Trump’s Gerrymandering Scheme in Red State Falls Apart at the Seams

Indiana Senate Republicans aren’t falling in line behind President Donald Trump’s gerrymandering scheme to keep control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.

Molly Swigart, a spokesperson for Indiana Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray, put it simply when speaking to Politico Wednesday. “The votes aren’t there for redistricting,” she said.

Four people familiar with the matter spoke anonymously with Politico, and two of them suggested that Bray and his leadership team were holdouts on mid-cycle redistricting. “If Bray would personally release his leadership to support this, there would be enough votes for this to pass,” one of those people said.

The White House reportedly conducted a dial-in poll, which revealed that the majority of Republicans supported the redistricting effort. But one Republican claimed their colleagues had been confused by the poll’s instructions, and that the White House had not provided specific guidance on how to proceed with redistricting.

Three of the people who spoke anonymously with Politico said that Governor Mike Braun was inclined to call a special election in order to redraw the state’s congressional district maps to scrounge up extra GOP seats. In September, Braun had floated the idea of lawmakers returning for a special session in November, and warned that there could be “consequences” for breaking with Trump’s wishes.

A spokesperson for Braun told Politico that the governor was “confident” that he could secure a majority of state Senate Republicans to “ensure fair representation in Congress.”

The Trump administration has previously urged Indiana to follow the lead of other states’ redistricting efforts and deliver Trump one or two additional Republican House seats. In August, Vice President JD Vance visited with more than 55 Republicans at the Indiana state House, pressing them to approve a new map, and Trump met privately with the Republican heads of the Indiana House and Senate in the Oval Office.

Trump’s redistricting efforts are widespread across the country. On Wednesday, North Carolina Republicans passed a new congressional map that diluted the voting power of Black residents and merged districts to make them more conservative, likely giving the GOP another seat in Congress.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has apparently chosen the silent treatment in response to a threat on the life of one of his colleagues.

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Wednesday that he still hadn’t heard from the Republican House leader, days after the wannabe assassin was arrested.

“Has Speaker Johnson reached out to you since a January 6er made a threat on your life?” a reporter asked.

“No,” Jeffries said plainly.

Christopher Moynihan, a 34-year-old from upstate New York, was arrested Saturday for plotting to kill Jeffries at New York City’s Economic Club.

Moynihan was convicted in 2022 for participating in the Capitol riot. Video evidence captured him breaking through fences, entering the Capitol, and rifling through documents in the Senate Gallery. During the riot, Moynihan said, “There’s got to be something in here we can fucking use against these scumbags,” according to court documents. Moynihan was also depicted standing behind the Senate well alongside Jacob Chansley, better known as the QAnon Shaman.

He was sentenced to nearly two years in prison in 2023 but was prematurely released thanks to a blanket pardon from Donald Trump that freed 1,500 January 6 rioters on his first day back in office.

Johnson claimed Tuesday that he was previously unaware of Moynihan’s threats against Jeffries, before he attempted to divert attention away from the right-wing attacker toward the past weekend’s anti-Trump No Kings protests and “violence on the left.”

“The assassination culture that’s been advanced now—this is the left, in almost every case that is advancing this, and not the right,” Johnson told reporters. “Let’s not make this a partisan issue, you don’t want me to go there.”

Jeffries said in a statement Tuesday that “threats of violence will not stop us from showing up, standing up and speaking up for the American people.”

Moynihan sent text messages Friday that spelled out his plans to end Jeffries’s life.

“I cannot allow this terrorist to live,” Moynihan allegedly wrote, according to a criminal complaint. “Even if I am hated he must be eliminated.… I will kill him for the future.”

The anonymous recipient flagged the messages to authorities, expressing additional concern over Moynihan’s “increased narcotic abuse and homicidal ideations,” reported Axios.

President Trump’s unilateral, indiscriminate “drug boat” bombings have expanded from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean.

“Yesterday, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel being operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization and conducting narco-trafficking in the Eastern Pacific,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote on Wednesday. “The vessel was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, was transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route, and carrying narcotics. There were two narco-terrorists aboard the vessel during the strike, which was conducted in international waters. Both terrorists were killed and no U.S. forces were harmed in this strike.”

Hegseth then went on to compare these alleged drug traffickers—who were killed thousands of miles away from the U.S. border—to the 9/11 perpetrators.

“Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people,” he said. “There will be no refuge or forgiveness—only justice.”

All previous bombings have occurred in the Caribbean Sea, where the Trump administration is ratcheting up its military presence. This strike has broadened the scope of the administration’s already deeply controversial bombing campaign. And this kind of language, combining the failed war on drugs with the failed war on terror, has been deployed to justify brutal extrajudicial executions that have killed 32 people at this point, at least two of whom were just regular fishermen.

“Every boat that we knock out we save 25,000 American lives, so every time you see a boat and you feel badly you say, ‘Wow, that’s rough,’” Trump said last week. “It is rough, but if you lose three people and save 25,000 people … these are people that are killing our population.”

That number is a complete guess at best. And there is no evidence beyond the administration’s own word that these boats were carrying drugs, or that the men blown to bits were drug traffickers. There are no questions asked, and no other evidence aside from the grainy highlight reels officials like Hegseth post.

Chad “Charpo” Joseph and Rishi Samaroo were two northern Trinidadian fishermen murdered by the Trump administration earlier this month for being “narcoterrorists.”

“I just want to know why Donald Trump killing poor people just so,” Joseph’s uncle “Dollars” told The Guardian. “Just because he going after the people gas and their oil. He going after people riches and killing poor people children.”

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is criticizing Speaker of the House Mike Johnson for refusing to address one of the main issues, if not the main issue, at the center of the government shutdown: the end of subsidies for the Affordable Care Act.

In a long post on X Wednesday morning, Greene called out Johnson for claiming on a Republican Party conference call the day before that he had “ideas and pages of policy,” but failing to mention or produce a single one to address the soaring costs of health care if the ACA subsidies expire, calling his actions “unacceptable.”

Greene also blamed Democrats for having “created this nightmare 15 years ago, then made it worse in 2021 by extending the ACA tax credits that are now expiring.” But she went on to castigate her fellow Republicans for “sitting on the sidelines doing nothing to fix this healthcare disaster that is leading many Americans into financial ruin.”

The Georgia congresswoman was once considered one of the most far-right members of Congress, but in recent months has publicly broken with the GOP and President Trump on everything from Israel’s genocide in Gaza to the Epstein files. Greene’s about-face has even led to Trump asking other Republicans about what happened to one of his biggest fans.

Greene has not let up on her criticisms during the current government shutdown, continuing to call out Johnson and Trump for refusing to address how unaffordable life is for Americans. While she may not have a health care plan of her own, she seems to be realizing that her party and its leadership don’t seem to care about addressing the coming crisis if health care subsidies expire. Maybe she’ll soon realize that they don’t care about improving the lives of Americans at all.

After successfully pushing out even Fox News from covering the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has filled his new press corps with sycophants and yes-men from the likes of ultraconservative organizations like Turning Point USA.

“We are excited to announce over 60 journalists, representing a broad spectrum of new media outlets and independent journalists, have signed the Pentagon’s media access policy and will be joining the new Pentagon press corps,” U.S. Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Sean Parnell announced on Wednesday. “Twenty-six journalists across 18 outlets were among the former Pentagon press corps who chose to sign the DOW media access policy.

“New media outlets and independent journalists have created the formula to circumvent the lies of the mainstream media and get real news directly to the American people,” he continued. “Their reach and impact collectively are far more effective and balanced than the self-righteous media who chose to self-deport from the Pentagon. Americans have largely abandoned digesting their news through the lens of activists who masquerade as journalists in the mainstream media.”

This comes just over a week after Hegseth announced a new “pledge” for journalists covering the Pentagon, requiring them to abstain from receiving any unauthorized material and seek approval for any agency information “by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.”

Parnell’s post—which conveniently failed to mention where any of those 60 journalists work—drew plenty of protest.

“This post doesn’t name them for some reason, but the ‘broad spectrum of new media outlets’ include: Gateway Pundit, TPUSA, and LindellTV, per their announcements,” CNN’s Natasha Bertrand wrote. Gateway Pundit, which proudly announced its inclusion in the Pentagon press corps on Wednesday, is known for constantly spreading false information, from falsely accusing multiple innocent people of being mass shooters or assassins, to spreading rumors about Hillary Clinton’s health in 2016. It is widely considered a fake news website. Other far-right outlets and grifters expected to be in the press corp include Tim Pool (who was at one point paid by the Russian government), Jack Posobiec of Pizzagate fame, The National Pulse, and Post Millennial.

“Three points: 1) Who’s on this list? Will they ask the hard questions that Americans expect? 2) Will these new journalists actually get briefings from the Hegseth team? None have been held since August. 3) The press corps that left the building is still very much on the job,” wrote former Pentagon press corps member Dan Lamonthe, who left in protest of Hegseth’s pledge ultimatum.

It should alarm every American that the defense secretary is making an effort to fill the press corps with people who will never hold him accountable, as the Trump administration continues to bomb boats and kill fishermen in the Caribbean, while inching closer and closer to conflict with Venezuela.

“Press corps as adjuncts of the administration,” Matthew Gertz of Media Matters wrote.

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.