Republicans to Spend Shutdown Playing Games at Five-Star Resort

Senate Republicans have a glorified resort vacation scheduled just days after the looming government shutdown deadline.

Politico’s Playbook obtained an invitation for the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s fall “meeting” at the five-star Sea Island Resort in Sea Island, Georgia, October 3–5. Their schedule will include buffet meals, pickleball, golf, shooting, and lawn games—all as the fates of millions of Americans hang in the balance. Rates per night range from $495 to $599 per night, and the entire trip is paid for by the NRSC.

When asked by Playbook if Senate Republicans still plan to visit the resort if the government shuts down, which looks incredibly likely, an NRSC spokesperson refused to comment.

On Tuesday, September 30, Congress will either pass a destructive continuing resolution that will slash funding for health care and homeless shelters and increase spending on mass deportation and war—or shut down the government and give Trump an excuse to furlough or fire hundreds of thousands of federal workers. Pickleball really isn’t appropriate at a time like this.

The Democrats, for what it’s worth, aren’t innocent, either. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s “Napa Retreat” is scheduled for October 13–14, shortly after the Republicans’, and on what would be day 12 of a shutdown. And while there is still uncertainty about whether the government will remain open past September, the fact that our leaders already have their vacations planned either way does not inspire hope.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s $20 billion Argentinian bailout is not only poised to prop up President Javier Milei’s anarcho-capitalist regime with U.S. taxpayer dollars; it’s also set to deliver a significant windfall to one of Bessent’s old friends, per a Monday report by Judd Legum at Popular Information.

Robert Citrone, a billionaire who founded the hedge fund Discovery Capital Management, has a decadeslong relationship with Bessent that’s gone unreported in the U.S. press.

Legum cites descriptions in Latin American business publications of Bessent and Citrone’s friendship, including one paper that notes their “personal relationship as well as a past working relationship.” He also reports that when they were co-workers at Soros Fund Management, Citrone, by his own account, gave Bessent highly profitable investment advice.

Since Milei’s ascendance, Citrone has bet big on the Argentine economy. But amid the recent economic downturn under Milei, his Argentine investments were in trouble.

Enter Bessent. Last week, the treasury secretary announced a $20 billion currency swap line that, Citrone told Bloomberg, “has helped tremendously” and “will pay dividends for the U.S. strategically.” It’s certainly boosted Citrone’s holdings. (Notably too, Legum writes, “In early September, days before Bessent’s announcement, Citrone purchased more Argentine bonds.”)

This wasn’t the first time the U.S. treasury secretary has seemingly pleased Citrone by acting on Argentina’s behalf.

Legum, citing the financial publication CE Noticias Financieras, reports that Citrone lobbied Bessent to push for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund in April, as the country’s economic woes grew. Bessent then reportedly helped persuade the IMF to disburse $20 billion to Argentina, which still failed to stabilize its economy, thus setting the stage for America’s own $20 billion intervention.

Members of Donald Trump’s administration are scrambling to right their ship, after the president’s tariffs sent a major foreign trading partner into the arms of Argentina, which just received a massive bailout from the U.S. government.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was spotted at the United Nations General Assembly last week reading a panicked message from “BR,” who some have determined to be Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins. The message linked to the X account of Ben Scholl, a midwestern grain trader who has sounded the alarm on Washington’s newly-tossed lifeline to Buenos Aires.

“Just a heads up. I am getting more intel, but this is highly unfortunate. We bailed out Argentina yesterday and in return, Argentina removed their export tariffs on grains, reducing their price to China at a time when we would normally be selling to China,” the message read.

“Soy prices are dropping further because of it. This gives China more leverage on us,” the message continued, with Rollins adding: “On a plane but scott I can call you when I land.”

The photograph, taken by photojournalist Angelina Katsanis for the Associated Press, has already circulated through Argentine news.

Last week, Bessent pledged that the United States was “ready to do what is needed within its mandate to support Argentina,” which was a “systemically important U.S. ally in Latin America.” He said that U.S. officials were in talks to establish a $20 billion swap line with Argentina’s Central Bank—an institution Argentine President Javier Milei once promised to abolish—and purchase secondary or primary government debt. Bessent even hinted at handouts from U.S. companies.

Scholl argued that this was a huge mistake. “China and Argentina work together for soybeans as Bessent offers to subsidize the Argentine economy,” Scholl wrote on X Tuesday. “They think you are stupid.”

China, the largest buyer of U.S. soybeans, has not purchased any American soybeans since May, pivoting to suppliers in Argentina and Brazil as Trump struggles to land an actual trade deal with Beijing. Even top Republicans have been forced to admit that Trump’s tariffs have created a squeeze for farmers, one that the president said could be offset with “millions” or “billions” of tariff revenue—he wasn’t actually sure.

“The U.S. trade war with China has dealt a huge blow to American soybean producers, since China paused soybean imports from the U.S.,” Rohit Chopra, former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Board, wrote on X Monday. “But this may not be temporary, as Argentina and other countries cut deals with China to cut America out of the business.”

“The Treasury Secretary should: (1) Immediately hit pause on this inappropriate bailout of Argentina that is further harming American farmers (2) Affix a privacy screen to his iPhone, available online and in stores for roughly $10,” Chopra wrote in a separate post.

Oklahoma public school teachers are required to teach the Bible to their students—but the copies they received from the state earlier this month to do so don’t accurately reflect history.

Former state Superintendent Ryan Walters placed a 55,000 unit order for new Bibles in October, but the parameters he set for permissible editions were eyebrow-raisingly specific. Bid documents required the successful edition to include the King James text as well as several core elements of U.S. history lesson plans, including copies of the Pledge of Allegiance, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the U.S. Constitution. That narrowed the pool down to one option available on the market: Donald Trump and Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A. Bible.

Aaron Baker, a history and government teacher in Oklahoma City, received two copies of Trump’s edition to his classroom earlier this month. However, he quickly noticed that something was amiss: The version of the Constitution published between the book’s leather-bound folds was “wrong.”

The version of the Constitution delivered to Oklahoma’s classrooms for statewide instruction was 160 years out of date and excluded more than a dozen amendments.

Notably, the incorrect version still featured the three-fifths compromise, a vestige of slavery that handed more political power to slave-owning states, while omitting the Thirteenth Amendment, which officially abolished slavery. The incorrect edition also lacked the Fourteenth Amendment, which constitutionalized the right to due process and granted citizens equal protection under the law, shielding them from state action.

In addition, Trump’s Bible is missing the Nineteenth Amendment, which grants women the right to vote; the Twenty-Second Amendment, which limits the president to two terms in power; and the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, which lowered the legal voting age from 21 to 18.

Altogether, Trump’s God Bless the U.S.A. Bible, as delivered to Oklahoma’s public schools, did not include Amendments 11 through 27. The text of the Bible itself appeared unchanged from the King James version.

The New Republic reached out to the publisher of the Bibles for an explanation as to why it chose a copy of the Constitution that hadn’t been used since the Civil War but did not receive a response. The publisher did, however, respond to Oklahoma’s local broadcast station KFOR-TV, informing the network that it had made the decision to “only include the original Founding Fathers’ documents, as Amendments 11-27 were added at later dates.”

“The Constitution is a living document,” Baker said on social media, condemning the book as revisionist history. “It is something that has grown and changed over the years, and the way we teach it, and the way we present it, must reflect that reality. It was created to be changed.”

Baker criticized the publisher’s rationale, likening the publication of an inaccurate version of the Constitution for mass instruction to feeding raw dough at a family dinner.

“As far as I’m concerned, that’s like your family asking for bread with dinner, but instead of baking rolls you bring raw dough to the table,” Baker said. “And they ask, ‘What is this?’ And you tell them, ‘Well, I wanted to give you the authentic experience of bread as it existed before I even baked it.’”

Walters resigned last week from his position atop Oklahoma’s Education Department to run Teacher Freedom Alliance, an initiative by the conservative think tank Freedom Foundation with a mission to end teachers’ unions across the country. Walters has previously accused Oklahoma’s teachers’ union of being a “terrorist organization,” and in an interview on Fox News Wednesday, said he wanted to “destroy the teachers’ unions” and “build an army of teachers to defeat the teachers’ unions once and for all.”

In his brief two-year tenure atop Oklahoma’s public school system, the MAGA politico also appointed Chaya Raichik—the woman behind the far-right, anti-LGBTQ+ social media account “Libs of TikTok”—to the Oklahoma state Department of Education’s Library Media Advisory Committee, handing Raichik the power to decide what children across the state are allowed to read. Prior to her appointment, Oklahoma was ranked fourth in the nation for the most banned books, according to a 2022 report by Pen America.

White House budget director Russell Vought reportedly fumed at spending cuts directed by former DOGE czar Elon Musk.

The New York Times reported Monday that Vought, a key architect of the Project 2025 playbook for Donald Trump’s second term, felt undercut by Musk’s brief efforts to make sweeping reforms, as Vought embarked on his plan to force a legal battle over Congress’s power of purse. Musk’s supposed cost-cutting initiatives were affecting programs Vought wanted to keep in place.

“We’re going to let DOGE break things, and we’ll pick up the pieces later,” Vought told his staff, three people told the Times.

Vought was reportedly outraged when Musk sent an email to federal employees prompting them to explain five accomplishments they’d made that week. Musk’s so-called “pulse-check” pissed off agency heads and irritated Vought, who believed the move had sidestepped personnel procedures and needlessly exposed the government to liability.

Vought was also furious that Musk had moved to eliminate the Department of Education’s data office, two people told the Times. Vought wanted to use information collected by the agency to undermine programs that benefit Black and brown students, as well as students with disabilities or poor backgrounds. Vought has previously called to abolish the agency entirely.

Vought’s spokesperson Rachel Cauley denied that he made these comments, but acknowledged that he felt annoyed by the billionaire bureaucrat.

Vought isn’t the only one in the White House who was irritated at Musk: The Tesla chief and the evidently ill-tempered Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly almost came to blows while arguing about the Internal Revenue Service.

Now that Musk has vacated the White House, Vought has been free to move ahead with his plan to set new legal precedent for Trump to block spending from policies and programs that he personally disagrees with, and dismantle the administrative state how he sees fit.

As the government funding deadline fast approaches, Vought has taken to openly trying to intimidate Congress. The White House Office of Management and Budget wrote Congress last week urging them to pass a short-term measure to keep the government open through November. If they fail to agree on a deal, Vought’s office has warned federal agencies to prepare for another round of mass firings, with a focus on eliminating positions where funding has been discontinued or that do not align with Trump’s agenda.

Meanwhile, Democrats are working to ensure tax credits from the Affordable Care Act that are set to expire at the end of this year. An estimated 5.1 million Americans will lose their insurance by 2034 if funding expires, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

President Trump has caused federal drug prosecutions to plummet as his administration prioritizes kidnapping immigrants off the streets. 

Reuters has reported that the Trump administration is prosecuting people for breaking federal drug laws at the lowest rate in over two decades. 

“We’re seeing a reduced amount of time on long-term investigations so agents can go out in their raid gear and be seen supporting immigration raids,” an anonymous senior Justice Department official told Reuters. 

While drug overdose deaths did drop during the Biden administration, drug trafficking itself hasn’t tailed off at all. In fact, it rose by six percent this year, while the number of people charged with drug trafficking fell by six percent, according to Reuters. Charges for “drug conspiracy” fell by 15 percent, and prosecutions for using illegal guns for drug trafficking fell by five percent.  

This has, in all likelihood, been caused by the Trump administration’s decision to prioritize arresting as many immigrants as possible. “You cannot conduct thorough, multi-agency drug investigations if you’re running around doing this other stuff,” said a former DEA official who oversaw the shift diverting agents to immigration enforcement. 

That, along with decisions like shutting down the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, has made it harder for officials at the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to do their jobs. Instead of investigating cartels, they’re whisked away to assist in immigration raids, even if they have no background or experience in them.

Trump and his Cabinet seem to think that Mexican and South American immigrants are the primary arbiters of drug trafficking. “[President Trump’s] highly successful efforts at closing the border and removing dangerous criminal illegal aliens from our communities, along with prosecuting violent drug traffickers and targeting transnational cartels, means less illegal drugs are circulating in American communities,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in response to Reuters’s story.

But the numbers prove that’s simply not the case. It’s been clear from the very start that this administration is more concerned with the appearance of strength and success than actually being strong and successful. Echoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s depraved photo ops, ATF and DEA agents have been specifically directed to display their agency badges on their armor so that the White House can post them on social media. 

“A lot of good cases are just going stagnant for some photo-op bullshit,” said a former ATF agent. 

The ATF and DEA did not respond to Reuters’s questions about the priority shift.

Stephen Miller was apparently calling the shots in the Trump administration’s lethal military strikes on Venezuelan boats accused of drug smuggling. The White House deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser played a principal role in the operations, which were led by his homeland security council, The Guardian reported Monday.

According to three Guardian sources familiar with the matter, Miller’s influence over the strikes “at times” even “superseded” that of Marco Rubio, who is President Trump’s secretary of state and national security adviser. This comes as Miller continues to consolidate power in the homeland security council.

Miller’s role, The Guardian notes, helps account for the shaky legal justification the administration has provided for the attacks: The Trump administration claims the president was using his authority under Article II of the Constitution, based on the notion that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a foreign terrorist organization. This recalls Miller’s repeated assertions that TdA is “running Venezuela” in his argument for deporting Venezuelan immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act.

The revelation about Miller’s role also recalls reports that he mused about bombing unarmed immigrants in boats as an adviser in the first Trump administration.

Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security official who resigned in Trump’s first term and became a vocal critic of the president, recounted an exchange between Miller and the then-commandant of the Coast Guard—which Miller vehemently denies—in his book Blowback.

Miller, according to Taylor, asked the commandant why the administration couldn’t “use a Predator drone to obliterate” boats “full of migrants” in international waters. The commandant replied that it would violate “international law,” but Miller was interested not in “the moral conflict of drone-bombing migrants,” but “whether anyone could stop America from doing it.” He told the commandant, per Taylor, “I don’t think you understand the limitations of international law.”

The president threatened a bevy of new tariffs against foreign-made products Monday morning, rattling America’s industries for another among countless times.

In a post to Truth Social, Donald Trump announced he intended to impose a 100 percent tariff on films made outside of the country, blaming California Governor Gavin Newsom for what he perceived to be a “stolen” industry.

“Our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries, just like stealing ‘candy from a baby,’” Trump wrote.

Hollywood did not react positively when Trump first aired the possibility of such a tariff in May. One industry insider told CNN at the time that it would “represent a virtually complete halt of production.”

“But in reality, he has no jurisdiction to do this and it’s too complex to enforce,” the insider said.

In a separate post Monday, Trump claimed he would be helping North Carolina—the so-called “furniture capital of the world”—by placing steep tariffs on companies selling foreign-made furniture.

“In order to make North Carolina, which has completely lost its furniture business to China, and other Countries, GREAT again, I will be imposing substantial Tariffs on any Country that does not make its furniture in the United States,” Trump wrote. “Details to follow!!!”

He did not specify exactly how severe the new tariffs would be.

Monday’s threat is just the latest in a long line of whopping trade penalties imposed by the White House. Last week, the president unveiled a 100 percent tariff on branded drugs, a 25 percent tariff on heavy trucks, a 50 percent tariff on kitchen cabinets, and a 30 percent tariff on upholstered furniture.

In the end, it will be America that pays the price for Trump’s aggressive trade policies. Countless companies have already introduced price hikes on consumer goods to offset the cost of doing business under the president’s unconventional economic plan (practically every company outsources some component of its manufacturing or business in the current era of globalized trade).

Some of the companies that have already announced price spikes include Adidas, Nike, AutoZone, BestBuy, Columbia Sportswear, Ford, Macy’s, Nintendo, Proctor & Gamble, Walmart, Target, Shein, and Temu.

Did Donald Trump fall for an AI deepfake of himself?

The president shared a video Saturday that showed him speaking from the Oval Office about a “historic new health care system.” But the video and announcement weren’t real, and the post was deleted from Trump’s Truth Social account just 12 hours later.

The clearly computer-generated clip shared to Trump’s Truth Social showed Lara Trump reporting on Fox News about the president’s new “medbed” hospitals, a far-right medical hoax. An AI-generated Donald Trump announced that every American would receive their own “medbed card,” which would give them access to facilities “designed to restore every citizen to full health and strength.”

“Medbeds” are a far-right conspiracy theory that claims the so-called deep state has access to futuristic medical pods that can cure any ailment. One faction of QAnon believes that the government has been using one to keep former President John F. Kennedy alive.

It’s not clear where exactly the video originated. Investigative reporter Jacqueline Sweet posted on X that the clip appeared to originate from an Instagram account under the name Dr. David Richard Simon, “a common fake name for fake doctors in romance scams.”

Trump shared the video as part of a late-night posting spree on Truth Social, where he pushed a range of news clips from right-wing networks. So it’s entirely possible that the president posted the video by mistake, thinking it was a real news story—and apparently forgetting he never made such an announcement. Either that, or he’s trying to elevate a far-right conspiracy theory as a means of waving to his extremist supporters, or just to troll anyone who cares about the difference between reality and fiction.

In any case, it is disturbing to imagine the president would “announce” a phony medical breakthrough only to revoke it hours later.

Thomas Jacob Sanford, the 40-year-old Iraq War veteran identified as the suspect in a fatal Sunday attack on a Mormon church in Grand Blanc, Michigan, seemed to own Donald Trump memorabilia, with a campaign sign on display outside his house.

His reported home on East Atherton Road in Burton, Michigan, according to public records, is located less than 20 minutes by car from the church into which he ran his truck, before opening fire—killing at least four people—and setting the building ablaze.

As of June 2025, the house had a Trump campaign sign posted on its fence, per a Google Maps image. A picture posted to Facebook in September 2019, of Sanford with his wife and son, shows him wearing a camo shirt that reads “Re-elect Trump 2020,” and “Make liberals cry again.”

Mark Grebner, a Michigan Democratic consultant and data expert, told local outlet Bridge Michigan that Sanford signed two petitions a few years ago, both of which seemingly aligned with right-wing causes: one for Unlock Michigan, against Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s pandemic restrictions, and an anti-abortion petition by Right to Life Michigan.

Local authorities and the FBI have not yet identified a motive for the attack.

The Trump administration, which has seized on recent acts of violence to accuse the entire left of possessing a penchant for political violence, hasn’t commented on these revelations about the gunman. The president did, however, post to Truth Social that he believed the incident to be “yet another targeted attack on Christians in the United States of America.”