Trump Officials Secretly Worried Democrats Have a Point on Shutdown

The Trump administration’s projected strength during the government shutdown is belied by a nagging insecurity, reports The Wall Street Journal: that the Democratic health care concerns that set off the affair are well founded.

The government shut down this week after the GOP refused several Democratic demands, chief among them extending Affordable Care Act premium subsidies currently on track to expire at the end of 2025. Without the subsidies, millions of Americans, many in red-leaning states, would see their health care premiums more than double—initiating a political nightmare for a party hoping to cling onto its weak majority in the House in 2026.

The White House is keenly aware of this. Citing administration officials, the Journal reports that Trump’s advisers are concerned the GOP “will take the blame for allowing healthcare subsidies to expire,” and have “privately acknowledged” that the issue could cause Trump “political headaches.”

White House officials are thus considering proposals to extend the subsidies, according to the Journal, but the president remains undecided on supporting such a plan.

Republican strategists have long warned that the expiration of the subsidies would be a political disaster, with Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio issuing a memo in July that stated: “By broad bipartisan margins, voters want to see the tax credits extended rather than expire at the end of the year, whether in the context of premiums doubling or 5 million families losing their health insurance,” and “this includes solid majorities of Trump voters and swing voters.”

Nonetheless, Trump and his team are reportedly intent on standing strong and refusing to “cave to Democrats’ demands and negotiate while the government is shut down.” The White House, the Journal reports, still believes it has “the upper hand” in the ongoing shutdown.

But beyond the looming health care issue, early polling indicates that—despite the Trump administration’s sombrero memes and legally dubious use of federal agencies’ websites to villanize “radical left” Democrats—Americans blame Republicans more than Democrats for the shutdown.

Even a government bailout won’t undo the damage that Donald Trump’s tariffs have wreaked on America’s soybean farmers.

The president reiterated Wednesday that he intended to use the country’s supposed tariff money to subsidize American soybean farmers. Trump initially suggested the same idea last week, though he mixed up “billions” and “millions” in recounting how much money would amount to actual aid.

But speaking with CNN Thursday, American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland said that a bailout wouldn’t be the golden ticket that Trump has made it out to be, as American farmers still need a market to sell their products.

“Right now, our largest export market in China is a zero buyer,” Ragland said. “They buy as many soybeans as all of our other export markets combined. And right now, with them having not entered into purchase U.S. soybeans, it is hurting prices and it is causing lots of uncertainty as a whole.”

Soybeans are the largest agricultural product that is exported from the United States, with the most beans grown in Illinois. The U.S. has been the number one supplier of soybeans to China.

“Government payments and programs never make farmers’ bottom line whole. It will oftentimes serve as a Band-Aid on a wound,” Ragland, a soybean farmer himself, told CNN. “What we need is markets and opportunity so we can actually make a profit and recoup the large investment that farmers have made.”

The Trump administration appears fond of bailouts. The White House is currently working out the kinks in a multibillion-dollar lifeline to Argentina in an apparent effort to make that country great again too. But after widespread reporting that the South American nation had replaced the U.S. as China’s soybean supplier, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC that the cash infusion had become a “credit swap line.”

Farmers may have avoided these difficult times altogether if Trump had never instituted his aggressive tariff plan to begin with. Tensions between the Trump administration and Beijing have practically halted trade with China, nixing a crucial market for American farmers.

Apple has taken down apps that alert people to the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in their area after pressure from Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The primary ICE tracking app, ICEBlock, was intended to “keep people safe” in the midst of President Trump’s immigration crackdown. But Bondi saw it differently, arguing that it placed already masked ICE officers in danger.

“We reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store—and Apple did so,” Bondi said in a statement to Fox News Digital. “ICEBlock is designed to put ICE agents at risk just for doing their jobs, and violence against law enforcement is an intolerable red line that cannot be crossed. This Department of Justice will continue making every effort to protect our brave federal law enforcement officers, who risk their lives every day to keep Americans safe.”

Now, thanks to Apple once again bowing down to the Trump administration, its users will have to resort to other measures if they want to know where ICE is or may be.

Tracking apps were blamed after last month’s attack on an ICE facility in Texas that killed two detainees. ICEBlock’s founder, Joshua Aaron, was unconvinced.

“You don’t need to use an app to tell you where an ICE agent is when you’re aiming at an ICE detention facility. Everybody knows that’s where ICE agents are,” he told the BBC.

President Donald Trump’s obsession with posting AI slop to mock House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has reached a new low.

Amid an ongoing government shutdown, Trump posted a computer-generated video on Truth Social Thursday night that showed him sitting across from Jeffries in the Oval Office, with two red “Trump 2028” hats sitting on the desk between them.

That initial image was from the president’s meeting with Democratic leaders earlier this week, in which Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had drawn a hard line over cutting funding for health care subsidies.

The new image Trump shared sprang to life as he tossed a third red hat onto Jeffries’s head, and then pointed and laughed like a petulant child. In the background, the Village People’s “YMCA” could be heard, a favorite of Trump’s.

The AI-generated video managed to evaporate any trace of nuance from the fruitless meeting that the president had transformed into a photo op to highlight his power, which he clearly views as limitless. Clearly, one cannot actually expect any good-faith negotiations from such a witless bully.

This week, Trump has been posting a storm of AI-generated videos to mock Jeffries, hounding him with racist memes and inspiring other Republicans to join in. Weirdly, Trump seems to have no problem posting AI deepfakes of himself—images of the president have a tendency to feel surreal, even when they’re legitimate—but in some cases, it appears that the commander in chief can’t tell the videos aren’t actually real until it’s too late.

You may recall the Nazi porn scandal that plagued the Republican lieutenant governor of North Carolina last September. For the second year in a row, the cooler months have ushered in a Republican Nazi porn scandal, this time beleaguering a candidate for lieutenant governor in Virginia.

Republican nominee John Reid faces fresh scrutiny surrounding a Tumblr blog, allegedly linked to him, that contained pornographic content. Reid denies ownership of the profile, which has the same username as other social media accounts of his: “JRDeux.”

It was previously reported that “JRDeux” reposted users’ photos that, per The Washington Post, ranged “from explicit photos of male genitalia to images typical of a racy underwear ad.” When that news broke, Reid, who is gay, persisted with his campaign despite Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin urging him to drop out.

On Wednesday, American Journal News unearthed additional details about the “JRDeux” Tumblr profile. In October 2015, the blog reposted an image of “a male college student in underwear,” which was published by a Nazi fetish account with a racial slur in its username; it contained the phrase “obedient n—.”

The user described himself as a “subservient n— who knows his place in society” and who was seeking “superior white men” in the Washington, D.C., area. According to American Journal News, the Nazi fetish account also posted sexual images including swastikas and white supremacist slogans, but “JRDeux” only shared the one underwear post.

“JRDeux” also shared posts from an account called “slaveandy,” devoted to content about sexual slavery.

According to Reid, the whole story was concocted to smear his sexuality.

Virginia Democrats, however, are calling on Reid to suspend his campaign.

“The accounts that Reid appears to have promoted and engaged with are full of hateful, racist, bigoted imagery,” said Virginia Delegate Mike Jones. “John Reid’s track record shows he is comfortable with white supremacy. Now, it looks like he’s fine with it showing up on his social media feed.”

“The news of the racist, antisemitic online content linked to John Reid on a social media account is appalling and shameless,” said state Senator Adam Ebbin. “They reveal John Reid has a disturbing level of comfort with disgusting, dehumanizing ideologies.”

The scandal echoes that which dashed the 2024 gubernatorial campaign of former North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson. Last year, CNN reported that an account linked to Robinson had boasted about being a “Black Nazi,” among other shocking posts, on a pornographic forum.

Free-speech grifter Bari Weiss will soon be named editor in chief of CBS News, multiple outlets reported Thursday, and her right-wing, genocide-denying blog The Free Press will be acquired by Paramount Skydance for about $150 million. Paramount will make the official announcement in the coming days.

This move comes soon after CBS was acquired by David Ellison, son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. Oracle, of course, recently made headlines for getting control of TikTok’s U.S. assets, as the group’s CEO also seeks to “embed the love and respect for Israel in the American culture.”

Weiss gained notoriety for her controversial exit from The New York Times in 2020, when she claimed she was targeted by her co-workers for being insufficiently woke after she defended a grotesque and incendiary op-ed from Senator Tom Cotton urging President Trump to use the military against Black Lives Matter protesters. She took that momentum all the way to establishing The Free Press, becoming a symbol for right-wingers who are more afraid of people of color, LGBTQ folk (and trans people specifically), and student protesters than they are of President Trump’s authoritarian agenda.

Weiss’s The Free Press notably recently made headlines for a repugnant, cruel attempt at a “gotcha” article claiming that viral images of gaunt, malnourished Palestinian children in Gaza should actually be disregarded as pro-Hamas propaganda because the children pictured already had preexisting conditions like cerebral palsy—as if that in any way explained their starvation. If anything, as most people pointed out, Israel’s genocide only exacerbated their health conditions.

Now Weiss, who wants to be a martyr in the woke wars and who oversaw countless stories denying the suffering of Palestinians, will be in control of one of the country’s largest media conglomerates, as the larger media landscape shifts rightward.

Mexican American GOP lawmakers have been largely silent on MAGA’s sombrero memes this week.

President Donald Trump on Monday shared a video featuring House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Truth Social, using AI to depict Jeffries wearing a mustache and sombrero while mariachi music plays and Schumer trashes Democrats.

The president’s allies (including the official Republican Party) have gleefully seized on the absurd video, making and sharing their own memes of Democratic lawmakers in sombreros. Some Latino advocacy groups have condemned Trump for using stereotypes to demean Mexicans.

But most Mexican American Republicans in Congress—Representatives Brian Mast, Tony Gonzales, David Valadao, Juan Ciscomani, Monica De La Cruz, and Gabe Evans—have not addressed the memes publicly as of this writing Thursday afternoon.

Representative Anna Paulina Luna is the only Mexican American Republican to comment on the meme, and in fact, she can’t seem to stop. The Florida representative has even changed the profile picture on her congressional X account to a portrait of herself in a digitally added sombrero.

Luna dismissed “fake outrage” over the memes on Wednesday, and later told Fox News host Jesse Watters that the joke inspired her to purchase red sombreros for Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

On Wednesday evening, Luna shared a photoshopped picture of JD Vance donning a sombrero and mustache. On Thursday, she posted a photo of herself, Vance, and Jeffries in sombreros, asking her followers, “Who wore it better?”

On the Democratic side of the aisle, many members of Congress of Mexican descent have reacted to the memes.

Senator Alex Padilla and Representative Teresa Leger Fernández seized on the moment to criticize Trump’s childish posting habits and pin blame for the ongoing government shutdown on Republicans.

“Democrats came to the White House to keep the government open. The President answered with a racist AI video,” Padilla wrote on X. “Anyone searching for an answer on who owns this shutdown—look no further.”

Fernández accused Trump of “acting like a 6-year-old,” saying, “The problem is that when he acts like a 6-year-old, it’s not like you can just get mad at him and say, ‘Stop drawing mustaches on people.’ People will die because of their decisions.”

Representative Jimmy Gomez responded to the memes with an AI-generated movie poster featuring Donald Trump and the late notorious sex criminal—and former Trump associate—Jeffrey Epstein. “Every time Donald Trump puts up a racist AI generated video of Hakeem Jefferies or any of my colleagues, I’ll put [up] a new movie poster about Trump and Epstein,” he wrote.

Senator Ruben Gallego responded to Republican Senator Ted Cruz’s sombrero meme by highlighting the 2021 scandal in which the Texas senator took a trip to Cancún, Mexico, while a winter storm left millions of his constituents freezing without power and heat.

Posting an image of Cruz in the airport—with a photoshopped sombrero and mustache, of course—Gallego wrote, “Cancun Cruz knows a thing or two about Mexico and a lot about raising health care costs for 24 million Americans.”

The Department of Homeland Security blatantly lied about the victim of a recent shooting committed by an ICE agent during an immigration arrest in Chicago. 

Silverio Villegas-Gonzalez, 38, was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Franklin Park during an attempted immigration detention. DHS claimed Villegas-Gonzalez had resisted arrest and dragged an officer for “a significant distance” with his car. Nearby surveillance footage revealed the agent fired two shots, and Villegas-Gonzalez died from his injuries later at a hospital.

But the agency’s justification of deadly force doesn’t quite add up. 

On September 19, DHS published a press release that claimed that Villegas-Gonzalez was “a criminal illegal alien with a history of reckless driving.” But apparently, that’s completely wrong: NBC News reported that he had no criminal history. Villegas-Gonzalez had pleaded guilty to four traffic violations, including speeding, the most recent of which was in 2013.

The federal press release also claimed that the ICE agent responsible for the shooting had been “seriously injured” in the line of duty. But bodycam videos from Franklin Park police officers shortly after the incident showed the ICE agent describing his injuries as “nothing major,” NBC News reported Monday. 

It’s not clear why ICE had targeted Villegas-Gonzalez in the first place. David J. Bier, the  immigration director for the Cato Institute, wrote on X that ICE had manufactured the incident through a needless traffic stop.

“ICE tried to grab him just after dropping off his two little kids at day care. There is no reason why this interaction needed to happen at all,” Bier wrote, adding, “Desperate people in desperate spots can make stupid decisions like this guy did. But ICE shouldn’t manufacture these situations either.”

Additionally, one witness speaking to the Chicago Sun-Times claimed that ICE’s account of the fatal shooting had been inaccurate, and questioned whether the incident would be properly investigated. Neither of the officers involved in the incident were wearing body cameras, even though policy requires they wear them “as soon as practicable at the beginning of an Enforcement Activity and deactivation when the activity is concluded.” 

A group of Democratic lawmakers, including Illinois Representatives Jesús “Chuy” García and Delia C. Ramirez, as well as Senators Dick Durbin, Richard Blumenthal, and Tammy Duckworth sent a letter Tuesday to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE Director Todd Lyons demanding that DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari investigate the shooting. 

It’s not entirely surprising that ICE would pursue an arrest of someone with no criminal conviction, or that they would lie about it. A Cato Institute study from June found that 65 percent of ICE detainees since October 2024 had no criminal record, and 95 had no violent criminal convictions. 

DHS’s press release about Villegas-Gonzalez claimed that ICE law enforcement was facing a 1,000 percent increase in assaults against them, up from a nearly 700 percent increase in July. But considering that there were just 10 assaults against ICE agents during the same period last year, that places the total number of purported assaults at roughly 100.

That figure doesn’t seem all that terrifying, especially when considering all of the wildly inconsistent and patently phony allegations of assault that have come to light as the Justice Department consistently struggles to secure indictments against protesters accused of assaulting immigration officials.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement will soon be tracking cell phone data.

The immigration law enforcement agency has bought access to an “all-in-one” surveillance tool that gives it updated location data from hundreds of millions of phones, according to ICE documents obtained by 404 Media. ICE reportedly prefers the service because it also peels information from social media accounts.

Redacted documents make reference to two products, both produced by the contractor Penlink. They are known as Tangles and WebLoc. Both were created by an Israeli company called Cobwebs, which merged into Penlink in 2023. ICE has reportedly spent upwards of $5 million for access to the software, Forbes reported last month.

Previous attempts to monitor consumers’ location data for immigration enforcement were found to be illegal. A sweeping records request by the ACLU in 2022 found that DHS had obtained more than 336,000 location data points across North America by scraping app user data on hundreds of millions of phones during Donald Trump’s first term.  

“Every American should be concerned that Trump’s hand-picked security force is once again buying and using location data without a warrant,” Senator Ron Wyden told 404 Media in a statement.

The decision to invest in Penlink’s products was informed by market research conducted in May and June by ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations, according to the documents.

WebLoc monitors the trends of mobile devices that have location data activated, and “how often they have been” to those locations, according to a government case study. Tangles creates a day-in-the-life profile of individuals based on mined social media data. It combines “posts, contacts, locations, and events they attended, combining it with any information leaked about them online,” Forbes reported, as well as captured images of a subject’s face that can then be searched for in databases by using Tangles’s AI-assisted tools.

ICE has praised Penlink’s products in internal documents, noting the tools forgo issues they’ve had with previous services, which would require analysts to “manually collect and correlate data from fragmented sources.”

“Without an all-in-one tool that provides comprehensive web investigations capabilities and automated analysis of location-based data within specified geographic areas, intelligence teams face significant operational challenges,” according to ICE documents published by 404 Media.

Read the full report at 404 Media.

The president who promised an “end to endless wars” just rekindled one—the war on drugs. 

The New York Times obtained a confidential memo sent to Congress this week that announced President Trump had “determined” that the U.S. is actively at war with drug cartels, which are now officially considered “nonstate armed groups.” The move comes after the Trump administration’s repeated strikes on what it claims were “drug boats” in the Caribbean.

“Based upon the cumulative effects of these hostile acts against the citizens and interests of the United States and friendly foreign nations, the president determined that the United States is in a noninternational armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations,” read the notice. It contained no further specifics as to what groups will now be designated as terrorists.  

The obvious issue here is that the purposefully vague classification of “nonstate armed group” will allow the Trump administration to continue to administer unilateral, extrajudicial violence against whomever they see fit. The notice also stretches international law, which requires a “nonstate armed group to meet a certain threshold. Many drug cartels are more loosely tied groups of smugglers than they are organized and militant terror groups. But now the Trump administration has the language to justify treating them like it.   

“Not surprised that the administration may have settled on such a theory to legally backfill their operations,” former State Department lawyer and armed conflict law expert Brian Finucane told the Times. “I had speculated they might do so. One major problem, however, is that it is far from clear that whoever they are targeting is an organized armed group such that the U.S. could be in a noninternational armed conflict.” 

He also went on to describe Tren de Aragua, one of Trump’s favorite targets, as a “loosely organized cells of localized individual criminal networks” that was too “decentralized” to be treated as a nonstate armed group. 

This is far from the first time Trump has used wartime language to justify his version of the war on drugs. In March, President Trump used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798—untouched since the War of 1812 and the Japanese internment of the 1940s—to push the deportation of more than 200 Venezuelans, claiming they were Tren de Aragua gang members whom we were “in a time of war” with. 

The first war on drugs was fought domestically against Black and brown citizens, with tactics like broken-windows policing and excessive criminal charges. Trump’s war on drugs will be defined by unilateral attacks on drug boats and violations of Mexican and South American countries’ sovereignty in the name of keeping Americans safe. But given the vague definitions outlined in the memo, this will likely lead to more violence, more surveillance, and more suffering for those Trump thinks we’re at war with.