President Donald Trump has pardoned his former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, his onetime chief of staff Mark Meadows and others accused of backing the Republican’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The “full, complete, and unconditional” pardon applies only to federal crimes, and none of the dozens of Trump allies named in the proclamation were ever charged federally over the bid to subvert the election won by Democrat Joe Biden. It doesn’t impact state charges, though state prosecutions stemming from the 2020 election have hit a dead end or are just limping along.
Dozens? But wait! There’s more:
Among those also pardoned were Sidney Powell, an attorney who promoted baseless conspiracy theories about a stolen election, John Eastman, another lawyer who pushed a plan to keep Trump in power, and Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who championed Trump’s efforts to challenge his election loss. Also named were Republicans who acted as fake electors for Trump and were charged in state cases accusing them of submitting false certificates that confirmed they were legitimate electors despite Biden’s victory in those states.
Department of Justice’s Pardon Attorney, Ed Martin., posted the full list (4 pages) to FKA Twitter. Trump did not pardon himself … yet. Not until, if he lasts that long, he’s leaving office in January 2029.
Martin replies, “We are working on it!” CNN reports that Martin is working behind the scenes on a habeas petition that Peters filed in March. He’s “urged a federal judge to free her from state prison while she appeals her conviction. That matter is still pending, but a decision is expected this year.”
Peters was sentenced on October 2 on Colorado charges a Trump pardon cannot touch:
Former Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters was sentenced to nine years in prison on Thursday for her role in a 2021 security breach in the elections office she was supposed to oversee.
Peters will spend the next six weeks to six months in the Mesa County Detention Facility before being transferred to the Colorado Department of Corrections, where she will serve her nine-year prison sentence.
The state judge in her case told Peters, “You are no hero…. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.” That makes her a hero in Trump’s mind. Birds of a feather and all.
The Historic Entrance of Mammoth Cave. NPS Photo/ Deb Spillman.
Takes on the Senate shutdown vote Sunday night are flowing like champagne at one of Donald Trump’s Gatsby parties. A handful of moderate Senate Democrats reached an agreement with Senate Majority Leader John Thune that moves Congress toward ending the longest government shutdown in history: 40 days through Sunday.
In a test vote that is the first in a series of required procedural maneuvers, the Senate voted 60-40 to move toward passing compromise legislation to fund the government and hold a later vote on extending Affordable Care Act tax credits that expire Jan. 1. Final passage could be several days away if Democrats object and delay the process.
The agreement does not guarantee the health care subsidies will be extended, as Democrats have demanded for almost six weeks. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York voted against moving ahead with the package, along with all but eight of his Democratic colleagues.
Search on the word “cave” for a sense of the betrayal felt over seven Democrats and one independent surrendering their key demand for an extension of Obamacare subsidies. The issue has massive public support.
The bloc includes three former governors: Jeanne Shaheen (D) of New Hampshire, Angus King (I) of Maine and Maggie Hassan (D) of New Hampshire. They agreed “to vote to advance three bipartisan annual spending bills and extend the rest of government funding until late January in exchange for a mid-December vote on extending the health care tax credits.” That is, they settled for the promise of a vote to extend the subsidies that will likely fail. If it takes place at all. This is Shaheen 10 days ago: “This fight is about ensuring that we are not going to see 20 million Americans have their health insurance become unaffordable.”
The other five are Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).
The agreement opened the way for a Senate vote in which eight Democratic defectors voted to break the filibuster and to clear the first hurdle to reopening the government after nearly six weeks. Their move will offer relief to millions of Americans whose lives have been severely disrupted by the shutdown.
But the compromise was opposed by some key party leaders and is already igniting a firestorm of protests from progressives who accuse their more moderate colleagues of disastrously backing down, handing President Donald Trump a victory and turning their backs on millions of Americans who can’t afford spiking health care premiums.
Mehdi Hasan rages at Zeteo, “Is there a more feckless, spineless opposition party anywhere in the democratic world?”
Brian Beutler: “Even if little happens in the next two and a half months, caving in a fight you’re winning after the public gave you a big shot in the arm to keep fighting… well, it’s a bell that can’t be unrung. If March was the product of poor morale and low self-confidence, this is throwing a fight.”
Now I’ve recently mentioned glass-half-empty progressives for whom every victory is incomplete, every bill is half a loaf, and every compromise a betrayal. Josh Marshall is not among them. So, not to add to your black-and-blue Monday, Marshall offers a counterintuitive perspective on this “deal to basically settle for nothing.” He sees a glass “two-thirds or maybe even three-quarters full.” No, really:
There was a legitimate party rebellion after the March debacle. Democratic voters demanded fight. When the time came Democrats fought. They held out for 40 days, the longest shutdown standoff in history. They put health care at the center of the national political conversation and inflicted a lot of damage on Trump. At forty days they could no longer hold their caucus together. And we got this.
That’s a sea change in how the congressional party functions. And that’s a big deal. Many people see it as some kind of epic disaster and are making all the standard threats about not voting or not contributing or whatever. That’s just not what I see. It’s a big change in the direction of the fight we need in the years to come that just didn’t go far enough. Yet.
There will be the usual calls to primary those from safe, blue states, etc., but Marshall is not as interested in the individual players as the broader dynamic. He sees this as Democrats developing muscle memory for fights yet to come. Even Scrooge learned from his glimpse of future Christmases.
So, Marshall concludes:
… don’t tell me nothing has changed or that this is some cataclysmic disaster. It’s not. This accomplished a lot. It demonstrated that Democrats can go to the mat when the public is behind them and not pay a political price. It dramatically damaged Donald Trump. It cued up the central arguments of the 2026 campaign. It just didn’t go far enough. The ball was fumbled at the end. So we need to demand more.
Additionally, Marshall notes, the December vote (if it happens) will make crystal clear that Republicans mean to launch Americans’ health care premiums into the stratosphere or completely eliminate government help while Democrats own the issue of affordability. If this deal only extends government funding through January, Democrats get a rematch. By that time, the eight spelunkers will have heard more than they care to from constituents.
A word on “affordability.” The term still feels like an abstraction to me, too impersonal, and one Democrats ought to lose. People are worried about the cost of living, the cost of groceries, their everyday struggles, etc. And they are struggling. Affordability in six syllables doesn’t speak to what they are feeling. People who talk to me out on the street respond strongly to six simple words: YOUR LIFE SHOULDN’T BE THIS HARD. They feel seen.
I feel too despondent to go deep in the fact that eight Dems caved and broke the filibuster on the shutdown. Supposedly they got some kind of gentleman’s agreement that the Republicans would allow a vote on the ACA in December. Whoopie.
I think this is probably a reasonable take on the whole thing, which shows it wasn’t a total rout. But they were the ones who made the subsidies their primary demand and they didn’t get it.
The CR is good until January so the Congress will have their precious holidays. We know how important that is. And that’s assuming the House and Trump agree to any of this.
The Trump roller coaster is getting wilder. We didn’t even get a full week of feeling like we have a chance to push back the fascist tide before our own leadership surrendered again. But that’s the way it goes in this era. Trump’s probably on the upswing again and God knows what hell he’s going to inflict on us.
The message from the off-year election is plain. Run with ideas for lowering the cost of living and putting a stop to Trump. It’s not complicated. From Ipsos:
Note that even Republicans are upset about that issue. Yet Trump running around saying that everything is fabulous and he’s fixed all the problems and everyone is happy.
A big component of Mamdani’s appeal was his specific and targeted policies, as well as messaging, around making life more affordable for New Yorkers. The polling shows that Americans are drawn towards those policies. Even policies that are generally considered “progressive” are backed by a majority of independents. The bottom line is that real people are worried about real things—groceries, rent, daily costs, and so on. Without answers, you lose voters.
Regrets, they’ve had a few:
Their conclusion:
Since Donald Trump entered politics, Republicans have historically struggled in elections where his name is not on the ballot. They must figure out a way turn out the low-turnout voters that Trump attracted and win back the gains Trump made among young and non-white voters. In elections where turnout is higher, this might be easier. But it may still be an uphill battle given Americans’ pessimistic views on the economy. Republicans’ short-term success will likely hinge on economic conditions improving – and whether the public gives Republicans credit.
On the other hand, Democrats have made “countering Trump” a big aspect of their appeal. Exit polls show that dissatisfaction with Trump was a key driver in Democratic turnout in this year’s elections. Democrats may be able to count on negative partisanship in 2026, but beyond, Democrats will need to create an identity of their own in a post-Trump political landscape. A populist economic platform aimed at affordability may be one step on the way there.
Yep. But I would also guess the GOP is going to be stuck with their MAGA extremists for at least another presidential cycle and they will prove to be a thorn in any candidates side if they try to distance themselves from it. So Democrats will have to run against Trump’s record to make sure people understand that the Republicans aren’t reverting to sanity any time soon.
Two findings from the latest national NBC News poll, which shows Trump’s approval rating down from March, help explain not only Tuesday’s results but how a fired-up Democratic Party base is engaging with politics right now. The large “No Kings” protest movement has mobilized those strongly opposed to Trump, and interest in the 2026 election is already at a historically high point, according to the poll.
More than 4 in 10 registered voters (43%) say they support No Kings, a larger share than some past political protest movements measured by NBC News polling, and about the same size as the Black Lives Matter movement was in April 2023.
A little less than 3 in 10 Americans supported the tea party movement in September 2010, the first time it was asked in an NBC News poll, and about the same amount supported the Occupy Wall Street movement in November 2011.
Meanwhile, today, one-third of registered voters said they currently support Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.
Support for the No Kings movement is about on par with the share of voters who say they strongly disapprove ofTrump, 48%, as voters say he’s fallen short on the economy and other key issues.
When I think of the media’s ecstatic coverage of the Tea Party, the way they fawned over the leadership and followed them around like they were a bunch of Deadheads, I’m reminded once again of just how wired for the Republicans they are.
But the truth hurts. I know most of the establishment thinks that Democratic voters simply don’t matter but there are actually a whole lot of them who disapprove of Trump and a majority of Independents do too. These numbers who that there are more of them than cop to being MAGA and who identified with the Tea Party. Maybe they could pay a little bit more attention next time there’s a big protest. Which there most definitely will be.
— Commander Op At Large CA Gregory K. Bovino (@CMDROpAtLargeCA) November 7, 2025
Ecuador has been an excellent partner to the U.S. in our work to stop illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and smugglers on land and on the seas.
It was wonderful to be back in this beautiful country—and even better to see it on horseback! President Noboa and First Lady of… pic.twitter.com/eU5mQ7C4ag
Kristi Noem down in Argentina on another taxpayer funded adventure with her “Chief of staff” and “special friend” Corey Lewandowski. pic.twitter.com/IruB1UeV2C
Donald Trump rolled out the red carpet for a lavish party at Mar-a-Lago on Friday—swapping a government shutdown for opera and truffled gratin dauphinois.
He partied over filet, scallops and a dessert trio with a Fox News star, a foreign politician and a country singer at the same time as his administration was asking the Supreme Court to stop it from being forced to pay food stamps to millions.
The event was the second big Friday in a row for Trump at his Florida club. Last Friday, which was Halloween, he threw a Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party featuring skimpily dressed dancers in giant martini glasses. That earned him mockery for his apparent failure to know the plot of Gatsby, while California governor Gavin Newsom compared Trump to Marie Antoinette.
It’s not like Trump doesn’t know what people are saying:
Video that was posted Friday night also shows him seated at a banquet table next to one of his occasional golf buddies, Fox News anchor Bret Baier.
Baier is described as being from the “straight news” side of Fox and had an exclusive interview with the president on Wednesday. During the interview, he challenged Trump about the cost of living crisis, reading out loud a message from a lifelong Republican who voted for Trump three times but is “not happy” about costs: “I don’t see the best economy right now—Wall Street numbers do not reflect my Main Street money. Please do something, President Trump.“
Baier asked Trump his response, prompting Trump to say, “Beef we have to get down. I think of groceries—you know, it’s an old fashioned word but it’s a beautiful word. Beef we have to get down, but we’ve got prices way down and think of this: energy. She drives a car, probably, and her energy prices are way down. And energy is so all-encompassing. It’s so big that when energy goes down everything comes down. Everything follows it. And I have energy down to five or six-year lows now.”
Baier then sat down right beside Trump on Friday over a meal centered on the beef which the president had said was unaffordable.
I’m sure it was delicious. But it was the CPAC seafood spread that was super impressive:
Seafood spread and ice sculpture at Mar-a-Lago as Trump continues to starve poor children pic.twitter.com/07wYdGW1os
President Donald Trump wants the Washington Commanders to name their planned $3.7 billion stadium after him, multiple sources with knowledge of the situation told ESPN.
A senior White House source said there have been back-channel communications with a member of the Commanders’ ownership group, led by Josh Harris, to express Trump’s desire to have the domed stadium in the nation’s capital bear his name. The new stadium is being built on the old RFK Stadium site that served as the team’s home from 1961 to 1996.
“That would be a beautiful name, as it was President Trump who made the rebuilding of the new stadium possible,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told ESPN on Friday night via email.
They’ll do it I’m sure. It’s exactly the tribute he loves the most and it costs them nothing. Well, except the ongoing degradation of our democracy but who cares about that? We love a crazy, dementia riddled King. It’s part of our heritage.
I see the Donald J. Trump Viagra Stadium in D.C.’s future.
As Saturday’s session got under way, Republican senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Rick Scott of Florida and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana welcomed a proposal made on social media early Saturday by Donald Trump, from his golf course in West Palm Beach, for subsidies to be replaced by health savings accounts.
[…]
Graham welcomed the proposal, which is similar to a replacement for Obamacare he put forward in 2017, writing on social media that Trump’s “recommendation that we stop sending tens of billions of dollars under Obamacare to money-sucking insurance companies and instead send that money directly to the people so they can buy better healthcare is simply brilliant”.
“We’re going to replace this broken system with something that is actually better for the consumer,” Graham said later.
Cassidy, who was a co-author of Graham’s similar plan in 2017, also praised Trump’s proposal on social media, and stood next to a giant blow-up of Trump’s post as he spoke on the Senate floor.
“I’m writing the bill right now,” Scott posted in a response to Trump’s suggestion. “We must stop taxpayer money from going to insurance companies and instead give it directly to Americans in HSA-style accounts and let them buy the health care they want. This will increase competition & drive down costs.”
None of the Republican senators seemed to grapple with the fact that consumers would still need to buy plans from the same insurance companies, or that Republican lawmakers need the support of eight Democrats to reopen the government, and the idea of repealing and replacing Obamacare with savings accounts is unlikely to earn a single Democratic vote.
This is why Trump wants them to nuke the filibuster. Then he can get all the Republicans to help him destroy health care in America and put their names on it. Huzzah!
President Trump is 100% right: We should send health care dollars directly to patients, not insurance companies. My proposal does exactly this. This is a real solution that empowers American families. pic.twitter.com/N1umD4wzjf
— U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (@SenBillCassidy) November 8, 2025
We’re sending $150 billion of ACA subsidies straight to insurance companies.
It’s time to put patients back in charge, bring real transparency to prices, and make health care affordable again. pic.twitter.com/5XI9FjWcaI
This is a recipe for disaster — the disaster we had before Obamacare. If they ditch the regulations that came with the program, vast numbers of sick people will be ineligible for insurance and if they aren’t, premiums will be sky high and you can bet that the Trump checks won’t cover them. The insurance market will be in chaos as people can’t navigate the marketplace (because it’s already confusing) and many will just go without. Hospitals and providers will see even more strain as uncompensated care rises.
We have been here before. We know what this does to people. But the Republicans have never given up on their hatred for anything that helps people, especially health care, even though their own voters are affected.
I don’t know if Americans really need to touch the stove in order to see what a fucking nightmare this administration and GOP is in this second term. It seems obvious to me but what do I know? If they didn’t care about 1.2 million deaths during COVID, even among members of their own families, why would they care about this? But maybe, with all the rest of the country going straight to hell, this might have an impact. We live in hope.
The one thing that worries me is that Trump is now leaning heavily on sending checks to Americans. He’s not only saying he wants to send checks for health care, he’s talking about this as well:
I recall that many people were very excited about Trump when he signed the so-called “stimmie checks” in his first term. People can be very stupid and he knows it.
The repudiation voters handed Donald Trump last week was larger than New York City and more sweeping than Democrats’ wins in Virginia and New Jersey. NPR ran down some less high-profile wins:
In Georgia, Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson will be the newest members of the state’s five-person public utility regulator after earning roughly 60% of the vote. It’s the first time Democrats have won a nonfederal statewide office there since 2006 and one where soaring energy costs and displeasure with incumbents dominated the race.
Pennsylvania voters chose to retain three state Supreme Court judges that were first elected as Democrats after millions of dollars in outside spending driven by conservative billionaire Jeff Yass‘ efforts to reshape the state court’s politics. Democrats also won special elections for a seat on Pennsylvania’s Superior Court and a seat on its Commonwealth Court.
Also in Pennsylvania, Democrats swept the top “row offices” in the purple-hued Bucks County, electing the county’s first-ever Democratic district attorney and defeating an incumbent Republican sheriff a year after Trump narrowly won there. Democrats similarly notched commanding victories in county executive races in Erie, Lehigh and Northampton counties, all bellwether counties in recent presidential elections.
At the state legislative level, Mississippi Democrats have broken a GOP supermajority in the state Senate after flipping two seats in that chamber plus another pickup in the state House. A federal court ordered lawmakers to redraw 14 total House and Senate districts after finding the maps drawn in 2022 discriminated against Black voters.
Democrats have also vastly expanded their control of the Virginia House of Delegates and in New Jersey’s General Assembly, the party gained a supermajority.
But the wins were deeper still. Democrats across North Carolina, for example, swept municipal races from Wilmington to Raleigh to Charlotte to Asheville. State chair Anderson Clayton told an interviewer that Democrats flipped over 150 seats on Tuesday. Those are not simply wins for 2025 but build Democrats’ bench of the future.
Further evidence that the resistance to Trumpism is growing comes from a retired senior United States district judge in Massachusetts. Reagan-appointed Mark Wolf explains he is leaving “that lifetime appointment and giving up the opportunity for public service that I have loved” (The Atlantic, gift link):
My reason is simple: I no longer can bear to be restrained by what judges can say publicly or do outside the courtroom. President Donald Trump is using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment. This is contrary to everything that I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench. The White House’s assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out. Silence, for me, is now intolerable.
Wolf lays out some personal history in the job as well as Trumpish sins against the rule of law that will be familiar to Hullabaloo readers. He then summarizes his plans for the near future:
Others who have held positions of authority, including former federal judges and ambassadors, have been opposing this government’s efforts to undermine the principled, impartial administration of justice and distort the free and fair functioning of American democracy. They have urged me to work with them. As much as I have treasured being a judge, I can now think of nothing more important than joining them, and doing everything in my power to combat today’s existential threat to democracy and the rule of law.
Will he make a difference? He’s unsure, but has to try:
I cannot be confident that I will make a difference. I am reminded, however, of what Senator Robert F. Kennedy said in 1966 about ending apartheid in South Africa: “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.” Enough of these ripples can become a tidal wave.
A typical representation of the comedy and tragedy masks. Image by Tim Green via Wilkipedia (CC BY 2.0).
Hardly a wonder, isn’t it, that so many of its columnists left the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post in 2025 after he announced its change of editorial focus to “personal liberties and free markets“? A quick search includes among them Jonathan Capehart, David von Drehle, Perry Bacon Jr., Molly Roberts and David Hoffman (both on the editorial board), Philip Bump, Jennifer Rubin, and Eugene Robinson. Some accepted buyouts. Others just left.
The Bulwark last week announced that Catherine Rampell has joined their team. She left the Post in July after 11 years.
The Post’s remaining editorial board has relocated to Cloud Cuckoo Land, or else to a billionaire prepper bunker.
A clueless editorial the WaPo board published last week ahead of the election of Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral win in New York City exhibited a humiliating lack of self-awareness.
Donald Trump won the Oval Office in 2016 with no prior elective office experience. Yet the Post expressed alarm that Zohran Mamdani, “a socialist with almost no governing experience” who was “born into a life of wealth and privilege” might win the New York City’s mayoral race. While Trump shakes the world’s economic system with his tariff fetish, the Post warned that Mamdani might bring to the office “a worldview centered around destroying the economic system that made his adopted country thrive.”
A new era of class warfare has begun in New York, and no one is more excited than Generalissimo Zohran Mamdani. Witness the mayor-elect’s change of character since his Tuesday election victory.
Mamdani ran an upbeat campaign, with a nice-guy demeanor and perpetual smile papering over a long history of divisive and demagogic statements. New Yorkers periodically checking in on politics could understandably believe that he simply wanted to bring the city together and make it more affordable. That interpretation became much harder after his victory speech.
Across 23 angry minutes laced with identity politics and seething with resentment, Mamdani abandoned his cool disposition and made clear that his view of politics isn’t about unity. It isn’t about letting people build better lives for themselves. It is about identifying class enemies — from landlords who take advantage of tenants to “the bosses” who exploit workers — and then crushing them. His goal is not to increase wealth but to dole it out to favored groups. The word “growth” didn’t appear in the speech, but President Donald Trump garnered eight mentions.
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