Emboldened by Tuesday’s Election Night wins for Democratic candidates and causes across the nation, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) on Wednesday renewed their request for a meeting with President Donald Trump to discuss the ongoing shutdown — which is on its 36th day, now making it the longest government shutdown in U.S. history
Continue reading “Emboldened by Election Night Wins, Dem Leadership Asks Trump for Another Sit-Down to Discuss Shutdown”A Few Day-After-the-Election Thoughts
The clearest read of what happened last night is that, as far as I can tell, Democrats won every race that was in meaningful contention anywhere in the country. That’s not just high-profile races in New York, New Jersey and Virginia or the redistricting proposition in California. It goes way down into races only obsessives or local observers were watching in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Mississippi and a bunch of other places. Democrats won everywhere, and just about everywhere they won by larger margins than even optimists were expecting.
As I noted last night, some of these were surprises against low expectations which were not realistic. But Democrats did well against realistic expectations too.
Continue reading “A Few Day-After-the-Election Thoughts”In First Chance For Voters to React to Trump II, All Kinds of Democrats Steamrolled Republicans
All kinds of Democrats won all kinds of races Tuesday night, as the party swept governors’ mansions, clinched the New York mayorship and is in the fight for an improbable Miami one, ran up huge margins in state legislatures, dominated critical judicial elections and cruised to victory in California’s redistricting initiative.
Continue reading “In First Chance For Voters to React to Trump II, All Kinds of Democrats Steamrolled Republicans”Chasing the Dress Into the Viral Traffic Abyss
Gawker Media’s Nolita office, where the blog conglomerate was located until the summer of 2015, was always dank and weird: a brick, loft-style room in a former tenement on Elizabeth Street, with lighting so low it was probably reportable to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. I began working there in 2014, as culture editor for the women’s site Jezebel, and while I adapted to the speed of blogging culture, I could never quite get over the fact of the office. It was so dark that our computer monitors emitted more light than the overheads, which were strung across the ceiling with the aplomb of an early 20th century publichouse, and had the useless brown glow of tiny Edison bulbs. Those of us without the wherewithal to get desk lamps, which was most, clacked away in the dark at the long rows of tables where the staffs of its six sites, about a hundred of us, sat side by side. We communicated almost exclusively through internet chat — even coworkers who sat a foot apart — though often the room erupted in gales of laughter at quips known only to those in their particular Slack channel. Everyone got used to that, but otherwise the office was so silent, like a wacky library, that it was almost startling if someone spoke to you aloud.
Except for Feb. 26, 2015, when a viral outfit known as “The Dress” upended the office silence and, probably, the trajectory of the media itself.
Continue reading “Chasing the Dress Into the Viral Traffic Abyss”What a Glorious Time for Criming in America
The Purges: FBI Edition
The MAGA feedback loop continues to decimate the senior career ranks of the FBI.
A quick refresh: Kash Patel provides Hill Republicans with internal FBI documents from the Trump investigations->Hill Republicans cull them for the names of agents->the agents get put on blast by the MAGA propaganda machine->the White House orders the agents to be fired->Patel races to comply.
This is what Trump’s long-threatened investigation of the investigators looks like.
The firings are not being publicly announced, making it more difficult to get a grasp of exact numbers, but from various reports it appears another another five senior agents have been fired. Reuters identifies four of them: Jeremy Desor, Jamie Garman, Blaire Toleman, and David Geist. NBC News identifies one: Aaron Tapp.
At one point, D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro reportedly intervened in four of the latest firings, but that apparently only had the effect of getting them fired Monday and then fired a second time Tuesday.
“The actions yesterday—in which FBI Special Agents were terminated and then reinstated shortly after, and then only to be fired again today—highlight the chaos that occurs when long-standing policies and processes are ignored,” the FBI Agents Association said in a statement. “Director Patel has disregarded the law and launched a campaign of erratic and arbitrary retribution.”
A few reflections:
- By being brought under the thumb of the Trump White House, the FBI has lost its independence, esprit de corps, and significant functional capacity. The senior agent ranks — where taxpayers see the return on years of training and experience — have been ransacked. Agents can’t be quickly replaced, and loyalty will the decisive factor for new hires.
- Combined with the dismantling of DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, the FBI purges have hamstrung the investigation and prosecution of complex white-collar crimes, especially public corruption cases. That’s no accident.
- It can’t be said often enough that before this year, the FBI had one political position: the director. Everyone else held career positions. The purging of career FBI employees without cause or due process is unlawful. There have been dozens (and maybe more) unlawful firings.
It sometimes feels like the public reaction to the politicization and weaponization of the DOJ and FBI is to compartmentalize it as something happening to people like former FBI Director James Comey, who signed up for or maybe deserve such retribution. (He didn’t and he doesn’t.) But everyone is a potential victim of a federal crime, and no one can count on the FBI to be there now. Once the loyalists are in place, you may not want the FBI involved.
Election 2025: Top Lines
- NYC mayor: Zohran Mamdani trounced Andrew Cuomo in a high turnout race that was called at 9:34 p.m. ET.
- NJ guv: Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D) decisively defeated Jack Ciattarelli (R) despite rumblings of a GOP surge.
- VA guv: Former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D) romped over Winsome Earle-Sears (R).
- CA Prop 50: Democrats’ counterpunch to the GOP’s red state redistricting blitz passed overwhelmingly, clearing the way for Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) to draw a new congressional district map for the 2026 midterms.
Election 2025: Down Ballot
- VA: Democrats flipped at least 13 seats in the House of Delegates to expand their narrow majority.
- GA: Democrats won two seats on the Public Service Commission, their first statewide wins in non-federal races in Georgia since 2006.
- PA: Three incumbent justices on the state Supreme Court were retained, preserving a liberal majority for another two years.
- ME: A ballot initiative mandating voter ID was resoundingly defeated.
- CO: A ballot initiative to raise taxes on high earners to fund free school breakfasts and lunches passed overwhelmingly.
Election 2025: Headlines
- Punchbowl: Dems Romp: What that means for Washington
- HuffPost: The Backlash To Trump Is Here — And It’s Big
- Politico: Democrats didn’t just rebound. They dominated.
Election 2025: Bottom Lines
- TPM’s Josh Marshall: DC Conventional Wisdom Goes Down to Defeat in State after State
- David Weigel: Blowout state elections offer something for every Democrat
- Jamelle Bouie: Trump Is an Albatross
Taking the Minority Out of Minority Scholarships
Confronted by President Trump’s anti-DEI jihad, universities across the country have been capitulating by revamping, retooling, and rebranding minority scholarships to take out the minority component — but this particular case stands out for bitter irony.
UC San Diego and the San Diego Foundation — sued by a student under the federal anti-KKK statute dating to 1871 — settled the case last month by renaming the Black Alumni Scholarship Fund and making it available to all students, the WaPo reports.
16th Lawless U.S. High Seas Attack
Two people were killed in another U.S. attack on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the eastern Pacific, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced. The death toll from the U.S. campaign of lawless attacks off the coasts of Central and South America now stands at 67.
Dick Cheney Remembrances
Let me gently steer you away from the sanitized Dick Cheney obituaries to the ones that tell it like it is:
- Spencer Ackerman: His Works Completed, Dick Cheney, Mass Murderer of Iraqis and American Democracy, Dies
- Cheney experts Barton Gellman and Marc Fisher: “Former vice president Dick Cheney, who recast an understudy’s job into an engine of White House power, becoming chief architect of a post-9/11 war on terrorism that involved bypassing restrictions against torture and domestic espionage, died Nov. 3.”
- TPM: I dug up an old draft obituary for Cheney that Brian Beutler wrote way back in 2012, shortly after Cheney’s heart transplant. It, like Cheney’s new heart, held up better than I expected.
A Chicago Pope Still Blows My Mind
“Jesus says very clearly at the end of the world, we’re going to be asked, you know, how did you receive the foreigner? Did you receive him and welcome him or not? And I think that there’s a deep reflection that needs to be made in terms of what’s happening.”–Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV, asked by reporters about immigrants detained at the ICE facility in Broadview being refused the opportunity to receive holy Communion
Quote of the Day
“I could smell the onions and mustard.”–Border Patrol agent Gregory Lairmore, testifying in the trial of the D.C. sandwich thrower
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California Voters Approve Measure to Offset Damage of Trump’s Red-State Gerrymandering Blitz
In the first substantial blow to the Trump administration’s redistricting power grab in red states across the country, California voters on Tuesday approved a proposal to redraw the state’s congressional district lines. Governor Gavin Newsom and state Democrats pushed the measure to help offset Trump’s nationwide gerrymandering blitz in red states.
Continue reading “California Voters Approve Measure to Offset Damage of Trump’s Red-State Gerrymandering Blitz”Voters Reject Republican Push for Voter ID and Restricted Vote by Mail in Maine
On Tuesday, Maine voters rejected Question 1, a Republican-backed measure primarily about voter ID, that, if approved, would have restricted absentee voting and ballot access and disenfranchised eligible voters.
Continue reading “Voters Reject Republican Push for Voter ID and Restricted Vote by Mail in Maine”Zohran Mamdani Easily Wins the NYC Mayoral Race. What Comes Next?
By electing Zohran Mamdani, New Yorkers have just launched one of the most high-profile experiments on the future of the Democratic Party and its opposition to Donald Trump. Mamdani, who won a clear-cut victory, is a young Democratic Socialist who vaulted from relative obscurity in the state legislature to City Hall in the span of about a year, thanks to an ambitious policy agenda and a relentless digital offensive tailor-made for the age of TikTok and Instagram.
The Associated Press called the race at 9:34 p.m. ET, with Mamdani pulling in 50.4% of the vote ahead of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo with 41.3% and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa with 7.5%.
Continue reading “Zohran Mamdani Easily Wins the NYC Mayoral Race. What Comes Next?”DC Conventional Wisdom Goes Down to Defeat in State after State
Elections are hard to predict. But even with that, some of the notional “surprises” we’re seeing tonight are less surprises than a measure of GOP dominance over current press narratives. People were looking for an upset in New Jersey. Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin speculated that New Jersey might be moving toward becoming the next swing state. In fact, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D) currently appears on track to crush Republican Jack Ciattarelli. A similar failure of conventional wisdom appears to be unfolding in the Virginia Attorney General’s race. A lot of D.C. insiders had convinced themselves that a controversy over some intemperate texts (not nothing but fairly close to it) had doomed his campaign. As recently as a couple days ago, betting markets (which are proxies for conventional wisdom) gave his opponent Jason Miyares 3-to-1 odds of victory. Jones now appears on his way to a clear though not resounding victory with a 3-to-4 percentage point margin.
Continue reading “DC Conventional Wisdom Goes Down to Defeat in State after State”Mikie Sherrill Demolishes Trump-Backed Jack Ciattarelli in New Jersey Governor Race
Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D) is projected to win a decisive victory against Jack Ciattarelli (R) in New Jersey’s race for governor, one of two closely-watched gubernatorial contests this year. The win leaves Democrats two for two after Abigail Spanberger won her race in Virginia earlier Tuesday evening.
The AP called the race at 9:23 p.m. ET. With 61% of the vote counted, Sherrill led Ciattarelli 56.9% to 42.5%.
Sherrill, a former Navy pilot and assistant U.S. attorney, was only slightly favored in the polls ahead of Election Day — worrying Democrats in what is normally considered a comfortably blue state. The consistent Democratic outcome in presidential contests has not always held true in gubernatorial elections, however: Drumthwacket, the governor’s mansion, has stayed in a single party’s hands for no more than two terms since the 1960s. That pattern has now been broken.
Ciattarelli, a businessman and former state legislator, has run for governor — and, now, lost — three times, and in 2021 came too close to defeating current Governor Phil Murphy for many Democrats’ comfort.
His career tracks that of many once-moderate Republicans. A state and local politician from central New Jersey, he once derided Trump as “a charlatan who is out of step with American values” and “not fit to be President of the United States.”
“Sitting silently and allowing him to embarrass our country is unacceptable,” he said in 2015.
Ciattarelli shifted slowly over the last decade. Running again in 2021, in the wake of Jan. 6, he sought to largely avoid the topic of the then-former president. “I do think Trump’s rhetoric is what led to the riot that took place,” he said during a debate. Ciattarelli lost to Murphy 51 to 48, a strong showing that was among the biggest surprises in U.S. politics that year.
The politics of 2025 are very different, with Trump again in the White House. And Ciattarelli was different too. This year, he fully embraced Trump. Asked to explain the shift, he applauded Trump’s second administration — it deserved an “A” grade, he said — and shrugged off his change of heart with a gesture toward JD Vance, whose comparison of Trump to Adolf Hitler does in fact make such insults as “charlatan” appear tame.
“JD Vance said things a whole lot worse,” Ciattarelli said. “And today he’s the vice president.”
Trump, too, has let bygones be bygones. He endorsed Ciattarelli in the Republican primary and has campaigned for him, holding events and working him into various Truth Social missives. “Jack Ciattarelli is a good man, who understands business, and who will bring down Energy, and other costs, by 50%, and even more,” he declared in one post, denouncing “the unusually named Mikie.” Trump continued campaigning for Ciattarelli through the afternoon of Election Day.
Democrats can, now, breathe a sigh of relief that 2021’s squeaker will not be repeated. The race will inevitably be interpreted as a rebuke to the president via a candidate who bear-hugged him.
Executive branch chaos intruded into the race during a bizarre September episode in which the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) released Sherrill’s almost entirely unredacted military record, including her Social Security number, to a Ciattarelli campaign ally as Republicans’ dug for oppo research. NARA told CBS News, which broke the story, that the release was inadvertent, and that a technician at the National Personnel Records Center did not follow standard operating procedures. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee called for an investigation, which the acting inspector general for NARA opened that month.