Trump Calls Cattle Ranchers Ungrateful After They Say He Betrayed Them

President Donald Trump claimed Wednesday that he knows better than American cattle ranchers as he prepares to gut their business.

Writing on Truth Social, the president tried to douse the fire sparked by his offer to buy Argentine beef, claiming that outraged cattle ranchers were simply too stupid to grasp the brilliance of his economic machinations.

“The Cattle Ranchers, who I love, don’t understand that the only reason they are doing so well, for the first time in decades, is because I put Tariffs on cattle coming into the United States, including a 50% Tariff on Brazil,” Trump wrote. “If it weren’t for me, they would be doing just as they’ve done for the past 20 years—Terrible! It would be nice if they would understand that, but they also have to get their prices down, because the consumer is a very big factor in my thinking, also!”

But cattle ranchers, and the rest of America, see Trump’s offer for what it really is: part of a hefty package of handouts the U.S. president has pledged in the hopes of buying Argentine President Javier Milei a victory in the country’s upcoming election.

The National Farmers Union observed that Trump’s tariffs on soybeans have sent China into the arms of Argentina, which had already received a massive bailout from the U.S. government. “The last thing we need is to reward them by importing more of their beef,” the union said in a statement.

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association slammed Trump’s plan Monday, pointing out that in the last five years, Argentina has sold more than $801 million of beef into the U.S. market, compared to more than $7 million that American cattle ranchers had sold to Latin American nation.

And Farm Action, an agricultural watchdog group, called the plan “a betrayal of the American rancher,” lamenting that “after crashing the soybean market and gifting Argentina our largest export buyer, [Trump is] now poised to do the same to the cattle market.”

It doesn’t take a genius to see that Trump’s move would give American ranchers the short end of the stick. Even the most devoted MAGA members, who tend to bandwagon the president’s most inane whims, don’t see Trump’s logic. Right-wing commentator Tomi Lahren called the move a “disgrace” and a “stab in the back” for ranchers, in a post on X. Meriwether Farms, a beef producer in Wyoming that touted its “love” for the president, warned that Trump was betraying “the very people who put food on the table for us.”

Beef prices in the United States have been steadily increasing as the shrinking American herd struggles to keep up with high demand. NPR reported that America’s beef cattle herd is the smallest it’s been in 75 years, in part because of drought brought on by the changing climate of cattle states. Beef prices have increased 51 percent since February 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

North Carolina’s Republican legislature has officially redrawn the state’s legislative map to give the GOP an additional seat in Congress.

On Wednesday, the state House approved the new map with a 66–48 vote, which makes the move official after the state Senate advanced the measure Tuesday. The changes do not require the signature of North Carolina’s governor, Democrat Josh Stein.

Now the state’s first congressional district, currently held by Democratic Representative Don Davis, will absorb some Republican areas. The district narrowly supported Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. At the same time, the nearby third district, considered one of the most Republican districts in the state by the nonpartisan Cook Report, will absorb some Democratic-leaning areas.

Republicans control 10 of North Carolina’s 14 congressional seats, and hope to increase that number after the 2026 midterm elections. The new map will take effect before then.

“The motivation behind this redraw is simple and singular: drawing a new map that will bring an additional Republican seat to the North Carolina congressional delegation,” said Republican State Senator Ralph Hise, who prepared the map, at committee hearing earlier this week.

Democrats in the state have called the maps racist, arguing that they diminish the voting power of North Carolina’s Black and Latino voters. Davis is one of only three Black representatives from North Carolina.

“You didn’t need to use racial data because every single member of this body knows about the Black population in the northeastern part of this state,” said Democratic State Representative Gloristine Brown Wednesday on the House floor.

The move comes at the behest of Trump, who is urging Republican-run states to engage in aggressive gerrymandering to keep the GOP in control of Congress. Texas approved a new map in August that seeks to get five more Republican seats, while Republicans in Missouri have done the same to squeeze out an additional GOP seat. The moves are certain to set off a gerrymandering war with blue states, as Democratic leaders in New York and California have already pledged to respond with new maps of their own.

Famed Donald Trump biographer Michael Wolff is suing the first lady for defamation.

Wolff’s work includes four books on the sitting president as well as extensive interviews with Jeffrey Epstein prior to the pedophilic sex trafficker’s jailhouse suicide. But Wolff, whose latest project focuses on Melania, appears to have crawled right under the first lady’s skin.

The first lady, per Wolff, is demanding he apologize for suggesting that she is covertly involved in the administration’s response to Trump’s bungled Epstein scandal—or else face a $1 billion lawsuit.

Jumping out in front of Melania’s legal threat, the bestselling author filed a 15-page civil defamation suit late Tuesday in the New York Supreme Court, arguing that Melania’s attempts to silence him in a lawsuit of her own were not legally justifiable.

“It is not defamatory to say that Mrs. Trump is actively managing the present White House response to the controversy. Nor is it defamatory to say that Mrs. Trump was involved in Epstein’s rather expansive social circle,” Wolff wrote.

Wolff also argues that his statements, in proper context, qualify as protected opinions based on the available facts. He also claimed that the first lady’s attorneys would not be able to win a defamation case since they would not be able to prove the required burden of actual malice, a legal standard requiring evidence that Wolff did not believe his own statements to be true.

“Several days ago I was notified by lawyers for the First Lady that they intend to sue me for a billion dollars for some of those statements,” Wolff said in a video statement posted to Instagram, deriding Melania’s efforts to control similar reports as meritless “SLAPP suits.”

“I can’t live like that,” Wolff continued, situated on the porch of his beachside Hamptons home. “In fact, to be perfectly honest, I’d like nothing better than to get Donald Trump and Melania Trump under oath, in front of a court reporter, and actually find out all of the details of their relationship with Epstein.”

Blue states are fighting fire with fire, flaming the Trump administration for the ongoing government shutdown by adapting the president’s home-cooked messaging strategy.

For weeks, federal websites have displayed messages overtly blaming the shutdown on Democrats in Congress, in an apparent violation of the Standards of Ethical Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch and the 1939 Hatch Act, which are designed to limit partisan messaging from federal employees.

In a massive reversal of the White House’s shutdown blame game, at least three states have now posted notices to their state government websites informing residents that the ongoing shutdown was entirely Republicans’ fault.

“Because Republicans in Washington D.C., failed to pass a federal budget, causing the federal government shutdown, November 2025 SNAP benefits cannot be paid. Starting October 16, SNAP benefits will not be paid until the federal government shutdown ends and funds are released to PA,” a banner on the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services website reads.

Illinois issued a similar message, further pinning the blame on “federal officials with the Trump Administration.”

“SNAP customers will not receive November food benefits—unless there is further action from the Trump administration to reopen the government,” the website for the Illinois Application for Benefits Eligibility said.

California, whose governor played his own imitation game against Trump this summer, also jumped on the bandwagon. In a note on the California Health and Human Services Agency website, the state government blamed the shutdown on the “failures of the President and Congress.”

The government has been shut down for more than 21 days as of Wednesday, making it the second-longest federal closure in U.S. history. It’s only bested by a 35-day shutdown between 2018 and 2019, during Donald Trump’s first term.

Both national political parties are hung up on how to fund Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget, which included details to slice billions from Obamacare subsidies and Medicaid.

Democrats—and their constituents—have insisted that party representatives hold firm until they can find a way to salvage the subsidized health care programs. But a major hitch looms on the horizon: Open enrollment for Obamacare plans begins on November 1. If the shutdown is not resolved by then, millions of Americans will be forced to make a decision about their health coverage without knowing whether premiums will come down or not.

Is Florida trying to hide how many U.S. citizens have been detained as part of Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants?

The Miami New Times reported Wednesday that the Florida State Board of Immigration Enforcement removed the number of U.S. citizens arrested as part of law enforcement’s sweeping deportation efforts from its website, after the publication asked the state why citizens were being arrested in the first place.

As of October 14, Florida’s Suspected Unauthorized Alien Encounters Dashboard had recorded the arrests of 21 U.S. citizens and another nine who had encounters with law enforcement but were not arrested, according to the Times. After the outlet reached out to the board, the figure vanished. The Times reported the dashboard now shows that U.S. citizens have had two encounters and only one arrest.

The Times reached out to the board, as well as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Governor Ron DeSantis’s office about the change, but received no response.

Last week, ProPublica reported that more than 170 U.S. citizens have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including 20 children.

Since August 1, immigration authorities in Florida have recorded more than 5,800 encounters and made 4,700 arrests. Of those arrests, more than 2,400 have been conducted by state and local law enforcement operating federal immigration powers under a 287(g) agreement.