Republican Governor Tries to Force Party to Gerrymander for Trump

Indiana Governor Mike Braun is pushing President Donald Trump’s gerrymandering scheme forward in the Hoosier State—but Republicans still aren’t getting on the bandwagon.

Braun announced Monday that he was calling a special legislative session to vote on new congressional districts, ensuring Republicans maintain control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.

“I am calling a special legislative session to protect Hoosiers from efforts in other states that seek to diminish their voice in Washington and ensure their representation in Congress is fair,” he wrote in a statement.

But Molly Sigart, spokesperson for Rodric Bray, the Indiana Senate’s president pro tempore, told The New Republic Monday that the votes “still aren’t there for redistricting.” The 50-member Senate has only 10 Democrat members, meaning that more than a dozen of the remaining members also opposed the plan.

Last week, Bray’s office said that the Republican plan lacked the necessary support, raising red flags for Braun’s redistricting efforts. Meanwhile, Braun’s spokesperson claimed the governor was “confident” that he could secure a majority of state Senate Republicans’ support.

Braun initially floated the idea last month of calling legislators back and warned that there would be “consequences” for not keeping pace with the White House’s requests for redistricting, which have already been passed in Texas, Missouri, and most recently, North Carolina. The special session Braun called Monday, which will occur before lawmakers are set to return in January, will likely cost taxpayers a pretty penny.

In Indiana, things have gotten heated. Both Trump and Vice President JD Vance have personally connected with state Republicans about supporting a new congressional map. Last month, Indiana state Senator Jim Banks suggested that podcaster Charlie Kirk’s death was reason enough to do it. “They killed Charlie Kirk—the least that we can do is go through a legal process and redistrict Indiana into a nine to zero map,” Banks said.

Indiana state Senator Liz Brown, an assistant majority floor leader, published a statement supporting the move Monday.

“Redistricting isn’t a technical exercise. It’s power drawn on a map. And Democrats have been wielding it for decades,” wrote Brown on X. “Conservative voices have been thwarted for far too long by liberal states like Massachusetts who refuse to create competitive congressional districts.”

“Gov. Braun’s decision to call our legislature into session to address redistricting is welcome news,” she wrote.

Exxon is trying to claim that California’s climate laws infringe on its freedom of speech.

The oil company filed a lawsuit against the state Friday over two laws, passed in 2023, that require companies doing business in California to disclose carbon emissions and climate-related financial risks, with penalties if they don’t comply. Exxon claims that the laws, known as the California Climate Accountability Package, would force the company to “serve as a mouthpiece for ideas with which it disagrees.”

A spokesperson for California Governor Gavin Newsom, Tara Gallegos, told The New York Times, seemingly tongue in cheek, that it was “truly shocking that one of the biggest polluters on the planet would be opposed to transparency.”

The laws, which will be enforced beginning next year, “have already been upheld in court and we continue to have confidence in them,” Gallegos added.

Exxon said in the lawsuit that it already reports its carbon emissions and climate risks voluntarily but that the state laws would force it to change its framework to one it finds “misleading and counterproductive.”

Right now, Exxon uses a methodology to calculate its emissions developed by an oil and gas industry group, but would have to change to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, developed by the research group World Resources Institute and business network World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

The company claims this framework would send “the counterproductive message that large companies are uniquely responsible for climate change no matter how efficiently they satisfy societal demand for energy, goods, and services.” Exxon additionally argues that the legal requirement to report its global emissions should only be focused on the company’s emissions in the state.

Exxon is also fighting against a provision in one law that requires companies to disclose how climate change threatens their business operations and what they plan to do about it. Exxon claims the law requires speculation “about unknowable future developments” and conflicts with securities laws.

There is another pending lawsuit against the laws from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the California Chamber of Commerce, and the American Farm Bureau Federation, with a trial expected next year.

The oil company is trying to dodge transparency about its operations, perhaps concerned about how bad these disclosures would make it look. It may also be hoping for the law to be struck down by conservative judges, or even the Supreme Court. President Trump is loudly dismissive of climate change and the threats it poses, and may take further action against California on his own.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford thinks that the Ronald Reagan anti-tariff commercial that set President Trump off was “the best ad I ever ran.” 

The TV ad featured an edited 1987 radio address from President Reagan, in which he stated that tariffs only serve to “hurt every American.” Trump was so bothered by the ad using someone he likes to compare himself to against him that he started another trade war with Canada, announcing an additional 10 percent tariff on its products over the weekend.

“Canada was caught, red handed, putting up a fraudulent advertisement on Ronald Reagan’s Speech on Tariffs,” Trump posted to Truth Social to justify the tariff hike. “The Reagan Foundation said that they, ‘created an ad campaign using selective audio and video of President Ronald Reagan. The ad misrepresents the Presidential Radio Address,’ and ‘did not seek nor receive permission to use and edit the remarks. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute is reviewing its legal options in this matter.’”

But the premier of Ontario, which produced the ad in the first place, isn’t bothered.

“You know why President Trump is so upset right now? It was because it was effective,” Ford said on Monday. “The only people that win in a tariff war are the people around the world that don’t necessarily see eye to eye with us and with the United States.”  

Ford says the ad has received over “a billion impressions around the world.” 

This shared animosity underscores the schisms that Trump’s retaliatory tariffs have caused with some of America’s closest allies. 

“We can’t control the trade policy of the United States. We recognize that that policy has fundamentally changed from the policy in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, and it’s a situation where the United States has tariffs against every one of their trading partners,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters last Friday, when Trump first began fuming about the ad. “What we can control, absolutely, is how we build here at home.… What we can also control, or at least heavily influence, is developing new partnerships and opportunities, including with the economic giants of Asia, which is the focus of this trip.”

Health care access could soon become a pipe dream for some Wisconsinites if Congress doesn’t muster up a budget.

The government shut down 27 days ago, in large part over a debate on the merits of the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced premium tax credits, which assist individuals making upward of 400 percent of the federal poverty level. Still, neither national political party appears willing to shatter Congress’s stalemate on how to fund Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget, which included details to slice billions from Obamacare subsidies and Medicaid.

Open enrollment for the subsidized coverage is just days away, but failing to extend the premium tax credits could raise premiums by thousands of dollars a year for people within the affected income bracket all over the country. In Wisconsin, those hardest hit could see their premiums rise by more than $30,000 per year, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers warned Monday.

Age and residency also factor into eligibility for the credits. In Barron County, a 60-year-old couple making $85,000 could see their premiums rise by 800 percent to an annual increase of more than $33,000. Roughly 32 percent of Barron County is above the age of 60, while 73 percent of the population makes less than $100,000 per year, according to 2020 census data.

In a statement, Evers argued that the ongoing congressional failure will make “healthcare coverage costs skyrocket.”

“Republicans’ reckless decisions are causing prices on everything to go up, from groceries to gas—Wisconsinites cannot afford to pay even more for healthcare, too,” Evers said. “Republicans need to end this chaos and stop working to make healthcare more expensive. It’s that simple.”

But Wisconsin is far from the only state expected to suffer. As of last week, more than a dozen states had opened up their Obamacare marketplace for a window-shopping period, including California, Georgia, Kentucky, Nevada, Maryland, and Maine. Individuals in those states could similarly see prices rise by thousands of dollars annually.

Idaho, which has roughly 135,000 enrollees on the marketplace, opened its Affordable Care Act marketplace portal Thursday with a slew of new price tags, offering the nation a glimpse into federal health care services sans federal support. More than 6 percent of the state population, roughly 13,000 people, stand to lose the premium tax credits.

The mystery donor who wrote President Donald Trump a $130 million check for the military is believed to be 83-year-old conservative billionaire Tim Mellon.

Two people familiar with the conversations identified Mellon to The New York Times, which published the development Saturday. Mellon inherited his fortune from his grandfather, banking magnate and former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, and he has become a major player in conservative politics in his own right over the past decade.

Mellon donated a whopping $150 million to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, surpassed only by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, according to Open Secrets. The day after Trump was convicted of 34 felony charges that same year, Mellon donated $50 million to Trump’s super PAC, one of the single largest disclosed contributions ever.

With this latest donation, it’s clearer than ever that Trump’s White House has been bought and paid for by the billionaire class. But this particular payment will hardly make a dent. Split among the military’s 1.3 million service members, the donation will come out to about $100 per person.

Last week, Trump announced that his administration had received a $130 million donation, and the Department of Defense confirmed that the government had accepted the money in order to “offset the cost of Service members’ salaries and benefits” under the “general gift acceptance authority.”

On Friday, Trump declined to say who the donor was, only saying he was “a great American citizen” and a “substantial man” who would “prefer that his name not be mentioned.”

Budget experts argued that the donation violated the Antideficiency Act, which puts barriers on the use of funds and personnel during an appropriations lapse, prohibiting the use of funds not allocated by Congress. Legal experts pointed out that Trump was already going out on a limb legally by repurposing other DOD funding to keep service members paid.

A federal agent blatantly violated a court order against using excessive force against journalists and protesters last Thursday by pointing a gun in a veteran’s face, saying “Bang, bang” and “You’re dead, liberal.”

The Chicago Headline Club, a nonprofit representing journalists in the Chicago area, filed a complaint in federal court after the incident, which took place in the city’s Little Village neighborhood. Local residents had gathered to observe and protest a large presence of federal agents in the area, and Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino did not respond well or care to take the earlier court order into consideration.

According to the complaint, combat veteran Chris Gentry was “lawfully standing on the side of the road voicing his opposition as agents were driving by in their vehicles.” That’s when an agent pointed a gun at him and threatened to kill him.

That was just one of many shocking incidents that day. Bovino also allegedly threw a tear gas canister into a crowd of protesters, who, according to the complaint, were not violent or committing any crimes. Some of the protesters attempted to talk to Bovino and other federal agents there and were rebuffed. Bovino and his colleagues instead shoved several people and threw more tear gas canisters at them, according to the complaint.

The Department of Homeland Security claimed in a social media post that protesters “shot at agents with commercial artillery shell fireworks” and that they attacked federal agents first, which the complaint calls a lie. Further, the complaint quotes protesters who say that the crowd in Little Village was peaceful. Bovino claimed to a reporter at the scene Thursday that he was hit with a rock, but did not appear to be injured.

Federal Judge Sara Ellis has ordered Bovino to appear in court Tuesday to testify about Thursday’s incidents, as well as sit for a five-hour deposition on November 5.

Judging by Bovino and his fellow federal agents’ actions on Thursday, court orders and legal action don’t appear to be a deterrent. Other federal agents nationwide, particularly those working for ICE, have made violent arrests and lied about them, even dragging a four-foot-six blind man outside of a Portland detention facility and dropping him on his head earlier this month.

The fatal flaw in the criminal cases against Donald Trump: credibility.

Ex-special prosecutor Jack Smith’s legal team was expecting to file the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case in the nation’s capital. But in an attempt to play the case by the book, Smith surprised them by opting to file in Florida instead, where the case would have a one in six chance of landing in Judge Aileen Cannon’s courtroom, reported The Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis in their book, Injustice.

“Are you all fucking insane?” David Raskin, a federal prosecutor who had worked on the case, blurted out in a Justice Department hallway at the time, according to the Post.

Smith believed then that filing in Florida could place the case on firmer legal footing, reducing the possibility that the most egregious charges could be overturned down the line. Smith further trusted that even if the case was randomly assigned to Cannon, they would be able to prove Trump was guilty by sheer volume of evidence.

“I’m not worried about Florida,” Smith told Justice Department officials while presenting his decision.

Instead, once the case was in her hands, Cannon blatantly took steps to drag it out and turn the tide in Trump’s favor.

A year on, the decision to bring the case to Cannon’s doorstep has been interpreted as the case’s death knell. The quest to bring Trump to justice for his alleged crimes disintegrated by election night 2024, by which point the MAGA leader had managed to transform the myriad cases against him into supposed evidence that he was being unfairly prosecuted by a Democratic presidential administration and its DOJ.

Trump has since rejiggered the Justice Department in his image, leveraging its heft to prosecute his own perceived political enemies, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and former special counsel James Comey. His next target is California Senator Adam Schiff.

Smith has also become the subject of conservative-centric controversies. Republican lawmakers accused the former special prosecutor earlier this month of spying on them during his investigation of Trump, claiming Smith tapped their phone lines and monitored their phone calls. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley dubbed the right-wing scandal “worse than Watergate.”

Smith and his team have vehemently denied those allegations, clarifying in a letter that they obtained telephone toll records, which only contain information pertaining to incoming and outgoing phone numbers and call duration. They do not contain any details of a call’s contents.

Smith conducted two parallel investigations into Trump, both of which resulted in indictments. They centered on allegations that Trump mishandled and retained classified records after the end of his first presidential term, and his alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election. Trump pleaded not guilty on all charges before the charges were dropped altogether after the 2024 election due to Justice Department policy that prevents the prosecution of a sitting president.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, seemingly at the behest of the vehemently Islamaphobic Laura Loomer, has detained well-known British Muslim journalist Sami Hamdi in the middle of his U.S. speaking tour because he is critical of Israel. 

Hamdi was taken by ICE on Sunday at San Francisco International Airport, just a few hours after speaking at a Council for American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, gala. He is the managing director at The International Interest, an organization that “advises on geopolitical environments and risks across the globe,” according to its website. 

“Thanks to the work of [Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem] and [Secretary of State Marco Rubio] and the men and women of law enforcement, this individual’s visa was revoked and he is in ICE custody pending removal,” wrote Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. “Under President Trump, those who support terrorism and undermine American national security will not be allowed to work or visit this country.”

CAIR put out a very different statement. 

“Abducting a prominent British Muslim journalist and political commentator on a speaking tour in the United States because he dared to criticize the Israeli government’s genocide is a blatant affront to free speech,” the organization wrote. “Our nation must stop abducting critics of the Israeli government at the behest of unhinged Israel First bigots. This is an Israel First policy, not an America First policy, and it must end.”

Loomer, an informal Trump adviser, took credit for Hamdi’s detainment, as she was posting obsessively about him for days prior to his arrest—calling Hamdi a Muslim Brotherhood jihadist who supports Hamas. 

“This is not a ‘commentator.’ This is not a ‘guest speaker.’ This is a foreign agitator embedded in jihadist power networks—operating on U.S. soil and training U.S. activists overseas outside the reach of American law-enforcement,” Loomer wrote Sunday on X. “Let this serve as a warning to every jihadi operative, every Brotherhood front, and every Marxist collaborator using America as a staging ground: We are no longer just exposing you—we are forcing consequences.” 

Loomer posted a video of Hamdi speaking positively about armed Palestinian resistance on October 7, while speaking vehemently against Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians. 

“Netanyahu did not envisage that for the first time since 1948 … Palestinians would actually retake land back from the Israelis … that Palestinians would be able to hold those territories for more than 72 hours,” he said in the video. “Celebrate the victory. Allah has shown the world that no normalization can erase the Palestinian cause.”  

Loomer, without proof, also claimed that Hamdi has ambiguous ties to New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, who has received a massive amount of hate as the potential first Muslim mayor of NYC. 

It’s telling that the White House seems to be following the marching orders of a woman who quite literally hates Muslims for a living. Hamdi’s detainment is in the same vein as those of Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk, and Mohsen Mahdawi. It’s clear that anyone who dares speak ill of Israel—especially those of Arab or Muslim descent—are at risk of being attacked, muzzled, and deported. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson is taking playing dumb to a whole new level.

During a press conference Monday to highlight the so-called “Democrat Shutdown,” Johnson went so far as to claim that Republicans, who control the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, weren’t the ones running the government.

“The Democrats are required to open the government. They keep saying the Republicans are in charge of government. We aren’t—not in the Senate!” Johnson said. “Sixty votes control the Senate. Not a bare majority.”

With the government shutdown entering its fourth week, Johnson has turned playing dumb into an art form as he abstains from actually leading his party. During his daily delivery of remarks to the press, Johnson has incessantly insisted he hasn’t heard about anything bad his government has done while running a deluded defense of President Donald Trump’s administration.

On Monday, Johnson also claimed that cutting trillions of funds to Medicaid had actually “strengthened” the program. Meanwhile, Republicans have repeatedly refused to guarantee the continuance of essential Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year.

Johnson also doubled down on the Trump administration’s latest excuse for not providing funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, starting in November—despite previous USDA guidance. “I got a summary of the whole legal analysis, and it certainly looks legitimate to me,” he said, claiming that contingency funds would require a trade-off for school lunches and infant formula.

The speaker has used the government shutdown to banish Republican lawmakers back to their districts for an extended vacation, where Johnson claimed Monday they were doing “some of the most meaningful work of their careers.” Crucially, the speaker has also used the government shutdown as an excuse not to swear in a duly elected Democrat from Arizona, who is poised to deliver the final signature on a petition to force a vote on releasing the government files on Jeffrey Epstein.

Donald Trump hasn’t ruled out giving more money to Argentina, he told reporters on Air Force One on Monday.

The president claimed that the country’s midterm election results on Sunday, which went very well for right-wing President Javier Milei, are good for the United States because bonds have gone up, making “a lot of money for the United States.” When a reporter asked if Argentina would need “more support,” referring to the president’s $40 billion bailout of the country, Trump replied in the affirmative.

“They might. Yeah, we would consider it,” Trump said.

Trump’s comments come as SNAP funding is set to expire in five days thanks to the government shutdown, with millions of Americans expected to lose food stamps across the country. Health care subsidies are also on the verge of expiring in the U.S., causing health insurance premiums to skyrocket for millions of Americans.

Meanwhile, the up to $40 billion bailout for Argentina that Trump has already approved benefited major hedge funds, including BlackRock, Fidelity, and Pimco, as well as Robert Citrone, a close friend of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who founded the hedge fund Discovery Capital Management.

Thus, when Trump brags that Argentina’s right-wing government is making money for the U.S., he’s not referring to the average American struggling to make ends meet, but rather financial executives and hedge funds. But Trump never was too worried about how the average American is doing.