curated news excerpts & citations
Charlotte Clymer: The Six Day Peace
Yet another Trump failure.
It was only seven days ago that Donald Trump announced the first phase of a peace deal between the Israeli government and Hamas had officially gone into effect.
The remaining living Israeli hostages were released on Oct. 13th after nearly two years in captivity. Netanyahu had agreed to draw back Israeli troops to agreed upon lines. Humanitarian aid would soon flood into Gaza.
Trump took a highly publicized victory lap.
…
I don’t mind saying that a small part of me hoped he was right. As relieved as I was that the hostages had finally been released and the killing of Palestinian civilians had temporarily been halted and humanitarian assistance would soon be on the way, a small part of me hoped this might be the first time Trump followed through.
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Let’s wait and see, I thought. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he actually did it. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be wrong about Trump for once?
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And then, yesterday—predictably and tragically—the whole thing fell apart.
The “peace deal” lasted six days.
Six. Days.
Israel launched its heaviest bombardment on Gaza since the ceasefire took effect and suspended humanitarian aid following two of its soldiers being killed by Hamas, which followed the Israeli military allegedly murdering Palestinian civilians, which followed…, etc. etc. etc.
(Charlotte Clymer more…)
Guardian: Israel has violated ceasefire 47 times and killed 38 Palestinians, says Gaza media office
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Jennifer Rubin: The 7th Circuit rejects lies about Chicago
The MAGA Supreme Court must not condone Trump’s lies
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The latest collision between Trump’s misrepresentations and reality came in a unanimous 7th Circuit per curium opinion upholding the U.S. District Court’s opinion finding that there was no legal basis for National Guard deployment in Chicago. (On the three-person panel, one judge was appointed by Trump, another by George H.W. Bush, and the third by Barack Obama.) The court acknowledged that, though deference is owed to the executive, it must not turn a blind eye to a blatantly false portrayal of events. Put differently: Government lies to the country will not fly in court.The court put the Chicago protests in perspective. “According to Broadview Police, the crowd has never exceeded 200, though the administration suggests it may once have reached around 300,” the judges reminded us. Translation: The apocalyptic vision Trump invents to justify a massive crackdown on civil liberties is spun out of whole cloth.
When ICE deployed pepper spray and tear gas (against unarmed protestors) on Sept. 26, “[S]tate police and other local police departments sent six cars. The activity near the facility closed a nearby road for roughly five hours, but Illinois law enforcement was able to contain the scene,” the court reiterated. The next week, a few dozen protestors showed up, but “State and local law enforcement quickly responded and controlled the scene. DHS did not have to intervene.”
That was reality. The court dismissed as unreliable the Trump regime’s contradictory assertions (in sworn declarations signed under penalty of perjury), finding that they “omitted material information or were undermined by independent, objective evidence.” The court, in other words, refused to accept Trump’s fictitious narrative.
In making its finding, the 7th Circuit panel distinguished between “rebellion” (one legal basis justifying deployment of the National Guard) and constitutionally protected protest:
A protest does not become a rebellion merely because the protestors advocate for myriad legal or policy changes, are well organized, call for significant changes to the structure of the U.S. government, use civil disobedience as a form of protest, or exercise their Second Amendment right to carry firearms as the law currently allows. Nor does a protest become a rebellion merely because of sporadic and isolated incidents of unlawful activity or even violence committed by rogue participants in the protest.
The court emphasized that a few violent perpetrators whom local police handle do not erase the “considerable daylight between protected speech and rebellion.” …
(Jennifer Rubin more…)
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CNN: How Trump-Zelensky meeting turned acrimonious over demands for territorial concessions
President Donald Trump’s working lunch with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday turned acrimonious when the US leader insisted Ukraine make territorial concessions to Russia to end the war, according to European officials briefed on the meeting.
…It was after a call with the Russian leader on the eve of the Zelensky meeting that Trump again insisted Kyiv must give up swaths of land for the conflict to end.
(CNN more…)BBC: Zelensky ready to join Trump-Putin talks after ‘frank’ White House meeting
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FreePress: Virginia Giuffre’s Memoir Is an Indictment of Everyone Who Knew
She is a former Epstein victim who said she was trafficked to Prince Andrew when she was 17. Her posthumous memoir, completed shortly before her suicide in April, recounts the full, revolting story.
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – October 20, 2025
Over the weekend, as millions of Americans attended “No Kings” protests, President Donald J. Trump’s social media accounts responded by posting images not just of Trump as a king—defecating on Americans, even—but also of Vice President J.D. Vance in a royal crown, suggesting that American democracy has been supplanted by tyranny that will last past Trump into the future.
… “[I]n America the law is king,” Paine wrote. “For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”
But under Trump, the law is under attack.
Last night, on CBS’s 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley, Aaron Weisz, Aliza Chasan, and Ian Flickinger presented the story of Erez Reuveni, a former lawyer for the Department of Justice (DOJ) who alleges that the Trump administration is destroying the rule of law in America.
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Jason Easley: Democrats Move To Cut Off Funding For Trump’s White House Ballroom
Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) has introduced a bill that would cut off all funding for the construction of Trump’s White House ballroom during the government shutdown.
…Trump has claimed that the White House ballroom will be funded with private donations, but that’s not true.
The taxpayers are picking up the cost demolition and construction costs.
…The legislation applies to the government shutdown, but there is much more that suggests Democrats are going to be coming after Trump’s White House ballroom.
(Jason Easley more…)
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Jennifer Rubin: ‘Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals…’ and antifa too!
White House mouthpiece Karoline Leavitt declared last week that Democrats’ “main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.” That followed Speaker of the House Mike Johnson smear of 7 million people preparing to turn out for peaceful No Kings Day protests. Johnson declared that millions of fellow Americans were the “Hate America” crowd, the “pro-Hamas wing and the, you know, the Antifa people.”
Who knew there were 7M such people in the United States?! And how clever they are—terrorists disguised as grandmothers, babies in strollers, aging veterans, young parents, and spirited folks wearing inflatable animal costumes. Those sly “Hate America” types decided to bring American flags, hold up images of the Declaration of Independence, dress in 1776 garb, and reaffirm in hundreds of thousands of signs proclaiming their love for America. It turns out this hateful crowd is everywhere: in big and small cities, rural areas, mountain ranges, and beach towns. The Villages in Florida; Bozeman, Montana; all across Texas; in hundreds of red cities and counties; and even those beyond our borders are stocked with such signs.
To be clear, ten times the number that turned out on Saturday (roughly 70M) turned out to vote for Kamala Harris in 2024. That’s an awful lot of “Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.”
We have to remember that the worst act of domestic violence in our lifetime was perpetrated by anti-democracy extremists on Jan. 6 at our Capitol, where Trump supporters attacked police, smashed windows, defaced the halls of Congress, and bore the flag of traitors (the Confederacy). Trump pardoned all of them, including the most violent criminals.
…That still leaves open a question for Trump and his fellow slanderers: If anti-fascists who pay tribute to democracy, free speech, nonviolence, empathy, the rule of law, and our founding documents are the target of MAGA’s ire, what does that make Leavitt, Johnson, Vance, Trump, and the rest?
(Jennifer Rubin more…)
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NY Times: G.O.P. Senators Oppose Trump Watchdog Nominee After Report of Racist Texts
At least four Republican senators, including the Senate majority leader, signaled their opposition to Paul Ingrassia, the president’s pick to lead the Office of Special Counsel.
Politico: Trump nominee says MLK Jr. holiday belongs in ‘hell’ and that he has ‘Nazi streak,’ according to texts
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LAWdork: The Ninth Circuit’s 2-1 Oregon National Guard order was just the start of getting to an answer
Monday’s order granting the Trump admin a stay pending appeal in the Oregon case changed nothing on the ground immediately. But, it did crystallize where we are at — and going.
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Monday’s order was important. But, it was more important for the role it is now playing in moving all of these other pieces forward — one or more of which will determine whether there are limits on Trump’s desired use of the National Guard in American cities and how real those limits actually are in practice.
(LAWdork more…)
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James Eagle: The big tech exceptions with US tariffs
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I find this chart particularly compelling because it’s unlike anything I’ve encountered before. Yet it makes perfect sense, as it captures precisely the narrative I’ve just outlined above. The tariff system is inefficient, and the sheer number of exemptions reveals it as fundamentally broken. This point deserves proper attention, and the chart illustrates it brilliantly with remarkable simplicity.
(James Eagle more…)
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Joyce Vance: Comey moves to dismiss
Today, as expected, former FBI Director James Comey asked a federal judge to dismiss the indictment against him. He filed two motions:
- A motion to dismiss the indictment because “the government has singled out Mr. Comey for prosecution because of his protected speech and because of President Trump’s personal animus toward Mr. Comey.” …
- A motion to dismiss the indictment, arguing it’s “fatally flawed” because the appointment of Trump’s U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Lindsey Halligan, violated the Appointments Clause and the statute authorizing appointments of interim U.S. Attorneys. …
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Both motions are strong and it would be unsurprising, after briefing and oral argument, to see one or both of them granted and the prosecution dismissed.
(Joyce Vance more…)
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Lawfare: “Anna, Lindsey Halligan Here.”
My Signal exchange with the interim U.S. attorney about the Letitia James grand jury.
Daily Beast: MAGA Beauty Queen Prosecutor’s Disastrous Signal Texts Revealed
‘NOT HOW THIS WORKS’
Lindsey Halligan tried to argue that everything she wrote was off the record—after the fact.
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Wired: What the Huge AWS Outage Reveals About the Internet
Amazon Web Services experienced DNS resolution issues on Monday morning, taking down wide swaths of the web—and highlighting a long-standing weakness in the internet’s infrastructure.
Timeline: Tracking the Trump Justice Department’s Anti-Voting Shift
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda
Trump Pardons Database
Project 2025 Tracker
DOGE Tracker
ProPublica: Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew
Wired: 6 Tools for Tracking the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Civil Liberties
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