK TIMES) report:
The Senate on Sunday night took the first step toward ending the longest shutdown in U.S. history, after a group of Democrats broke their party’s blockade and voted with Republicans to advance legislation to reopen the government.
The 60-to-40 vote paved the way for the spending agreement to begin making its way through Congress, where it would still need to be debated and passed by the Senate, win approval in the House and be signed by President Trump to bring the shutdown to a close.
Eight senators in the Democratic caucus voted to advance the measure, which would fund most federal agencies through January. That indicated there were enough votes to end weeks of gridlock that has shuttered the government for 40 days, leaving hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed, millions of Americans at risk of losing food assistance and millions more facing air travel disruptions.
But the deal prompted a quick and fierce backlash among Democrats, many of whom were livid that their colleagues had backed down from the party’s central demand in the shutdown fight: the extension of health insurance subsidies that are slated to expire at the end of the year, sending premiums soaring for millions of Americans.
Saturday, at THE AMERICAN PROSPECT, Robert Kuttner explained what was going on:
Most commentators, including me, concluded that the Tuesday election victory saved Democrats from capitulating to Republican demands to pass a simple continuing resolution to reopen the government, in exchange for vague assurances of a vote on Affordable Care Act subsidies that amount to nothing. But my reporting finds that at the Thursday meeting of the Senate Democratic caucus, two days after the election, Democrats very nearly capitulated once again.
Here’s what occurred. It has been widely assumed that the group of eight mostly centrist Senate Democrats, who have been looking to broker a hollow deal on Republican terms, were freelancing. In fact, they were acting with the express approval of Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and were reporting to him daily.
At Thursday’s meeting, they told their caucus colleagues that they now had ten votes to reopen the government in exchange for no real Republican concessions. At that, much of the rest of the caucus went ballistic, and some of the supposed ten said that, in fact, they were not willing to vote for any such deal.
The leaders of the proposed Democratic cave-in, Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, both of New Hampshire, and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, then backed down. Only after that did Schumer go public with his proposal to reopen the government in exchange for a one-year extension of the ACA subsidies, along with a bipartisan commission to figure out a long-term solution.
After 40 days of the government shutdown, a small — but large enough — group of Democrats has caved. For more than a month, the party incessantly demanded Republicans get on board with its effort to protect expiring Obamacare subsidies, preventing significant premium hikes for millions of Americans. But on Sunday, several Senate Democrats broke ranks with their caucus, setting in motion an end to the shutdown without a promise of extending said tax credits.
Sens. Angus King (I-ME), John Fetterman (D-PA), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) voted in favor of the continuing resolution (CR) following the bipartisan deal.
[. . .]
The House Democratic leader almost immediately expressed his frustration with the deal after it became public, saying he will not be supporting the bill the Senate is expected to pass in the coming days.
“House Democrats have consistently maintained that bipartisan legislation that funds the government must also decisively address the Republican health care crisis,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said in a Sunday statement. “It now appears that Senate Republicans will send the House of Representatives a spending bill that fails to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits … We will fight the GOP bill in the House of Representatives.”
Tomorrow's snapshot will address why Chuck Schumer needs to be relieved of leadership immediately. For those who missed it, I refused to call for that earlier this year. When the shutdown started, it made it into the snapshot that Schumer needed to go. I dictate the snapshot and do so quickly often with a lot of asides. I said something to the effect of, as an aside, that when the shutdown was over, I'd explain why Schumer needed to go. The aside made it into the snapshot and a few days later, I explained one reason: Schumer was doing nothing to inform the public. That was only one reason.
I'd go into it tonight but I'm not Donald Chump. I'm not wanting to go into a rage. I just want to get some sleep, to be honest. And I'm not going to get it tonight if I rage. As Anne Sexton observed, "It is a small thing/ To rage in our own bowl" ("For John, Who Begs Me Not To Enquire Further"). Or maybe I should brown shoe it?
We'll figure it out tomorrow.
For the many bothered by Chump's destruction of the White House, Minho Kim (NEW YORK TIMES) reports:
Michelle Obama criticized President Trump for destroying the East Wing of the White House to make room for a $300 million ballroom, calling the project a denigration of a space that traditionally has been the first lady’s domain.
“When we talk about the East Wing, it is the heart of the work” of a first lady, Mrs. Obama said during a live taping of her podcast in Brooklyn last week, according to Vanity Fair. “And to denigrate it, to tear it down, to pretend like it doesn’t matter — it’s a reflection of how you think of that role.”
The East Wing of the White House came crumbling down last month for Mr. Trump’s 90,000-square-foot ballroom, a project that will transform one of the most recognizable buildings in the world and could nearly double its size.
Mrs. Obama said that she had told President Barack Obama’s staff at the West Wing that she and members of her staff brought him “five extra approval points” for his job approval rating by presenting a balanced image of the first family, according to Vanity Fair.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
Murray and all Senate Democrats: “We are seriously alarmed by this administration’s obvious attempts to interfere with the science and politicize the drug review process in order to restrict abortion access.”
Murray has led Senate Democrats in fighting back against Republican attacks on mifepristone—leading amicus briefs, holding events, and repeatedly pressing FDA Commissioner Makary on mifepristone access
NEW FROM GUTTMACHER: The War on Mifepristone: How Junk Science and False Narratives Threaten US Abortion Access
***LETTER HERE***
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a senior member and former chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, led the entire Senate Democratic caucus in a letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kennedy and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Makary expressing alarm over the Trump administration’s plans to conduct “its own review of the evidence” on the safety and effectiveness of mifepristone.
Mifepristone was approved by the FDA in 2000 and is used in the overwhelming majority of abortions in the United States. Access to medication abortion is more critical than ever in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s disastrous Dobbs decision that overturned the Constitutional right to abortion and allowed dozens of states to enact extreme abortion bans that threaten women’s health and lives. According to data from Guttmacher, medication abortion accounted for nearly two-thirds of abortions in the U.S. in 2023, the first year after the Dobbs decision.
“Decades of evidence and hundreds of studies prove the safety and efficacy of mifepristone, which is not only the most common method of abortion in the U.S., but is also frequently prescribed to women to help manage early pregnancy loss or miscarriage. We are alarmed by the Department’s obvious attempts to politicize the review, regulation, and approval of mifepristone at the FDA, and we write to request more information,” Murray and the entire Senate Democratic caucus wrote in their letter to HHS and FDA.
The letter lays into a recent junk science “report” put out by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), an avowedly anti-abortion think tank, that appears to be the basis for the Trump administration’s announced review of mifepristone. The EPPC report parrots anti-abortion disinformation, was not peer-reviewed or published in any medical journal, and has been widely criticized by reputable health organizations since its release. “By elevating the sham EPPC report as rationale for restricting access to mifepristone, HHS is blatantly undermining well-established science and weaponizing disinformation to fit the Trump administration’s clear agenda to cut off abortion access in any way possible,” the senators wrote. “FDA relying on a partisan, sham report as part of the evidence review for any drug is deeply concerning—and in this case, it’s clear that the Trump administration is downright eager to do away with established science if it helps further their extreme anti-abortion agenda.”
Mifepristone is already subject to burdensome Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) requirements that must be followed for prescribing and dispensing mifepristone—in fact, FDA already restricts mifepristone more heavily than 99.5% of the over 20,000 prescription drugs it regulates. On October 30th, a federal court ruled that the FDA’s explanation for its current restrictions on mifepristone is unreasoned, unsupported, and illogical. In their letter, the senators ask how the administration plans to comply with this ruling and ensure any review of mifepristone is consistent with the court order. “That court order reinforces that, in conducting this new review, FDA may not cherry-pick junk science serving an anti-abortion agenda, but must instead look at the full body of evidence both confirming mifepristone’s safety and underscoring the harms of the FDA’s onerous restrictions,” the senators wrote.
“The bottom line is that access to mifepristone allows patients to receive time-sensitive, essential health care, including abortion care and miscarriage management,” the senators continued. “If HHS insists on rejecting the science that clearly proves mifepristone is safe and effective, and instead decides to impose additional restrictions on its use, this will force countless women to carry pregnancies to term against their will—regardless of the consequences for their health or lives.”
Murray and Senate Democrats concluded by demanding answers to a number of detailed questions, including what exactly prompted the administration to initiate the review, what process will be used to conduct it, whether there is any unreported data on adverse events it is considering, and how FDA will ensure compliance with the court order in Purcell v. Kennedy. “The American people need to be able to trust that any reviews, regulations, and approvals of medication by HHS and FDA are based on science and evidence—not on partisan attempts to attack abortion access,” the senators concluded. “It is critical that scientific experts and evidence are central to any FDA review or REMS initiative. Mifepristone has long been shown to be safe and effective, and there is no new evidence to justify burdensome restrictions that block women from getting the health care they need.”
Senator Murray leads the Democratic caucus on reproductive health care issues, and she has led the fight in Congress to protect and expand access to mifepristone. Senator Murray led the Congressional response to FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a lawsuit brought by Republican anti-abortion extremists trying to rip away access to mifepristone—Murray led multiple amicus briefs, organized her colleagues, and raised the alarm at every turn. In June 2024, the Supreme Court dismissed the case on standing, but Murray made clear that “the nationwide threat to medication abortion has not gone away—far from it. If Donald Trump and his anti-abortion allies return to power, they will do everything they can to rip away access to mifepristone and ban abortion nationwide.” Senator Murray has grilled Trump’s FDA Commissioner, Marty Makary, on access to mifepristone at every opportunity she’s had—including at a HELP Committee hearing on his nomination in March, and an Appropriations Agriculture-FDA subcommittee hearing in May. In 2023, Senator Murray pressed national pharmacies including Costco to ensure access to mifepristone, and in August, when Costco announced it would no longer sell mifepristone at its stores, Murray spoke out to demand they reverse course.
Throughout her career, Murray has beat back countless Republican attacks on reproductive care and other family planning services—and she is widely credited with successfully pushing the Bush administration’s FDA to follow the science and make Plan B available over the counter.
The full letter is available HERE and below:
Dear Secretary Kennedy and Commissioner Makary,
We write today with serious concerns about the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS or the Department) announcement that it will conduct, through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), “its own review of the evidence” on the safety and effectiveness of mifepristone, which has been approved by the FDA since 2000 for the medical termination of pregnancy. Decades of evidence and hundreds of studies prove the safety and efficacy of mifepristone, which is not only the most common method of abortion in the U.S., but is also frequently prescribed to women to help manage early pregnancy loss or miscarriage. We are alarmed by the Department’s obvious attempts to politicize the review, regulation, and approval of mifepristone at the FDA, and we write to request more information on the details of the review of mifepristone. We are especially troubled by this administration’s clear intent to tee up further restrictions on medication abortion, in light of a recent federal court order holding that the agency has failed to justify its current extreme restrictions on mifepristone and must consider lifting them.
In an April 28, 2025 letter, Senator Hawley called on the FDA to revisit its existing restrictions on mifepristone, alleging the “research showing the safety risks” of medication abortion are “far greater than the FDA currently acknowledges.” The same day, the avowedly anti-abortion think tank Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) published a junk science “report” that parrots anti-abortion disinformation, was not peer-reviewed or published in any medical journal, and has been widely criticized by reputable health organizations. Based on apparently nothing but the nakedly partisan and easily debunked EPPC report, Commissioner Makary committed to conducting a new review of mifepristone in a June 2, 2025 letter. Secretary Kennedy and Commissioner Makary similarly sent a September 19, 2025 letter to Republican attorneys general, highlighting the EPPC report as alleged evidence of the “potential dangers that may attend offering mifepristone without sufficient medical support or supervision.” By elevating the sham EPPC report as rationale for restricting access to mifepristone, HHS is blatantly undermining well-established science and weaponizing disinformation to fit the Trump administration’s clear agenda to cut off abortion access in any way possible.
Mifepristone has been proven to be safe and effective in hundreds of studies over more than two decades, and this has been backed up by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)—which represents more than 90% of the nation’s OBGYNs, the American Medical Association (AMA), the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, and the Society of Family Planning. While the EPPC report makes unsubstantiated claims about the rate of adverse events following medication abortion, the safety label for mifepristone clearly states that “serious adverse reactions were reported in <0.5% of women” in accordance with the data from 10 clinical trials of more than 30,000 women in settings in the U.S. and abroad. And, the FDA’s own website states that “the FDA’s periodic reviews of the postmarketing data for Mifeprex and its approved generic have not identified any new safety concerns with the use of mifepristone for medical termination of pregnancy through 70 days.”
There are numerous serious methodological issues with the EPPC report, whose analyses cannot be verified or replicated due to EPPC’s failure to transparently share its data sources. As the Society of Family Planning stated in a May letter to Commissioner Makary, “this paper is not a methodologically rigorous, evidence-based resource, and does not warrant consideration, particularly in scientific spaces.” The FDA should be using gold-standard science and evidence when making decisions about medication access for the American people. Typically, the FDA relies on its Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) or other postmarketing surveillance data to consider the safety risk of a particular drug, not unverified claims from a debunked report. FDA relying on a partisan, sham report as part of the evidence review for any drug is deeply concerning—and in this case, it’s clear that the Trump administration is downright eager to do away with established science if it helps further their extreme anti-abortion agenda.
It is also important to note that mifepristone is already subject to burdensome Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) requirements that must be followed for prescribing and dispensing mifepristone. The REMS already restricts the number of providers who can prescribe or dispense the drug, and the FDA already restricts mifepristone more heavily than 99.5% of the over 20,000 prescription drugs it regulates, making it more difficult for women to receive the timely access to care they need. On January 3, 2023, the FDA approved a modification to the mifepristone REMS, which included permanent removal of the requirement that the drug be dispensed in-person, and the addition of a new pharmacy certification process to allow qualified retail pharmacies to dispense mifepristone to patients with a prescription. These commonsense changes allow for improved access to mifepristone, yet the REMS criteria continues to impose unnecessary restrictions that cause administrative burdens for providers, which may impede their ability to provide the medication, thus impacting patient access.
Leading health experts, including ACOG and the AMA, have long advocated for removal of the mifepristone REMS, given that the restrictions do not make care safer and are not based on medical evidence or need. ACOG argues these restrictions only create further barriers to abortion care and medical management of early pregnancy loss, particularly for communities that already face structural barriers to care.
Abortion opponents are particularly focused on reinstating an “in-person dispensing” requirement for mifepristone. This would force every patient in the country to travel, in some cases hundreds of miles, to pick up the medication in-person at a health center. This mandate would apply even when the patient has been thoroughly evaluated and counseled by a licensed provider via telemedicine and there is no clinical reason to necessitate a health center visit, and even when it would be extremely burdensome or impossible to arrange the transportation, childcare, and time off work necessary for that in-person trip. Yet, as the FDA itself found, “there does not appear to be a difference in adverse events between periods when the in-person dispensing requirement was being enforced and periods when the in-person dispensing requirement was not being enforced. This suggests that mifepristone may be safely used without an in-person dispensing requirement.”
On October 30, 2025, a federal court ruled in Purcell v. Kennedy that the FDA’s explanation for its current restrictions on mifepristone is unreasoned, unsupported, and illogical; that the FDA did not engage with the objections of preeminent medical associations like ACOG and AMA that the mifepristone REMS is medically unnecessary and harmful; and that the FDA ignored peer-reviewed research showing both that mifepristone remains extremely safe when regulated like other prescription drugs and that the FDA’s restrictions significantly reduce patient access. The court also found that the FDA failed to meaningfully address the guardrails that Congress imposed on the agency’s authority to impose a REMS. That court order reinforces that, in conducting this new review, FDA may not cherry-pick junk science serving an anti-abortion agenda, but must instead look at the full body of evidence both confirming mifepristone’s safety and underscoring the harms of the FDA’s onerous restrictions.
The bottom line is that access to mifepristone allows patients to receive time-sensitive, essential health care, including abortion care and miscarriage management. Medication abortion is a critical option for patients who want to end their pregnancy in a place of their choosing, with access to the medical support and information they need. This option is particularly essential for patients who live in remote or rural areas and those who already face barriers to care due to inequities in our country’s health care system. If HHS insists on rejecting the science that clearly proves mifepristone is safe and effective, and instead decides to impose additional restrictions on its use, this will force countless women to carry pregnancies to term against their will—regardless of the consequences for their health or lives.
As you review the evidence regarding the safety and efficacy of mifepristone, we request responses to the following questions by November 28, 2025:
- Following the March 6, 2025 HELP Committee hearing to consider Dr. Makary’s nomination to be FDA Commissioner, he was asked, in a question for the record, if he planned to make any changes to how mifepristone can be prescribed, dispensed, or accessed. He responded: “I have no immediate plans to make changes to regulation of any specific products and would not do so without a fulsome review of safety and efficacy data.” What qualifies as a “fulsome review of safety and efficacy data?”
- What prompted the Department to initiate the recent review of mifepristone?
- What studies or data are HHS or FDA relying on to justify restrictions on mifepristone, including but not limited to, initiating a new review of mifepristone?
- Have any mifepristone manufacturers communicated to HHS or FDA any changes in the safety and efficacy data for their products?
- What process will you use to conduct this review?
- Will you solicit unbiased expert review and public comment through advisory committees, expert review panels, public workshops, a request for information, the federal rulemaking process, or other avenues? If utilizing an expert review panel, how will you establish that members have relevant expertise, including recent experience prescribing mifepristone? If utilizing an advisory committee, does HHS commit to following all statutory requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA; 5 U.S.C. Chapter 10)?
- Please list all procedural steps you intend to take in the review of mifepristone to ensure public participation and review of all relevant data.
- How will you ensure that this review is based on the best available science? For example, will the agency consider only studies that have undergone peer review?
- How will you ensure that the review is consistent with the court order in Purcell v. Kennedy and FDA’s limited authority under 21 U.S.C § 355-1(a), (f), and (g)?
- The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) documents any reported adverse events to specific prescription drugs approved by the FDA. Does the agency have additional unreported data on adverse events that it is considering in initiating its new review of mifepristone? If yes, will the agency release the unreported data to the public and to the signatories of this letter?
- A recent letter led by Senator Cassidy documented several statements from Secretary Kennedy on mifepristone in a September 4, 2025 Finance Committee hearing. Secretary Kennedy claimed the Biden administration “twisted the data” to bury one of the safety signals for mifepristone and that the signal showed an approximately 11% adverse event risk. Please respond to this letter with the same information you provide in response to Senator Cassidy’s letter.
- Senator Cassidy asked a question regarding a statement by Secretary Kennedy in the same Finance Committee hearing, indicating studies relating to the safety of mifepristone are “progressing and that they’re ongoing.” Please respond to this letter with the same answer you provide to Senator Cassidy regarding the details of these studies, including the scope, expected timeframe, agencies involved, and type of study.
- At the close of the same Finance Committee hearing, Ranking Member Wyden inquired about Secretary Kennedy’s planned mifepristone review which is “not based on new clinical trials or data from the scientific community,” but based on one non-peer-reviewed paper from an anti-abortion political organization. Secretary Kennedy responded by committing to “good science and good scientists” as part of this needless safety review. Please explain how the Secretary intends to meet this commitment and if the preeminent medical professional associations (i.e. ACOG, AMA) will be consulted as part of the review.
The American people need to be able to trust that any reviews, regulations, and approvals of medication by HHS and FDA are based on science and evidence—not on partisan attempts to attack abortion access. We are seriously alarmed by this administration’s obvious attempts to interfere with the science and politicize the drug review process in order to restrict abortion access. It is critical that scientific experts and evidence are central to any FDA review or REMS initiative. Mifepristone has long been shown to be safe and effective, and there is no new evidence to justify burdensome restrictions that block women from getting the health care they need.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter and we look forward to your response.
###
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PREDATOR: BADLANDS1 day ago
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Saturday, November 08, 2025
Chump's tanking economy
When he was sworn in as president, Joe Biden inherited a lousy economy. Too many people wrongly assumed that all the problems stemmed solely from the pandemic. Reality was that Donald Chump was running he economy into the ground, destroying all the advances taking place in the eight years of Barack Obama's two-term presidency. Had the pandemic not happened, the damage Chump was doing from the start of 20117 to the start of 2021 would have registered more. Joe spent four years building back the economy. In less than one year in office, Chump has undermined and destroyed all those advances.
Doubt it?
Look around.
Fast food chain Wendy's is planning to close hundreds more stores just a year after shuttering 140 locations.
Interim CEO Ken Cook told investors in a Friday, Nov. 7, quarterly earnings call that the company would be closing a "mid single-digit percentage" of locations. With around 6,000 locations still operating nationwide, this would amount to roughly 240 to 360 stores. One investor estimated the number at about 300 locations during the call. "When we look at the system today, we have some restaurants that do not elevate the brand and are a drag from a franchisee financial performance perspective," said Cook. "The goal is to address and fix those restaurants."
Shay Johnson (PENNY GEM) notes, "Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in the United States, is planning to close about 60 stores over the next year and a half. These locations, which represent around 2% of the company’s total stores, are mostly ones that have been performing poorly. The decision highlights how the grocery business is changing as people shop differently, costs rise, and competition grows tougher." BUZZ60 notes, "Winn-Dixie, a staple of Southern grocery shopping for generations, is facing its most dramatic shift in decades. In October, parent company Southeastern Grocers (SEG) announced plans to close or sell 40 stores—32 Winn-Dixie and 8 Harveys Supermarkets—across Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi by year’s end."
So that's eateries and grocery stores, what about retail? Dominick Reuter, Sarah Jackson, Sarah Perkel, Brent D. Griffiths and Jordan Hart (BUSINESS INSIDER) report:
A Business Insider tally of disclosures from 16 retail chains found that more than 3,700 stores have closed or are set to close across the US so far in 2025.
The current number is up from last year's total and 2023, when the collapse of Bed Bath & Beyond contributed to the shuttering of more than 2,800 locations, by Business Insider's count.
UBS analysts estimated last year that US retail closures could reach 45,000 stores by 2029, primarily due to smaller stores going out of business.
As this more evidence piles up, Chump lies to the people. And some let him et away with it. There's one area where his lies don't work. Groceries. As SV Date (HUFFINGTON POST) reports:
President Donald Trump’s relentless lying finally appears to have encountered a problem it cannot overcome: grocery prices, which, in large part because of his tariffs, have been rising nearly twice as quickly as they had under predecessor Joe Biden.
“Grocery prices are way down,” the president has been saying, time after time after time after time, for months, including twice on Thursday and once again on Friday.
Tariffs was never an economic plan. It was just a sign of stupidity -- on the part of Chump and a huge number of Americans who didn't realize how stupid they were. Tariffs are a tax on the people of the country imposing them. Lawrence O'Donnell has sent hours going over that near nightly on his MS NOW program. There's no excuse for not knowing that.
B-b-b-but I-I-I watch FOX "NEWS"!!!!!
Your decision to destroy your mind with fake news and propaganda was your decision, don't whine to me.
Here's another issue of the stupid: The untaught and uninformed.
There are millions of topics in this world. I'm lucky if I can comment semi-intelligently on just a few. And I know that. I know my limitations. And I'm not embarrassed by them. I don't know why people have to pretend to be know it alls. But people who knew nothing about economics felt comfortable weighing in and demonstrating their stupidity.
I knew tariffs were taxes but that's about it on economics. I know what GDP stands for and what GNP stands for, but there's a book from an economic course that I have to pull down from shelves when I'm trying to remember which one overlooks a number of issues (GNP is the one that overlooks). There's no point in going after the aged text book I reference but you can read an essay Gloria Steinem did on this topic in her book MOVING BEYOND WORDS (which is old itself, having come out in 1994).
To cover economics here, I got crash courses from four friends. That involved conversations, lectures from them and their assigned reading. In addition, one said watch THE 11TH HOUR WITH STEPHANIE RUHLE because she covers economics regularly and intelligently. So I started watching and the professor and I would talk any segment she did on the economy and analyze that.
This time last year, I wouldn't have had any real strength in the area. I am by no means an expert -- I'm still working on increasing my knowledge -- but I am conversant in economics.
We're encouraged to fake it and pretend we're experts on everything. We're not. I'm certainly not.
And on somethin that important, you don't need people faking. And you don't need to be faking on something as important as the economy.
You should also have some common sense. Every time the GOP claims the presidency, the push is for tax cuts for the rich. We're supposed paying down debt during times when a Democrat is in the White House. And I'm tired of that too. All that happens is that any progress made is then used by the Republican president to insist it's time for tax cuts (for the wealthy).
Over and over this cycle has continued.
So when Chump, a Republican, starts making economic promises, your own common sense should tell you, "I need to be suspicious."
In other news, Cory Turner (NPR) reports:
A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration violated the First Amendment rights of Education Department employees when it replaced their personalized out-of-office e-mail notifications with partisan language blaming Democrats for the government shutdown.
"When government employees enter public service, they do not sign away their First Amendment rights," U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper wrote in his decision on Friday, "and they certainly do not sign up to be a billboard for any given administration's partisan views."
The lawsuit was brought by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE).
"This ridiculous ploy by the Trump administration was a clear violation of the First Amendment rights of the workers at the Education Department," said Rachel Gittleman, the president of AFGE Local 252, which represents many Education Department workers, in a statement. She added it is "one of the many ways the Department's leadership has threatened, harassed and demoralized these hardworking public servants in the last 10 months."
Let's wind down with this from Senator Patty Murray's office:
“If the Trust for the National Mall has become a tool for favor-seeking between billionaires and the President of the United States, the American people deserve to know.”
Washington, D.C. — In a response to an October letter from U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Wyden (D-Ore.), Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Markey (D-Mass.), the Trust for the National Mall refused to answer questions about its role in fundraising efforts for President Trump’s new White House Ballroom.
Billionaires and billionaire corporations with business in front of the Trump administration have funneled money to the new ballroom, raising questions about potential corruption. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon this week explained that the bank has not given to the ballroom because "we're quite conscious of risks we bear by doing anything that looks like buying favors or anything like that.”
“If the Trust for the National Mall has become a tool for favor-seeking between billionaires and the President of the United States, the American people deserve to know. It’s my job as a United States Senator to uncover possible corruption and get answers for Americans. I’ll keep pushing to find out if the Trust is facilitating wink-and-nod arrangements between Trump and his billionaire ballroom donors — and what these donors are getting in return,” said Senator Warren.
“The Trust for the National Mall’s response is insultingly unsatisfactory. It’s an insult to our intelligence and their integrity. The President is abusing this respected nonprofit institution to facilitate special interest access and fund his $300 million vanity boondoggle. Billionaires and big corporations are exploiting this vehicle to cozy up to Trump. It will be diminished in credibility and trust as it becomes entrenched in Trump’s quicksand. The American people deserve to know whether there have been any quid-pro-quos or backroom favors for donating to his gilded ballroom project. I’ll continue to press for answers,” said Senator Blumenthal.
“$300 million in private donations are bankrolling Trump’s vanity project at the White House, with much of it coming from corporate interests with high-stakes matters before the federal government. The Trust’s wholly inadequate response to our letter only deepens our serious concerns that they are enabling a major pay-for-play scheme, allowing the wealthy and megacorporations to curry favor with a lawless president – all while Trump refuses to negotiate the end of his government shutdown. Given Trump’s clear pattern of shaking down businesses in exchange for sweetheart deals with his Administration, we will keep working to shine a light on these donors and what’s motivating them – including whether they expect favorable treatment in return for their ‘generosity,’” said Senator Van Hollen.
“As Americans struggle to feed their families and federal workers struggle without pay, Trump builds a golden ballroom funded by billionaires and large corporations. We demanded answers about Trump's corruption and pay-to-play politics and got zero answers. Public office is a public trust — not a VIP suite for the highest bidder,” said Senator Markey.
The Trust was established as a nonpartisan, nonprofit partner of the National Park Service. But the scale of funds raised for President Trump’s ballroom, President Trump’s personal involvement in fundraising for the project, and the number of corporate donors with business before the Trump Administration raised questions for the lawmakers about whether the organization is facilitating these donors’ corrupt access to and favor-seeking from President Trump and his administration.
On October 23, the senators pressed President and CEO of the Trust, Catherine Townsend, and National Park Service Comptroller Jessica Bowron, about the exact agreements in place regarding the building of the ballroom, the source and amount of donations, whether the donations are charitable deductions, and more.
In the Trust’s response, Townsend confirmed the Trust is “managing the private donations gifted to support the [ballroom] project,” but refused to answer questions regarding the agreements between President Trump, the White House, and the Trust with regard to funding and building the Trump Ballroom.
Townsend also declined to release details about the donations made to date, along with any terms and conditions related to each of these donations, saying “donor names and identifying information are not subject to public disclosure under [federal law].”
Townsend directed the senators additional questions about the project to the National Park Service and the White House.
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A River, a Whale, and a Revolution in Justice
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