As I’ve written a few times, we can’t over-read any single move in the broad contest over big societal institutions obeying or resisting Trump administration diktats. But Sinclair Broadcasting just announced they’re ending their “preemption” of the Jimmy Kimmel show. Even their own statement seems to make clear that while they asked for concessions from ABC/Disney they didn’t get any.

We’ve noted this in the emails members have received, but since we’ve gotten a lot of questions about it: tickets for individual nights will go on sale this coming week. We know a lot of people can’t make it in for both nights (Thursday and Friday). So for those who just want to attend the show Thursday evening or the anniversary party Friday evening, those tickets will go on sale this coming week.

I also want to take a moment to thank everyone who came out to our event with STAT News Thursday night in Cambridge (Boston). I loved the venue and it was a chance for me to finally meet a lot of longtime readers from Boston and the greater New England region. A bunch of members from Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, etc. were there. (There may have been some from Maine. But no one told me they were from Maine.) The venue was really great, I thought, and I had a great mini-discussion with Rick Berke, co-founder and executive editor of STAT News. (That was the “content” for this event before we got on to the happy hour proper.) Let me thank especially Allegra Kirkland and Christine Frapech as well as the rest of our team for putting the Boston event together.

We’ll update you when tickets for each individual night of the anniversary celebration go on sale.

Going into 2026 and 2028 it’s time for — essential for — Democrats to make clear that the current Supreme Court will have to reformed (expanded in number, reformed in structure) to allow popular government to continue in the United States. This is not so much a litmus test (though it should be that too) as a precondition for any other promise to be credible.

This is a brief update on the New York City mayoral election. There’s not a lot of good reason why this should be big news or a big story outside of the tristate area. But since politically obsessed people are pretty obsessed with it, I wanted to discuss a couple specific points about Mayor Eric Adams’ announcement that he’s leaving the race.

There’s now a flurry of statements from GOP congressional leadership essentially saying, Democrats need to do the right thing, act responsibly. The White House is claiming it’s about ACA for “illegals.” If anything this tends to confirm the folly of all these intricate and baroque arguments about how to win or argue or whatever else about a shutdown confrontation, whether you state explicit policy demands, or don’t state them or use subordinate clauses or the passive voice.

We’ve had a lot of you asking if you can buy tickets for one night of our anniversary event in early November. We know a two-night commitment is a lot. So as of this morning, we’ve put those individual tickets on sale too. If you’re a member there’s an email in your inbox with a link to buy tickets for either Thursday (the big show, live podcast, etc) or the party Friday night. Or you can just click the links here. We can’t wait to see you.

Early this afternoon, multiple federal departments and agencies sent out an email to employees blaming the impending shutdown on the Democrats. I didn’t see one from every department and agency. (I saw with my own eyes the versions at Health and Human Services, the Social Security Administration, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Justice and the National Science Foundation. TPM’s Emine Yücel separately saw one from the Department of Commerce.) I saw enough to see that they were going out government-wide. They were all identical. So, unsurprisingly, they were produced at the White House or possibly the General Services Administration. It was a top-down decision. “Unfortunately,” it says, “Democrats are blocking this Continuing Resolution in the Senate due to unrelated policy demands.” The website of the Department of Housing and Urban Development currently has a pop-up message claiming that the “radical left are going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people …” This is hardly surprising. Legalities mean nothing to the Trump administration. So following the Hatch Act would almost be quaint.

Meanwhile, as you’ve likely seen, at the much-anticipated convocation of general officers at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Hegseth encouraged generals and admirals who don’t agree with Trump administration policy to resign. In his speech, President Trump announced that he wants to make American cities the “training ground” for the U.S. military.

From a federal employee. TPM Reader XX1, initials anonymized and portion of letter which notes government agency removed for obvious reasons …

I’m writing here to concur with your last couple blog posts on the shutdown.  You put into prose accurately what I’ve been trying to get across to so many local political allies who overthink irrelevant minutia.  They focus on the timing of the fight, on the details of the substance, etc.  None of that matters, as has been apparent to me all along.  This is, in fact, an arm-wrestling match, purely a battle over power.  The Democrats’ goal should be to extract a material concession that resonates to the broad masses as a “public good,” and they are doing that with ACA subsidies.  Successfully extracting  a concession is a material victory that slightly restores just a little bit of balance of power, and blocks Trump’s effort at totalitarian control. 

I write fluidly across different venues. Here, on social media, in emails with readers … and I sometimes lose track of where I’ve said what. So I wanted to agree with something TPM Reader XX1 says in this email I flagged. I’m skeptical the White House will follow through on their threats to carry out a new wholesale round of firings, as Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought is threatening. I’m not saying they won’t. They totally might. So this isn’t something I’m relying on or telling you to rely on. I’m just skeptical for two reasons. The first is that this White House doesn’t need a shut down to fire people. Despite the law-breaking it entails, they’ve made clear that, with the Supreme Court’s assistance, they can fire as many people as they want. If they thought it helped them to fire more people, they’d be doing that already; the shutdown provides zero new legal power to fire anyone.

“Want” is the key word here.

I can’t go into too much detail without revealing my sources. But I wanted to share that I’ve heard from sources in multiple departments and agencies that the groundwork you’d expect to see in advance of wholesale firings — as promised by Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought — simply are not happening: lists for who gets fired and who doesn’t, the reduction in force paperwork, etc. Those things aren’t happening. At least not in the places where the people I’ve spoken to work. At least not yet.

Of course we’re one day in. MAGA isn’t known for good order and process. So it might change. But it is an early signal, by no means definitive, that Vought’s threat of a DOGE 2.0/large-scale firings is one they’re hesitant to carry out … In this Times newsletter, Jess Bidgood relays Karoline Leavitt’s threat that the layoffs are “imminent” and Vought is cueing them up. Trump holds all the power, she continues. “The question is merely how far [Trump] wants to go.” But again, under the hood, in the boiler rooms of personnel policy rather than official statements, it looks different.