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.

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.

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.

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.