Health

 Two Maine providers have been accused of Medicaid violations by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. Plus: The state is planning a public hearing over if Prime Healthcare Foundation is meeting staffing and care standards in operating Central Maine Healthcare.

11 secret rooms inside the White House you'll never get to tour

India

Time  - The world’s largest democracy, India, is in turmoil. After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government raised unfounded speculation about “illegal” Bangladeshi voters, an overhaul of India’s electoral registration system stripped 130 million names from the voter rolls. Youth-led protests broke out across the country in response, and in the capital of Delhi, swarms of paramilitary personnel were deployed, thousands of protesters were detained, and internet access was restricted.

Black net worth tumbles

MS NOW - A new report by the Federal Reserve Board says that from 2022 to 2025, the median net worth in the United States rose for families of all racial and ethnic groups — except Black people, whose median net worth fell a stunning 25%. During 2019-2022, by contrast, the median net worth for Black families increased by 60%. The median wealth of white families last year was nine times that of Black families. That is the largest gap since 2016.

The median wealth of white families last year was nine times that of Black families. That is the largest gap since 2016.

….Factors in the African American economy’s turnaround are complex and varied. At the macro-level, Trump has convinced much of America, including corporations and colleges, that promoting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts to redress a long legacy of racism is taboo, if not illegal.

Black workers saw his harsh, overzealous firing of federal employees as a community affront because the government, especially in the Post Office decades ago, was a place where Black people could more reliably get jobs, even if at the lower levels, when other employers didn’t hire them.

Donald Trump

Alternet - On Friday, while speaking at a rally in Fort Myers, Florida, President Donald Trump threatened to launch a new war "on our way back from Iran." In Trump's estimation, what the voters want right now is another war -- this time with Cuba. What's more, he appeared to momentarily struggle to remember the name of the government he's currently fighting.

"We have the greatest military equipment in the world. You saw that in Venezuela and you see now in...the national," Trump paused for a moment, then seemed to tell himself to "think of it," before exclaiming, "The Islamic Republic of Iran will tell you that we have the best equipment."

A comment from someone in the audience sent him on a new topic. "He wants to know what about Cuba," said Trump. "Give me a break. Don't worry -- we'll take Cuba on our way back from Iran," he said, making a serpentine motion with his hand. After repeating the motion, he assured the crowd, "We'll do a little stopover. Actually, what we're gonna do with Cuba is we're going to come back from Iran, those beautiful ships will pass Cuba, we'll have one of them stop about 50 yards off the coast, they'll raise up their hands, and then we're gonna send [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio in to finish up the thing."

Trump regime

POGO -  Reporting from Government Executive revealed an oversight crisis at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of the Inspector General. Some employees allege that staff cuts, an exodus of institutional knowledge, and a chilling environment perpetuated by Inspector General (IG) Cheryl Mason have “watered down” the work of the watchdog office. Mason was a political appointee before becoming an IG, part of an ongoing trend in which this administration replaces independent IGs with people more politically aligned.

Trump's concentration camp

New Republic - On the evening of March 15, 2025, while government lawyers haggled in a D.C. courtroom, three airplanes delivered 238 chained prisoners to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador. Better known as CECOT, the center is little more than a twenty-first-century concentration camp, where conditions are tantamount to “torture,” in the words of a Salvadoran jurist. According to Kilmar Ábrego García, a U.S. resident who was sent there for three months in early 2025 as the result of an “administrative error,” inmates are subjected to “severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture.”

A grotesque abuse of human rights, the administration’s illegal deportations to CECOT caused a furor across the country. Despite the outrage, however, most elected officials remained silent. Republican lawmakers, perhaps unsurprisingly, either demurred or supported the president. Then–Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem visited the facility, posing in front of a cage brimming with prisoners while sporting a $50,000 watch.

More surprisingly, Democratic congressmen and senators largely stayed mum in the face of administrative evil. “Democrats cannot say a word, apparently,” ex-Republican Bill Kristol seethed on March 31, “without going through some filter of what pollsters have been telling you.” Of the 47 members of the Senate Democratic caucus, only a handful criticized the deportations (and in April, Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen visited Ábrego García in El Salvador). In May, a group of centrist senators introduced a milquetoast fact-finding bill—while deportees languished in the prison.

Their fecklessness was, unfortunately, not an anomaly. Despite Democrats’ eagerness to point out the economic missteps of Trump’s second term, the party’s leaders and most prominent figures rarely denounce its worst human rights violations (which have primarily targeted immigrants and trans people, two groups that most Democratic politicians avoid talking about like the plague).

Heat killed 50,000 Europeans

The Guardian - Heat killed a record 50,000 people in European cities this summer, new research suggests, with scientists blaming climate breakdown for two in every three of the deaths. Morgues and funeral homes filled with bodies from June to August as the heat added by planet-baking pollution cut short an extra 32,000 lives in urban areas, the researchers found. Hot days pushed vulnerable bodies into overdrive and warm nights prevented them from recovering.

The “staggering” death toll, modelled using historical relationships between heat and health in 854 cities, was the worst on record, the study found. Hot weather marked by relentless heatwaves killed nearly twice as many people as it did in each of the two next most dangerous years.

Donald Trump

Independent - President Trump has claimed that the CEO of Google talked him out of renaming the Atlantic Ocean.  Trump, who in his second term has shown a penchant for renaming large bodies of water, made the claim at a rally in South Carolina as he tried to drum up support for Senator Darline Graham ahead of the midterm elections.

“We have a lake, we have a gulf. Now we need a river, and we need an ocean,” he said, referring to executive orders to rename Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico to Lake America and the Gulf of America, respectively.

Trump went on to say that he would consider only two oceans for bearing either his name or America’s. 

Independent -  President Donald Trump on Friday lost his temper with yet another journalist as he said he did not care about Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton’s history of being raped by her late stepfather and continued to voice support for a widely condemned ad targeting Acton — by using a clip of her estranged mother calling her a “liar.”

 Speaking as he departed the White House for a rally in Florida and a weekend at his Palm Beach home, Trump upbraided a female reporter for NBC News who pressed him about his continued support for GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s decision to run the television spot, which shows Acton’s birth mother, Donna Arthur, accusing her daughter of being “a liar” and warning the people of Ohio not to vote for her.

“You're a horrible little reporter, aren't you,” Trump said after the journalist informed him of her employer’s identity.

Acton, 60, has said she was raped by her stepfather when she was 12 years old and has not spoken to Arthur since 1978 after the latter refused to believe her and instead sided with her husband, whom she stayed with, even after he was charged, until his death.

NBC News - When voters headed to the polls nearly two years ago, Donald Trump promised them cheaper groceries, gas below $2 a gallon and a wave of new manufacturing jobs. They elected him president — and got the opposite. Instead, prices have kept rising and wages have struggled to keep pace with inflation. While the broader economy has grown at a healthy rate, the gains have disproportionately flowed to the wealthiest households.

….Take cheaper groceries. Prices are up 3.5% from January 2025, when Trump came into office, in part because of tariffs and higher fuel costs following the Iran war.  Speaking of fuel, Trump promised gas for $2 a gallon. But the national average of regular gas is $4.27, according to AAA — the first time gas has ever averaged more than $4 a gallon in October.

Taxes, however, are lower on average, as Trump promised. And while tax law partially achieves his pledge to eliminate taxes on tips and overtime, the reality is a little more complicated.

Alternet -  In the wake of President Donald Trump’s rallies on Wednesday, a widely cited psychologist and body language expert warned of a “shocking new symptom” of the commander-in-chief’s increasingly apparent “neurological decline.” According to Dr. John Garrison, Trump displayed a “wide variety of neurological symptoms” suggesting a severe “dysfunction,” and it’s only going to get worse.

“I've been saying for a while now the signs and symptoms of the neurological dysfunction are going to become more obvious,” says Garrison, asserting, “It is more obvious now.”

He plays a clip in which Trump makes an abrupt "eeerp" noise in the middle of speaking. According to Garrison, “There's several possibilities of what this could be. This could be something like I talked about a couple of months ago, like a focal aware seizure or something similar. But one thing we know for sure is that we're seeing motor dysfunction. We're also seeing vocal dysfunction.” Whatever the cause, warns Garrison, it is “a startling and absolutely shocking new symptom.” 

New Republic -  “If you don’t want Communists controlling the Senate, which is between JIIIAAAAT,” Trump slurred. “How about the gentleman from a place called Michigan, he’s in a jihadist. He’s a jihadist!”

Trump was referring to Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is Muslim and a Democrat—not a Communist or jihadist.

Later, in a desperate attempt to appeal to normal people, Trump once again pretended he could relate to struggles with landscaping equipment, with some … creative insertions.

“You got to be very smart to turn on a lawnmower. I don’t want you to have to think too much. I’d like you to POWW or BIIING,” Trump said.  

Health

Washington Post - A groundbreaking vaccine reduced the risk of death or recurrence of melanoma by almost half, an encouraging signal for a treatment seeking federal approval that has boosted the fortunes of drugmakers Moderna and Merck and could usher in a new wave of cancer treatments.

The drug, intismeran autogene, which uses messenger RNA (mRNA) to deliver a vaccine tailored to the genetic profile of a patient’s cancer tumor, reduced the risk of recurrence or death from melanoma by 42 percent compared to a standard treatment in a Phase 3 clinical trial, Moderna and Merck announced Thursday.

“It sounds incredibly positive,” Karen Knudsen, CEO of the Parker Institute, a nonprofit for cancer therapeutic research and development, said of the results. “This looks like yet more evidence of a well-conducted, meaningful study.”  

10 air passenger rights airlines hope you never find out about

Voting

Jonathan Willson Hartgrove - The Associated Press reported this week that early voting turnout has surged over past midterms, especially in states with key Senate races that will decide who controls the upper chamber of Congress.

In Texas, early voting is up 74% compared with 2022. In Kansas it’s more than doubled. Maine, North Carolina and Ohio also have seen increases of more than 30% in early in-person and mail voting compared with the same point in 2022.

Here in North Carolina, early voting opened a week ago today, and first day turnout was 47% higher than the first day of the midterm vote in 2022

Meanwhile. . .

NBC News- The Justice Department has filed suit against Alaska election officials, seeking to block the results of November’s U.S. Senate election from being certified unless incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan wins.

DOJ attorneys argue that the presence of Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr. on the ballot could mislead supporters of the sitting senator, Daniel S. Sullivan. Sullivan Jr., whose candidacy survived an earlier legal challenge, is running against Sen. Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola. Republicans have alleged that Sullivan Jr.’s candidacy is an attempt to cause confusion and help Democrats flip the seat.

How Denver handles homelessness

NY Times -   Homelessness, all appearances to the contrary, is a long-solved problem. We know both the causes and the cure. You wouldn’t think that’s the case from visiting many U.S. cities. Stymied by political and financial hurdles, progressive bastions — including Los Angeles, Seattle and Burlington, Vt. — appear to have given up. They have surrendered public spaces to the homeless and their encampments to the point that it’s difficult to describe these spaces as truly for the public anymore.

Denver shows what happens when a city puts into place proven policies with determination and focus. Not only has it significantly reduced homelessness; it embarrasses every other urban jurisdiction that has failed to deal with its Covid-era surge of homeless encampments. Other cities no longer have an excuse.

Denver has recorded the biggest recent drop in street homelessness among the largest U.S. cities, according to my analysis of local data. The city’s drop was roughly 13 times the national rate in 2025, the most recent year for federal statistics. Since 2023, Denver’s unsheltered population is down 64 percent. “What they’re doing is working,” said Samantha Batko, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Urban Institute, which is independently evaluating the city’s progress.

Since Mayor Mike Johnston of Denver took office in 2023, he has focused on getting unsheltered homelessness to zero. He has done so by using some fairly standard ideas. Police officers break up homeless encampments, warning that repeated violations could lead to arrest. With the help of social workers, the city connects those people to services and shelters. Crucially, it has expanded those services to ensure that officers and social workers have something to connect people to.

By successfully combining enforcement and social services, Denver demonstrates that cities don’t need to choose between those binaries. They should do both.

Politically, none of this is easy. On the policing side, progressives remain skeptical of using law enforcement to deal with what they see as largely an economic issue. On the housing side, the constraint is money. Building housing and shelters requires public and private funds that cities often don’t have and aren’t willing to prioritize over other spending and tax cuts

Health costs

Time - Amber Kostka, who owns The Stockpot restaurant in Hampton Roads, Va., says she has tried to do right by her employees by offering them health insurance, alongside good wages and a 401k. 

But as costs have risen—premiums have roughly tripled since the company first started offering health insurance in 2018—her employees are increasingly telling her they can’t afford health insurance. That’s even though she splits the cost of premiums with employees, which are roughly $400 a month

Instead, employees are dropping out of the plan and going uninsured, she says. About 35% of her eligible employees now buy the employer-sponsored health insurance, she says, down from 50% prior to COVID. She wants to warn them about the risks of going without insurance, she says, but also knows their finances are extremely tight. “It’s just a cost thing, at the end of the day,” she says. “You can’t stop paying for groceries.” 

Her employees aren’t alone. The share of working-age U.S. adults without health insurance rose to 11.2% in 2026, up from 8.9% in 2024, according to new research from the Commonwealth Fund. People don’t have health insurance because the costs of everything—including gasoline, housing, and food—are rising, and they’re deciding they can’t afford to pay for even employer-sponsored plans like Kostka’s. “The whole system just seems like a complete gamble with people’s lives,” she says. 

The real cost of tariffs

MS NOW - President Donald Trump promised that his tariff policies would make the country richer and would bring in enough revenue to eliminate the need for income tax and to pay down the country’s debt. Instead, Trump voters in Michigan told MS NOW they feel poorer, as income tax is still on the books and the national debt has soared to $40 trillion.

Increased prices due to tariffs continue to pinch consumers across the country, and few are paying a higher price than Michiganders.

In September, a study for the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, a nonpartisan “small government” research group, estimated that the impact of tariffs on Michigan households since January 2025 has been somewhere between $23 billion and $26 billion, which breaks down to an estimated burden of about $6,000 per household.

“I hate them. They suck,” Dennis Walls, a three-time Trump voter who works in landscaping and is looking for a second job, said of tariffs….

Donald Trump

NBC News - defamation lawsuit against the BBC by Dec. 11, or face the possibility of having his $10 billion action dismissed.  U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett handed down the order after the BBC’s lawyers complained that Trump was stalling. He was supposed to sit for a deposition on Oct. 16, but canceled it for a “matter of national importance,” which an attorney for the news outlet said had turned out to be a political rally and fundraiser.

Politico - ABC programs are already tempering their election coverage ahead of the midterms to avoid angering President Donald Trump,” as Trump’s Federal Communications Commission threatens to revoke ABC’s broadcast licenses.

Young voters and Trump

Data: Harvard Youth Poll, Fall 2026; Chart: Emily Peck/Axios

Which states are the most free?

Health

Washington Post -  Last year, startled scientists reported that the average human brain they studied contained roughly the weight of a plastic spoon in microplastics and nanoplastics. Now, a deeper look suggests a much broader assortment of material from the outside world — silica, metals, soot and other debris — is getting through.

Researchers from the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center and other institutions examined, in extraordinary detail, brain tissue from 11 people who died at ages 80 to 91. They discovered that some particles had penetrated deep into the brain, reaching the amygdala, a region that helps shape emotion and memory.

The finding is part of a broad shift in how scientists are thinking about the link between air pollution and conditions that impact the brain such as dementia, Parkinson’s and autism.

For years, a leading explanation has been that pollution harms the brain indirectly, by triggering inflammation and other changes throughout the body. That idea hasn’t gone away. But scientists are now exploring whether that pollution may also act more directly.

What you didn’t know about Benjamin Franklin

American Facts   - Did you know Benjamin Franklin left school at just 10 years old? Or that at 16, he secretly wrote newspaper columns under a woman’s name? And what about the fact that he was a vegetarian? We all know Franklin as a Founding Father, inventor, and statesman, but his life was filled with odd habits, surprising choices, and stories that sound almost too eccentric to be true. From his unusual "air baths" to the invention of a musical instrument that captivated Mozart, here are 10 things you may not know about the unique life of Benjamin Franklin.

Hooked to YouTube

NBC News -  A sixth grader in Wisconsin viewed 2,204 YouTube videos last school year. In Pennsylvania, an eighth grader viewed more than 4,700.

Over the past decade, YouTube has become ubiquitous in the American classroom. Many school districts give students their own laptops and encourage them to watch educational videos on the platform. But districts often struggle to effectively restrict what else students can watch, and YouTube, which has become ingrained in class curricula, does not give schools a way to disable addictive features like autoplay and TikTok-style YouTube Shorts unless they block the website entirely. Google says it's up to schools to decide whether to allow YouTube access and that administrators must obtain parents' permission annually before enabling YouTube.

Still, millions of students have access to billions of videos, leaving some endlessly scrolling through targeted recommendations that have nothing to do with school.

Donald Trump

Newsweek-   President Donald Trump has renewed calls for New Mexico to be rebranded "New America," claiming that the name change would "add great value and prestige" to the state and increase home values and incomes.

"New Mexico should immediately change its name to New America," Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Monday. "We are not Mexico, we are the United States of America! The name would add great value and prestige to the State! Home Values and Incomes would rise, and you would be even prouder while saluting our beautiful American Flag! Maybe even the Crooked Elections, that New Mexico is known for, would become honest again!"

….The suggestion fits into Trump’s efforts to rebrand geographic landmarks and places with a patriotic twist, including the Gulf of Mexico—which he renamed "Gulf of America"—and Lake Ontario, which he has designated "Lake America."

Alternet America - Trump warned a Kansas rally crowd that America would burn like France if Republicans lose the midterms.

Independent -   President Donald Trump can’t stop gushing about Ohio Senator Jon Husted’s body during his attempts to boost the Republican candidate ahead of the midterms — even when he’s campaigning in a completely different state.

Trump first raved about Husted’s physical features, namely his butt, during a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, last week after learning that the senator is a former All-American defensive back at the University of Dayton.

“I don’t do this with men very often. I started examining [Husted’s] body because I didn’t know he was a great athlete, and I looked, and I watched up and down,” Trump told supporters last week. “I looked at his ass, and I looked at the whole, and then I looked at his hands. Look at his hands. He’s got these like claws.”….

“So he’s over here. I’m over here, and I’m studying his body. I’ve never studied the body of a man before. It’s not my thing. Nothing wrong with it, of course,” Trump said with a chuckle. “I always precede it by saying, ‘Nothing wrong,’ but it’s never been my thing, to be honest with you.”

Trump continued: “But I looked at his ass, and then I looked at his legs. I said, ‘His ass, s***, it’s like, it’s like a pile of muscle. Then I looked at his legs, and I said, ‘Man, his feet are big.’ Then I looked at his shoulders, and I tapped him on the shoulder, and it actually hurt my hand.”

The president then added: “He’s like a piece of steel. I said, ‘This guy’s a monster!’”

Meanwhile. . .

Washington Post - A small group of U.S. national security officials has been discreetly advising state governments and congressional lawmakers on how to prepare for the possibility that the Trump administration will attempt to interfere in November’s midterm elections, according to people involved in the effort. The group includes about 10 current and former officials with experience in the Defense Department, some of whom have previously focused on countering authoritarianism abroad. 

Prime Chronicle -  France has arrested thousands and shut hundreds of schools, yet leaders still refuse a national emergency. About 5,000 people were detained amid nationwide student protests, most of them minors.  Authorities reported 256,000 demonstrators, with many marches peaceful alongside pockets of violence. Hundreds of schools closed due to safety risks and damage, with reported student injuries.

The Congressional Insider -  A nonprofit’s review of local 2026 counts points to an 8.2% national decline in veteran homelessness. The estimate suggests the number of homeless veterans could fall below 30,000 for the first time since 2009…. Veteran homelessness has fallen about 56% since 2010.

Polls

PopularResistance - Comprehensive global polls show Israel is now the most unpopular country on Earth, following its thoroughly documented genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. The organization the Alliance of Democracies conducts a comprehensive study every year called the Democracy Perception Index.

This group is by no means biased against Israel; it is in fact funded by Israel’s closest allies, including the European Union, US government-financed organizations, Ukraine, Taiwan, and major US corporations like Microsoft and Palantir.

….For its 2026 survey, the Alliance of Democracies interviewed tens of thousands of people in 85 countries, and asked them for their opinion on 132 foreign states and international organizations.The comprehensive study found that Israel is the most disliked country on Earth — with an even lower approval rating than North Korea and Afghanistan.

The United States, the main sponsor of Israel, is the fifth-most hated country.

Most Americans support democracy

Jennifer Rubin -    As the recently-released 17th American Values survey (a mammoth sampling of 5200 adults) reveals, we have a pro-democracy, reality-based 65 percent (or so) majority, and a discrete radical minority — mostly white Christian nationalists — that holds views the rest of the country find abhorrent. Unfortunately, the latter group dominates one major party and holds disproportionate political power.

….Two-thirds of Americans (68%) say empathy is a foundational moral value that helps build a healthy society, while 27% say it can become dangerous when it leads people away from building a society guided by God’s truth. The vast majority of Democrats (84%) and independents (70%) agree that empathy helps build a healthy society, compared with 54% of Republicans.

White evangelical Protestants are the only religious group in which a majority does not agree that empathy is a foundational moral value (42%). Instead, a majority (54%) say empathy can be dangerous.

How carbon emissions need to be cut

The Guardian -  The world needs to cut carbon emissions by nearly a fifth in the next four years, and by close to half within a decade, to avoid overshooting climate targets by a disastrous margin.

Although the “window has closed” on holding temperature rises to 1.5C, in line with scientific advice, limiting the “overshoot” of that target is still possible, according to the UN Environment Programme (Unep).

But countries are failing to translate their long-term targets on reducing emissions into short-term actions, a report on the “emissions gap” between climate goals and policies has found.

Global carbon output appears to have stalled: the emission levels in 2025 were broadly similar to those of the previous year. But Unep analysts were wary of calling it a peak or plateau, given the vast uncertainties of geopolitics and an increased reliance on fossil fuels, despite strong growth in renewable energy.

Cutting greenhouse gases by 18% by 2030, and by 45% by 2035, would yield a good chance of limiting temperature rises to 1.7C above preindustrial levels. This would still allow events such as the record heatwaves of the last few months to become frequent and common, but could help prevent them from getting drastically worse.

Governments were warned for years that time was running out, said Inger Andersen, the executive director of Unep. “[We used to say] there’s still an opportunity if we make this herculean effort [to stay within the 1.5C limit],” she said. “It’s now clear the herculean effort was not made. We procrastinated, and now we are saying this window has closed.”

Ukraine

The Hlll -  President Trump’s warming relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which may lead to a trilateral summit of the United States, Russia and China to resolve the fate of Ukraine, is getting strong pushback from Republicans in Congress.

Several Republicans have panned the idea that Trump would huddle with Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, two foreign leaders largely viewed in Congress as adversaries to American interests, to cut a peace deal that Ukraine would be forced to accept.

….Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) called a potential summit with Putin and Xi to decide Ukraine’s fate “foolhardy” and “morally wrong.”

“To not include Ukraine is nonsense,” he told Sirius XM’s “The Julie Mason Show.”

“Ukrainians have got to be part of any peace deal. It’s not only essential because otherwise we won’t have peace, but it’s also the right thing to do,” he added. “Russia is trying to kill Americans around the world, covertly and overtly.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) declared in a CNN interview that “Putin is playing President Trump like a fiddle” and warned “history is not going to look good on an America that failed to rise up and defend the Western world if Putin actually gets his way.”

The Guardian - Vladimir Putin ordered the release of an American from a Russian jail as he met Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg on Wednesday for fresh talks on ending the war in Ukraine, amid increasingly close relations between Moscow and Washington.

Trump had previously asked Putin to free Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old former teacher who had spent more than four years in Russian jails on charges of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine.

His release appeared to be Moscow’s latest calculated move to bring Trump further into line with Putin’s position on Ukraine, while offering the US president a diplomatic victory before the midterm elections.

Trump Pushes to Evict the Press From the White House

NY Times - In late August, during one of Karoline Leavitt’s final meetings with President Trump in the Oval Office, he pitched her on an idea in front of several senior aides. He told her to move reporters out of the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, which would effectively remove news organizations from the White House. It would be, he told her, her “last legacy.”

But the proposal never moved forward while she was there. The president had put the request to her several times over months, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions who were not authorized to speak publicly. Ms. Leavitt officially stepped down as White House press secretary on Aug. 27.

Mr. Trump has told aides he would prefer to bring back the indoor pool President Franklin D. Roosevelt added in 1933 as therapy for his polio-afflicted legs; President Richard Nixon later covered it over to make room for the news media. Journalists who are credentialed to cover the White House work out of a small office space connected to the press briefing room.

While moving the media out of the White House may be a relatively small debate considering Mr. Trump’s attacks on journalists more broadly, it would be highly symbolic. The proximity of the media to the seat of U.S. executive power has long been an acknowledgment of the importance of a free press in a constitutional democracy.

Trump is empowering Putin, abandoning Ukraine, and preparing to bargain with dictators over the future of the world. The Republicans are doing nothing...

Thom Hartmann - What the hell is going on in the Republican Party?

Trump gutted his own Russia sanctions law, cut a diesel deal with Putin, and is now talking about carving up the world with Putin and Xi. Congress has the power to stop him right now: why are Thune and Johnson still on vacation?

Yesterday Donald Trump told reporters he’s ready to sit down with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in Shenzhen next month — apparently, a modern-day Yalta conference to carve up the world — and that Ukraine’s president may not be invited to the meeting that will decide Ukraine’s fate.

That came just three days after he spit on the grave of Lindsey Graham by signing an executive order waiving every operative section of the Lindsey Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act that both houses of Congress had passed on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis.

Gone are the 500 percent tariffs on Russian goods, the secondary sanctions on Putin’s oil customers, and the requirement that the sanctions stay in place until Russia made peace on terms Ukraine accepted. All destroyed on a Friday night while Congress was out of town. And now he’s publicly, shamelessly defending it and essentially daring Republicans in Congress to do anything about it.

This all came a week after one of Trump’s roughly every-two-weeks-since-he-was-sworn-in phone calls with Putin, presumably to get his instructions on how to destroy American democracy, gut our government, and hand Europe over to the revived USSR that Putin fantasizes about.

Putin apparently ordered Trump to end diesel sanctions and thus send him billions of dollars to build more drones and glide bombs to kill more Ukrainian children, and Trump said, “Sir, yes sir!”

…..While Democrats and average Americans are furious, a tiny handful of Republicans have timidly objected.