Week 44
By 
Congress voted, one vote short of unanimity, to release the Epstein files. Trump said this is a good thing, I’m still not convinced they will actually be released, but we’ll see. The survivors have led this action, although they are frequently erased from the picture. As is common for women, they have been ignored for decades now. Larry Summers tried to do the old thing of keeping his head down for a while while keeping a foothold so that he could make yet another comeback, but Harvard got shouted down.
We make progress one tiny step at a time.
And we made progress in other areas. The Epstein vote pulled Republicans away from the Trump lockstep. The Epstein vote is another crack in the Republican wall, as is the continuing fight over including self-proclaimed Nazis in the MAGA coalition.
The Indiana state legislature, heavily pushed by Trump, will not redistrict. The Texas redistricting initially lost in court, but of course the Trumpies push forward in appeals until they find a friendly judge.
Trump retreated on tariffs on coffee and other things that don’t grow in Kansas.
Greg Bovino, the short guy with a Nazi haircut who is leading the CBP attacks against Hispanics, was admonished by a judge on his lying in court. He had to lead his troops out of Chicago because the weather is getting worse, or maybe because a convention of furries was expected there. They are now wreaking havoc in Charlotte. The locals are resisting, using lessons learned from Chicago.
They are focusing on individual cities because they do not have enough goons to do more. They are doing a lot of damage and must be resisted, but we outnumber them.
Trump’s approval polls continue to get worse for him. His overall approval is testing the 30% decade. His “policy” recommendations, like “Take the money away from the insurance companies and give it to the people so they can bargain for their own insurance, like entrepreneurs,” are not executable, although a few of the faithful try to act like they are.
Trump’s love-fest with Zohran Mamdani yesterday was a hoot. He genuinely looked happy, in the same way he did with MBS earlier in the week. We don’t know what happened behind closed doors, but Mamdani is smart enough to have found common themes through which he could convey a fellow-feeling to Trump, like more housing in New York City. Laura Loomer is having a stroke. Trump will come back to bad-mouthing Mamdani, but let’s enjoy this laugh.
Steve Witkoff got rolled again by the Russians, this time Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign investment fund and would-be heir apparent to Sergei Lavrov as Foreign Minister. It’s not clear that Vladimir Putin sees Dmitriev as more than a lackey to deliver the paper to the mark And Putin is critical of what was delivered back to him.
His criticisms are a lot like mine. The 28 points, while clearly favoring Putin, are not in an actionable form. And the translation to English was pretty bad. Russians have people who can translate better than that. An amateur event all around.
Nonetheless, Trump doesn’t know that and is leaning on Volodymyr Zelinsky to agree to the 28 points by Thanksgiving, which will not happen.
Added later: The unprovoked strikes in boats off the shore of South America continue. Elissa Slotkin and five other members of Congress who have served in the military or intelligence services made a video reminding people in the services that they can refuse illegal orders. In response, Trump called for their execution by hanging. Here’s Slotkin’s response to that.
Follow the court-watchers for the details of the lawsuits. Chris Geidner (LawDork, Bluesky), Roger Parloff (Lawfare, Bluesky), and the Just Security tracker.
As usual, keep it to things that have actually happened, not hypotheticals. What is actually happening is bad enough.
Caring for yourself and loved ones is resistance too. Post your pets.
164 more weeks to go. What are you doing?
Previous weeks: Week 10, Week 20, Week 30, Week 40, Week 41, Week 42, Week 43