Declines to reindict.....

Grand jury declines to reindict Letitia James

By Katelyn Polantz, Kaitlan Collins, Holmes Lybrand

A grand jury declined to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James after being asked to look at the mortgage fraud case against her a second time, 10 days after a federal judge threw out the initial charges against her, according to a person familiar with the development Thursday.

Another source familiar with the situation said there should be no premature celebration, because the Justice Department could try to seek the indictment a third time.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on grand jury matters. The grand jury was in court until noon on Thursday.

The quick move by the Justice Department to present the case again to a grand jury shows the intensity of its efforts to prosecute James, a frequent Trump political target who was one of several enemies he has said on social media should face legal jeopardy.

Late last month, a federal judge said that Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s handpicked prosecutor, was unlawfully appointed as an interim US attorney and therefore the cases against James and another Trump political opponent — former FBI Director James Comey — must be dismissed. Halligan, a former White House adviser, was given the job after the Justice Department pushed out the previous interim US attorney amid increasing pressure to bring cases against Comey and James.

James had pleaded not guilty to one count of making false statements to a financial institution and one count of bank fraud.

“All actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment” including the indictments against Comey and James “were unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside,” Judge Cameron McGowan Currie ruled.

But Currie tossed out the cases “without prejudice,” leaving open the possibility that both individuals could be re-charged for the same alleged conduct.

Prosecutors, however, face a long road ahead as several efforts to dismiss the charges remain — including claims of a selective and vindictive prosecution that James made before the case was thrown out.

Both James and Casey have pointed to a myriad of comments from Trump calling for them to be prosecuted, and in the case of James, have accused the government of “transforming the Department of Justice into the President’s personal agents of revenge.”

Their attorneys pointed to one of Trump’s Truth Social posts, which was directed at Attorney General Pam Bondi, in September.

“Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, ‘same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,’” Trump wrote, referring to Comey, James, and Sen. Adam Schiff of California.

The Justice Department has argued that the president’s social media posts weren’t directing Bondi to act, but simply saying Trump believed those people should be prosecuted because they’re guilty.

In the cases against Comey and James, defense attorneys argued the 120-day period an interim US attorney is allowed to serve prior to confirmation from the Senate or approval from the district’s judges had already expired when Halligan took the position.

This, they said, meant that Halligan’s appointment was unlawful.

Currie agreed. She wrote that agreeing with the government’s position would give Trump and other officials authority “to evade the Senate confirmation process indefinitely by stacking successive 120-day appointments.”

“The 120-day clock began running with Mr. Siebert’s appointment on January 21, 2025,” she wrote, referring to Erik Siebert, who had been serving as the interim US attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia until he was pushed out in September. (After the 120-day period ended earlier this year, judges in the district voted to keep him in the job.)

“When that clock expired on May 21, 2025, so too did the Attorney General’s appointment authority,” Currie wrote, adding that Bondi’s “attempt to install” Halligan “was invalid and that Ms. Halligan has been unlawfully serving in that role since September 22, 2025.”

Last month’s ruling made Halligan the latest Trump US attorney nominee whose appointment was found to be unlawful. Federal judges found the process that the Trump administration used to name three US attorneys in New Jersey, Nevada and the Central District of California was unlawful.

But unlike with Halligan, judges did not throw out the indictments because they said there were other assistant US attorneys who worked on the case, and the interim US attorneys’ roles were limited, if they were involved at all. Halligan was the only person who signed the indictments for Comey and James.

Most troubling things.......

‘One of the most troubling things I’ve seen’: lawmakers briefed on double-tap strike

By Katie Bo Lillis, Ellis Kim, Morgan Rimmer, Annie Grayer

Top House and Senate lawmakers emerged divided along party lines after a private briefing with the military official who oversaw September’s attack on an alleged drug vessel that included a so-called double-tap strike that killed surviving crew members, with a top Democrat calling video of the incident that was shared as part of the briefing “one of the most troubling things” he has seen as a lawmaker.

“Any American who sees the video that I saw will see the United States military attacking shipwrecked sailors — bad guys, bad guys, but attacking shipwrecked sailors,” said Connecticut Democratic Rep. Jim Himes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. “Yes, they were carrying drugs. They were not in the position to continue their mission in any way.”

But the panel chairman, Republican Rep. Rick Crawford of Arkansas, said that he thought the second strike was justified. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton, also a Republican from Arkansas, called the strike “entirely lawful and needful.”

After reviewing video of the strike, Cotton told reporters, “Just like you would blow up a boat off of the Somali coast or the Yemeni coast, and you’d come back and strike it again if it still had terrorists and it still had explosives or missiles, Admiral Bradley and Secretary Hegseth did exactly what we’d expect them to do.”

In what has been the most significant congressional scrutiny of President Donald Trump’s military campaign in the Caribbean so far, Adm. Frank “Mitch” Bradley is on Capitol Hill on Thursday for a round robin of private meetings with lawmakers of both parties to defend the secondary strike on the ship.

Most Republicans have signaled support for the overall campaign, which has killed more than 80 people and which a broad range of outside legal experts have argued is likely unlawful. But the September 2 strike has drawn bipartisan scrutiny as a potential war crime — including, most consequentially, a vow from the Senate Armed Services Committee to conduct oversight.

When the initial hit on the vessel did not sink it, CNN and others have previously reported, the military then carried out a second strike that killed survivors.

According to Cotton and Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, the military used a total of four missiles to sink the boat — two missiles in the initial strike, according to Coons, and two in the second strike. According to Cotton and another source with direct knowledge of the briefings, after the initial strike, the boat capsized, leaving the two survivors amid the wreckage. But from there, interpretations differed: Cotton said he “saw two survivors trying to flip a boat, loaded with drugs bound for the United States, back over so they could stay in the fight.” The source with direct knowledge of the briefing said the two men were clinging to the wreckage, helpless, before they were killed.

It is considered a war crime to kill shipwrecked people, which the Pentagon’s law of war manual defines as people “in need of assistance and care” who “must refrain from any hostile act.”

“You have two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, were killed by the United States,” Himes said Thursday.

The Defense Department has been making the case for the follow-up strike by arguing that the survivors were still “in the fight” and defense officials have said that they radioed for help. If they had been rescued, they could have theoretically continued trafficking drugs, according to US officials briefed on the strikes.

Bradley was expected to make a similar case to lawmakers Thursday, as CNN has previously reported.

Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who specializes in law of war issues and is among those who believe the administration is unlawfully treating civilians as enemy combatants without an authorization for war, dismissed the department’s argument.

“Even if you were to assume there was an armed conflict and further assume that these people could be targeted in the first instance, they don’t forfeit their status as ‘shipwrecked’ by calling for help based on the speculation that the rescuers could salvage some of the cargo,” he said. “That would blow a huge hole in the protection for the shipwrecked. … If anytime you called for help, you lost your ‘shipwrecked’ status, there would be no protections there.”

The precise timeline of the twin strikes — as well as who ordered them — have been a shifting point of scrutiny since reports of the second strike first emerged in the press over the weekend.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his spokespeople initially railed against reporting of the second strike, with Hegseth calling it “fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting.” Just days later, however, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the second strike occurred and said Bradley was the one who ordered it.

Himes said Thursday that the admiral told lawmakers Hegseth did not issue an order to “kill them all.” CNN previously reported that a source familiar with the strikes said the defense secretary ordered the military to ensure everyone on the boat was killed, but it was not clear if he knew there were survivors before a second strike was carried out.

During a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Hegseth said that he observed the initial strike on the boat but then left to attend other meetings and learned about the second strike hours later.

Asked if he was told that Hegseth ordered the second strike on a suspected drug boat in September after the original strike did not kill everyone on board, Crawford said it was his “understanding” that Bradley had ordered the strike.

“I feel confident and have no further questions of Hegseth,” Crawford told CNN.

But the precise language of Hegseth’s orders surrounding the September 2 strike — or the more than 20 others that the military has carried out — remain unclear, as has the broader legal justification for the campaign.

“The underlying judgment that frames this entire operation is that if there is a boat with narcotics and people that are affiliated with a narcotics trafficking organization, that that’s a legitimate target,” Coons told reporters on Thursday. “I’ve still got questions about that.”

They are not following science

Doctor reacts to ACIP: “They are not following science”

From CNN's Meg Tirrell

The presentations Thursday on hepatitis B vaccination “are not following science,” Dr. Jason Goldman, a liaison to the ACIP for the American College of Physicians, told CNN.

Studies casting doubt on the need for hepatitis B vaccination and its safety were quoted out of context, and the proposed language for voting on vaccine recommendations “is inappropriate,” Goldman added.

The first vote scheduled for Thursday is whether to remove the universal recommendation that newborns receive a hepatitis B vaccine that’s been in place in the US since 1991. Instead, for babies whose mothers haven’t tested positive for the virus, the recommendation would move to “individual-based decision-making.” If parents forgo a birth dose, the vote would recommend babies receive the vaccine no earlier than two months of age.

But, Goldman pointed out, “all decisions are individual-based. Nothing is a mandate.”

He compared the nature of the recommendation that all babies receive a dose at birth with one he might make as a physician for other health decisions, such as whether patients should get a colonoscopy to screen for colorectal cancer.

“I recommend a colonoscopy to a patient. They still have a choice to do it. The evidence shows colonoscopy reduces incidence of cancer,” Goldman told CNN. “Same analogy. I recommend the hepatitis B vaccine. [The] patient can refuse. The evidence shows benefit of [the] vaccine in reducing disease.”

Speaking during the meeting, Goldman said the meeting should be ended now, before a vote.

“You are wasting taxpayer dollars by not having scientific rigorous discussion on issues that truly matter,” he said. “The best thing you can do is adjourn the meeting and discuss vaccine issues that actually need to be taken up.”

Non-experts

Non-experts whose research has been discredited presented on hepatitis B

From CNN's Brenda Goodman

In another departure from past practices, the CDC vaccine committee heard a presentation from Dr. Cynthia Nevison, a research associate at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she is an atmospheric scientist.

One of her research studies, called “Autism Tsunami,” was written with the next ACIP presenter — Dr. Mark Blaxill, who introduced himself as a critic of the CDC who is now working at the agency — was retracted by the journal that published it.

The editors of the journal said the authors misrepresented and selectively cited. or cherrypicked, data and that there were no valid justifications for the mechanisms the authors proposed for prevention.

“This is someone with no hepatitis B expertise and a well documented anti-vaccine bias. They could not find an expert to present on this?” wrote Dr. Dorit Reiss, a law professor at the University of California at San Francisco and a vaccine policy expert who was posting about the meeting on social media.

In her presentation, Nevison, who introduced herself as a contractor to the CDC, suggested that hepatitis B infections had never been a real threat to infants.

Nevison’s presentation sought to cast doubt on the importance of the hepatitis B vaccine and on recent modeling evidence that indicated doing away with the birth dose would increase the number of preventable hepatitis B cases and deaths in kids.

“There’s very little evidence that horizontal transmission has ever been a significant threat to the average American child, and the risk probably has been overstated,” Nevison said.

Nevison noted that the greatest declines in hepatitis B cases had been among younger adults, ages 20 to 39 — exactly the age group born after the universal birth dose was first recommended in 1991.

Instead, she said the decline in cases in this age group “had to be [due to] other measures.” She said other measures that may have been driving down hepatitis B infections, including better screening of blood products used for transfusion, safer dialysis and the adoption of safer sex practices due to the AIDS epidemic.

In reality, the adoption of screening and recommendations to lower the risk of transmission to infants has been stepwise.

In 1984, the CDC first recommended vaccination of infants born to mothers who tested positive for hepatitis B. Four years later, in 1988, the CDC first recommended hepatitis B screening for all pregnant women. In 1991, the CDC recommended universal hepatitis B vaccination for infants, then, in 2005, the CDC updated the recommendation to specify that babies should get a shot before they leave their birth hospital. In 2018, the recommendation was revised to specify that all infants should get the shot within 24 hours of birth. Nevison failed mention this history in her presentation.

Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth and the only current member of ACIP who has experience on the committee, said he took “strong positions against each of the three presentations.”

“This disease has gone down in the United States thanks to the effectiveness of our current immunization program,” Meissner said.

“The way I look at a neonatal birth dose is that it is a safety net.”

Leave fucker! And take your dry-cleaners with you.....

Prop. 50 changes may send longtime Calif. Republican to Texas

By Anabel Sosa

After Proposition 50 passed, which sliced up GOP congressional districts in California, Rep. Darrell Issa said he wasn’t leaving.

“I’m not going anywhere. I’ll continue to represent the people of California — regardless of their party or where they live,” the 72-year-old Republican said in a statement sent to SFGATE after the Nov. 4 vote. “I’m not quitting on California. And neither should anyone else,” he reiterated at the time.

With the passage of Prop. 50, California’s congressional districts are now completely rearranged — and five heavily Republican seats have been changed to favor incoming Democratic challengers. For Issa, who was first elected to Congress in 2001, his post-passage statement was a reflection of how consequential the redistricting ballot measure would be to the longevity of his job.

Yet despite having insisted he was “not going anywhere” just one month ago, Punchbowl News reported on Monday that Issa is planning to leave California politics –– and is toying with a congressional run in Texas next year instead.

Jonathan Wilcox, a representative for Issa, told SFGATE in an email on Monday evening that he could not confirm Punchbowl’s report, but he left his note on a cliff-hanger.

“We don’t have any news to make tonight — but stay tuned,” he said, adding: “On the record!” 

The speculation comes as Issa, along with his Republican colleagues, confronts the reality that he could lose his seat. Issa’s district, District 48, was one of five that was redrawn under Prop. 50 to favor Democrats. Whereas the district used to span San Diego and Riverside counties, it is now set to add Palm Springs and three other cities in San Diego County, including Escondido, San Marcos and Vista. Those changes will shift District 48 away from its Republican-dominated voter population and to a generous Democratic lead. 

Issa previously did not run for reelection in 2018; that year, the district was becoming increasingly Democratic and was rated a “toss up” by nonpartisan political analysts. He did, however, successfully jump back in the race during the 2020 election and has held his seat representing both San Diego and Riverside counties since then. 

It is not uncommon for a member of Congress to run for a different district in their state — Issa himself has done this before, and his fellow newly endangered Republicans are also considering whether to run in different districts next year — but leaving to run in another state altogether is unprecedented, one Republican strategist told SFGATE.

Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist, told SFGATE it would be “wild” if Issa left California.

“I can’t think of a precedent for that. Especially someone trading flip-flops for cowboy boots,” Stutzman said.

California Rep. Ro Khanna, an outspoken Democrat who represents Silicon Valley, called the potential move “bizarre” in a phone call with SFGATE on Tuesday.

“I think it’s hilarious. To run in two different states?” he said “ … It’s kind of bizarre, I’ll leave it at that.”

U.S. representatives are required to live in the state they represent but are not required to live in the district they serve in. It is unclear, however, whether Issa owns a residence in Texas.

Issa would be leaving the Golden State to run for Texas’ 32nd District, a Dallas-area seat that is currently held by Democratic Rep. Julie Johnson, Punchbowl News reported. Under that state’s new redistricting law, her seat is now vulnerable. 

If he follows through, Issa would be parting ways with his San Diego County district, where he has served on and off for the last 25 years. 

Issa has been a staunch ally of President Donald Trump. He most recently nominated the president for a Nobel Peace Prize, praising him as a leader that “kickstarted” peace throughout the world.

Whether Texas’ new map holds up or not will be decided soon by the U.S. Supreme Court. Last month, a federal panel of judges decided the Texas map was unconstitutional on the grounds that it was “racially gerrymandered,” but the Supreme Court temporarily restored those lines. Issa would likely only make the jump to Texas if the new map is upheld by the high court.

Candidates have until an early March deadline to jump into the 2026 midterms race in time for the June primary. Stutzman, the Republican strategist, said Issa’s departure could make room for a more fresh-faced Republican to step into District 48.

One of those candidates could be Jim Desmond, a current member of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, who announced earlier this year he was running to represent part of San Diego County. He did not respond to SFGATE’s request for comment before the time of publication. 

Rusty Hicks, the chairman of the California Democratic Party, told SFGATE on Tuesday that he was confident that under Prop. 50, Issa would be out of California either way.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “Darrel Issa can retire now or run off to Texas. Either way, when new membership is sworn in in 2027, Darrell Issa will not be a member of congressional California. That’s all that matters.”

Returned to California tribe

Nearly 1,000 acres near Yosemite National Park returned to California tribe

'It's a sanctuary, and a place where we can go and be, and have our own sovereignty'

By Sam Mauhay-Moore

Nearly two centuries after the Southern Sierra Miwuk people were displaced from present-day Mariposa County, 900 acres of land west of Yosemite National Park have been returned to the tribe. 

Sandwiched between the park and Sierra National Forest, the property is set along Henness Ridge, a crest rich with conifer and oak woodlands that separates two branches of the Merced River. Its forested vistas look out over the Sierra and the mouth of Yosemite Valley to the east and the Central Valley to the west, and it once acted as a key migration route for Miwuk and Mono tribes traveling from low to high elevations between seasons.

Its return marks the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation’s first modern real estate transaction, according to Tara Fouch-Moore, the nation’s secretary. 

“Now we finally have this piece of our land that we can go to. We don’t have to ask permission to be there,” Fouch-Moore said. “We relied on this ecosystem for thousands of years, and now we don’t have to ask permission to gather our foods and medicines there anymore. It’s a sanctuary, and a place where we can go and be, and have our own sovereignty over how we want to exist on the landscape.”

The land was transferred to the tribe from the Pacific Forest Trust using funding from the California Natural Resources Agency’s Tribal Nature-Based Solutions Program, which has facilitated the return of thousands of acres across the state back to Indigenous stewardship. The agencies and the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation also partnered with local groups like the Sierra Foothill Conservancy to facilitate the deal, Fouch-Moore said. 

The ridge sits along a historic deer migration route from the Central Valley and is rich with springs, meadows and wildflower blooms, according to Laurie Wayburn, president of the Pacific Forest Trust. 

“You walk up to the top of the ridge, and the world unfolds in front of you,” Wayburn said. “When you look to the south, you see the river winding like a little shining ribbon, and to the north you see the mouth of the Yosemite Canyon itself. But what’s truly amazing is that on a clear day, to the west, you can actually see the Pacific.”

The land was originally proposed by John Muir — who had an often-buried history of holding deeply derogatory views toward Native Americans — to be part of the park, Wayburn added. But the land was owned by timber companies at the time and used instead for logging. It was then sold off in tracts and was placed under private ownership or absorbed into Sierra National Forest prior to being acquired by Pacific Forest Trust. 

“It’s really wonderful for this to be returned to people who value it as part of their culture and their identity, as opposed to just as a commodity, whether for real estate or for timber,” Wayburn said. 

The Southern Sierra Miwuk people are among several groups whose homelands include present-day Yosemite National Park. When tribes in the area were driven out of the western Sierra by settlers, many sought refuge in Yosemite Valley — only to be displaced once again when the land was declared a national park. 

“As time progressed and as the park developed, it became more of a situation where you could only live in Yosemite if you were an employee of the park or one of the concessionaires. And that’s still true today,” Fouch-Moore said. 

The return of Henness Ridge, she said, marks an opportunity for the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation to once again employ its traditional land management and stewardship practices, including cultural burns and the restoration of pollinator habitats. 

“That’s why it’s so important for us to have land of our own, so that we can implement Indigenous stewardship the way our ancestors have done it, and pass on that traditional ecological knowledge amongst ourselves and to future generations,” Fouch-Moore said. “This can show modern land managers how it could be done, how it used to be done and how it should be done.”

The California Natural Resources Agency program that provided funding for the deal has returned large swaths of land to several California tribes this year, including 17,000 acres to the Tule River Indian Tribe and 1,000 acres to the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel.

Spread heavy metals everywhere............

Calif.'s enormous battery plant ignited. Now scientists say it spread heavy metals everywhere.

The new study uses soil samples from three days after the Moss Landing blaze

By Anna FitzGerald Guth

After a massive blaze at one of the world’s largest battery storage facilities in Monterey County this past January, thick smoke spread over the area, and residents reported ailments such as bloody noses, skin rashes and lung problems.

Now, scientists are revealing what they found in the soil three days after firefighters contained the flames at the Moss Landing Power Plant. 

Researchers from San José State University’s Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and their colleagues discovered elevated levels of nickel, manganese and cobalt — the primary components of the plant’s lithium-ion batteries that can be toxic for people and wildlife — in soil samples from the nearby estuary, Elkhorn Slough.

They recently published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports.

“This study is a solid set of evidence showing that indeed the fire spilled these metals,” Ivano Aiello, a marine geologist and the chair of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories who authored the study with his colleagues, told SFGATE. “We were lucky, in a sense, because we had baseline data for the area from a major marsh restoration project, so we could create a before and after. A few days after the fire, we found a multifold increase in the particular three elements used in lithium-ion batteries.” 

The researchers determined that the ratio of nickel to cobalt in the soil mimicked the discharge from the plant’s batteries, confirming the source. The study area alone — an almost 300-acre marsh within the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve — had a some 55,000 pounds of heavy metals, the researchers estimated. Still, their soil samples likely only account for around 2% of the total heavy metals the blaze burned, Aiello said, suggesting the vast majority spread elsewhere in the region.

“The Moss Landing battery facility is located within a complex and vulnerable landscape,” the researchers wrote in their study. “It sits adjacent to Elkhorn Slough, one of California’s largest estuaries, near the town of Moss Landing, and is surrounded by intensively farmed agricultural land. The fallout from the fire’s smoke plume raises serious concerns about contamination of soils, water, and vegetation in this region.”

Nearby residents filed a lawsuit against Vistra Corp., which owns the battery facility, and other defendants soon after the fire. They allege the company did not establish adequate fire safety measures. Vistra did not respond to SFGATE’s request for comment before the time of publication.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency authorized the removal of the damaged batteries, with Vistra picking up the tab. The EPA and California Public Utilities Commission are investigating the cause of the fire. 

Meanwhile, Aiello reports that his team will continue tracking how the metals move through the area and interact with the estuary’s flora and fauna. 

Because AI is garbage

The time has come to declare war on AI

By Drew Magary

A few months ago, my son asked me to buy him a subscription. The product in question was something called Ground News. For $100 a year, Ground News would assign a bias rating to any news link my son came across. He’s an aspiring journalist, and he knows that the journalism industry — which I work in — is rife with misinformation, obfuscation and ulterior political motivations. The kid is only 16. He’s not as media literate as his old man is. In theory, a bias sniffer like Ground News might prove valuable.

So I dug around a bit on Ground News to see if it was worth the subscription. And folks, you’re not gonna believe this, but it’s not. In fact, it buys some of its bias ratings straight from an AI algorithm. Once I discovered that bit of intel, I told the boy that the app was garbage.

Because AI is garbage. It’s an inherently antihuman technology that is doing active harm to the now hundreds of millions of people who consume it. A recent MIT study showed that using AI bots, like ChatGPT, can deaden your cognitive skills. Multiple parents have filed suit against ChatGPT’s parent company, the former nonprofit outfit OpenAI, accusing the product of encouraging their children to (successfully) die by suicide. Elsewhere, AI services are stealing creative content they don’t own, disseminating lifelike child sexual abuse images for pedophiles, jacking up Americans’ electricity bills and boosting fossil fuel emissions to record levels at a time when the planet’s health, humanity’s health, can least afford it. To cap it all off, the tech giants that have profited wildly from the AI boom are now openly laying off thousands of workers, with the expressed goal of using their AI models to do all of that work instead. Andrew Yang warned us the robots were coming for our paychecks, and we didn’t listen.

The problem is only metastasizing. In a very short timeframe, AI has become the high-fructose corn syrup of the digital realm: It’s now in everything, even if you don’t want it there. It’s at the top of every Google search, unless you do a bit of manual tinkering. It’s in your news feed. It’s on your Spotify playlist. It’s in terrible holiday ads for Coca-Cola. And, thanks to our beloved President Narcolepsy, it’s about to be in your government. From NBC News:

“[Trump’s] order opens the door to significantly increased public-private partnerships on AI development: within 90 days, the secretary of energy must identify systems and data available to support the program, including ‘resources available through industry partners.’”

I hardly need to tell you that Donald Trump is mandating AI contracts in order to enrich his Silicon Valley donor base, but it’s especially galling when you consider how much the tech sector has already profited from the AI boom over the past three years. Once OpenAI launched its ChatGPT product to the public in 2022, and once its CEO Sam Altman later did away with the whole nonprofit charade, the company triggered a gold rush that every major tech giant — Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon — rushed to get in on. The downsides to the technology may have spooked them at first; we’ve all seen “The Terminator” movies. But they stopped worrying about all of that doomsday s—t when their market caps went up and up and up.

And yet, they want more. In fact, those same companies are now aggressively portraying the advent of AI as an economic opportunity they have to take full advantage of. They now have allies in Washington. Many of them. Just this summer, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz mounted an effort to ban individual states like California from regulating AI. Ted Cruz is scum. He’s not fighting AI regulation because he cares about you. He’s fighting it because he wants to f—k you. They all do. And they’re succeeding.

This is a crisis, only you may not read about how big of a crisis it is because your Ground News app rated this article as LEFT. These bots are only as honest as the people programming them. And you may not find a more dishonest breed of businessmen right now than the AI evangelists of Silicon Valley. I know because I’ve tested their products, from Elon Musk’s AI-powered Wikipedia clone to ChatGPT and its competitors. None of them provided me with any intellectual stimulation, and virtually all of them have been designed to prey on Americans, especially young ones, whose loneliness was exacerbated by the pandemic. These AI models all bear the marks of their respective creators, because those creators are eternally biased in favor of whatever brings them the heftiest profit. That bias, along with a bit of Nazism, shows in the products they’re forcing down our collective throat.

And you know what? Americans are beginning to get sick of it. They don’t wanna pay higher power bills just so they can get laid off from their assembly line gig by corporate. They don’t want their kids dying by suicide. And they prefer that their pornography feature human genitals rather than digitally rendered ones. Meta may be seeing returns on its AI products, but their customers sure as s—t aren’t. You and I know that staying in a chat room with a virtual customer service agent is only so enjoyable for so long.

The question is if fed-up Americans are willing to fight back against the incredible institutional backing that AI now enjoys. Silicon Valley’s attempt to excise human beings from the world economy is supported both by predatory Democrats and by Republicans who, like Trump and Cruz, perfected the art of crybaby politics long ago. Republicans want nothing more than an electorate that’s been dumbed down into servitude, and these mind-eating AI products are only helping to accelerate that process. None of the aforementioned sockstains I just mentioned will suffer from the AI bubble going POP. Once the sector crashes, these leeches will simply pivot to a new bubble, with taxpayers footing the tab for the transition. From needless wars to needless bailouts, American tax dollars have always been used primarily to keep the markets up. The real money is in the corruption and, with Trump in charge, the corruption sector is enjoying a boom unlike anything that you or I have ever lived through.

That’s how market manipulation has helped AI weasel its way into every digital product you use, and why a chatbot is currently giving your little brother detailed instructions on how to hang himself in the basement. This is an evil technology, and I said as much to my son when he asked for that Ground News sub. You, the discerning reader, must also spread the word. Tell your family, tell your friends and tell your representatives. AI is evil. It’s a bunch of crappy products engineered to wage war on mankind itself, and not in cool sci-fi ways. It’s a banal evil, same as so many of the other evils that you and I have encountered over the years. But it’s a growing one. All reasonable Americans should want it banned, and they should want the likes of Sam Altman dropped into a Supermax. I don’t care if you take anything else away from this essay, so long as you absorb that point.

And if you decided to read an AI summary of this essay, come here for a second so that I can kick you in the face.

NGC 1316

An example of violence on a cosmic scale, enormous elliptical galaxy NGC 1316 lies about 75 million light-years away toward Fornax, the southern constellation of the Furnace. Investigating the startling sight, astronomers suspect the giant galaxy of colliding with smaller neighbor NGC 1317 seen just right of the large galaxy's center, producing far flung star streams in loops and shells. Light from their close encounter would have reached Earth some 100 million years ago. In the sharp telescopic image, the central regions of NGC 1316 and NGC 1317 appear separated by over 100,000 light-years. Complex dust lanes visible within also indicate that NGC 1316 is itself the result of a merger of galaxies in the distant past. Found on the outskirts of the Fornax galaxy cluster, NGC 1316 is known as Fornax A. One of the visually brightest of the Fornax cluster galaxies it is one of the strongest and largest celestial radio sources with radio emission extending well beyond this one degree wide field-of-view.

3 Steps Backward

Trump Is Taking 3 Steps Backward in the AI Race

The administration needs to shift focus away from providing chips and datacenters to the world’s richest companies.

By Arati Prabhakar and Asad Ramzanali

Last week President Donald Trump’s artificial intelligence policy took a fresh twist with his latest executive order, launching a “Genesis Mission” that claims to accelerate scientific research and bolster U.S. competitiveness by using AI. The order came wreathed in grand rhetoric, including comparisons to the Manhattan Project and the Apollo program.

But for all that Trump touts the importance of American leadership in AI, in reality he’s spent much of his presidency hobbling it.

So far, Trump’s AI doctrine has focused on boosting tech companies friendly with the administration, helping them dominate every aspect of people’s lives and the economy. The doctrine is driven by the idea that the United States wins the AI race if these companies control global AI — even at the cost of our kids’ mental health, gutted jobs, polluted skies and higher utility bills.

The recent executive order may seem like a welcome pivot to using AI rather than just building AI infrastructure. But unfortunately for American leadership in AI, it’s just a small step forward after three giant leaps backward. A serious effort to achieve America’s aspirations with AI has to start by reversing Trump’s damage to critical government functions.

The first giant leap backward has been a dangerous weakening of public data, the raw material required to train AI models. The federal government collects troves of data that families and businesses use every day — traffic patterns and census information, nutritional assessments and air quality reports, soil data and economic measures.

The executive order rightly focuses on the importance of data to “unleash a new age of AI-accelerated innovation and discovery.” But this comes after the administration has spent months ordering agency after agency to delete or hide data that’s politically inconvenient, and indiscriminately firing employees including those who manage valuable datasets.

Here’s what that means for AI advances. Initial research shows the eye-popping potential for AI weather forecasts that could be precise down to a city block or accurate as far ahead as a month. But that’s only possible with the sensor data that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) collects and curates from weather stations, ships, balloons, aircraft, satellites and buoys. The Trump administration has reduced weather balloon launches and removed hundreds of agency staff. It plans to cut back on NOAA satellites and shutter more than a dozen facilities that gather and curate data.

Politics, not policy, is guiding these decisions. As this administration tries to blind us to climate risks, it is putting Americans at risk today by undercutting conventional weather and disaster forecasting — and it’s diminishing the prospects for one of the most powerful and globally significant advances that AI could bring us.

The data problem doesn’t stop at weather. The Trump administration has also disrupted the collection of important health data. One example is data the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gathered for nearly four decades from a representative sample of volunteers to understand risks in pregnancy. That valuable data now remains scattered and hard to access, because the CDC first shuttered the database to avoid collecting data on race and ethnicity in line with the administration’s executive order against “DEI,” and then placed the staff on administrative leave. That makes it harder to learn why Black maternal mortality is more than twice the national average, or how to protect all mothers and newborns. Data on vaccine safety, farm labor, hunger, greenhouse gas reporting and international development have also been deleted or degraded.

For AI to be effective against these immensely complex challenges, the smarter move would have been to expand data collection and support the agency staff who make sure datasets are robust and accessible.

The second backward move is Trump’s cuts to federally funded research. With steady support from Congress over successive administrations, eight decades of federal research funding made it possible to start new industries, prevent and cure diseases, deter potential adversaries, understand and start to manage environmental risks and expand the boundaries of human knowledge. This research base is where AI itself came from, and to harness AI for the next generation of advances, federal support is essential.

Instead, the Trump administration has frozen grants, attacked leading research universities, curtailed high-talent immigration, ousted thousands of research agency staff and proposed a $44 billion reduction in federally funded research and development — the largest single-year cut in history.

While some take solace in the administration’s cuts sparing specific budget lines for AI research and the new executive order for Energy Department research using AI, that’s like buying more tractors while you kill off your crops. AI is a tool, not the goal itself. The federal government needs to fund not just AI researchers, but researchers in the full range of promising fields that need AI to advance — for example, biologists, materials scientists and meteorologists. It is their knowledge that will help develop AI for more effective medicines, resilient infrastructure and disaster warnings. And that’s how we create new industries that will help America maintain its global economic leadership. Trump’s cuts to publicly funded research mean lost opportunities, delays in breakthroughs and American researchers recruited to other countries hungry for our talent.

The third backward leap is the administration’s opposition to policies that protect people. The foundation for all AI applications, current and future, has to be managing AI’s risks. The obvious reason for this is the real harms that are already materializing: bot-encouraged suicides, deepfakes nudes, worker surveillance and job loss, and new forms of fraud. In addition, AI advances won’t meet their potential if people don’t trust the technology.

Nonetheless, the Trump administration and its allies in Congress are trying to undo or preclude state laws that protect Americans from real harms. While the previous congressional attempt at a moratorium on state AI laws failed 99-1 in the Senate, the White House has been itching to try again, and some in Congress are looking for ways to revive this misguided policy.

The American people have a different view. A recent Pew poll found that 50 percent of Americans are more concerned than excited about AI, while only 10 percent are more excited than concerned. Democratic and Republican voters across dozens of polls strongly support AI regulations. Effective regulation of industrial production reduced pollution. Effective regulation for seat belts saved hundreds of thousands of lives. AI is an even broader technology that will reshape so many facets of our lives. It needs effective regulation that builds trust, so Americans can seize the beneficial advances AI can provide.

To be sure, the Trump administration has done some good on AI. For example, it is expanding a pilot of the National AI Research Resource to support researchers and startups with AI computing resources, and it has embraced open source and open weight AI models that are increasingly important in the global AI race. The recent order on AI for science could make some advancements in accelerating how AI is used in scientific domains, though it remains to be seen how this work is executed.

But these are modest elements compared to the rest of the Trump AI agenda — a series of measures that focus on providing expensive chips and datacenters for the world’s richest companies.

AI is a powerful technology that can help America meet its great ambitions. A different, better AI doctrine would recognize that the work ahead is much more than supercomputers, data centers and chips. It would recognize the expansive possibilities of AI beyond today’s narrow commercial focus, move nimbly to manage risks, and boost our national capacity to develop and deploy AI applications that transform Americans’ lives. It would define larger national objectives that public and private organizations achieve together, rather than ceding our future to a small group of billionaires whose most obvious imperative is the valuations of their companies, not the value they add to our lives.

Cat fight....

Stefanik says Johnson ‘certainly’ wouldn’t be reelected speaker

Rep. Elise Stefanik blasted House Speaker Mike Johnson as an ineffective leader.

Cheyanne M. Daniels

Rep. Elise Stefanik said Speaker Mike Johnson would lose an election to lead the House if a vote were suddenly called.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal Tuesday night, the New York lawmaker said Johnson is an “ineffective leader” who is losing control of the Republican party.

“He certainly wouldn’t have the votes to be speaker if there was a roll-call vote tomorrow,” said Stefanik, a close ally to President Donald Trump. “I believe that the majority of Republicans would vote for new leadership. It’s that widespread.”

Johnson replaced former Rep. Kevin McCarthy to helm the lower chamber in 2023, accepting the speaker’s gavel after a historic series of multiple rounds of voting. He easily won reelection to the speakership earlier this year on a near-party-line vote.

It’s not the first time Stefanik, who is running for governor, has criticized the speaker.

Earlier this week, she accused Johnson of blocking provisions to the National Defense Authorization Act that would notify Congress if the FBI begins investigating federal candidates.

Johnson, she said Monday in a post to X, is “getting rolled by House Dems attempting to block my provision to require Congressional disclosure when the FBI opens counterintelligence investigations into presidential and federal candidates seeking office.”

Still, Johnson appears to have the favor of Trump, who has been able to keep a lid on most GOP internal disputes this year and was credited with mediating the quarrel between Johnson and Stefanik.

But in an interview with Playbook, Stefanik pointed out that between Trump and Johnson, “one has historic support among Republican voters, and one has catastrophic, plummeting support among Republican voters.”

Meanwhile, Democrats watching from the sidelines have cheered on the in-fighting with glee.

“THE GIRLS ARE FIGHTING!” a Tuesday memo from the DCCC highlighting the Stefanik-Johnson feud said.

3-year Obamacare subsidy extension

Senate Democrats eye vote on 3-year Obamacare subsidy extension

The plan is likely to fail; Republicans are mulling a counterproposal.

Jordain Carney

Senate Democrats will propose a three-year extension of soon-to-expire Affordable Care Act subsidies for an expected floor vote next week, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss caucus strategy.

Democrats get to decide what proposal the Senate votes on as part of a deal struck with Senate Majority Leader John Thune last month to end the government shutdown. The Senate is expected to hold that vote Dec. 11.

The strategy likely helps Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer keep his caucus unified on the vote, and it aligns his caucus with House Democrats’ plan to try to force a vote on a three-year extension through a discharge petition.

But it will also limit any chance they would be able to peel off more than a couple of Republicans. Thune said in an interview Wednesday that pitching a clean three-year extension is “designed to fail.”

To get a deal on the subsidies through the Senate, it would need 60 votes to advance. Some GOP senators, including Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, have backed a two-year extension but have acknowledged there would need to be income caps and other restrictions to pick up more GOP support. Whether or not to include abortion funding restrictions is also a major sticking point.

Spokespeople for Schumer didn’t immediately respond to a question about the plan. Schumer declined to tip his hand earlier Wednesday when asked after a meeting with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries if Senate Democrats would offer a three-year extension.

“Stay tuned,” he told reporters.

Some of his members want Democrats to put up a more sweeping health care proposal, while others have been discussing a potential compromise with Republicans that would extend the subsidies but with new restrictions.

Senate Republicans need to decide whether they will offer their own counterproposal for a vote next week. Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo and Senate HELP Chair Bill Cassidy talked through their ideas, along with other GOP senators, at a closed-door Tuesday lunch.

Thune on Wednesday evening said they had not yet made a “final decision” on whether they would put a proposal up for a vote next week.

“We’ll kind of see what the temperature of our members is,” Thune said.

Deadly boat strike brief

Top Pentagon brass to brief lawmakers on deadly boat strike

Gen. Dan Caine will accompany Adm. Mitch Bradley to Capitol Hill Thursday for a closed-door meeting with the top four Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.

Joe Gould

The Trump administration is sending its top military official to brief senior lawmakers on Thursday about a missile strike that reportedly killed survivors of an earlier attack in the Caribbean.

Gen. Dan Caine, the Joint Chiefs chair, will accompany Adm. Mitch Bradley to Capitol Hill on Thursday for a rare, high-stakes closed-door meeting with the top four Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.

Senior lawmakers in both parties have said they plan to investigate the Sept. 2 operation after the Washington Post reported that the first strike on a suspected drug-smuggling boat left survivors clinging to wreckage and that U.S. forces killed them in a second strike. Some Democrats and legal experts have said that, if confirmed, the attack could constitute a war crime.

“We are going to have the admiral who was in charge of the operation as well as the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff to join us, and we’re going to go into detail as precisely what happened, particularly with the second strike,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the Senate Armed Services Committee’s ranking member, told the journalist Aaron Parnas in a video clip posted Wednesday.

Lawmakers are also set to view unedited video of the strikes, according to one person familiar with the sensitive matter who was granted anonymity to discuss it.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday he’s open to releasing the video footage.

Lawmakers also want to see the intelligence that led the military to label the vessel a legitimate target, the rules of engagement in place at the time, the casualty assessments and criteria used to distinguish combatants from civilians and the legal rationale behind the operation, Reed said Wednesday in a floor speech.

Lawmakers say the briefings mark the start of a bipartisan inquiry, which delves into one of the most contentious national security controversies of the Trump administration.

Lawmakers from both parties are expected to use the meeting to seek a detailed accounting of the timeline, the decisions involved, the chain of command and whether U.S. forces saw or should have seen survivors in the water before the second strike took place — and, if so, whether a rescue was possible.

Caine has already spoken with the lawmakers who Bradley will brief on Thursday, according to a Pentagon readout. But the classified session is expected to yield the first comprehensive reconstruction of the events directly from Bradley, who was then running Joint Special Operations Command and has since been promoted to the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command.

Reed, in a floor speech on Wednesday, signaled the depth of concern, citing the report that survivors were killed.

“Multiple legal experts, including former judge advocate generals, have stated that if this reporting is accurate, this strike appears to constitute a war crime,” Reed said. “Indeed, many of my Republican colleagues have joined Democrats in recognizing that the reported facts of this strike would be clearly illegal.”

The White House has defended the operation, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying this week that Bradley acted “within his authority and the law.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday he “did not personally see survivors” and that Bradley made a “correct decision” to sink the boat “a couple of hours later.”

Congressional leaders, including Republicans, say they want unfiltered answers. Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) has pledged “a full investigation,” while House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said lawmakers will seek “complete clarity about what did and did not happen.”

Fading relevance

Texas exodus underscores the state’s fading relevance in the House GOP

Not long ago, seven committee chairs hailed from the Lone Star State. Now its delegation is young, large and unsettled.

By Mia McCarthy and Meredith Lee Hill

The Lone Star State is used to having a Texas-sized impact on the House Republican Conference. And, by the numbers, its influence should be larger than ever.

If a bold redistricting plan pushed by President Donald Trump goes forward, Texas could have a massive 30-member GOP delegation come 2027. And yet by the measures of clout and seniority — the real markers of power inside the House — the state is clearly on the wane.

Six members are retiring — some to pursue other political ambitions, others quitting cold turkey. Assuming the redistricting plan is approved — a Supreme Court ruling on the matter could come as soon as Thursday — another five Republicans would be freshman back-benchers from a state that once racked up committee gavels.

The turnover has left many in the already huge delegation unsettled and wondering how the state’s clout declined so precipitously. Rep. Pete Sessions, Texas’ longest-serving Republican, said in an interview that it’s “the biggest change of any redistricting period” he has been through in a nearly 30-year career.

“The timing of this across the board has been difficult to get your hands around,” Sessions said. He noted the redistricting and other retirements will “add youth and opportunity to the Texas delegation but a lot of the inexperience and a lot of things that come at a time when my party needs a lot of teamwork and collegiality.”

A younger colleague, Rep. Jake Ellzey, also said the delegation is facing a “drastic change” over the coming years: “There’s going to be a lot of introductory lunches, that’s for sure.”

Already there has been a remarkable shift since the beginning of Trump’s first term, when Texans held sway over seven House committees — including the powerful Armed Services, Financial Services and Ways and Means panels — as well as three coveted Appropriations subcommittee chairs.

The GOP delegation was known for zealously guarding its influence, holding weekly lunches to strategize, amassing seats on the influential steering committee that doles out committee assignments and often voting as a bloc on key matters.

Today Texans hold only three committee gavels, all on relatively backwater panels, and just one Appropriations subcommittee chair. One of those chairs, Budget’s Jodey Arrington, is retiring. No Texans serve in the House GOP’s elected leadership.

“We were powerful,” said Rep. Roger Williams, who chairs the House Small Business Committee, recounting what the delegation was like when he first arrived in 2013. “But that all cycles.”

No single member approaches the influence of the most formidable Texan in recent House Republican history — former Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who was often said to be more powerful than the speaker he served with, Dennis Hastert.

Rep. Michael McCaul, who announced his retirement plans in September, was the top Republican on two key committees for 12 years. In an interview, he remembered DeLay brokering power when he was first elected. “And there was a time when I was one of seven committee chairs from Texas, and we had the majority of the chairmanships,” McCaul added.

There are still some pockets of ambition in the delegation’s ranks, including Rep. August Pfluger, who heads the 180-plus-member Republican Study Committee. Many Republicans expect Pfluger to vie for an elected leadership role in the next Congress.

But the fact that the redistricting push proceeded at all reflects the state’s relative impotence in Trump’s Washington. The president used Texas as the tip of the spear in his aggressive campaign to rewrite congressional districts midway through the usual Census-driven cycle, and wary Republicans folded in the face of an unrelenting pressure campaign from Trump’s top political advisers.

One Texas Republican relayed his surprise and frustration to a group of fellow House Republicans on the floor as the push unfolded.

“What the hell did we do to deserve this?” he said, according to one of the Republicans present.

Since then, a fifth of the delegation has announced plans to leave. McCaul announced his plans to retire in September, as did Rep. Morgan Luttrell, a highly recruited former Navy SEAL. Arrington followed, and Rep. Chip Roy launched a campaign for state attorney general, while Rep. Wesley Hunt decided to take on incumbent GOP Sen. John Cornyn.

Last week, Rep. Troy Nehls made a surprise announcement that he would be retiring, and some Texas Republicans believe there could be at least one more in their ranks who could call it quits before the state’s Dec. 8 ballot qualifying deadline.

Rep. Ronny Jackson, Trump’s former White House doctor, has spoken privately to other Republicans in the past about leaving for a possible administration job, but he has filed for reelection. A spokesperson said Jackson is “committed to strengthening the House Republican majority and supporting President Trump’s agenda in Congress.”

Even the Texas Republicans who are sticking around are showing signs of frustration in the House rank-and-file. Some conservatives in the ranks are privately expressing unease about the millions of Texans set to get hammered with higher health care costs before next year’s midterms and are concerned about Republicans’ lack of a counterattack as they get hammered by Democrats.

Rep. Nathaniel Moran, who represents a deep-red east Texas district, stood up during a recent closed-door GOP conference meeting to confront party leaders on why they haven’t been working on a plan to address expiring Obamacare tax credits until just weeks before the year-end deadline.

Moran said in an interview this week that Democrats were making headway against the GOP with what he called a “sound bite policy” on health care. “So I would like to see … Republicans come to the forefront” with more substantial plans, he said.

Other senior Republicans note that the cohesion of the big delegations including Texas’ has withered under speakers Kevin McCarthy and now Mike Johnson, who have continued a trend of centralizing decisionmaking in the leadership suites. Younger members are not given enough senior mentorship, according to another senior Republican, and White House officials “run wild” across the Capitol forcing members to march in lockstep with Trump.

For more than four decades, the Texas delegation has scheduled regular Thursday lunches in the Capitol during session weeks to build camaraderie and discuss strategy. But because Johnson often aims to wrap up House business by 10:30 a.m. Thursdays, Republicans note, members are often scattered to catch flights by lunchtime — including younger members who are most eager to get home.

“Certainly that change of schedule has thrown into play the integrity of the ability of a delegation to meet and speak and gather their balance and equilibrium,” Sessions said.

Members are generally shrugging off the retirements. Moran said “it’s a natural cycle” to life in Congress while Arrington said in an interview that “Texans are more inclined to see it as a temporary calling to serve temporarily and go home.”

“For some people, that’s six years. For some, it’s eight years, and for others, it’s 10,” said Arrington, who is leaving after eight years even though he has the chance to continue at least one additional term as Budget chair if Republicans keep the majority.

Those who choose to leave have different perspectives on the experience. Nehls and Luttrell have identical twins. Nehls is behind his brother Trever’s bid to replace him in the House, but Luttrell said he didn’t expect his twin brother Marcus, also a retired SEAL, to do the same.

Asked if he would encourage him to consider it, Luttrell laughed: “No, I would never do that.”

Without a formal policy

Without a formal policy process, Trump can’t end the war in Ukraine

As long as the handful of players within Trump’s administration keep operating on their own, there will be chaos and confusion surrounding any Ukraine peace plan.

By Ivo Daalder

If you’ve had a hard time following the latest U.S. efforts to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, you’re hardly alone. It’s been a dizzying few months, with meetings in Moscow, Anchorage, New York, Washington, Miami, Kyiv and Geneva, and countless more informal calls between a large list of players.

One reason for this rollercoaster is that U.S. President Donald Trump has set his camp a nearly impossible task: ending a war between two countries that are both determined to continue their fight for polar opposite goals: In Russia’s case, Ukraine’s subjugation; in Ukraine’s case, securing its sovereignty and independence.

But there’s another reason for the chaotic scenes we’ve witnessed over the past few months — of summits announced then called off, deadlines declared then abandoned, plans set in stone then amended, all with an ever-rotating cast of characters leading negotiations — and that’s because the Trump administration lacks a formal process to develop policy, provide guidance, interact with foreign governments and set a clear direction.

This absence of formal process is a unique feature — or bug — of this presidency. Of course, Trump is hardly the first U.S. leader to rely on a small coterie of aides to discuss critical foreign policy issues. Former President George H.W. Bush ran the Gulf War with seven top officials, while Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden made many national security decisions during his presidential daily intelligence brief, which was attended by just a few top aides.

What’s different here is that top aides in other administrations relied on an interagency process led by their staff to discuss issues, develop policy options and oversee implementation. Trump, meanwhile, runs the U.S. government like he ran his family business — from behind his desk in the Oval Office, where he meets with everyone, calls anyone and then decides policy on a whim. And his aides operate almost entirely on their own.

When it comes to Ukraine and Russia, there are literally only a handful of individuals within the president’s circle: Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Presidential Peace Envoy Steve Witkoff and, since October, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Not included as a matter of course are the defense secretary, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, or the heads of the CIA and national intelligence.

Of these key players, only Rubio has a substantial staff at the State Department and National Security Council, but even then, there’s very little evidence to suggest he relies on them in the ways his predecessors did. Whatever interagency discussions are happening, their influence on policy development at the highest levels is scant — if it exists at all. And according to foreign interlocutors, including diplomats in Washington, officials in both departments are approachable yet largely in the dark about what is happening.

Even more problematic is the fact that, besides Rubio, the other main players on the Ukraine file operate without staff or process.

Witkoff, for example, attends meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials without a notetaker, and he’s been known to rely on Putin’s own interpreter. Kushner is deeply involved in talks but has no formal position in the administration. And Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, who was drawn into discussions with Ukraine on very short notice last month, was only given a weekend to get up to speed on the war, its history and the negotiations before being sent off to Kyiv to present the latest plan.

This absence of process also goes a long way toward explaining the extremely chaotic nature of the talks over the past few weeks and how everything all unfolded.

Initially, in mid-October, Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov sent Rubio a memorandum setting forth ideas on how to end the war. The plan was that Putin and Trump might agree on these points during their meeting in Budapest, which was planned for the end of the month.

The memo contained all the usual Russian demands: territorial concessions, severe limits on Ukraine’s armed forces, and no NATO troops in or membership for Ukraine. But when Rubio called Lavrov to discuss it, he found that Moscow’s position was set in stone and advised Trump not to go to Budapest. The U.S. president subsequently called off the talks, saying he didn’t want “a wasted meeting.”

However, while Rubio and Trump were pivoting to increase pressure on Russia — including the announcement of the first new sanctions since Trump’s return to office — Witkoff was engaging other Russian interlocutors to get talks back on track. In a call with Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s top foreign policy advisor, Witkoff reportedly claimed: “The president will give me a lot of space and discretion to get to the deal.”

Then, two weeks later, Witkoff and Kushner were sitting down in Miami with Kirill Dmitriev, another close Putin envoy, looking to sketch out a 20+ point plan to end the war, just as they had done for Gaza weeks earlier. Except unlike Rubio mere days before, Witkoff and Kushner largely accepted Russia’s position and made it their own. As Dmitriev told Ushakov after the meeting, as reported in another leaked transcript, he had passed along an informal paper as the basis for a final plan to make sure it was “as close to [Russia’s] as possible.”

When Rubio was first presented with this 28-point plan drawn up by Witkoff and Kushner, he called it merely “a list of potential ideas,” reportedly telling U.S. senators that “it is not our recommendation [or] peace plan.” Trump, however, liked it and told Ukraine to sign on by Thanksgiving or be on their own. This then led Rubio to quickly reverse course and declare “the peace proposal was authored by the U.S.”

Ultimately, what drives all these U.S. players isn’t a formal process or even a coherent assessment of what it will actually take to end the war in Ukraine. Rather, it is an unrelenting effort to satisfy Trump’s insistent demand to be recognized as the world’s peacemaker.

As long as this continues, so will the chaos and confusion. And none of this will bring an actual end to the war any closer to reality.

Never Grew Up

The President Who Never Grew Up

Instead of focusing on governing, Trump spends his days chasing entertainment, attention and renovation projects that reflect a presidency stuck in adolescence.

By Jonathan Martin

Sometimes, in journalism, the metaphors come easy. This is one of those times.

One day before Tennessee voters went to the polls this week for a special election in a House seat Donald Trump carried by 22 percentage points last year, the president quite literally phoned it in.

Instead of taking Air Force One to Nashville to campaign for Republican Matt Van Epps, who only won by nine percentage points, Trump dialed into a so-called tele-town hall to rally his supporters. It was the same approach he took earlier this month in the New Jersey governor’s race — which could at least be explained by Trump’s presence being more harm than help in a blue state.

But why can’t he be bothered to show up in a blood-red House district when base turnout is vital to success, and his party’s majority is so threadbare it may not survive this Congress? And why won’t he, as his advisers and allies keep hoping, start focusing on how he’s addressing the cost of living while trumpeting his party’s accomplishments going into next year’s mid-term election?

The answer is that Trump is living his best life in this second and final turn in the White House. Coming up on one year back in power, he’s turned the office into an adult fantasy camp, a Tom Hanks-in-Big, ice-cream-for-dinner escapade posing as a presidency.

The brazen corruption, near-daily vulgarity and handing out pardons like lollipops is impossible to ignore and deserves the scorn of history. Yet how the president is spending much of his time reveals his flippant attitude toward his second term. This is free-range Trump. And the country has never seen such an indulgent head of state.

Yes, he’s one-part Viktor Orbán, making a mockery of the rule of law and wielding state power to reward friends and punish foes while eroding institutions.

But he’s also a 12-year-old boy: There’s fun trips, lots of screen time, playing with toys, reliable kids’ menus and cool gifts under the tree — no socks or trapper keepers.

Yet, as with all children, there are also outbursts in the middle of restaurants.

Or in this case, the Cabinet Room.

After weeks of GOP pleading with him to address the cost of living following the Democratic rout last month, Trump this week used a Cabinet meeting to belittle “affordability,” calling his party’s central political challenge “a con job” and “fake narrative.”

Then there is Trump’s play-time schedule.

He not only goes to a Yankees game on Sept. 11, he ducks into the locker room afterward to pal around with stars a half-century younger, still the Queens kid whose first sports memories were of Willie, Mickey and the Duke.

Same as at the Ryder Cup, at Bethpage on Long Island: Trump didn’t just show up to take in some golf, he walked up to the first tee with PGA great Bryson DeChambeau.

Didn’t know Trump was a big soccer guy? Neither did I. But there he was at the Meadowlands in New Jersey at the FIFA Club World Cup in July, standing alongside Chelsea FC and baffling the English club’s players as they celebrated while the American president remained on stage.

And it wasn’t enough for the president to pop over to suburban Maryland last month for the Commanders-Lions game. He also had to duck into the broadcast booth to get some airtime with the Fox Sports crew and also have Air Force One execute a flyover above the stadium.

Of course, part of these outings goes with the office, and presidents have long played the role of first fan. But Trump’s cavorting goes well past sports.

A celebration of the U.S. Navy’s 250th anniversary in Norfolk becomes an excuse to preen on an aircraft carrier and commandeer the ship’s PA system to do a now-hear-this riff, as if Chris Farley had come back to life and was doing a Trump bit.

Any excuse to hang out with the celebrities who will be seen with him is taken, whether it’s Sly Stallone, Kid Rock or Andrea Bocelli crooning in the Oval. And hey, isn’t that Vince Vaughn?

Not surprisingly, companies and countries have figured out what animates Trump, same as every adolescent: presents. So the Brits present a gilded invitation to Windsor Castle, the Qataris offer a tricked-out plane and most every other country pitches their golf courses whenever he wants to come.

And these nations know not to serve him foie gras. Catering to Trump’s forever-young palate, the South Koreans offered beef patties with ketchup and gold-embossed brownies to the American president in October.

What really holds Trump‘s attention, as much as anything can, is the sandbox once known as the White House.

He could be pacified in the first term by being allowed to get in the driver’s seat of a big rig, parked outside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. But now he wants to remake the place entirely.

It started with the gateway drug of a larger flagpole, then moved onto paving over the Rose Garden, and now he is constructing a massive ballroom in what used to be the East Wing that will tower over the rest of the building.

Cranes, excavators, fellas in hard hats. Fun!

Lest you think he can be satisfied with just one property renovation, look no further than his Oval Office desk, which includes a model of the Arc de Trump he wants to build between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House.

Why be bothered to know the basic details of a potential healthcare plan — homework! — when you can do L’Enfant cosplay?

Also different from the first term, there are a few people around him willing to steer him away from his impulses. The easiest way to find job security in Trumpworld is to not control Trump.

And about those phone calls and meetings, which the White House likes to spotlight. If you think he’s spending those focused entirely on policy and not bragging on his short game, I’ve got a ballroom to sell you.

Which leads me to the best spin of our time: Trump’s transparency. He has no more interest in open government than any pre-adolescent would, but he does like attention.

That’s why the cameras are brought in nearly every day, for whatever executive order he is ostensibly there to promote or a foreign leader whose name he can’t always summon. The point is to see himself on TV.

Of course, like any kid, that’s not the only screen he craves — which is why he spends so much time on social media, posting all manner of content his parents would disapprove of if they found his account.

This isn’t to say it’s all recess all the time. There are chores Trump can’t get out of. Yet even his most substantive work is driven by a longing for validation — namely the quest to be viewed as a great president, as he thinks a Nobel Peace Prize or his big, beautiful head on Mount Rushmore would confer.

However, even the most acute case of arrested development can’t slow age. And the older one gets, the more they reflect their true selves. Trump will be 80 next year. Why would Republicans think he’d grow up now?

Spare him again?

Can Hegseth’s MAGA playbook spare him again?

The Defense secretary has a game plan for controversies, but the latest ones may prove a stiffer test.

By Jack Detsch

Pete Hegseth has given Washington a roadmap for how to succeed in the Trump administration: Attack your enemies, revamp your story and never say you got it wrong.

When a Democrat ran an ad urging soldiers to disobey illegal orders, Hegseth threatened him with a court martial. After reports emerged that the military hit wounded survivors in a second boat strike, the Pentagon chief revised his initial timeline of watching the attack and said he ducked out before it happened. As for those sensitive texts he sent a Signal group chat about airstrikes on Yemen? Hegseth said they were not “war plans.”

It’s a familiar MAGA playbook — one perfected by President Donald Trump — that carried Hegseth through a bruising confirmation and a string of early missteps, and has kept him in the White House’s good graces.

But as the Signalgate and boat strike controversies converge Thursday on Capitol Hill with the release of a Pentagon watchdog report and a top U.S. commanders’ briefing about the survivor incident, people close to the administration say he’s in a trickier spot now — and the usual game plan may not work.

“There’s only so many times that you can stand next to the president and label everything as fake news and deny everything,” said a former senior Trump administration official. “It’s worn out.”

So far, Hegseth isn’t changing his strategy. Even as POLITICO reported the inspector general’s conclusion that Hegseth’s Signal texts to a group of national security officials risked endangering U.S. troops, his allies went on the offensive.

Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell called the report a “TOTAL exoneration” of Hegseth and declared that “the case is closed.”

As the Defense secretary met with MAGA-friendly media personalities at the Pentagon on Tuesday and attended the agency’s first-ever Christmas tree lighting, his supporters on Capitol Hill appeared to take a page from his playbook. They dismissed the classified Signalgate report, which examined whether he violated the Pentagon’s standards for sharing classified information, even as Democrats renewed calls for his ouster.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) labeled it a “nothingburger.” And Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), who helped the Pentagon chief overcome allegations of alcohol abuse during his heated confirmation hearing, said Hegseth was within his rights to put sensitive military details into a Signal chat that accidentally included a reporter from The Atlantic.

“Anybody that read it could not take a different opinion about it,” Mullin said. “There’s no way that you can have any other opinion that he was well within his authority to do what he did.”

The Trump administration has continued to back the Defense secretary throughout his controversies, applauding his crusade against diversity programs and pointed attacks on MAGA enemies. The White House this week said the top military officer in charge of those strikes — Adm. Frank Bradley — was largely responsible for ordering the lethal missile attacks.

But Hegseth is still facing political risks. Senior Republicans on the House and Senate Armed Services committees have promised an investigation of the Sept. 2 strikes against alleged drug traffickers, and other Republicans have started to voice concerns.

The Pentagon chief went after opponents of the drug boat operation over the weekend with a seemingly AI-generated Franklin the Turtle children’s book meme.

“When he takes this approach of, ‘this is fake news,’ and then hits back with some type of a troll…that only reinforces his biggest liability, which is that he’s unqualified for the job,” said the former official, who, like others, was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive Pentagon dynamics. “That just reinforces that he’s not serious.”

The Defense Department laid the blame on false narratives that misrepresent a successful leader.

“As this administration knows, pushing back against the fake news is a full time job,” Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said. “Yet, despite the fabricated hit jobs and endless attacks, Secretary Hegseth has accomplished more at the Pentagon than any secretary before him, and he is 100 percent committed to revitalizing the warrior ethos and putting America first.”

The Pentagon chief also used the controversy over the boat strike to bash the media and his critics. “This is called the fog of war,” Hegseth said at a Cabinet meeting on Monday. “This is what you in the press don’t understand. You sit in your air-conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill, and you nit-pick and you plant fake stories.”

Hegseth’s comment that he did not witness the follow-up strike against shipwrecked civilians in the Caribbean — and the administration’s move to place responsibility for the operation on Bradley — was met with anger and disbelief by some in the Pentagon.

“Lots of eye rolling,” a defense official said of the reaction within the agency. “It’s despicable to blame Adm. Bradley for this.”

And even Hegseth’s allies don’t think he’s out of the woods — yet.

“The arc of the story is that it’s just a never-ending stream of efforts to undermine Pete Hegseth,” Schmitt said. “They didn’t get him in the confirmation process, [they] make a big deal out of this…I wouldn’t expect it to end with this.”

The release of the Signalgate report also showed that Hegseth’s tactics could backfire. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), the retired Navy captain who the Defense Secretary threatened with a court martial, was one of the first members of Congress to tell reporters the results of the investigation.

Begin blaming him....

Trump's own voters begin blaming him for affordability crisis

Americans continue to say affordability is out of control, and they place the responsibility on Trump, The POLITICO Poll found.

By Erin Doherty

New polling shows many Americans have begun to blame President Donald Trump for the high costs they’re feeling across virtually every part of their lives — and it’s shifting politics.

Almost half — 46 percent — say the cost of living in the U.S. is the worst they can ever remember it being, a view held by 37 percent of 2024 Trump voters. Americans also say that the affordability crisis is Trump’s responsibility, with 46 percent saying it is his economy now and his administration is responsible for the costs they struggle with.

Those are among the new results from The POLITICO Poll that crystallize a growing warning sign for Republicans ahead of next year’s midterms: Some of the very groups that powered Trump’s victory last year are showing signs of breaking from that coalition, and it’s the high cost of living that’s driving them away.

It’s a growing vulnerability that Democrats exploited repeatedly in recent months, with campaigns focused on affordability sweeping key races in last month’s elections in New Jersey and Virginia and powering an overperformance in a deep-red House seat in Tennessee on Tuesday.

“This is a small warning, but it’s one that Republicans need to understand, is that to hold the House in 2026, it’s going to be an all-hands-on-deck effort,” GOP strategist Ford O’Connell said after the Tennessee election, where Republican Matt Van Epps beat Democrat Aftyn Behn by 9 points, but underperformed against Trump’s 22-point margin in 2024.

This article is part of an ongoing project from POLITICO and Public First, an independent polling company headquartered in London, to measure public opinion across a broad range of policy areas.

One year ago, Trump’s economic message helped him piece together a diverse winning coalition, fueling his return to the White House amid widespread frustration over spiraling inflation.

Then Trump, after campaigning against Joe Biden, inherited the economy he spent months attacking, and both parties were anticipating the moment when voters would begin to turn their blame to the new incumbent.

Almost one year into Trump’s term, that shift is well underway.

The POLITICO Poll, conducted by Public First, found that despite Trump’s continued support among the Republican base, his softest supporters — the ones the GOP most needs to hold onto next year — are expressing concern.

Republicans were already worried about how they can turn out lower-propensity voters during a midterm cycle when Trump himself is not on the ballot. Now Democrats are also trying to peel away their voters by focusing aggressively on affordability, which remains a top priority for 56 percent of Americans, according to The POLITICO Poll. As was the case in November, affordability was central to the Tennessee special election, with Behn repeatedly centering her campaign on an affordability pitch.

“Republicans have long had the advantage on dealing with the economy, but if [it] remains in the doldrums and prices remain high, it’s harder to find a good job, they will blame the party in power, and that’s Republicans,” said Arizona-based Republican strategist Barrett Marson.

Republicans’ growing vulnerabilities on the economy represent a stark inversion on an issue that has long defined the GOP, and presents an emerging splintering in Trump’s 2024 winning coalition as his party heads into a high-stakes midterm fight.

Three-quarters of Trump voters say they trust the Republican Party over Democrats to reduce the overall cost of living. But his numbers are far weaker among those who say they voted for him, but do not identify as “MAGA Republicans” — 61 percent, compared to 88 percent of MAGA-aligned voters — pointing to a possible weak spot in his coalition.

Even among Trump voters a meaningful portion — nearly 1 in 5 — say Trump holds full responsibility for the state of the current economy.

The White House disputes that Trump is losing ground on the economy. “Cleaning up Joe Biden’s economic disaster has been a Day One priority for President Trump,” spokesperson Kush Desai said in a statement.

“President Trump is just getting started implementing the policies that created historic economic prosperity in his first term, and Americans can rest assured that the best is yet to come.”

Americans agree that affordability is their top priority, and they hold Trump responsible for addressing it

Across parties, age groups, races, genders and income levels, Americans say the cost of living is the nation’s top problem, The POLITICO Poll finds, a sign that the economy will again overshadow other political topics in next year’s midterms.

The poll underscores just how pervasive the affordability crisis cuts across Americans’ everyday lives. A 45 percent plurality list grocery costs as the most challenging things to afford, followed by 38 percent who say housing costs and 34 percent who say health care. (Respondents could select multiple responses.)

Forty-three percent of Americans — including 31 percent of Trump voters — say there is less economic opportunity in the U.S. now than there has been in the past.

Other indicators present a similarly bleak view: Consumer sentiment fell in November to one of its lowest levels on record, according to the University of Michigan.

And while Trump frequently points to his predecessor to deflect blame for inflation and high prices, the survey reveals that defense is starting to crack.

More Americans say Trump holds most or all responsibility for the economy (46 percent) than say Biden does (29 percent).

“Voters aren’t going to go, ‘I voted for Trump to better the economy, but Biden just hamstrung [him] too much,’” Marson said. “Voters are going to very quickly forget about Joe Biden and just as quickly turn their ire to Trump unless things get better.”

The survey underscores how Trump is now running into the kinds of economic headwinds that dogged Biden and the Democratic Party during the 2024 campaign.

While inflation rates have fallen from a high of 9.1 percent during the Biden administration to roughly 3 percent last month, voters’ frustration with the cost of living has remained elevated.

Biden repeatedly pointed to job growth to argue the economy was strong, even as prices rose. Now Republicans — who repeatedly hammered Biden over his handling of affordability concerns — are increasingly concerned that Trump is taking a similar tact.

“It’s striking to see President Trump make the same mistake,” said Michael Strain, the director of Economic Policy Studies at the historically conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

Voters say Trump isn’t doing enough, and it’s fracturing his coalition

The survey shows that there is a limit to how long Trump voters are willing to give him to deliver on a core campaign pledge. Already, 1 in 5 say he has had a chance to change the economy but has not taken it, underscoring how an issue that helped Trump form his coalition is now splitting it.

A significant portion of Trump’s voters last year did not come from his base — more than a third, 38 percent, self-identified as not being a “MAGA Republican” in the survey — and those voters are more likely than self-identified MAGA Republicans to hold a pessimistic view of Trump’s handling of the economy.

Among non-MAGA Trump voters, 29 percent say Trump has had a chance to change things in the economy but hasn’t taken it — more than double the 11 percent of MAGA voters who say Trump had not taken his opportunity.

Non-MAGA Republicans were also much more likely than MAGA voters to say the Trump administration is more responsible for the things they find difficult to afford, including grocery costs, utility bills and health care costs.

Democrats are eager to take advantage of the shifting politics of affordability and make the 2026 midterms a referendum on Trump’s economic record — and plan to link GOP candidates up and down the ballot to his policies.

Democrats from New York to Georgia zeroed in on affordability to propel them to victory in last month’s elections, and many party leaders believe it’s a playbook that candidates should follow closely next year.

“House Republicans should 100 percent expect to see ads next year calling them out for their broken promise to lower prices and for supporting Trump’s tariffs,” CJ Warnke, a spokesperson for the Democratic super PAC House Majority PAC, said in a statement.

Republicans, for their part, argue they’re the ones focused on reducing costs. “While Democrats are fighting amongst themselves on who can be the next Zohran Mamdani socialist, Republicans are laser-focused on lowering costs, rebuilding prosperity, and delivering relief for the middle class,” NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said in a statement.

Trump allies also say he’s making an affordability pitch, even if voters aren’t yet feeling improvements in their daily lives. But Trump himself has sent mixed messages on the issue.

On Saturday, he posted on Truth Social about drug prices that he claimed are falling so fast Republicans should easily win the midterms, declaring: “I AM THE AFFORDABILITY PRESIDENT.”

Days later, he said “affordability” is a “Democrat scam” and “con job” during a Tuesday Cabinet meeting.

“They just say the word,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything to anybody. They just say it — affordability. I inherited the worst inflation in history, there was no affordability. Nobody could afford anything.”