Meanwhile. . .

NBC News  - Katie Zacharia is out as White House press secretary after just five days on the job, a senior administration official, an administration official and a source familiar with the decision said, following a widely panned first press briefing and the revelation that she represented herself as a lawyer but did not pass her bar exam.

Amazon prices up

Business Insider -   The owners of Bed Scrunchie, a company solving the problem of unruly sheets one mattress at a time, say Amazon is pressuring them to raise their prices wherever else they sell online. "Amazon told us basically that if we don’t increase our price elsewhere, that this product will remain [in]visible to buy," co-owner Jack Nehala shares in a new Business Insider video essay. California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is leading a price-fixing case against the Big Tech giant, says this is a common tactic for Amazon — "We have the receipts." 

Stacy Mitchell, a key expert featured in the story, says this is likely "just the tip of the iceberg of a huge price-fixing operation” and argues that online competition cannot lower consumer prices if policymakers let these tactics continue. “Amazon has so much power over suppliers to essentially monitor prices and make sure that other retailers never have lower prices than Amazon," warns Stacy. 

Polls

Medialite -  The latest Fox News poll carried some decisively bad news for President Donald Trump and his administration, which has been plagued by corruption scandals in recent months.

The new poll found that the top issue among voters, with 88% of respondents saying they are “extremely or very concerned” about it, was “corruption in government.”

The poll conducted between October 9th and the 12th, among 1,202 registered voters, found “Inflation and high prices” to be the second most important issue to voters, with 85% “extremely or very concerned” about it.

“Gas prices” came in third, with 83% of respondents being “extremely or very concerned” about it, while “Healthcare” landed in fourth place with 80%.

Liberals backing Puerto Rican independence

The Nation -   Something is changing in the political conversation about Puerto Rico. In recent months, major leaders and organizations on the American left have explicitly signaled their support for the island’s independence.

On September 23, to mark the 158th anniversary of the Grito de Lares freedom revolt, future congressman Chris Rabb joined his Puerto Rican constituents in Philadelphia and declared, “I support Puerto Rican independence. Puerto Rico has the right to be a free, sovereign, and independent nation.”

Rabb, who will almost certainly get elected to the US House of Representatives from Pennsylvania’s 3rd district, joined other influential progressives who have come out for Puerto Rico’s freedom. Earlier this year another general election shoo-in, Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York, called for an inclusive Puerto Rican self-determination process. She added: “I also support independence for the Puerto Rican people. Because after 128 years, it’s the least the people on the island deserve.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has also weighed in. In June, on the eve of the National Puerto Rican Day Parade, Mamdani gave Puerto Rican independence a poetic shoutout:

“This weekend, the boricuas of our city will don bright colors, sing songs of freedom, and wave a flag that was once made illegal by the United States government. There will be joy…as well as the bittersweet knowledge of an independence that has too long been denied.”

Notably, support for sovereignty is rising among political leaders outside of Puerto Rican bastions like New York and Pennsylvania. Former Missouri representative Cori Bush and fellow Missouri Democratic primary candidate Hartzell Gray came out in support for Puerto Rican sovereignty. So did Julie Gonzales, who gave John Hickenlooper a scare in the Democratic primary for US Senate in Colorado. (Full disclosure: My organization, Boricuas Unidos en la Diáspora, which advocates for Puerto Rican independence, endorsed all three of those candidates.)

Elon Musk has poured 369 million into elections

Washington Post -  Elon Musk has become the largest individual political donor in modern American history. The world’s richest man poured $369 million of his own money into this year’s midterm elections, mostly to save the Republican Party’s control in Congress.

The spending alleviates the fears of some Republicans who worried the Tesla CEO would not come to their rescue after a dramatic and public feud with President Donald Trump last year. Musk gave at least $268 million to his super PAC and other Republican-aligned groups in the past three months, according to Federal Election Commission data filed Thursday. The GOP’s main Senate super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, received $158 million of that money. The Senate Leadership fund then immediately transferred an identical sum to a PAC dedicated to backing Republican Ken Paxton in the Senate race in Texas, where Musk lives.

….In total, the top donors in American politics have poured in more than $2.3 billion to influence the midterm elections. They are dominated by Republicans. Republicans are hoping the influx of cash will help them in the final stretch before November by blanketing the airwaves and deploying more canvassers to voters’ doors. Republican-leaning donors gave $1.54 billion, compared with $590 million from Democratic-leaning givers and $259 million from bipartisan and special-interest groups, such as those backing sports betting and cryptocurrency interests.  List of megadonors

Ukraine

The Guardian - Donald Trump has called Ukraine’s renewed strikes on Russian oil refineries “a disgrace” and criticised Volodymyr ?Zelenskyy after an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine failed to take hold.

Donald Trump

The Guardian -   Donald Trump plans to once more severely restrict the number of refugees admitted to the US, announcing a limit of just 17,500 people in fiscal year 2027 - and that, again, those let in will be "primarily" white South Africans.

Refugee rights groups are alarmed and infuriated at the decision last month by the US president to exclude almost every other demographic.

They claim the decision will continue to leave thousands of refugees stuck in dangerous situations around the globe, many of whom were already vetted and approved for entry, in favor of a very small quota dominated by Afrikaners, an Afrikaans-speaking white ethnic group descended from Dutch and French colonial settlers to South Africa.

Hegseth’s military imposes testosterone testing

MS NOW -   After nearly 250 years of testing its troops’ strength, endurance and marksmanship, the U.S. military is starting to test their testosterone.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says it will give them “the biological foundation required to sustain the fight,” brushing off concerns from current and former service members — including an ex-Army surgeon general — that the initiative rests on shaky science.

Some veterans fear the new mandatory screening could threaten troops’ fertility and careers, tying some of them to lifelong injections the Department of Veterans Affairs is not guaranteed to continue covering.

Under a program Hegseth announced in July, service members 30 and older will be screened each year for testosterone deficiency during their routine health assessments. Those found to have low levels will be offered hormone therapy.

Hegseth said treatment would be voluntary, though the Pentagon has not said whether troops who refuse recommended treatment would face consequences.

“We are building a High-T department focused on strength, performance, lethality,” the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, wrote on X in mid-September, echoing language used in podcasts and other forums with a recent focus on the definition of masculinity.

Trump vs. federal judges

Alternet - President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is getting an earful from federal judges across the nation, with one accusing the administration of concealing its “true motives” as it tries to get its hand on voter data.

A ProPublica investigation published Friday documented showing how judges have rejected the department’s legal arguments in 26 lawsuits seeking states’ unredacted voter rolls, delivering an embarrassing series of defeats to Trump’s effort to obtain election records.

The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has sued 30 states, including Washington, D.C., in an effort to get confidential information about millions of American voters in unredacted voter rolls since September last year.

A judge, appointed by President Bill Clinton, accused the Trump administration of trampling on Americans’ right to vote, writing:

“The foundation upon which American democracy has been built is the right to vote. … Now it seems the Executive Branch of the United States government wants to abridge the right of many Americans to cast their ballots. … The Court does not take lightly DOJ’s obfuscation of its true motives.”

Personal note

Sam Smith -  My wife and I celebrated our 60^th wedding anniversary yesterday. According to one study only about one or two percent of marriages last that long, in our case thanks in no small part to my partner, Kathy. I met Kathy when she was working for Senator Gaylord Nelson. She had graduated from the University of Wisconsin magna cum laude and nonetheless married a guy who had graduated from Harvard magna cum probation. And we have been happy ever since. 

Tales from the attic: Finding the right words

Sam Smith, March 2016 – Lately, I’ve been feeling real glad that I got into activism in the early 1960s because I’m increasingly getting the sense that I wouldn’t be good enough to be an activist by today’s liberal standards.

 For example, Jesse Benn, writing in Huffington Post, said recently that “White people from across the political spectrum are overt racists, hold implicit biases, and/or harbor otherwise problematic, incomplete views about race. All white people fall into one or more of these categories, from vehement anti-racists to card carrying white nationalists.”

 When such sweeping generalities are applied to other ethnicities, isn’t it called racism?

 Then there’s all this talk about “white privilege” which seems to be applied equally to whites out of work or underpaid as well as to Donald Trump.

 Then we have the charge that critics of Hillary Clinton’s loud approach to campaigning are “sexist” even though Bernie Sanders also shouts a lot.

 As Meghan Daum pointed out in the LA Times, “Clinton is a shouter. Not the bellicose kind, like Sanders, but the testy, scolding kind. Her rhetorical effect sometimes brings to mind a parent counting slowly to three in an effort to get a recalcitrant child to stop whatever it is she's doing right now.”

 In fact, the problem in each of these cases is that politicians appeal to their immediately present audience rather than the even larger one watching it all on television. It’s a rational thing to note and talk about. And you might want to even add the nearly eight years of professorial lecturing we’ve gotten from the current president who seems to think we are all his students.

 And since substance and integrity no longer matter much in American politics, journalists should be at least allowed to cover it all more like the sporting event it has become

Of course, back in the 1960s we had our problems as well. I was at a Student Non-Violent Coordinating meeting when Stokely Carmichael came and said we whites were no longer welcomed in the civil rights movement. Two of my activist friends went to prison and three committed suicide after losing their way in the movement. There were many activists who fought vigorously against the Vietnam War but didn’t have any time for ethnic discrimination or anti-poverty issues. And as a 220 pound iron-pumping 30-something, I was confronted four times at demonstrations by protestors who were certain I was an uncover cop or an FBI  agent.  

Lots of people were doing lots of different things in lots of different ways. And the point was to produce change, not merely to prove one’s own virtue. So you were active also because, with luck, you could actually change how people thought about things.

I knew early on that this was possible because I had changed. In fall of 1965 I wrote, “The public must be conditioned to the realities of the situation. They must be made to understand the necessity of the undramatic, sufficient, and lengthy application of American force in South Vietnam.” Less than a year later I wrote that LBJ’s “Vietnam escapade has been an abject failure.”

One thing I learned from that experience was not to be too hard on people who hadn’t figured it all out. Or who still believed the lies of those at the top.

Today, it too often feels like both liberal and conservative America consider politics an evangelical religion where there are those who have been saved and those who will go to hell. And the ones that don’t think like you are in the latter group.

Which is why so many liberals are willing to define their faith as encompassing things like gay marriage and abortion, while ignoring the economic issues that once made their politics powerful.

For more than three decades, as their own social and monetary status has improved, many liberals have been drifting away from concern over economic matters, creating a huge cultural gap between themselves and the middle and lower class. This has opened the way for the right wing success now peaking with the candidacy of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Liberals didn’t lose the support of the less successful white American; rather they tossed it away.

Part of the secret of successful politics is not to condemn those whom you’re trying to convince. Especially since there aren’t enough liberals around to have a majority just by themselves. They may get into heaven, but they won’t make it often to the White House.

Besides, insisting on the right words and right symbolism at best only gets you that. Picking the right issues and the right actions and forming alliances even with those who don’t think and talk right about everything can get some really important change.

I learned this as an admirer of the community organizer Saul Alinsky, someone who wouldn’t be too well regarded in liberal circles these days. A short time before his death in 1972, he was interviewed by Playboy. An excerpt:

PLAYBOY: The assumption behind the Administration's Silent Majority thesis is that most of the middle class is inherently conservative. How can even the most skillful organizational tactics unite them in support of your radical goals?

 ALINSKY: Conservative? That's a crock of crap. Right now they're nowhere. But they can and will go either of two ways in the coming years -- to a native American fascism or toward radical social change. Right now they're frozen, festering in apathy, leading what Thoreau called "lives of quiet desperation:" They're oppressed by taxation and inflation, poisoned by pollution, terrorized by urban crime, frightened by the new youth culture, baffled by the computerized world around them. They've worked all their lives to get their own little house in the suburbs, their color TV, their two cars, and now the good life seems to have turned to ashes in their mouths. Their personal lives are generally unfulfilling, their jobs unsatisfying, they've succumbed to tranquilizers and pep pills, they drown their anxieties in alcohol, they feel trapped in long term endurance marriages or escape into guilt-ridden divorces. They're losing their kids and they're losing their dreams. They're alienated, depersonalized, without any feeling of participation in the political process, and they feel rejected and hopeless.

They're the first to live in a total mass-media-oriented world, and every night when they turn on the TV and the news comes on, they see the almost unbelievable hypocrisy and deceit and even outright idiocy of our national leaders and the corruption and disintegration of all our institutions, from the police and courts to the White House itself. Their society appears to be crumbling and they see themselves as no more than small failures within the larger failure. All their old values seem to have deserted them, leaving them rudderless in a sea of social chaos. Believe me, this is good organizational material.

 I got my activist start with help from an Alinsky trained Presbyterian minister, learning early not only good strategies but the importance of treating everyone  with respect, finding unity in specific issues rather than a general ideology, and approaching problems as a friendly human and not as a sociology professor sternly parading theories.

As I wrote some years later, “What if we were to start with the unhappy truth that humans have always had a hard time dealing with other peoples, and that much ethnic and sexual antagonism stems not from hate so much as from cultural narcissism? Then our repertoire of solutions might tilt more towards education and mediation and away from being self-righteous multi-cultural missionaries converting yahoos in the wilds of the soul. We could turn towards something more akin to what Andrew Young once described as a sense of ‘no fault justice.’ We might begin to consider seriously Martin Luther King's admonition to his colleagues that among their dreams should be that someday their enemies would be their friends.”

It’s not a bad way to start bringing middle and lower class whites to the progressive agenda. Dump self righteous liberal evangelicalism and find issues that, by pursuing, can make friends with those they have been trained by the right to despise. Talk about middle class white pain instead of white privilege. Teach ethnic commonalities. Find what we share. And choose issues that will make things better for most - regardless of the color of their skin.

One of the other ways the 1960s were different was that we believed that if we worked hard enough in the right way things would get better. We have to recover that sense. And working together on things you didn’t realize you had in common is a great way to start.

Climate change

Inside Climate News  - Since January, wildfires have burned more than 1.7 million acres across Europe and more than 8.5 million acres in the U.S. “The risk is growing more severe. We’re seeing phenomena that are more violent, more intense and more brutal,” said Christine Bouisset, a wildfire researcher at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research.

 As the threat grows, researchers are also questioning whether the way communities prepare for fire needs to change.  In June, the CNRS published a scientific report on wildfires in which experts argued that climate change is challenging France’s current approach and its lack of community organizations. They pointed to Montecito, California, as an example of successful collaborative wildfire governance. “The question of sharing responsibility between institutions and citizens is a crucial governance issue,” the report said….

 Across the U.S., a range of community organizations work alongside public agencies to help residents prepare for wildfires and reduce risks at the local level.

 The Wildfire Adapted Partnership in Colorado was one of the first organizations to “develop the idea of volunteer neighborhood ambassadors, with community members who serve as examples to their neighbors on what fire-adapted living means,” said Bill Trimarco, Archuleta County program manager at WAP.

 Different states have different programs. “These are tools,” said Kris King, a wildfire mitigation specialist at Lake Wenatchee Fire and Rescue in Washington state. “They’re all trying to do the same thing: to encourage residents to do something.”

Time - According to a new report published Oct. 14 in the journal BioScience, “Earth’s climate system is moving deeper into uncharted territory.”

The State of the Climate, an annual report that tracks the Earth’s “vital signs,” monitors several climate-related indicators—ranging from greenhouse gas concentrations and temperature changes to tree cover loss due to wildfire. The researchers found that, of the 16 planetary vital signs, seven are currently at record extremes. This includes sea levels and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Meanwhile, several others, such as areas burned during wildfires and ocean heat levels, show evidence of acceleration or abrupt shifts. 

The State of the Climate, an annual report that tracks the Earth’s “vital signs,” monitors several climate-related indicators—ranging from greenhouse gas concentrations and temperature changes to tree cover loss due to wildfire. The researchers found that, of the 16 planetary vital signs, seven are currently at record extremes. This includes sea levels and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Meanwhile, several others, such as areas burned during wildfires and ocean heat levels, show evidence of acceleration or abrupt shifts. 

The researchers warn that the rate of global warming appears to have accelerated, from about 0.05°C per decade between 1880 and 1970 to roughly 0.36°C per decade between 2010 and 2024—and that the 2°C threshold meant to limit planetary damage could be reached before 2050. These accelerating and intensifying changes could raise the risk of reinforcing feedback loops and crossing tipping points—critical thresholds that, when crossed, can lead to accelerating and often irreversible environmental changes.

"Earth’s life-support systems are being pushed beyond stable limits," the report states, "with changes unfolding faster than our ability to respond." —Simmone Shah Read the full story here.

Donald Trump

The Guardian  - Donald Trump has shelved a widely condemned plan to livestream the execution of a disabled man by firing squad. The US president confirmed the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, convicted of killing 13 people at a military base at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, would not be public.

His administration had faced sweeping criticism, and comparisons to dictatorships in Iran and Afghanistan, after Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, said last week it would “make sure” people were able to watch.

A College-by-College Guide to Which Majors Pay Off — or Don’t

https://freeportfunfacts.blogspot.com/

Polls

The Guardian -  With the midterm elections less than three weeks away, key voting groups including independents, rural voters and even some Republicans are increasingly disenchanted with Donald Trump’s economy, according to an exclusive Harris poll for the Guardian.

The majority of those surveyed were pessimistic about the economy, with three quarters of Americans saying they are concerned about a recession while 61% wrongly believe that the US is already experiencing one. By its typical definition, the US is not currently experiencing a recession.

The poll shows growing weariness across the political spectrum over high prices.

Republicans, fighting to keep control of Congress, are losing support with independent voters, who are expected to be the deciding factor in key swing races. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of independents said the economy is worse, up from 48% who said the same in September 2024 in the heat of the 2024 presidential election.

Even within the Republican ranks, optimism has waned. In February 2025, just a few weeks after Trump was inaugurated, 39% of Republicans said the economy was getting better. By February 2026, just before the US launched attacks against Iran, that optimism was up to 49%. In the latest poll, just 28% of Republicans said the economy is getting better.

Voter purge

 Hartmann Report - With virtually no mention or reporting in the corporate press, Republican-run states are again running the voter purge of millions that gave Donald Trump the White House in 2024.

Yesterday morning, Reuters published a special report on the ways the Trump administration could "interfere" with the midterms, noting that a lawyer in Idaho's Republican attorney general's office bragged that his state had "taken a leading role in ensuring its voter registration list is purged…."

Yep, they used the word "purged." They're not even bothering with the polite terms anymore.

… The GOP-aligned, billionaire-funded Heritage Foundation spent over a decade doing a deep dive into every state looking for voter fraud and noncitizen voters, examining every American vote since 2000 - more than a billion ballots cast nationwide - and found just 89 cases of non-citizen voters. In more than twenty years!

The libertarian Cato Institute did a similar analysis specifically on the 2020 election looking for any evidence that Trump's claims were right that the election was "stolen" from him by "Mexicans" voting in the US election. They concluded the same thing:

“There are likely many problems with America’s voting system and there is no doubt that a non-zero number of non-citizens illegally voted, but there is no good evidence that noncitizens voted illegally in large enough numbers to actually shift the outcome of elections or even change the number of electoral votes.”

Trump’s press secretary claims she misunderstood question about being a lawyer

The Hill:  White House press secretary Katie Zacharia said that she misheard a shouted question about where she passed the bar exam from a reporter earlier this week, leading her to say that she passed the exam when she moved to China.

“I assumed the question was, ‘Where were you after law school?’” Zacharia said in a phone call with The New York Times on Wednesday.

The president was originally asked a question about which state Zacharia passed the bar exam in, before he turned back to her to ask “which state?” The interaction took place on the White House South Lawn as Trump and Zacharia prepared to leave for a campaign trip to Alaska just after Zacharia’s first turn in the White House briefing room.

“That’s all I could hear over the sound of Marine One,” Zacharia told the publication. “And, wanting to respect protocol, the distance behind the president, kept me from moving closer to hear the question.”

The development comes as Zacharia’s legal credentials have come under intense scrutiny after the left-leaning newsletter Popular Information reported that Zacharia is not licensed to practice law in the U.S. or Washington, D.C.

The Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday that Zacharia sat for the California bar exam after she received her law degree from Pepperdine University, but she did not pass. The Journal reported that Zacharia moved to China shortly after and took a job as an associate at the Zhong Lun Law Firm.

The watchdog group Campaign for Accountability filed a complaint with the State Bar of California on Wednesday over her claims that she is a lawyer.

ICE

The Six Pac - Fifty-eight human beings have died in ICE custody since Trump returned to office… And his Border Czar, Tom Homan, said, “We’re not gonna apologize. You can hate all you want, we’re not going anywhere."

This isn't enforcement - it's a regime of death created by Trump and his Republican enablers. They are ripping people from their lives and throwing them into horrifying conditions. We are talking about severe overcrowding, zero sanitation, freezing cells, and rotten, inedible food.

Trump Humiliated With Half-Empty Rally in Middle of Rust Belt

Polling

EMILYs List of women running in battleground races across the country are surging ahead in the polls.

ARIZONA GOVERNOR

Katie Hobbs (D) - 49%
Andy Biggs (R) - 43%

OHIO GOVERNOR

Dr. Amy Acton (D) - 47%
Vivek Ramaswamy (R) - 46%

TEXAS GOVERNOR

Gina Hinojosa (D) - 49%
Greg Abbott (R) - 45%

ARIZONA’S 6TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT

JoAnna Mendoza (D) - 47%
Juan Ciscomani (R) - 45%

IOWA’S 2ND CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT

Lindsay James (D) - 46%
Joe Mitchell (R) - 45%

Secret Service reports record number of threats

Republican Informer - The Secret Service says threat cases jumped about 40 percent this year to roughly 10,000, underscoring the most dangerous environment its protectees have ever faced.  A senior official called the threat environment the highest the agency has ever seen. Most threats now begin online, with lone actors and mental-health crises driving cases. Mental-health interventions tied to suspected threat-makers rose about tenfold versus 2025.

Bank of America hit with third largest fine in Treasury Dept. history

NBC News - Bank of America was ordered to pay $1.2 billion, the third-largest penalty in Treasury Department history, for violating anti-money laundering and sanctions laws, the department said. As part of that total, the bank was ordered to pay $750 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the largest fine it has ever levied. 

The Treasury Department said the bank didn’t report “over $5 billion dollars in suspicious transactions,” including suspicious transactions “indicative of Chinese Money Laundering Networks, fraud, and potential trade-based money laundering.” The bank is also settling “its potential civil liability for 475 apparent violations of multiple sanctions programs,” the Treasury Department said.  How Bank of America responded to the penalties.

Voting

The Hill - President Trump is breaking a more than two-decade-long tradition of welcoming a key group of international election observers to monitor the midterm contest, drawing criticism for discouraging democratic transparency. The U.S. has routinely invited election observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to observe and report on midterm and presidential contests since 2002. Election observations are carried out by the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR).

Trump’s decision puts the U.S. in the same basket as the isolated, autocratic regimes of Belarus and Russia. Those countries have also rejected international observers, and their most recent elections were widely condemned as a sham.  

The U.S. is one of the 57 members of the OSCE, an international body created after the Cold War to promote democracy and human rights in post-Soviet states. The U.S. hosting OSCE election observers is viewed as an important signal of transparency that encourages countries with more vulnerable democracies to open up their elections to observation and monitoring. 

“The Trump Administration’s decision not to invite international observers to the United States is deeply antithetical to the spirit of freedom, democracy and transparency that defines our elections,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the outgoing ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement. 

Donald Trump

President Trump’s administration has filed 42 emergency pleas to the Supreme Court since retaking the White House, surpassing the count from his entire first term. Just last week, the Justice Department asked the justices to stop a ruling favoring Democrats in a fight over TV advertising rates ahead of the midterms.  As the count ticks higher, we’re taking a look at Trump’s scorecard. 

The TV ad rate case and another one concerning transgender inmates remain pending. Four others were withdrawn, leaving 36 emergency cases with an actual decision on the books. 

Trump has effectively won 28 and lost eight, according to The Gavel’s analysis. That’s a nearly 80 percent success rate. 

Read the full scorecard here.

None of those wins was unanimous, however. 

The Supreme Court justices often publicly highlight that the majority of decisions on their regular docket, called the “merits docket,” are unanimous. The court frequently acts unanimously in low-profile emergency disputes, too.  

But when it comes to the president’s emergency requests, the justices’ ideological lines are clear.

Democratic Conservation Alliance

TRUMP SAID: “It’s been getting cooler, not warmer.”

FACT CHECK: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that the summer of 2026 (June through August) was the hottest summer on record for the contiguous United States.

TRUMP SAID: “The ice caps are bigger than they’ve ever been.”

FACT CHECK: Though sea ice naturally fluctuates on a seasonal schedule, yearly minimum and maximum measurements show that it’s declining overall and becoming thinner. This year’s maximum was the lowest on record.

Meanwhile. . .

Maryland Comptroller Brooke Liermann - The Trump administration has proposed stripping away more than 1,400 federal regulations that guide Head Start, which for more than 60 years has opened doors to early education, health screenings, and meals for children from low-income families. Trump’s changes would remove many of the standards that make it work. They would impose an English-only requirement, excluding children whose primary language at home isn’t English, and eliminate standards on class sizes, teacher-child ratios, and services for children with disabilities. In 2024 and 2025, the program served more than 7,000 Maryland children.

Maryland Comptroller Brooke Liermann - The Trump administration has proposed stripping away more than 1,400 federal regulations that guide Head Start, which for more than 60 years has opened doors to early education, health screenings, and meals for children from low-income families. Trump’s changes would remove many of the standards that make it work. They would impose an English-only requirement, excluding children whose primary language at home isn’t English, and eliminate standards on class sizes, teacher-child ratios, and services for children with disabilities. In 2024 and 2025, the program served more than 7,000 Maryland children.

Maryland Comptroller Brooke Liermann - The Trump administration has proposed stripping away more than 1,400 federal regulations that guide Head Start, which for more than 60 years has opened doors to early education, health screenings, and meals for children from low-income families. Trump's changes would remove many of the standards that make it work. They would impose an English-only requirement, excluding children whose primary language at home isn't English, and eliminate standards on class sizes, teacher-child ratios, and services for children with disabilities. In 2024 and 2025, the program served more than 7,000 Maryland children.

The Washington Post: Reflecting pool liner failed in 85 places after flawed renovation, inspection found

Increase in Social Security

NY Times  - Retirees and other beneficiaries will receive the largest annual cost-of-living adjustment since 2023 in their Social Security checks next year, driven mainly by persistently high inflation.  The Social Security Administration announced a 3.6 percent annual cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, on Wednesday after the release of government inflation data for September. The COLA is determined using the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, or CPI-W. The index values for July, August and September are averaged to produce the official adjustment figure.

For the average Social Security beneficiary, the COLA will translate to a $75 monthly increase, the government said. However, the actual amount for any retiree enrolled in Medicare will vary. The Part B premium, which covers outpatient care, is usually deducted from Social Security benefits, changing net COLAs. Separately, Social Security said the maximum amount of earnings subject to the Social Security payroll tax would rise to $192,300, up from $184,500 this year.

The Medicare board of trustees has projected that the monthly Part B premium will rise $6.60 in 2027 to $209.50. The final figure will be released this fall, but if the projection holds, most beneficiaries will receive net COLAs of at least 3 percent.

Trump's new press secretary

NY Times  -  President Trump’s new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, made her debut behind the White House lectern Tuesday morning. It was a bumpy one.

“Good morning!” she began. “I want to thank President Trump for his trust that he has placed in me. I have wanted to work for him for a very long time.”

She spent the next eight minutes reading nervously from a script, looking up at the cameras every couple of lines. Then she said she was ready to take some questions. She called on only three reporters, dropped one wild piece of news, made a slip mixing up her husband and her president, then darted out of there after just five and a half minutes, leaving the White House press corps to scratch its collective head.

Wedding traditions that are slowly being forgotten

America's most mysterious off-limits places