This Weekend in Politics, Bulletin 227

… JD Vance lied repeatedly on Sunday shows with his trademark smug insufferability. Trump lies like a huckster televangelist - like he knows he’s trying to con you with obvious bs so he keeps checking to see if you are buying it and can’t believe his luck that so many are. Mike Johnson lies with a monotone smooth sliminess that reminds me of the character Kevin Spacey played in The Usual Suspects. But Vance tells preposterous lies with a tone of indignancy if you dare suggest that he might be full of shit.

… Vance on NBC: Q - “Are you seriously looking at invoking the Insurrection Act? Vance: The president is looking at all of his options, right now he hasn’t felt he needed to. But we have to remember we are talking about this because crime has gotten out of control in our cities. Q - Crime is down in both Chicago and Portland. Vance: Crime is down in Chicago and Portland often because they are so overwhelmed at the local level they are not even keeping the statistics properly.”

… Q - “During the 2019 shutdown when Trump was president, no federal workers were laid off. Why are these firings necessary? Vance: Who do we care more about- federal bureaucrats or the troops getting the payment they need? Q - But layoffs are a priority? Vance: They have forced us to choose.”

… The layoffs have nothing to do with the shutdown. Workers are normally furloughed. Russ Vought is just using that as an excuse to launch DOGE 2.0.

… Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY): “OMB Director Russ Vought is shamelessly using the Republican shutdown as cover to execute his Project 2025 deconstruction of the fed govt. These political mass firings violate the Antideficiency Act and are an illegal attack on our civil service. They engineered the shutdown so they could inflict even more damage on the American people.”

… Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT): “The VP is just not living in reality. There’s no negotiations happening right now because Republicans are boycotting them. They are boycotting negotiations to reopen the govt because they are desperate to raise premiums on people in this country by 75% in order to finance their tax cut for the wealthy. The other reason the House isn’t in town right now trying to reopen the govt? Because they’re about to have enough votes to pass a resolution mandating the release of the Epstein files.”

… Q - “Trump said Gov. Pritzker should be in jail. Do you think Pritzker has committed a crime? Vance: Well I think Pritzker has certainly failed to keep the people of IL safe. Q - I asked if you agree with Trump that Pritzker has committed a crime. Vance: Well I think Pritzker has allowed a lot of people to be killed in Chicago and elsewhere. I think he absolutely should suffer some consequences. Q - It’s really a yes or no question. Vance: Pritzker has failed to do his job. I certainly think he has violated his fundamental oath and office. That seems pretty criminal to me.”

… Vance on ABC: “Did Tom Homan keep the money or give it back? Vance: He did not take a bribe. Q -Are you saying he did not accept the $50,000? Vance: The question is did he do something illegal. Q - I’m asking if he accepted the $50,000. Vance: Did he accept $50,000 for what? Is it illegal to take a payment for doing services? Low income women can’t get food because of the Democrats. Q - I asked you whether Homan accepted $50,000 as was heard on a audiotape recorded by the FBI in Sept 2024. You didn’t answer the question. Vance: No, I said … “

… For some reason, Vance’s feed was cut by someone at that point.

… After the feed was cut by someone, George Stephanopoulos signed off the interview with this: “It’s not a weird left-wing rabbit hole. I didn’t insinuate anything. I asked whether Homan accepted $50,000, as was heard on an audiotape recorded by the FBI in September 2024. And you did not answer the question. Thank you for your time this morning.”

… MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian: “A reminder: Homan has not disputed that he took the cash. The unanswered question is whether he kept it. Again, according to documents and sources, this was $50,000 in cash handed to him by undercover FBI agents. It was government money—your money.”

… Vance on CBS: Q - “We confirmed that the Trump admin rescinded some of the layoffs of hundreds of CDC scientists. Some of them were involved with the federal measles response and the response on ebola. How does a mistake like this even happen? Did the WH even talk to the CDC? Vance: That’s because Schumer and other Democrats shut down the govt. CBS - But that was a WH decision to lay off these individuals.”

… MSNBC: “RFK Jr. moved one step closer to his goal of dismantling the nation’s premier public-health agency by dismissing more than 1,000 scientists, doctors and public health officials from HHS. Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, former director of CDC’s Center on Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who recently resigned to protest what RFK Jr was doing: “CDC is over. It was killed. This admin only knows how to break things. They have made America at risk for outbreaks and attacks by nefarious players. People should be scared.”

… Infectious Disease Dr. Neil Stone: “The CDC has been gutted. I’m telling you now. The US will NOT be ready for the next pandemic.”

… Vance also contradicted his own admin on Fox about where it is getting the funding to make payroll for military troops this week: “It’s coming from tariff revenue but also income tax revenue that is going to make it possible for us to pay our troops.”

… Tariff revenues are taxes that go straight into the US Treasury with all other taxes. They don’t go into a slush fund for the Trump admin. Money can only come out of the Treasury with an Appropriations Bill from Congress. Also, the Trump admin issued a statement that the money was coming from DOD Research & Development program, so it is that or tariffs?

… Punchbowl report contradicting Vance’s claim on where the money is coming from: “The Pentagon is diverting approximately $8 billion in unobligated research and development funds to cover the costs of paying troops, a DOD official confirms. Money comes from ‘the prior fiscal year.’”

… Pritzker then followed Vance on ABC: “You just heard a tidal wave of lies from the VP. It’s a bit shocking. And you heard over and over again him just making things up on national TV. There’s a reason why the judge here in federal court said that they admin lacks credibility and why even the Nobel Prize committee chair said the admin lacks integrity.”

… Speaker Mike Johnson on Fox: Q - “Open enrollment starts in November. People are already getting notices about what they may pay. I mean, that’s gotta be resolved, right? Johnson: Yes, and Democrats are eating up the clock in the month of October.”

… Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI): “The Republican House has worked 12 out of the last 79 calendar days.”

… Rep Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) to MSNBC about House leadership’s decision to keep the House out of session for so long: “Outrageous for us to be on vacation. I think the dam is going to break soon. This is a complete abdication of responsibility.”

… Johnson: “Republicans are the party that are fixing healthcare. We just demonstrated that in the one big beautiful bill.”

… Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ): “The problem that Speaker Johnson is trying to fix is that he thinks too many Americans have health care. That’s why he thinks gutting Medicaid and ACA subsidies means ‘fixing healthcare.’”

... House Dem Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Fox News Sunday: “My friends on the other aisle seem to think believe that healthcare is an extraneous issue. We don’t believe it’s an extraneous issue. It’s a central issue - the states that are most affected are all states that Trump won, so this is not a partisan fight for us. We’re fighting for everyday Americans.”

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If you missed the last Bulletin, you can find it here.

… USA Today: “The US Dept of Education fired nearly everyone in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services in a wave of new layoffs that began Friday. Without an official estimate from the agency, it wasn’t immediately clear how many people in the division were fired. Yet based on reports from staff and their managers, most employees below the leadership level were part of the workforce reduction.”

… “Separately, employees involved in the college access program known as TRIO were also let go. An Education Dept staffer said the agency laid off just about every employee who works to administer funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, the primary federal law supporting students with disabilities. He was unsure how those programs will exist moving forward.”

… WaPo: “On Sunday, the president ordered the Pentagon to repurpose research and development funding to make payroll for members of the military, who were set to miss their first paycheck Wed. But civilian employees won’t see the same treatment — and the Trump admin’s budget office also argued in a draft opinion last week that furloughed workers are not entitled to back pay when the shutdown ends.”

… Across the nation, the shutdown is beginning to turn up the pain for food banks reliant on fed funds. George Matysik, with the Share Food Program: “Before the shutdown, demand for Share’s services had already gone up by 120% as the nonprofit saw $8.5 million worth of federal resources vanish under the Trump admin’s cuts to fed spending. I have never seen our warehouse as empty as it has been in the last three months. And on top of all this, we’re now layering a shutdown.”

… Jonathan Stewart, an air traffic control supervisor who handled flights in and around Newark Airport, said the system was showing signs of cracking just a few days into the shutdown: “When you further stress out an already stressed out career field, controllers are going to be in no way fit to control airplanes. It’s as simple as a field already stressed to the max. What is happening is pretty clearly predictable for anyone with any knowledge of it at all.”

… “Controllers’ last paycheck will come Tues, deepening the uncertainty they face as the shutdown drags on and threatening to make deepen flight delays. Staffing shortages at airports across the country, including Denver, Nashville and DC’s Reagan National Airport, led to thousands of flight delays last week.”

… “In an interview on Fox Business, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that typically an average of 5% of flight delays are linked to staffing shortages. In recent days, 53% of delays have been caused by staffing shortages. Federal workers are bracing for the financial consequences of missed paychecks. A Social Security worker said his wife has picked up extra shifts at her job to compensate for his loss of pay.”

… A furloughed NIH staffer said he visited a food pantry last week to stock up in preparation for who knows how many weeks of going without a salary: “My wife has been so stressed. I’m so angry at this administration.”

… WSJ: “More than 4,000 employees at agencies across the govt were issued layoff notices, according to a filing late Friday by the admin in federal court. Layoffs hit the HHS, Energy, DHS, Education, Treasury, Commerce, and HUD. The move marks a major escalation in Trump’s efforts to force a resolution to the partisan standoff on Capitol Hill and tests the limits of his executive power to trim the federal workforce.

… “More than 1,100 workers at HHS across several divisions received reduction-in-force notices. Some of the people who lost their jobs were deemed ‘at odds with the Trump admin’s Make America Healthy Again agenda,’ said spokesman Andrew Nixon. Hundreds of thousands of govt workers are currently furloughed, while others deemed essential are working without pay. But layoffs hadn’t been part of past shutdowns and Democrats said the WH had no reason to fire employees, while also questioning their legality.”

… Sen Patty Murray (D-WA) said this will not get Democrats to cave as lawsuits are filed: “Reductions in force are not a new power these bozos get in a shutdown. We can’t be intimidated by these crooks.”

… Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) told Fox’s Maria Bartiromo that he feels more isolated from fellow Democrats after he voted with Republicans on the CR: “I mean, for me it’s been very isolating, honestly. I mean, just, you know, not - it’s very similar, like, with Israel through this. Regardless of what the base might want, I think it’s the right thing that my kinds of, my kinds of positions are reasonable.”

… Fox host Maria Bartiromo told Fetterman she was proud of him: “You know, senator, what you just said, it’s really shamefully on your colleagues. You feeling isolated - that is absolutely outrageous. You are a breath of fresh air. I know our viewers are grateful.”

… Kristi Noem released a video to be played in US airports: “It is TSA’s top priority to ensure that you have the most pleasant and efficient airport experience possible while we keep you safe. However, Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal govt, and because of this most of our operations are impacted and most of our TSA employees are working without pay. Our hope is that Democrats soon recognize the importance of reopening the govt.”

… Tina Fey unveiled her Noem character on SNL last night, with Amy Poehler playing Pam Bondi:

… Politico: “Beijing shattered a fragile trade truce with Washington this week, announcing sweeping restrictions on exports that contain even trace amounts of Chinese rare earth. An irate Trump is threatening to retaliate with 100% tariffs and new restrictions on exports of critical software — and said there’s ‘no reason’ to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping later this month.”

… “It’s also the clearest test yet of Trump’s ability to translate his transactional approach to trade into a coherent China strategy - one that can withstand Beijing’s deliberate and long-term economic warfare. Most of China’s new restrictions will take effect Dec. 1, while the US’s retaliatory measures are set to kick in Nov. 1.”

… “China’s Ministry of Commerce unveiled its most expansive rare earth export controls to date, allowing Beijing not only to restrict shipments of raw materials and magnets — as it has in the past — but also any devices that incorporate those elements. Because Chinese rare earths are embedded in everything from iPhones and electric vehicle motors to fighter-jet sensors, the rules effectively give Beijing potential veto power over vast swaths of global manufacturing.”

… Liza Tobin, the NSC director for China during Trump’s first term: “We’re playing 2-D chess while Beijing is playing 4-D chess.”

… After his long and unhinged post on Friday threatening total economic warfare with China, Trump posted this on Sunday afternoon: “Don’t worry about China, it will all be fine! Highly respected President Xi just had a bad moment. He doesn’t want Depression for his country, and neither do I.”

… CoinCentral: “One crypto trader turned market chaos into massive profit. A whale made over $160 million by shorting Bitcoin and Ethereum just before Trump announced a 100% tariff on China. The timing of these trades has raised questions. The positions were opened just before the tariff announcement sent crypto markets tumbling. Within 24 hours, the BTC shorts generated over $90 million in profit. The trader opened these positions ahead of the price decline.”

… “The total crypto market cap fell more than 10% in 24 hours. It dropped to $3.73 trillion. The crypto whale’s trades on Hyperliquid are publicly visible due to the platform’s transparency. Total profits exceeded $160 million from both Bitcoin and Ethereum positions combined.”

… CNN: “Federal prosecutors met Sat to finalize the details of a potential indictment against former NSA John Bolton, who has been under criminal investigation for years related to his handling of national security information. The searches this year related to, in part, a reopened, years-old investigation involving Bolton’s book manuscript. Yet investigators are also exploring other possible leaks.”

… The Telegraph on the stock market bubble: “It is not clear which needle will burst the bubble, there is no doubt about the bubble itself. The AI hype is off the scale, with the big prize dominance not of the generative AI chatbots that we have already become accustomed to using in our everyday lives, but of so-called ‘general AI’ or computers with cognitive powers similar to a human being, only infinitely faster and more powerful.”

… “The dangers of AI fever are not just in unhinged stock-market speculation. Such is the magnitude of investment in AI data centers, connectivity and supercomputing that it is said to have contributed nearly a half of all GDP growth in the US so far this year. The economy is becoming almost wholly dependent on just a handful of tech titan ‘hyperscalers’ chasing a dream of uncertain substance and return. Rarely, if ever, have the fortunes of the world economy depended so precariously on the judgment of such a small cluster of men – the bosses of Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple, X, Amazon and others chasing the supposed crock of gold at the end of the AI rainbow.”

… “It’s true that all booms are different, with specific characteristics and transmission mechanisms. But the one constant is that they always end in a bust. People forget that the dot.com boom was not just about transitory fireflies. It also included heavy investment in enabling infrastructure which came close to completely bankrupting many of the established and seemingly solvent telecoms players that provided it.

… “Such is the scale of today’s investment outlay, and the fear of being left behind, that even the giants of tech are increasingly having to dip into credit markets to stay in the game. Existing cash flows don’t cover it. All the stars are now aligned for the mother of all financial meltdowns, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen soon. Market collapses require a trigger, or some kind of event that causes the presiding sentiment of greed to turn into panic and fear. We don’t yet see that.”

… Sen. Brian Schatz to Meidas on Trump’s energy policy: “We don’t even have to talk about climate action. We can just say wind is cheap, solar is cheap. They’re stopping wind and solar because this guy has some very strange ideas about the energy mix. And it’s consistent with the rest of his political and economic philosophy - if there’s less of everything, it gives him more authority to dole out favors and have people come to him for indulgences from the king.”

… Schatz: “The cost of electricity is rising at double the rate of inflation and that’s before all of these data centers kick into high gear and all of these cheap solar energy projects got cancelled. Buckle up.”

… Trump is calling for Sen. Adam Schiff to be prosecuted next: “The Ukraine Impeachment (of me!) Scam was a far bigger Illegal Hoax than Watergate. I sincerely hope the necessary authorities, including CONGRESS, are looking into this! Adam ‘Schiffty’ Schiff was sooo dishonest and corrupt. So many laws, and protocols, were violated, and just plain broken!!!”

… AP: “Before Bill Pulte started targeting Trump’s political enemies, he practiced on his own family. He accused his grandfather’s widow of insider trading. He was allegedly the driving force behind a website trashing an aunt as a ‘fake Christian.’ And he publicly blasted another relative as ‘a fat slob,’ ‘weirdo’ and ‘grifter,’ according to court records from a bitter legal feud pursued by Pulte that ensnared PulteGroup, the multibillion-dollar homebuilding giant his grandfather founded.”

… In any other admin, that background could foreclose the possibility of landing a top govt post. But in Trump’s Washington, the attention-seeking and hyper-online millennial has unexpectedly become a major player. The latest measure of his influence came this week when NY AG Letitia James, who angered Trump with her courtroom pursuits of him, was indicted on bank fraud charges following a protracted campaign by Pulte.”

… “Pulte’s official job is director of the Fed Housing Finance Agency, where he’s entrusted with the dull but critical task of ensuring the soundness of the mortgage market. He has instead transformed the position into a megaphone to denigrate Trump’s perceived political foes. In addition to referring James to DOJ - which Pulte widely publicized - he has probed Sen. Adam Schiff and Lisa Cook, a Fed Reserve governor appointed by Biden. Both are now under federal criminal investigation.”

… Trump also seemed to be calling for the prosecution of former FBI Director Chris Wray: “THE BIDEN FBI PLACED 274 AGENTS INTO THE CROWD ON JANUARY 6. If this is so, which it is, a lot of very good people will be owed big apologies. What a SCAM - DO SOMETHING!!!”

… CNN played several clips to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) of ICE agents brutalizing people using excessive force on both migrants and American citizens and asked him for his reaction: “I don’t know the specifics of those examples you gave. What I do know is these ICE agents are under tremendous pressure. I think they’re doing a good job.”

… Jordan was also asked if he believes DOJ is acting independently from the president or following his orders by indicting and investigating his political opponents: “I think the DOJ is just applying the facts to each case.”

… CBS: “A federal appeals court Saturday blocked the deployment of National Guard troops in the Chicago area amid ongoing protests at ICE facilities that the Trump admin has vowed to crack down on. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling from US District Judge April Perry earlier this week denying a request from the WH to deploy National Guard troops on the streets of Chicago in response to a lawsuit brought by IL and the city of Chicago.”

… Trump continues to cite a false story from a fringe right-wing outlet on this. After the story came out, Trump’s own FBI Director Kash Patel issued a statement that the story was false and the agents were sent to the Capitol AFTER the violent insurrection was already well underway.”

… It was also the Trump admin’s FBI. Biden wasn’t president yet.

… Trump fired Sergio Gor this weekend as WH Personnel Director, who disclosed recently that he lied previously about being born in Malta when he was born in the Soviet Union: “I am pleased to announce that the great Dan Scavino, in addition to remaining Deputy Chief of Staff of, will head the WH Personnel Office, replacing Sergio Gor, who did a wonderful job in that position, and will now become the Ambassador to India.”

… Scavino started out his career as Trump’s golf caddie. His primary qualification is fanatical loyalty to Trump. He’s Trump’s Luca Brasi, if you’ve seen The Godfather.

… VA’s Republican candidate for governor Winsome Earle-Sears has been begging for Trump’s endorsement to help with MAGA turnout, but has gotten neither. She was asked about that on Fox with the election only two weeks out: Q - “You don’t have Trump’s endorsement. What does that mean? Earle-Sears: We’re gonna keep working. Would I like the president’s endorsement? Of course I would.”

… Melania Trump is now selling a Christmas ornament for $75. This is it if you are interested.