FACT FOCUS: Democrats did not shut down the government to give health care to illegal immigrants.

A lot of government continues during a federal shutdown. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, will continue at least for the month of October.

📽️ VIDEO: Donald Trump is using the same tactics authoritarians have used to attack democracies for centuries. Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat joins the podcast to expose Trump's playbook and share one of her most important maxims of resistance. Watch below👇

In July, we documented nearly 50 incidents of immigration officers shattering car windows to make arrests — a tactic experts say was rarely used before Trump took office. ICE claims its officers use a “minimum amount of force.” You can judge for yourself.

“Clanker” is a derogatory term used to insult AI products such as delivery robots, therapist chatbots and automated servants. Our future robotic overlords might take, writes Sarah Ogilvie.

Trump's deportation machine has diverted some 42,000 crime fighters from other tasks

Here’s 3 full minutes of @kaitlancollins trying to get @SpeakerJohnson to admit undocumented people can’t get federal health care, and Johnson repeating the lie over and over anyway. Republicans are kicking people off insurance then lying about who they’re doing it to.

*sigh* my life-long dream is to leave something like this after I am gone..

Loved this! I've been listening to @ezraklein.bsky.social for ~10yrs now (since his The Weeds days w/ Sarah + @mattyglesias.bsky.social) & feel like I've grown up w/ him. The thing I remember from this convo: "There's a difference between what you believe and what you believe when you're in power."

“Meta and X settled similar lawsuits with Trump over suspending his accounts, paying $25 million and $10 million, respectively. These three companies alone have collectively paid Trump and his associates $59.5 million for the sin of enforcing the rules of their own privately held companies.”

Exclusive: Jeffrey Epstein never got kicked out of Wall Street’s VIP club. His banking and investment activities before his death were more widespread than previously known, including accounts at multiple banks.

"This case…squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us. The Court answers this Constitutional question unequivocally “yes, they do.”"

OMG this William G. Young opinion that just dropped (12:30pm) in AAUP v. Rubio. It begins with a postcard sent to Chambers and Young's reply card: "Trump has pardons and tanks, what do you have?" WGY: "We the People of the United States — you and me — have our magnificent Constitution"

BREAKING: Federal judge finds that the Trump administration unconstitutionally targeted noncitizens for deportation over Gaza war protests.

It’s only the President’s fault if I’m not the president

Pritzker: "In any other country, if federal agents fired upon journalists & protesters when unprovoked what would we call it? If officials marched down streets harassing civilians & demanding their papers, what would we say? I don't think we'd have trouble calling it what it is: authoritarianism"

This is a must read:

Brutal.

Responding to an outdated mythicist claim #maklelan2923 youtube.com/shorts/4gm8Q...

“The problem in our country isn’t with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. Look at the magazines, the newspapers around us – it’s all junk, all trash, tidbits of news. … You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” — Ray Bradbury

Statement from Portland Mayor Keith Wilson: "President Trump has directed ‘all necessary Troops’ to Portland, Oregon. The number of necessary troops is zero, in Portland and any other American city." open.substack.com/pub/jefftied...

Why are they unable to sell the harvest, Senator?

USB-C was supposed to make everything simple. Instead, it’s more complicated than ever. So let's clear up the confusion.

In this post on Comey indictment, I asked whether Lindsey Halligan was just play-acting as US Attorney when she claimed to have indicted Jim Comey last week. www.emptywheel.net/2025/09/26/w... In two posts, conservative lawyer Ed Whelan suggests she was. www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/...

Bringing the U.S. arm of TikTok into the MAGA fold seems like part of Donald Trump’s grand project to concentrate power and rout his perceived enemies, @johncassidysays.bsky.social writes.

Moldova’s pro-Western ruling party decisively wins a tense parliamentary election fraught with Russian interference claims.

The video I filmed of an ICE agent shoving a woman to the ground at 26 Federal Plaza, a New York City immigration courthouse, went viral. Then, in a rare move, the government publicly reprimanded the officer, calling his actions “unacceptable.” By @tilleckert.com

The government faces steep challenges in proving key elements of its bare-bones indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, including his state of mind during 2020 testimony before Congress and the potential lack of a credible star witness.

They are so afraid of this they won’t seat a newly elected Congresswoman from AZ to keep it from happening.

The Silver Age of comics was hilariously unhinged

Bookmark this for the next time Republicans say the left is to blame for all political violence in this country. trib.al/rPBaof2

Keir Starmer attacks ‘racist’ Farage plan to deport people settled in the UK

BREAKING: President Trump asks Supreme Court to uphold restrictions he wants to impose on birthright citizenship.

Putin preparing to attack another European country, Zelenskyy says

But if Richman is person 3, and this is about Comey’s 2017 testimony, I’m not sure how they connect that to 2020 because 2020 is strictly about McCabe. 🤷‍♀️ If I’m Comey’s lawyer, I’m adding a MTD on no charge stated to the pile of pre-trial motions. END/

For everyone asking: The Richman stuff isn’t about the memos. Before the memos episode, Richman worked with Comey as a Special Government Employee at the FBI. In that role, he sometimes spoke to reporters, including this story about the Clinton investigation.

Everything else aside, Trump is calling for parents to take time out for nine (!) separate pediatrician visits.

First Trump ordered baseless investigations of Tish James & Jim Comey--now it's OSF The efforts to manufacture criminal charges vs OSF violate the rule of law, the 1st Amend. & fundamental Constitutional principles We must speak out before it too late www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/u...

Did you know? The U.S. has no statutes under which groups are designated domestic terror organizations.

Pharma middlemen propose regulatory changes to avoid Trump administration rules, Bloomberg News reports reut.rs/4pK3FSQ

If Carney went to the United Nations to show the world that Canada and the U.S. have become sharply different countries, he can probably declare it mission accomplished. There's plenty of vivid examples of the two countries on diverging paths. #Opinion

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called on the world leaders to support Moldova in the face of Russia’s alleged attempts to influence its parliamentary election on Sunday

CNN data guru is saying a "massive move to the left" is happening following the large Democratic turnout in Arizona — a reflection of what's happening nationwide.

“.. Americans deserve to know whether Homan, who styles himself an aggressively by-the-book cop unwilling to look past any immigrant’s slightest infraction, is guilty of soliciting bribes.” @bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

PSA: Although I am making myself learn to cope with annotating research papers in Adobe Acrobat Reader, I have zero temptation to subscribe. I'm fine on the free level. Also, even those who can afford (some) should avoid unnecessary subscriptions.

"Well there are certain sections of Boston, Vlad, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade."

Bessent on why US troops won't get involved in defending Europe: "As I told my European counterparts about two weeks ago, 'All I hear from you is that Putin wants to march into Warsaw. The one thing I'm sure of is that Putin isn't marching into Boston.'"