Trump Escalates War on CFPB With Move to Cut Off All Funding

The Trump administration has declared that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding mechanism is illegal, which could force the agency to close in the coming months when it runs out of cash, reported Politico.

Normally, the CFPB is funded using money from the “combined earnings” of the Federal Reserve—but Republicans, in an attempt to defund the agency, have been putting forth an argument to interpret “combined earnings” as profit. The Justice Department said in a legal memo that since the Fed has no surplus cash, it can’t transfer any money to the CFPB.

This is the latest tactic in an ongoing effort by Republicans and the Trump administration to dismantle the agency.

The CFPB was created after the 2008 recession in order to protect consumers from the kinds of predatory, risky lending practices that contributed to the crash. At a time when more and more Americans are falling into debt and struggling to keep up with their loan payments, the loss of the CFPB would remove oversight from lenders.

Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, is the mastermind behind the fight to eliminate the CFPB: In February, he requested $0 from the Fed to fund the CFPB, not arguing that the funding was illegal as the administration is now, but rather that the agency just didn’t need the funds. He’s also fighting in court for the ability to suspend 90 percent of CFPB staff.

Without funding, the agency “anticipates exhausting its currently available funds in early 2026,” it said in the court filing.

The Department of Homeland Security is patting itself on the back for Chicago’s dip in crime—even though the record low has absolutely nothing to do with the presence of federal agents.

“Celebrating with Chicagoans that since Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago started, homicides decreased 16 percent, shootings decreased 35 percent (the lowest in four years), robberies decreased 41 percent, vehicular carjackings decreased 48 percent, and transit crime decreased 20 percent,” Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin emailed the Chicago mayor’s office Monday afternoon.

“Thanks to DHS law enforcement, Chicago has experienced the fewest summer murders since 1965!” McLaughlin concluded.

Crime was down across the board by the end of August, according to the Chicago Police Department. But how the Trump administration is responsible for the drop in Windy City crime doesn’t make sense, considering that DHS didn’t arrive in Chicago until September 8.

“Crime is down in Chicago, but ICE/CBP has nothing to do with that work,” posted the Chicago mayor’s office on Tuesday.

If anything, the presence of federal agents in Chicago seems to have made the city less safe. State-sanctioned violence has been nearly nonstop in Chicago over the last few months.

In October, agents used tear gas in residential areas “multiple times without audible warnings,” according to court documents, surprising families with the painful chemical irritant. A couple of weeks later, federal agents allegedly tear-gassed a group of school-age children on their way to a Halloween parade, in a residential Chicago neighborhood.

Regardless, DHS’s Chicago presence is apparently here to stay.

“We aren’t leaving Chicago,” McLaughlin posted on X Tuesday.

The White House is using a report from DoorDash, a food delivery service, to claim that the price of breakfast foods has gone down for American consumers. But their cherry-picked numbers are outrageously misleading.

As President Donald Trump continues to dismiss concerns about affordability, his administration released a report citing DoorDash’s first-ever State of Local Commerce Report, which was published Monday. Among other things, the company’s report claimed that grocery prices on breakfast items have dropped 14 percent between March and September 2025.

Trump officials took that 14 percent and ran with it throughout Monday, touting the statistic as proof that the president had managed to improve the economy. But that number alone is deceptive about the overall price of breakfast foods because of what items are included and what items are missing.

DoorDash’s claim is based on the company’s “Breakfast Basics Index,” which is made up of the price of four items: three eggs, a glass of milk, a bagel, and an avocado. Already, this is a poor metric for breakfast because DoorDash omits breakfast staples such as coffee, bread, bacon, or even orange juice—all of which have seen prices go up in the past year.

Drought and weather conditions in South America have led the price of coffee to increase more than 83 percent so far this year. Meanwhile, NBC News reported that the prices of bread, bacon, and orange juice all saw increases since October 2024. Only by omitting breakfast staples could the company claim a reduction in the price of the most important meal of the day and then be parroted by an administration desperate to assuage mounting concerns about affordability.

The number is also misleading due to what it includes. DoorDash’s report states that the 14 percent drop was “driven largely by the decrease in the price of eggs.” By mid-September, egg prices had crashed at least 70 percent since the highs of March that were brought about by the bird flu outbreak earlier this year. One graph provided by DoorDash, and shared to X by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, showed a sharply declining price of eggs, while the other items had only gentle slopes.

The price of DoorDash’s “Everyday Essentials Index,” which included the cost of toothpaste, shampoo, toilet paper, laundry detergent, pain medicine, and diapers, “remained flat over twelve months,” according to the company. But in its own report Monday, the White House claimed those costs “fell over the past year.”

Leavitt claimed that DoorDash’s report proved Trump had “defeated Joe Biden’s inflation crisis—just like he promised.” In reality, inflation has steadily increased for the last five months in a row.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins also celebrated the results, writing on X: “More savings, less stress—that’s The Trump Effect.”

DoorDash is determined to be a “good partner” of the Trump administration, according to a private company scorecard that circulated through the White House in August. Trump previously met with DoorDash CEO Tony Xu in January.

The Trump administration has heavily relied on companies to spread its false claims about lowering consumer prices. Last week, Trump touted a decrease in the price of Walmart’s 2025 Holiday Meal as proof that groceries were less expensive—but failed to point out that last year’s basket contained more items.

Donald Trump’s Truth Social has its own AI-generated chatbot to compete with the likes of Grok and ChatGPT, but the program has one fatal flaw: It actually tells the truth about the president’s policies.

The AI search function debuted in August, a month after Trump ordered the end of “woke AI” in the federal government. But the program has since become one of his biggest detractors, highlighting the disparity between the Trump administration’s rhetoric and the reality of its work.

The Bulwark asked the Trump-owned chatbot a series of questions about the impacts of Trump’s agenda, ranging from tariffs to the insane claim that he has “solved” eight wars over the last 11 months.

Here’s how the experiment went (with answers edited down for length):

Q: Do Trump’s Tariffs cost the American people money?

Truth Search AI: Yes. Tariffs are taxes on imports that U.S. importers pay and largely pass on through higher prices, so the costs are borne mainly by American businesses and consumers.

Q: Did Donald Trump lie about the 2020 election being “rigged” and “stolen?”

Truth Search AI: Yes. Courts, Trump’s own advisers, and official investigations found no evidence that the 2020 election was “rigged” or “stolen,” despite his repeated claims.

Q: Did people storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, [2021], because of Donald Trump?

Truth Search AI: Yes. Multiple official and contemporaneous records attribute the January 6, 2021, Capitol breach to a pro‑Trump crowd mobilized around his false election‑fraud claims and pressure campaign to stop certification.

Q: How many wars has Trump ended since taking office in 2025?

Truth Search AI: None. There is no verified instance of President Trump formally ending a war since taking office in January 2025.

Q: Have grocery prices gone down since Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2025?

Truth Search AI: Short answer: No. As of 2025, grocery prices have not fallen since Jan. 20, 2025; they have continued to rise modestly on net.

Thousands of student protesters in Belgrade, Serbia, formed a human shield on Tuesday around a bombed-out military complex, vowing to stop Jared Kushner’s redevelopment company, Affinity Partners, from turning the historical monument into a luxury complex.

NATO bombed Serbia for 78 days in 1999 in an effort to end then–President Slobodan Milosevic’s violent ethnic cleansing of Albanians living in Kosovo, which resulted in the death of 13,000 people (mostly ethnic Albanians). NATO bombed bridges, military buildings, and government buildings. Human Rights Watch estimates that as many as 528 civilians were killed in the bombings. 

Many Serbians still see the bombed buildings as a point of cultural and architectural pride today. 

But in May, Kushner’s company and the Serbian government signed a deal for a 99-year lease of the land the bombed-out buildings are on for “revitalization”—meaning a high-rise hotel, office space, and stores. It will be a $500 million project. Kushner’s company will reportedly build a separate memorial for the bombing elsewhere.  

“The economic progress in Serbia over the past decade has been impressive,” Kushner said at the time. “This development will further elevate Belgrade into the premier international destination it is becoming.”

Protests were planned from the minute the deal was signed. “This is a warning that we will all defend these buildings together,” one of the students told the Associated Press on Tuesday. “We will be the human shield.”

It is unclear how effective the protests will be in delaying or denying the project.

Virginia Senator Tim Kaine accused MSNBC host Katy Tur of “overdramatizing” Democrats’ anger after he voted with seven other Democratic senators to end the government shutdown without any meaningful concessions.

Tur, who spoke with Kaine on Monday, questioned him about why he chose to end the shutdown without securing the Affordable Care Act subsidies that the Democrats had been fighting for. “It doesn’t seem like some of the party is just angry about this; it seems like this is ripping the party apart at a time where it felt like the party was coming back together postelections,” Tur said. “How do you convince your fellow Democrats to stay together on this, and how do you convince voters across the country to believe in the Democrats again?”

“Can I just say: ‘Ripping the party apart’? I think you’re overdramatizing this,” Kaine replied, looking smug. “I know the news business is to try and make everything the biggest crisis since the Cuban missile crisis, or something. There’s differences of opinion!”

Tur, defending her point, went on to quote responses from fellow Democrats, like California Governor Gavin Newsom, who called the deal “pathetic.” “This is me quoting Democrats. I’m not making things up. It’s reading what people are saying and reporting it,” she insisted.

“We’re a big tent, we have different points of view,” Kaine responded. “I’ve been doing this for 31 years. This is by far, by far, a minor league issue within the Democratic Party.”

The most that Kaine and his fellow Dem defectors could do to prevent Americans’ health care premiums from shooting up was get Republicans to agree to a vote on extending the subsidies, which is unlikely to pass in the Senate (and not even guaranteed to happen in the House). But Kaine still touted this as a victory.

“We’re going to unify around having the health care fight within a month, and people are going to see where Democrats are and see where Republicans are,” he said.

What Kaine fails to realize is that he and the seven other Democrats who voted to end the shutdown have already shown us where they stand, and the rest of the party won’t forget it.

Women are already getting squeezed out of Pete Hegseth’s military.

A female Navy captain was set to become the first woman to oversee Navy SEALs in a Naval Special Warfare command in July—until her promotion was abruptly canceled with little to no explanation.

She was the top officer for promotion in her cohort, CNN reported Tuesday on the unnamed commander. She received a Purple Heart for her time in Iraq, during which she was injured in an IED attack. She was also the first female troop commander to serve with SEAL Team Six.

“She was the best man for the job. There is absolutely no DEI,” a retired SEAL told CNN.

But two weeks before the ceremony commemorating her advance was set to take place, her rank change was canceled.

The decision came through a series of phone calls that skirted formal channels while omitting a paper trail, several sources told CNN. The consensus among Naval Special Warfare is that the incoming commander was yanked by the defense secretary because of her gender.

“They want to keep it the brotherhood and don’t like that she’s coming in and challenging the status quo,” a Navy special operations source familiar with the situation told the news network.

A Pentagon official said that the command was pulled because the officer wasn’t a SEAL, not because she is a woman, and that Hegseth had no hand in the matter. But multiple people familiar with Navy personnel dynamics weren’t buying it.

And many people are worried about what Hegseth’s policies will do to the state of women in the military in general. “To be quite honest, I am fearful for women in uniform right now,” said Patti J. Tutalo, a retired Coast Guard commander. Tutalo served on an advisory group for women in the military before it was shut down this year after decades of work.

“I definitely think there will be a retention issue for women. I also think that you’re going to see an increase in assaults, increase in harassment, increase in bullying, hazing, and I think there’ll be a lack of accountability for those things.”

In September, Hegseth announced to hundreds of America’s top military commanders at a mandatory in-person assembly in Quantico that he would be resetting military combat requirements to the “highest male standard only.”

“When it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender neutral,” Hegseth said at the time. “If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it.”

Women made up 17.3 percent of America’s active-duty force in 2021, with more than 231,000 members. That same year, they composed 21.4 percent of the National Guard, according to a demographics report from the Defense Department.

Hegseth has openly said before that he does not believe women should serve in combat roles. During a November 2024 interview on the Shawn Ryan Show, Hegseth said, “I’m straight-up just saying we should not have women in combat roles. It hasn’t made us more effective. Hasn’t made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated.”

The United Kingdom isn’t playing about President Donald Trump’s extrajudicial military strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats—it’s cutting him off from the intelligence apparatus used to track boats, CNN reported Tuesday.  

The U.K., which controls some territories in the Caribbean, operates an intelligence network in the area. The top ally has long assisted the United States in monitoring alleged drug trafficking in the Caribbean, sharing its intelligence with the Joint Interagency Task Force South. 

Typically, the boats would be stopped, boarded, and searched. But recently, Trump has opted to just blow them up, killing dozens of crew members, violating international law. 

In a major break between longtime allies, the U.K. stopped sharing this intelligence with the U.S. government after it grew concerned that the Pentagon was using the information to carry out its extrajudicial executions, sources told CNN.

The Trump administration has claimed that its military strikes have targeted “unlawful combatants” who are part of foreign cartels it argues are “nonstate armed groups.” To assert its authority to make the strikes, the U.S. government claims the transport of drugs constitutes “an armed attack against the United States.”

But a closer look at some of the men killed in these strikes revealed that they were not so-called “narco-terrorists” or members of criminal gangs or cartels. Many of them weren’t even heading for the U.S. And, crucially, they were smuggling cocaine, not synthetic opioids responsible for killing tens of thousands of Americans every year. 

Officials in the U.K. aren’t the only ones skeptical of the Trump administration’s ratcheting-up military campaign. During a tense meeting last month, Admiral Alvin Holsey, who has served as commander of the U.S. Southern Command for only a year, offered to resign from his position after he questioned the strikes’ legality, sources told CNN. He is expected to leave his post in December. 

A Utah judge rejected a Republican-drawn congressional map on Monday, choosing instead a map that would create the first Democratic-leaning district in the state in 25 years.

Judge Dianna Gibson found that the map submitted by Utah’s Republican-controlled legislature violated Utah law because it was “drawn with the purpose to favor Republicans.”

While states across the country mount gerrymandering offensives, Utah has been knee-deep in its own redistricting battle: Voters passed Proposition 4 in 2018, which created an independent redistricting committee to draw new state maps and prohibited maps that considered partisan data. But Utah Republican legislators couldn’t tolerate that and repealed the proposition in 2020, creating a new, Republican-favored map.

That caused the organizers behind Prop 4—the League of Women Voters of Utah and Mormon Women for Ethical Government—to sue in 2022.

Gibson ruled in favor of a Prop 4–compliant map submitted by the plaintiffs, deeming it independently and correctly structured, without partisan influence. Gibson’s ruling could give the Democrats another coveted seat as they head into the midterms.

Utah joins states like Texas, North Carolina, and California that have passed new maps ahead of the midterms—but unlike Texas or California, where the party in power is creating more seats for itself, Utah Republicans’ efforts to do the same thing have brutally backfired.

Eight Senate Democrats didn’t just give up on affordable health care by agreeing to a shutdown deal—they also gave the GOP a clear path to take revenge on former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith.

Bloomberg Law has reported that the very end of the Senate-approved shutdown deal contains a hidden provision that essentially allows Republican senators to sue Smith for millions of dollars in damages after their phone records were seized during his investigation into the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. The legislation allows any senator who has been searched without their knowledge to be awarded at least $500,000, so long as they weren’t the target of the investigation.

While the provision does not mention Smith by name, it is retroactive to January 1, 2022. That date was just a few months before Smith and the FBI began to request electronic communications from eight GOP senators as part of the January 6 investigation.

“Any Senator whose Senate data, or the Senate data of whose Senate office, has been acquired, subpoenaed, searched, accessed, or disclosed in violation of this section may bring a civil action against the United States if the violation was committed by an officer, employee, or agent of the United States or of any Federal department or agency,” the provision reads. That would certainly include Smith.

Smith has yet to release a statement in response to the news.

The former special counsel has been seen as an enemy of the administration ever since his dual criminal investigations into Trump for illegal possession of classified documents and his role in January 6. Trump pleaded not guilty on all charges before they were dropped altogether after the 2024 election due to convenient Justice Department policy that prevents the prosecution of a sitting president. Smith has maintained both his innocence and the validity of his investigation.

The full Senate-approved funding bill can be read here.