Yeah Greg is correct here.

Theory 5 (non exclusive): factions in the administration have genuine ideological commitment to reducing the size of SNAP for small-government / dependency reasons and don’t want to cede ground here

Theory 4 (also non exclusive): WH preferred outcome is now that Senate Republicans kill fillibuster (even above Dems caving), so they get that public blames GOP but WH *wants* to pressure Congressional GOP

Theory 1: Administration botching it badly, but the intent is to cause pain and suffering so people will blame Dems. Theory 2: Causing pain and suffering to cater to strongest supporters, who like pain and suffering. Theory 3: Administration just likes pain and suffering. All plausible!

Iron Law of Politics: NYC Mayor is a dead-end job.

I’d like our economy to not resemble Russia’s thank you very much.

Outside of being illegal, and outside of USDA telling us that Trump wants to provide benefits that he's scrambling in court to stop...this is surely ineffective! It's just talking to the most hard-core partisans; everyone else will either tune out the obvious partisan rhetoric get upset about it.

Dear Pundits trying to figure out which of these people is the real and successful Dem party. They all are. This is a national party that has to suit our great diversity while being recognizably D together and being recognizably not R, esp today. Looking at you, Bezos.

HUGE: Nearly 3000 people have signed up with @runforsomething.net to run for office since Tuesday night. runforwhat.net

My apologies...he said 1981 moment, not 1961. So a totally different phony gap, but no Vietnam. I guess I'll delete, and consider whether I need that cataract surgery sooner than I thought. (1981 moment would be when our opponents are eroding rapidly and we don't realize it).

I have concerns that even with Dems in charge, Virginia may continue to advance fossil fuels & fail to meet the legal obligations of the Virginia Clean Economy Act in large part because data center growth has boxed us in 1/2 virginiamercury.com/2025/11/07/e...

Cities are amazing accomplishments of humankind.

On that last point: Let Orange County have Reagan, and let John Wayne hang out with Pat McCarran somewhere, uh, appropriate. National should be National. (Of course there's also my suggestion to rename Dulles after General George Marshall and National after Chief Justice John Marshall).

Mentions of "adelita" in official congressional e-newsletters over time, by party. Thanks to @jonathanbernstein.bsky.social for giving me the idea to look

One reason we need like 150 NBA teams and 60 NFL teams is so that eccentric billionaires can do more normal eccentric billionaire things like own sports teams instead of mucking around in politics.

Gonna keep saying it: There's just no way that the negative publicity Johnson is generating on Grijalva is worth pushing back the clock on a potential Epstein vote. Dunno if it's his idea or Trump's but it's a total blunder.

We really need to stop treating betting odds (even if you call them "prediction markets") as politically meaningful data. They're not assessments of what people think (that's polls), they're assessments of what some bettors (many seemingly with more money than sense) think that people will think.

And, hey, maybe on Sept. 30 they thought Dems would cave quickly as they did in the DACA case. Maybe they thought that Dems would take the blame. Maybe they still thought that on Oct. 7. Wasn't entirely crazy. Oct. 15? Dunno. At some point, it became entirely crazy.

Some of those photos are pretty good explanations.

Very curious about what Thomas and Alito are thinking about next year's Senate elections. But also how badly needed they believe they are to keep Roberts and the rest of the squishes from straying.

I have long argued that the single best thing you could do to improve the functioning of the US government is double the salaries of everyone working on Capitol Hill. Serving Congress shouldn’t involve poverty wages in DC. You could attract a much wider set of perspectives netting a better result.

Tuesday's elections were about the Democrats finally waking up to the idea of power, maybe open.substack.com/pub/goodpoli...

@juliaazari.bsky.social on how Mamdani is *not* like Obama open.substack.com/pub/goodpoli...

So presumably *some* of this is shutdown-related and the history is that presidents bounce back quickly once the government re-opens...but who knows? He sure seems determined to alienate a majority of the nation.

A lot of discourse hasn't caught up with how the strong/somewhat breakdown is even more brutal. His core base of strong support is already falling below a quarter of voters! Even what approval he has is increasingly soft and halfhearted. Whereas disapprovers are much firmer in really hating the man.

I’ve been looking for a political biography of Pelosi for our Congressional Leaders series at Kansas. If you’re interested in writing one, send me an email or DM.

Feeling better and better about my side of the argument about whether presidents now have a high approval floor. (And worse and worse about multiple current and future policy failures).

Anyone keeping track of pardoned J6ers running for office? This guy just announced for FL-16 (open, with Byron Donalds running for guv) www.johnstrand.com

In a meeting her staff said we need to whip votes to pass the ACA. Someone asked who would do it. Speaker Pelosi said "I will" Someone said how many? Speaker Pelosi said "all of them" She got it passed.

House of Representatives still absent is not helping resolve the shutdown. It was a strategy designed to pressure Ds but instead angered them and made them dig in. (Same with tactics like blocking the NY-NJ tunnel, etc. etc.)

(I don't think Cornyn is stupid, but I do think his upcoming primary encourages him to say stupid things).

Mood.

There are a growing number of official congressional e-newsletters talking about "delisting" animals from the Endangered Species list. Recent mentions include the gray wolf, mexican wolf, and grizzly bear.

So much to say about Nancy Pelosi, now retiring Plausibly the most effective House leader of modern times A telling episode, from early 2010 when Democrats were *this* close to giving up on what eventually became the ACA us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

I cried watching this live. Thank you, Madame Speaker. www.nbcnews.com/video/george...

My election wrap, mostly forward looking, covering lots of ground briefly - including my irresponsible speculation about one reason the conventional wisdom was so certain that the party didn't have its act together. goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/after-the-...

Morning. ☕ ICYMI: Don't sleep on all the down-ballot victories that Democrats just pulled off. They're not as sexy as governor's races or the NYC mayor's race, but they matter -- and they were some of the most astounding wins of Tuesday night. www.huffpost.com/entry/democr...

Wait why are Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys driving those cement trucks?

San Francisco's international airport is currently unnamed! www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/u...

it turns out, as it were, that society has stigmatized Nazism, fascism, integralism, being a ‘big fan of Stalin,’ etc for decades for good reasons and not just to ruin everyone’s fun

A Hero of the Republic. One of the all-time greats.

It’s crazy how the entire national platform from discretionary spending to diplomacy has become a series of make-a-wish projects for a senile octogenarian.

A quick backgrounder on Nigeria for those who are just tuning in. 1. There's no Christian genocide, and certainly not on the part of the govt. 2. There has been a decade-long Islamist insurgency, mainly in the north but spreading in recent years, that has targeted many, including Christians. 1/x

Trump was so busy botching the shutdown by cheering it on at first, and then by ignoring it for a while, and only now has started to build pressure on GOP Senators to ditch the filibuster...which at this point is just another way he's botching the shutdown.

Went to place a prop bet on Trump doing or saying something antisemitic before Mamdani but it's off the board; no one willing to take the other side of that total lock bet. (Bigotry against Jews and others across the political spectrum is sadly real. Too bad the ADL gave up on fighting it).

1. Trende should join us over here. It's actually quite nice here. 2. I think I'm ready to say that Dems getting to 51 is clearly up to drawing to an inside straight, and closing in on just plain drawing to a straight now. 3. Waiting on Alaska.

Up to now we've seen (as far as we know) Trump get rolled within his own WH a lot less often than during his first term...good for @gregsargent.bsky.social to highlight this.

New theory: Trump goes grocery shopping and pumps his own gas all the time, but every single time he's done it he picks up a six-pack of Colt '45 out of respect to Billy Dee even though he doesn't drink, and he always thinks he's gonna be carded so he whips out his ID. Works Every Time!

“You go to a grocery store, you have to give ID. You go to a gas station, you have to give ID.” This guy has never once bought a box of cereal or pumped his own gas. And we’re the one who are supposed to be out of touch. 🙄