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Debt Rattle November 10 2026

Nov 102026
 
 November 10, 2026  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , ,  Add comments


Pablo Picasso The old fisherman 1895 (Picasso was 14)


• Democrats Told Trump to ‘Lawyer Up.’ He Just Flipped the Script on Them (Margolis)
• Stephen Miller Swears “Absolute Loyalty” To Trump (ZH)
• Extended 60-Minutes Interview with President Trump (CTH)
• Trump Unloads On 60 Minutes (ZH)
• The Curse It Is Cast (James Howard Kunstler)
• We Were Wrong (Kenneth R. Timmerman)
• Calley Means: Susie Wiles and Fellow Lobbyists Subverted Trump Interests (CTH)
• Voters Didn’t Switch Parties. They Fired The Contractor (Raymond B. Jewell)
• “It’s Going To Be Total Chaos” – Martin Armstrong (USAW)
• “Pretty Far Right” (CTH)
• You Thought Woke Was Dead? It Was Hibernating. (Stacey Lennox)
• France Bows to the Reality of Its Debt Crisis (Thomas Kolbe)
• Sotomayor Hopes to Overturn the Presidential Immunity Decision (Turley)
• Democrats May Only Need to Wait Rather than Pack the Court (Turley)

 

 

 

 


“The imprisonment should be against these EXTORTIONISTS, and Republicans should get smart, fast!”

• Democrats Told Trump to ‘Lawyer Up.’ He Just Flipped the Script on Them (Margolis)

When Democrats spent election night telling Republicans to “lawyer up,” President Donald Trump made it clear he isn’t going to sit there and take it. It’s no secret that the Democrat Party plans to weaponize its new House majority against Trump, his administration, his allies, and even his staffers. Democrats couldn’t even wait for the ink to dry on the midterm results before they started promising subpoenas and investigations.


Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led the charge. He issued a victory statement laying out his investigative plans and branding Trump’s relatives “The Trump Crime Family.” He also told Republicans to “lawyer up.”

The pile-on hasn’t slowed down since. This week, Democrat Reps. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) and Deborah Ross (D-N.C.) floated impeaching Attorney General Todd Blanche. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) each want an investigation into the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The reality is that Democrats have boxed themselves in. The new Democrat majority can stall Trump’s agenda, but Trump can thwart theirs right back, which leaves them with exactly one play. Their far-left base wants a radical agenda, and when it can’t get one, nothing will satisfy it except endless Trump investigations. So the hearings, the subpoenas, and the impeachment threats are coming, ready or not.

Trump, however, has no intention of playing defense. On Saturday, he fired off a Truth Social post demanding a Justice Department investigation and prison time for the Democrats he branded “extortionists,” accusing them of threatening Republican officials and GOP donors.

“The Democrats are going around threatening a lot of people, including the Attorney General of the United States, and others, with Impeachment and many other forms of punishment, even though they admit they have no reason to do so, and there have been no impeachable acts committed, or even thought of, by the victims of this illegal process,” Trump wrote.

“This is extortion at the highest level, and they should be held accountable for this,” he added. He’s right, and Democrats know it. They’ve spent years insisting that nobody is above the law, yet the moment they grab the gavel, they start treating the law as a cudgel for anyone who dares to back the president.

“Also, they’re threatening our Donors, some of the most respected people anywhere in the World, with imprisonment, and many other levels of punishment, just because they happen to be Republicans, or Republican supporters,” the president continued. “This is Weaponization and Lawfare at another level.”

Trump also singled out Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who infuriated Republicans last month when she called for a “deterrence message” to young college graduates thinking about joining the Trump administration. It was a jaw-dropping moment: a sitting U.S. senator wants to scare recent grads away from serving their country because she doesn’t like who won the election.

“The imprisonment should be against these EXTORTIONISTS, and Republicans should get smart, fast!” Trump concluded.

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Wow!

“..he said the United States would not exist if not for Trump. “He saved our military from collapse, he saved our economy from destruction, he saved our border from annihilation, and he saved our country from threats at home and abroad which would have been the end of the American dream forever..”

• Stephen Miller Swears “Absolute Loyalty” To Trump (ZH)

Stephen Miller became White House chief of staff on Monday after telling a crowd in Florida he pledges Trump “my absolute loyalty,” as the deputy chief of staff and his own wife both recalibrate their lives around his new job.


In his first public comments since Trump tapped him, Miller wrote on X on Nov. 6: “The mission now is more clear than ever: Fight with all of our soul to support our President and defend this magnificent Republic.” Hours later in Florida, he said the United States would not exist if not for Trump.

“He saved our military from collapse, he saved our economy from destruction, he saved our border from annihilation, and he saved our country from threats at home and abroad which would have been the end of the American dream forever,” Miller said, adding: “It is the honor of my life to be President Trump’s chief of staff, and I swear to you, and I pledge to you, Mr. President, my absolute loyalty, my unwavering commitment and my total devotion to your success and the success of this country.”


Trump, who shared the video on social media, said before Miller spoke that his new chief of staff was “a very hot commodity” who had become “hotter than Trump.”


Trump announced the change on Nov. 6, a day after Susie Wiles, his only chief of staff in the second term, submitted her resignation on the evening of Nov. 5, according to a White House official. Trump said Wiles will move to the “Trump Political operation,” and wrote: “I want to thank her for her service as Chief of Staff – She has done a great job.” Wiles said on X that serving the president “has been the honor of a lifetime.”

The shake-up follows Republican losses in the midterm elections that handed Democrats control of Congress, and some figures on the right had called for her removal. Steve Bannon said Wiles and the political consultants “should be removed and removed immediately.” As we reported, Miller replaces Wiles, whom former HHS adviser Calley Means called the “most powerful chief of staff in modern American history” on Joe Rogan’s podcast. That interview was f’ing wild.

Richard Walters, the deputy chief of staff and a former Republican National Committee official, is leaving as well; Miller told news outlets over the weekend that Walters “will continue to help from the outside.” Axios first reported the departure. “Stephen is building an incredible and capable team to implement the President’s agenda and I look forward to being part of it from the outside,” Walters told the outlet.

Katie Miller, the new chief of staff’s wife, said Sunday she is stopping new episodes of her podcast. She wrote on X: “I make every decision based on what’s best for my children and our family. With @StephenM taking on this new role for President Trump, I’ve decided to stop recording new podcast episodes.” The Epoch Times quotes her adding: “Nothing is more important than raising our four kids. While I’ve loved the podcast, the time commitment is too great and now is the time to step away.” Two previously taped episodes will still air, she said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote on X within hours of the announcement: “Stephen Miller is a dangerous xenophobe and reckless extremist who has American blood on his hands. His presence in government should be eradicated like a malignant tumor. Fire him today.” Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) said Miller “is the most dangerous person in Trump’s administration and should be fired instead of promoted.”


Miller takes the job as the policy he built is in question: as we reported, Trump told “60 Minutes” in an interview taped Friday that his deportation policy “might be too tough” and that he would “love to do something on immigration” with the Democrats about to take over Congress, an hour before he replaced Wiles with Miller.

Read more …

Two takes on Trump’s 60 Minutes interview.

• Extended 60-Minutes Interview with President Trump (CTH)

President Donald Trump sat down with Ross Douthat for a 60-Minutes interview discussing the Republican losses in the midterm elections, the wars in Iran and Ukraine, immigration, AI/Tech, his personal and presidential legacy and UFOs. The full video (partially aired) and transcript is below. The interview is almost an hour long.



CHAPTERS:
• Midterm Elections: Analysis of Republican results and voter dynamics (0:00 – 6:30).
• Iran and Foreign Policy: Discussions on the war, nuclear non-proliferation, and the Strait of Hormuz (7:36 – 13:58).
• Immigration: Views on border security and potential legislative deals (13:58 – 19:41).
• AI and Technology: The race for super intelligence with China (19:41 – 26:04).
• Administration and Legacy: Staffing, succession, and presidential pardons (26:04 – 31:19, 45:46 – 51:47).
• UFOs: Insights into government inquiry and pilot reports (37:36 – 40:33).
• Russia-Ukraine War: The status of the conflict and diplomatic efforts (40:33 – 45:46).

[FULL TRANSCRIPT] – Interviewer, Ross Douthat: Mr. President, thank you so much for doing this. We’re going to start with the midterms. Two years ago, you won a big, some might say historic victory. Just now, the Republican Party in the midterms suffered a big, some might say historic defeat. Give me your political analysis of what just happened.

[00:23] Donald Trump: Well, number one, I was not on the ballot, but I campaigned hard for some people, and I think if I was on the ballot, it would have been a much different situation because you saw the level of popularity and love—there was love. We had massive rallies. Nobody’s ever seen rallies like that for midterms, and there wasn’t one room that didn’t have thousands of people outside who couldn’t get in.

So you had to transfer those voters, however, to candidates that they didn’t like. But there’s something beyond that: they didn’t like the war, they didn’t like the fact that gasoline went up—because I had it down at a low in Iowa, it was $1.85 a gallon, 85 cents a gallon. And when you look at $1.85 and you go up to $3.50, $4 dollars—still lower than Biden, lower than Obama—but the war was blamed for that. And they didn’t like the war, I think mostly for that reason, because I think everyone agrees that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and they will never have a nuclear weapon. They won’t have that.

But, and there’s a great dislike, incredibly, for Israel. There seems to be a dislike for Israel. So you have that, you have the war itself, you have the gas prices, and I think those are the primary reasons. And, you know, MAGA and I—I always, I want to keep out of wars. I’ve settled eight wars. I settled eight wars. I mean, India-Pakistan would have been a nuclear war. I got it settled before it got going. They had 11 planes shot down; they were ready to go. The Prime Minister of Pakistan said Trump saved 30 to 50 million lives. I settled a lot of wars.

[02:07] Interviewer: So, let’s—let’s go through those then one by one. Start—start with the candidates, right? You said it was tough to transfer your own appeal to candidates, but in a lot of cases, you picked the candidates. You picked, you endorsed Ken Paxton in Texas—he had a tough time. You endorsed Darlene Graham in South Carolina—would have lost also…

[02:24] Donald Trump: Darlene, I did that in honor of a man named Lindsay who was a friend of mine, good politician, good guy, a very good… [

02:32] Interviewer: Okay, and she fought hard. She fought hard. She really did, she… But she lost a very Republican state…

[02:39] Donald Trump: Oh, to a very liberal… I won South Carolina by the highest vote in history, by far. I won Texas by the highest vote in history, by far. I won Florida, who by the way I did endorse, and he’s going to be a great governor and a great senator. I endorsed both of them, and had I not endorsed him, they wouldn’t have won because there was a wave. You know, I also brought a lot of people a lot closer to victory. If you look at Ohio, he was—John, you said, who was a good guy, but he was 15 down, he ended up losing by a point, maybe less than a point. It was, he almost won. But I don’t make excuses for that. I won Ohio by the most votes in history, too.

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“Asked whether he expects to fire anyone after the midterms, Trump said, “Yeah, I do. Little bit, little bit,” with “maybe a few changes” he wouldn’t name. He said he has confidence in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.”

• Trump Unloads On 60 Minutes (ZH)

: President Trump says the Justice Department told the head of one of the big AI companies to “get ready to go to jail,” then plans to pardon “anybody that got within a thousand miles of the Oval Office” on his way out. In his first sit-down since the midterm wipeout, he also said the countries the U.S. protected will repay “any and all costs” of the Iran war and wouldn’t say who throttled Ukraine’s Starlink.


Asked by 60 Minutes’ Ross Douthat why he isn’t worried about the doom scenarios AI builders themselves describe, Trump said the risk “can be managed,” and then said by whom. “The DOJ. We had a situation where somebody was reported to us to be doing something bad with AI. We called them very strongly and said, ‘Get ready to go to jail. Please give your wife a kiss good night.'”


“I can’t tell you,” Trump said when Douthat asked who it was, adding that the message went on: “Do you like the color orange? … Go home right now, see your wife and children, give them a kiss good night.” Asked whether it was the leader of a major AI company, one of the big ones, Trump answered: “Yeah, okay. One of the big ones.” Douthat said the person “totally changed everything” and Trump replied, “Totally. Yes, sir.”


“China Has No Guardrails, By The Way”
Trump said he is “an AI bull” because Xi Jinping, who “left here two weeks ago,” is “all-in” on what Trump calls “SI,” for super intelligence. “If we don’t have it, China’s going to have it. That would put us at an unbelievable disadvantage,” he said, putting China “one year behind us, which is amazing.” Asked why he isn’t spooked, he said: “So we’re racing China, and that makes it worth the risk.” Douthat followed up: “Or you just think the risk is not real?” Trump: “I think that the risk is not nearly as real as … they talk.”


On guardrails he said he doesn’t mind them on AI safety but “I don’t want to put us in a deep second position,” and offered that “China has no guardrails, by the way.” Douthat pointed out that China has the guardrail of a totalitarian state, where “whatever Xi says goes.” Trump: “With me, it’s pretty strong, but it’s not quite that strong.” He said “very brilliant people” are watching every one of the companies.

Data centers, he said, are being made to bring their own power. “Every one of those centers that goes up now under me is building their own electric,” he said, and “they’re giving the excess electric right now, they’re giving it into the old grid that we had,” which he called “old, broken.”

Douthat read back Elon Musk’s pitch that AI ends in a “universal high income” where nobody has to work, and asked whether that sounds like a good future to a man who likes to work. “No,” Trump said, reading Musk’s point as being about data centers that communities like West Virginia “love,” and about not losing “a cash cow” to places like Finland.

“Anybody That Got Within A Thousand Miles Of The Oval Office” Towards the end of the interview, Douthat asked whether Trump expects to issue a lot of pardons when he leaves office. “Yes, I do,” Trump said. Does he expect to pardon himself? “I don’t,” he said. Does he have the power to? “I do.”

“I intend to issue tremendous numbers of pardons. In fact, I say oftentimes, anybody that got within a thousand miles of the Oval Office, because I don’t want people spending the rest of their lives…” he said, describing what he went through “defending myself by radical left lunatics.” As we noted before the election, he had already floated preemptive pardons if Democrats took Congress.


Douthat joked that he and the 60 Minutes crew were pretty close to the Oval Office and asked whether Trump would pardon him. “I think I might have to after this interview,” Trump said. He defended his pardons of the January 6 defendants: “I don’t think any group’s been treated more unfairly than them,” he said, and “to this day, when they see me, they cry.” Pressed on those who attacked police officers, he said, “There were some that got rough, but, you know, they were rough to them, too.”

“I Can’t Tell You Who Turned It Down”
Douthat asked who is in charge of Starlink, the satellite system Elon Musk owns, after a recent slowdown that made it harder for Ukrainians to use it: Trump or Musk? “It wasn’t me, I don’t know,” Trump said, and added that “I have a lot of power over everything.”

Did Musk turn it down? “I don’t think he literally turned a dial. I can’t tell you who turned it down. I can tell you ultimately he turned it back up, and so they have it.” Pressed on why he can’t say who did it, Trump said “it hasn’t been proven to me that it was turned down,” and that “there’s a lot of lies going on with that war, but I know this: that when I heard about it, it went back up.”

On the war itself, Trump said a “very important” meeting would run from Saturday “to Sunday and to Monday into Tuesday,” and that “I believe that that war is going to end, and it’s going to end soon. And the only reason it’s going to end is because of me.” He blamed the “tremendous hatred between President Putin and President Zelenskyy,” and said that at their first meeting “there was great disrespect shown to Russia.” Asked whom he trusts more, he said, “I’d rather not say, but I get along with both.”

Douthat said Trump had lifted diesel sanctions on Russia. “I didn’t lift diesel sanctions,” Trump answered. “I made it possible for Russia to give, not us, but to the world … thousands and thousands of barrels of … diesel oil, which it needed.” Pushed on Europe now supplying Ukraine’s weapons, he said Europe is buying them from the U.S. “at full price,” against the “$350 billion worth of cash and weapons” Biden gave, and said he gave Ukraine “nothing.”

“Pay Us Back Any And All Costs”
On Iran, Douthat asked how a deal gets the Strait of Hormuz open and the U.S. military out. Trump said the Strait is already open, with tankers “babysat by a large US military presence,” and the military can simply stay. “End of this whole thing, those countries that we’ve protected are going to pay us back any and all costs that we’ve had for the war. We’re going to get all that money back, and I’ve told them, and they’re going to do it 100%, because without us, they wouldn’t exist.”

He also took a victory lap on Venezuela. Reading from a note he had written that morning, Trump said 18 Americans had died in seven or eight months across Iran and Venezuela, compared with thousands in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam and Korea. “Venezuela, where by the way, we’ve taken out 50 times what the war has cost already. To the victor belong the spoils!” he said. Earlier he had called it “a territory, you could call it whatever you want” and said “we won that war in less than one hour.”


Asked whether he agrees with JD Vance that the Iran war cost Republicans the election, as we reported last week, Trump said “I don’t disagree with it,” and that he told Vance to “write what you feel.” Would he do it again? “My answer is an emphatic yes, because you can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon.” He said Iran wanted a deal just before the election, “and that gives them a little bit of a hope certificate now.”

He said he isn’t looking to escalate, because Iran’s material is “buried under thousands of tons of rock” and watched through Space Force lenses. “If we needed to do Pickaxe, which we don’t at this moment, we would have that done in one hour.” Asked whether he expects to fire anyone after the midterms, Trump said, “Yeah, I do. Little bit, little bit,” with “maybe a few changes” he wouldn’t name. He said he has confidence in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

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The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin’
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’

“. . . history and even corruption itself have a way of normalizing the unbearable.” —Naomi Wolf on Substack

• The Curse It Is Cast (James Howard Kunstler)

That 60-Minutes interview with the President Sunday night was a doozy: he allowed Ross Douthat (former New York Times columnist) to over-speak him so audaciously you had to wonder why Mr. Trump even bothered to show up. He barely levered a word in edgewise and looked rather glum in the process. Actually, you were watching an act of political ju-jitsu: the president pretending to take it like a whipped dog, so that his antagonists would think he was offering himself up for slaughter. They’d better think again (but watch, they won’t).


Also on Sunday, Roger Stone wrote that Stephen Miller, the new chief of staff, was just promoted to “wartime consigliere.” You are a little off, Roger. It’s more like wartime field marshal. The president has gone to war against the treasonous Democratic Party, the Party of Victims. Now they know. And now you know. The positions on both sides have hardened-up. I’m dreaming of. . . a strange Christmas.

Pardon me for going out on a limb here. The Party of Victims has flat-out said it wants to see the president drawn, quartered, beheaded, pissed-on, and stuffed into an unmarked hole in the ground. Plus, anyone who ever worked for him or voted for him to be hurled into prison. There’s your casus belli. The curse it is cast.

The Party of Victims has also announced its intentions to shred the Constitution via legal legerdemain for the purpose of making the USA a one-party state and, as such, subservient to governing entities outside the USA. Those entities reside mainly in and around the European Union, including the EU itself, the financial elites that it serves, and an international NGO galaxy of aggrieved “activists.” These are commonly identified as the “Globalists.” Note that this cabal is already under extreme stress on its home territory as the nations of Europe explode in violence. IOW, these Globalists are already losing and turning ever more desperate.

Discount any prattle coming out of the Party of Victims and their ancillaries in the news media about “our democracy.” The phrase is a ruse, aimed at malware they have already installed in your brain, straight out of Rachel Maddow’s pretty mouth. “Our democracy” is a phantom concept to disguise a political apparatus that only works for the Party of Victims. Also note: the Party of Victims wants to make victims of everybody outside their party. “Our democracy” actually means: we get to push you around and do our bidding. . . or else go off and die.


So, the Party of Victims has “won” the midterm election super-bigly. They crushed it. They are supreme. Everybody and his uncle voted for them overwhelmingly, in record numbers so stupefying they seem. . . a little supernatural. Yes, like they got an assist from somewhere, from someone — and probably not from the better angels of our nature, if you know what I mean. Somehow an extra 20-million ballots were cast this midterm over the previous midterm in 2022. But they were strangely distributed.

In the Texas gubernatorial, for instance, almost two million new voters showed up this year above the total voters in 2022 — 9.9-million over 8.1 million. Nationwide, Republican votes were nearly the same in 2026 as 2022, but those 20-million new votes went strictly to the Party of Victims. Gol-lee! Where did they come from? I think we’re going to find out. Of course, to find out, you have to first inquire. Why would you inquire if the election was one hunnert percent above-board, fair-and-square? How dare you! That would be election denialisim, spurious, illegitimate, . . . tyrannical. . . verboten!

That is the Party of Victims’ well-advertised “red line,” right there, the thing that triggers their thing, which is activist activism going active in the streets, protest marches, shrieking nose-rings, froggie costumes, raging inflamed transsexuals, POCs unchained, Boomer grandmas in a lather, all of them maybe busting up some storefronts, setting a few fires, mostly peaceful, you understand, except where they’re not. Chicago is suddenly like Paris was in October. And the Party of Victims double-dares you to do something about it!

The president will do something about it, probably something that entails federalizing the national guard, or failing that, sending in regular army troops. It will probably require him to declare the Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C. §§ 251–255), which overrides the Posse Comitatus Act. No approval from Congress is required.

Anyway, the U.S. has operated under multiple overlapping national emergencies for decades (the oldest still-active one dates to the 1979 Iran hostage crisis). The 2018 Election Interference Emergency order (EO 13848) is one of them. It was renewed by the president in August 2026. Which is to say, the country is already under an emergency, this one pegged to foreign interference in our elections. It mandates an “assessment” of foreign interference by the Director of National Intelligence, and further action by the DOJ. It may not be enough. Effective executive action might require the declaration of a National Security Emergency in the event that substantial evidence of election fraud is discovered.

The “Our Democracy” NGOs scheming in the background of the midterm election want the Party of Victims to go medieval on the president. This is where their plan kicks in to nullify the president and turn over his executive powers to a panel of governors (Newsom, Pritzker, Hochul, etc.), who will then supposedly preside over a “restructuring” of the basic charter of the USA. Their chatter about this was recorded and distributed across the internet the past month, along with their written memos to the same effect. It’s all out there. In short, this actually is an insurrection, and Mr. Trump will oblige himself to stop it, just as Abraham Lincoln had to oblige himself to put down the southern secession. And for the same reason, to save the Union.

You might have noticed that there is also a lot of background chatter on the web about “stocking up” on food and supplies. . . about possible interruptions of the internet, perhaps days or even weeks . . . about threats to the electric grid. Of course, it’s alarming. It implies rather extreme and severe circumstances. But do you really know what might happen? This is serious. Pay attention. Maintain situational awareness. This could be a very strange Christmas indeed.

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“Republicans should have been hammering home every single day how their policies had actually made things more affordable, such as tax cuts for working and middle-class Americans. But they didn’t.”

• We Were Wrong (Kenneth R. Timmerman)

We were wrong. I’ve got to admit it right up front. Our optimism about the economy, our confidence that most Americans were thankful to President Trump for having halted mass migration at our Southern border on Day One, were all wrong.


We trumpeted Trump’s achievements over the past 20 months, from tax cuts to tariffs to increased NATO defense spending and getting Europe to cover the cost for the Ukraine war (instead of the American taxpayer). And that’s not to mention the Greenland Deal. And ending eight wars. And $22 trillion in direct foreign investment in the United States. And driving the transgender nonsense to the fringes of our culture where it belongs.

We thought those accomplishments were self-evident. But they were not. On the contrary, every day the President, his administration and federal agencies such as ICE were denigrated, castigated, and vilified by the formerly mainstream media and on millions of social media channels that have increasingly taken their place as news sources for younger Americans.

And then came the Iran war, and the totally predictable rise in oil and gas prices. Even conservatives griped about the price at the pump. My friend Morgan Murphy, a former DoD spokesman, retired U.S. Navy Captain and Afghan war veteran, went on Newsmax TV with me to kvetch about how the Republicans were just missing the point.

“We all just want to be able to buy our wives or girlfriends pumpkin spice lattes and to fill up our F-150s for less than $150,” he said. Republicans should have been hammering home every single day how their policies had actually made things more affordable, such as tax cuts for working and middle-class Americans. But they didn’t.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has accepted the verdict and has stepped down. Not so his cocky and clueless counterpart in the Senate, John Thune. Thune has been saying all week how great the Senate Republicans performed over the past two years, so he just can’t quite understand why seven of them got hacked to pieces on Tuesday.

He doesn’t seem to have heard about the SAVE America Act, the one thing Senate Republicans could have done to ensure that our elections were safe and secure by requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. It passed the House several times, to accommodate Senate “concerns.” But still, Thune would not whip his colleagues to pass the bill. (And no, he didn’t necessarily have to nuke the filibuster to do so, but that gets down into the weeds).

Look at these election results. A rock-rib Republican state like Texas swung 25.77 percent to the left over the 2024 election, with all 254 counties swinging to the left. Mississippi swung 22.9%, North Carolina 22.8%, South Caroline 22.4%. And in all of those states, “safe” Republican senators got shredded on election day.

I find it hard to believe that Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, who turned out 4.5 million Republicans to vote for him this year, got beaten by a Democrat no one had heard of and whom he outspent by 5 to 1. Abbott beat Democrat challengers in 2018 and 2022 with roughly the same numbers, 4.5 million votes for Abbot and 3.5 million for the Democrat.

This year, Abbott still got his 4.5 million votes (so no lack of Republican enthusiasm, apparently), but out of nowhere 1.6 million new voters appeared and voted for the Democrat. I have no idea how that happened and none of the explanations I have read so far makes any sense. But I trust that DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullen is on the case.

Michigan is another one that makes no sense to me. Abdul El-Sayed (not his real Muslim name) managed to alienate a good portion of the Democrat party base, in particular Jewish Democrats and young black males. He also alienated nearly half of the Arab American population in Michigan, Christians and Muslims, who fled from Islamist oppression.

And yet, he won by just over 7%. How is that possible? Not once during the campaign did he appear with his Sharia-clad Muslim wife. But once he won he trotted her out. Happy now, Michigan? And then came vice-president JD Vance, who blamed the election losses on the Jews for having snookered Donald Trump into the Iran war, and on the war itself.

My guess is that JD smells blood in the water, and he thinks it is not his own. Ari Fleischer, press secretary for George W. Bush, had the perfect response, in my view. “

The problem was not the Iran War. It was the cease fire. If you start a war, you need to win it and finish it — otherwise don’t start it.” And who pushed and pushed for that ill-fated ceasefire? JD Vance, along with Steve Witkoff. Over the summer, JD was telling us we could just “walk away” from the entire region, without having defeated Iran, and everything would be just fine.

Jew-hating does not make for winning campaigns with Republican. Maybe JD can hang out in Qatar with his buddy Tucker Carlson. But if you ask me, he just made a monumental political miscalculation, and he couldn’t help himself.

Because it was a tell. He just revealed to us who he really is.

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Susie Wiles selling out Trump for her own -financial, lobbying- interests is quite the claim.

• Calley Means: Susie Wiles and Fellow Lobbyists Subverted Trump Interests (CTH)

Appearing on Face the Nation, former HHS Senior Advisor to Robert Kennedy Jr, Calley Means, outlined how Susie Wiles, Richard Walters, Walker Barrett, James Blair, Katie Wiles, Ballard Partners (lobbyists) and Tony Fabrizio “subverted” the interests of President Trump and the MAGA/MAHA agenda in order to profit, expand their financial holdings, increase their affluence and influence and ultimately use the office of the President as a DC lobbying operation.


Regardless of what credibility you may or may not assign during this interview, keep in mind that all of this is going to be investigated by Democrats in congress as part of their effort to marginalize President Trump. What Calley Means outlines in this extremely controversial interview is alarming. WATCH: Video and Transcript Below:


[TRANSCRIPT] – MARGARET BRENNAN: Calley, thank you for coming in and talking to us. President Trump has announced that Chief of Staff Susie Wiles has left the White House. The departure coincides with this resounding Republican loss in the midterms. But also, you went public with some very specific allegations of corruption and a call to clean house. Was it your intention to get her removed?

CALLEY MEANS: Yes. I think President Trump has been subverted by people that are beholden to special interests and not what President Trump ran on, and what voters voted for. I led the MAHA initiative at the White House. And Stephen Miller said it recently in his speech, the heart of MAHA is that we are the only primate humans that deal with pediatric cancer and rampant cancer rates. And it’s obviously because of our environment. It’s because of pesticides. It’s because of that- 70% of a child’s diet is ultra-processed food. It’s because we’re not out in the sun.

It’s basic, basic stuff. And that, I think, was really the heart of the MAHA movement. I think a heart of what President Trump ran on. And there’s very simple things. And Americans voted to change those things. And I think underneath Trump’s nose, in many cases, you had a group of former lobbyists, catering to the vaping industry, catering to the ultra-processed food industry, catering to the pharmaceutical industry, catering to the pesticide industry and doing their bidding with an excuse that we need their money for the midterms and really need to actually go against what voters said, but need their money explicitly. That’s what they said. And I think that–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –Who’s they?

CALLEY MEANS: Susie and her cohort. Susie and Richard Walters, who is actually not someone most people know, but was one of the most powerful people in the country, was the de facto chief of staff when Susie was getting cancer treatment. Walker Barrett and James Blair, a very close knit crew, who explicitly catered to special interests against the will of the voters. I think a lot of this happened without Trump’s full knowledge. I don’t think President Trump fully knew that some of these advisors were taking money from the industries we ran on fighting against. At the time, they’re giving explicit policy advice–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Directly taking money?

CALLEY MEANS: Directly, of course. Yes. Tony Fabrizio–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –he’s a pollster. (CROSSTALK)

CALLEY MEANS: –is one of the most powerful people in the country. And every single cabinet secretary was conniving on how to convince Tony Fabrizio of their policy positions because any policy went through Tony Fabrizio for a political check. You know, he was in the White House all the time, every single week. And–

MARGARET BRENNAN: He runs an outside polling firm that the White House relies on.

CALLEY MEANS: Yeah, but- but that’s- that’s a name- I mean, he was- he was one of the most impactful players in White House policy making. One of the most powerful people in the country. He had a huge say in any policy that got done. And as he is opining on the political relevance of doing, you know, healthy food and healthy school lunches or, you know, taking on the pesticide industry or taking on big pharma, which President Trump ran on. He was getting paid by Pfizer or by Pepsi. To this day, it’s on his website right now. You can see it on the Joe Rogan podcast I just did, we pulled up his website. It’s advertised right now. He solicits clients right now and lists those people as his clients.

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“Sometimes, the iron laws of economics answer all the questions.”

• Voters Didn’t Switch Parties. They Fired The Contractor (Raymond B. Jewell)

American voters have been making investments for a long time.


They pay taxes every year—federal, state, local—without fail. They send their sons and daughters to serve in the military when the government asks. They comply with regulations, absorb the costs of policy decisions they had no voice in, and keep showing up to work in an economy that has been squeezing them from every direction. For decades, they have been investing in their country.

What they have not been getting is a return.
Tuesday’s election was more than a verdict on personalities or party platforms. The polling data point to a deeper story: voters were demanding a return on their investment. Until both parties understand that, they will keep misreading the signal—and the voter will keep bouncing between them, looking for someone who finally gets it.

What the Exit Polls Actually Showed
Seventy-four percent of voters told exit pollsters that the Iran war was a crucial or major factor in their congressional vote. Eighty-seven percent said they were very or somewhat concerned about gas and diesel prices. Three-quarters described the state of the economy as not so good or poor. Sixty percent blamed the administration’s policies for prices being higher than usual.

These are not partisan numbers. These are household numbers.

Retail diesel reached $6.53 per gallon—the national weekly average recorded in September and the highest nominal price since the Energy Information Administration began tracking diesel prices in 1994. Diesel is not a luxury item. Diesel helps move nearly everything you buy. When diesel prices surge, that cost works its way through the supply chain—and 2026 has been no exception. Freight rate data show transportation costs up sharply from a year ago.

Food producers, including McCormick, have cited transportation cost inflation tied to the Middle East conflict in their 2026 quarterly earnings calls. Industry analysts have warned that if diesel stays above $6 per gallon, thousands of small carriers could exit the market this year, tightening capacity further. When small carriers exit, freight capacity tightens, adding upward pressure on shipping costs that can eventually reach consumers.

Social Security recipients received a 2.8 percent adjustment for 2026. Yet inflation accelerated during the year, reaching 4.2 percent in May and remaining elevated into the fall. The Social Security Administration has announced a 3.6 percent increase for 2027, but that increase will not arrive in monthly retirement checks until January. For retirees facing rising grocery, energy, and medical expenses now, the pressure has been immediate. They felt it in the voting booth.

The Iran war, which began in February 2026, has cost the United States more than $47 billion and counting—the figure reported by the Pentagon and cited by the Associated Press as of mid-October. Pentagon figures show at least 21 service members killed and 865 wounded during operations connected to the conflict. Sixty-three percent of voters said it was the wrong decision to begin it. This is not a cultural complaint. This is a math problem.

The Founding Exchange
An economic principle describes what happens when one party in an exchange stops delivering value. The exchange breaks down. The other party finds a new exchange partner—or withdraws entirely. nThis country was founded on an exchange.

The government receives your taxes, your sons and daughters for its military, and your compliance with its laws and regulations. In return, it delivers stability, security, and the conditions under which people can build lives. The Preamble calls it promoting the general welfare. The Declaration calls it securing unalienable rights. Whatever language you prefer, the structure is the same: value given, value received. It is not a complicated arrangement. It is the simplest contract a republic can make.

When that exchange breaks down—when a family is paying $4.29 for gasoline and $6.53 for diesel, absorbing inflation that has outrun any raise they received, and watching a war they never voted for cost more than $47 billion and counting—they notice. Not ideologically. Economically. The way you notice when the contractor you hired doesn’t deliver what the contract promised.

And it goes beyond the war and the pump price. Working people have watched the government spend freely on programs, cultural projects, and overseas commitments that feel completely disconnected from the household budget. No single expenditure is necessarily wrong. It is the cumulative effect: the money keeps flowing out toward things that do not return anything to the people who funded them.

The voter sitting at the kitchen table, running the numbers, is not making an ideological argument. They are asking a simple question: Where is my return? The 43 percent of voters who told New York Times and Siena pollsters in May that they were dissatisfied with both parties—four times the number satisfied with either—were not registering a party preference. They were describing a broken contract.

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“.. look no further than the Democrats to fan the fires of conflict and killing. Armstrong says, “The Democrats are anti Russia. They are going to fund Zelensky in Ukraine…”

• “It’s Going To Be Total Chaos” – Martin Armstrong (USAW)

egendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong with his famous “Socrates” program accurately predicted what would happen in the midterm elections last Tuesday with the so-called “Blue Wave.” Armstrong says, “Socrates is looking at everything. It showed Texas would flip blue, but Florida would stay red…”


“Even on the national level, it showed we were looking at a blue tsunami. It is also showing that was necessary for its forecast going into 2032… The Democrats are in a long-term bear market, despite all the hoopla and everything else. Socrates shows they will not win in 2028. I have said in my last three conferences that the Democrat party will split. You have even seen James Carville say he’s no longer a Democrat (and wants to leave the party).”

Armstrong contends what he is seeing is lots of upheaval coming from a variety of sources. Could some of this upheaval come from the Trump Administration unwinding the voter fraud? Could it be from Democrats committing lawfare against Trump and his allies? Could it be from funding more war in Ukraine against Russia, or all of the above. Armstrong says:

“Socrates was looking at trends, and, basically, it was time to flip. Then you look at what is going to come, and it’s going to be total chaos. . .. You are going to be looking at investigations and all sorts of things. What the computer is projecting is this chaos for the next two years. We are going into a stagflation and a recession where the economic growth will now decline. Inflation is going to go up.

Democrats who voted this way are going to find out it does not matter who the heck you put in. Washington is Washington. Going into 2028, you are going to see a rise in third party activity. People are just fed up with Republicans and Democrats.” Meanwhile, Armstrong brings up the latest “Blue Wave” that is, historically, not that big. Armstrong says:

“Although Democrats are cheering big time, Obama lost 9 Senate seats in the midterms. Then, look at Truman, and he lost 12 Senate seats. This is a minimal one. The news makes it sound like a big tsunami and this is it. This is the end of the Republican Party. Sorry, it’s not going to work that way.”

On the chaos coming from war, look no further than the Democrats to fan the fires of conflict and killing. Armstrong says, “The Democrats are anti Russia. They are going to fund Zelensky in Ukraine…” “He immediately started attacking refineries (in Russia). So, there is no way we are looking at a peaceful resolution. . .. There is no chance in hell. . .. They are going to be promoting war with Russia.

So, this gets to be much more serious geopolitically. This is why the DOW has been making new highs when everybody said it was going to crash. The big capital is coming into the US, and it goes to the DOW.” Armstrong also contends that oil prices will remain high, and gold and silver will be heading up in price shortly after the new year.


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Sundance’s credentials.

• “Pretty Far Right” (CTH)

CONTEXT: I believe in deportation and repatriation of all illegal aliens with extreme prejudice and without favor or concern for the sensibilities of those who may disagree with my position.


I believe in the cancellation of all H1B visas, student visas and all subsequent immigration visas that cause negative impact to the jobs, skills, education and training of American citizens. Qualified, specialized, time-restricted individual employment visas should be scarce and exceptionally expensive for the sponsor ($1+ million/per).

I believe we are under no obligation to support, train, educate or subsidize anyone who entered this country unlawfully. The primary obligation of a functioning state is to remove such persons from the general population using any/all means at our disposal while following the strict constitutional parameters as expressed and intended in our founding documents.

I reject the crass, vulgar, intolerant and entitled attitudes, and/or indecent behaviors, of those who entered our country illegally. And with full attestation to my American brothers and sisters, I reject the effort to use my Christian faith, virtue, charity and kindness as a twisted weapon against my interests.

I value respect, honesty, cleanliness, lawfulness and common consideration while rejecting public expressions of vulgarity, filth, rudeness, greed, selfishness and indecency as defined by generations of western cultural values and standards. These factors form the baseline of ordinary interaction within the social compact of my comfort.

I believe each person is equal under the law, and no violations should be entertained as permissible by those who are entrusted with the general maintenance therein.

I disagree with those who express an intention to kill me for expressly discriminating against -and removing myself from- their cultural assembly. And, should the need arise, I reserve my right to violence in my defense.

I am, however, one vote with no greater weight or addition, and I accept those who are opposed to my standard hold an equally sacrosanct right to vote in opposition to my viewpoint.

Perhaps I am, “pretty far right.”

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“The team at Queer News Tonight is just sure that one of Speaker Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-N.Y.) priorities, if he can get the job, will be letting Tim in the ladies’ room.”

• You Thought Woke Was Dead? It Was Hibernating. (Stacey Lennox)

Your friends who aren’t very politically active thought it was about affordability. Maybe some believed it was about the “war” in Iran, where the bombing stopped in April. They might understand what it was really all about when the 12-year-old girls they love start talking about the boy in their locker room.


New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-14th District) warned you all. When Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Democrat Francesca Wong came under scrutiny during the primary for old tweets supporting defunding the police and canceling Thanksgiving, Ocasio-Cortez was asked about Wong’s tweets during an appearance on ABC’s This Week. She flippantly laughed and said a city councilman in New York often says, “Woke one was crazy.”

However, it seems everyone ignored the rest of her commentary. She did not say she disagreed with the ideas. She disagreed with the rhetoric. She also said some important dialogue happened during that timeframe. She, however, also blamed “woke” on the pandemic and lockdowns, which is absurd.

“Defund the police” was born out of the Ferguson riots. The Democratic Party first included transgender protections in its platform in 2012. “Believe All Women” started with the “Dear Colleague” letter to college administrators in 2011. Ocasio-Cortez was at the forefront of the climate insanity, famously telling us the world was going to end in a decade.

Cancel culture started in 2017 with the #MeToo movement. Roseanne Barr lost her show in 2018. And they attempted to cancel J.K. Rowling in 2018, the woman who proclaimed Dumbledore was gay, because she dared to say men cannot be women. Cancel culture was alive and well before the pandemic. And it was years before the pandemic that conservatives in Hollywood needed a secret group called “Friends of Abe.”

Some on the Democratic side, like James Carville and Dan Turrentine, believe that “woke” is not on the Democratic agenda post-election. Carville criticized California Rep. Ro Khanna (D-17th District) and his X post that said, “DEI is back,” the day after the election. Carville observed, “The DEI people asked me to honor your identity above your humanity. I cannot do that. To me, you’re a human being first. And if we bring this bulls—language back, we’re going to pay for it.”

Turrentine, a strategist, added, “Not a single new member from a competitive state or district ran on restoring DEI. Quite the contrary, they stayed away from relitigating settled social issues and focused like a laser beam on costs, chaos, and corruption.” He is correct. For example, trans kid-loving Texas senator-elect James Talarico avoided his record like the plague.

But the woke can’t contain themselves. On Sunday, New Jersey Democrats introduced legislation that adopts a definition of Islamophobia that includes factual criticism of the religion and its customs and includes civil and criminal penalties. The Houston mayor has already told his officers not to honor ICE detainers, despite a state law banning sanctuary cities. And even in Washington, D.C., they can’t keep hiding the ball.

Two days after being elected to the Senate, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed (D-Mich.) told Joe Scarborough that the left-wing grift machine, USAID, must be funded. That way, the NGOs that enforce the woke agenda by threatening organizations with boycotts and negative campaigns if they don’t implement DEI programs can do the progressives’ dirty work. And it employs their donors’ kids with downwardly mobile degrees.

And the kickoff of the Democrats in power wouldn’t be complete without commentary from Queer News Tonight. They are hoping Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), formerly known as Tim, will be able to use the ladies’ room. “When Democrats take the gavel in January, expect that to change. They vehemently protested the rule two years ago, which specifically was created to target McBride. Soon, Democrats will make the rules and make things right,” host John Hayden said. The team at Queer News Tonight is just sure that one of Speaker Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-N.Y.) priorities, if he can get the job, will be letting Tim in the ladies’ room.

And if you think similar pressure won’t be on every new Democratic trifecta to do the same thing in their state, hold onto your seat. “Moderate” Abigail Spanberger took office as Virginia’s new governor in January 2025. She waited only until June of that year to put boys back in the girls’ locker room and in girls’ sports because a proposal from the Department of Health, submitted under former Gov. Glenn Youngkin, was in the comment period.

As soon as public comments closed, she yanked the proposed rule that would have kept girls’ sports and spaces free of boys. And she did this just one election cycle after parents sent a clear message that they do not like the sexualization of students at school by electing Youngkin, the Republican.

“Moderate” Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill went even further. New Jersey already had a law allowing boys who said they were girls to compete in sports and use girls’ spaces. That wasn’t enough. Sherrill had to sign a sweeping law shielding parents who brought their children to New Jersey from states where trans procedures on children were banned from prosecution.

Woke Two will be more insane and more insidious than Woke One. It will start with the six new Democratic trifectas at the state level. “Moderate” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro talks out of both sides of his mouth on the trans issue. In one breath, he criticizes legislation protecting girls as “cruel” and has also said he doesn’t want boys on the field to have an unfair advantage. With both legislative chambers and potential presidential aspirations, Shapiro will have to sign legislation allowing boys into girls’ sports and spaces. Or he will be out of the primary before it starts. Minnesota, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan will all follow suit.

The bright spot is that residents of these states may realize a government that is at least divided can’t shove the preferences of 20% of the population onto the 80% who hate it. Maybe they will learn there is no such thing as a moderate Democrat anymore. Our best shot at taking back the House could be overreach in the states that voted blue, no matter who, leading to buyer’s remorse.

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“When societies drift toward central planning and state-run economies, only nuances separate political clownery from its disastrous real-world consequences.”

France is bankrupt. It takes ever more to just cover its debt.

• France Bows to the Reality of Its Debt Crisis (Thomas Kolbe)

Tax-advantaged bonds reserved for French citizens, a debt write-off at the ECB, or shifting part of the bill onto the Germans — France’s approach to its national debt is at times creative, at times brazen. Above all, this curious collection of ideas reveals complete helplessness in dealing with public finances.


When societies drift toward central planning and state-run economies, only nuances separate political clownery from its disastrous real-world consequences. Political initiative turns into permanent intervention — and eventually, the resources run out. At the moment when fiscal reality hits, political elites appear overwhelmed and helpless.

France, in particular, has taken its state-run economy and welfare system a long way. The latter has settled over society like a sedative. In its naïve belief in the omnipotence of the state, the country has spiraled into a debt trap.

In an effort to create some financial breathing room, the parliamentary LIOT group (Libertés, Indépendants, Outre-mer et Territoires) presented an unusual proposal. It wants to raise a kind of citizen loan worth 50 billion euros, financed through government bonds available exclusively to French citizens. An interest rate of 3.5 percent is supposed to channel French savings into this financing vehicle, which would also guarantee tax-free interest payments.

With a maturity of ten years and an inflation rate that has now climbed above three percent in France, this is hardly an attractive deal — particularly as the country’s debt continues to rise unchecked and the budget deficit is expected to exceed six percent next year. With every passing year, the default risk on French bonds increases. Nor will the attempt to shift the debt from foreign to domestic creditors change that. The lawmakers expect this curious bond to generate interest savings of up to 25 billion euros over ten years. The government has so far rejected the proposal. France is in a state of political lockdown.

There is no room left to maneuver in fiscal policy. Any attempt at austerity is met by the United Left in the streets. Migrant riots, looting, and orchestrated chaos block this route out of the budget crisis. That leaves tax policy. With government spending accounting for more than 57 percent of the economy, tax increases have become inevitable year after year, as the economy can no longer develop.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has turned the tax screws sharply. This year, his government extended the special levy on the profits of large corporations as well as the 20 percent minimum tax on high incomes. This was followed by a levy on certain luxury assets held in wealth-management structures and a two-euro charge on small parcels shipped from outside the EU — a measure that was subsequently scrapped because the EU is now taking care of the matter. The 2027 budget proposal also envisages further additional burdens, including for companies and employers, as well as for certain food products and rental models.

France is becoming an expensive place to do business. Its private economy is shrinking. The welfare state is exploding, while private investment is nowhere to be seen.A proposal from the far-left fringe of parliament comes at just the right moment. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, founder and leading figure of the La France insoumise party, came up with the brilliant idea of eliminating that portion of the national debt held by the Banque de France within the Eurosystem.

A fiscal magic trick: one side simply burns the other side’s junk — after all, it is all the same club, the state apparatus. Public debt would shrink by roughly 18 percent, seemingly out of thin air. Such is the economics of the radical left.

The potential feedback effects and panic reactions in the bond market in response to this extraordinary proposal are simply ignored. That is as far as the superficial thinking of the radical left goes. They are economic gamblers who will keep playing until, as Maggie Thatcher once observed, they run out of other people’s money.

But France would not be France if it did not also attempt to combine patriotism with fiscal ingenuity. Politicians, as we know, are creative when it comes to bending the rules. Rational solutions involving possible social hardships that might hurt their electoral prospects, however, are not particularly popular. The question, then, is how to outdo LIOT’s curious national bond and the communists’ infantile fiscal destruction.

An answer came just a few weeks ago from Marine Le Pen, the potential next president of France. The leading figure of the Rassemblement National came up with the bridge-building idea of using the carbon intensity of each national economy as the basis for calculating part of the EU member contributions. Put simply: Let the Germans pay through the nose while we take it easy.

Cut spending in Brussels and make the Germans foot the bill for our own lavish pensions, hyper-expansive welfare state, and inability to reform — this is precisely the kind of issue from which the coming conflicts within the political right will emerge.

A fragmented political right coming to power in the EU, one that ultimately retreats into national sovereignty even in matters of fiscal and monetary policy, would spell the end of the European Union and, in particular, the Eurosystem. A quick look at the rising national debts across the eurozone reveals that everything in the EU is moving toward this final crescendo.

Big Government, state-run economies, and welfare systems — these are the defining features of Europe in our era. A cultivated apathy in economic life, an astonishing delusion in matters of migration policy, and the expanding role of the state in an increasingly unfree society will become stumbling blocks for Western Europe. The mounting public debt is an expression of a desperate attempt to cling to the prosperity of the past. Only now is it slowly becoming apparent that this prosperity was long ago ground down in the name of the welfare state

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“I dissent a lot. I’m hoping that the court will take back some of the crazy things that it’s done. I’m only joking — maybe not…”

• Sotomayor Hopes to Overturn the Presidential Immunity Decision (Turley)

After telling an audience at Mount Vernon that “we saw the outpouring of voters in on Tuesday,” Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor told them that she hoped to see the reversal of various conservative opinions starting with the presidential immunity decision in Trump v. United States. Speaking at the historic home of George Washington, Justice Sotomayor described her (presumably) conservative colleagues as doing some “crazy things.”


She observed that “There have been some systemic changes in my court’s jurisprudence in many areas of law,” Sotomayor said. “We’ll settle down, too. Not quite sure when. But we will. And a new order will be established that people will begin to understand.”

She then specifically turned to the court’s 6-3 decision along ideological lines that former presidents enjoy at least presumptive immunity for their official acts. In her dissent, Sotomayor portrayed the decision as bestowing imperial power, noting that it made President Trump and his successors a “king above the law.”

She told the crowd that “I dissent a lot. I’m hoping that the court will take back some of the crazy things that it’s done. I’m only joking — maybe not…No, seriously, You know, I’ve spoken openly about this, there’s some opinions that I hope in my lifetime will get overturned. The immunity case is one of them.”

As I discuss in my column on the Democratic effort to effectively nullify the Electoral College without a constitutional amendment, there is a series of changes being sought to impact the 2028 election. With Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito pushing 80, liberals could secure a majority in the next Administration without carrying out their plan to pack the Court. If that happens, Justice Sotomayor appears ready to reverse a series of opinions that she deems “crazy” from her conservative justices.

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Once your highest court is known to be partisan, what are you?

• Democrats May Only Need to Wait Rather than Pack the Court (Turley)

In Henry VI, Shakespeare wrote, “Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends.” Many today would like to chisel those words above the doors to the Supreme Court. Time and time again, justices waited too long for their own legacies. For many conservatives, the loss of both houses of Congress has created a true nightmare scenario in which two conservatives (Justice Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito) could hand Democrats the opportunity to take control of the Court without having to carry out their court-packing schemes. Control of the Court could now be lost by sheer attrition.


Timing has always been a looming question for justices who want to see their seats filled by like-minded jurists. However, it is difficult to walk away from being one of nine. Some served beyond their own capabilities in clinging to the Court, becoming befuddled and isolated with age. That was the case with iconic justices such as William Douglas and Thurgood Marshall.

Others stayed too long to guarantee the preservation of their own legacies. The most recent example is Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Some of us wrote for years that Ginsburg was risking her legacy by not retiring while Barack Obama was president. After Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett replaced her, many liberals (who were consciously silent before her death) lamented her decision.

Now, conservatives worry they may face a double tap. For two years, there has been speculation that Thomas (78) and Alito (76) might retire to allow a Republican president and Republican Senate to select their successors. Both declined. If they were hoping for a two-year cushion, that window just closed with a resounding bang. Even if they were to resign in the next two years, it is unlikely that President Trump could replace them with a conservative nominee.

With 54 seats, the Democrats do not fear defections from independent-minded senators like Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.). (That number could increase to 56 if things break for the Democrats in Mississippi and Alaska). They will also cite the denial of a vote for Merrick Garland during the Obama Administration as a justification for denying a vote to Trump nominees.Even before the election, liberals raised money to campaign against even prospective nominees for Trump.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris called for Democratic donors to oppose “additional justices” that might be nominated by President Donald Trump “before they happen.” She praised the fundraising by Josh Orton, president of the dark-money group “Demand Justice.” It was a notable endorsement since Demand Justice was infamous for its campaign to get Justice Stephen Breyer to resign, including mobile billboards reading “Breyer, retire. Don’t risk your legacy.” Demand Justice has also pushed a radical agenda, including court packing.

Of course, Breyer did resign and allowed Biden to replace him with Ketanji Brown Jackson, arguably the most far-left justice to ever sit on the Court. As soon as the Democrats took control, the Senate Minority Leader (and possible incoming Majority Leader) Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.J.) declared that they would bar “any crappy nominees,” which was taken to mean any Trump nominee.

In fairness to Thomas and Alito, neither is diminished by age. Both have appeared in public and shown they are fully capable and effective. In the cases of Douglas and Marshall, they were eventually pressured to resign after they appeared on television and were clearly enfeebled. The last two years have seen some of the most impactful opinions from Thomas and Alito in their careers on the Court.

Now, however, they could be looking at not two more years but six more years to wait for a Republican president if the midterms foreshadow the 2028 election. If so, by the time a Republican could succeed such a Democrat, Thomas would be roughly 84 and Alito 82. The risk is tremendous. If their vacancies cause a reverse Ginsburg, the Court would shift from a 6-3 majority favoring conservatives to a 5-4 majority favoring liberals.

Worse yet, in the calls to pack the Court with a liberal majority, politicians and pundits often point to Biden-appointee Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as the model. Jackson has been widely criticized for a radical jurisprudence that discards long-standing norms and doctrines, including by her two liberal colleagues.

Such a court would make court packing entirely unnecessary. The signature opinions of Thomas and Alito would likely fall in quick succession, from Thomas’s gun rights decision in Bruen to Alito’s abortion ruling in Dobbs. Nevertheless, it is much to ask for two jurists to resign when they are both mentally and physically capable, particularly after rendering some of their most influential opinions in the last two years.

Moreover, some believe that justices should not engage in strategic resignations to shape the ideology of the Court. These justices have a right to serve out their lifetime appointments as long as they can do the job. They can have a clear conscience serving as long as they are able, and leave their replacements to the will of the American people. In any case, with less than six weeks left with a Republican Senate, the time has effectively run out for the retirement option in holding these seats for conservatives.

The irony is that these two justices can take considerable credit in the building of the conservative jurisprudence that has emerged in recent years on the Court. They have shown great patience in building the authority to overturn long-standing cases, from Roe v. Wade to Humphrey’s Executor. That legacy may now rest with their own longevity in the years to come.

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