Trump’s Weird Rants Are Hurting His Chances to End the Shutdown

The government shutdown has entered day 36, making it the longest shutdown in U.S. history—but Congress seems further than ever from coming to a resolution to end it.

That’s in large part thanks to Donald Trump’s public panicking over the blue wave that swept elections across the country Tuesday night.

PBS NewsHour correspondent Lisa Desjardins reported Wednesday that Democrats had been considering a “vague deal” with Republicans until the president began to buckle. So far, symptoms of his desperation include: threatening to close U.S. airspace, directing Republicans to kill the Senate’s long-cherished filibuster, and openly suggesting that Republicans’ nationwide election losses were the result of the ongoing shutdown.

“If you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans,” Trump told Senate Republicans at the White House Wednesday morning. “Last night, it was not expected to be a victory, it was very Democrat areas. I don’t think it was good for Republicans. I don’t think it was good for anybody.”

Congress’s failure to extend funding has crumbled SNAP benefits for millions of Americans and lapsed Obamacare subsidies, forcing tens of thousands of Americans to forgo their health insurance as their premiums skyrocket.

Yet Trump is continuing to live his billionaire lifestyle at taxpayers’ expense. While low-income Americans starve, Trump has opted to remodel the White House, transforming historic spaces such as the Lincoln bathroom into a gaudy, marble-plastered, Mar-a-Lago lookalike. The president is also pushing forward with plans to erect a $300 million ballroom on the fresh grave of the White House East Wing. But he’s not the only one blowing cash: FBI Director Kash Patel was caught last week using the bureau’s multimillion-dollar jet to ferry his girlfriend from state to state.

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told NewsHour that there’s an “unmistakable consensus” among Democrats that lawmakers should use this moment to stand up to Trump.

“I think last night’s results are having an impact,” Murphy said.

The Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts is walking back his defense of Tucker Carlson.

Carlson caused a major stir on the right last week when he decided to interview Nick Fuentes, a known white supremacist and Hitler fan. The interview was immediately flamed by conservative Jews, who condemned the ex–Fox News host’s decision to elevate Fuentes’s talking points.

Despite the opposition, Roberts released a video on X Thursday in support of Carlson and Fuentes, noting that while he disagreed with Fuentes’s beliefs, he did not believe that the “venomous” coalition “cancelling” the Christian nationalist Holocaust-denier had an appropriate reaction to the interview.

Since then, the Heritage Foundation has been embroiled in internal controversy, with at least one staffer exiting the institution over the mess. Roberts addressed the schism Wednesday.

“I made a mistake and I let you down and I let down this institution. Period. Full Stop,” the conservative think tank’s president told employees at an all-staff meeting, according to The Washington Free Beacon.

Roberts called the assembly to explain how his response to Carlson’s interview came to be in a moment when he felt the Heritage Foundation was under pressure to “make a statement” that would cast Carlson out from the conservative movement.

“This is an explanation, not an excuse,” he said, apologizing for his use of the phrase “venomous coalition,” calling it a “terrible choice of words, especially for our Jewish colleagues and friends.”

Carlson’s interview with Fuentes gave the fringe influencer a chance to swim in the MAGA mainstream. The interview has since come under fire from several corners of the Republican Party, highlighting that the former primetime TV host threw the antisemite a string of softball questions while failing to challenge Fuentes’s radical and violent beliefs.

Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan’s case against former FBI Director James Comey is coming apart at the seams.

During a hearing Wednesday, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick raised concerns about the Department of Justice’s handling of evidence against Comey, Politico reported Wednesday. Specifically, Fitzpatrick took issue with how prosecutors handled materials via warrants initially issued in 2019 and 2020 against Comey associate Daniel Richman. The FBI probe into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election first came under scrutiny in those years.

Comey’s attorneys had argued that because Richman was previously Comey’s lawyer, some of the material Halligan used to personally secure his two-count criminal indictment may have potentially been subject to attorney-client privilege.

Fitzpatrick warned the DOJ that using privileged information could have dire consequences for the prosecution’s “highly unusual” case, but said they could continue to use materials they believed were fair game “at their own risk,” Politico reported.

Fitzpatrick ordered the DOJ to hand over all of its search warrant materials to Comey’s attorneys by Thursday, along with the complete records of the grand jury proceedings that led to his indictment, for the purpose of determining if any privileged information was used to secure the charges.

“They’re entitled to this information quickly,” Fitzpatrick said, according to Politico.

Tyler Lemons, an assistant U.S. attorney from North Carolina who is assisting Halligan with the case, said that his investigators had come to a screeching halt when they came across materials that appeared to be privileged, and that the files were now “isolated on a desk in FBI headquarters.”

Fitzpatrick’s request for the full grand jury proceedings to be turned over to Comey comes just one day after another order, issued by U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, for Halligan to turn over a complete record of grand jury proceedings. She had initially submitted only a partial report that did not include her jury instructions or presentation.

Crucially, Halligan’s jury instructions could be of interest to Comey’s legal team. While a prosecutor doesn’t have to dazzle in their delivery of jury instructions, they can’t present claims that are factually incorrect. If Halligan—a first-time U.S. attorney with no prior prosecutorial experience who presented the government’s case seemingly without the help of any assistant U.S. attorneys—elided the truth in her jury instructions, the case could be dismissed. Her failure to promptly turn over a record of her instructions, when paired with warnings from prosecutors that she did not have the evidence necessary to indict Comey, leaves open the possibility that this could be the case.

In a speech Wednesday morning, New York City’s next Mayor Zohran Mamdani warned Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents against violating the law.

Mamdani’s speech at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens was to announce his transition team, but he also stressed accountability for the federal law enforcement agents carrying out President Trump’s draconian immigration policies, which have resulted in violent raids and abuses.

“My message to ICE agents and to everyone across this city is that everyone will be held to the same standard of the law. If you violate the law, you must be held accountable,” Mamdani said. “And there is sadly a sense that is growing across this country that certain people are allowed to violate that law, whether they be the president or whether they be the agents themselves.”

That message is in sharp contrast to that of the current mayor, Eric Adams, who has been openly cooperating with the Trump administration on immigration, as the Department of Justice kindly dropped its corruption case against him. Mamdani openly embraced immigrants in his campaign for mayor, visiting communities across the city and putting out campaign videos in multiple languages.

That message clearly resonated with voters, and resulted in the highest turnout for a New York City mayoral election since 1969. Mamdani’s message Wednesday morning suggests that his administration will attempt to curtail ICE’s egregious actions in the city, which include interrogating children playing baseball and violently arresting people in immigration court. That message also seems to have the support of the people of New York.

Reactions from the right continue to roll in as they cope with the idea of a Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani introducing basic social democratic policies to New York City. 

Disgraced former New York City Mayor and Trump crony Rudy Giuliani had perhaps the most unhinged reaction, posting a photo on Facebook of planes colliding into the Twin Towers on 9/11, flames and smoke billowing. A picture of him in the city streets during cleanup is edited into one of the smoke plumes. “New York, You Forgot” is pasted onto the image. The song “September 11th, 2001 (9/11)” by The Experience plays in the background. 

“It breaks my heart,” Giuliani captioned the image.  

Insinuating that New York City’s first Muslim mayor will do another 9/11 attack is an incredibly lazy, racist, and Islamophobic strategy that certainly would not be employed if Mamdani’s name, religion, and culture were not what they are. (Mamdani, by the way, was 9 years old at the time of the 2001 attacks.)

Giuliani wasn’t the only Republican working through some things online the morning after Mamdani. 

“Launch the nuke,” GOP Representative Mike Collins posted at 9:50 a.m. Wednesday morning. 

“The battle lines between capitalism and socialism were clearly drawn last night. Texas is now the unrivaled HQ for capitalism in the US,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott wrote on Wednesday, touting the benefits of capitalism as millions of Texans go without SNAP benefits for the month. “We lead the country in finance sector employment & new stock exchanges. Capitalism always prevails. Capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than all of the social programs in the world. We will secure capitalism for the future of our country and deny the expansion of socialism that is creeping across the US.” 

Donald Trump finally has competition for the media spotlight.

The MAGA president took words right out of Zohran Mamdani’s campaign Wednesday in a flailing attempt to drudge relevance back to his own electoral victory—a year ago. Trump’s celebratory post came with an unexpected echo of the democratic socialist’s policy positions regarding the affordability crisis, despite the fact that Trump spent months waging war against the Muslim New Yorker.

“Happy Anniversary! On this day, November 5th, one year ago, we had one of the Greatest Presidential Victories in History—Such an Honor to represent our Country,” Trump posted to Truth Social. “Our Economy is BOOMING, and Costs are coming way down.

“Affordability is our goal,” he added.

If the last 11 months are anything to go by, then affordability has been far from Trump’s list of priorities. Since his inauguration, Trump has enacted tariffs and sparked trade wars with America’s biggest trade partners, rattling the economy and pushing farmers to the brink of bankruptcy.

Companies, hesitant to invest in the unpredictable market, peeled back on hiring in such a devastating way earlier this year that the White House ordered the dissolution of the monthly jobs report and fired the staffers responsible for organizing and publishing the data. In doing so, Trump stripped a significant indicator from economists, pushing the American public and its myriad industries into the dark regarding the overall health of the country.

And Trump has done very little to make life easier for low-income Americans in recent weeks, allowing the Agriculture Department to ignore its legal requirement to fund SNAP benefits through November using contingency funds. (The USDA announced Monday, two days after benefits expired, that it would partially fund SNAP benefits through the remainder of the month.)

Trump’s administration also pressed for ending Obamacare subsidies, forcing tens of thousands of Americans to forgo health insurance as their premiums skyrocket.

New Yorkers elected Mamdani as their next mayor Tuesday night, with more than 50 percent of voting city dwellers casting their ballot for the 34-year-old assemblyman. Mamdani won in spite of Trump’s countless promises to strip federal funding from the city (something that he does not have the constitutional authority to decide) and his threat to deport the Ugandan-born politico. Instead, the city is concentrating on tangible local issues: the ongoing housing crisis, the astronomical cost of living, and the expensive price tags on everyday goods.

All things considered, Trump’s redirection toward affordability is especially odd from a man that considered a $1 million loan from his father to be “small,” is currently building himself a $300 million ballroom on the trampled remains of the White House East Wing, and seems to believe that you need a photo ID in order to purchase groceries. (This was a miraculous improvement in Trump’s comprehension of supermarkets, considering that he seemingly never knew the word “groceries” existed until last year.)

Vice President JD Vance has finally reacted to the significant Democratic victories in Tuesday’s election, downplaying the wins while also mimicking the rhetoric of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in his diagnosis of the GOP’s election night failures. 

“I think it’s idiotic to overreact to a couple of elections in blue states,” Vance wrote in a post on X rather condescendingly, before going on to emphasize the need for Republicans to focus on voter registration and the inflation making life unaffordable for so many Americans.

Vance’s comment about “a couple elections in blue states” ignores the reality of the situation. Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Georgia all saw big wins for Democrats Tuesday night, and they aren’t exactly blue states. And even within those states (and in bluer ones like New York and New Jersey), Democrats won in red districts.  

Democrats in Georgia made history by winning two statewide races for public service commissioner, their first nonfederal statewide wins since 2006. In Erie County, Pennsylvania, which went for President Trump in 2024, Democrat Christina Vogel won the county executive race by 24 percentage points. In Virginia’s 66th state House district, Democrat Nicole Cole beat 36-year Republican incumbent Bobby Orrock, the longest-serving GOP delegate in Virginia. And in ruby red Mississippi, Democrats were able to break the GOP state Senate supermajority, flipping three seats after 13 years of Republican control. 

These local victories, combined with Proposition 50 in California, the Democratic gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey, Trump’s very low approval rating, and what may be a significant Latino exodus, should certainly have Republicans more worried than Vance is in the thoughts he shared. And cutting SNAP benefits and triggering inflation while the president enriches himself and his family is quite a ways away from “working to make a decent life affordable in this country.”

After Zohran Mamdani’s win Tuesday night in New York City’s mayoral election, some top city officials are heading for the exits.

FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker announced Wednesday that he will resign, and Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Kaz Daughtry will likely follow, the New York Daily News reports. Tucker sent an email to Mayor Eric Adams only hours after Mamdani’s victory, saying that he will step down after December 19.

“Between now and then, I will continue to lead the greatest fire department in the world and will ensure an orderly transition,” the email said, according to the Daily News.

A fire department source told the newspaper that Tucker, who is Jewish and a Zionist, didn’t feel able to work well with Mamdani’s administration due to the mayor-elect’s views on Israel and Palestine. What that has to do with fire safety in New York is not clear, and Mamdani has unequivocally condemned antisemitism multiple times, including on Wednesday morning.

Last month, Mamdani told a Jewish congregation in Brooklyn, “I’m going to have people in my administration who are Zionists, whether liberal Zionists, or wherever they may be on that spectrum.”

Tucker, however, has political ties to Adams that seem to blur ethical lines. He owns a private security company that made some oddly timed donations to Adams without the required disclosures, before being appointed FDNY chief in 2024. He is currently traveling to Israel to meet with the Israel Fire and Rescue Authority, and may speak publicly about his resignation when he returns to New York.

Regarding Daughtry’s departure, the Daily News cited an unnamed source stating that the deputy mayor, as a member of the previous administration, didn’t see a future with Mamdani. Another Adams official told the Daily News that many other Adams staffers would likely resign in the coming days, as well.

President Donald Trump issued a nonsensical prophecy Wednesday for democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s term as New York City mayor.

While giving a speech at a forum of business leaders in Miami, Trump cited Mamdani’s victory as a means of criticizing congressional Democrats—though one of the party’s mainstream leaders never even endorsed Mamdani and didn’t appear to vote for him.

“If you wanna see what congressional Democrats wish to do to America, just look at the result of yesterday’s election in New York where their party installed a Communist as the mayor of the largest city in the nation,” Trump said, eliciting a round of tepid boos from the audience.

Trump went on to laud the city’s history of accepting refugees from Communist regimes—but quickly started fearmongering over the stunning results of New York City’s mayoral election the night before.

“Now the Democrats are so extreme that Miami will soon be the refuge for those fleeing communism in New York City. They flee, they flee!” Trump ranted. “Where do you live? ‘New York City, but I’m trying to leave because I don’t want to live in a Communist regime!’”

Trump continued to lament the supposedly rising tide of communism in the United States.

“After last night’s results, the decision facing all Americans could not be more clear: We have a choice between communism and common sense. Does that make sense to you?” Trump said.

No, it doesn’t, because much like failed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, whom the president had labeled a “Commie,” Mamdani isn’t actually a Communist. He’s a democratic socialist advocating for free city buses, cheaper groceries, and rent freezes—issues that ignited New York City’s electorate and garnered the most popular support of any mayoral candidate in the city’s history.

“And as long as I’m in the White House, the United States is not going Communist in any way shape or form, we’re gonna stop it,” Trump said.

“You know, I said [as] they were voting last night, ‘You could have a Communist or a thug,’” the president said. “And they took the Communist, you know? We could’ve done a little bit better in terms of candidates.”

Earlier this week, Trump issued a last-minute endorsement of independent candidate Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor of New York. After Mamdani’s victory was announced, as part of a wave of Democratic victories Tuesday, Trump took to Truth Social to try to convince his followers not to blame him for his party’s abject failure.

At least other MAGA Republicans didn’t take the loss too hard—oh wait, no, they immediately started decrying the imminent destruction of New York.

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is starting off with a big move: bringing former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan to co-chair his transition team. 

Mamdani made the announcement during a speech Wednesday morning at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens. Khan will be joined on Mamdani’s transition team by women leaders from previous mayoral administrations: former First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer, nonprofit president Grace Bonilla, and budget expert Melanie Hartzog. Elana Leopold, Mamdani’s campaign adviser and a staffer to former Mayor Bill de Blasio, will lead the team of women leaders as executive director.

Khan is famous for her antitrust expertise, beginning with her work at the New America Foundation and continuing through her time at Yale Law School. When President Biden nominated her as FTC commissioner and later as FTC chair in 2021, she was the youngest nominee ever.   

As FTC chair, Khan was willing to take on major corporations such as Amazon and Microsoft to combat monopolies, earning praise from Democrats as well as Republicans, including JD Vance and Steve Bannon. Khan’s action against Ticketmaster drew bipartisan support for a Justice Department lawsuit against the company in May last year.

Mamdani’s inclusion of Khan for his transition suggests that he’s willing to take on powerful corporate interests as mayor as part of his agenda to make the city more affordable. The question is how much he’ll be able to do from New York City Hall.