Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

That ignorant, drunken, talk-show-host, rapist Sec Def is systematically purging the military of women. I’m sure he’d be fine with keeping them around to cook and clean. Maybe they can do some clerical work. But that’s about it. After all, if you don’t have a penis there’s really not much you’re good at (except for, well, you know.)

They’re just making it impossible for women to pursue their careers:

Everything was set for the Navy officer to take over a new role that would have capped an already distinguished career— and made her the first woman in a Naval Special Warfare command overseeing Navy SEALs.

Ranked the top officer for promotion in her cohort, she received a Purple Heart after being injured in an IED attack during a combat tour in Iraq. She then became the first woman to serve with SEAL Team Six in the role of troop commander, one of several senior positions within the squadrons that make up the elite naval unit.

A formal ceremony marking her new position was planned for July. Invitations went out two months in advance.

But just two weeks before the ceremony, her command was abruptly canceled with little explanation, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation. The decision didn’t come through formal channels but by a series of phone calls from the Pentagon, one of the sources said. The circumstances were unusual and seemed designed to omit a paper trail, according to multiple sources.

Under the Navy’s “up or out” policy, with no command slot to take, the officer’s more than two-decade military career was effectively over.

Everybody knew it was Hegseth. He’s made it clear that he doesn’t want any women in leadership roles (or really, in the military at all.)

The Pentagon said that women are “excited” to work for Hegseth and his “strong leadership.” Sure they are. (I hope none of them are ever in a room alone with him…)

With Hegseth at the helm, many who spoke to CNN felt women are no longer wanted in uniform— a potentially seismic shift since they make up roughly 18% of the US military.

“To be quite honest, I am fearful for women in uniform right now,” said Patti J. Tutalo, a retired Coast Guard commander who served on a decades-old advisory group for women in the military before it was shut down this year.

“I definitely think there will be a retention issue for women,” Tutalo added. “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.”

There was already a problem with harassment and assault. It’s going to grow exponentially with the drunken womanizer who follows a medieval Christian nationalist preacher who believes women should be subservient to men in all ways.

For Hailey Gibbons, an Army veteran who was among the first women to graduate from Ranger School after it was opened to women a decade ago, the idea that women aren’t meeting the same standards as men is “laughable.” Her initial physical test at Ranger School – a grueling two-month training course – was the same as her male comrades, she said: 49 pushups, 59 sit-ups, and a five-mile run in under 40 minutes, plus six chin-ups.

Hegseth is making it okay for others in the military to say, “women can’t do this,” said Gibbons, who served in the Army’s elite 75th Ranger Regiment.

Another woman in the Army who spoke to CNN – an enlisted soldier in a combat arms unit – said that she is already feeling real-life effects of Hegseth’s September speech.

Following the secretary’s remarks, she said a male noncommissioned officer in her unit told her: “All you women are getting out now.”

“I want nothing to do with the military after this,” she said.

This lout and his buddies are making the U.S. Military a hallowed out core of wild-eyed extremists and fools. They’re not just pushing women out, they’re firing a massive number of top generals who apparently haven’t shown the proper deference to Hegseth and Dear Leader.

Meanwhile, they’re gleefully committing murder on the high seas in such contravention of international law that our allies are now refusing to share intelligence because they want no part of it.

And they are preparing to start wars. Good luck.

This one is just … incredible:

A provision of the government funding bill that passed the Senate on Monday could give Republican senators a big payday over the government allegedly spying on them.

The legislation, expected to become law this week and end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, looks like it would allow the aggrieved senators to sue the government for at least $500,000 in statutory damages.

The FBI sought phone records from eight Republican senators in 2023 as part of its investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the certification of his 2020 loss to Joe Biden, according to documents obtained by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who said the government “spied” on the lawmakers.

[…]

“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 bill text says.

Crucially, the provision comes with “limited retroactive applicability” covering any violations since January 2022, so the eight senators would be eligible for damages for the probe that occurred in 2023.

The investigation, nicknamed “Arctic Frost,” looked at the timing of phone calls by the lawmakers from Jan. 4 to Jan. 7, 2021. The records included details about call times but not the actual contents of the communications, contrary to one Republican who complained his phone had been “wiretapped.”

The eight senators are Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). Investigators also obtained phone records for Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), but the legislation doesn’t create a cause of action for House members. None of the lawmakers were charged with crimes or were known to be the targets of a criminal investigation.

Public record shows that those Senators were being sought to help with the coup. The special counsel was trying to establish a timeline. But naturally these senators are squealing about being “spied on” when the truth is that they were participating in a coup attempt. But whatever.

It’s the part about being able to sure for half a million dollars that really reeks. Apparently, this is another one of those deals where the DOJ just gets to decide if they deserve the money. Gosh, I wonder how that’s going to go?

The corruption and abuse of power has become endemic to the GOP. And they aren’t even trying to hide it. But then, why should they? Their voters think it’s great. As long as they own the libs they can do anything they want.

Republicans, that’s who

Trump: "I want the money to go into an account for people where the people buy there own health insurance. It's so good. The insurance will be better. It'll cost less. Everybody is going to be happy. They're going to feel like entrepreneurs. They will able to go out and negotiate… pic.twitter.com/BfY1a6ROTq

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) November 11, 2025

I wrote below about the idea of how to lose well and maybe there’s a way to do more of that going forward. In the meantime we have to hope that Democrats will work with what they have, which is not insignificant. Dan Pfeiffer writes:

This is now a messaging campaign. It is an opportunity to make sure that every American knows two things: Republicans raised their premiums and Democrats tried to stop them.

Do not sleep on what a truly politically insane decision Republicans have made. Affordability is the top issue in American politics. Last week’s elections made that crystal clear. And the Republican response to voters being incredibly concerned about the cost of living was to raise people’s health care costs.

And you don’t have to take my word for it. Tony Fabrizio — Donald Trump’s pollster — wrote a memo earlier this summer that detailed the danger for Republicans:

While the 2024 outcome for these districts was even, the generic Republican is down 3 points among all registered voters. Among those most motivated to vote — an early indicator of midterm turnout — the Republican is down 7 points. If the Republican candidate lets the premium tax credit expire, the Republican trails the Democrat by 15 points. There is broad bipartisan support for the tax credits and their extension.

We need people paying attention if and when the Senate votes down the bill — and we need everyone to know that the House wouldn’t even hold a vote to prevent the premium increase. File this under turning chicken shit into chicken salad.

This means Democrats doing the following:

• holding town halls in Republican districts
• Democratic activists rallying in front of Republican offices
• organic and paid campaigns telling the stories of the people whose premiums have skyrocketed — with a special focus on former Trump voters and other Republicans
• elected officials, activists, and other influencers posting some of the premium notices that have gone out
• contrasting the rising premiums for millions of Americans with Trump building himself ballrooms and throwing Gatsby parties for his rich friends
• talking with our friends and family about how Trump jacked up health care costs.

He believes the Republicans have made “a potentially fatal error in service of owning the Libs. Democrats gave them an offramp to avoid this political fate, but they were too dumb to take it.”

As he says, next year no one will remember the shutdown cave but they will know their premiums have gone up. The Democrats have got to focus like a laser on making sure everyone in this country knows that it’s Donald Trump and his minions, The Republican Party, who made that happen.

I don’t think one is hard at all. The incredibly stupid “plan” the GOP is now pushing is going to be hugely unpopular. But that’s all they’ve got. In the meantime, people are going to get angrier and angrier.

If you listen to podcasts I highly recommend you listen to this one with Greg Sargent and Brian Beutler, two of the best analysts in the business. (You can read a transcript here.) The whole thing is worth listening to but I thought this was particularly insightful:

Beutler: It sounds a little bit contradictory, but there’s strong ways to cave and then there’s weak ways to cave. And what we’ve seen is Democrats say, essentially, we tried to fight Donald Trump and it didn’t work, so we give up. That was Angus King’s line, essentially.

But if they had reached the same decision but from a different posture, it might not have appeared to everyone like surrender, right? If Jeanne Shaheen or Angus King, or ideally just Chuck Schumer, went to the mics and said: We have tried everything we can to make Republicans give you back your health care. They refuse to do so. The only way you’re going to get your health care back is to elect Democrats.

In the meantime, Americans need their government to be working for them. The problem with that is that Donald Trump can’t be trusted with a full-year budget. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to give him one month of budget authority. And if he doesn’t break the law, we’ll give him another month. And we’re going to keep him on a very short leash to keep him in line with the law. And if he and Russell Vought break the budget law even one more time, there will be no more Democratic votes for even a month of budget, of budget runway.

Then at least you’re setting the terms—you’re saying, Look, like they are completely irrational about health care and you’re going to pay for it and we’re sorry about that, vote for us next time.

In the meantime, we have to do something about the lawlessness and this is the only way we can do it.

Sargent: To sort of try to boil down the underlying principle that you’re articulating here. Everything needs to be run through the following prism: Are Democrats showing that they are using leverage and power to constrain Donald Trump, or are they not doing that? Does that sound right?

He is right. It was always going to be difficult to find a way out of this. Democrats only had one card: the filibuster. I was thinking that Trump might be making headway in getting the Republicans to pull the trigger but those Senators didn’t want to be in the position of having to pass all of Trump’s cockamamie ideas (like 50 year mortgages!!!) So the end game was never going to be obvious because other than that it depended upon Republicans crying about people’s suffering and they just don’t. They don’t even care about business suffering anymore.

Anyway, the way to “lose well” (an underrated political skill) was to do something like what Beutler spells out.

Maybe, in the end, it will work out that way, With the base apoplectic about the cave and the CR expiring in January maybe we’ll see something like this. Unfortunately, it’s also possible that we’ll see the eight Senators succumb to hurt feelings and double down. (We know Fetterman’s going to.) So who knows? But this is the type of strategic thinking that needs to happen going forward if the Democrats want to keep their base engaged and ready to fight next November.

He’s just the Son. Donald is MAGA’s Godfather.

Christian nationalists love Jesus. But they don’t need him when Donald Trump will gladly forgive their sins (and crimes).

Trump on Monday issued pardons to over 70 people involved in the White House scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election Trump lost to Joe Biden. Yes, he has an ulterior motive. He’s signaling to them that they can try again in 2026 and he’ll keep them out of jail, at least on federal charges. Trump is signaling that he can somehow overrule state charges and convictions too. He talks a good game, but can he deliver? It doesn’t matter to him so long as his lackeys commit crimes in his name. They are disposable.

Recall that Trump pardoned nearly 1,600 January 6 insurrectionists on his first day in office. Including the Oath Keepers’ Stewart Rhodes. He has plans to relaunch his white supremacist group.

Are thee a sexual predator? Trump has your back there too, as Digby pointed out on Monday.

Jonathan Braun, the New York Times reported, is at least the 8th “convict to whom Mr. Trump granted clemency during his first term who has since been charged with a crime.” He received a 27-month sentence on Monday for “a range of criminal conduct — including physical and sexual assault.”

Trump is sending signals that Jeffrey Epstein’s partner in sex trafficking is headed for a Trump commutation. While Ghislaine Maxwell waits, MSNBC reports, she “is being waited on ‘hand and foot’ by the staff at her minimum security prison camp.”

USA Today this morning suggests that Trump is not done issuing pardons to his faithful foot soldiers for past sins in anticipation of his needing them to commit more. Trump pardon attorney Ed Martin indicates that beyond Monday’s pardons “There are many more Americans who Biden targeted. And we’re working to help them.”

Martin went even further in an extended interview Nov. 10 with former Trump advisor Steve Bannon on his “War Room” podcast.

Martin said that as pardon attorney and also as head of DOJ’s “weaponization working group,” he’s leading an extensive effort to identify a broader swath of people that Trump believes were wronged by either of the last two Democratic presidents.

Martin said that in a meeting in the Oval Office, the president told him to find people “that deserve a break,” including those “weaponized against us by Biden. And Obama, by the way.”

Those include?

Martin said the list goes beyond anyone who hasn’t already pardoned in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

He also mentioned the “FACE Act, the pro-lifers,” in apparent reference to anyone charged under a 1994 federal law, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which prohibits physically interfering with someone who is getting an abortion or reproductive health services or damaging a related facility.

In return, their Godfather will ask a favor. Count on it.

Update: Spell-checking the body doesn’t check the headlines. So it goes.

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

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Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

MAGA can’t help it

Progressives sometimes talk about conservatives being driven primarily by their lizard brains, the most primitive parts governing “fight, flight, feeding, fear, freezing up, and fornication.” Donald Trump wears his on the outside. He has no ideology. The man is all appetite and instinct. Insulated since childhood by his father’s wealth, primitive instinct has served him better than it would a poor man with no impulse control.

So when Trump suddenly discovers “affordability” the way last year he introduced the press to the word “groceries,” he has not developed late-life empathy. He’s reacting to a threat.

Republicans’ dramatic losses to Democrats last week spooked Trump. Especially Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral win in New York City in a campaign won on lowering people’s cost of living. Suddenly Trump wants to address a problem he repeatedly claims to have solved.

Trump on affordability: It’s a con job. Costs are way down.

Ingraham: So you are saying voters are misperceiving how they feel? pic.twitter.com/Cs8s4UBoqM

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 11, 2025

Politico suggests we watch what Trump does, not what he says. He claims that cost of living talk is a con job by Democrats. Yet he’s announced a set of actions aimed at lowering it:

He’s announced a plan to send low- and middle-income Americans $2,000 checks funded by new tariff revenue, asked the Justice Department to investigate whether meatpacking companies are colluding to raise beef prices and, at an event flanked by pharmaceutical executives, announced a deal to lower the price of increasingly popular weight-loss drugs.

He’s also suggested sending money to Americans directly to help them purchase health insurance and floated a proposal pushed by Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte to establish 50-year mortgages, which could lower homeowners’ monthly payments.

Together, the moves demonstrate a White House more concerned with pocketbook issues than the president is publicly willing to admit.

Economist Paul Krugman is disappointed as many are by the “tactical weakness” of a group of Senate Democrats cutting a deal to end the government shutdown. But he turns this morning to “a different kind of weakness on the part of Donald Trump and MAGA as a whole — namely, their innate cruelty.”

Krugman writes, “They have a visceral dislike for policies that do anything to help the less fortunate, and can’t even bring themselves to be cynical, to help Americans temporarily while they consolidate power.”

But that just may be what Trump’s spooked lizard brain is up to, short term, even while Republicans kill Affordable Care Act subsidies and dramatically jack up the cost of Americans’ health insurance.

Krugman suspects:

Drastically increasing health care costs at the beginning of 2026, causing millions to lose insurance, certainly looks like a massive political blunder. My guess is that it doesn’t reflect a considered strategy. Instead, Republicans just stumbled into this because nobody in a position of power within the party understood how the ACA works.

Trump’s lunatic idea for sending money directly to Americans for buying their own policies from insurance companies proves Krugman’s point. That’s like claiming individual workers will get a better deal negotiating salaries with employers than they would through collective bargaining. Republicans hate that too.

Sure, the ACA enjoys overwhelming public support, “74 percent overall, including half of Republicans,” but that’s no reason for conservatives not to kill it. It’s who they are, even if Trump recognizes on a primitive level that doing so threatens him.

The political moral is that the humiliating cave over the shutdown isn’t the end of the story. Democrats can and should keep hammering Trump and his party over their indifference to the suffering of ordinary Americans. They need to make sure both that Americans know who’s responsible for surging premiums now and that Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill will lead to savage cuts in both Medicaid and food stamps after the midterms.

MAGA can’t help being cruel. It can’t even pretend to care about other people’s suffering. And Democrats should take full advantage of this pathology.

But will they?

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

No King’s One Million Rising movement 
50501 
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

They are actually trying to be more like Kristi Noem and Kimberley Guilfoyle:

Since January, D.C. plastic surgeons have seen a wave of Trump insiders asking for overt procedures in line with the “Mar-a-Lago face” look.

The big picture: President Trump is all in on aesthetics, and bolder is always better.

• As with the $100 million “Arc de Trump” or the revamped Lincoln Bathroom or all the gold Oval Office bling, it’s less “quiet luxury” and more “foghorn luxury.”

And some of the people in his circle are embracing that maximalist ethos when it comes to their visage, surgeons tell Axios.

What they’re saying: Washington is typically an understated town regarding plastic surgery; people want to look good, but don’t want it to be obvious they’ve had work done, says area plastic surgeon Troy Pittman, who works with a lot of Trump insiders.

• But that’s no longer the case since Team Trump 2.0 rolled into town: “[Now] we’re seeing people who want to look like they had something done,” he says.

And while old-school Beltway-ers tend to be hush-hush about their tune-ups, the “Palm Beach crowd” is all-systems-go, says Pittman, whose MAGA-verse clients will often chat procedures and trade doctor recs.

• Fillers are big with this crew — especially lips, says Pittman, as are Botox and Dysport.

The intrigue: D.C. plastic surgeon Anita Kulkarni has had to turn down an influx of newly arrived political insiders asking for “a more done look, like that Mar-a-Lago face.”

• The aesthetic didn’t fit her practice’s typical understated vibe, and these people wanted extra fillers and injections on top of already treated faces, which can be dangerous, she says.
• It’s a situation Kulkarni calls “filler blindness.” If you add more and more product to your face and are surrounded by people who do the same, “you lose sight of anatomic normalcy.”

It isn’t just the women:

Speaking of the men, they’re looking for procedures to appear “younger” and “more virile and masculine,” says Pittman, in line with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s rhetoric surrounding military fitness and appearances.

Kimberly Guilfoyle and a fan at Mar-a-Lago pic.twitter.com/BTv2bNpGDU

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) March 13, 2024

Lara Trump's eye sockets pic.twitter.com/iJtppqW68i

— Molly Ploofkins (@Mollyploofkins) October 18, 2025

These are the Real Americans, not like those plastic phonies out here in Hollywood.

Another Trump-pardoned criminal re-offends:

A felon whose sentence President Trump commuted in the final hours of his first term was sentenced to 27 months in prison on Monday after being accused of a range of criminal conduct — including physical and sexual assault — since Mr. Trump freed him.

The sentencing of the man, Jonathan Braun, who had a long history of violence and in 2011 pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering, demonstrates how Mr. Trump’s handling of pardons and commutations has allowed some convicts to return to criminality.

Mr. Braun’s family used a connection to Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to obtain the commutation in January 2021. He is at least the eighth convict to whom Mr. Trump granted clemency during his first term who has since been charged with a crime. Several others pardoned more recently after being convicted of offenses committed during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol have also run into trouble with the law.

Trump is murdering poverty stricken fishermen every single day claiming that they are unlawful combatants against the United States. This guy, however, is a convicted trafficker and a rapist but he was buddies with Jared and Ivanka so he’s all good.

How about this convicted sex offender?

Ghislaine Maxwell, the Jeffrey Epstein confidante and convicted child sex trafficker, is being waited on “hand and foot” by the staff at her minimum security prison camp while she prepares a request that President Donald Trump commute her sentence, according to whistleblower revelations made public on Monday by House Democrats.

“The deference and servility to Ms. Maxwell have reached such preposterous levels that one of the top officials at the facility has complained that he is ‘sick of having to be Maxwell’s bitch,’” according to a letter to Trump from Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

In August, Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for helping Epstein prey sexually on children and young women, had an unusual interview with the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who once was Trump’s personal defense attorney. She told Blanche she never saw Trump behaving inappropriately.

After the interview, she was transferred from a low security prison in Florida to a minimum security federal prison camp in Bryan, Texas. The Federal Bureau of Prisons has not explained the transfer, which MSNBC and other outlets reported deviated from a policy that generally forbids sex offenders from serving in prison camps.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons has not explained the transfer, which MSNBC and other outlets reported deviated from a policy that generally forbids sex offenders from serving in prison camps. Days after her arrival, she said in emails to friends and relatives that she was much happier at the less restrictive facility.

Now Judiciary Democrats say they have obtained documents and whistleblower information that Maxwell is receiving special favors at the prison camp — benefits unavailable to other inmates.

Raskin’s letter said Maxwell has received customized meals personally delivered to her cell, after-hours time in a private exercise area and access to a service puppy. Raskin said Maxwell was also afforded private meetings with visitors arranged by the warden, complete with snacks. The guests were allowed to bring computers, which Raskin described as “an unprecedented action” that risked Maxwell having “unmonitored communications with the outside world.”

When the phone lines went down for other inmates at the camp, Raskin said, Maxwell had friends and relatives call prison employees, who then could help her speak to them. “These luxuries and amenities … mark Ms. Maxwell more as a guest at a Trump hotel than a federal prisoner and child sex offender,” Raskin wrote.

Sexual offenders are never allowed to be in such prisons but Maxwell is. And these favors are unprecedented. Apparently when anyone complains they are retaliated against.

I wonder how all this came about?

She’s reportedly working on her commutation. What are the odds that she gets it?

Here’s his plan to deal with it:

Trump: "We're gonna issue a dividend to our middle income people and lower income people of about $2,000, and we're gonna use the remaining tariffs to lower our debt."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-11-10T20:58:47.036Z

Hassett: "We understand that people feel like there's an affordability problem, but we're closing the gap fast. And with these policies and potentially rebate checks, we might close the whole gap really really fast."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-11-10T20:19:59.719Z

Gosh, I sure hope he doesn’t sign those checks with an auto pen…

I guess they aren’t worried about inflation actually spiking from this massive stimulus… but whatever. We’re living in the world of make-believe now.

By the way, the Congress has to pass this giveaway. I guess they probably will because the Democrats will be afraid to stop him from handing out the “stimi checks.”

Meanwhile, CNN offers a Fact Check on Trump’s lies about inflation: President Donald Trump went on a lying spree about inflation last week.

Grocery prices. Gas prices. Prescription drug prices. Overall prices. Over just three days, Trump made false claims about all of them.

Trump was discussing the issue of “affordability” after Democrats won state and local elections Tuesday in part by campaigning on the cost of living. He argued that this theme was “a con job by the Democrats” given how successful he said he has been in lowering prices.

But Trump repeatedly used inaccurate statistics and assertions to make his case that Democrats were dishonest. Here is a fact check.

Prices are up during this Trump presidency

Over and over, Trump claimed overall prices have fallen since he returned to office in late January.

“Every price is down,” he said Thursday. “Everything is way down,” he said at another Thursday event. “Prices are down under the Trump administration, and they’re down substantially,” he said Friday, adding, “Everybody knows that it’s far less expensive under Trump than it was under Sleepy Joe Biden. And the prices are way down.”

None of that is true.

Prices are up during this administration. Average prices were 1.7% higher in September than they were in January, according to the most recent figures from the federal Consumer Price Index, and 3% higher than they were in September 2024. There has been inflation every month of the term, and far more products have gotten costlier than cheaper.

Inflation has accelerated to 3%

Trump claimed Friday: “We have almost no inflation. We’re down now to 2%.” He said at the same event: “Inflation is almost nonexistent.”

Those claims are slightly more accurate than Trump’s late-October claims that “we don’t have any inflation” and that “we’re down to 2%, even less than 2%.” But the new claims are still wrong.

Inflation not only very much continues to exist but has been accelerating since the spring. As of September, the year-over-year inflation rate had increased for five consecutive months.

The September rate, 3%, was the same as the rate in January, the month Trump returned to the White House. Inflation of 3% is simply not inflation of 2%. (Core inflation, which omits volatile food and energy prices, was also 3% in September.) And this “2%” claim wasn’t a one-time slip by Trump; he claimed in late October, “We’re down to 2%, even less than 2%.”

Grocery prices have increased, not decreased

Trump claimed on both Wednesday and Thursday that “groceries are way down.” But grocery prices are actually up. Average grocery prices rose 1.4% between January and September, Consumer Price Index figures show, and they rose 2.7% between September 2024 and September 2025. The 0.6% increase in average grocery prices from July 2025 to August 2025, meanwhile, was the biggest month-to-month spike in three years – and it was followed by a 0.3% increase from August to September.

Read on for the particulars about the following:

It isn’t just beef. Dozens of grocery products have gotten more expensive

Prescription drug prices can’t come down ‘1,200%’

Gas prices aren’t the lowest in two decades and aren’t close to $2 per gallon

Biden-era inflation was high, but Trump didn’t inherit the worst ever

Oil and gas prices are down, but not household energy prices

Everything he is telling his ecstatic cult members is a lie.Do they believe him? Yeah, mostly. But nobody else does.

It would be nice to know their reasoning on this so we could feel confident that they’ve decided that marriage equality isn’t on the chopping block, but this is good news nonetheless:

 The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a call to overturn its landmark decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. The justices, without comment, turned away an appeal from Kim Davis, the former Kentucky court clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the high court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.

Davis had been trying to get the court to overturn a lower-court order for her to pay $360,000 in damages and attorney’s fees to a couple denied a marriage license.

Her lawyers repeatedly invoked the words of Justice Clarence Thomas, who alone among the nine justices has called for erasing the same-sex marriage ruling. Thomas was among four dissenting justices in 2015. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito are the other dissenters who are on the court today.

Roberts has been silent on the subject since he wrote a dissenting opinion in the case. Alito has continued to criticize the decision, but he said recently he was not advocating that it be overturned. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was not on the court in 2015, has said that there are times when the court should correct mistakes and overturn decisions, as it did in the 2022 case that ended a constitutional right to abortion.

Barrett has indicated that gay marriage might be an exception because people have come to depend on it when creating families. So that’s nice.

I still would not rest entirely easy on this. A lot depends on what happens in the next few years. If the authoritarian Christian Nationalists solidify their power and they are able to impose their culture war beliefs on the rest of us, this will almost certainly be on the chopping block. For now they’re concentrating on transgender hatred.

Still, it’s good. I’ll take it.