They returned after six weeks and chose Epstein files theater over hungry children. A Native American in Iowa was hours from deportation despite showing tribal ID and matching fingerprints. Hundreds of Chicago immigrants are held improperly without bond. (more at website)

Trump again refused to rule out attacking Venezuela today. The difference is that the USS Gerald R. Ford strike group is now arriving. This armada includes destroyers, dozens of aircraft, and thousands of soldiers. They're linking up with a sizeable attack force already there. (more at website)

Trump went to the Supreme Court twice to stop food aid for 42 million Americans. Federal judges kept blocking his attempts, so he escalated to the Supreme Court. He threatened states that gave out benefits anyway, demanding they take back money from families who'd already bought groceries. (more)

Trump spent Sunday taking victory laps while Democrats folded. (more at website)

They're not hiding the lies anymore. The White House announced that there have been ZERO illegal border crossings for six months while their own DHS reports over 30,000 encounters in October alone. And how would they know if there was a successful illegal crossing anyway? (more at website)

The shutdown in the Republican-controlled federal government continues to expose systemic problems including millions of hungry people missing food aid and a severely compromised air transportation system. Systems crack, splinter, then fall apart, and we're somewhere in the middle of that. (more)

JD Vance called a federal judge's order absurd tonight. That judge had ordered SNAP payments be sent to 42 million Americans who receive food aid. The White House said it would fund partial payments, and the judge countered today that his order wasn't optional. (more at website)

Our biggest challenge is to bear witness to the suffering around us. World Central Kitchen is feeding unpaid government workers in DC as they might people in a war zone or disaster area. (more at website)

Trump continues governing like an emperor even as today's election returns show Americans are unhappy with him. Democrats flipped Virginia's governorship with the state's first woman governor, held New Jersey despite his meddling, (more at website)

Tuesday is Election Day and our chance to begin restoring the norms we once lived under. In the less than ten months since he's taken office, Donald Trump ordered attacks on 16 unarmed boats near South America that killed dozens of people. (more at website)

Expect Trump to continue using multiple distractions to avoid the humanitarian crisis we face. One of every eight people has lost federal food aid while 5.9 million households are losing home heating aid just as we reach November. (more at website)

Donors and power grabs take precedence in Donald Trump's world. Just one day after the UN condemned the US for attacking boats and killing people, the Trump administration announced a brand new attack. They even had an attorney tell Congress that it didn't need their authority to do so. (more)

The United Nations condemned the U.S. today for 14 separate boat attacks that have killed 61 people. The High Commissioner for Human Rights made that announcement before SNAP’s food aid benefits for one of every 8 Americans were set to go unfunded by the federal government. (more at website)

Trump isn't hiding the machine being built. Military orders today established a unit of nearly 25,000 troops to deploy as Quick Reaction Forces with a presence in each state for supposed unrest.

Trump plays by dangerous rules. Today he ordered nuclear weapons testing to resume after 33 years. His military has killed 61 people on boats over the past month without trials or evidence. And he's defending Israeli airstrikes that killed 104 Palestinians while claiming the (more at website)

Trump is still in Asia, ignoring suffering and death at home. Louisiana's Surgeon General banned vaccine events after two infants died from whooping cough. Anti-vaccine ideology matters more than dead babies. (more at website)

House Republicans have abandoned America in a time of dire need. Three crises are building. Insurance premiums doubling, food aid running out, and Trump deploying the world's largest aircraft carrier to Venezuela's coast after they accused the U.S. of plotting false-flag attacks. (more at website)

Forty-two million Americans lose food aid in five days. Trump is using their hunger as a bargaining chip to force Democrats to cave on healthcare. Democrats shut down the government October 1 over spiraling ACA costs. Republicans won't even talk until Democrats vote first and give up leverage.

Trump performed as global peacemaker today while his agents deployed chemical weapons in American neighborhoods for the fourth time this week. A man fleeing ICE after a traffic stop in Virginia ran onto I-264 and was struck and killed by a vehicle. (more on the website)

The fuses Donald Trump lit are burning as he flies to Asia for a week. Forty-two million Americans depend on food stamps to eat, and the Trump administration refused today to use emergency funds to keep benefits flowing as the shutdown continues. (more at website)

History is being rewritten in real time. Trump continues gaslighting America by demanding the National Symphony open concerts with the National Anthem and editing the White House website to include photos of Hunter Biden in a bathtub (more at website)

The food crisis is real and about to get much worse. California and New Mexico are the latest states warning about their inability to meet demand now that they've been cut off from federal funding. That's millions in California and one out of every five New Mexicans. (more at website)

💰 Donald Trump is looting America, but his own party is feeling the heat. He now says that he'll decide whether taxpayers pay him $230 million for being investigated, claiming the decision "would have to go across my desk." (more at website)

The pain is about to get very bad for a lot of people. Food benefits and Head Start programs are quickly running out of money. Pennsylvania already said they have no funding for SNAP in November. Federal employees are missing checks. (more at website)

👑 Donald Trump's reaction to seven million of us in the streets protesting his administration was to post an AI video of himself wearing a crown and dumping feces on the protesters. (more on website)

Seven million Americans flooded streets today in one of the largest single-day demonstrations in U.S. history. That number matters. ✊ (more on website)

Today, more than one million Americans are expected to protest at events throughout the country. From an undeclared war in Venezuela to attacks on those who oppose him, Donald Trump has learned what rules he can ignore backed by an enabling Congress and compliant Supreme Court. (more on website)

🔥 Americans have sat in slowly warming water that will soon boil. Would you have believed this could happen in America without people demanding change? You can do just that on Saturday. Visit nokings.com and choose from more than 1,000 events nationwide. Then show up and demand change. (more)

They govern by dismissing whatever gets in their way or doesn't serve them. The Young Republicans who wrote praising Hitler were “kids being kids” while Rep. Grijalva still hasn’t been sworn in after being elected on September 23. (more on the website)

Donald Trump should be basking in the glow of forcing a Middle East ceasefire. He was just in Egypt and Israel yesterday lauding peace. Today he threatened Hamas with a military attack and ordered strikes that killed six more people on a boat in the Caribbean without offering proof of wrongdoing.

🕊️ Today should have been Donald Trump's triumph. He flew to Israel, was lauded at the Knesset, then went to Egypt, where he signed a Gaza accord with other mediating countries. Then he flew back home to give a posthumous Medal of Freedom tomorrow. (more at website)

⚠️ Violence is Trump’s default response. Agents fired pepper balls at naked cyclists in Portland while priests were illegally denied access to prisoners in Chicago. In DC, JD Vance threatened more painful mass firings while his boss flew to Israel and threatened to give Ukraine missiles. (more)

The week that was in daily quotes.

🎯 His schtick is paternalism, but Donald Trump hosed his supporters today. Nearly all special ed staff supporting K-12 programs in our local schools were fired. Democrats won’t budge on the shutdown without restoring the Affordable Care Act. 57% of recipients live in Republican districts. (more)

🆕 What happened today just doesn't happen in modern America. China restricted exports of rare earth minerals. Trump responded with an immediate 100% tariff on top of the tariffs already crushing American farmers. (more)

🗺️ America's descent into uncharted territory continues. The first GOP governor broke ranks with Trump today when OK's Kevin Stitt said that his state's residents would "lose their minds" if the Illinois Guard was deployed there. (more)

🔥 Trump removed his mask yesterday when he told a meeting room that he "took the freedom of speech away." You can watch the video. It's not a slip or anyone spinning a story. He bragged and tried to justify it. The USA is now an authoritarian regime. (more at website)

🖕 Trump breaks the law. His cabinet enables him. And they'll attack you if you speak up. Troops are now on the ground in Illinois over the governor's objections. Trump says he'll decide which federal workers get their back pay, and OMB deleted the law requiring it from their website. (more)

⚖️ They're bulldozing constraints while starving our protections. Troops are moving toward Chicago, and Trump threatens Portland and the courts with the Insurrection Act. Down in Florida, the DOJ admits that not everyone locked up in the Everglades was subject to deportation. (more)

☢️ Trump dropped the façade today and ordered troops into Chicago and Portland. A federal judge has blocked any Oregon deployment for now. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is calling this Trump's Invasion, and it's hard not to see it as anything but a pretext. See below for free ACLU protest training.

🛑 The crackdown is here. Trump is sending 300 National Guard troops into Chicago over the governor and mayor's objections. Border Patrol shot a second citizen there today. Trump tried sending troops to Portland too, but a federal judge stopped him. (more)

⚠️ The House of Representatives has no votes scheduled for nine days while Trump runs amok and acts like the First Emperor of America. The US military attacked another boat in international waters today, killing four more people without proof or due process. America has killed 21 people in this way

💔 You may have been one of the millions Trump punished today. He cut funds to states that didn't vote for him, denied a dying man medication, and hijacked federal workers' voices to force partisan messages. But rangers keep defying orders, scientists keep blowing whistles, prosecutors (more)

⚙️ The shutdown is a weapon for Trump. Two days after a judge threatened officials with contempt for defying his Voice of America restoration order, the agency shut down all broadcasts and furloughed every journalist. (more)

🛒 You know that panicked feeling when you're sprinting through a store at closing time? That's today's news. Thirty-one stories dropped as the government shut down. All of the generals worldwide were summoned for loyalty tests, the president posted racist deepfakes twice, (more)

💸 They fired the whistleblowers who exposed fair housing violations, shot pepper rounds at a journalist documenting ICE operations, and charged activists for posting an agent's address online. When they attack the people who expose corruption, your documentation becomes resistance.

🚨 Federal troops and agents are now in Chicago and Portland with Memphis next. DC and LA were practice runs. Their bosses are emboldened. A Border Patrol commander bragged his agents arrest people based on "how they look" while tactical teams swept Michigan Avenue.

⛔Trump controls Congress, the courts, and the executive branch, but still governs through threats.

🌃 They dropped 28 major stories tonight betting you'd already checked out for the weekend, but the purge is impossible to miss. More Trump enemies are being investigated and FBI agents who kneeled at a protest five years ago were fired today. But the systems are holding against some abuses.

💊 Trump promised "I am your retribution" and now you're paying with your life. He ordered Comey punished, ordered prosecutors to seek death in every eligible DC criminal case, & ordered doubling the cost of imported insulin, cancer drugs, and heart pills. His cruelty ends at your medicine cabinet.