Feels quaint, almost cliché, to say this about a Trump action, but just for the record:

This is all illegal, the President can't simply disregard the laws passed and agencies created by Congress, and both Vought & Trump would be impeached if the Constitution or the rule of law mattered to the GOP.

White House budget director Vought plans to shut down CFPB within months, says it's no longer protecting consumers reut.rs/4qjMIyT

I read the piece. You shouldn't. He dismisses the "No Kings" protests as liberals in blue cities. He invokes Rosa Parks, as if rural white people in the 60s loved everything that the movement then was doing. "We need a movement but not this one" is a core centrist tact these days.

See this for what it is:
*Trump wants to make the military/FBI loyal to him
*GOP refuses bipartisan legislation to pay the military
*Trump creates a new executive power: that he and he alone decides if the military/FBI is paid during shutdown

donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-shutdo...

Trump's mechanism to pay the troops during the shutdown is by far the most illegal budgetary action he's taken as POTUS, potentially setting the stage to break everything.

It's also needless because Congress would easily pass a troop pay bill if Johnson were willing to gavel in.

Long thread.

Trump: "I won Georgia three times. But they say twice. I won it big the second time but we had criminals that didn't allow- I hope they're gonna go into that. I hope they go into the votes which are being stored in Fulton County and take a real look at those votes, because I won it the 2nd time too"

Politico received an initial tip that a Taylor staffer had a swastika neatly pinned to his cubicle during a zoom call. When confronted, the congressman’s press office pretty implausibly sought to present the situation as a police matter, and Politico went along with that in its headline and lede.

Capitol Police called to investigate swastika in GOP congressional office

An American flag altered to include an image of a swastika was found in Rep. Dave Taylor’s office.
www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

It's the first example of news media solidarity I have seen in the Trump era.

Mike Johnson: "I don't think it will end before the Hate America Rally on the Mall on Saturday, where all the Marxists and antifa people and all the people who hate Trump and hate America will be there."

Breaking: At least one US military strike in the Caribbean targeted Colombians on a boat leaving from Colombia, sources tell us.

The deliberate targeting of Colombians suggests the US military’s campaign is wider than previously believed www.cnn.com/2025/10/15/p...