Those of you who follow right wing political history are certainly familiar with their old lament about “the sell-out at Yalta” in which Roosevelt and Churchill allegedly old out to Stalin by allowing him to continue to occupy eastern Europe. It was bullshit of course. But it looks like Trump’s on his way to actually doing it:
The Trump administration has been secretly working in consultation with Russia to draft a new plan to end the war in Ukraine, U.S. and Russian officials tell Axios.
The 28-point U.S. plan is inspired by President Trump’s successful push for a deal in Gaza. A top Russian official told Axios he’s optimistic about the plan. It’s not yet clear how Ukraine and its European backers will feel about it.
The plan’s 28 points fall into four general buckets, sources tell Axios: peace in Ukraine, security guarantees, security in Europe, and future U.S. relations with Russia and Ukraine.
It’s unclear how the plan approaches contentious issues such as territorial control in eastern Ukraine — where Russian forces have been inching forward, but still control far less land than the Kremlin has demanded.
Behind the scenes: Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff is leading the drafting of the plan and has discussed it extensively with Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, a U.S. official said.
Dmitriev, who runs Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and is also deeply involved in diplomacy over Ukraine, told Axios in an interview on Monday that he spent three days huddled with Witkoff and other members of Trump’s team when Dmitriev visited Miami from Oct. 24-26.
Dmitriev expressed optimism about the deal’s chances of success because, unlike past efforts, “we feel the Russian position is really being heard.”
Dmitriev told Axios the basic idea was to take the principles Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to in Alaska in August and produce a proposal “to address the Ukraine conflict, but also how to restore U.S.-Russia ties [and] address Russia’s security concerns.”
[…]
Dmitriev said this effort was entirely unrelated to the U.K.-led push to draft a Gaza-style peace plan for Ukraine, which he said had no chance of success because it disregards Russia’s positions.
The Russian envoy said the U.S. side was now in the process of explaining the “benefits” of its current approach to the Ukrainians and the Europeans.
Sounds great. Give Russia what it wants and everything’s copacetic.
The Democrats currently have a 14-point lead against the Republicans among registered voters nationally on the 2026 generic congressional ballot question. This has changed considerably. Since 2022, voters have divided about which party’s candidate they would support. Asked at the tail end of the nation’s longest government shutdown, a plurality of Americans say they place most of the blame for the shutdown on congressional Democrats. However, President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans do not walk away unscathed, with six in ten blaming either the President or the GOP in Congress.
A majority of registered voters nationally (55%) say they would support the Democratic candidate for Congress in their district, if the 2026 congressional elections were held today. 41% would support the Republican, and 3% would back another candidate. Among independents, the Democrats (61%) have a +33-point advantage over the Republicans (28%).
This is the first time in more than three years that Democrats have had a notable advantage on the congressional generic ballot question. When last asked in November of 2024, registered voters divided, 48% to 48%. The last time the Democrats had a noteworthy advantage on this question was in June of 2022 when the Democrats were +7 among registered voters.
39% of Americans blame the Democrats in Congress for the government shutdown. 34% place responsibility on President Trump, and 26% blame congressional Republicans.
While 80% of Republicans blame congressional Democrats, 49% of Democrats blame President Trump. An additional 40% of Democrats point a finger at the Republicans in Congress. Among independents, 41% blame President Trump; 32% blame the Republicans in Congress, and 27% blame the congressional Democrats.
President Trump’s job approval rating among Americans is 39%, down slightly from 41% in September. 56% of Americans disapprove of the job the President is doing in office. This compares with 53%, previously.
26% of Americans say they strongly approve of the job President Trump is doing while 48% strongly disapprove.
There’s more here.
I don’t think I need to comment other than to say that Trump’s king act may not be the hit he thinks it is.
President Donald Trump’s approval rating fell to 38%, the lowest since his return to power, with Americans unhappy about his handling of the high cost of living and the investigation into the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
The survey showed Trump’s overall approval has fallen two percentage points since a Reuters/Ipsos poll in early November.
Neither I nor Digby anticipated that I would be writing from ground zero in the voting rights war when I joined her in August 2014. Life’s little quirks.
The conservative Carolina Journal summarizes the case today:
A three-judge federal panel will consider this afternoon requests to block North Carolina’s new congressional map for the 2026 elections.
Two sets of plaintiffs are seeking an injunction against the map. Republican legislative leaders are defending the map.
Tied to Senate Bill 249, the map shifts counties between Congressional Districts 1 and 3. Legislative leaders say the changes are designed to help Republicans pick up District 1, a seat held now by Democratic Rep. Don Davis.
One group of plaintiffs led by the North Carolina NAACP and another working with Democratic operative Marc Elias’ law firm challenge the map as violating constitutional rights.
The NAACP’s latest court filing targets arguments from legislative lawyers.
Beyond that point, it’s Republican arguments for why disenfranchising Black voters is A-okay with them.
Feting a Saudi butcher, suggesting Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi had earned dismemberment, and calling a female reporter “piggy” are not the only items on Donald Trump’s lowlights reel from the last week.
His effort to shake up the 2026 congressional elections by asking (and getting) state-level allies to redraw district maps to favor Republicans mid-decade just came up TILT on Tuesday (Politico):
Together, they represent roadblocks for the White House’s push to shore up a House majority through mid-decade redraws. Republicans began their rush to redraw the maps with the upper hand, but state-level backlash, Democrats’ big Election Day win for California’s redistricting measure and this court ruling have cut into that advantage, with just under a year until voters head to the polls in next year’s midterms.
Not to mention Trump’s epic Tuesday losses in the House (427-1) and Senate (unanimous consent; GOP senators did not want a recorded vote) on release of the Epstein files:
The bill forces the release within 30 days of all files and communications related to Epstein, as well as any information about the investigation into his death in federal prison. It would allow the Justice Department to redact information about Epstein’s victims or continuing federal investigations, but not information due to “embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.”
The bill now lands on the Oval Office desk.
Trump does not dare veto the measure. Not with those vote margins and with 80 percent public approval of full disclosure. That doesn’t mean he, AG Pam Bondi, and FBI director Kash Patel won’t be casting about for “the dog ate my homework” excuses for drawing out the Epstein coverup. Don’t expect to see full disclosure anytime soon.
Getting back to the 160-page Texas ruling authored by Judge Jeffrey V. Brown, a conservative Donald Trump nominee, Mark Joseph Stern explains (Slate):
Remarkably, Brown found that it was Trump’s own Department of Justice that had injected race into the plot as part of its “hamfisted” effort to cook up a pretext for new maps. And he laid out a gobsmacking amount of smoking-gun evidence that all points in the direction of unlawful racism. The Texas Legislature, Brown noted, could simply have drawn a straightforward partisan gerrymander that benefited Republicans without regard to race. Instead, it colluded with the DOJ to reengineer congressional districts by skin color—the one thing that even this Supreme Court does not allow.
But it was a letter sent July 7 by Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, that set the stage for Brown’s ruling. She claimed that existing Texas districts were unconstitutionally racist and risked federal action if not redrawn.
Brown, explains Stern:
… largely blames Dhillon and her deputies at the DOJ for bungling the whole gambit. Partisan gerrymandering, he noted, is permissible under the U.S. Constitution. And “to be sure, politics played a role” in the creation of this map. But Texas Republicans repeatedly disclaimed that they were, first and foremost, attempting to comply with Dhillon’s demands. And her primary demand was that they re-sort voters along racial lines.
Why? That is the baffling question that Brown spent much of his opinion trying to resolve. Here is what appears to have happened: Texas Republicans wanted a pretext they could use as a fig leaf to pretend that their gerrymander was not purely partisan. Dhillon was well positioned to concoct one, since she could threaten to sue the state if it didn’t follow through on Trump’s demands. Her solution was to seize upon a recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, Petteway v. Galveston County, which held that the Voting Rights Act does not require states to draw multiracial “coalition” districts. (In other words, Texas does not have to combine two minority groups to create one majority-minority district.) Petteway merely relieved states of the obligation to draw coalition districts. In her letter, though, Dhillon twisted the ruling into a prohibition against these districts. Because Texas currently has a number of them, she wrote, the state’s congressional map was unconstitutional and had to be retooled.
But Dhillon’s letter was so full of factual, legal, and typographical errors that, following its illogic, Stern summarizes, “Republicans targeted Texas’ nonwhite voters with almost surgical precision. [North Carolina knows something about surgical precision.] They left majority-white districts largely intact, even those that leaned Democratic. But they obliterated majority-minority “coalition” districts through the classic technique of a brazen racial gerrymander.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he would appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court and seek a stay. Voting Rights Act adversaries on the Roberts court may sympathize with Trump’s effort. But, Stern suggests, “Tuesday’s decision is notrooted in the VRA; it is, rather, based on the simple principle that the Constitution does not permit invidious racial discrimination in congressional elections.”
The question now is whether SCOTUS is prepared to stand by that principle despite Texas having broken the law to steal an additional 5 congressional seats.
“Donald Trump and Greg Abbott played with fire, got burned — and democracy won,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement on X Tuesday. “This ruling is a win for Texas and for every American who fights for free and fair elections.”
Meanwhile, at the White House:
Everyone at this White House State Dinner and Elon Musk are sitting down at a table having dinner with a man Musk accused of being a pedophile They are also breaking bread with a Saudi murderer prince. That’s the current backdrop to a gathering of the world’s most evil people pic.twitter.com/HMSUjg3wh0
60% of Republicans think Trump is full of shit on the Epstein files. And since his own DOJ is now charged with releasing the files (assuming he signs the bill, which he says he will do) a good many people will assume it’s a shame — because Trump has spent the last few months covering it up. This is never going to fully go away — and Trump knows it.
He knew how this was going to go when they asked him if he’s release the JFK, MLK and Epstein files all in the same breath. Those conspiracy theories never go away.
I hope everyone doesn’t get too, too excited, though. The Trump era is a roller coaster. We’re on the upside today but it’s inevitable that we’ll be hurtling down the other side before long. I don’t know what it will be — war maybe. Rally ’round the flag? But something. We have three long years to go….
Online influencer Andrew Tate, a self-described misogynist who has millions of young male followers, was facing allegations of sex trafficking women in three countries when he and his brother left their home in Romania to visit the United States.
“The Tates will be free, Trump is the president. The good old days are back,” Tate posted on X before the trip in February — one of many times he has sung the president’s praises to his fans.
But when the Tate brothers arrived by private plane in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, they immediately found themselves in the crosshairs of law enforcement once more, as Customs and Border Protection officials seized their electronic devices.
The Tates were released under pressure from the United States for reasons that were obscure. There is no doubt that they are the worst kind of violent misogynists. They videos their misdeed and put them on the internet. At the time, it was thought that maybe the U.S. would take over the investigation and deal with them in their own judicial system.
Nope:
This time, they had a powerful ally come to their aid. Behind the scenes, the White House intervened on their behalf.
Interviews and records reviewed by ProPublica show a White House official told senior Department of Homeland Security officials to return the devices to the brothers several days after they were seized. The official who delivered the message, Paul Ingrassia, is a lawyer who previously represented the Tate brothers before joining the White House, where he was working as its DHS liaison.
In his written request, a copy of which was reviewed by ProPublica, Ingrassia chided authorities for taking the action, saying the seizure of the Tates’ devices was not a good use of time or resources. The request to return the electronics to the Tates, he emphasized, was coming from the White House.
[…]
Ingrassia’s intervention on behalf of Tate and his brother, Tristan, caused alarm among DHS officials that they could be interfering with a federal investigation if they followed through with the instruction, according to interviews and screenshots of contemporaneous communications between officials.
One official who was involved and spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid facing retribution said they were disgusted by the request’s “brazenness and the high-handed expectation of complicity.”
— Nathan Livingstone (MilkBarTV) (@TheMilkBarTV) January 11, 2025
Yeah:
Trump had nominated Ingrassia to lead the Office of Special Counsel, but the 30-year-old lawyer’s chances for Senate confirmation imploded after Politico reported that he had sent a string of racist text messages to fellow Republicans and described himself as having “a Nazi streak.” Paltzik, his lawyer, raised doubts about the authenticity of the texts but said “even if the texts are authentic, they clearly read as self-deprecating and satirical humor.”
In a post on X announcing he was withdrawing from his Senate confirmation hearing because not enough Republican lawmakers were supporting him, Ingrassia said he would “continue to serve President Trump and this administration to Make America Great Again.”
Last week, Ingrassia announced he was moving to a new role within the administration, after Trump called him into his office and asked him to serve as deputy general counsel at the General Services Administration.
From the man who personally, and with the help of his Vice President, dressed down the president of an allied country at war with an adversary in front of the whole world, comes this:
Reporter: Is it appropriate for your family to do business with Saudi Arabia while you’re president? The us intelligence concluded you orchestrated the murder of a journalist…
Trump: Who are you with?
Reporter: ABC News
Trump: ABC Fake news. I have nothing to do with the family business. You mentioned somebody extremely controversial—a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman. Whether you did or didn’t like him, things happen but he knew nothing about it. You don’t have to embarrass our guest.
Trump suggests Khashoggi had it coming: "You're mentioning someone that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about. Whether you like him or didn't like him, things happen. But he knew nothing about it. You don't have to… pic.twitter.com/uhh8VjFy20
Speaking with reporters days after the emails’ release, Trump insisted. “I know nothing about that. They would have announced that a long time ago.”
“Jeffrey Epstein and I had a very bad relationship for many years,” he added.
When an off-camera female reporter — later identified as a Bloomberg reporter — began to ask if there was anything “incriminating” in the Epstein emails, Trump pointed a finger in her face.
“Quiet. Quiet, Piggy,” he said menacingly.
Apropos of nothing. here are some common symptoms of dementia
Social inappropriateness: Inhibitions are often lost, meaning a person may say or do things that are considered socially inappropriate, such as making offensive comments or touching someone inappropriately.
Poor judgment: The ability to judge a situation or what is appropriate is diminished, which can lead to impulsive actions or remarks.
Disregard for social norms: The brain areas that enforce social norms are impaired, so the person may not understand that their behavior is out of line.
Impulsivity: Dementia can lead to more impulsive behaviors, as the control mechanism for acting on an impulse is damaged.
One of the most dramatic moments in modern American political history came in the wee hours of July 28, 2017, when the country watched to see if the Senate would vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act — and send the country back to the days when premature death and bankruptcy were common due to lack of access to health insurance. Republicans had voted dozens of times to repeal the law they had hated, even calling it “Obamacare” as a kind of epithet, not realizing the program would become popular and forever be associated with the popular Democratic president who signed it.
That night, the vote on the floor was called the “skinny repeal,” a transparent gimmick intended to force GOP House members on the other side of the Capitol to come up with something better, even though their previous attempts had been failures. The Republican caucus was unified with three exceptions. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine were opposed. Only Arizona Sen. John McCain remained uncommitted. If he voted no, it would defeat the bill 51-49.
McCain was suffering from brain cancer and had dealt with a lifetime of health challenges due to his injuries as a POW in the Vietnam War. He understood the stakes, and he had a gift for drama. When he walked on to the floor that night, he knew his vote would be one of the defining moments of his career. When his name was called, McCain didn’t say anything. He simply walked up to the desk and gave a thumbs down, effectively ending the GOP’s relentless, years-long attempts to repeal Obamacare.
Eight years later, the GOP — the party that has spent decades trying to privatize Social Security and Medicare — is trying a different approach: Destroying the program by increments, one painful piece at a time. They ended the individual mandate, which would have made everyone participate — and kept premiums lower while covering people who don’t realize that bad things can happen to them too. They hobbled the Medicaid expansion from the beginning, and more recently they cut that program drastically under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which is conveniently set to take place after the 2026 midterms, revealing that they know just how unpopular and cruel those cuts will be. They made it more difficult to enroll, forcing people to manually sign up every year instead of being automatically enrolled. And now they are allowing the ACA subsidies to expire, hiking premiums to unaffordable levels for millions of people.
The GOP’s philosophy was perhaps best captured by Medicare and Medicaid head Dr. Mehmet Oz, who said Sunday on Fox News, “If you really want to drop the cost of health care in America, get healthier.”
It took Democrats decades to pass universal health care legislation, which was famously the dream of President Harry Truman. In 1994, the Clinton administration’s attempt at health care reform failed, largely due to Republicans being unwilling to negotiate. There were subsequently some successes at the state level, most notably in Massachusetts under GOP Gov. Mitt Romney, who passed a program with some elements that appealed to Republicans. Democrats thought Romney’s template might offer a way to attract GOP support in Congress.
When Barack Obama won the White House in 2008, the country was in the midst of a severe economic crisis and a painful recession. Job losses exacerbated a health care crisis that had been growing for decades. A system dependent on employer-provided health insurance left tens of millions of Americans unable to afford it on their own — if they could qualify at all.
When Democrats stated their intentions to finally pass health care reform, Republicans refused to participate. But Democrats had been given a mandate by voters, along with large majorities in both houses of Congress. For months they held hearings, consulted experts, drafted policies and debated, trying to form a consensus as a party, and with the public. There were pro-life members who refused to allow abortion coverage, progressives who wanted a public option and conservative senators who wanted less coverage and regulation. Across the country, the newly-formed Tea Party was staging a tantrum, and giving the media the thrilling political theater they craved.
Still, largely due to the leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Democrats managed to pass the Affordable Care Act with the understanding that it was only a “starter home,” as Obama referred to it — a framework on which to build over time. Important regulations such as requiring insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions, allowing kids to stay on their parents’ policies until they were 26 and requiring some basic kinds of coverage were the plan’s foundation.
Many Democrats hoped they could eventually provide a public option, which would essentially allow people to opt-in to Medicare. The party also wanted to raise the subsidies that helped people pay for the insurance on the exchanges, as most agreed the original formula would not be sufficient over time to cover all the program’s eventual recipients. In 2021, as the Covid-19 pandemic precipitated yet another economic crisis, leaving many out of work and needing to buy into the program, Democrats were finally able to increase those subsidies for millions of people through the American Rescue Plan.
Now, after these hard-fought gains, Republicans are at it again. They are recycling their absurd health care “alternatives” at a time when the government has completely lost touch with anything resembling reality or responsibility. This time, they might just get them passed.
President Donald Trump has apparently decided that he can take one of his faux-populist stances by promoting the idea of sending subsidies directly to Americans instead of the “big bad insurance companies,” allowing Americans to negotiate with the corporations on their own. Setting aside the notion that individuals can negotiate the cost of their health care, this daft idea offers no explanation as to how it’s supposed to save people money. They would still have to kick in their own share of higher premiums.
It’s clear that Trump doesn’t understand anything about insurance — but then some Republican senator doctors apparently don’t either. In a speech on the Senate floor, Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall complained that 40% of people insured under Obamacare don’t file any claims, which means they shouldn’t be on the program. Then there is a more serious proposal by Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who wants to send Trump’s subsidies to a mandatory Health Savings Account, which experts warn would end up collapsing the ACA Marketplaces.
But not to worry. Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., says he’s writing the legislation and that he’s an expert. He once ran HCA, the country’s largest for-profit health care company — until he resigned in 1997 during a federal investigation. In 2003, the company was found to have defrauded Medicare and had to pay $1.7 billion, then the largest fine in U.S. history.
Republicans openly admit they want people to pay high deductibles and have terrible coverage because they think it will make them more “responsible.” During a presidential debate in 2011, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas., a medical doctor, was asked if society should just let people who don’t have insurance die, and his fans in the audience yelled “yeah!” He suggested that charity could pick up the tab but that really, people just need to be responsible for themselves.
Paul’s response was honest, what most Republicans are unwilling to admit they believe: If you aren’t rich enough to afford high premiums, or to pay for your own health care if you get sick and insurance refuses to cover you, then you have failed to adequately care for yourself and you should just have to suffer the consequences. All of Trump’s phony paeans to populism can’t hide his real intentions.
