The Trump administration has been using the president’s cruel mass deportation visions as a vehicle to, also, crack down on the residents of blue cities across the U.S. who did not vote for him.

What really matters is how Senate Dems respond once the legislation is brought up for a vote in the upper chamber, as Republicans will need support from at least seven Dems to pass the bill.

How exactly Congress will address the coming health care cost crisis — premiums are set to soar for millions of Americans in coming months — remains unclear.

If Pirro was looking for a way to please Trump in the midst of his outburst about U.S. attorneys not being sycophantic enough, both Slotkin and Powell would be obvious targets.

Trump has made his “retribution” objective explicit, spinning his administration’s plans to clamp down on First Amendment rights and his withholding of federal funding as some sort of deliverance for the “GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA” from their duly-elected leaders.

A usual level of uncertainty hangs over the typically far-more-straightforward question of which party will hold the upper hand in a critical election year. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/how-red...

Trump might torpedo the whole thing, whether the Senate passes the House extension or puts up its own bipartisan bill for a vote (which would then need to pass the House before being sent to Trump’s desk). More here:

"The fatal shooting of Good shows that the people who have been resisting Trump’s mass deportation push are risking their lives. However, waves of protests in the aftermath of her death show the threat is not stopping anyone from showing up." More from @hunterw.bsky.social in tonight's WTS:

From a 2015 fraud allegations focused on Minnesota day care centers overbilling state welfare agencies to an ICE agent killing a woman in Minneapolis on Wednesday, @laylaayanna.bsky.social provides a definitive unpacking of how we got here:

Trump sent 2,000 ICE agents to Minnesota this week as part of his ongoing immigration enforcement assault across America.

By some counts, Dems need to flip just three seats in order to take back control of the lower chamber, but the status of Trump’s gerrymandering blitz — and Democrats’ own gerrymandering efforts to combat it — muddies the picture.

Kelly has continued to promote a similar line in response to each new Hegseth attempt to act on Trump’s long & much discussed interest in punishing elected Dems and anyone who dares criticize him: that he will fight all of the retribution efforts in defense of Americans’ freedom of speech.

Join us in celebrating the 17th Annual Golden Duke Awards, @talkingpointsmemo.com's yearly toast to the toads who took venality and nonsense to new heights.

“… Immigrant New Yorkers, undocumented New Yorkers, are not simply living the challenges pertaining to their status,” Mamdani told @talkingpointsmemo.com’s @hunterw.bsky.social. “… They’re living both the affordability crisis and a crisis of dignity on the question of people’s immigration status.”

Massie is one of the only elected Republicans who has been consistently willing to criticize the president. But Trump’s Truth Social post about Reiner was so deranged that others are speaking up.

In the end, Trump’s intimidation tactics and blatant attempts to predetermine control of Congress were not enough to persuade the 21 Republicans to cave.

If Indiana Republicans cave to Trump today and agree to rig the 2026 elections, both Illinois and Maryland are in line to respond, notes @nicolelafond.bsky.social. Cites our interview with Rep Jamie Raskin pushing State Sen prez to drop his bizarre opposition: talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things...

Indiana Senate REJECTS Trump's gerrymandering/refuses to cave to Trump's months-long redistricting pressure campaign. A handful of GOPers who voted against the measure have been threatened by Trump and have been victims of bomb threats and swatting. More from @khayahimmelman.bsky.social here:

Indiana state Senate Republicans are expected to take a vote as soon as tomorrow that could mark the conclusion of a months-long drive by the Trump administration, and many of his closest allies, to force state legislators to draw Democrats out of representation for Indiana in the U.S. House.

The Trump admin messaging appears as part of a brazen attempt to pit low-income borrowers against working class Americans in some sort of faux class war (or maybe “affordability” standoff?) during a time when no one can afford anything.

Several of the elected Democrats who have been targeted by Trump and his cronies’ absurd revenge mission have responded to the Bloomberg report with vows to not be intimidated by the escalating threats.

Republicans in Congress are furrowing their brows very strongly about the Department of War’s approach to menacing Venezuela.

"Crisis pregnancy centers, including the one at the heart of the case the Supreme Court heard Tuesday, operate on deception." More from my colleague @kateriga.bsky.social in tonight's edition of Where Things Stand:

On Monday, my colleague @hunterw.bsky.social asked both Mamdani and Sanders what they thought of Trump’s attempt to take the mantle of “affordability.” “I will shock all of you in suggesting that the president of the United States is a pathological liar. He lies all of the time,” Sanders said.

Obviously, moments like these put an already tense nation further on edge due to the increasingly fraught environment we live in, where political violence has become more routine, even over the course of the past year.

The FBI is now conducting its own investigation into Dem lawmakers who put out a video reminding active duty members of the military about their constitutional oath — a message that prompted death threats from no less than President Trump.

The Pentagon announced that it is investigating Sen. Mark Kelly, a combat veteran and elected Democrat from Arizona who recently upset Trump admin officials for stating publicly something that is in the Constitution — obviously a major offense in this era.

It is an escalation of Trump's retribution vows to investigate and punish his political foes by orders of magnitude.

Data on race and ethnicity has put us on the cusp of breakthroughs in treating kidney failure, which disproportionately affects Black Americans. But the Trump administration has halted that data collection as part of its war on supposed "DEI." Important new story from @laylaayanna.bsky.social

happy 25th @talkingpointsmemo.com ✨

Trump’s transformation on the topic, if we even want to call it that, was mostly an effort to make it appear publicly like he was always on board with being forced by Congress to do something that he could’ve easily done without forcing Congress to force him to do it — if he wanted to.

Seconding this! It's so so impressive and admirable.

There are few things that Trump says that are shocking to me, or anyone else stuck in this warped doom loop that is paying attention to American politics in 2025. But Trump’s remarks today demonizing murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi and defending the Saudi crown prince were an exception.

Trump encouraged House Republicans to vote to release the files just after he spent the weekend doing some 3-D chess to conceal the fact that the only reason the DOJ hasn’t released the documents from the Epstein case is because Trump doesn’t want them released.

Perhaps in anticipation of Grijalva’s plan to sign the petition immediately upon her swearing-in, admin officials were working overtime on Wednesday to try to persuade one Republican who had already signed the petition to remove their name and prevent the official collection of 218 signatures.

What a thrill to be part of @talkingpointsmemo.com's series about the past 25 years of digital media! I wrote about why private equity goons destroyed Deadspin and why it matters.

Fine! Scrap it!

It might be too much to expect MAGA world to realize that its incessant attacks on its enemies and welcoming embrace of the fringiest of figures might not play well with voters. What, after all, would MAGA be without enemies and fringe figures?

The disinfo wave around Mamdani reflects a confusion in both parties about exactly how to explain the 34-year-old insurgent candidate.

It appears that DOJ employees who use language to accurately describe the events that took place on Jan. 6 — but language that does not, of course, line up with Trump’s white-washed narrative on the attack — are being punished. More in tonight's edition of Where Things Stand here:

Trump has publicly weaved his visions of deploying the military domestically and training its might on civilians before, but Tuesday’s remarks put that aspiration in starker terms.

From my colleague, @kateriga.bsky.social in tonight's edition of Where Things Stand: "The Trump administration has seen its appellate court victory delayed for days, hamstrung in its effort to flood Portland with armed troops, all due to its own baffling legal blunder." More here:

Come see! www.niemanlab.org/2025/10/talk...

The White House has been courting Indiana GOPers since August in an attempt to force them to redraw district lines for the 2 seats that Indiana Dems hold in the House. Vance has visited the state twice to make the administration’s case. And, yet, they still don’t have the votes to pass new maps.

While it is significant that a few Republicans are at least vocalizing that something about how the Trump administration is handling the shutdown is maybe probably perhaps not legal, it’s unlikely to change anything.

My colleague @hunterw.bsky.social in tonight's Where Things Stand: "The '3.5 Percent Rule' refers to the idea that no government has survived a challenge against it from a nonviolent mass movement that brought together at least 3.5 percent of the population during a 'peak event.'" More ⤵️

The Trump administration is stepping into legal gray areas, finding ways to move money around to keep the things it wants to keep operating operating — whether that is to score rhetorical points against Democrats or to keep their policy agenda creeping forward.

Trump allies have used Kirk's death as a springboard for acting on Trump's longtime vows of retribution against his political foes. Charlie Kirk’s podcast is the forum they’re using to broadcast those schemes.

The North Carolina GOP is notorious for ratfuckery:

Republicans have developed a newfound interest in mothers who rely on federal nutrient assistance programs like WIC to feed their children — the types of social safety net services and programs that Democrats champion and that Republicans have been hellbent on gutting for decades.