Wednesday, November 4, 2026. Chump is a lame duck as Democrats take control of both houses, US House Rep Robert Garcia advises the administration to "lawyer up" as he is set to become Chair of the House Oversight Committee in January, Priss Pot Pet Hegseth is involved in one scandal after another, ICE continues to attack immigrants and US citizens, and much more.
Yesterday was the last day of voting for the midterms and the results were huge and telling with Democrats taking control of both houses of Congress. Both. Chump is now a lame duck who will struggle through the next two years desperate for meaning but most of all attention. With the midterms over, the media will begin focusing on the 2028 presidential election which will further sideline Chump. It is the end of his era.
As Ben (MEIDAS TOUCH) notes in the video above, Chump is now saying he wasn't on the ballot. This despite the fact that he has declared he was, that he's said over and over. "Pretend I'm on the ballot." He said it as midterm convention in Dallas back in September, he repeated it non-stop on his DESPERATION TOUR.
President Trump implored voters over the course of the midterm campaign to “pretend I’m on the ballot.” He said it not once, not twice, but 47 times this fall.
And voters did -- just not the way he hoped.
The Democratic wave in the congressional elections on Tuesday amounted to a stinging rebuke of a deeply unpopular president after more than a decade in which he has dominated the national stage. More than any of his predecessors, Mr. Trump deliberately made the midterm contest a referendum on himself, only to pay the price.
The electoral backlash extended even into deep red states and indicated that Mr. Trump has lost his hold over the coalition that lifted him to the White House twice. Frustrated by high gas prices, an intractable war with Iran and allegations of flagrant profiteering by Mr. Trump and members of his circle, voters who previously took a chance on an outsider promising change either rejected his party or stayed home.
As of early Wednesday morning, the Democratic margin of victory in the overall national vote for House seats was expected to be about 13 percentage points, the largest that either party has lodged in a congressional election since at least 1976, according to estimates by The New York Times. It will dwarf even the margins that the Republicans won in their two big landslide victories of modern times when they defeated congressional Democrats when Bill Clinton held the White House in 1994 and Barack Obama was president in 2010.
Thanks to redistricting, that margin may not translate into as many seats as the winners gained in those watershed years. Gerrymandered House districts leave far fewer seats available for poaching by the other party than in the past. But the overall margin of Democratic victory indicates that while the president has two more years left in office and can still wield power to great effect, Americans are signaling the beginning of the end of the Trump era.
A little bit earlier today, MS NOW's MORNING JOE reviewed the results.
There are all sorts of victories from last night and all are worthy of praise. We'll note that Keisha Bottoms won the office of governor in Georgia and this will make her the first Black female governor in the United States, Christopher Wiggins (THE ADVOCATE) notes, "New Hampshire voters have elected Chris Pappas to the U.S. Senate, making the Democratic congressman the first out gay man elected to the chamber and preserving a Senate seat for his party," Johnny Perez-Gonzalez (WHYY) notes US House Rep Sarah McBride became the first openly transgender member of the House of Representatives in 2024 and that she was re-elected last night, Edith Olmstead (THE NEW REPUBLIC) notes Peggy "Flanagan will replace Democratic Senator Tina Smith, making her the first Native woman in the U.S. Senate," Hafiz Rashid (THE NEW REPUBLIC) notes, "Michigan voted to send Democrat Abdul El-Sayed to the Senate Tuesday night, making him the first Muslim senator," Texas and Kansas made history with their slate of candidates winning elections that Dems have not won in decades.
The Trump administration’s hyper-politicized military environment apparently has thousands of active-duty military members looking towards the exit.
A survey by Common Defense Civic Engagement, a grassroots veterans organization, found that 53 percent of active-duty service members want to leave because their service is becoming more politicized.
Another 45 percent of polled respondents shared that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s policy changes and the ensuing instability had made them consider leaving their stations sooner rather than later.
The poll also found that 67 percent of active-duty respondents felt that the recent policy decisions affecting America’s military branches were being made for political gain rather than mission readiness.
[. . .]
The survey, which was conducted in September and released in October, reported that 50 percent of respondents disapproved of Donald Trump’s job as commander-in-chief. Those polled felt similarly about Hegseth, who received a 45 percent approval rating and a 50 percent disapproval rating.
Like the military, the rest of the American people weren't happy with Chump's antics. They sent a very clear message.
So what happens now? Thomas Kika (ALTERNET) notes David Rothkopf warned Joanna Coles on THE DAILY BEAST podcast:
Without Republicans in control of Congress to rubber-stamp his agenda or stand aside while he pursues whatever ends he wants, Rothkopf further predicted that Trump will go to increasingly dangerous lengths to keep getting the attention he craves, possibly involving his well-established fixation on nucelar weapons.
“Particularly if Congress is taken away from him as an option, it’s all going to be whatever goes on inside his head,” Rothkopf said. “We’re already watching the decay of this mind. I mean, there are all these early signs of dementia and everything else, but the next couple of years are going to be like watching a nuclear meltdown: the Chernobyl inside Donald Trump’s head.”
He added: “Trump has a relationship with nuclear weapons that should scare the s—— out of us all because he does consider it. He does want to think about it. And there are other stories of [him] saying, ‘Well, why don’t we use nukes?’ And military people saying, 'No.' I think there are military people who are already deeply fed up with Trump and have seen the damage... he and [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth have done to the military in manifold ways, who would resist. I really do think that’s a bridge too far.”
Abuse of the rule of law and shredding of the CONSTITUION account for some of the votes against Chump in the midterms. Erin Keller (INDEPENDENT) reports:
The former head of the FBI’s Chicago office is suing senior Justice Department officials, alleging he was forced to resign over his refusal to pursue politically motivated investigations into anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protesters.
Douglas DePodesta, a 24-year bureau veteran, filed the lawsuit Monday, accusing federal officials of pressuring him to target people opposed to the Trump administration, The Associated Press reported.
He also claims Andrew Boutros, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, sought his removal and later blamed him for the collapse of a high-profile case against six protesters.
DePodesta, whose departure was announced over the summer, told the ABC7 Chicago I-Team that he did not leave the bureau voluntarily.
"I was forced to resign. This was by no way voluntary," DePodesta said in an interview published Monday. "I was ordered by the highest levels of the FBI that I needed to leave my position."
The lawsuit names FBI Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Todd Blanche, Boutros, the Justice Department and the FBI as defendants. It alleges that "Boutros initiated and caused unconstitutional actions taken against DePodesta."
Boutros is accused of pressuring senior officials to remove DePodesta after the prosecution of the so-called “Broadview Six” fell apart. Those six were protestors who were prosecuted for protests near an ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois.
That sounds like something in need of a Congressional investigation.
Several watchdog organizations have sued the U.S. Department of Defense and Secretary Pete Hegseth over a newly formed advisory committee that includes figures such as Elon Musk, citing fears over "private interests" and a lack of transparency with the public.
The 37-page complaint alleges that Hegseth unlawfully created the committee named "Project Meridian: the Future of Warfare," is keeping its records secret, and is composed of "private-sector membership" that "raises precisely the type of conflict-of-interest concerns" that the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) "was designed to address."
Consequently, the nonprofit groups say, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia should bar Project Meridian from conducting operations until the Department of Defense changes its practices.
[. . .]
The watchdogs point specifically to FACA, a law that "governs the establishment, operation, and termination of advisory committees within the executive branch of the Federal Government." Among other things, FACA requires that a federal advisory committee that includes nongovernmental members "make its records and meetings open to the public, and be fairly balanced in its membership."
That is not the case with Project Meridian, according to the complaint.
"No members of Project Meridian provide a meaningful counterweight to the biases and profit-driven view of Project Meridian's current non-government employee members," the lawsuit states, pointing to the only government employees in the project reporting to Hegseth and other members having ties to President Donald Trump.
US House Rep Robert Garcia, re-elected last night, will be the Chair of the House Oversight Committee. Last night, he advised the administration, "Lawyer up." Priss Pot might want to consider doing so immediately. Here's the press release from the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee:
Today, Rep. Robert Garcia, Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, released the following statement after Democrats secured a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Following this win, Garcia will become Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, where he has vowed to take on the Trump Crime Family, corporate corruption, DHS and ICE abuses, and the cover-up of the Epstein files. His statement can be found below.
Trump always needs a fall guy. After the 2018 midterms, in which Democrats picked up 40 seats and regained a House majority, the role fell to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom Trump had been itching to fire over the Russiagate investigation. Within a few weeks, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke also “resigned” under a cloud of scandal. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis left office around the same time, not because Trump was displeased with Mattis but because Mattis was displeased with Trump. “We’re looking at a lot of different things, including the Cabinet,” Trump said the day after the 2018 election. “You know, it’s very common after the midterms. I didn’t want to do anything before the midterms.”
The most obvious reason to dump Hegseth is that Trump’s Iran war enraged voters by driving up oil prices. Less than one month into the war, Trump was already positioning himself to blame his defense secretary if it went badly. “I called a lot of our great people,” Trump said at a public appearance with Hegseth in Tennessee, “and Pete, I think you were the first one to speak up. And you said, ‘Let’s do it, because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.’” Ouch!
The Atlantic’s Nancy Youssef and Jonathan Lemire reported on November 1 that Trump was asking political allies “about the job performances of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and General Dan Caine.” But the knives are out much more for Hegseth. He “is good at telling the president what he wants to hear,” one outside Trump adviser told The Atlantic. But now, Youssef and Lemire write, Trump is “searching for a scapegoat, and has focused on those who had told him that a war with Iran would be quick and decisive.”
Congress can’t stand Hegseth. That articles of impeachment have been drawn up for Hegseth is perhaps no great distinction. The same happened to former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, ex–Attorney General Pam Bondi, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., and Education Secretary Linda McMahon. But in Hegseth’s case, the impeachment resolution was introduced by Hegseth’s fellow Republican, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky. Massie introduced his impeachment bill as a privileged resolution, which meant the House was required to vote on it within two days. Fearing it would actually pass, House Speaker Mike Johnson called an early campaign-season recess to kill it. Last week, Massie told a reporter that he would reintroduce this resolution after the midterms. “Trump should fire Hegseth to avoid Hegseth’s impeachment,” Massie said on X.
Once upon a time, when the US government went into a court room, the judge could expect that they'd be telling the truth. Under Chump? Liars all over the place. Ashlyn Walker (OK) report:
Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and former Attorney General Pam Bondi have been thrust into an explosive federal court ruling after a judge found that an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fabricated arrest records and lied under oath, OK! can reveal.
According to court documents obtained by OK!, U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai issued a 50-page ruling on November 2, finding that federal immigration authorities repeatedly violated an injunction restricting warrantless arrests in Oregon.
In a stunning finding, the judge determined that an ICE officer had falsified information in official government records to justify an immigration arrest.
The court also found that the officer gave false testimony under oath while attempting to explain discrepancies in the documentation.
The findings emerged during proceedings examining whether federal immigration authorities had complied with an earlier court order governing arrests without judicial warrants.
The ruling raises serious questions about the accuracy of federal immigration records and the government’s compliance with judicial oversight.
A federal judge in Oregon wants more ICE agents on the witness stand after finding that an officer lied in an official arrest record, saying live testimony helped expose it.
U.S. District Judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai, a Biden appointee, said the case showed why courts should hear directly from government officers when their accounts are disputed, rather than rely solely on written statements.
“Evaluating live testimony is a time-tested method for truth finding,” Kasubhai wrote in court filings reviewed by Newsweek. “Written declarations are convenient, but insufficient on their own when witnesses are willing to lie.”
“Live testimony is necessary. Examination and cross-examination are necessary,” the judge continued.
[. . .]
The judge said the discrepancy might not have been discovered had the officer not been required to appear and answer questions under oath.
“This case underscores what happens if people were not called to testify under oath in a courtroom, if as a society we do not demand that government agents explain their actions, and if the public fails to shine a spotlight on what is happening under cover,” Kasubhai wrote, “people with authority know they will not be held to account.”
Their days of lying and getting away with it are over. We've noted the lying that Chump's officials and officers have repeatedly carried out in courts and we've noted that they no longer deserve the presumption that they will tell the truth. When you are caught lying repeatedly, you have destroyed your own reputation. Rahman notes in his article:
Kasubhai also said he would no longer give the defendants the “presumption of regularity,” which generally allows courts to assume government officials have properly carried out their duties unless evidence shows otherwise.
“This presumption no longer holds for Defendants. The evidence in this case proves as much,” the judge wrote, adding, “One must earn credibility by acting with integrity.”
Kasubhai pointed to similar concerns in courtrooms across the nation. In September, a federal judge in Massachusetts said that after “repeated misrepresentations by ICE officers,” the court would no longer give ICE the presumption of regularity.
That's what happens when you lie to the court repeatedly and that's what this administration has done repeatedly.
Footage has emerged of a masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent pulling their handgun on a dogwalker in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, during Friday’s arrest of a Venezuelan man who DHS says had received a final order of removal.
ICE adopted more aggressive tactics after Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 having vowed to crack down on illegal immigration during the 2024 presidential election campaign.
[. . .]
On Friday the Los Angeles Times published a video it said had been recorded earlier that day during an ICE operation in North Hollywood, credited to Damari Butler. The footage was filmed from an elevated position, possibly a building, above the ICE agents, who are wearing tactical gear reading “ICE Police.” It has since circulated widely on social media.
The footage begins with one ICE agent detaining a man who had been pinned down on the sidewalk, while a second aims a can of spray at a bystander with two dogs on leads who had stopped at the scene. DHS told Newsweek the detained man is Angel Luis Gonzalez Lobo, describing him as “an illegal alien from Venezuela with a final order of removal.”
[. . .]
It then cuts to two agents dragging the detained man, who is shouting in Spanish and appears to be moaning in pain, towards a vehicle. During the commotion, a can of an unidentified spray is dropped by one of the agents, and the dogwalker moves over and picks it up.
He is swiftly grabbed by an ICE agent and throws the can further down the road, after which a second agent pushes him into a bush and points a pistol at his head from a range of several inches.
Pulling a gun on an unarmed citizen? ICE just thinks they can get away with anything . . . because Chump has allowed them to get away with anything. On Monday, ICE agent Mario Alberto Morales turned himself in. Emma Tucker and Isa Mudannayake (CNN) report:
The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer accused of running over an undocumented immigrant from Mexico with a vehicle was released on a $30,000 bond Monday after appearing in court for a bond hearing, according to his attorney.
A grand jury indicted Mario Alberto Morales Friday on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after he allegedly struck the man, causing multiple leg fractures. Morales’ next court hearing is set for December 2, according to his attorney David Lindenmuth.
Morales was driving an ICE vehicle, a Jeep Grand Cherokee, near Houston on October 10 when he started to pursue a vehicle driven by Miguel Parra Hernandez, an ICE spokesperson said. Parra Hernandez, who has lived in Harris County for more than 30 years, has no criminal record and had no deportation order at the time of the incident, Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare said at a news conference Friday.
Parra Hernandez, 48, and another occupant in the vehicle with him began to flee on foot after Morales pursued their vehicle, Teare said. “What happened next shocked our entire community,” the district attorney said before playing video he said showed Morales striking Parra Hernandez with his vehicle.
[. . .]
The other occupant in the car with Parra Hernandez was identified by ICE as Jose Mendoza-Cervantes, who the agency said was the target of the operation. But Teare said the man by that name has been “apparently dead for nine years” and did not identify the other man with Parra Hernandez inside the vehicle.
In a previous interview with CNN, Parra Hernandez’s brother said the other man in the truck was not Mendoza-Cervantes, the person ICE said it was trying to arrest. “We don’t know him,” said Rodolfo Parra Garcia. “The person ICE was looking for was not the person with my brother.”
Jhonatan Fabricio Taizha Urgiles was walking to his car at 7:15 on a Monday morning when ICE officers asked him for his papers. Four days later, a federal judge in Philadelphia ruled that everything that followed was illegal: the handcuffs, the back seat, and the cell at the Federal Detention Center.
U.S. District Judge Catherine Henry granted his habeas petition on Friday, Oct. 30. She held that ICE arrested him without a warrant and jailed him without an individualized custody determination, which violated both federal immigration law and his due process rights. She ordered his immediate release.
The ruling is about the arrest. The story inside it is about what allegedly happened at the gate of his house. According to the petition, as recounted in Henry’s opinion, an ICE officer threatened to shoot the family dog, tased it, and then attacked Taizha Urgiles’s brother so violently that it broke his leg. At the hospital, doctors said the brother needed surgery. ICE refused it at that time.
The court did not rule on those allegations. It did not have to. The government’s own filing gave the judge enough to free him.
There was a time when Americans could reasonably assume that registering to vote was an ordinary act of citizenship, not an invitation for the federal government to start snooping around their lives.
Under Donald Trump, apparently, those days are over.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has morphed from an agency charged with enforcing immigration laws into something far more dangerous: a heavily armed, increasingly unaccountable surveillance operation serving a president who has never met a democratic institution he didn’t want to bully, bend or break.
Trump’s personal Gestapo is no longer just about rounding up immigrants (whether in the country legally or not). It’s about building a government with the technological firepower to find people, track them, investigate them, and make them think twice about exercising their constitutional rights.
[. . .]
Because the evidence supports a much less dramatic conclusion: noncitizen voting is a real but rare problem, while the government’s appetite for collecting personal information is getting awfully big.
And somehow, we’re supposed to believe the threat to democracy is the immigrant who might cast an illegal ballot—not the government building a surveillance machine that could put millions of legitimate voters under suspicion.
That’s why ICE has become Trump’s Gestapo. The danger isn’t that America has become Nazi Germany. It’s that a government agency is accumulating the tools, secrecy and political permission to treat ordinary people as targets first and citizens with rights second.
ICE doesn’t need to know how you voted. It doesn’t need to turn the polling place into an extension of its surveillance operation. And Trump’s obsession with election fraud doesn’t give his administration permission to treat every voter like a suspect.
The right to vote isn’t a privilege bestowed by Donald Trump. It’s a right that belongs to the people.
If this administration can’t understand the difference, the rest of us had better defend that right before the machinery built to frighten immigrants becomes a tool for frightening everybody else.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:
Senators raise concerns that McDonald’s is pressuring franchisees to follow AI-driven pricing recommendations that could undermine competition and drive up prices amid food affordability crisis.
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Representative Becca Balint (D-Vt.) demanded answers from McDonald’s President and CEO Chris Kempczinski about how the company generates AI-driven pricing recommendations, whether McDonald’s pressures franchisees to follow them, and how the company assesses the technology’s potential harm to consumers and competition. The letter came after reports that the company is using artificial intelligence (AI) to determine the “optimal price” for individual menu items at each of its locations and pushing franchisees to adopt these AI-based prices.
“We are concerned that McDonald’s may be using AI to squeeze consumers into paying higher prices, and that its AI pricing tools may facilitate collusion between franchisees who should be operating as competitors,” wrote the lawmakers.
U.S. Representatives Greg Casar (D-Texas), Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.), and Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) also signed the letter.
According to recent reports, McDonald’s has developed an AI-based pricing tool that it may be using to recommend specific prices for each individual store, building off the massive trove of consumer data that Amazon has collected through its loyalty program and mobile app. For example, two McDonald’s-operated restaurants just two miles apart in Fresno, California reportedly charged prices that differed by as much as 21 percent for the same menu items. The lawmakers raised particular concerns about McDonald’s use of AI-based pricing at a time when food prices are rising nationwide and particularly at McDonald’s. One report found that certain McDonald’s menu prices doubled between 2014 and 2024, rising more than three times as fast as overall inflation and driving away customers who previously relied on McDonald’s for an affordable meal.
“We are concerned that McDonald’s is using its extensive consumer data and algorithmic pricing tools to unfairly raise prices on consumers who are already struggling with high food and dining costs,” wrote the lawmakers.
The lawmakers also questioned McDonald’s for reportedly putting pressure on franchisees to adopt its pricing recommendations, including through new business standards and potential consequences for franchise renewals. They warned that encouraging competing franchisees to rely on a shared pricing tool informed by nonpublic data could undermine independent pricing decisions and raise antitrust concerns.
“While McDonald’s asserts that using data and analytics to inform pricing is a standard business practice, pressuring competing franchisees to use a shared AI pricing tool built on nonpublic data is not a standard business practice, but rather a potential antitrust issue,” continued the lawmakers.
The lawmakers requested answers by November 16, 2026, on the data and algorithms used to generate pricing recommendations, the extent to which franchisees adopt those recommendations, the pressure McDonald’s places on franchisees to comply, and the company’s assessment of potential antitrust risks.
Senator Warren has long fought consolidation, collusion, and price gouging in the food industry and across the economy, and worked to lower costs for American families:
On October 5, 2026, Senator Warren (D-Mass.) warned that giant food and grocery mergers may increase costs, harming American families, restaurants, and small businesses.
On April 14, 2026, Senator Warren (D-Mass.) and Minority Leader Schumer (D-N.Y.) led a group of colleagues in calling on the Trump administration to address anticompetitive practices in the food industry like surveillance pricing.
On March 24, 2026, Senator Warren (D-Mass.), along with four colleagues, called on the FTC to crack down on war-related price gouging.
On March 12, 2026, Senator Warren (D-Mass.) pressed Amazon on the company’s use of opaque algorithms to overcharge schools, local governments, and taxpayers for essential goods.
On February 4, 2026, Senator Warren (D-Mass.) wrote to Google with concerns that the company’s integration of AI into its shopping services could be used to set personalized prices and manipulate consumers into spending more.
In July 2025, Senator Warren (D-Mass.), Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), and Representative Chris DeLuzio (D-Pa.) reintroduced the Price Gouging Prevention Act, which would protect consumers and prohibit corporate price gouging by authorizing the FTC and state attorneys general to enforce a federal ban against grossly excessive price increases.
In October 2024, Senator Warren (D-Mass.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) slammed McDonald’s for squeezing customers with excessive price increases.
In October 2024, Senator Warren (D-Mass.) and Representative Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) wrote to the CEOs of Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and General Mills, pressing their executives on the companies’ pattern of profiteering off consumers, both through “shrinkflation” and dodging taxes on the profits they made from that price gouging.
In August 2024, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bob Casey (D-Pa.) sent aletter to Rodney McMullen, chairman and CEO of Kroger, raising concerns about Kroger’s use of Electronic Shelving Labels (ESLs) to potentially surge grocery prices and exploit consumers.
In May 2024, while chairing a Senate Banking Subcommittee on Economic Policy hearing, Senator Warren (D-Mass.) called out giant corporations for hiking up food prices while raking in record profits, and urged action to promote competition and bring down costs.
In May 2024, during a hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs, Senator Warren (D-Mass.) called out food industry price gouging and urged action to combat unfair pricing practices.
In April 2024, Senator Warren (D-Mass.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.)wrote to DoorDash and UberEats, the two largest delivery platforms, calling out their use of hidden junk fees.
In February 2024, Senator Warren (D-Mass.) joined Senator Bob Casey (D-Pa.) inintroducing the Shrinkflation Prevention Act to crack down on corporations that deceive consumers by selling smaller sizes of their products without lowering prices.