NEW: Dems easily flipped the sheriff's office in Pennsylvania's Bucks County, a big swing county in the Philly suburbs. So? The incumbent GOP sheriff had contracted with ICE. His Dem challenger promised to end the contract. Now he wants other swing-state Dems to look at his victory as a lesson:

I scribbled down all my shutdown-related intrusive thoughts and put them in a blog post. open.substack.com/pub/davekarp...

TODAY! DC peeps, join us. Wondering how we got to a place where the Republican party is currently debating whether to mainstream a Nazi influencer?! Laura’s got answers. Open to the public with free registration:

With multiple procedural steps and potential derailment points still ahead in order to actually end the shutdown, you cannot overlook the fact that this president and these Republicans are more fumble-prone than any politicians in history.

Trump snapped at an NBC reporter for debunking his claim that Walmart’s Thanksgiving dinner will be cheaper this year than last. In reality, the Thanksgiving bundle he has has repeatedly touted actually contains less food than last year's. Read more: www.mediamatters.org/nbc/trump-sn...

$40B of your money to this guy, so he can dance at CPAC at Mar-a-Lago while Americans wait for their paychecks, hoping the money actually comes.

Note to Democratic Party: 90% of democrats AND 67% of independents say the cuts in federal funding of healthcare programs such as Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act have gone too far. Majorities of both also say health care is critical issue to them. @prri.org prri.org/research/tru...

The Supreme Court did grant review of one case today, Watson v. Republican National Committee, and it's a big one over state laws allowing the counting of ballots cast by Election Day but received after Election Day. Here's the docket: www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docke... And question presented:

BREAKING: The Supreme Court DENIES former county clerk Kim Davis's request for the justices to take up her longshot bid to overturn 2015's Obergefell v. Hodges marriage equality decision. No justice even writes about the request.

Not only immoral in a policy sense, but political malpractice as well.

Read every word & share with everyone you know. This is real life here in Chicago. Americans need to know this grotesque reality & stand with us.

Two-thirds of Democrats say their own party makes them feel frustrated. By far the most commonly cited reason is that the party is not pushing back hard enough against Trump. www.pewresearch.org/politics/202...

How. In. The. World. Does. A. Senator. Go. On. National. Television. And. Say. This.

"they think it's the 90s" 🎯

A one year-old was pepper sprayed in a car with her parents by an armed, masked federal agent, and Dick Durbin is more concerned with "how the Senate works"

The full clip may be even worse. He explains that it “didn’t work” bc Trump took advantage of it to do a bunch of unlawful things. This is the same elite cowardice that has gotten us exactly nowhere. “Gosh, Trump is breaking the law and hurting people. Guess we’d better cave.”

This is the same blinders-on mentality that led to all sorts of people saying, when he was first made Speaker, that Mike Johnson is "nice."

This is really telling! It doesn't work like that anymore, bud. None of it works like that — even if it did on Jan. 19.

seems to me that those democrats inclined not to fight perceive themselves as living through a somewhat ordinary cycle of presidential overreach and backlash and not something much more significant and dangerous

NEW: The First Circuit has denied the Trump Admin’s motion to stay in our SNAP case. This means that full benefits should be paid after the SCOTUS stay expires. The court does not mince words about what the government has done here. Congrats to our clients, co-counsel, and @democracyforward.org.

If the Republicans won't give up ACA subsidies when they are being pressured and taking political hits, the theory for why they are *more* likely to concede with the pressure removed is .... ?

How do you make this your central demand for 40 days and then just let it go

Great job, @schumer.senate.gov. You've changed the story from "GOP hurting millions of Americans to please unpopular, failing, delusional despot who's destroying his party" to "Dems are too weak and divided in the face of Trump's strength to take a stand and protect Americans"

I think the quick negative statements by normie centrist Dems outside of the Senate reflects their read that the vote is very unpopular with the base, at least in the short run.

Just thinking about how pissed off Republicans were at their own party and its leadership in 2010 That year they got a net gain of 6 seats in the Senate and 63, that's right, 63 seats in the House. Anger is powerful.

When you've lost *checks notes again* Chris Cillizza

The model of holding individual senators responsible is broken here. The retirees clearly agreed to take the fall. Which is why the nos should get no credit for voting no unless they move to oust Schumer

"oh gee why can't you all just get along, stop being divisive" I'm sorry are you Jon Stewart on Crossfire twenty years ago? Or do you want to come back to this planet in the year 2025? The overwhelming gripe is people think you're spineless, not that your DW-NOMINATE score isn't bipartisan enough

This is not what they actually say. This is what they used to say, in the long ago before times when Shaheen learned to do politics. There is no kumbaya median voter anymore. The question you get knocking doors is not "why can't you all just work together?" it's "why didn't / will you fight harder?

This is why this surrender isn't just about this narrow issue but is rather the whole constitutional ballgame: Democrats are affirmatively signaling they do not want political power at the same time Trump is transitioning the political system into an autocratic one wherein they're denied it forever

The correct answer to this is "because Republicans don't want to solve your problems. They literally want you to starve and go bankrupt so they can make billionaires even richer."

They’re hoping that if this happens everyone will forget what happened today

It’s almost like Senate Democrats *want* Dems in disarray stories

if only there were some simple way to determine the veracity of this claim

People are very aware of how the Senate “works,” and that’s exactly why they are so angry

Maybe you should have banded together with your colleagues to oust Schumer, then

-Oct 18, more than 7 million Americans stand up and stand together. -Nov 4, millions of Dems turn out for landslide wins in VA, NJ, NY, CA, GA, many other places. -Nov 9, eight "Dems" say "Oh, this nice Mike Johnson and Mr. Trump say they care about health. If they don't, well shame on them..."

Since the Democrats worked extra hard to hide who actually supported this, I think the No Kings/Resistance position should be to primary every Democrat unless they publicly call for Schumer's ouster this week Either they go into total rebellion mode, which they won't, or the people will

Sen Gary Peters is in his own way the biggest embarrassment of the lot. He’s been a leader of Team Cave and he’s retiring. So there’s no politics or risk aversion. He wants to cave as a matter of genuine principle.

The day the mainstream media starts reporting for some reason that the president is a li'l sleepy, gosh who knows why, and the day he gets booed by a full football stadium, is the day Schumer and his braintrust cave. It's quite something!

Normally retiring senators, from whichever party, do the courageous thing. This time they did the cowardly thing, and caved.

Important to understand this. There's a reasonable chance that your Dem Senator who voted against it and is acting mad now was in on the play. It's the same reason why they scheduled the surrender for AFTER the election this week. They didn't want people pissed at Dems right before an election.

The coordinated nature of this—none are facing voters in 2026—means that either Schumer approved it or failed in his job as Senate Majority Leader to stop it. Dems voting "no" get zero credit until they demand a change in leadership. Schumer out as Leader, Durbin out as Whip.

Listening to these 8 Dem Senators explain their vote convinces me that they are either idiots or liars. Either is plausible.

The original Dem demands were: 1) Permanent ACA subsidies 2) Medicaid funding restored 3) No more blank checks for the regime (rescission) They dropped Medicaid immediately. Went silent on rescission. Cut back to 1 year of subsidies on Friday. And surrendered today. The Senate Democrats!

Blame *all* Democratic incumbents for this surrender. Not just the ones voting for it. The others could have voted to remove Schumer long ago and install a leader capable of formulating a strategy and holding his people together. They were content to stay with a proven loser.

Apparently, it is negotiable!

2/2 You think Dem voters would have turned out in the numbers, and with the enthusiasm, they did JUST FIVE DAYS AGO if they thought the party was going cave like this? Jesus

Fight don’t fold.